Lloyd was sorely tempted. He had never been content to spend his life hunting and farming.

As one of the hidden folk—unregistered, unclaimed—he had even less chance of ever leaving these mountains.

That made ruling his own corner of the mountains the best future open to him.

Derek's proposal was beyond his power to refuse.

Both sides would benefit, he told himself.

In the end, Lloyd nodded. The conversation between them was destined to remain a secret.

Derek had no intention of dirtying his own reputation, so he would never touch Lloyd's enterprise directly.

As for what others might guess, every noble had secrets. They simply had to remain out of sight.

Every mounted bandit and brigand crew with a name on its banner had a noble standing somewhere behind it.

Just before they returned to camp, Derek raised one more small request.

"I also need a bit of ground. A single hilltop would do—somewhere small shipments of goods can be moved in without too much trouble. Any recommendations?"

"Every patch of decent farmland in these mountains has an owner. Breaking new ground costs more than it's worth."

"No, no—I only need a place to stand. I'm not coming to farm."

"Then it's easy. I'll find you somewhere."

And so the deal, sealed in the name of friendship, was struck. They agreed on a meeting place and a rough date, then parted ways.

Back at the caravan, Steward Vincent was waiting up for him.

"Knight Derek. I hear you went to see that mountain man from last time?"

"I did. Rest easy—these few bundles of furs go entirely through you. I don't break the rules."

Vincent's expression eased a little, and his warning was sincere: "Trade is not as easy as you imagine. Barging into the business out here will buy you no end of trouble.

"If you have doubts, ask your father when you're home. Old Baron Ferreira will have advice worth hearing."

Given how recently they had met, saying even this much was generous of him.

Derek expressed his thanks and repeated, more than once: "I will never blunder into what mustn't be touched. I know the nobility's rules perfectly well."

Unlike Vincent, Derek might be minor country gentry, but he was noble to the bone. There was no chance he did not understand these matters.

Hearing that, Vincent let the matter drop. Offering deep counsel to a recent acquaintance rarely ended well.

After that exchange, the relationship seemed to slip into a temporary chill.

On the road home, both men pretended nothing had happened, but a measure of distance had opened between them.

Perhaps with time—once Derek proved he wasn't some adventurer bent on smashing the rules—the grain would dissolve.

Back in Sentinel City, Derek balanced his books and began preparing to move.

Grain, weapons, refined iron, daily supplies.

Two cartloads. He slipped out of the city quietly.

Naturally, the ever-watchful Steward Vincent knew within hours.

"Still chasing the mountain trade, then?"

Vincent shook his head. The boy's eyes had been pasted over by profit.

Getting in was easy. But coming back out?

The mountain-goods trade inside the city was already divided among established interests. The moment the wrong people noticed him, his next trip would meet with an accident—

and one accident was all it took to lose everything down to the bone.

As one of those established interests, Vincent needed only one letter to stop Derek's expedition cold.

But considering their acquaintance—and above all, the fact that there was no need to make himself the villain—

"Two cartloads is nothing. Let him learn the hard way first. I might even buy the wreckage back cheap."

That was simple worldly wisdom. What profit was there in reporting him now? It would trade a hard-won friendship for a feud with a formidable fighter.

And if Derek escaped the net afterward? A lifelong menace.

An old hand like Vincent did not make mistakes that crude.

He ordered his people to watch Derek closely, and set the matter aside.

...

Derek made no stops on the road, driving straight into the mountains.

The pace was quick; five days brought him to the meeting point.

Someone was indeed waiting.

At the sight of two carts and twenty-odd men, a mountain man burst out of the brush.

"Lord Derek, is it?"

Derek walked his horse forward and looked down at him. A familiar face—one from that night at the fire.

"Lloyd sent you?"

"Yes, my lord."

The man bowed and bobbed. Having seen Derek's soldiers work, his spine wasn't up to standing straight.

"Wait here one day, my lord. I'll run word back, and brother Lloyd will come meet you."

So Derek made camp on the spot. This was only the range's outer skirt—no place to linger.

The next day, Lloyd emerged from the treeline with twenty-some men.

Several of the bandits wore new swords at their belts and were beginning to look like a proper force.

