A tyrant's heir must go into the mountains to face a band of insurgents on its own ground. Not everybody will emerge from the confrontation unscathed, not least him.
Falki Grendelsson, eldest son of the first lord of the Northlands, serves as a company commander in his father's elite Obsidian Guard. Though many lords would keep their sons close and out of harm's way, Grendel is determined his son learn the business of war firsthand for the day he puts on his father's cloak.
But when Robert Dalton leads displaced farmers armed with stolen Old World repeating rifles in a raid that kills a favored officer, Grendel sends Falki to make an example of them.Falki has never fought this type of war before. Although the Obsidian Guard has the deadly weapons of the ancient world and dirigibles to rain fire from the skies, Dalton's insurgents know the land and the mountains hold terrors beyond his increasingly-desperate men.
In order to cement his father's new order, Falki has to triumph not only over a physical foe who would gladly kill him, but his own demons. And victory over one might mean falling to another...

This novella is set a year before the first novel in the series, Battle for the Wastelands.