The freeze had a secondary, more predatory effect on the geography of the frontier. As the sparse wildlife of the barony migrated or went to ground, the human scavengers—the remnants of the Duke's mercenary companies—found themselves facing a binary choice: starvation or a direct assault on Kael's resource chain. Kael had calculated the caloric desperation of the bandits with the same accuracy he applied to his own rations. He knew that the sight of smoke rising from Outpost Alpha's repaired firebox would be an irresistible beacon for men with empty stomachs and sharpened blades.
The assault began not with a charge, but with a deliberate attempt to sever the outpost's singular lifeline. Under the cover of a pre-dawn mist, a group of twenty riders moved to occupy the high ground between Ashfall and the outcrop, effectively cutting the line of sight for the optical telegraph. Kael, standing atop the limestone ridge, watched the distant flashes of the barony's central tower abruptly cease as a heavy hide screen was hoisted by the bandits on a nearby ridge.
"They've cut the signal," Rylen reported, his hand resting on the grip of his standardized crossbow. "They're trying to isolate our psychology before they move on our stores. They think if we can't see the barony, we'll break."
Kael didn't look at the ridge; he looked at the ground. The limestone outcrop was a natural fortress, but it was also a labyrinth of open pits and unstable tailings. He had already prepared for this variable. "They aren't attacking us," Kael noted calmly. "They are attacking the supply. They want the dried tuber meal and the salt. We will let them reach the perimeter, but we will control the kinetic environment."
Kael initiated the Dynamic Perimeter Protocol. He ordered the fifty occupants of the outpost to abandon the outer wagon circle and retreat into the primary excavation pit. This appeared to be a tactical withdrawal, but it was a calculated lure. The pit was a deep, stepped crescent in the limestone, offering perfect cover from wind and arrows, but more importantly, it was surrounded by the "Loose Scree Zone"—thousands of tons of unstable limestone waste generated during the Mineral Audit.
As the forty bandits descended from the ridges, sensing a victory over a panicked labor force, they found the wagon perimeter deserted. They swarmed the central camp, their shouts echoing off the frozen stone as they began to tear into the storage crates. However, Kael had booby-trapped the primary stores with "Industrial Distractants." Several crates, marked with food icons, were actually filled with a volatile mixture of fine coal dust and dried lime—byproducts of the kiln and water still.
When the bandits broke the seals, the dust billowed out, coating their eyes and lungs in an abrasive, alkaline cloud. In the freezing air, the lime reacted with the moisture of their breath and eyes, causing instant, agonizing irritation. This was the signal.
"Trigger the slopes," Kael commanded.
Rylen's team, positioned at the top of the pit with long iron pry-bars, released the wooden shoring that held back the primary tailings pile. Thousands of tons of frozen limestone scree cascaded down the slopes, not as a lethal avalanche, but as a systematic "Area Denial" event. The noise was deafening—a grinding, metallic roar that filled the valley. The bandits were not buried, but they were trapped; the shifting, unstable stones turned the flat camp into a treacherous basin where every step caused a new slide.
From the safety of the pit's inner steps, the fifty inhabitants of the outpost rose. The Aspirants, who had spent the last three days mastering tool maintenance in the dark, now held their heavy iron-tipped mining picks and standardized crossbows with a cold, industrial focus. They were no longer refugees; they were the defenders of the source.
The engagement was brief and one-sided. The bandits, blinded by the lime dust and struggling for footing on the shifting scree, were unable to mount a cohesive charge. Rylen's crossbow squads fired with the same rhythmic discipline they used for the ballistae. They didn't aim for the heart; they aimed for the legs and the horses. They were neutralizing the threat, not hunting for glory.
"Cease fire," Kael ordered once the bandits had been pushed back into the center of the debris field.
He stepped forward, his silhouette sharp against the rising sun. He didn't offer a parley. He offered a calculation. "You have lost your horses, your vision is compromised, and you are standing on ten thousand tons of limestone that I can shift with a single lever. You have three days of water in your skins, and the temperature will drop again at sunset."
The bandit leader, coughing and wiping lime from his eyes, looked up at the wall of armored laborers. He saw the same cold, technical efficiency that had broken the Duke's siege towers.
"The barony has a labor deficit," Kael continued. "You are trained in violence, which is a form of energy. I will not feed you for free, but I will offer you the same five-year Aspirant contract as the people standing above you. You will trade your steel for shovels, or you will freeze in this pit. The math is absolute."
By the end of the day, fifteen of the surviving bandits had surrendered their weapons and were being processed through the medical triage. Kael didn't trust them—he placed them in a "Tier 0" labor group under constant armed guard—but he had successfully turned an external threat into an internal resource. He had expanded his labor pool by thirty percent in a single engagement.
The optical telegraph resumed its rhythm. The screen on the ridge had been torn down by the new laborers under Rylen's direction. The message flashed back to Ashfall: Outpost Alpha Secured. Labor Surplus Acquired. Send Additional Triage Supplies.
Kael stood at the edge of the pit, watching the new "Aspirants" begin the grueling work of clearing the very scree they had fallen into. The siege of the outcrop was over, but the grit of the frontier had just entered the barony's bloodstream.