Dawn spread pale linen over Riversong Flats, and the drums on the far edge sounded like someone knocking from the wrong side of a door. The air had that clean, cruel smell battles keep for mornings.
— Perimeter Brief — Day 2 (Hour –1)• Wind: W→E, stronger than yesterday (our back)• Light: sun low, enemy eyes squinting• Stakes: three wagons staged; plant-time (dry) ~60s• Water: refilled; soup bricks ready (after)• Signals: 1 long, 4 broken, 5 rising (L/R), 7 steady, 8 falling• Morale: Steady, tired; levies quiet 😐
Aiden walked the half-gate-that-wanted-to-be, naming shoulders with his eyes. Levies stood in the second line—fishers with ropes, farmers with stones, cartwrights with boards. They had slept poorly and woken older. Some shook. Some didn't. All looked at him as if the world were waiting for a sentence.
"You did the first day," he said, voice steady. "Do the second. Water first. Stones when called. Hold the pavises. If you see a flag fall, pick it up. If you see me make a mistake, forgive me later." He swallowed dust and pride. "No heroics."
Mara thumped a ladle against a barrel. "Drink," she ordered. "Chew something. Cry after." 🍲
Calder touched a boy's forehead with two fingers and made a small sun on his skin with chalk. "This is permission to breathe," he murmured. The boy nodded as if blessed.
Elara walked the first line, helm under her arm, and tuned the wall like a string. "Center boards up. Left, I want hips ready. Right, you will not admire your dust. Skirmish—masks and drums. Cavalry—screens. Thorn—periods only. Don't chase, don't chase, don't chase."
Jory climbed the tower and set the horn across his knees like a cat. He tasted eight falling in his mouth and left it there. 🫡
One long.
The wall stood.
The thousand came with less ceremony and more hate. Two shamans, leather-tied; four drums in a box; lines that wanted to be wedges and were tired.
"Four broken." Elara's voice cut.
Skirmishers leaned into ropes. Clay glandes snapped—two caught a drummer's wrist, one cracked the cracked mask's cheek again. The wind did Aiden the small courtesy of shoving sweet smoke back into the faces it came from; the intact mask coughed a sound not in any liturgy.
"Thorn," Elara breathed.
Thwack. A drum rim exploded. The beat stumbled. The line came on anyway—because lines do, even when brains know better.
They hit the caltrop quilt, and geometry wrote its rude paragraph again. Goblins yelped, hopped, made bad decisions. Left Wing took a lean, then hinged like a door that had learned stubbornness.
"Seven steady," Elara called, not shouting. Stakes bit, ropes sang, boards kneeled into earth with that satisfying thud that means the world will hold if you ask correctly.
The levies worked like a second set of lungs. Water up, empties back; stones forward, arms tired, throw anyway; pavises planted and replanted; a fallen flag lifted by the wrong hands and made right by the act. A girl from Riversong—no more than thirteen—ran a coil of rope to a gap with the calm of someone who had forgotten how to be frightened and learned how to move. 🙂🥲
The rear drums tried to grow larger than themselves; Jory hit four broken until his face flushed. Bryn's slingers picked the rear box apart one wrist at a time. A drummer with a scar across his lip lost his stick to a clay oval and found his mouth to be a bad instrument.
The intact mask raised both hands—authority for hire—and the belly surged. "Right—five rising, green," Elara called; riders dusted the flank in crescents, leaving nothing but a hint of teeth. The rash front outran the drums because greed is faster than rhythm.
"Now," Elara said gently.
The Center took a single step into the wobble—spears forward, shields kissing. It looked small. It broke a shape. The drums hiccupped. The goblins' feet forgot what forward was for.
"Eight falling." Jory's horn laid the law down. The wall refused the sweet. The wall remembered work.
— Contact Log — Day 2, Hour 1• Drums: 2 destroyed; 1 disrupted; 1 unsteady (rear)• Shamans: intact mask hit; cracked-mask degraded• Enemy momentum: front overextends, belly staggers, rear thinks• Our line: holds; minor dent Right, corrected; levies on rhythm
The intact mask tried smoke again; wind said no. He tried voice; it came out complaint. The cracked mask shaman limped too close to Thorn.
"Period," Elara said.
Thwack. The bolt took the cracked mask's tie. The bone face fell to the dirt like a lie dropped in public. The shaman stared—naked, furious, suddenly small—and the men around him flinched as if their hired courage had just become invoice.
"Skirmishers—finish drums," Elara snapped.
A hail of clay and stone answered. The last steady drum croaked, then quit. Silence fell on the rhythm like a closed book.
Silence is loud.
It was the kind of loud that makes men think of home. The goblin line remembered it had none here.
