The day began with clean wind over Barley Hollow and the mill's new wheel gossiping to the river. Oakwatch threw its square of shadow like a promise; the horn cairns along Founders' Way hummed the same note when Jory tapped them—each a syllable in the language of ready. 🙂
The wind brought hooves.
*— Regional Alert — Horn Cairn #3 (West Run)• Dust line sighted, banners unknown.• Estimated strength: ~280–300; mixed foot/light riders.• Heading: Barley Hollow granaries & byre lane.• Sign: Black field, three red slashes.Two short relayed; muster recommended. *
Jory's horn answered with one long—spine—and then three quick on the bells for muster calm. Flags rose; boots found places they'd practiced until boredom learned their names. 🫡
Elara's voice threaded the noise without raising itself. "Hollow line. Stakes-lite. Pavises on the lane. Skirmishers to the wheat ridge. Riders: serpentine screens, not art. Reserve: hinge shadow."
Aiden felt After-Sight like a cool finger behind his eyes and did not touch it yet. He let the map in his head be rope and habit first. "Bryn—Pathfinders to cut-bank south of the byre. Hale, gourds up. Ras, find the place where knees forget themselves."
Bryn's chin dipped once; the twelve peeled away like commas, quiet and necessary.
— Raiders — The Three Slashes• Leader: Rowan Three-Slash (ex-client to a moth you don't feed).• Colors: Black field, three red slashes (slogan: "Three cuts make a door.")• Composition: ~290 — 40 light riders, 180 javelin/short-spear foot, 50 bow/sling, 20 shielded bully-boys.• Intent (Pathfinder read): burn granary, lift penned cattle, make the road pay.
Elara's hand carved sense in the air. "Center shield wall: 120. Skirmish: 60. Riders: 12 (Lute, Rella, Tor, Siah leading). Reserve: 40 with Garran. Stakes-lite teams: 12. NO battery—we don't waste dots on thieves."
"Good arithmetic," Aiden said. He climbed Oakwatch to steal distance with his eyes.
Barley Hollow lay like a palm: granaries (new braces), byre lane curling east, wheat ridge to the north—high enough for slings to speak plain. The cut-bank to the south had learned shame last week and might be trying to forget. Aiden's skin remembered Kez anyway and didn't ask permission.
He thumbed After-Sight.
The world didn't change color—it admitted. Habit and malice sketched themselves fine over the Hollow. The cut-bank flared: brush trimmed too neatly; a ditch drum tucked like a lie; a lane of trodden grass where a clever man would hide twenty to make two hundred look safe. Farther west, a bow line had been measured with a show-off's hand: six men, too brave for the work.
"Ambush—cut-bank, south lip, sixty paces shy of the willow bend," Aiden called down, numbers tidy, voice steady. "Drum in the ditch; brush mat. Hale—whipline and caltrops right where panic puts knees. Bryn—leave them something to watch and fail to enjoy."
Elara didn't ask how he knew. She read the coordinates off his mouth and made them law. "Wheat ridge: skirmishers two ranks, slings up. Center: sit. Stakes here and here—soft caps; we're stopping legs, not writing elegies."
Mara's Night Soup kettle arrived with the inevitability of weather. "Eat before running," she said, which was both rude and true. 🍲😑
The Three Slashes came down off the west rise with the arrogance of men who had been allowed to be terrible elsewhere. Their banner was black, red gouges slanted like a grin. Rowan rode a wolf-colored nag but sat it like a friend, not a braggart. His bully-boys trailed cheap shields. Their flanks flicked with javelins like bad ideas.
"Don't talk to me about kings," Rowan called for the crowd to hear. "We cut doors and walk through."
Aiden did not answer. He let horn be mouth. One long set the spine; seven steady tapped the stakes in with a practical heartbeat; five rising, green sent the riders out in fox-serpentine crescents that taught dust manners and then left it alone.
