Chapter 82: War Footing
Fourteen days after Demeterra’s army left Deepwell, Zephyr rebuilt his world into a weapon.
The Iron Covenant’s military machine — the thing he’d spent a year constructing — shifted from peacetime economy to wartime configuration with the mechanical precision of a clock changing hours. Every settlement, every forge, every trade route, every prayer service recalibrated toward a single purpose.
Ashenveil became a logistics hub. The forges ran triple shifts — three teams of smiths rotating through the heat in eight-hour blocks, hammering stonesteel into arrowheads, spear tips, shield facings, and replacement blade edges. The iron song of the forge district carried across the settlement day and night, a constant metallic pulse that replaced the morning birdsong and became, for the residents of Ashenveil, the sound of survival.
Nez coordinated the supply chain from a stone office near the Chapel that she’d turned into a war room of her own — smaller than Krug’s, messier, papered with inventory lists and delivery schedules and the kind of annotated maps that only made sense to a Goblin who’d spent fifty years thinking about logistics. Every cart, every porter, every donkey train moving between the seven settlements was tracked, timed, and optimized.
"Ninety-day siege reserves at Ironhold," Nez reported, her clawed finger tracing a column of figures. "Sixty at Ashenveil. Forty at the southern positions. If we pull non-essential personnel from Cinderpit and Bridgewater north, we gain twelve days of food buffer."
Krug studied the numbers. Through the bond, Zephyr studied them simultaneously — the same data viewed from two perspectives. Krug saw provisions. Zephyr saw margins.
"Pull them," Krug said.
The civilian evacuation had started three days ago. Non-combatants from the southern settlements — Bridgewater, Cinderpit, and the forward-deployed trading posts — moved north in organized convoys. Families with children first. Elderly second. Everyone else third. The roads were full of people carrying bundled possessions, leading livestock, walking in the tired silence of populations that had been told to be afraid in an organized way.
[MOBILIZATION — Day 14 Status]
[Civilian Evacuation: 1,200 non-combatants relocated north]
[Remaining in combat zone: 2,400 soldiers + 600 militia + essential staff]
[Forge Output: 300% normal — triple-shift operations]
[Supply Lines: 3 active routes (western road, eastern trail, river barge)]
[Food Reserves: 90 days (Ironhold) | 60 days (Ashenveil) | 40 days (southern positions)]
***
The southern fortifications were Harsk’s masterwork.
Two corridors. That was the geography’s gift — the grassland approaches to Iron Covenant territory funneled through two natural corridors, bounded by dense marshland to the east and broken hill country to the west. Any army coming north had to come through one of these corridors or waste weeks navigating unsuitable terrain.
The western corridor — the wider approach, the obvious path — was a killing ground three kilometers deep. Three trench lines, each backed by stonesteel-reinforced palisades with covered firing positions. Between the lines: stake fields, deadfalls, concealed pits lined with sharpened stonesteel spikes. The communication tunnels connecting the lines were Kobold-engineered — narrow enough that minotaur-sized attackers couldn’t pursue, wide enough for defenders to move freely.
The eastern corridor was the marsh. The Hydra’s domain.
Gorthan had positioned the creature at the corridor’s narrowest point — a stretch of elevated ground between two flooded basins where any advancing force would need to move in column, compressed, vulnerable. The fighting platforms rose from the marsh on stonesteel-reinforced stilts, giving the defenders elevation and cover. And coiled around the largest platform, three heads resting above the waterline, was twelve meters of divine creation that had been waiting for this moment since the day it was bound.
Through the bond, Zephyr felt the Hydra’s readiness — not as thought, but as heat. A furnace at full draw, waiting for the door to open.
Harsk walked the western line with Krug, inspecting positions, checking sight lines, testing trench walls for soft spots. The Gnoll moved with the focused intensity of a predator examining its trap — every stake field evaluated, every firing angle verified, every retreat path tested.
