Harold looked at Fitch and Caswell. "Both of you, yes."
Fitch straightened like he'd been waiting for permission to stand taller. Caswell's grin pushed out through the professional surface he'd been wearing all morning, and he didn't bother reeling it back in.
"What about the rest of you?" Harold said, and let it sit.
Arjun's arms uncrossed, and his chin came down as he assessed the opportunity.
Maren had already been watching Harold when he said it. "I'll come."
Harold nodded and turned to Aiko.
She held herself the same way she had all morning — spine straight, hands loose at her sides, nothing wasted. "I'll remain," she said. "I'll be more useful here than in a scenario I can’t fight within."
Harold nodded. He was going to suggest she stay behind either way.
He looked at Renna. She'd been studying the embrasure to her left — running her thumb along the stonework angle, but she turned when she felt his attention.
"I’m not much of a fighter," she said. "I won't pretend otherwise. But I can read terrain as fast as anyone you have, but I am curious about what this token is." Her hand settled briefly on the satchel at her hip. "I can work with your supply and medical support."
He looked at Henri last.
Henri had his hands clasped behind his back and his chin at the precise elevation of a man trying to retain any dignity he could.
"Henri." Harold held it for a half-second. "You're with me."
"Naturally," Henri said.
Harold turned to Hale. "Get them to the quartermaster. They may have kit, but let's see what we have in stores — armor that fits if we have it, any blades we have that are better at minimum." He paused. "Better something than nothing when the scenario drops."
"On it," Hale said, and was already moving.
The wall steps rang with boots a moment later, the cadence of someone who'd been running and was trying to pretend they hadn't. Harold turned in time to watch Dalen reach the top step and pull up short, one hand finding the wall as he caught his breath.
He was grinning.
His eyes went to Fitch first, then swept the line — Maren, Caswell — and Fitch's composure came apart completely into something more honest, the composed expression he'd been wearing since morning dropping away as he stepped forward. Dalen met him halfway with a forearm clasp that became a hand on the shoulder, and Maren's mouth curved at the corner, and Caswell leaned out and cuffed Dalen across the back hard enough to stagger him a full step.
Harold let it happen, glad they all got along.
Dalen found him through the group, still catching his breath, the grin holding. "My lord." He straightened. "I heard you're running the trial."
Harold raised an eyebrow.
Dalen's jaw set under the grin. "I want in. You've kept me in support since I swore — supply lines, garrison rotations, holding what you've already taken." His chin came up. "I'm not complaining about the work. But support roles don't earn the kind of perks that let me do more for my people, and I won't be the sort of lord who sends his soldiers somewhere he wouldn't go himself."
Harold looked at him for a moment — at the man who'd spent his time on earth behind a desk managing other people's paperwork, and his time here finding out what kind of man he was.
He turned toward where Hale had gone. "Him too."
Hale's answer came from twenty feet away without him turning around. "Obviously."
From somewhere behind Parker's left shoulder, Elroy had leaned toward Jenkins with the slow gravity of a man sharing state secrets.
"We should go," Elroy said. "Heroes, Jenkins. The babes love heroes."
"Absolutely," Jenkins said.
Parker's open palm caught the back of Jenkins' head mid-nod, the motion clean and reflexive, not breaking his stride.
Jack Churchill stood three feet from the pair with his arms folded and his axe still on his belt. He watched them the way a man watches something he has been trying to explain to himself for a long time.
"I genuinely do not understand," he muttered, "how either of you is that good with mana."
Elroy looked at him with the patient expression of a man who has been asked why the sky is blue.
"It's not hard," Elroy said. "You just tell your mana what to do."
Jenkins nodded. "Mine does whatever I say."
Jack Churchill looked at both of them aggrieved, then turned and walked away.Harold came down off the wall with the breastplate under one arm and the pauldrons tucked against his ribs by Carter's hand before he'd even asked. They found a flat section of ground near the base of the earthwork where the salvage teams had cleared a workspace, and Carter set the pieces out in order on an overturned crate while Harold shed his gambeson.
"Nice kit," Carter said, picking up the breastplate and turning it over. His thumb found one of the scale edges and traced it. "I like the color. Who did this work?"
"Chest from the boss drop." Harold lifted his arms so Carter could position the breastplate against his torso. "Scales from the hide, it’s system work and better than anything we’ll be able to make for years."
Carter hummed and began working the side clasps. "So you got the shiny armor and the rest of us got a bonus."
"You got gold."
"I always get gold." Carter moved to the left pauldron, slotting it to the shoulder plate and pressing until the catch seated. "You get the fancy kit every time."
"Carter, this is the first time I have gotten any loot."
"What about that scepter you got from that kobold boss during the verdant forest campaign?"
"Dude, that's useless. You can’t hold that against me."
Carter snorted and moved to the right pauldron. The vambraces came next — he ran them up Harold's forearms and fastened the inner buckles. The belt went on last, wide and scaled, and when Carter stepped back and looked Harold over, his mouth did something complicated.
"Alright," Carter said. "You look like you mean it."
Harold flexed his fingers and felt the armor move with him, the weight distributed closer and more settled than the old kit. He pulled up the notification and let it linger in his line of sight.
