The first sounds of excavation began at the far side of Torun’s great tunnel shortly after midday. Many of the villagers lept for their swords and then looked to Torun when he didn’t do the same. He merely shook his head and leaned back against the stone, closing his eyes to rest.

Many called it a gift, that soldier’s ability to sleep anywhere, but it was no more of a gift than a bearmoose’s fur coat, or a wolfboar’s tusks. They were born of necessity, and a bearmoose would be just as happy bald if he were born to a warmer climate. As it were, the climate was what the climate was, and it would be a long time before Torun had another chance to rest.

Grunt seemed to understand that, too, and lay in a heap beside Torun, a sleeping hillock of black fur and vicious ivory.

The cracks of splitting stone and shifting earth became undeniable at about dusk, though it was impossible to tell the time down here. Now Torun levered himself to his feet, tightened the straps of his armor and picked up his sword.

Muted conversations echoed throughout the grand entranceway, and the Shadow Ridge villagers roused their companions, checked each other’s armor, and milled about behind Torun as he strode to the center of the grand entranceway, the last wall of boulders that blocked the tunnel forming his backdrop.

“You know the stakes,” said Torun, “But let me remind you anyway. They get through this tunnel… and everyone you know and love dies. You run away, and everyone you know and love dies. You get battle fever and rush too far in, everyone you know and love dies. It's not easy, but it's at least simple: form a wall, stand together, and don’t give an inch.”

No applause, no cheers. Torun lifted his helm of crude Farwilds iron onto his head in silence. It was an old Fire Nation design, a cap with cheek guards, no mask or frills. He adjusted the strap beneath his chin, tightened the pauldron that covered only his left shoulder, like a small shield he didn’t need to hold.

One of the boulders behind him cracked. A few of the top ones fell away and torchlight appeared near the ceiling as the first of the Earthbreaker engineers broke through. There were shouts of alarm on the far side and a sudden pause in the excavation. A few more pulls and they’d be through. They were gearing up to rush the breach when it occurred.

Torun took up his place in the line, Grunt at his side growling, a dozen of the village’s best fighters to either side of him, ten more ranks behind them. The boulders fell backward and Torun angled himself to place his more heavily armored side forward, two hands on his sword high at the ready.

The soldiers beside him did the same, though their stanches, guards, and styles were all their own. He didn’t have time to teach them all how to fight like a wall of Meteor Knights. He didn’t know if that would even be any better. Rook had pointed out the best of her fighters and Torun had to trust her, trust them to fight with everything they had.

Dust blew out to fill the tunnel, and when it began to clear the last of the boulders blocking it were gone, making it a grand entranceway in truth. Still, the cloud hung heavy enough that they could not see far into the breach.

The sound of crunching reforming earth could be heard beyond.

“At the ready!” Torun yelled. The order was redundant. They were all ready, raring even. But they needed to hear something from their commander in this moment.

A wall of Earthbreakers rushed out of the dust, gaining momentum and roaring their warcry.

“Kingdom!”

They brandished swords and fists of crushed stone.

“Stand!” Torun bellowed, his cry echoed by a wolfboar. He braced himself. Shattered earth washed over him just before the first wave of fighters came crashing in. Torun took it on his armor and began slashing with everything he had.

The fighting wasn’t easy, but it was simple.

***

The second and third times the Earthbreakers charged the ridge, they broke and retreated earlier and earlier. Something had awoken in the children and elders of Shadow Ridge. In the span of one day they had gone from quiet hunters and townspeople to vicious ranged warriors, giving ground only at great expense.

As the sun began to set, after an entire day of fighting and surviving, Duu thought that the fighting would be over. She could not have been more wrong.

As the third attempt at taking the ridge broke and turned back, regrouping at the base beyond their range, a tower slowly lifted into view. It was so tall, that as it stood up, like a giant tree falling in reverse, Duu thought it a trick of the light.

The sun had been at their backs for that first assault, but now, as the last light of the day petered off, the setting sun hung behind the Earthbreaker camp, making it difficult to see what they were up to.

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Duu hadn’t realized how much of a disadvantage it was to have the sun in your eyes, and she wondered why they had chosen dawn as their initial charge. Did they expect that first wave to fail? Had they planned to fail all day? Had they held something back, just waiting for the right time, when all the advantages lined up on their side?

“We’re getting low on arrows,” said Yeller beside her.

Duu looked down to see what was left of his bushel. He had fired the best arrows first, the iron-tips, followed by the flint. Now he was left with only blackened wood that didn’t look much more dangerous than a snapped treebranch.

He didn’t say the other part, Duu could tell. I don’t know how much longer we can hold them off. It wasn’t worth saying. Torun had told them what would happen if they lost the ridge. “There is no fallback point,” Torun had said. What he really meant was that there was nowhere to run.