"They’ll hit the west first," Harsk said. "Gorvahn’s Frogmen. He’s a vanguard commander — he’ll want to establish a penetration and hold it for the main force. Three thousand Frogmen in phalanx formation, shield walls, disciplined advance." He tapped a position on the first trench line. "They’ll reach this line in forty minutes from the border. We bleed them here — ranged fire, Kobold traps, controlled withdrawal. Make them pay for every meter."
"And the east?" Krug asked.
Harsk looked toward the marsh. "The east is the Hydra’s problem. Anyone who enters the eastern corridor walks into knee-deep water with a divine creature waiting at the end. If Demeterra sends significant force through the marsh, it means she’s desperate or she’s found a way to neutralize a twelve-meter serpent in its natural terrain. Either way, we’ll know."
"What about the Thornwyrm?"
Harsk was quiet for a moment. The question neither of them wanted to ask. Demeterra’s divine creature — massive, serpentine, armored in living wood. Their intelligence from Skrit’s mission estimated it at twenty meters. Larger than the Hydra. And it would have its own Warden directing it.
"The Thornwyrm goes where Demeterra points it," Harsk said. "If she points it west, we have a problem. Our fortifications weren’t built to stop divine creatures. If she points it east, the Hydra fights it. And the Hydra—"
"The Hydra holds," Krug said. Not a question. A statement of faith in something that was twelve meters long and made of divine fire.
Harsk looked at the Priest. Decided not to argue.
***
The hawk circuits reported the same picture every six hours: Demeterra’s advance elements were moving north through the grasslands. Gorvahn’s Frogmen in the vanguard — three thousand amphibious soldiers in disciplined march columns, covering thirty kilometers per day. Behind them, the main force: Human infantry, Beastmen raiders, Durnok’s Minotaur siege units. Stretched across the grasslands like a dark river flowing north.
And behind the army, visible from the highest-altitude hawk passes: the Thornwyrm. Moving with the column, its massive wooden body grinding through the grassland, leaving a trail of flattened vegetation and disturbed earth. Fifty meters of living wood and thorn.
Gorthan’s hawks counted them. Ember, the fastest, made the pass at dawn and returned with the numbers Zephyr had been expecting.
[ENEMY FORCE — Advance Assessment]
[Vanguard: Gorvahn’s Frogmen — 3,000 (phalanx formation, shield wall capable)]
[Main Force: Human Infantry — 2,500 | Beastmen Raiders — 1,500]
[Siege: Durnok’s Minotaurs — 800 (heavy equipment, battering rams)]
[Divine Creature: Thornwyrm — 20m, living wood, acidic sap, Warden Siltjaw]
[Vassal Forces: Gorvahn (Rank 3), Durnok (Rank 2), Kreth (Rank 2) — active]
[Seylith (Rank 3): Ordered to eastern attack — status pending]
[Total Estimated Combat Strength: 8,500+]
[Estimated Contact: 10-14 days]
Ten to fourteen days. The time compressed from theory to certainty the way a distant mountain resolved into a wall when you walked toward it.
Zephyr calculated. Twenty-four hundred soldiers against eighty-five hundred. Three-to-one disadvantage in raw numbers. Equipment advantage: significant — stonesteel outperformed everything in Demeterra’s arsenal except divine creature power. Terrain advantage: decisive — the corridor approach meant Demeterra couldn’t use her numbers to envelop. She had to come through the funnel.
Divine creature: one against one. The Hydra was smaller. The Hydra was in its preferred terrain. The outcome was uncertain, and uncertainty was the one variable that strategy couldn’t resolve.
Through the bond, to Krug: *Ten days. Maybe less. Everything we’ve built comes down to this.*
Krug stood on the western trench line, looking south. The grasslands were golden in the late afternoon light — beautiful, peaceful, indifferent to what was coming across them.
"The soldiers are ready," Krug said.
And you?
The Lizardman was quiet for a moment. Not hesitation. The specific quiet of a man choosing his words for a god who would remember them.
"I was ready the day you spoke to me in the fire."