image [https://i.imgur.com/oDA7Oms.jpg]

Within minutes, the town officers directed everyone to the motte and bailey. The Sternways’ soldiers already occupied the fort, leaving nearly everyone else coming from the town hall, roundhouse, or barracks.

Fabulosa emerged from the battle college, leaving behind Dino. As the ward of the building, he remained bound to its confines. She spent much time there for the last few months, jokingly describing her nights as private massage and stretching sessions.

Dressed to the peak of Hawkhurst fashion, Fabulosa had taken enough time to don color-coordinated accessories she and Charitybelle tailored for their armor. The fittings weren’t entirely without purpose. Tabards were sleeveless overcoats warriors wore to prevent their armor from overheating in the sun. The ladies customized the surcoats, reducing them to mostly sleeves and a cape. They fitted lacey garments between the joints of their armor pieces and used the frills as accents. Hawkhurst often weathered overcast conditions, so she didn’t need to keep the sun off her.

Fabulosa wore a predominantly orange ensemble with hints of yellow embroidery—a cheerful costume. Perhaps the female one-upmanship showed Winterbyte that Fabulosa possessed battlefield acumen and a sense of style. Fashion wasn’t my wheelhouse, so I never asked them about it.

Since Fabulosa served in a militia slot under my command, my Protector promotion swelled her health to almost 500. She would be a monster in the upcoming fight, and part of me couldn’t wait to see her in action. Her tight grin echoed my sentiment about this showdown. She looked ready for this.

Fabulosa patted down her equipment, ensuring she secured everything where it should be for battle—a familiar ritual for anyone donning gear under pressure.

Howls in the distance prompted everyone to pick up their pace. Dark silhouettes of dwarves and humans poured from the roundhouses. Their shapes ran along rows of everglowing candles we retrieved from Odum’s temple. They provided little light but marked a clear route to safety.

We designated our rally point to be the motte and bailey entrance. Ally counted warriors and noncombatants and directed everyone to their areas. The only ones not running to it included two level 11 dwarves.

Bernard fastened his armor and called back to his brother. “Git on yer battle rattle, Blane! The dugs are gathering outside!”

Blane stopped to argue. “I’m gowan, I’m gowan. How am I to remember how these buckles work with you chewing your tongue?”

Bernard offered only a sloppy salute. “Guv! Can ye believe the gall of it? The flea-bitten mongrels can’t scrap at a decent hour?”

Despite the sense of urgency, neither dwarf adopted the military formality the rest of the town embraced. I found it oddly comforting.

Blane muttered to himself as he dressed. “Mangy dugs. Yowlin’ at the moons already.”

Bernard smacked his Blackriver Cudgel against the Prismatic Shield. The sound rang like a dissonant bell in the night. “They’re not the only ones who can make noise.”

Blane cringed at the sound. “Stap yer clatter, ye eejit! The dugs don’t need a rhythm to wail to!”

I interrupted their banter. “Hey guys, why don’t you head over to the bailey? We’ll need you on the walls when the dogs arrive.”

After saluting, the brothers dashed along the line of candles to the fort. The absence of their squabbling gave me time to focus on the interface map. The radar showed that we’d left no one behind in the fog of war. I appreciated even the minor reassurance.

Fabulosa trotted over to me, interrupting my thoughts. “Gunny’s crew took care of the horses. The sheep and torodons are spooked, but Murdina has them penned inside the bailey. The animals should be fine.”

I already unsummoned Beaker, and it looked as if Fabulosa, myself, and the Silverview brothers remained the last ones outside the defensive circle. Reaching the motte and bailey took only a few minutes, and we made it well before the enemy.

I took one long look at our town hall, hoping it wouldn’t be my last. Aside from struggles with the quarry, Hawkhurst’s structural bonus hasn’t been tested, and I didn’t want marauders pounding on our buildings if we could avoid it. We’d invested time and labor into our home, and I wasn’t sure if everyone would stay put if the gnolls set our town to flame. On the other hand, I wasn’t entirely sure they were flammable, given the town’s core bonus.

