Carter had him by the elbow before Harold cleared the last step off the wall.
"Command center," Carter said, and it wasn't a suggestion.
"I know where it is."
"Then let's go there."
Harold let himself be steered across the courtyard, the cleanup noise following them in — the low voices of Tribune Tran's detail moving the field, the scrape and clink of weapon salvage, someone calling distance estimates in the torchlight. Three hundred yards of cleared ground, and every inch of it had something useful lying in it. Tran had the civilians working in organized lanes.
The stairs down to the bunker were the same as they'd been earlier — low ceiling, the smell of old stone and lamp oil, the map still spread across the table with Aldric's red markings on it and four hours' worth of new annotations in Hale's hand added over the top. Someone had left a water pitcher on the table. Harold poured a cup, drank it standing, poured a second, and set it down and put both hands flat on the table.
Ren and Corwin took their positions flanking the door without being told. Carter set himself at Harold's left shoulder and crossed his arms.
Hale came in four minutes later with his field notebook open and a junior centurion behind him carrying a crate of tallied reports.
"Your Lords are coming," Hale said. "Parker's bringing them."
They filed in over the next few minutes.
Caswell came through first, sleeves still rolled, dropped into a chair at the table's corner and didn't move from it. Dalen came in behind him, quiet and deliberate, and found a spot along the wall without being asked. Fitch and Maren arrived together and separated at the door — Fitch standing, Maren settling with her arms folded and her eyes already on the map.
Jack Churchill found the back wall near Harold and leaned against it with a cup of coffee he had grabbed from somewhere. Parker came in last, helm tucked under his arm, and closed the door.
"Brennig's still out," Parker said. "Surveying. I sent someone to find him."
“Na, let him work, that needs to be finished,” Harold replied and looked at Hale.
Hale opened the notebook. "About three thousand, seven hundred confirmed dead on the field. Tran's detail is still working the treeline — the count'll go up before morning." He turned a page. "Our side: 29 wounded, eleven serious. Six won't be back on the wall this rotation. No deaths. Potion supply is down, but Finn and our alchemists in the city are working on it. Crossbow bolts are the hard number — we are counting shots from here."
"How bad?"
"Archers are at about two quivers a man. We're recovering everything we can from the field." Hale's finger moved across the notebook. "Tran put civilians on weapon salvage the moment the gate opened. The town's done this before, apparently."
Harold looked at Aldric, who was standing near the map rack.
Aldric gave a short nod. "Three times. Not at this scale."
"Crossbows, I want saved," Harold said. "Put the archers on the wall rotations and keep the crossbowmen back until we need volume." He looked at Hale. "Renna's already got the fletchers going?"
"I told her before I came in here, but she had already done it." Hale turned a page. "The ditch — one cohort is working it now. Four more feet across the north face by morning if the pace holds." He set the notebook down. "The other cohort I want in beds."
Harold opened his mouth.
"Sir," Hale said, with the tone of a man who had made a decision and was delivering it, not discussing it. "They need four hours. They won a fight. Let them sleep. We rotate them onto the ditch before first light, we have two cohorts working by midmorning, and both of them are rested." The patience in his voice had teeth underneath it. "Run them down tonight, and we'll be holding this wall with wrung-out people when the second wave arrives and the third after that."
Harold looked at the water cup. Looked at the map and let it go.
"Fine," Harold said. "But that ditch needs to be done."
"It'll be done." Hale moved on without acknowledging the concession. "Lady Maren says the ballista towers will be complete late tomorrow morning. Roughly an hour after that to get the ballistas mounted, then we will need to range them."
Harold looked at Maren.
"The timber is prepped," she said. "We're not waiting on materials. The limit is the mana capacity of the crafters. Without them reinforcing the frame with mana the construction will be too shoddy for a siege. But they'll be up."
Hale reached into the crate the junior centurion was holding, pulled out a folded paper, and slid it across the table to Harold. "Defensive plan for the next waves. Based on what we saw tonight, historical patterns—" a brief pause "— and the data you provided before we came out."
Harold unfolded it and read it. Turned the page. Read the second sheet.
The data Hale meant was Harold's. He'd given Hale everything he could remember from the first timeline about lizardmen. Hale had taken it and had apparently spent time building a defensive plan.
"The siege beasts," Harold said.
