Chapter 87: THE EXPECTED ATTACK

RAIGORO’S POV

By the time Raigoro saw West Rime, he had been riding north since before the previous dawn.

The command party had changed horses where the relay posts could spare them. The heavier engineering wagons remained hours behind.

From the final ridge, West Rime looked repaired.

That was the first problem.

No wall had dramatically collapsed. Ward markers still burned along the mountain line. Soldiers occupied the visible posts, and local crews worked behind temporary screens where the damaged anchor approach had been opened.

A report written from farther south might have called the position stable.

Raigoro had not ridden this far to trust distance.

Senior Engineer Bastan Holt did not.

He stood beside the local ward specialist over an opened section of the repair approach.

"The surface damage is worse than the first report showed."

The ward specialist pointed toward the outer line.

"Anchor three is carrying badly. Four has already begun taking additional pressure."

Raigoro dismounted beside them.

"Can you stabilize it?" Raigoro asked.

The ward specialist answered first.

"If the pressure does not rise much farther."

Holt added, "And if the replacement material reaches us before the local reserve is exhausted."

"How long?"

Holt gave him a range.

Raigoro disliked the upper end.

"What fails first?"

The ward specialist pointed toward the outer anchor.

"Three."

"Then?"

"Four carries more."

Holt tapped the repair access behind them.

"And my crews lose safe working space long before the entire ward fails. If you want that anchor reinforced, I need this lane kept open."

The outpost commander approached.

"Scouts report movement."

"How much?"

"Larger than yesterday."

"Direction?"

"Toward us."

Expected.

Raigoro looked east.

North Spur lay beyond the next mountain line.

North Spur had sent no urgent signal and reported no attack yet.

He entered the command shelter.

West Rime’s local officers had prepared a tactical map.

The terrain differed from the western battlefield months earlier.

Unlike the western battlefield, West Rime offered no narrow trap corridor or convenient ridge to surrender. The ward itself was the strategic point. If they gave too much ground, the engineers would lose access; if they held too tightly, corrupted creatures could pin the infantry against unstable ward structures.

Raigoro placed the infantry in layered lines, with archers above the engineer approaches and the reserve behind the inner road. The Dragon Host remained held back, although one pair stayed close enough to intervene if something large breached.

Lieutenant Kian Marr held the lower section beneath Captain Arven.

Raigoro recognized him from the First Border Defense.

Kian was younger and less experienced than Arven, but no longer inexperienced enough to mistake every movement for an opportunity.

Kian looked once toward the repair lane.

"If the creatures force us against the engineers, they lose access."

"Yes."

"Then I give ground before they reach the lane."

Raigoro looked at him.

"If you need to."

Kian nodded.

No argument.

He had learned something since the western ridge.

Captain Veyr disliked waiting.

Raigoro knew without asking.

Meris disliked it more.

Her gray wings shifted repeatedly on the distant landing shelf.

The first attack came before sunset.

Ash hounds and stonebacks came first, with one larger corrupted shape moving low behind them through the broken ground. There were enough creatures to inflict casualties, but not enough to take West Rime.

The creatures came hard at the outer ward break.

Exactly where any competent enemy would attack.

Infantry received them behind prepared barriers.

Archers fired from protected elevation.

Engineers continued working until the last possible moment before withdrawing behind the second line.

Raigoro watched the enemy formation.

The creatures showed none of the wandering, feeding, or competition between species Raigoro would expect from a loose corrupted group. They moved directly toward the damaged section.

Organized again.

"Left pressure increasing," Captain Arven reported.

Raigoro looked.

A group of stonebacks had shifted toward the lower path.

"Hold."

"They’ll reach the barrier."

"Yes."

Arven waited another few breaths.

Raigoro watched behind them.

Nothing.

No second group exploiting the movement.

"Now."

Arven sent only one infantry block left.

The barrier held.

The creatures struck.

Blackharrow absorbed the impact.

An ash hound cleared the outer stakes and reached the first infantry line.

A soldier went down beneath it.

The man beside him drove a spear into its flank, but another hound came through the space before the formation could close.

It reached the repair lane.

Raigoro drew his sword.

The creature lunged.

He moved inside the bite rather than away from it and drove the blade beneath the corrupted jaw.

The hound struck the ground hard enough to pull his sword arm down with it.

