The dead were Harken's problem.
Kai had made that decision before the battle and he didn't revisit it now. Ashfield had no surgeon, no spare men, and no particular obligation to the soldiers of a lord who'd come to take their province by force. If Harken wanted to recover his wounded from the western bank he was welcome to send men across under a white flag and Kai would let them do it.
He sent Aldric to the bridge with that message and went to find Oswin.
The carpenter was sitting on an upturned log eating bread with the unhurried contentment of a man who had built something difficult and watched it work exactly as intended. He looked up when Kai approached and said nothing, which Kai had come to understand was Oswin's version of a warm greeting.
"The third layer," Kai said. "How long to rebuild it?"
Oswin chewed. Considered. "Four days."
"The whole structure?"
"Eight. If I have the same crew."
"You'll have them." Kai looked at the collapsed bridgehead — timber scattered across the western approach, the bridge itself clear now after Harken's men had spent four hours working on it from the eastern side. "I want it better this time. The southern flank extension needs to go deeper into the water."
Oswin looked at the shallows where the eight flanking soldiers had gotten their boots wet.
"Two feet deeper," he said.
"Three."
Oswin looked at him.
"Three," Kai said pleasantly.
Oswin went back to his bread. "Eight days becomes ten."
"Fine."
He left the carpenter to it and walked back up the ridge to where Brennan was running the garrison through a weapons check with the focused efficiency of a man who'd spent thirty years doing it and still thought most people held swords wrong.
"Count," Kai said.
Brennan didn't look up from the sword he was examining. "Forty one confirmed dead on their side. Western bank, arrows mostly. Some from the structure collapse." He set the sword down and picked up another. "Maybe thirty more walking wounded that crossed back. Another fifteen that got carried."
Eighty six total casualties. Forty one dead.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BATTLE ASSESSMENT: Bridge of Ashfield │
│ │
│ Enemy engaged: 220 (western bank) │
│ Enemy KIA: 41 │
│ Enemy wounded: ~45 │
│ Enemy routed: 220 │
│ │
│ Ashfield KIA: 0 │
│ Ashfield wounded: 0 │
│ │
│ Kill count: 41 / 50 milestone │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
Nine short.
He dismissed it and watched Brennan work through the weapons check.
"The village archers," Kai said.
"Calt's men?" Brennan set down a spear with a cracked haft and made a note. "What about them?"
"Are any of them interested in staying?"
Brennan looked up at that. "Staying."
"As garrison. Paid properly." Kai looked out at the men. The forty three had the loose, quiet energy of soldiers who'd done something they hadn't expected to do and weren't quite sure what to make of it yet. Not celebrating — too professional for that. Just settled in some fundamental way that hadn't been there a week ago. "We held the bridge with forty three men and forty one farmers. Next time we might not have a bridge to hold."
Brennan was quiet for a moment. "Some of them will want to go back to their fields."
"Some of them. How many won't?"
The old soldier looked out at the village archers who were clustered near the eastern end of the ridge, talking amongst themselves with the animated gestures of people processing an extraordinary day. One of them — a young man, maybe seventeen, who'd shot with the kind of natural instinct that didn't come from training — was demonstrating something to the men beside him with a stick.
"Maybe fifteen," Brennan said. "If the pay is right."
"Make it right," Kai said. "Talk to Aldric about the treasury."
"The treasury is—"
"I know what the treasury is. Talk to Aldric anyway."
He found a quiet corner of the fortress an hour later and sat down with the battle assessment still open, running numbers.
Forty one kills. Nine short of the first milestone.
Nine, he thought. Close enough to be annoying.
He was still looking at it when the system chimed.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ⚠ ALERT │
│ Harken's force has not withdrawn │
│ Current position: 2.1 miles east │
│ Status: ENCAMPED │
│ Estimated duration: Unknown │
│ │
│ He is not finished. │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
Kai stared at that last line for a moment.
He is not finished.