"We're expecting them in the next waves. The ballistas are the primary solution, but our bolt stock is mostly explosive heads — penetrators are limited." Hale folded his hands. "The explosive heads may work on the larger beasts, but we don't have confirmation on how they'll perform against that kind of hide and scale. I want to know if the smiths here can make penetrator heads for our bolt shafts." He glanced toward Aldric.
"They can make them sharper for sure," Aldric said. "Whether they have the stock is a different answer."
"Talk to them tonight," Harold said. "And while you're at it, find the town's imbuer. Ask what materials he has on hand. Based on my conversation with him, I got the feeling he wasn't that experienced."
"He's only an apprentice," Aldric said.
"Don't expect much," Harold said to the room. "Imbuement and alchemy interact badly without certain materials, and a half-trained imbuer working on an explosive bolt head is a short conversation with a loud ending." He looked at Hale. "Have Lord Fitch work with Finn. See what they come up with between them — Finn knows what he's building, and Fitch might have some good ideas to combat these beasts. Let them figure out if there's anything useful to be done there."
Fitch straightened slightly — the earnestness getting there before the professional caught up, as it usually did. He nodded.
"The siege beasts don't just hit the gate," Harold said. "They hit the walls directly. They're large enough that the wave behind them can use them as a ladder. The gate will fall almost immediately without some kind of reinforcement. We need to stack stone and debris behind the gate." He looked at Parker.
Parker nodded, and his fingers tapped once on his helm. "Knight deployments."
"One century distributed across the wall walk in reactive teams. Anything that size comes over the parapet, I want knights meeting it with legionaries."
Harold looked at him. "The other century stays in reserve with the cohort if they are back in time. Gate response if the gate fails."
"I'll have the teams sorted by morning."
"One more thing," Harold said. He looked at Hale. "The search."
"One century is in the treeline right now." Hale looked at Parker.
Parker looked up from the table in the way of a man who hadn't been expecting to be the one holding this answer. "Voss has the task. Took the century out as soon as the battle ended. They were moving fast." He set his helm down and picked it back up. "He'll find it if it's there."
Harold nodded once.
Jack Churchill spoke from the back wall — the first words he'd said since the room filled. "Shame we didn't bring Garrick."
The room went briefly quiet.
Harold set the defensive plan flat on the table. "Yes," he said. "It is." He looked at the map for a moment, not reading it. "I need to stop assuming I know how things are going to play out. Things are changing, and I need to stay ahead of them. Garrick would be invaluable out here."
Harold looked around the table. The lanterns had burned down a quarter since they'd started. Outside, the ditch crews were still working — that low, steady scrape carrying through the town walls in a rhythm that meant the pace was holding.
"Alright," Harold said. "The first wave was the warmup. Whatever comes next is the real thing, and there'll be more than one of it." He turned to Hale. "The Legion prepares. Hale has the outline — get your role assignments from him." He shifted and looked at the lords. "While the Legion is doing that, I want you out in this town."
Caswell looked over from his corner of the table.
"Talk to people. Find out what they know — what they've found, what they've built, what they're sitting on that they don't know is useful yet. The trial gives us objectives, but it gives us opportunity too, we just have to find it." He paused.
"The dwarven enclave quest didn't fall into our laps. That was Caswell being proactive and us using our ranks and influence to work for our goals." He glanced at Caswell, who lifted one hand in a minimal shrug that managed to be modest and Australian. "That's what I need from you. Get out there and find things."
He looked toward the door.
"Lord Brennig is still surveying the town. He's looking for something specific, and he'll know it when he finds it. If any of you cross his path, support him." He straightened. "Any questions?"
Nobody spoke, but plenty of glances at everyone else.
"Good. Four hours of sleep if you can get it. Then get back to work."
The room started moving.
Bram's people were moving when Harold found them.
The enclave had set up in the southern quarter — a cluster of stone-built storage houses that backed against the town wall, solid enough that Bram had apparently decided they were the only structures worth occupying. The dwarves were packing with unhurried efficiency and had long since made peace with the fact that they'd have to do it again. Crates came out of the storage houses in a steady stream, strapped and stacked with a precision that suggested the packing system had been refined over multiple evacuations.
Harold found Bram at the back of the column, standing with his arms folded and a pipe going, watching a younger dwarf load a reinforced crate onto a low cart with more care than the crate's size suggested it needed.
Bram heard him coming and didn't turn around. "Count."
