Morning rinsed the Flats clean. Oakwatch's new timber cap wore dew like coins; the horn cairns down Founders' Way hummed when Jory tapped them—each the same note, like a promise practiced into habit. 🙂
— Morning Brief — Novaterra• Oakwatch: cap braced; horn shelf set; mirror perch awaits glazing (T+2)• Pathfinders: cut-bank gourds (3/8); caches stocked (rope/mouthpieces/caltrops)• Riversong Fort: recon today (no siege); starvation cordon to draft• Training: Cross-module (Hinge manners) w/ Fox unit at noon• After-Sight: Ready (cooldown 0)• Morale: Work-bright 🙂
Ansel patted the tower's post like it had done a hard job. "She'll see," he said.
"She'll listen, too," Jory answered, and tucked one of his new mouthpieces into the horn with reverence. 🫡
Elara met Aiden at the tower foot with Bryn, Hale, Ras, and two Riversong cousins. "Eyes first," she said. "Knives last."
"Eyes first," Aiden echoed. He could feel After-Sight sitting behind his eyes like a finger on a map. He didn't push it. Not yet.
They approached Riversong Fort at a distance that felt like good manners: Oak Rise between, the Flats broad as a held breath. Through glass borrowed from Duvall's crates, the Fort resolved into geometry instead of rumor.
It was not grand. That helped. It was rude—new palisade stakes still green at the heart, a ditch that had ideas but not depth, brush-mat lanes cut toward the river, a low gate with a bone bar meant more for courage than strength. Stakes bristled like bad stubble. A stink of smoke lay on the air with a sweetness that said trash fire and worry.
"Count," Elara said.
Bryn did it with her eyes. "Inside the curtain, eighty to a hundred. Two masks—one leather-patched, one raw bone; no proper drum box. Ditch shallow—a tall man could step out of it angry. Brush tunnel to river, here." She pointed with a thin stick. "Fish-weirs downstream—fort's pantry."
Ras did not look at the masks. He looked at the trees. "Perches," he murmured. "That bent willow… that clay lip… that single thornbush that's too neat in the middle of mess." He marked each with a quiet twist of rope and a pebble in his pocket, as if tying ghosts to stones.
Hale measured with a rider's mind. "If they sally, they'll try this blind—cut-bank meets wadi, a curl that hides hooves and knees. Good place to be wrong."
Elara nodded once. "We'll make wrong easy and right expensive."
Aiden finally lifted After-Sight and let it choose his focus. The world didn't change; it admitted. Lines of habit and malice penciled themselves over the Fort like a draughtsman losing patience. The gate yard glimmered—men grouping; two wicker mats leaned ready; a drum tucked behind a brush screen, insultingly tidy.
"Gate," he said softly. "Sally in one hour if we can read a drum that hasn't breathed yet." He gave Elara the distance and the angle; she didn't ask how he knew. They didn't use the word for the thing that lived behind his eyes; you don't feed tools praise.
"Bryn—mark the curl," Elara said. "Ras—trip them twice where panic puts knees. Hale—gourd here. Liaise with Jory for a clean two short if anyone forgets they brought their brains."
They laid quiet teeth: caltrops in the exact knee-places Ras had named; a whipline rope hidden under dust and pegged with two forgiving knots; a basket of sand where paint would make boards lie; a little brush of flag at the rally mark so feet could find home without thinking.
No heroics. Just spite with good handwriting.
— Fort Recon — Riversong Fort (Rank I)• Garrison est.: 80–100; 2 masks (1 patched); no drum box• Works: shallow ditch; green palisade; brush tunnel to river; fish-weirs• Weak points: curl at cut-bank; low gate yard; water path• Cordon plan: cut weirs; deny foragers; alarm gourds on wadis; no siege
They fell back to Oakwatch and watched the Fort watch back. The sun lifted. Heat began to scribble in the near air. The palisade twitched—not the wood; the men.
"Here they come," Bryn said, before the gate admitted it.
