The drums arrived before the faces. Thum—thum—thum, four of them, arguing toward a common beat. Heat made a veil; dust braided the horizon; Riversong Flats forgot how to be pretty and remembered how to be useful.
— Perimeter Brief — Novaterra (D-Day 0, Hour 0)• Positions: West Redoubt (pavises), Corner I (anchor), trench + caltrop belts, rope trip-lines marked low• Water: 8 wagons lateral to center; aid tents (sun-dot) hot• Ammunition: clay glandes batch #2; javelins; Thorn bolt crate "Thorn Was Here"• Signals set: 1 long, 4 broken, 5 rising (L/R), 6 low, 7 steady, 8 falling• Morale: Flint-bright 🙂
They could have sent the levies home—800 peasants, farm hands and fishers and cartwrights, eyes like flint shavings. They didn't.
Aiden stood on the half-gate-that-wanted-to-be and told the truth. "You are not soldiers," he said. "You are home. You'll work the second line—carry water, stakes, stones; guard the pavises; fill a gap when a wall remembers it has breath. Don't chase. Don't be clever. If you live, you'll be stronger; if you die, we'll remember your names."
A murmur—fear, pride, grief already half-made. Lia squeezed a flagpole until her knuckles whitened; Sera's staff ribbon snapped once in the wind like a small oath. Calder moved among the levies with a kettle and a chalked sun-dot. "Water first," he said, as if it were sacrament. "Soup after." 🍲
Elara walked the first line bare-headed, helm under her arm, and made confidence out of bones. "Center boards up. Right—rope tight. Left—don't let the ditch steal your ankles. Skirmishers: masks and drums. Cavalry: screens only. Thorn—periods. No heroics."
Rinna's mouth set soft. "Aye." Tam stroked the stock like it was a living thing and said nothing. 😌
One long sang from Jory's horn. The line stood.
The thousand showed themselves the way storms do: edge first, then weight. Two shamans—one with leather over a cracked mask—and four drummers in a box. No wolf riders. Pennons of hide on scraped poles. Shape of a column, smell of a mob trying to pretend.
"Four broken," Elara said.
Skirmishers leaned into the ropes and sent clay glandes like handwriting: swift, neat, repeating. The cracked mask jerked. The other shaman raised his staff; the drummers found one beat and shoved it into the air.
The first push hit the caltrop quilt and discovered geometry had opinions. Goblins yelped, hopped, tried to make bridges of their own feet. The ditch took three with casual indifference. Shields in the front rank took the bump, pushed back with hips, not arms. Bosses punched ribs, spears slid—not dramatic, industrious.
"Center—sit." Elara's voice did not rise; it deepened.
Seven steady. Stake teams stepped in, legs like levers. Aiden watched hands he couldn't help make the earth choose them. Ropes sang as if pleased by correct use.
Right Wing started to curve—goblins finding a seam. "Five rising, green," Elara called. Bryn's riders dusted the flank with crescents of horses and mirthless grins; two javelins stitched a ragged edge; a third feinted then disappeared because don't chase was written on boots and bruise-memories.
The rear drums tried to breathe confidence into the mob. Jory blew four broken until his lips rang; skirmishers pivoted. One drummer jerked, then sagged; the beat hiccupped, then steadied. The intact shaman flicked smoke from his palm—sweetened air that turned fear into risky. West wind slapped it back in his face. He coughed, offended.
"Thorn," Elara said.
Thwack. The bolt shattered a drum rim; the stick clattered away. The drummer stared at his hand like it had betrayed him. Rinna re-biased to the intact mask; Tam adjusted the elevation with the reverence of a man aligning a sentence.
The second push came with wicker mats, dumped on the caltrops; two stuck, three flipped, one carried into the ditch where the ditch explained it preferred mud to wicker. A wedge of twenty tried a body bridge—noble in its way, obscene in effect. Left Wing sagged two steps, then hinged back; Garran barked and lent a limp where it mattered.