Then the novices among Aiden's levies saw what looked like an ending. A cheer went up in the second rank—small, brittle, dangerous.
Aiden lifted his hand—no—and Elara's helm turned—no—and Jory blew eight falling like a commandment—NO CHASE—and still, two dozen younger men surged two paces past the pavises as if the world would allow them the generosity of making this over.
"Back," Mara said, not loud. They heard her anyway. They stepped back, shame flushing faces that had thought after could be now.
The goblins didn't see the shame. They saw a line that could not be coaxed. Their front broke. The belly tried to argue with itself and lost. The rear measured, saw no rhythm to borrow, and chose life.
Route smelled like penny-iron and dust.
— Inflection — Route Begins• Enemy: front breaks; belly follows; rear withdraws in clumps• Our doctrine: no chase (held)• Levies: second line holds; water/sling cadence continues• Thorn: rebiased to counter any rally; no shot taken
A strange quiet came down; the kind of quiet that makes birds bold and men feel foolish for how badly they wanted to shout. Aiden felt a sound rise in his chest, something like relief and hunger and fear braided, and kept it there by force.
Elara walked to him with helm under her arm. "We hold," she said. "We do not chase." Her eyes went to the flats—drift lines of bodies, a dark scarf where the drums had been. "They'll drag small teeth with them. Their General will write a story about us either way."
"Or we write one on them," said a voice to Aiden's left—Sergeant Kez, broad shoulders, a scar that looked like a comma at the corner of his mouth. "A screening chase—forty foot, ten riders. Run them until dusk, cut backs turned, don't overreach." He nodded toward Bryn. "We can be back before dark."
Elara's eyes didn't move. "Screens are not chases."
"They'll regroup," Kez pressed. Hale, hovering, added, "A quick knife now keeps a longer knife from tomorrow."
Aiden looked at the Flats. He thought of Grey Moth and letters that smelled like perfume and lies. He thought of the ache in men who'd held two days without being allowed to eat triumph. He heard himself say words he had designed to be safe.
"Limited pursuit," he said, and Elara's jaw went stone. He kept talking because stopping would cost more. "Forty foot under Kez; ten riders under Lute. No more than five hundred paces beyond Oak Rise. Break stragglers, smash rally, return on two short. If you see a drummer or a mask, you do not play hero. No heroics."
Kez saluted. Lute grinned a wolf's grin and made it smaller when Elara looked at him. Bryn said nothing but her mouth went into the line that means remember you're mortal.
Rinna caught Aiden's sleeve as they passed the scorpion. "We can't reach past the Rise," she said quietly. "I can't put a dot where I can't see the sentence."
"I know," Aiden said. He didn't—not enough.
The detachment moved: forty shields, ten light hooves; dust in tidy lines; a horn tucked under Lute's arm like a reminder he hadn't earned yet.
Jory held the tower rail until his knuckles were bone. "Two short," he breathed. The wind took it and didn't bring it back.
Silence expanded. Aiden counted heartbeats to two hundred and hated each one. Elara stood beside him and pretended to be carved.
The horn came back on a wind not theirs. Not two short. Three sharp—impolite retreat—ragged and far.
"Bryn—ride!" Elara snapped. "Hale with her. Reserve to the gap. Calder—litters."
The story came in pieces, carried by sound first, then by dust, then by one rider nursing a cut along his cheekbone and a horse spurting red.
"Reserve," he gasped at the foot of the gate. "Hidden in the gully past the oak—two hundred, maybe more—drums under brush—we went in on their backs and the ground opened—oh gods, Kez—"
He slid sideways. Calder caught him like a bottle and poured him into life with bark and a lie about comfort. 😬
The field spoke. You can tell the sound of men being finished. It is not like killing. It is like unthreading.
Bryn and Hale came back with seven of the foot. That left thirty-three on the Flats with no horn, no dot to call them home. Lute's ten riders were two when they crossed the chalk. One was Lute, covered in someone else's face. He did not smile. The other had lost his left boot and part of his belief in cause-and-effect.
"Ambush," Bryn said, voice iron-scraped. "Reserve with brush-mats over the cut. They let the route run past them and then closed. Drums in the ditch. Kez went down trying to tear a path. When we blew three, the air ate it." Her eyes cut to Aiden—one strike, clean. "We should not have chased."
Elara didn't look at him. She looked at the Flats and said, "No one goes back out. Not even me."
Aiden nodded because his head could do small things. Inside, something that had been game slid and became weight. He had written a plan with safe words and the world had annotated it in blood.
The sun kept going anyway.
