Noon put a hot palm on Riversong Flats. Shadows shrank to coins. The Oak on the low rise scowled at the heat as if offended by schedules. Dust thought about becoming a curtain and hadn't made up its mind.
— Field Brief — Riversong Flats (Noon)• Wind: light W→E cross-breeze• Visibility: heat shimmer; dust moderate• Stakes: wagons staged; plant-time (dry) ~62s• Skirmish ammo: river stone + clay glandes (batch #1)• Signals: 1 long, 4 broken, 5 rising (color), 7 steady, 8 falling• Morale: Keen 🙂
Standards went up—Center (white circle on green) crowned the rise; Left (blue chevron on gray) took the gentler shoulder; Right (red bar on black) hugged a drier swale. The sun-dot reserve waited back with Calder's kettles under canvas.
"Form," Elara said, voice flat and clean.
One long unfurled from Jory's horn. The line compressed: shields kissing, feet finding the chalk pricks Ansel had stabbed into the turf at dawn. Seven steady—and the stake crews convinced ash into the soil in a whispering cadence: lift, set, drive, lash. Ropes sang. Rinna rolled Thorn into her pocket thirty paces behind the Center, bow arms unstrung, trigger hooded; Tam vibrated at a frequency only scorpions and dogs appreciate. 🙂
Aiden walked the back of the line with his hands visible and unhelpful, letting people borrow steadiness by looking at him. "Don't chase," he said, quiet first, then louder. "Don't chase." 😑
They came in a ripple of wrong-sized movement: two hundred fifty goblins cresting the far swell, loose as scree, one shaman behind them. His mask—bone lacquered and split—was cracked and bound with slick leather. Four little drums tried for one heart; they got two and a limp.
"Four broken," Elara said, and the air learned to split.
Skirmishers slid forward to the chalk. Bryn's sling sang. A clay glans hissed like a wasp and rang the shaman's crack—mask jarred sideways, leather binding snapping a tooth. The staff lifted; trinkets chimed like a lie looking for a mouth.
"Thorn," Elara breathed.
Rinna's crew moved like grammar: wind, breath, squeeze—thwack. The bolt chewed through the staff just under the feather-trash. Charms spat themselves to dust. The shaman stumbled, eyes wide and suddenly too human without the bone to hide in.
"Center—sit." Seven steady.
The front rank knelt a hair; stakes bit three paces deeper than a goblin expected. Right Wing—5 rising, green.
Bryn's riders rolled out on the right—dust, two javelins each bit, then back, teasing, gone. The vanguard bit back and found only air—and teeth.
They hit the hedge of ash points and bossed shields. The sound wasn't heroic; it was practical: wood thudding bone; spear-hafts driving ribs aside; the clean bump-skid of a body discovering the ground remembered gravity.
A drummer hopped the first row of stakes—good legs, bad brain—and landed in a caltrop quilt seeded under the thatch. He screamed, dropped his drum, and kicked twice, learning math the way pain teaches: one… two.
"Don't lean," Rinna murmured without looking. Tam didn't.
"4 broken," Jory rang again—shaman sighted, right of center.
Skirmishers pivoted like one wrist. Clay glandes whickered; three thudded into the ruined staff; one kissed the shaman's naked cheek. He tore the last mask shreds away and tried smoke: a palm-burst of sweet stink. The west breeze slapped it sideways into his own flank. Goblins coughed questions.
"Hold," Elara said—not a shout. A tone. The line listened to that more than to fear.
A goblin with copper wire plaited round his forearm went low at Garran's bad leg; Garran's boot met shin with the history of a limp that refused to be a weakness; the boss of his shield found a jaw; a spear introduced the earth.
Left Wing took a push—eight tried to roll the lip; Left's second rank half-turned and shoved hips, not arms. Shields held. "Hinge," Elara snapped—Center flexed a pace to lend weight and snapped back. Practice made into weather.
The vanguard surged a final time—anger and embarrassment both—and ran its face into the stake line again. The drums, uncertain of what celebration feels like when lungs are busy with dust, tripped over their own beat. The shaman went to one knee clutching a staff that was no longer a staff. He screamed a word that did not belong to his mouth and sounded like a boy pretending to be thunder.
"Eight falling!" Jory hammered—NO CHASE.
The wall refused the sweet taste of forward. The new ones shook—wanting to climb, to step, to prove—and did not. Calder's sun-dot stayed folded. No runners yet. Aiden let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been unwilling to owe.
The vanguard broke—not a rout, a scatter. Half of them limped on geometry; the other half decided they had been lied to about the size of Novaterra. The shaman backed away, bleeding face and pride, and found the caltrops too. Good.
He turned once, eyes huge over the cracked leather binding, and shrieked toward the heat line:
"Little wall! Little city! The General comes! A thousand!"
The horizon answered—first a pressure underfoot, then a low thum—thum—thum rolling like someone drumming on the inside of the world. Even the Oak tilted a leaf to listen.
— Engagement: Vanguard at Noon• Enemy: 250 + 1 shaman (cracked mask)• Outcome: Vanguard broken; shaman staff disabled; drums disrupted• Our casualties: 0; injuries 7 (cuts, bruises)• Discipline: No chase maintained 🙂• Morale: +6 (first open-field win)
Aiden wanted to smile. He didn't. "We're done here," Elara said, already turning the wall into a road.
"Two short—polite," Jory sent. Stakes came up with the same rhythm they'd gone in. Wagons slid like smooth thoughts. "Three sharp—impolite." Paces lengthened. Breath shortened. Discipline kept things tidy while the ground begged them to be messy.
Bryn's riders threw dust veils for the withdrawal, showing teeth when anyone got interested and vanishing when greed reached out. The line's rear ranks swapped places with front on Elara's hand signal, so no one had to walk backward into fear for long.
They hit the perimeter as the thousand's drums stopped being weather and started being men.
— Defensive Set — Novaterra Perimeter• West Redoubt manned (pavises planted; firing steps roughed)• Caltrop belts refreshed; Ras closes three predicted gaps• Corner I anchors the right; rope trip-lines marked by low flags• Thorn sited behind Redoubt (cover), bolt crate "Thorn Was Here" staged• Aid stations (sun-dot) hot; water wagons lateral to Center; soup after 🍲
Children who had spent a week judging fathers with horns scattered off the street; Jory's second took the tower and packed his pride away like a grownup. Mara nailed a plank across a cart: NO HEROICS BEFORE WATER. Someone laughed; someone else drank.
The first files of the thousand came through the heat shimmer—two shamans, leather-bound; four drums in a square; no wolf riders (mercy or missing budget); hide pennons like flayed laundry. The cracked mask glinted on the right-hand shaman. Aiden filed that under 4 broken early.
Elara walked the line with helm under arm, every inch of her saying boring and dangerous. "Center—board. Wings—don't draw too pretty a circle. Skirmish—eyes on masks and drums. Thorn—periods only."
"Periods," Rinna affirmed. Tam patted the stock like an altar and didn't say "good girl" out loud. 😌
Aiden put his palm on the fence post that had learned to hum. "Positions," he said. "No heroics."
Jory lifted the horn for the second time that day.
One long.
The wall… stood.