"Levies—stones!" Elara didn't often shout. Now she did.
The second line moved: fishers with arms for casting, farmers with hands for throwing, tanners who knew how to hit. Stones arced over pavises and bit into faces. Slingers in the levy half-remembered boyhood and remembered aim. One old woman with a shoulder like a winch put a rock into a drummer's mouth from twenty paces and raised an eyebrow at fortune. 🙂
"Don't chase," Aiden called, because the taste of forward had reached the teeth of men who had never before had permission to push.
"Eight falling," Jory hammered. The wall refused appetite. The levies breathed like they had just realized breathing was a job.
The intact mask lifted, bared teeth, and called a word that made the hair on Aiden's neck lift—not magic, exactly; the sound of authority hired by the day. A squad with plaited copper bands dove under the ditch lip and came up at the pavises with knives. A levy line failed once—panic does that—and then Mara was there with a ladle like law and a voice like a bell. "Stand." She said it once. The line obeyed.
"Reserve—brace!" Elara snapped. Veterans and best Guards moved up behind the levies, shields high, no gap.
— Contact Log — Phase I (Hours 0–1)• Drums: 1 destroyed (Thorn); 1 disrupted; 2 steady• Shamans: cracked mask suppressed; intact mask active (smoke/authority)• Enemy tactics: mats on caltrops; body bridge; ditch lip infiltrators• Our line: held; right flank screened; levies resupplied, slung stones• Casualties (so far): 0 KIA; 18 WIA (line), ~60 levy WIA (cuts, panic trample)• Enemy losses (est.): 120–160 K/WIA near ditch/quilt
The third push was the one that wins wars when men want lunch: lazy, then ugly. The intact mask tried a rhythm change; the drums stuttered and went double-time, a gambler's trick. The husk of the cracked-mask shaman limped into view, mask half-hanging, staff splinted in desperation. He hissed syllables that hopped like sparks.
"Four broken," Jory cut, harsh.
Bryn, who could listen to dirt, saw the spark line trying to run along the trench edge and had her slingers throw wet clay where it wanted to be fire. The sparks thunked into mud and swore, tiny and mean.
"Thorn—mask," Elara said, not loud. Rinna breathed. Tam exhaled. Thwack. The bolt bit the intact mask's brow and tore the leather ties. The shaman reeled and clutched at nothing where faith had been rented. The beat wobbled.
"Skirmishers—now."
A volley of clay glandes—dozens—arced like words repeated until they become law. Three struck the intact mask's face. One broke a tooth. Blood made everything unprofessional.
The push buckled. Not broke—remember that, Aiden told himself—but suddenly insecure of its own instructions. He felt the first ache of wanting the cheer.
He swallowed it. "Hold."
— Contact Log — Phase II (Hour 1–2)• Drums: 2 disrupted; 1 destroyed; 1 steady (rear)• Shamans: intact mask wounded; cracked-mask degraded• Enemy progress: none through ditch; body bridge collapsed; infiltrators repelled• Levies: holding pavises; two rotations to water; ~150 WIA, ~35 KIA (first tallies)• Line: stable; Center bosses dented (Hadrik pleased to repair later)
He moved among the levies then, because leadership is also a second line. "You—sit," he told a boy with blood and wonder on his face. "You—water her," to a woman whose lips were chalk. "You—hold this flag and don't think it's important until someone cries for it." He wanted to say go home. He didn't. They were home.
Elara passed him once, helm on, eyes a precise heat. "Rear feints?" she asked.
"Yes," Aiden said. "But we swat front if it outruns its drums."
She nodded. Rain-short hair like a laurel of iron. "Good arithmetic."
The rear tried exactly what Grey Moth's letter had promised: a shape of threat, a hint of turning flank. Elara flashed flags to mimic panic—let the rear imagine fruit where there was rope. The front—hungry and now under-drummed—bit.
"Now," Elara said.
