First light came grey and cold over Ashfield.
Kai was already awake. He'd been awake for most of the night, working through the correspondence pile with a candle and a growing sense of just how comprehensively the previous Voss lords had mismanaged everything they'd touched. Tax records that didn't add up. A grain storage report from two years ago that nobody had followed up on. Three unanswered letters from the kingdom's administrative office about road maintenance funds that had apparently been spent on something else entirely.
He made notes. Lots of notes.
At some point Aldric knocked, saw the state of the desk, said nothing, and left two cups of something hot that tasted like tea if tea had given up on itself.
Kai drank both and kept reading.
By the time they rode out — Kai, Aldric, and Brennan on three horses that were adequate if not inspiring — he had a clearer picture of what he was working with. Not a good picture. But a clear one.
Brennan rode like a man who'd done it for thirty years and had stopped enjoying it about twenty-five years in. He said nothing for the first mile, which Kai appreciated.
"You read all night," Aldric said. Not a question.
"Most of it."
"Find anything useful?"
"The grain storage in the northern village is three times what the records show. Someone's been underreporting to avoid the provincial tax." Kai watched the tree line as they rode. "I'm not going to pursue it. I need those people cooperative, not resentful."
Aldric glanced at him. "Your father would have fined them."
"My father is why they were hiding grain."
Brennan made a sound that might have been a laugh. It was hard to tell.
The eastern road deteriorated quickly once they left the fortress — another item for the list. The river came into view after forty minutes of riding, brown and swollen from the recent rains, moving faster than it looked. The bridge sat low over it, old stone, wide enough for two horses abreast.
Kai dismounted before the others and walked to the edge.
┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│ TERRAIN SCAN ACTIVE │
│ Bridge: Stone, pre-empire era │
│ Width: 2 horses abreast │
│ Weight limit: Infantry only │
│ Cavalry crossing: NOT VIABLE │
│ Current river depth: +2.3ft │
│ Ford (200m south): IMPASSABLE │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
He crouched and looked at the base of the nearest support. The stonework was solid but the road approach on the far side had washed out — there was a two-foot drop from the bridge surface down to the mud of the opposite bank. Manageable for infantry on foot. Completely unusable for cavalry moving at speed.
Harken had cavalry. Good cavalry, from what the correspondence suggested.
Kai stood and looked south toward where the ford should be.
"The ford," he said.
"Impassable," Brennan said from behind him. "I checked it yesterday. You'd lose horses."
"Did Harken's scouts check it?"
Brennan paused. "…I don't know."
"His maps are from eight years ago. Before the upstream damming project." Kai turned back to the bridge. "As far as Harken knows, he has two crossing points. The bridge and the ford. He'll plan around both."
"And in reality he has one," Aldric said slowly.
"One narrow bridge that won't take cavalry." Kai looked at it for a long moment. Five hundred men. Infantry can cross two abreast. At marching pace that's roughly four minutes per hundred men — twenty minutes to get his full force across. Minimum. "He won't like that."
"He'll like it less if we're on the other side of it," Brennan said.
Kai looked at him.
The old soldier had his arms crossed, squinting at the bridge with the expression of someone running numbers he didn't much like. But he was running them. That was the thing — Brennan was actually thinking about it rather than just waiting to be told what to do.
"You've held a river crossing before," Kai said.
"Once. Didn't enjoy it."
"What broke it?"
Brennan was quiet for a moment. "Supply. We held for four days. Day five, the arrows ran out." He glanced sideways at Kai. "We had forty men then too. Different bridge."
"Did you have a general?"
"We had a knight with a very large sword and a great deal of enthusiasm."
"How'd that work out?"
"Day five," Brennan said.
Kai almost smiled.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ✦ QUEST COMPLETE │
│ Scout the Eastern Approach │
│ │
│ REWARDS │
│ +10 Tactics │
│ Skill Unlocked — TERRAIN READING Lv.1 │
│ [Passive: Terrain advantages visible │
│ on battlefield overlay] │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ✦ NEW QUEST │
│ Prepare Ashfield's Defence │
│ │
│ Hold the bridge against Harken's force │
│ Time remaining: 6 days │
│ │
│ REWARDS │
│ +20 Command │
│ Skill — FORMATION Lv.1 │
│ │
│ BONUS OBJECTIVE │
│ Win without losing a single man │
│ Bonus Reward: ??? │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
He dismissed both and turned to face Aldric and Brennan.
"I need three things," he said. "Timber from the northern forest — as much as we can move in two days. Every arrow in the province, bought, borrowed, or requisitioned. And I need to know if any of the villages have anyone who's worked with fortifications before."
Aldric frowned. "What are you building?"
"Harken expects to cross a bridge and meet a defensive line." Kai looked back at the crossing one more time. "I want him to cross a bridge and meet a problem he's never seen before."
"Forty-three men can't hold that bridge against five hundred," Aldric said. "Not with timber and arrows."
"No," Kai agreed. "But forty-three men in the right position, with the right obstacles, on ground that turns cavalry useless and stretches infantry into a single-file corridor —" He paused. "Forty-three men don't need to beat five hundred. They need to make five hundred bleed enough that taking Ashfield stops being worth the cost."
Brennan was looking at him with an expression Kai hadn't seen on him yet. Not convinced. Not skeptical. Something in between — the look of a man who'd seen enough bad plans to recognise when something might actually be different.
"You've done this before," Brennan said.
"Not personally."
"But you've seen it."
Kai thought about Thermopylae. About the Swiss at Morgarten. About a hundred other moments in history where geography and discipline had beaten numbers so thoroughly that people were still writing about it centuries later.
"I've studied it," he said. "Extensively."
Brennan grunted. Looked at the bridge. Looked back at Kai.
"I'll find you your carpenter," he said.
They rode back with the morning burning off into a pale blue sky and Kai running numbers in his head the whole way. Timber quantities. Arrow trajectories from an elevated position. The psychology of a commander who'd never been slowed down before suddenly finding himself funnelled into a twenty-minute crossing window with no cavalry option.
Harken was good. By local standards, very good. He was also used to winning quickly and cleanly against opponents who panicked.
The first principle of asymmetric defence
Kai thought, is that you don't try to match what they have. You remove the conditions that make what they have useful.
Harken had five hundred men and excellent cavalry and a commander who drank before engagements.
In six days, none of that was going to matter.
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ CURRENT STATS │
│ Command ████░░ 12 │
│ Tactics ███░░░ 18 │
│ Logistics ██░░░░ 11 │
│ Intel ███░░░ 14 │
│ Presence ███░░░ 9 │
│ Combat █░░░░░ 1 │
└─────────────────────────┘
He looked at that last bar for a moment.
Still one.
He dismissed it and rode a little faster.
Six days.