>>96311242
Dawn of Fire: The Iron Kingdom. There's a subplot about the MM being falseflagging shitheels.

>A farmhand, by the look of his thick, hardy attire and stout physique, stood gawping. He looked terrified but determined to protect his lands, a wooden-stocked carbine in his hand. Six others joined him, all natives, all people of the land. One wore a pot helmet and carried a shotcannon in a nervous grip. Then came six more, the edges of agrarian buildings emerging through a slowly evaporating fog. Renyard saw a waterwheel, stables, fields for crops. There were more men here too, converging on the five strangers. With greater numbers, they grew bolder. No vox-tower. The lines didn’t reach this far out. Regardless, word could not slip of his arrival.

>Staring coldly at the first man, who had dared to take aim at the warrior in mustard-yellow ceramite, Renyard uttered, ‘Burn it.’

>They left the farms and fields a scorched ruin, smoke still spiralling skyward in a thick column in their wake. They would need to move quickly now, and force march across the hardy terrain. Smoke would draw investigation eventually and that would lead to attention. He could have spared them, he supposed, but Renyard preferred the lesson of pain.

>He had written a message in their blackened bones and broken bodies. It read, *Fear us, we are coming.*

>All combat squads were accounted for, dispersed across a few miles. Their first target was close. He had begun tracking it the moment they made landfall. It had been given to them before embarkation, Ardemus again proving his prescience. He smiled, sickle-sharp, at the thought of what would come next. It had been years since Renyard had fought like a guerrilla. A ruthless and deadly art. He had missed it.