Page 88 of Beds and Blades

I looked at the map more closely.

The red chips. Their distribution. The pattern over time.

The map was not merely Ely’s problem. It was the entire outpost line, rendered in ink, carved markers, and accumulated dread.

Small figures stood across it—dark pieces for the five outposts, red chips for vampire incursions, pale wooden markers for villages and roads. Some had been moved so often that the map beneath them was smudged from fingertips.

This was not a picture of the war.

It was the war, made small enough to move by hand.

Five fortresses. Five High Commanders. One valley holding back everything that wanted to come through the mountains.

And Cato, stationed at Skip’s left, close enough to the center of the line’s command structure that his silence carried almost as much weight as anyone else’s speech.

The pattern was changing.

They were attacking more often, but in smaller parties. The number of attacks was increasing while the intensity of each attack decreased. They were no longer trying to break the line through a single massive assault. They were testing it instead, probing the spaces between the outposts, learning where the defenses were thinnest and what they could get away with.

The siege had been the exception, and even that had not truly been an attempt to take Ely by force. It had been a ploy, a way to occupy the outpost’s attention while Morvanna slipped command-level vampires and Mira inside the walls.

“Mind if I chime in?” I asked.

“I do,” Cato said.

He did not look up from the map.

“Marshal,” Skip said.

“With respect, High Commander—and I mean that sincerely.” Cato straightened. “I am responsible for five fortresses, four thousand soldiers, and every village behind this line. When this meeting ends, I ride to Stonegate, and what we decide at this table rides with me. Every person standing here has earned their place at it across decades.”

He looked at me, directly, and there was nothing cruel in it.

“You have been in this world for a very brief time. You have stood one engagement, from a wall. I am certain you are intelligent. The line is not defended by intelligence alone. It is defended by people who know what the third hour of a night assault feels like, and who will still be here next winter.” He turned back to the map. “She may observe.”

Across the table, Skip’s hand flattened beside the map.

“Marshal Cato.” Skip’s voice dropped into the register that ended discussions. “During the siege, this woman identified the eastern assault as a feint before any officer on this line did. Before you would have. Her analysis held the western courtyard. You reviewed that engagement yourself. You know the arithmetic of what a breached courtyard costs.” He let one breath pass. “You ride between five fortresses. She saw through Morvanna’s deception from inside one, in her first week, in a world she did not grow up in. I would think the Line Marshal, of all people, could distinguish between experience and judgment. They are not the same resource. We are short on both.”

The room was very quiet.

Cato looked at me again. I could see him reassessing me, unwillingly but thoroughly. Whatever conclusion he had reached the first time, he was adjusting it now.

“Then speak,” he said. It was not warm. It was a door opened exactly wide enough to walk through.

I pointed at the map.

“The attacks have been getting less intense and more frequent,” I said. “They are redistributing. Look at the last six weeks.”

I traced the red chips.

“Smaller forces, shorter engagements, wider spread along the line. They are not trying to break through. They stopped trying to break through. They know they cannot break through.”

I looked up.

“They are keeping you watching.”

The room went quiet.