Chapter 81: The Eve of War
Fifty-eight days after the mobilization order, everything was ready. Or close enough to ready that the difference was academic.
Zephyr reviewed the Iron Covenant’s war footing with the detached precision of someone reading a spreadsheet that happened to describe the survival or destruction of four thousand lives.
[STATUS — IRON COVENANT WAR READINESS]
[Day 58 / 60 — Pre-Contact Assessment]
[MILITARY]
[Standing Army: 1,800 soldiers (expanded from 1,200)]
[Militia (activated): 600 (trained, garrison-assigned)]
[Total Combat Strength: 2,400]
[Equipment: Full stonesteel kit — blade, shield, plate, helm]
[Formations: Multi-race combined-arms (Lizardman core, Minotaur heavy, Gnoll skirmish, Human support)]
[Officers: 24 (12 combat-tested, 12 field-promoted)]
[FORTIFICATIONS]
[Western Corridor: Trench system — 3 lines, stonesteel-reinforced palisades, covered firing positions]
[Eastern Corridor: Marsh channeling — flooded approaches, elevated fighting platforms, kill zones]
[Ironhold: Walls strengthened, gate reinforced, siege stores: 90 days]
[Ashenveil: Inner wall completed, evacuation routes mapped, civilian shelter capacity: 3,200]
[DIVINE ASSETS]
[Hydra: 12 meters, 3 heads — combat-ready]
[Warden Gorthan: Full tactical bond achieved (Ember + Hydra secondary)]
[Hawk Patrol: 8 hawks, 4 circuits, 24-hour coverage]
[Vassal Thyrak: Beast domain blessings active — 40 soldiers enhanced]
[FAITH INFRASTRUCTURE]
[Total Believers: 4,200]
[FP Generation: 5,800/day]
[FP Reserves: 92,000]
[Life Domain: Area healing active — 3 settlement coverage]
[Forge Domain: Equipment production at maximum capacity]
[Storm Domain: Weather manipulation prepared — rain and fog protocols ready]
[Knowledge Domain: Battle analysis and communication network active]
[INTELLIGENCE]
[Demeterra’s forces: Mobilized — estimated 8,500 combat strength]
[Advance elements: Detected 200km south — Frogman scouts, Gorvahn commanded]
[Main force: Assembling at Deepwell — estimated 14-day march to Iron Covenant border]
[Thornwyrm: Active — moving with main force column]
[Timeline to contact: 14-21 days]
The numbers were what they were. Twenty-four hundred against eighty-five hundred was better than twelve hundred against ten thousand, but the ratio still favored Demeterra by more than three to one. In open field, that was terminal. Behind fortified positions in channeled terrain, with stonesteel equipment, divine creature support, and four domains of blessings — it was survivable.
Survivable wasn’t comfortable. But survivable was all he needed.
***
Krug walked the fortifications at sunset.
The western corridor — the primary approach from the grasslands — had been transformed in sixty days from open terrain into a killing ground. Three lines of trenches, each backed by stonesteel-reinforced palisades with covered positions for archers and crossbowmen. The trenches were connected by communication tunnels — covered passages that allowed soldiers to move between lines without exposure. Between the first and second lines, sharpened stakes angled south, driven into the earth at intervals designed to break a charge formation.
The soldiers on the line were quiet. The professional quiet of people who’d trained for something and were now waiting for it to arrive. They cleaned weapons. They checked armor straps. They spoke in low voices about things that weren’t the war — families, food, the score of a wrestling match in the barracks last week.
Krug stopped at each position. Not to inspect — Vark handled inspections with a rigor that made additional oversight redundant. Krug stopped to be seen. The soldiers needed to see the man who spoke for the god. They needed to see that he was walking the same ground, breathing the same air, standing behind the same stonesteel walls.
