With so much to do in preparation for the Earthbreaker army, Yaosen had resisted. But Torun had insisted that a soldier needed his rest, and the others agreed. When they finally convinced Yaosen to lay down, he slept for nearly a day.
When he awoke he had gained a new sense of certainty. There were no more scenarios for him to run, no moral quandaries, no more questions. None that mattered right now, anyway. There was a certain simplicity in fighting for one’s life.
Yaosen composed himself as best he could in the simple quarters of Fenri. Beside him, he noticed a neatly folded stack of furs and pelts, as if he were supposed to notice them upon waking. He unfolded the top one and held it before himself.
It was a fur tunic, white as snow.
Yaosen looked down to the gi he had worn since that first fight with Lu Gun. It was stitched and bloodstained where the elite metalbender had first injured the monk aboard the Fire Nation ship so long ago, and then again where the metal dart had ripped through his stomach in their second battle for the meadow.
The dirt of his toils and travels had all washed out, but nothing could cleanse old blood.
Yaosen laid the new fur garments out, and realized that they were stunningly pure, and far warmer and more protective than his gi. Fenri had offered him the choicest pieces of fur and hides, and what was more – Yaosen realized as he tried the garments on – they fit perfectly. Fenri must have made these specifically for Yaosen in the last few hours. In the end, Yaosen emerged from Fenri’s cave clad in the colors of a lightbender, in the style of a wild bender, and though he felt slightly foolish, it seemed somehow appropriate given his mission. It was attire fit for a final stand.
He found Rook walking briskly down the thoroughfare, an entourage of gruff looking villagers following in her wake. She wore her characteristic cloak of ashraven feathers, her wide hilted longsword sticking out over one shoulder. As she moved, Yoasen also realized that she wore greaves and vambraces made of the same dark iron as her blade. The discussion died down behind her as she broke away to approach Yaosen.
She noticed his regard and said, “What? Didn’t think we knew what ‘armor’ was in the Farwilds? You called them ‘metal hides’ if I remember correctly.”
Yaosen allowed himself a small smile, “I never know what’s endemic and what’s universal.”
“You’re the one who didn’t know what ‘blonde’ meant.”
“Like I said,” Yaosen shrugged, then his smile faded as he remembered himself, “Where am I needed?”
Rook’s own smile faded as well, the dark mask of the chief returning, “Torun is stationing the best fighters where the Earthbreakers are most likely to attack, and Fenri’s laying traps at the other approaches. Duu is… well you’ll have to go see for yourself. She’s on the western ridge now. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Yaosen was puzzled at that, but nodded.
He turned to go find his companions, and help in whatever way he could.
Rook grabbed him by the arm, bringing him back around, “If we survive this, Yaosen, it won’t be because I was right about standing and fighting. It will be because I was right about you. And your companions.”
Yaosen didn’t quite understand what she meant by that, but he accepted the compliment with the dignity of a light monk. In truth, he didn’t know if he should accept it. He didn’t know if he deserved it.
As Yoasen climbed the switchback pathways and narrow stairs carved into the back side of the caldera he kept glancing behind him, at the home, at the people, at the lives they had made nestled into the caldera.
“Remind you of anything?” came the gruff voice from overhead.
Yaosen looked up, but at the late hour, the sun shone from atop the western ridge, blinding him. As Yaosen mounted the last few steps, he saw that it was Torun, who had posed the question as they both stood overlooking the small village.
“It’s like a small version of the capital city back home,” said Yaosen, “Only that city’s on a dormant volcano.”
“You benders and your dramatic vistas. Keep your volcanoes and mountain-top temples; I’d take a nice rich plot of land with a fishing creek over all of them.”
“Rook’s a firebender at heart. I’m sure of it. I don’t blame her for being drawn to her element in its natural home.”
“Hmph. It’s too bad we’re not facing waterbenders, though. Anyone other than the Earthbreakers and this would be the perfect natural fortification.”
Yaosen turned to continue studying the village that they would most likely give their lives for in the next few days. Shadow Ridge was contained on three sides by the natural ridge of stone leftover from the volcano's last violent eruption. On the fourth side, the northward side, the remnants of a peak provided the vent for the mountain’s fumes and the home for one particularly large bird. In fact, Yaosen began to wonder about the ashraven’s role in maintaining that smokey vent, before Torun brought him back around.
Torun leaned in and grumbled, “We can’t let them get into the caldera.”
He had lowered his voice, so as not to be heard by the villages who milled about along the natural ramparts.
Yaosen had long since taken account of the villagers and their numbers. “We can’t hold the whole ring indefinitely,” he said, “Surely we’ll have to fall back to the town at some point.”
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“Trust me,” said Torun, “If we give up the ridge, it's as good as over. We have to make sure we stop them here.”
Yaosen looked the Meteor Knight in the eye and saw such grim determination that he had no choice but to trust his protector.
“Ok. We hold the ridge at all costs. What’s the plan?”
Torun unrolled a charcoal sketch of the countryside onto one of the natural crenellations. It had vague landmarks signifying the land that stretched before the western approach.
“They’ll have sent boneshifters through the tunnels, and looping around to the east to, just to test our defenses on the far side, but the main attack has to initially come up this trail,” said Torun tracing a finger along his charcoal sketch then gesturing down the ridge, where the only trail from the caldera to the west wound its way up loose black gravel and a few odd collections of black boulders. Somewhere near the bottom of the trail, the volcanic scree gave way to the dusty orange earth that was the hallmark of the boneshifter badlands.