Raigoro tore the blade free.

"Close that space."

Kian was already moving his second rank.

Shields locked.

Medical runners pulled the fallen soldier behind them.

Raigoro did not ask whether the man would live while the line was still open.

An engineer shouted from behind the second line.

Raigoro turned far enough to see two soldiers dragging a defensive wagon across the access lane leading to anchor three.

Holt swore.

"Move that wagon."

The outpost commander looked at him. "It closes the lower gap."

"It also closes my repair route."

The choice was visible immediately. Leave the wagon where it was and the infantry gained a stronger barrier. Move it and Kian’s crews could continue carrying stone and fittings to the damaged anchor.

Raigoro pointed toward the lane.

"Open it."

The commander hesitated only long enough to understand the cost.

"Shield section to the gap," Raigoro added.

Six soldiers shifted from the safer barrier to cover the exposed repair approach while the wagon was pulled aside. A stoneback struck the outer stakes before the movement finished. One shieldman went down under the impact and had to be dragged clear by the soldier beside him.

Holt’s crews kept moving through the lane.

The ward mattered more than one convenient piece of cover. That did not make the price imaginary.

One of the heavier stonebacks broke away from the infantry pressure and turned toward the exposed repair approach.

That mattered.

"Veyr."

The captain was already moving.

One Dragon Host pair launched, a younger bronze rather than Meris, and struck the stoneback from the side before it reached the repair position.

The creature rolled downslope.

The dragon did not pursue.

Good.

Raigoro’s order had been explicit: strike, return, and do not chase anything beyond the ward markers.

The enemy pressure continued for nearly an hour.

Then began thinning.

Too easily.

West Rime had taken several casualties, but the ward had not failed. The engineers remained alive, anchor three remained accessible, and the enemy had committed nothing Raigoro could not answer with trained defense.

Captain Arven came beside him.

"They misjudged reinforcement."

"Maybe."

"Or they did not know it arrived."

"Maybe."

Arven looked at him.

"You have another answer."

"I have several."

The corrupted creatures withdrew without breaking formation.

Raigoro watched spacing remain intact.

The ash hounds did not scatter.

Stonebacks covered the retreating group in ugly, slow movement.

One wounded creature was abandoned.

Everything else moved beyond archery range.

Captain Veyr came from the Dragon Host position.

"Meris can cut them off before the ridge."

"No."

"They’re leaving."

"Yes."

"We can destroy half of them."

"Maybe."

Veyr looked from the retreat to Raigoro, then back toward the ridge.

"Too little."

Exactly.

The enemy had attacked the weakened ward, found West Rime reinforced, lost creatures, and withdrawn without making a serious attempt to break the position.

Raigoro looked toward the engineer station.

"How long until anchor three is reinforced?"

Kian answered from behind him.

"Two hours."

"Continue."

Captain Arven asked, "Pursuit?"

"No."

Lieutenant Kian watched the retreating formation beyond the ward markers.

"They are keeping formation."

Raigoro looked at him.

Kian continued.

"If they wanted only to escape, they would be moving faster."

"Probably."

Kian looked toward the ridge.

"They want us after them."

"Maybe."

Kian nodded.

"Then we stay."

Months earlier, after the small western attack, Raigoro had refused pursuit because the retreat was too clean.

Today the reasoning was broader.

The enemy already knew Blackharrow’s defenses through corrupted paperwork.

Someone had tried to create two weak places.

Raigoro had no intention of removing soldiers from one simply because the enemy invited him forward.

"Reset the outer line, recover the wounded, and count ammunition," he said. "Dragon Host remains where it is."

Captain Veyr nodded.

No argument this time.

The enemy disappeared beyond the western markers.

West Rime began resetting its line.

Holt’s crews returned to the damaged anchor.

Then the eastern signal tower changed.

One watchman shouted first.

Raigoro turned.

A beacon answered from farther along the mountain chain.

Then another.

The pattern repeated eastward.

Captain Arven looked toward the final signal.

"North Spur."

Raigoro waited.

The pattern carried only one useful fact.

ATTACK.

The signal carried no number, casualty count, or explanation.

North Spur was too far away for the signal towers to tell him anything more.

Raigoro looked once toward the creatures that had just invited him to chase them west.

Then east.

The attack in front of him had never been the whole battle.