Our strategies depended on our ability to hold ground inside the motte and bailey. The vargs weren’t clever enough to pick apart entrenched defenses, but that’s how the gnolls complemented them. Some stood as tall as our ramparts, and their prehensile paws could pull them down with grapples and line.

By my estimation, the 45 red blips amassed on our radar looked like more than our defenses could hold. If they somehow breached our perimeter and charged at once, we couldn’t do anything about it.

I toyed with heading into the woods. Winterbyte knew nothing of the Dark Room, which could hide me from her scent. It would work for a while, but they’d eventually return to Hawkhurst and exact revenge.

Fabulosa and I entered the bailey last. When the mercenaries barricaded the doorway behind us, Fletcher clapped his hands like a stage director. “Places! Places everybody! This is not a rehearsal!”

A few of Sternway’s guildies climbed the walls and prepared to repel intruders. It would cost the enemy a lot of blood to breach our defenses, but they had a lot of blood to lose. Winterbyte wasn’t dumb. She’d seen our defenses and wouldn’t have returned without overwhelming forces.

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Watching Fabulosa pulling six-foot-long wooden spikes out of her inventory bag looked like a magic trick. “Patch, you’re on holes, right?”

I nodded.

“Y’all, pike it up!” Fabulosa distributed stakes to villagers.

The pikes provided a second line of defense, similar to the weapons we’d spiked against Fatberg’s rolling concubines. Watching Winterbyte bound down the hillside after our first battle made me believe her legs to be powerful enough to leap over our walls. And when the vargs wanted to move, they could leap, but I wasn’t sure if they could clear the height of our bailey.

I used Dig to create postholes into the ground. We tested it, and it worked better than I’d hoped. Dig allowed me to clear a cubic yard of earth for every rank of nature, far more than we needed for stake holes. The dirt disappeared into another dimension until I expelled it, so digging didn’t even create a mess, and I could make holes faster than the town could fill them with pikes.

If the gnolls and vargs vaulted over the walls, they would impale themselves—the tactic needed to work because Hawkhurst’s best defenders could not defend themselves against foes so powerful. We also wanted the stakes to be a surprise, so Fabulosa carried them in her inventory. The fort’s interior bristled with an array of quills, ready to receive anything leaping over our walls.

An out-of-breath Yula ordered noncombatants into the shrine. Her nameplate vitals looked good. Aside from a stack of Exhaustion debuffs, she had full health and mana, so she hadn’t seen combat.

The huntress slipped from a scouting role to organizing defenders. “Iris and Fletcher! Put best archer and blade bearer on wall. Spread een circle. Zey will come inside. Vargs are good jumpers.”

The Sternways didn’t hesitate to relay the orc’s orders, aligning our best archers along the wall, alternating our best melee fighters between them. The Sternways knew the capabilities of our best fighters, and Yula knew how the canines attacked, making me the commander in name only.

“Puut flame to wall!”

At first, I thought Yula had ordered our troops to burn down our walls, but I spied the ring of torches affixed to our protective curtain—torches we’d never used before. I didn’t know if they deterred them from leaping over our bailey or advertised our location. Anyone from the kobold mountainsides would see a large ring of fire in Hawkhurst Meadow, but that counted for the least of our concerns. Fletcher and I cast Presence, and someone stacked wood into a bonfire within the fortification, giving us plenty of light.

The red dots drifted south and veered to the west toward our position, staying out of bow range. To my surprise, they didn’t surround us. A couple gave our walls the once-around, but the bulk of the blips formed in two loose groups. One group of red dots stayed quadruped, while the other switched between upright and all fours.

I climbed up to the narrow walkway along the wooden ramparts. The enemy discussed something but gathered too far out of range. After ten minutes, the cluster of red blips dispersed into an attack formation.

