Chapter 353: The Road We Opened

The first two volunteers from the enclave arrived on June sixth.

They landed in the eastern field, inspected the signal flags, and spent the next hour discovering how many different things humans could mean by waving a piece of cloth.

Thor watched from beside the practice markers.

“Again.”

The younger dragon, a green male named Tareth, turned his head toward her.

“I understood the signal.”

“You understood it after landing in the place marked for wounded people.”

“There were no wounded people.”

“That is why we are practicing.”

His companion, a broad brown female named Ossira, made a low sound that might have been laughter.

Then she mistook the next signal herself.

By midday, both were paying considerably more attention.

The operation began with a miller’s estimate.

Rennick had asked how much flour the enemy column at Slateford would need each day. The millers gave him a range, the quartermasters refined it, and the scouts compared it with the wagons traveling along the eastern supply road.

The army across the river was being fed from a fortified storeyard two ridges behind the village.

Its wagons crossed a narrow stone causeway.

There were other roads, but none fit for heavy loads without days of repair.

Thor placed two markers on the map.

“We do not need to drive them out of every house. We need to make staying more expensive than leaving.”

Ordel had sent drawings of the causeway and the ground around it.

It crossed a deep drainage cut, not a river. Destroying the road would strand the storeyard’s wagons without sending water through nearby farms.

“We will want the road afterward,” Mary said.

“We take out one section,” Thor replied. “Ordel has marked the one we can rebuild.”

Lexander studied the approaches.

“And the laborers repairing it?”

“We keep the position under observation. If they bring forced crews forward, we change the plan.”

I looked at Slateford’s broken bridge.

“Rennick holds while we work behind them.”

Thor nodded.

“He has spent long enough waiting for the next attack.”

Two more gods came through Orselle’s gate that afternoon.

They arrived with a battered company of refugees and no expectation of ceremony.

One carried a spear wrapped in cloth. She gave her name as Eshara and her domain as the spear, then asked where she should report if she wanted to fight.

The other, Daven, was a god of watchtowers. He had spent the retreat keeping scattered settlements warned of approaching troops until there were no settlements left ahead of the enemy.

His voice was almost gone.

We gave them food before asking for their accounts.

Eshara accepted hers standing, watching the wounded being carried past.

“I can still fight,” she told Thor.

“I believe you.”

“Then use me.”

Thor held out a chair.

“First, sit down and tell us what you saw.”

By evening, Eliza had added their reports to the maps.

Daven agreed to help strengthen the warning posts around Orselle once he had rested. Eshara would train with one of the reserve companies before joining a strike force.

Neither would be sent straight back onto the road they had barely survived.

Eshara argued about that.

She did it while eating a second bowl of stew.

Adriana found me afterward with the deployment lists spread across my desk.

“You have that expression.”

“Which expression?”

“The one you wear when every choice leaves someone somewhere you would rather they weren’t.”

I looked down at the page.

She sat beside me.

“Where are you going?”

“Slateford. Thor will lead the force against the supply road. I will stay with Rennick in case the enemy tries to break across when it realizes what we have done.”

“And Lexander?”

“Here and Concordia. Baldr remains in Orselle.”

She nodded slowly.

Then she moved one of my cups away from the papers before I could knock it over.

“Mary asked me to review the provincial food reports tomorrow.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes. Though apparently I am becoming the person people approach when they want someone to count actual mouths instead of arguing about old entitlements.”

“A terrifying reputation.”

She smiled.

“Mother seems pleased.”

I took her hand.

“So am I.”

We left on June seventh.

Thor’s force traveled by night along the inland route, guided by scouts from the returning provinces. Tareth and Ossira flew separately and would wait beyond the ridges until the ground signal called them in.

Sareth and Dorevan remained on the coast.

The four dragons rescued from captivity continued their treatment under Ilyra and Sovan. Nobody put their names on the duty lists.

Aurethar coordinated the aerial reports with Orselle’s watch.

For once, our plan did not depend on one person arriving everywhere at exactly the right moment.

I carried that thought with me through the gate.

Slateford smelled different.

The worst fires had burned out. Wet ash still lay along the eastern bank, but on our side the mill was running.

Its wheel turned beneath a rough timber screen built to catch arrows.

Rennick met me beside it.

He had shaved since I last saw him.

That seemed a better sign than anything he might have said.

“My daughters sent a letter,” he told me as we walked.

“How are they?”

“One likes the place they’re staying. The other wants our kitchen back.”

He looked across the river toward the village.

“So do I.”

I followed his gaze.

Smoke rose from a chimney behind the enemy’s barricade.

Someone else was cooking there now.

The signal came shortly after dawn on June eighth.

A runner reached us from the western ridge, carrying the report relayed by the scouts.

Thor had taken the causeway.

The section Ordel marked was down.

The storeyard had been warned before our force could enter it, but its loaded wagons remained trapped on the wrong side.

Tareth and Ossira were circling above the approaches.

They had not burned the grain.

That mattered. We hoped to feed people with it later.

Rennick read the message after me.

Then he looked toward the eastern rooftops.

“Now they decide.”

We reinforced the ford and waited.

They tested the crossing before midday.

Archers moved into the ruined houses while infantry gathered behind the river wall. Two officers rode along the line, pointing toward the mill and the shallows upstream.

I stood where they could see me.

Winter gathered along the bank at my feet.

I did not freeze the river.

I raised a line of jagged ice across the approach to the ford, high enough to force men to break formation if they tried to climb it.

Rennick’s archers took their places behind timber cover.

