Beorn had checked the pan cover twice before they passed the citadel’s outer gate, and he checked it again now, one thumb pressing the frizzen down and confirming the seal without breaking stride.

The two squads behind him moved at the same pace, keeping the formation Godric had organized before they left, loose enough for the street’s width, tight enough to read as intentional.

The saber was on his left hip, acquired the previous evening from the garrison stores, and he was carrying it with the focused awareness of who knew where a weapon sat on his body but had not spent years ignoring it.

Aestrith was beside him.

"How many times do you plan to check it again?" she said.

"The first one was habit," Beorn said. "The second was confirmation. The third is because once isn’t enough for today."

She looked at his left hip.

"And the saber?" she said.

"So-so," he said.

She did not respond immediately. He counted two strides before she spoke again.

"Will you be leading this personally," she said.

"I am," he said.

She kept pace with him for a moment before asking, "And why is that?"

He kept his eyes on the street ahead and gave her the practical answer. "The high quarter takeover is three entry points going at the same time. The timing has to come from someone who can call all three at once if one meets resistance or one goes faster than expected. That cannot be done from the war table."

He paused for one stride. "The civilian problem makes it worse. If a squad leader seizes a building with the wrong people in it, the call to hold ground or push through is not something I can make from miles away."

"And if you’re the one who gets shot?" Aestrith said.

"Then Godric takes over," Beorn said. "The plan doesn’t require me to survive it."

She looked at the road for a moment before answering. "And the civilians, how do you avoid taking their houses apart while you look for him?"

"We go toward the center."

Beorn mused over his explanation. "Coss is moving between three or four addresses, and the center of the high quarter is where those addresses cluster. His force falls back toward him when pressed, which means pressing from the outside pushes everything inward. We don’t need to search room by room."

He let that sit for a stride, then finished it. "We pressure them to retreat to the right address."

She accepted that and said nothing further.

The street they were moving through had the atmosphere of an avenue dealing with the aftermath of urban warfare. Two shuttered windows on the east-facing wall of the corner building, one with a crack through the upper pane that came from a crossbow bolt hitting stone nearby and the shockwave finding glass.

Dark staining on the cobblestones near the wall’s base, too wide to have come from one person and not recent enough to still be wet. The city had not cleaned it yet because no one in Ashmark took responsibility for cleaning what happened to the street outside their neighbor’s door. Someone would get to it or they would not.

Two people crossed the far end of the street without looking at the armed group moving through it. They had learned to think first and look second.

They kept going.

Further along, a vendor had returned to a position near the residential quarter’s main road. Board across two barrels, goods out, prices chalked on a piece of slate propped at the near end. The chalk was fresh enough that the marks had not yet softened at the edges.

The vendor watched the group pass and ignored them with a tense expression.

When Beorn’s group cleared the near corner, the vendor’s eyes went to the far end of the street, and they called something to a person there, resuming whatever transaction had been suspended while a formation of armed men blocked the sightline.

A voice came from a second-floor window, two people arguing in the clipped easter accent and something further south, the argument clearly mid-sequence and not interested in starting over for the benefit of the audience below.

A domestic conflict conducted through open windows in two languages, the way the city did almost everything.

Near the slums the street narrowed and the smell changed.

Cook fires burned on the pavement outside buildings that had taken in more people than the interior would handle.

A family used a doorframe as three walls of shelter, with the building behind them serving as the fourth.

A child sat on the step at the shelter, watching the armed group with bland indifference.

The sound of the slums after the refugee influx had more layers to it, more languages, more hours of the day occupied, the city’s lowest district absorbing what the rest of the territory had sent here.

The miners’ quarter had a different atmosphere from the first walk through, months ago when the tools were leaning against walls instead of being carried.

Some of the nearest shafts had been drained, and the reclamation work had begun before the convoy routes were disrupted by the split. The workers moving through this section had somewhere to go, even if that somewhere was partial.

The plaza smelled of spent powder and iron, and the bodies had not been moved yet from the barricade and the breach between the retaining wall and the crates.

Harr was at the steps, and he acknowledged Beorn’s arrival with a brief nod.

Beorn walked through without stopping.

The steps were steep, built into the retaining wall that divided the high quarter’s elevation from the residential district below.

At the top, the high quarter opened before him.

It had looked different when he first walked through it, old but tended, ironwork that functioned properly, surfaces maintained with the consistency of a place where people took daily upkeep seriously.

The blockade and the commercial network’s collapse had begun to show.

The ironwork on the nearest gate fitting was not as clean as it had been, a film of neglect on metal that had been oiled regularly until someone stopped oiling it.

A section of cobblestone near the first corner had a loose fitting that would have been fixed within the week, back when this was a district that expected such things to be fixed.

He looked at the access points from the top of the steps.

The main road from the residential district was the obvious line and therefore the defended one.

Two side streets sat at the quarter where the elevation leveled out enough to allow access without stairs.

The center, where Ald had said the addresses clustered.

The tactical map was forming in his mind.

He turned to Godric. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Set the eastern route to move at the same signal as us," he said.

Godric confirmed it and turned to relay it.

The runner arrived from the slums two minutes later.

Godric took the report and delivered it in event sequence. What happened, where, what the numbers were.

Multiple ambush points hit at the same time within twenty minutes of each other.

Three dead.

Six injured badly enough to pull from position, with two others who had taken hits and stayed at their posts.

The warehouse district stragglers had linked with the slums men.

Beorn looked at the high quarter while Godric delivered it. He had known the slums pressure would increase while the push concentrated elsewhere.

Knowing it had not changed the decision.

He had made the decision and accepted the cost that came with it, and the cost had arrived, which was how accepted costs worked.

"Send a cordon to the routes between the high quarter and the slums," he said to Godric. "Blocking positions. No engagement unless they push through. Cut off the coordination and isolate both districts from each other."

Godric was already moving.

Aestrith stood at the top of the steps beside him, looking at the high quarter the same way he was. She had heard the report. She said nothing.

He understood what her silence was for.

He looked at the street ahead.