“When that attack comes, we send the best archers to this ridge,” Torun pointed to where they now stood, and then indicated the curve on his crude map, “They may try to build stairs up with earthbending to take the top, but they’ll give it up quickly enough.”
“Why?”
“The gravel’s too loose and the slope is too great. I don’t care how many earthbending engineers they have, it’ll be like paddling upstream. And they’ll be taking arrows the whole way.”
“But they’ll be sending arrows of their own back. And stones too. They are earthbenders.”
Torun shook his head. He gestured to markers on his drawing then different colored flags set into the slope at intervals. They appeared to be at every fifty yards or so, rising with the caldera’s outer slope. “Height advantage,” Torun said, “Throwing a rock uphill is even harder than shooting an arrow uphill, and you don’t have to worry about the arrow tumbling back down. Our arrows will be raining down on them long before they get in range with any of that, and there’s nothing they can do about it. This ridge is where nonbender warfare wins. And Duu’s got a plan to make sure of that. They’ll give up on the ridge pretty quickly if they’re smart.”
“What’s the alternative?” asked Yaosen, looked down the slope and seeing nothing but the single trail. There didn’t appear to be another way up; at least not on this side.
“You know the tunnels that we took to get here? And the tunnels that most people take to get here?”
“Yes, to the southeast,” Yaosen replied, finding them on Torun’s charcoal sketch, “But they’ll never try to fit a whole army through there. We walked those tunnels ourselves and it was no more than three men wide. Their numbers will count for nothing in there. Which is why I assume you’ve focused your plan on the western approach, here.”
“Well there’s one more tunnel. A big one. On the west, where they’ll come from. So they don’t have to take the top of the ridge to get up here, or squeeze into those other tunnels.”
Yaosen followed the long trail down to the west. There was nothing but a few clusters of boulders. “I don’t see another tunnel entrance.”
“Rook and the villagers filled it in a long time ago. No one comes from the west except for boneshifters, right? If they have any Earthbreakers worth their name, it won’t take them long to find it and clear it. Not if… but when they get into that tunnel, we’ll be waiting for them. It’s big for a tunnel, more like a grand entranceway, Halvard says, but it will still restrict what they can do with their numbers, and bending will do them little good in such close quarters. We plug that hole with as many of our fighters as it takes and we have a fair chance in a melee.”
“Fair?” Yaosen asked, “You’d be packing us all into a stone tunnel with an elite earthbending army. What’s to stop them from bringing it down on our heads?”
“Hmph,” Torun snorted, “If the Earthbreakers bury us alive, they’ll have to bury themselves alive too. This Lu Gun may be scary, but even he can’t force an earthbender to bring a mountain down on their own head.”
“But if he could?” Yoasen asked. They had underestimated Lu Gun before, and it had cost them their meadow, their progress, and a whole lot of pain.
Torun waved it off. “Let me worry about that.”
Yaosen took another long look at Torun and knew he didn’t need to remind the Meteor Knight what was at risk. Torun had been a soldier his entire life, and the primary defender of the Fire Lord for much of the latter half. If it sounded like he was flippantly gambling with lives, that was only because that was the usual currency for Torun Bo.
Yaosen nodded “Ok. So where are we going?”
“You don’t leave Rook’s side.”
“And where will she be?”
Torun pointed behind them, to the peak pouring smoke.
Yaosen followed his gesture then cocked a head back at Torun, “Why does it sound like you and Duu aren’t going to be there with us?”
“Because we’re not.”
Yaosen opened his mouth to protest, but Torun spoke over him, “The only way around all this,” Torun gestured to the charcoal battle plan, the natural defenses of the caldera, the trail, the village, everything, “The only way Lu Gun out-thinks us again is by thinking like an assassin, not a soldier. If she dies, Shadow Ridge falls and everyone dies. If you die, the search for the avatar fails. So you two will be well out of range of his metal bullet technique at all times. And if, by some miracle he slips past all of our defenses and winds up right next to Rook… well, she’ll need a lightbender by her side.”
“But we can’t leave Duu-”
“Duu will be in charge of the ridge. It will be the safest front from start to finish, even if they test it, and we’ll need her particular skillset there most of all. Fenri and Halvard are going to be in charge of the smaller tunnels. It’ll be tooth and nail on the boneshifter front, but that’s what they’re good at.”
Yaosen glowered at the Meteor Knight, then said, “Which means you’ll be in the tunnel, in the most danger. Alone.”
“I’ll be where I’m needed the most and I won’t be alone. But in the end, yes. That’s where I’ll be. The people of the Farwilds are made of tough stuff, but they don’t know what it means to stand in rank and file. And I don’t have time to hammer them into an honest army. If I’m not down there, I don’t think any of us have a chance.”
“So you’ll be armored and armed with a new blade, standing in a line like a good old Meteor Knight?”
Torun’s eye twinkled and his iron-shot stubble twitched in what could have been the makings of a small smile.
“You can’t be serious,” said Yaosen, “There are few enough metalbenders left, but we’re pretty certain that they have at least one. Or have you forgotten? A wall of heavy armor will never work.”
Torun smiled, “Don’t you worry about me. I have a few tricks up my sleeve if our metalbender friend leads the tunnel charge himself. Besides, I haven’t even told you the worst part of it all. Once I do, you’ll think I’m the lucky one down in that tunnel.”