The enemy officers watched us for a long time.

Then one turned his horse and rode back through the village.

The infantry stayed where it was.

No horn sounded.

Nobody crossed.

I remained at the ford until my hands had stopped shaking from the effort of being ready.

The attack came somewhere else.

In the afternoon, a messenger from Thor reported that troops from the storeyard had tried to force the causeway position.

Merova’s soldiers held the narrow approach while Ossira landed behind the attackers, cutting off the route their commander had expected to use for withdrawal.

She left them another way out.

Most took it.

Some surrendered.

Tareth spotted a second force trying to circle through the dry cut and warned Thor before it reached her flank.

The training flags had done their work.

We had wounded. So did they.

The causeway remained closed.

Rennick read the report with his jaw set.

“They cannot feed the whole column from the village.”

“No.”

He nodded once and went to inspect the watch posts himself.

The enemy began leaving Slateford that night.

At first, we thought it was another movement toward the upper ford.

Then the scouts saw wagons turning east without their usual loads, followed by teams dragging the remaining usable siege engine.

Rear guards stayed in the village.

We did not rush across after them.

Ordel had taught us enough about abandoned positions to make everyone suspicious of an inviting silence.

At dawn, the last organized troops withdrew from the river wall.

Istren’s scouts watched them go, keeping far enough away that a false retreat would gain them nothing.

Rennick stood beside me on the bank.

He said nothing.

Neither did I.

Across the water, a loose shutter knocked against the side of a house.

We entered the eastern part of Slateford on June ninth.

Engineers went first.

They found a tripwire at the storehouse door and a weakened stair in the watch building. One well had been fouled. Another remained usable after inspection.

We found six people hidden beneath a stable floor.

Two were laborers who had fled the retreating column. Four were villagers who had refused to leave and then discovered they could no longer reach the bridge.

One woman struck Rennick’s arm when he told her she should have gone with the evacuation.

Then she embraced him and cried against his coat.

He held her without finishing the argument.

Beyond them, soldiers carried water to the frightened people emerging from the stable.

The village was damaged.

It was ours again.

Rennick took me to his house after the first inspection.

The door hung from one hinge. Someone had broken a cupboard for firewood, and the floor was littered with straw.

He stepped inside slowly.

For a moment, I thought he would ask me to leave.

Instead, he crouched beside the hearth and reached behind a loose brick.

He brought out two small clay animals wrapped in a rag.

“My daughters,” he said.

I looked at the crooked little shapes in his palm.

“They made them?”

He nodded.

Then laughed once, a sound that nearly broke in the middle.

“I told them we would come back for these.”

He folded the cloth around them carefully.

I waited while he put them inside his coat.

Thor reached us the following afternoon.

The storeyard had been abandoned after its commander failed to reopen the causeway. Our scouts checked it before anyone entered.

We recovered grain, tools, harness, and records of deliveries to other positions farther east.

The enemy had destroyed some stores before leaving.

Not all.

“Three dead across the operation,” Thor told me. “Fourteen wounded. Two still serious.”

I nodded and took the written list.

“And the column?”

“Retreating toward its next prepared position. Still capable of fighting.”

She looked toward the broken bridge.

“We have room now. Let’s use it before they come back.”

The first work crews arrived before any families were permitted to return.

They brought timber, rope, clean barrels, and the sort of determination that had begun to look familiar throughout the kingdom.

Orselle’s carpenters worked beside men from the inland provinces. Westmere sent spare tools and two experienced millwrights.

Eleanor sent drawings for a temporary crossing and a note warning us not to improve them without asking.

Bruni arrived with the heavy timbers.

He looked at the empty space where the bridge deck had been.

“Bruni took away.”

“You did,” I said.

He set down the first beam with great care.

“Bruni put back.”

By evening, the work had begun.

I returned to Greykeep after the replacement garrison had taken its posts.

Mary met me with three matters that needed decisions and several more she informed me did not.

Adriana had settled a dispute over where the first recovered grain would go.

Evelyn had arranged relief for the healers who had spent too many days working without rest.

The kingdom had continued while I was away.

I was beginning to find comfort in that.

Julian found me in our sitting room that evening.

He carried his drawing of the house with the crooked walls.

“Grandfather said Slateford is back.”

“The enemy has left it. We are making it safe before the families return.”

He set the drawing beside me.

“Will they need these?”

I studied the careful measurements Garrick had helped him add.

“The builders will need to measure the houses themselves. But you could help here while we send the experienced carpenters there.”

“Doing what?”

“Ask your grandfather which repairs you can manage together.”

He considered that.

Then nodded.

“The nursery shelf leans.”

“I have noticed.”

“Carol says it is supposed to.”

“Carol has strong views on architecture.”

Julian smiled and gathered his paper.

At the door, he paused.

“One day, we could do that in Lyradon.”

I looked at him.

“Repair things?”

He nodded.

“One day,” I said, “I hope we can.”

Later, Evelyn and Adriana joined me beside the window.

They had heard about Rennick’s house.

Adriana leaned against my shoulder while Evelyn read the final report from the engineers.

“The first foot crossing should be ready tomorrow,” she said.

“If Bruni and Eleanor’s drawings agree.”

She smiled and folded the page.

Below us, a wagon rattled into the courtyard carrying damaged tools for repair.

I watched the workers begin unloading it.

For weeks, the roads had carried people away from burning homes.

Now one of those roads was carrying timber back toward them.

Adriana took my hand.

We stayed at the window until the last beam was lifted down.