Page 90 of Beds and Blades

“Signal keepers,” I said. “Designated people. Two per village at minimum, preferably more. A fixed signal point. A protected fire position. A pattern simple enough that no one has to think under pressure.”

I looked at Skip.

“You keep the watchtowers manned. You don’t thin the patrols. Instead, the villages signal you. Beacon to tower. Horn to wall. Something clear and visible, with a secondary sound signal for weather. You answer the signal, not a fixed route. That way, you keep your strength where it matters.”

I gestured slightly, laying it out as plainly as I could.

“The villages get an early warning system and the certainty that someone is watching for it. And if Morvanna slips the line and reaches a village, you send a force to intercept, not a constant patrol that is already spread too thin.”

I felt Skip’s focus sharpen. The steady intensity of him testing the idea from every angle, the full weight of his attention turning toward the problem.

Beneath that focus, something else stirred.

Pride.

“The signal system would need to be simple,” Aldis said.

He was the older of the two male High Commanders, and he had been silent since I entered. Not the silence of someone waiting to speak. The silence of someone listening.

“Something that cannot be mistaken for an accident.”

“A fire,” Fen said. “A specific configuration. Two fires mean contact. Three means turning in progress.”

“That works in clear weather,” Cato said. “Not in the mountain fog.”

“Then we add a secondary system,” I said. “Something auditory. A horn pattern. Simple enough to remember, distinct enough not to be confused with anything else.”

I moved one of the pale village markers closer to the nearest watchtower.

“I can write out the protocol. It does not need to be complicated. The best systems are not complicated.”

Cato looked at the map for a long moment. At the markers. At the villages.

“It does not solve everything,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “But it makes quiet infiltration significantly harder, and it does not cost you the capacity you need for direct defense. You buy time. Time is what you need right now.”

He was quiet for another moment.

Then he looked at Skip.

Cato met Skip’s eyes—the wordless communication of two soldiers who had worked together long enough to need very little spoken aloud.

Cato studied the map for a long moment. The incursions. The villages. The pattern I had traced.

“The analysis is sound,” he said finally. He said the words like he was paying a debt, in full, on time, and without enjoying the transaction. “The signal system is worth developing. It is also worth saying what it is not. Farmers are not soldiers. Terrified people forget patterns. Half these villages will light a beacon for a loose cow in the first month, and every false alarm will cost a response we cannot spare.”

“Probably,” I said. “False alarms are a cost. A turned village is a catastrophe. I know which one I would rather budget for.”

“It is worth developing,” he repeated, to Skip this time, as though routing the concession through the chain of command made it easier to issue.

Skip’s attention remained on the map.

“Then we develop it across the line,” he said. “Not only for Ely.”

He looked to the other High Commanders.

“Each outpost reviews its own attack pattern against this one. Same intervals. Same changes in force size, frequency, and direction.”