— Field Brief — Barley Hollow (Contact)• Wind: W→E (our back).• Visibility: good; wheat high.• Stakes-lite: set (ash, soft caps).• Skirmish ammo: clay glandes #3 + river stones.• Signals: 1 long (spine), 4 broken (ambush/drum), 5 rising (L/R), 7 steady (stakes), 8 falling (NO chase).• After-Sight: used (ambush revealed).
Rowan's riders teased the Right, dust pretty, javelins just shy; his bow line pecked at the wheat ridge. Elara's skirmishers returned river stone for poetry, each hit a small rudeness that taught arms to be less brave.
"Riders—serpentine two, no bite," Elara called. Lute and Rella made water out of hooves; Tor and Siah crossed dust without admiring it. Renard's lesson held. 🙂
Rowan's left flank tried the cut-bank curl, because greed runs faster than maps. The first ten dropped into the ditch and pushed the brush mat forward with too much confidence.
"Four broken, south," Jory blew.
Hale's whipline snapped; the mat jumped and turned like a traitor; Ras's kneecaltrops raised their hands and shook them enthusiastically. The ditch drum tried to be courage; Bryn sent a stone that made its drummer need a different career. The men behind learned watching burns if the show ends early.
Rowan squinted—filed away smart. He shifted his press to the center, bully-boys forward to taste board and ego.
"Center—sit," Elara said, voice all rope. Anchor Step took weight through knees to dirt and told shove to come back with better paperwork. Bosses kissed ribs; ash-capped stakes found shins and educated them. Garran's hinge made a noise like apology and did not move.
Skirmish arrows pecked the bow line off its measured pride. One of Rowan's forty riders overreached for a standard because drama is delicious; Jory gave eight falling before a surge could sneak up on anyone's feet; Lute tugged his reins and put discipline where hunger had wanted to be.
"Left—five rising, green," Elara added, and the riders made a curtain no arrow cared to argue with. Behind it, two flank pairs slipped a ribbon around the Three Slashes standard's tail and tugged it low enough for Lia's cousin—child-sun in both hands—to tap the cloth with exactly the legal touch and all the joy that fits in bones. The banner kissed dirt for a breath and came back dirty. Morale doesn't love laundry. 🙂
Rowan laughed once—honest, annoyed—and raised his own spear, banner newly re-braided. He tried a wedge because wedges had worked for him last week somewhere that was not here.
Elara's chin moved a degree. "Reserve—brace. Center—half-step into it." The wall seemed to take one breath forward then remembered two short and returned to patience. The wedge bounced off manners.
"Skirmish—paint the bully-boys' feet," Aiden called—because paint sacks from the Fox practice had become household items. A half-dozen sacks slapped dust into glue. Sand followed from bins set hours ago because Venn's ledger had believed in this yesterday.
Rowan's left wing sagged when it discovered the cut-bank wasn't romantic. His right hesitated when a fox-serpentine dust curtain broke and rejoined without leaving teeth exposed. His center paused when a child standard held, which sometimes is all it takes to embarrass grown men.
He tried to buy a song from fear with yelling.
Jory answered with music instead: two short for a polite compress, then four broken to remind any surviving ditch drum that it wasn't invited to lunch. The air learned the right words.
Rowan's bow line began to have meetings with itself about tomorrow. The bully-boys discovered that shins are important, and that ash caps in your life are educational. The riders counted their horses and decided profit had another form besides fire.
The break came quietly, the way cheap pride often ends—in a sideways step that admitted no one was watching them be brave anymore. The Three Slashes peeled away in clumps, some with dignity, some with a promise to be worse elsewhere, which is the kind of vow cowards keep.
"Eight falling," Jory hammered—NO CHASE.
Every Novaterra foot wanted two more paces. Every heel remembered Kez. The line stayed line.
Bryn ghosted the south lip with two Pathfinders and made sure the brush kept its secret. Courtesy costs little and buys tomorrow.