Duu looked to the defenders of the ridge. They had started the day frightened and confused. They had only survived this long because of the grief and rage that came with losing one of their own. If they hadn’t seen firsthand what the Earthbreakers would do to them, they might not have even had that.

But now all the emotions had been spent, like the last of the water drying out from a sapling in drought. Now they were nothing but a thin brittle husk.

Maybe Torun would know what to do. Maybe Yaosen would know what to say. But neither of them were here right now. The defenders of the ridge had only Duu and she was no good at war or speeches. She was however very good at one thing.

So Duu’s only response to Yeller was to sit back on her patch of mossy, verdant ground and close her eyes.

The Earthbreaker’s tower began to roll towards them.

***

Wave after wave of Earthbreaker bodies slammed into the wall of armored villagers and before long they were slipping over their own dead. There seemed no end to them, and Torun didn’t have a moment between blocking, slashing and parrying to try to count up the bodies at their feet to guess how much longer the Earth Kingdom elites could keep this up. He didn’t need to count them to know that they were a long sight short of one hundred thousand Earthbreakers slain.

Their only salvation was that the massive Earthbreaker army had to engage them only thirty or so at a time, in the confines of the tunnel. While their opponents threw perpetually fresh bodies at them, Torun was forced to pull his best fighters from the front lines so that the men and women behind them could take their place.

They were in it for the long haul, and they couldn’t afford to lose a good warrior because they had gotten tired or carelessly injured. Still, war was chaos, and more and more Shadow Ridge soldiers added their bodies to that growing mound.

The break, Torun realized, was essential not just for his old body, but for the mind of the defense’s commander. To beat elite benders, you had to think like one, and Torun soon realized that the Earthbreakers greatest asset was the very stone they had cleared from the breach.

They wouldn’t touch the earth and stone of the tunnel, lest they cause a cave-in, but they were arming themselves with what they cleared from their path throughout the hours-long excavation. Torun had more than a dozen seeping wounds or bruises from where fist sized stones had clipped the edge of his armor, or smaller, sharpened stones had found a gap. There wasn’t time on those front lines for the earthbenders to send anything larger than that, and whoever commanded the offensive had decided that tiring the defenders out was more likely to work than pelting them with big rocks at range.

Torun wondered why that was, only to realize that once a rock was thrown, it could be removed from the equation. So, as Torun took his first turn rotating off the front lines, he ordered those in the third and fourth lines to collect any rocks they could from the feet of their fighting comrades, and push them to the back of the tunnel, outside the range of any bending powers. The Earthbreaker commanders soon realized what Torun’s side was doing, and soon both sides had a few lines of fighters with a dozen or so scroungers collecting rocks at their feet.

Every rock was precious, every inch essential, and Torun vowed that every life lost would be paid for dearly in Earthbreaker blood. No cheap shots from distance. No hurled rocks would take a good swordsman from the fray. Before long – in truth, Torun didn’t know how long it went on – the Meteor Knight had succeeded in removing all traces of bending from the battle, at least until his enemy could organize a supply line of earth from far outside the battlegrounds.

He would have to think of something else by then to mitigate the bending advantage.

Torun’s forces didn’t have the advantage of high ground, or that of tighter tunnels, but this fight was now at least fair. It was essentially thirty against thirty, sword against sword, nonbender against nonbender, and though it was the exact fight Torun had sought, and the exact right way to fight this battle, Torun couldn’t place exactly why that all felt so wrong.

Maybe something Yaosen had said?

A man on the frontline took a sword across his brow. His helmet saved his life, but the blood that poured into his eyes was blinding him, and he was slashing wildly without realizing that he was pressing too far forward, causing a gap in the lines.

Torun pressed through the bodies and thrust one man, a boy really, into the gap even as he pulled the injured man back. The injured man was so battle-crazed he took a swipe at Torun. Torun caught the man’s arm and twisted the sword from his grip before saying, “Get to the back of the line and get cleaned up.”

The man growled something in response but it came out blubbery as blood filled his mouth.

Torun didn’t care what the man had to say just now, but he replied, “You’re done for the day unless-”

The air punched from Torun’s lungs, searing heat lodged in his chest. He realized he had been knocked to the ground and tried to stand. He had to get back to the line, he had to keep them organized or… or…

Torun didn’t know what else. He slipped back to the ground, unable to get his legs under him, unable to catch his breath. His hands went to his breastplate as he realized he was sticky and wet. Blood filled his armor, poured out the sides and bottom and neck, gushing up from the smoking hole in the center of his chest where the metal bullet had punched straight through.