The system didn't usually editorialize. The fact that it had meant something, though he wasn't sure what. He dismissed it and thought about what a competent lord in Harken's position would do after a defeat like this one.
Not retreat. Not yet. Retreating immediately meant accepting the loss as final, which meant accepting that Ashfield had beaten him, which meant every other border lord in the region would hear about it. Harken's reputation was built on never losing. He wouldn't give that up after one engagement.
So he was camped two miles east. Thinking.
What are you working out, Kai thought, and how long do I have before you work it out.
Two miles east, Lord Harken was working it out.
His command tent was larger than most men's houses and considerably less comfortable at the moment. The campaign table was covered in maps. Three of his senior officers stood around it with the careful posture of men who understood that their lord was in a specific kind of mood and were choosing their words accordingly.
Commander Veth — the man Kai had predicted would be drinking — was not drinking. He was standing very straight in the corner with the expression of someone who had correctly assessed that this was not the moment.
The man who was speaking was the vanguard commander. His name was Sera Dunmore, and she was the only woman in Harken's senior staff and the only one in the tent who didn't look like she was waiting for something to explode.
"The structure," Harken said. For the third time. "Describe it again."
Dunmore described it again. The interlocking timber. The collapse mechanism. The way the outer face had looked like a standard elevated barricade from the scouts' angle but was in fact something different entirely. The archers on the ridge — not military archers, she was certain of that, the accuracy was inconsistent, but the volume had been enough.
"Village farmers," Harken said.
"Almost certainly."
Harken looked at the map. Ashfield Province sat on it like an afterthought — a small grey rectangle wedged between his territory to the east and the rest of Greyveil to the west. Three villages. One fortress. One river.
One lord with no mana who had just cost him forty one soldiers and four hours.
"The ford," he said.
"Still impassable. The flooding won't clear for another two weeks at minimum."
"Two weeks." Harken looked at the map for a long time. "He knew about the flood."
"He knew before we did," Dunmore said. "His maps are more current than ours."
The tent was quiet.
Veth cleared his throat very carefully from the corner. "My lord. There is the matter of — the structure itself. I've never seen anything like it. Neither has anyone in the engineering corps." He paused. "It's not from anywhere local."
Harken looked at him.
"The design," Veth continued, choosing his words with the precision of a man navigating something sharp. "The principles behind it. They're not from Greyveil. Not from anywhere on the continent that I can identify." Another pause. "Where did a nineteen year old mana-less noble learn to build a collapsible bridgehead."
The tent was very quiet.
Harken looked back at the map.
"Find out," he said.
The message reached Kai just before dark.
Not from Harken directly — from Aldric, who had been keeping a quiet watch on the eastern approach with two of the garrison's sharpest eyes and had just sent a runner back.
Kai read the note.
Harken's camp is not breaking down. Supply wagons arrived from the east an hour ago. He's resupplying, not retreating.
He set the note down and looked out the window at the darkening sky.
Two weeks until the ford clears, he thought. That's his timeline. He's going to spend two weeks working out what happened and then he's going to come back with a different approach.
Two weeks.
Right.
He pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started writing.
The wall wasn't going to be enough. Harken had engineers now — Dunmore would have given him a thorough description of Oswin's work, which meant the collapsible bridgehead lost its surprise value entirely. Next time Harken would come prepared for it.
Which meant next time Kai needed something Harken couldn't prepare for.
He wrote for two hours. When he was done he had four pages of notes, three tactical problems he didn't have solutions to yet, and one idea that was either very good or completely insane.
He looked at it for a moment.
Probably both, he thought, and went to find Oswin.
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ CURRENT STATS │
│ Command ██████ 35 │
│ Tactics ████░░ 18 │
│ Logistics ███░░░ 14 │
│ Intel ████░░ 17 │
│ Presence ███░░░ 12 │
│ Combat █░░░░░ 1.004│
└─────────────────────────┘