When they moved closer, I saw the chimera Winterbyte summoned for the occasion. I first thought it to be another amalgamation of dinosaur parts, but wool covered its body. The level 26 monster moved slowly and stayed outside the main formation. It gave them a living battering ram.

Ringing the motte and bailey would have thinned their ranks. Instead, they launched a burst attack on a specific location. This tactic minimized the moat and palisade’s effectiveness, but they had enough meat to punch through.

The mammoth chimera led the charge, and soon, the rest followed.

Yula launched a glowing missile imbued with magic when they reached her bow range. Fabulosa, the next strongest, fired next, and soon mercenaries and I joined. Many arrows scored hits. Yula’s first caused a varg to tumble in a cloud of torn grass and dust. Fabulosa followed her shots with a Fireball when they entered spell range.

I played our biggest surprise by opening the religion interface and blessed Fabulosa and myself with Glowing Coals. We accumulated over 4,000 favor, and each blessing cost us 2,000 apiece. It nearly emptied the town’s entire reserves over the last few months.

The glowing eyes reflecting off Presence remained segregated into two attack groups.

Fabulosa cast Glowing Coals under a knot of gnolls, although we couldn’t see if Winterbyte ran among them. They yelped and withdrew from the hotbed’s radius.

I cast Glowing Coals beneath a concentration of vargs to a much better effect. The panicking animals stopped and retreated, doubling their route through the coals. Their howls conveyed a panic from not understanding what afflicted their feet. I’d burned only ten vargs, but their withdrawal weakened the pack’s resolve, and more peeled off. A Hotfoot debuff lowered agility and willpower and broke concentration, so they hadn’t lost a significant amount of health, but it harried over a quarter of their number.

A distinct baying came from the alpha, prompting the rest of the vargs to break off the attack. The gnolls responded to the withdrawal with vicious barks, and the distraction faltered their approach. The first wave of attack ended in indecision, and not one of them made it to the moat.

The assault force retreated beyond a smattering of arrows and reassembled out of our range.

When dwarves and mercenaries cheered, I raised my voice. “Quiet! Quiet! I can’t hear them!” I couldn’t pick out Common speech even with Creeper’s augmented hearing. Everyone shushed one another until it got dead quiet inside the fort. Only then could I hear the strange growling language.

It sounded like the gnolls quelling a wolf mutiny.

I went over to Fabulosa, who leaned over the wall, trying to eavesdrop. “What do you think?”

“I reckon Winterbyte needs to rally the vargs. She’s probably promising that Glowing Coals is a once-per-day ability and that they won’t get Hotfoot anymore.”

After much back-and-forth barking, the canines reassembled their ranks. Instead of a pincer movement, they ran between the hot coal beds and directed their efforts toward a single wall section.

Fabulosa placed her strength-enhancing bow against the fort walls and reached out to me. “Give me your Divine Bow!”

We distributed Yula and Fabulosa’s sturdy homemade bows to the town’s best archers, so nothing remained in my inventory except piddly little goblin bows. I didn’t feel like the commander in this battle, but Fabulosa had a better chance of hitting Winterbyte, so I handed it over.

When they committed to another run at us, I used my robe to reset my Glowing Coals cooldown. As they funneled between the other two heat patches, I plugged the bottleneck with another searing patch of pain. When the vargs broke off, they ran through our previous spots of Glowing Coals. High-pitched yelps and howls sounded another retreat. This time, nearly all had the Hotfoot debuff.

Instilled with doubt, they dispersed into retreat—rendering only our strongest archers capable of inflicting arrow damage.

The vargs barked loud enough to hear over the distance. All enemies became quadrupeds in my map interface, so it wasn’t easy to tell the vargs and gnolls apart until two groups formed. The larger half of the red blips drifted north. The vargs had given up. Winterbyte’s tenuous alliance came to an end.

Fabulosa lowered the Divine Bow, and she wasn’t holding an arrow. She turned to me with a long, triumphant glare. “I got her.”

The Divine Bow had served its purpose. For the next 24 hours, we tracked Winterbyte’s position.