— Pursuit Incident (Hour +2)• Pursuit force: 40 foot (Kez) + 10 riders (Lute)• Ambush: goblin reserve ≈ 200–250 in a brush-covered gully beyond Oak Rise; ditch drums; crossfire• Result: 38/40 foot KIA; 8/10 riders KIA (2 escaped)• Recovery: impossible before dark; Bryn/Hale extract 7 scattered survivors• Morale: Shock; command resolves no unscreened pursuits
Aiden walked to the sun-dot and put his hands on the edge of a kettle because metal knows what to do with heat and he didn't. Calder's eyes were very kind. Mara's mouth was a law.
"Say it," Mara told him, softly cruel.
"I sent them," Aiden said. "I said limited. The world doesn't speak that language."
"And now you will learn ours," Mara said. "The one that says after is part of during."
He went to the names board and wrote Kez first. The comma scar in his memory kept wanting to turn the name into sentence. He wrote anyway. He wrote too many. His hand didn't shake because hands have no compassion.
Elara came and set her helm beside him. It made a small honest sound. "You'll not do that again," she said. "Not without eyes in the ditch, not without overwatch, not without a dot that can reach."
"No," he said. It wasn't apology. It was a rule. "We'll scout and screen, not chase. Bridges, not trophies."
"Good arithmetic," she said, and did not add it cost.
Night fell the way nights do when men stay outside. The birds came back rude and then thought better. The wind, which had been on their side all day, wrapped cold fingers through the fence.
— Evening Summary — Day 2 (After)• Main battle: enemy broken; both shamans neutralized; all drums destroyed• Pursuit: ambushed; detachment slaughtered (details below)• Levies: total losses ~600 KIA, ~340 WIA (two-day total)• Promotions: surviving levies gain "Weathered" (Militia track opened)• Morale: Victory dampened; resolve hardened; command doctrine updated (no unscreened pursuit) 😔
Calder and Sera moved like mercy between canvas and plank. Lia sat on a step with an empty flagstaff across her knees and did not cry where anyone could hear.
Rinna covered Thorn with care as if the scorpion could feel shame for not having been able to place a dot past the rise. Tam sat beside the stock and stared at his hands as if they might explain anything.
Aiden stood at the half-gate and spoke to the fence that had learned him.
"Novaterra, we held the line and we broke their rhythm. We burned their beads and cracked their masks. Then we paid for a lesson: a battle has an after. We will not forget it. No heroics. Just work. And eyes." 🙂
The wind approved spitefully. The Oak across the flats watched with the disinterest of things that live longer than men. Somewhere beyond, a drum that hadn't gotten the message tried one more thum and found none to join it.
After-Action Ledger — Riversong Flats (Ch. 17–19)
*— Our Fielded Forces (peak commitment)• 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 "Thorn Was Here"• Reserve Counterpunch: 50 (veterans + best Guards)• Levies (Peasant Militia): 800 — water, stones, pavise guard, gap-fill
*— Enemy Fielded• Vanguard: 250 + 1 shaman (mask cracked), 4 hand-drums• Main Column: ~1,000 goblins; 2 shamans (right-hand mask cracked), 4 war-drums• Hidden Reserve (ambush): 200–250 in brush gully beyond Oak Rise
*— Outcome Snapshot• Vanguard (Ch. 17): broken in the open; orderly withdrawal to perimeter• Main (Ch. 18–19): repulsed and broken against ditch/caltrops; both shamans neutralized; drums destroyed; route• Pursuit (Ch. 19):limited chase → ambushed by reserve → detachment slaughtered
*— Casualties (Novaterra)• Line (Guards/Skirmish/Cav), main actions:14 KIA, 93 WIA (two days)• Pursuit Detachment:38/40 foot KIA, 8/10 riders KIA (2 riders + 7 scattered foot returned)• Levies (Peasants):≈600 KIA, ≈340 WIA (two-day total)• Total KIA:≈652 (includes pursuit & levies)• Total WIA:≈433
*— Casualties (Enemy, est.)• Vanguard: 70–90 K/WIA• Main battle: 600–700 K/WIA at ditch/quilt + breaks• Pursuit counter: ≈120 K before ambush sprung• Total est.:~800–1,000 K/WIA (significant straggler loss in route)
*— Promotions & Traits• Surviving levies (≈200) → Militia (Lv.3–5) unlocked; Trait: Weathered (+Resolve in formation, –Break chance when near standards) 🙂• Jory → Signal Adept (+Horn Endurance)• Thorn Crew → "No Greedy Shot" (+Discipline)• Doctrine Updated → No Unscreened Pursuit (requires scouts and overwatch and horn relay beyond line)
*— Logistics• Water wagons intact (7/8); soup bricks consumed; bolt crate at half• Repairs: bosses dented (Hadrik pleased); stakes to be replaced (40%)