The two men embraced with great warmth, and Lloyd announced eagerly: "I found your place. Hidden and safe—completely."

"My thanks. Once I've settled in, the drinks are on me."

Derek had braced himself for a brutal trek. Instead Lloyd led him winding this way and that, then followed a mountain brook for half a day—

until the brook suddenly emptied into its parent stream. A genuine river.

Lloyd's men hauled several log rafts out of the brush along the bank.

"See? Follow the river inward and the current does the work. Coming out is the harder half."

Travel inward followed the current; coming out meant fighting it. That would cause trouble later.

Derek was unbothered. He had no plans to ship anything out of these mountains. And a river, whatever its direction, beat overland hauling in trackless hills.

They traveled a full day—goods riding the rafts, men picking their way along the banks.

There was hardly a path at all. No trace of human passage.

Then the world abruptly opened up. Before Lloyd said a word, Derek's instincts told him they had arrived.

The river hooked into a bend here, and thanks to the run of the mountains, a broad shelf of open land lay in the crook.

River in front, mountains at the back. If the ground weren't strewn edge to edge with broken stone, it would have made prime farmland for the clearing.

People imagined clearing land was simple: dig, and be done.

But soil holds only so much fertility, and every stone and root must be wrestled out by hand—

cleared by human muscle alone, the heavy clods hammered fine year upon year.

Ground as stone-choked as this would run at a loss for its first decade; twenty years might not see a true field.

And if boulders lurked below the surface, the work could drag on for decades.

Only a lunatic would break ground here. Even mountain folk detoured around land like this.

Deep in the range, besides—no one came this far.

For Derek's purposes, it was perfect.

"Thank you, truly, my friend."

Derek wrapped Lloyd in a crushing hug, and the chief exhaled his relief. Satisfied was good.

He had no intention of asking what Derek wanted the place for. Friends were entitled to a few secrets.

The next day, Derek began to build.

The soldiers were provisionally re-classed as construction workers. Fortunately, soldiers of this world expected rough labor; not a man complained.

Starting from zero, he discovered every preparation he'd made was inadequate.

They lacked everything.

Thankfully Lloyd pitched in with his men, and the work limped forward.

First, several sturdy log cabins; then a palisade of stakes around the perimeter against whatever beasts might come.

...

Lloyd's men even rigged a ring of simple traps.

Then came the smithy—the core asset in Derek's hand.

The river-bend shelf was more than large enough; leveling a training yard later would be trivial.

The one drawback was that horses would never reach full speed here.

Even shod, a warhorse would twist an ankle on this rubble.

But no ground was perfect—and with the Panel, progress of some kind was always on the table.

With a foothold secured, the next step was to feed resources into it without pause.

Sentinel City—and everywhere like it—ran on fixed rules, under a ceiling nearly impossible to break.

But here, in the wild mountains, the rules held the least power.

A ceiling existed even here—but for Derek's purposes, it hung high enough.

When the smith's furnace roared to life, so, quietly, did his ambition.

After a parting feast, Lloyd shouldered the weapons he'd taken on credit and set out on his new road.

The labor hadn't gone unpaid, either: in the idle hours his men had trained under Derek, and the bandits—temporarily enrolled in the Panel—had each gained a level or two in their class.

To say nothing of Derek's professional grounding in tactics, thrown in free.

Men, weapons, and fighting spirit—all were present.

Next came expansion: grow the band and make it strong.

...

A caravan of the Night Owl Trading Company picked its way along a mountain trail. Theirs was not a company backed by the local nobility, so they threaded the hills to dodge the toll stations.

Unless a checkpoint truly couldn't be avoided, they paid not a copper of that tax.

Which kept the margins respectable.

Fine armor and weapons from the kingdom's heartland going out; warhorses, leather armor, even refined iron coming back.

A hundred-odd men toiled through the hills, most of them seasoned hands who could fight.

They had walked this road for years beyond counting. Even the local bandits gave them a wide berth.

Night. Camp was made.

Lloyd and his men crept close, a file of fully armed bandits at his back.

The crispness of their movement surprised even Lloyd himself.

"Those nobles are good for something after all. One month of training, and every man of them has grown."

A month ago, had this crew been anywhere near this sharp?

