Wait, what? Last chapter Baltier and a bunch of fellow criminals were being thrown into exile. Now he's leading a raiding party with some guy named Jake, sure. But now Jake's his brother?
I think that was my biggest problem with this chapter; I didn't know where to place it in time. If it was a flashback, which I started assuming it was, I had absolutely no indication of whether that was the case in the text. I waited for an explanation and didn't get one.
While that got in the way, I did enjoy the chapter. I think a lot of the points Frog made are valid. I didn't really understand what the wards did or what their significance was, though I'm not too sure that's an immediate problem; that could come up in more detail later and I would probably be willing to wait for it. I wondered about the scrying thing, too. That might be harder to explain since Jake is, presumably, dead now.
(And, as LTU points out, some of my questions about the magic were in regards to how magic is integrated in your world: How common are constructs? What about the wards--what are they for and how far do they extend? That sort of thing.)
I felt some definite confusion about who was on what side, though; I don't know who the constructs and the trebuchets were attacking. The raiders? The wildmen? Were the knight and his patrol the ones responsible for throwing them? If so, why did it take them so long to get to Baltier? Wouldn't they be on their way to aprehend them (since it seems to be fairly clear to them that Baltier is a criminal)?
I also don't know what Jake, Bal, and Co. were after. I know they're after money and... that's about it. I'm guessing they're trying to rob some sort of sacrosanct ground or something, since apparently even the King hasn't touched this supposed wealth and robbing it is worth sending one guy to the stocks (and ultimately exile, or so it seems) and another guy to his death (though I'm not sure how much stock I should put in Lucard's reaction, because he obviously has a stick up his - ahem - bottom).
Now, I can start making some sense about some of these things if I think about it, but they're all guesses, and I don't think making your reader guess serves your purpose here. We need to understand more clearly what the crime is and what the stakes are, I think. Otherwise we don't really know the significance of it, other than the fact that it got Baltier thrown in prison.
I like Baltier's new name, though it makes me think of the FFXII character.
Pairing Baltier up with Jake does seem a little odd, though. Not too sure how worried about it I'd be, but it's there.
I didn't have any problems with the pinky signal, by the way. It was fairly clear to me, even the first time around, that it meant "OMG HOUNDS!"
I could be wrong. It seems like a couple of people are associating the pinky thing with Jake's charm, which didn't occur to me at all. I still think my way makes more sense given the material you've given us. XP
Oh. Which reminds me. The acrid scent that you mention seems pretty distinctive, in that all of the raiders seemed to recognize it. Since the hounds are pretty nasty enemies, why do Baltier and Jake just toss that aside? What makes them so sure that there
aren't any hounds? I don't get so much as a hint of worry from either of them.
I didn't have a problem with Baltier running to the knights, since they're pledged to offer protection and all that... wait, actually, I don't know how much of that I'm extrapolating from your current draft and how much of it I'm just remembering from your last draft. It may help to clarify that.
The transition from the last chapter might be enough for someone reading this one chapter after another. (Especially since my first impulse, at least, is to flip back a page when I feel like I've missed something.) You could probably make the signal a little clearer with a word like "remembered" or something like that. You could also, perhaps, leave the end of chapter one as is, and further signal the transition with the use of the past participle in the first sentence of chapter two.
I would like to see a little more emotion from Baltier when he thinks he's killed his brother. I won't say that I got the sense that he didn't care, because I didn't, but I think that you could go a little farther with it. Maybe afterwards, too, though with the way you've constructed the story that may not be possible.
Speaking of contruction, one more question: Why is this a flashback? If it's important enough to justify spending an entire chapter on it--and I'm not saying it's not--why not just start there and move forward?
Of course, I have no idea what your master plan is, and it could be you've got something very definite behind this construction. Even if you don't, I'm not entirely sure that it's a problem. But it is something to think about, perhaps.
Good work, though.