Page 89 of Beds and Blades

“While what happens?” Cato asked.

He was still evaluating me. But the evaluation had changed registers—not whether I belonged at the table, but whether what I was saying could survive scrutiny.

From a man like Cato, that was something rarer than acceptance. It was the decision to take an argument seriously enough to try to break it.

“If I were Morvanna and I had spent years failing to break a fortified position, the next logical step would not be a bigger assault. It would be a different kind of assault. One that does not need to break the line because it uses what is already behind it.”

I touched one of the pale wooden village markers.

“She turns the villages,” Fen said.

Fen was the younger of the two female High Commanders, and she had been watching me with focus.

“The villages become the force.”

“Yes,” I said. “And she is not attacking because she thinks she can breach the wall. She is attacking because she has to. The line has been cutting off her supply of fresh blood for years. Her inner circle feeds on captives, people taken by sorcerers and sellswords and brought to Druvenfall at significant cost and risk. That keeps her command layer dangerous. It does not feed an army.”

I looked at the map.

“Every soldier in that army is operating below what blood would make them. This is not a patient general choosing her moment. This is a hungry army that has been patient as long as it can afford to be and is beginning to run out of patience. The raids are intensifying not because her strategy has changed, but because the pressure inside the mountains is increasing.”

Cato looked at the map. Then at me.

“You’re saying the longer we hold, the weaker they become.”

“I’m saying the longer we hold, the more desperate they become,” I said. “Those are different things. A weakening enemy becomes manageable. A desperate one becomes unpredictable.”

Cato’s gaze sharpened.

“Which is why Cato is right that the watchtower system is insufficient,” I said.

Cato blinked.

“Skip is also right that permanent night patrols outside the walls are unsustainable.”

Skip’s expression did not change. I felt something adjacent to amusement.

“You are both correct,” I said. “The question is not which approach to choose. The question is what third approach addresses both problems simultaneously.”

Cato looked at the map. Then at me.

“And you have one.”

“I have a starting point,” I said.

The room had gone very still.

“You need early warning without permanent depletion. Watchtowers cannot see everything at night. Agreed. Permanent patrols deplete your capacity. Agreed. But what about the villages themselves?”

I pointed to the settlements behind the line.

“Every village behind the outposts has people who grew up there. People who know the terrain, who know their neighbors, who would know something was wrong before any patrol from this garrison would. You do not need to patrol the villages constantly. You need to communicate with them.”

I touched one of the pale wooden village markers.

“A signal system. Something simple enough that a farmer can use it while terrified and fast enough that a garrison can answer.”

Fen leaned closer to the map.