Lord Effect: Water-based damage reduced by 25%. While worn, the lord's battlefield perk range is expanded by 25%.
"The range expansion," Harold said. "That's the part I needed, I dont care too much about the water resistance though I know it’ll be helpful in this trial."
Carter was adjusting the hang of the right pauldron. "Didn't know you had a battlefield perk."
"Starting perk. Been there since day one."
Carter's hands slowed. "What does it do?"
"Aura of Authority. People in range find it harder to ignore my commands and easier to believe I'm important and competent." Harold kept his voice flat. "Encourages compliance. Makes soldiers steadier under my banner. The opposite for people against me."
Carter went very still. Then he straightened and looked at Harold with an expression working through several things at once.
"That feeling," Carter said slowly. "When you walk into a room and everyone just —" He stopped. "The dread. The thing that makes you want to stand up straight. The part where your brain says this person matters and you should listen to whatever they say."
"That’s the one."
Carter dragged a hand across his mouth. "So, you’ve been manipulating us?
Harold sighed, "This is why social perks are so hated. I restrain the aura as much as possible, but sometimes…it leaks."
"I thought that was just —" He gestured vaguely at Harold. "You."
"It's also me. The perk enhances what's already there. This armor extends the range by a quarter." Harold looked at the scale work across his chest. “It’ll be important during this trial.”
Carter stared at him for a moment, then turned back to checking clasps he'd already checked twice.
"You've been walking around doing that to people for six months," Carter said.
"Not on purpose."
"To me."
"Sometimes yes, when you’re an idiot," Harold said with a flash of his aura directed at him.
Carter checked a buckle that didn't need checking. "Huh."
Across the cleared ground, a section of legionaries had formed up around the gold bags — five sitting in a row on an overturned crate, clinking softly in the wind. Harold crossed to the optio in charge, a weathered man named Voss who ran a strict section.
"Five thousand to the Landing," Harold said. "Straight to Caldwell — he'll be expecting it." He looked at the bags. "The other five thousand gets split among everyone who participated. Adventurers and legionaries both. Caldwell has the list."
Voss looked at the bags with the expression of a man doing arithmetic. "And if someone on the list didn't make it back?"
"Their share goes to whoever they named. If they named nobody, it goes into the common fund." Harold held the optio's gaze. "Make sure it gets there."
"Yes, my lord."
Hale was waiting near the formed-up legion with a scroll in one hand and the look of a man who was starting to get pissed off. The lords stood to one side in varying degrees of fresh kit — Caswell had swapped his sword for something heavier, Brennig was working a new knife into a sheath at his left hip, and Fitch had the expression of a man quietly delighted by equipment he hadn't owned until twenty minutes ago.
"Lords are set," Hale said. "Here's what we're bringing in."
He turned the tablet. "Three maniples — nine centuries, six hundred and seventy-two soldiers. Two centuries of knights, two hundred strong. Two ballista batteries, eight pieces each, sixteen total — same pattern as the wall emplacements, broken down for the wagons with a variety of bolts for each. Crews included, that's another eighty." He tapped the final line. "One hundred archers. Medics, supplies, two senior alchemists, and a couple of tons of their supplies." He looked up. "One thousand, even."
Harold scanned the line of soldiers formed up past the earthwork — centuries in close order, knights in a separate block to the right, the ballista wagons drawn up behind. The supply train was lean, four wagons and two medical carts.
"Light on supply personnel," Harold said.
"You said to keep it tight."
"I know what I said." Harold looked at the wagons. "The scenario will have civilians. We'll pull their support infrastructure into our train once we're inside."
Hale absorbed this without expression. "You know the scenario."
It know it very well,” Harold huffed. “It’s Lizardmen," Harold said. "They have an organized siege force, large and better equipped than anything we have seen in the basin, with a variety of types. They’ll come in waves, and they'll probe before they commit." He looked at the formed centuries. "Henri was thorough on the forums about what his token produced when he ran it. Terrain type, enemy formation, wave structure, timing. Every detail." He paused. "He was quite proud of how he handled it."
From three feet to Harold's left, Henri said nothing. His jaw moved once, small and tight, and his eyes fixed on a point above the formed centuries. It was his new favorite hobby, annoying the man.
"He failed the final objective," Harold continued. "Got the primary, lost the secondary when his third wave broke through." He glanced once at Henri, then back to Hale. "But he ended up getting some very good rewards either way."
Henri's clasped hands tightened at his back, knuckles shifting color. A short breath came through his nose — the sound of a man thinking something unpleasant. Something behind his eyes had gone past embarrassment into seeing clearly, for the first time, exactly how much he'd handed over by bragging in the other timeline. And the worst part is, he would have done the same within this one.
Hale looked at Harold with his own small smile.
"Formation's ready," Hale said. "Your call." He paused, glancing at the lords. "And where do you want them? I don't know their capabilities well enough to place them myself."
Harold turned and looked at the group of them — at the lords standing in a loose cluster in their fresh kit, some of them already looking at the formed centuries curiously.
“Detail a couple of knights to all of them, except Lady Renna, then we’ll place them with the knights. Lady Renna will work on organizing supplies and providing back-end support. Lord Henri will stay with my guard and I.”
Colonel Hale grunted. “Good with me, we’re ready to go when you are.”