Lloyd no longer dared look down on the lowland nobility. If nobles held the secret of training soldiers, then the cards in their hands were more terrifying than he could imagine.

Which was why Derek's suggestions had gone down so easily.

But tonight was for raising the banner.

A light winked in the distance: Wood, scouting ahead, signaling no hidden sentries.

Careless. Too careless.

How little did these people think of mountain bandits? They showed not a shred of vigilance.

Then again—nothing had ever happened to them. Who wastes worry on a rabble that never amounts to anything?

"Quietly now. Get in, cut them up, get out."

Minutes later flames leapt skyward and dozens of bandits poured howling into the camp, blades falling.

By the time the caravan rallied, a stack of goods was burning, several men were dead, and many more were wounded.

After a night of terror, the bandits released one of the caravan men they'd dragged off.

"What bandits are these? They gave you a message?"

The caravan steward held down his fury by force of will. These bandits had gone far beyond what he could tolerate.

"They call themselves the Mountain Wolves. From now on, any caravan passing this country sends a man ahead to buy a Mountain Wolf banner—fly it, and no bandit hereabouts will touch you. Otherwise..."

No need to finish. Last night was the demonstration.

Paying for safe passage wasn't the issue—they'd done it before, often enough.

The alternative was abandoning the route altogether; raids at random intervals would bleed them white.

The steward ground his teeth. On my home ground, he thought, I'd teach these wolves what fear is.

But this was not his territory.

"How much?"

"By caravan size. Two silver a wagon."

Not steep at all—far cheaper than the tolls, in fact.

Of course it was. Priced any higher, the caravans would simply turn around and pay the checkpoints, and the Wolves would collect nothing.

The steward laughed bitterly. Whoever these Mountain Wolves were, someone was clearly advising them.

"Fine. We'll buy."

Banner-selling posts stood at both ends of the route. Lloyd's strength couldn't yet police every trail—so if you fancied the gamble, you were free not to buy.

Raid by raid, he taught the caravans his rules.

Band by band, he absorbed the neighboring bandit crews at swordpoint, and built rules of his own.

And when a man came to buy a banner, Lloyd would take the opportunity to move a little merchandise.

Furs, friend?

Weapons? A warhorse, perhaps?

Good goods at fair prices always found a buyer.

He could even restock his own supplies this way—growing, little by little.

All of it took time, order laid down one stone at a time.

For all the swagger, however, the ceiling remained exactly where it had always been:

how many caravans did these mountains see?

But for Lloyd—and for Derek too—it was enough. For now.

His supplies about spent, Derek took Simon and returned to Sentinel City.

The smithy there was still turning steady profit—down to a single smith now, thinner margins, but all the less conspicuous for it.

It doubled as an ore refinery besides, saving the cost of hauling ore back and forth.

Derek bought a fresh load of supplies and left at speed.

By the time word reached Steward Vincent, the man was already gone.

Yet no extra mountain goods surfaced on the market—which rather threw off his calculations.

A few more round trips, and weapons began quietly flowing out through the visiting caravans—without drawing a single eye.

Out-of-region caravans all kept local partners; goods moving through them raised no flags.

And measured against the cost of long-haul transport, buying weapons on-site was actually cheaper than carrying them in.

Derek surrendered a slice of the margin, naturally.

It hardly mattered. Turning goods into coin—that was what mattered.

And with that came the next shortage: hands.

Even the dozen or so captives he had bought piecemeal from the bandits could serve only as raw labor.

Slaves not yet tamed needed time to prove loyal.

Facing the bottleneck, Derek simply picked up a pen.

He was not, let us remember, a man without connections.

Great backing, no. But a little family network? That he had.

"Dearest Second Uncle—your nephew's enterprise prospers, and he finds himself urgently short of good men.

"I hear that brother Adrian has completed his knight's training. I would be honored to invite him to join me.

"..."

Derek wrote at extravagant length, but the letter reduced to one sentence: the money was good, so come quickly.

In truth, Adrian's "knight training" was House Ferreira's own home-grown program—thin on prestige and thinner on quality.

Nor did he rank anywhere near the front of the baron's succession plans.

Better to gamble on the road with Derek than to drift through the family with no prospects at all.