"Master Ironhold." Harold stopped beside him. The pipe smoke was dark and sweet, something resinous underneath, and it hit the cold night air and spread out slowly. "Your people ready?"
"My people are always ready." Bram tapped the pipe stem against his teeth. "Question is whether your walls hold long enough for the southern road to be clear." He squinted at Harold sideways. "You think they will?"
"I saw you watching the fight. Don't act like you don't know how it went."
Bram made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite skepticism. He watched the young dwarf finish strapping the crate and move to the next one without being told.
He'd spent an hour with Bram today going through it all — the scattered clan, the three generations it took to find each other again, the old hold in the hills to the east, and the stone that was still inside it. The Gemheart Stone. Dark green, almost black, a raw gem seam running through its center, sitting in a plinth in a great hall that none of the living Gemheart dwarves had ever seen with their own eyes. Everything Bram knew about its location had come from his grandmother's stories, and his grandmother had been a child when they ran.
Every child born to the Gemheart clan since the diaspora had gone unrooted. No name carved anywhere. No record in the stone of where they came from. Bram's grandson had never had his name in the stone. His father before him neither.
Harold looked at the young dwarf finishing the last strap on the crate. Probably twenty-odd. Young for a dwarf, moving with the competence of someone who'd grown up doing this, who had never known anything else.
Harold looked at the column — the crates loaded, the cart wheels checked, the young dwarf now standing at the column's head with a pack on his back and his eyes on the southern road.
"I hope you actually succeed, lad," Bram said, and the gruffness in his voice was evident. "I mean that plainly. My people need a home. Every year we don't have one, we lose something we won't get back. We are…unrooted. No stone to call home." His jaw worked once. "But I can't risk them on an unknown Count, even one with a mana body token and a knight with a decent right hook." He glanced at Harold sideways. "You understand."
"I understand," Harold said. "I don't like it, but I understand it." He looked at the column. "I'd probably make the same decision in your boots."
Bram made a sound that suggested this was the correct answer, and was only marginally surprised to be hearing it.
"My legionaries," Harold said. "What did you think of them?"
"They're trained," he said. "Trained well enough. Good discipline, good formations — I watched that gate sequence. That was about as well done as can be." He pulled on the pipe and tapped the stem against his palm. "Their swords are rubbish, though. Armor too."
"Rubbish?"
"Should've been slicing through those zids like they were standing in water. Instead, they're glancing off, losing edge on the scale — that's a metal problem, not a skill problem." He shook his head. "Half of them should be using hammers, not blades. Blunt force, that's your answer against scaled hide. Nothing a good hammer can't fix." He said it like a philosophy.
"Equipment takes time," Harold said. "We're working with what we have."
"Aye, I know how it goes." Bram didn't sound unsympathetic. "Doesn't make it less frustrating to watch."
Bram reached into his coat.
He pulled out the amber token — the one Harold had set on the table between them in the inn, the one Bram had turned over in his big hands and not given back — and held it out flat on his palm. The torchlight caught it, that slow living warmth moving through the amber like something breathing inside it.
He held it there for a long moment, his hand very still.
Then he held it out to Harold.
"If you summon the Gemheart clan," Bram said, "I'll be expecting that token returned."
Harold turned the amber over in his fingers. Warm, even now. "Never seen a dwarf give up something this valuable before."
Bram's eyes narrowed, and he gave Harold the kind of look that could strip paint at ten paces. "Aye, well, I won't indebt myself to you," he said flatly. "You're a savvy man, Count Harold. I'm not handing you that kind of leverage." He pulled the pipe from his teeth and pointed the stem at Harold's chest. "That token says you owe me. Not the other way around. Remember the difference."
Harold held up the token before slipping it back into his pouch. "Understood, Master Dwarf."
Bram gave him one more long look, nodded once, and turned back to his column as they left. The young dwarf at the head was already moving, the cart wheels rolling against the stone, the column pulling away south.
Harold watched them go until the torchlight at the southern gate swallowed them. The southern quarter went quiet behind them in a way that was different from the rest of the town's quiet.
The guard closed back around him without being told — Carter at his left, Ren and Corwin stepping out from the shadows of the storage house where they'd held their distance during the conversation, Churchill a half-step behind with his arms loose at his sides.
"Seemed like a good man," Carter said.
"A good Dwarf," Harold said. He looked back at the road once more.