— Contact Log — Barley Hollow (Three Slashes)• Enemy: ~290 (40 riders), banner Three Slashes.• Our commit: 120 wall, 60 skirmish, 12 riders, 40 reserve, 12 stakes-lite.• Actions: ambush preempted (After-Sight); cut-bank denied; wedge blunted; NO pursuit.• Civ losses: 0 granaries burned; 1 byre gate cracked (repaired).• Enemy: 23 K/WIA captured; banner tassel taken (banner retained)**.• Our casualties: 3 WIA (cuts/bruises), 0 KIA. 🙂
Rowan wheeled at the west rise and saluted with a spear that wanted to be elegant and was, despite the dirt on his banner. His mouth made a promise Aiden had heard from better men and worse.
"We'll see you," Rowan called, "when you have less soup."
Mara, who had found a way to appear everywhere today, lifted the ladle like a priest lifts a book. "Come hungry," she said. 🍲😑
The Three Slashes disappeared into their own dust. Bryn's Pathfinders shadowed at distance, eyes first, knives last. The cordon around Riversong Fort did not blink; a garrison that had been considering a sally reconsidered in the face of a town that could deliver a fight and a harvest in the same day.
Rella rode back with a strip of black cloth—a tassel from the Slashes' standard—looped around her wrist. "For the plank," she said.
"For the plank," Elara agreed. "Not for gloating. For memory."
Aiden let After-Sight cool; behind his eyes it went gray and quiet like a law on lunch. He stood on the granary step and watched barley decide to keep being barley instead of smoke. His chest did that thing where it expands and doesn't know what to do with the extra. He taught it breathing again.
Calder and the binders moved through the minor cuts and the one cracked rib with competence that looked like affection. Sera rewound a knee. Lia's cousin helped a boy pick up a dropped pavise and did not let him pretend embarrassment; she showed him where to put his hands so the board forgave him. 🙂
Venn wrote numbers on a slate and then, softly, wrote Kez in the corner and boxed it with two lines. He does that when the math tries to forget. He doesn't let it.
Jory blew one long with the sound of a broom finishing its day. Thorn and Bramble slept under cloths; their crews sat nearby and learned the peculiar happiness of not being necessary.
Elara walked the line, touched boards, said nothing grand. She let competence be liturgy.
Aiden climbed Oakwatch and looked west, where Rowan had made a dust promise. He let the man be future labor, not present theater.
"Novaterra," he told the cairns and the Hollow and the ring that kept the Fort hungry, "we stopped a raid with work. We used eyes instead of trophies. We let dust be polite. We kept grain and didn't spend men. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
The wind ran down a gourd and came out as two short—make way. The road made way for wagons loaded with barley, not grief.
After-Action Ledger — Barley Hollow (Three Slashes Raid)
— Our Fielded• Shield Wall (Center): 120• Skirmishers (sling/archery): 60• Light Cavalry (serpentine screens): 12• Reserve (hinge shadow): 40• Stakes-lite crews: 12• Battery: none (held)
— Enemy• Three Slashes raiders: ~290 (40 riders / 250 foot)• Banner: Black, three red slashes ("Three cuts make a door").
— Outcome• Ambush detected via After-Sight (cut-bank south lip); denied with whipline + caltrops + stone.• Granaries saved; byre intact (one gate repaired).• Raiders repulsed; no pursuit (doctrine held).• Captured: 11 raiders (WIA), 12 unhurt who dropped arms; banner tassel (plank).• Released on parole to carry Bridge Law terms upstream (no charm/slave/trophy markets).
— Casualties• Novaterra: 0 KIA, 3 WIA (cuts/bruises; 1 rib – stable).• Raiders: ~20 K/WIA left field; 23 treated/captured.
— Notes• Cross-training (fox serpentine) materially reduced cav overreach (0 greedy rides).• Stakes-lite + Anchor Step proved effective vs. bully-boys.• Pathfinders' gourd/whipline preps prevented ditch-drum surprise.• Doctrine reaffirmed: No Unscreened Pursuit (Kez remembered).
Mara rang four spaced—drill only—and the town smiled with its feet on the way to soup. 🍲🙂