The sally was small and cheerful in the way foolishness is: thirty-five goblins with wicker mats, two with bravado and paint on their forearms, one drummer who had studied mopes and tried for menace. They slithered through the brush-curl exactly where After-Sight had drawn its chalk.
Elara's hand did not move. "Jory," she called, serene. "One long to set the spine."
The horn poured a clean line along Founders' Way. Militia who had been eating bread and practicing not dropping standards put boards in their hands and feet under them. Garran's hinge team took the right. Skirmishers found shade for their slings. The cavalry screens laughed without showing teeth.
"Four broken," Elara added, not because a real drum lived in the curl, but because discipline likes reminders.
The sally hit geometry and learned it had a face.
The first mat came up; Ras's quiet caltrops introduced themselves to two surprised knees. The second mat met the whipline—Hale cracked it from behind a cairn and the mat jumped like a fish and flipped into the ditch. The drummer ran into his own stick and discovered comedy. Chalk glandes opened neat constellations on wicker and cheek. A javelin kissed a bravado forearm; paint smeared into a lesson.
"Two short," Jory sent, gentle as a mother's hand. The line stepped back one pace so the curl wouldn't pretend to be a path. The goblins, who had been promised a chase by tradition if not by a clerk, met nothing where victory expected to live.
No shot for Thorn. No charge for Bryn. Just work: shields nudged, not smashed; spears presented, not swallowed; stones thrown once, not again when greed said please.
The sally blinked at the rude discovery that it was not the center of a story and went home in the way small armadas do—carrying embarrassment as ballast.
"Do we send them a note?" Garran asked, deadpan.
"We sent one," Elara said, eyes on the curl where a single caltrop winked in sun. "They can read."
— Contact Log — Fort Sally (Day 0, Hour 3)• Enemy: 35 + 1 drummer, 2 mats• Our actions: skirmish/snare; no pursuit; two short maintained• Casualties: none (ours); enemy bruises + confusion; 1 mat flipped (laughter)• Outcome: sally refused; fort morale −small; discipline +ours 🙂
Aiden let After-Sight cool. The world returned to its usual honesty. He looked at Oakwatch like a man who had asked a new friend for a favor and been repaid with competence.
"Starvation cordon," Elara said, already drawing the circle with her spear butt in dust. "Four arcs: North fish-weirs, West forager runs, South cut-bank crawls, East brush tunnel. Pathfinders hold the arcs; Militia rotate; cav screens if anyone forgets what two short means."
Bryn added pins to the circle: "Gourds here, here, and here. Mouthpieces in the rock lip. Flag posts at the rally spots—big and boring."
"Night Soup rota at cairns," Mara inserted, because she built morale the way Ansel built stone. "If someone bleeds, they will do it within the smell of broth." 🍲
"Clinic stretchers cached under Oakwatch," Calder said. "Bandage roll bins at rally flags. And the new Clean Room Tent ready, because if we win by being boring, we must be neat about it."
Venn wrote coins and days like a man enjoying arithmetic. "We can hold a cordon six weeks without tightening belts, eight with Night Soup being rude. We cut the Fort's weirs and they'll chew leather by harvest."
"We'll cut," Bryn said. "At night. Quiet. With a ribbon left to remind them luck doesn't live by the river."
Rinna measured Thorn's range against Oak Rise with a string and a frown. "Just shy," she said. "Good. I don't want to teach them punctuation yet." Tam sighed as if deprived of a love. 😌
— Cordon Orders — Riversong Fort• Arcs set (N: weirs; W: forage; S: crawl; E: brush)• Posts: horn gourds + flags + water butt + sand bin• Cache: stretchers/bandage rolls; mouthpieces at posts• Patrol cadence: 8h Pathfinders; 6h Militia; cav screen at 2h dusk/dawn• Action: Cut weirs tonight; no siege; no trophy raids
They marched the arcs into place before noon. Pathfinders flowed along the edges—Bryn's hands setting gourds; Hale tuning their mouths; Ras tucking rope where knees would thank him later. Militia drilled hinge manners at the west curl until dust agreed to cooperate. The cairns took fresh chalk marks that meant don't be clever.