At the eastern corridor, the approach was different. The marshlands — naturally wet, naturally channeled, naturally hostile to infantry movement — had been enhanced. Life domain blessings had accelerated the growth of marsh reeds and water vegetation, turning the shallow waters into a dense obstacle course that would slow advancing soldiers to a crawl. Elevated fighting platforms — wooden structures on stilts, positioned at intervals along the marsh edge — gave the defenders elevation and cover while attackers waded through knee-deep water in formation-breaking terrain.
The Hydra was there.
Twelve meters of scaled mass, three heads weaving slowly above the marsh waterline, its body coiled around the largest fighting platform like a living siege tower. Gorthan sat on the platform’s edge, legs hanging, Ember perched on a rail beside him. The hawk and the Hydra existed in the same handler — Gorthan’s bond extended to both, a dual connection that the Beast domain had allowed and the Life domain had strengthened.
The Hydra’s eyes tracked Krug as he approached. Three sets of golden eyes, each head following independently, the combined effect creating the unsettling sensation of being watched by a creature that could pay attention to three things simultaneously.
"How is she?" Krug asked.
"Hungry," Gorthan said. "She’s always hungry before storms. Something about the pressure changes." He scratched the nearest head under the jaw — a gesture that would have been suicidal a year ago and was now domestic. "She’s ready."
Krug looked south. The grasslands stretched to the horizon — flat, golden-green, beautiful in the way that open terrain was beautiful when you weren’t measuring it for defensive coverage. Somewhere beyond that horizon, Demeterra’s army was marching. Eight thousand five hundred soldiers, six vassal gods, and a divine creature that made the Hydra look small.
They were coming. And the question that had been theoretical for six months was about to become empirical.
Can the Iron Covenant survive?
Through the bond, the Voice provided the only answer that mattered:
We’re about to find out.
***
That night, the Chapel was full.
Not the council or the officers or the Crucible’s inner circle. Everyone. Every person in Ashenveil who could walk to the Chapel’s doors — soldiers on leave from the southern positions, smiths from the forge district, administrators from the records office, children who should have been in bed, elders who shouldn’t have been standing. The stone chamber packed beyond capacity, people standing shoulder to shoulder in the corridor, spilling out through the doors into the courtyard where the night air carried the sound of prayer into the dark.
Krug stood at the altar. The gold flame burned. Not the low flame of maintained faith — the full, brilliant flame of concentrated belief. Forty-two hundred believers, most of them praying simultaneously, their faith converging on a single point like rivers flowing into a sea.
He didn’t give a speech. Speeches were for leaders who needed to convince people to do something they didn’t want to do. These people didn’t need convincing. They needed confirmation that the thing they’d built was worth defending.
"Two years ago," Krug said, "I was a Lizardman with a stone axe and a god who spoke in my head. There were eleven of us. We lived in a cave. We ate what we could find. We survived because the Voice said survive, and we listened."
The Chapel was silent. Four hundred faces. Five races. The sound of breathing and fire.
"Now there are four thousand of us. We live in a nation. We eat what we grow and forge and trade. We survive because the Design tells us that survival is not enough — that survival is the starting point, not the destination. The Voice still speaks. We still listen. But what we hear now is bigger than survival."
He placed his fist over his heart. Left fist. The gesture that every person in the room knew the way they knew their own hands.
"What we hear is: *build.* Build the walls that protect the farmer. Build the forge that equips the soldier. Build the school that teaches the child. Build the temple that houses the flame. Build the nation that holds it all together and gives every person in it — Lizardman, Human, Kobold, Minotaur, Gnoll, Halfling, Beastman — a place in the Design."
He knelt. Right knee. The room knelt with him — a cascade of movement that started at the altar and rippled outward through the Chapel, through the corridor, into the courtyard. Four hundred people kneeling in unison. The sound of four hundred left fists striking four hundred chests.
"They’re coming," Krug said. "Let them come."
By iron and fire, I stand before the Design.
Four hundred voices. One prayer. The gold flame blazed.
And somewhere south, across the grasslands, under a different sky governed by a different god, an army began to march.