Page 87 of Beds and Blades

The moment I entered the keep, I heard the argument in the war room.

Their voices were raised but controlled, the sound of experienced soldiers arguing with discipline still wrapped around every word.

I followed the sound to the war room and stopped in the doorway.

Skip was at the head of the table.

Five others stood around the map, three men and two women, all dressed in leather and chain mail and carrying the unmistakable bearing of command. None of them looked like they had been summoned for something minor.

The map spread across the center of the table showed the valley containing the outpost line, rendered in a level of detail that turned an abstract defensive concept into a real place.

Five outposts stretched across the valley. The farthest two sat hard against the mountains on either side, anchoring the line. Outpost Ely stood at the center, closest to the narrow mountain path that led toward Druvenfall.

The logic was unmistakable. This was a system built for containment, and Ely was the hinge of it, the point nearest the entrance, the place Morvanna’s forces would press hardest if they wanted the line to break.

Behind the line were villages, farms, and roads. People lived there. People whose continued existence depended on the fortifications between them and whatever came down from the mountains.

I thought of Varia growing up in one of those villages, protected by the outposts and shadowed, always, by the threat of Morvanna.

Red chips marked the vampire incursion points, distributed along the line.

Skip saw me in the doorway. His expression shifted. The stern commander mid-argument became, briefly, something warmer before the professional face reassembled. I felt the warmth that accompanied the shift.

“Join us,” he said.

I came to the table.

“Line Marshal Cato,” Skip said, indicating the gray-templed officer to his left. “He is stationed at Ely, but his authority runs the length of the outpost line.”

Cato did not nod. He looked at me for the length of time it took to complete an assessment, arrived at a conclusion he saw no reason to conceal, and returned his attention to the map.

“High Commander,” he said to Skip. “This is a closed strategy session. Five commands. The entire line’s disposition is on this table.”

“It is,” Skip said. “Meghan stays.”

Cato’s jaw tightened, the movement so slight only someone looking for it would have caught it. I would later learn that a Line Marshal was accustomed to deciding who belonged in rooms like this. He accepted Skip’s decision to let me stay, but every line of him made clear that the concession did not sit easily.

Skip’s attention moved around the table. “High Commander Aldis of Westwatch. High Commander Veth of Stonegate. High Commander Fen of Eben. High Commander Rul of Eastwatch.”

The names landed with the weight of command. These were not officers gathered for a local disagreement. These were the High Commanders holding the line.

“The other High Commanders arrived earlier today,” Skip said. “I summoned them after the breach in the crypt and the revelation that Morvanna had reached into Ely itself. We were discussing strategy.”

“We were discussing night patrols,” Cato said.

He did not wait for further introduction.

“The watchtower system is no longer sufficient,” he said, addressing Skip rather than me. “Their numbers have been growing for three months. Their tactics are changing. A force that size can afford to sacrifice a small contingent if it means slipping others beyond the watchtower sightlines after dark. They could reach the villages before dawn. We need active night patrols outside the walls.”

“Patrols that will bleed strength from the outposts every night,” Skip said. “Fatigue, losses, attrition. If Morvanna sends a significant force directly at the line, we will be compromised.”

“If we do not patrol the villages,” Cato said, “one of the undead gets through, reaches a village, and starts building an army behind us.”

They had been having this argument for a while. I could tell from the shape of it.

Neither man was quite answering the other anymore. Each had moved past the point being made and begun responding to the version of the argument he had already defeated in his own head.

Deadlock.