Thorn didn't move; she didn't have to. The wall did. Center took one half-step forward into the stutter of drums—not a chase, a punctuated shove—while the Right's stake crew reset teeth a pace ahead. Bosses landed like hammers into damp clay; spears slid; a hundred spear hafts spoke the same sentence. The vanguard of the thousand—now just the front of a mob—lost its nerve.
"Eight falling!" Jory hammered. No chase. The wall returned to correct distance as if embarrassed by the taste of triumph.
"Rear drums," Elara said, and skirmishers sent every ounce of boredom and practice they had at that final steady box. Stones bit; clay cracked; one drummer went down as if someone had cut his name. The beat held—then skipped.
The intact mask raised hands for a thing that wanted to be larger than itself—then hesitated. Hesitation is how bridges beat luck.
The line held. The levies held. The drums lied less well.
— Phase III (Hour 2–3) — Inflection• Drums: rear box faltering• Shamans: intact mask hesitating; cracked-mask winded• Enemy morale: front wobble; belly sag; rear stiff• Our line: fresh reserve rotated to Left; levies to third water; KIA tally among levies rising (total ≈ 120 by dusk bell)
Dusk leaned a shoulder against the world. The thousand had not broken, but they were deciding. Aiden's arms ached without work; his throat tasted of dust and words he hadn't had to swallow because Elara spoke them for him.
She found him in the lull between beats. "Tomorrow morning," she said, tone like a stake. "We finish them. They don't know how to sleep well. We do."
He nodded, then looked at the levies, and his stomach did a thing he wished games would teach you early. Men he had seen last week haggling for rope or arguing with a fish were now chalk and blood and less. Names weights. Faces less.
He did not weep. He wanted to yell stop coming at the horizon. He did neither. He walked the line and told the unexciting truth.
"No heroics. Water first. Soup after. Standards up at dawn. We will be boring and dangerous again, and the sun will side with us."
Jory tried a note for hope; the horn gave him duty and he accepted the correction with a small, brave smile. 🫡
The night tested them with nothing. That was worse.
— Evening Summary — Perimeter (End Day 1)• Status: Line held; enemy not through ditch; both shamans degraded• Losses (today): Line 0 KIA, 41 WIA; Levies ~120 KIA, ~260 WIA• Enemy losses (est.): 300–400 K/WIA near ditch/caltrops• Logistics: water intact; soup bricks heavy with meaning• Morale: Steady, tired; levies' grief rising; command resolved 🙂/😔
Aiden sat on the half-gate and looked at the Oak across the Flats like a judge. He realized something he would have preferred to learn playing at strategy on a schoolyard: battles do not end when cheering starts. Reality had after in it—wounded, stragglers, reserve plans, letters in the dark.
"Tomorrow," Elara said, reading his face as easily as a flag. "We'll take their drums and crack the rest of that mask. Then we will not chase."
He nodded, already knowing the lesson would need to be learned twice.
— To be continued in Chapter 19: "The Thousand, Part II — The Cost of After" —
Interim Ledger — Orders of Battle (Ch. 18, Day 1)
*— Our Field (peak during Day 1)• Center Shield Wall (Guards): 260 (bossed; 3 ranks)• Skirmishers (sling/archery): 110 (clay glandes + river stone)• Light Cavalry (screen): 28 (Bryn/Hale)• Thorn (Scorpion): crew 3 + runner; bolt crate staged• Reserve Counterpunch: 50 (veterans + best Guards)• Levies (Peasant Militia): 800 — water, stones, pavise guard, gap-fill
*— Enemy Main (observed)• Goblins: ~1,000• Shamans: 2 (right-hand mask cracked, left intact but wounded)• Drums: 4 (2 disrupted/destroyed; 2 unsteady by dusk)• Siege: none; wolf riders: none
— Casualties to date (Day 1 only; will finalize after Day 2 & pursuit)• Novaterra Line: 0 KIA, 41 WIA• Levies:≈120 KIA, ≈260 WIA (will stabilize overnight; Sera/Calder treating)• Enemy (est.): 300–400 K/WIA