At noon sharp, the Fox arrived for the cross-module you win by losing soup bets. Lucien observed the cordon with an appreciation that did not need to be spoken.
"We do hinges first," Elara told him. "Then you make my riders prettier."
"Perfect," Lucien said, and did his best not to look too good holding a pike-lite. He failed. Renard, on foot, demonstrated how not to get your ankle loved by a stake. The crowd laughed with him; he bowed to them.
For one bright hour, the Flats forgot the smell of drums and learned the shape of courtesy. Then: back to work.
Night put its cool hand on the cordon. The river lay like ink. Fish bumped nets that would not be there tomorrow. Bryn's team moved along the north arc with rope and knives that liked quiet.
They found the first weir by smell—the slick, river-sweet and rot hung together. Ras tapped two posts with his knuckle—soft at the heart, ready to apologize. Hale cut a tie under water with a neat, nasty twist. The whole weir sighed and went loose.
"Ribbon," Bryn said, and tied a thin strip of undyed cloth to a stake they left half-driven into mud. It meant This was work. Walk away.
Two weirs later, a shadow tried to be a willow and failed. After-Sight was on cooldown, but Ras's perch-sense was not.
"Left," he breathed. Bryn's hand flicked; two sling stones whispered; a shape yelped and ran in a way that said hungry, not hunting. She did not chase. No one did.
— Night Action — Weirs• Weirs cut: 3 (north arc)• Contacts: 1 hungry scout, fled; no pursuit• Ribbon left: "Work, not luck"• River take: Fort pantry −moderate; our risk −low
At second watch, a whisper came down the gourds—two short quick and polite: Renard's fox screen had seen a small forager line on the west arc and let it see them. Foragers withdrew, dignity intact. Courtesy is cheap and buys tomorrow.
By dawn, the Fort's smoke curled more anxiously. Men make different breakfasts when the river becomes a rumor.
— Fort Dossier — Updated• Weirs: −3 (north)• Forage lanes: harassed; no casualties (ours)• Sally appetite: reduced• Spawn forecast: low trickle in 16–22 days (watch window)• Advisory: Starvation pressure building; siege not recommended until Rank II/III intel obtained.
Aiden let the [System]'s tiny clerkly voice fold itself away. He stood at Oakwatch as the day rubbed sleep out of its eyes and looked at the palisade that pretended to be a plan. It looked smaller under honest light.
"We hold the ring," Elara said beside him. "We teach them boredom. We let their yearly trickle walk into a world that already knows how to say no politely."
"And we don't get clever," Aiden said, because the last thing you forget is the thing that cost you men. He touched the railing where his palm had taught the wood his weight. "When we go, it's to hunt the core—not to admire a ditch."
"Good arithmetic," she said, which had become a benediction.
Oakwatch hummed a little when Jory tapped the horn shelf. The cairns answered in the right order. Mara sent a Night Soup rota down the road with cups and a promise. Calder chalked a small sun on the first aid bin under the flag. Thorn pretended to sleep and made a little sound like a punctuation mark in her throat. 😌
They let the Fort watch them not be idiots all day.
"Novaterra," Aiden told the rise and the road and the fence that had learned his voice, "we'll starve a fort with work. We'll teach it we have eyes. We'll save our knives for meat. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
The wind went down a gourd and made a pleased two short—make way. The river obeyed.
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Riversong Fort• Recon complete; Fort Dossier opened (Rank I; garrison 80–100; 2 masks)• Sally refused (no pursuit); cordon arcs set (N/W/S/E)• Weirs cut (3); foragers deterred (no casualties)• After-Sight: used (sally pre-read); cooldown cycled• Cross-training (Hinge manners) complete; Fox serpentine scheduled• Morale: Quiet-proud; patience funded 🙂