Ten tonnes of steel seems like a lot, until you need to build a small city out of concrete and wood. Certainly a fair amount of stone came from the quarry near Lookout. But by the time the construction was finished, there was less than a tonne of Altok’s gifted steel remaining.

A lot of that went into the further construction of Outpost and Lookout, and the assembling of more siege weapons. Most of what was left went into arrows, quarrels, spears, and swords. Haven was absolutely stocked up to return to war. Convenient, then, that they at war with two nations.

Though the Lord’s House was holding up far better than Oszrath and Narmen had hoped they would, it was more than enough of a problem that they were leaving Haven alone for the time being. So, while Haven was technically still at war with them, they were only really participating in the one war.

‘As nice as it is to receive gifts from Altok,’ Ato said, frowning mildly down a hill at a mine in far northwestern Wasolan. ‘It seems to me that having our own source of iron would be much more convenient.’

‘Us and what miners?’ Emen asked, since Massi wasn’t here to participate in the necessary argument.

‘All the miners who volunteered to go to the quarry,’ Ato said. ‘Give me a more difficult one, Emen.’

Emen joined in his sister’s mild frowning. ‘Us and what supply lines? It’s at least a week from Outpost.’

‘But,’ Ato held up a finger. ‘It’s further from Borirnna. And there’s that farm back up near the border that they never bothered to rebuild. And it’s supposed to be more fertile out here than in the sand anyway.’

Emen nodded along. ‘I’m sold.’

Ato got up. ‘Alright, let’s do it.’

‘Oh, wait,’ Emen said. ‘I thought of another one. Us and what defences.’

‘They’re not stupid enough to send troops to retake it,’ Pest said.

‘It’s so far away and they saw what happened last time,’ Heft said.

‘And it’s a mill,’ Tarry said. ‘It’s only out here because it was here before the Independent Cities fell. If they’d expected trouble from the wastes, they wouldn’t have bothered.’

Ato looked at Emen, who shrugged.

There was only a single troop stationed at the unnamed iron mill near the border of the wastes. It only took more than a minute for the raiders from Haven to take over because one of the soldiers hid in the watchtower and refused to surrender or come down. So Ato had to climb all the way up the ladder to talk to him.

When Ato sat down to add two more lines to her armour, the lookout was alive and unstabbed, having a conversation with Heft and Pest. She hadn’t intended for the pattern to end up looking as much like a flower as it did, but she didn’t mind it.

Among the many conveniences that made fighting Wasolan much easier than fighting the Lord’s House was that Ato didn’t need to change her outfit at all to infiltrate Borirnna. Over the months it took to get the farm and iron mill running, and build up another little fortress nearby, she infiltrated Borirnna a number of times.

She wasn’t alone, and she wasn’t doing it entirely for fun. Given that Borirnna was an actual city, there was very little that raiders from Haven could do to it. So, other than being able to get some dishes she hadn’t had in years, Ato and the others were gathering information to send back to Haven and Altok.

While the stalemate out west between Kzara and Wasolan persisted, Altok and Haven had largely run out of ways to help in the war since Rhatal had been permanently destroyed.

Ato had been feeling like Haven was getting big. Compared to Borirnna, it was still tiny. She was glad she’d decided to go infiltrating before trying to talk anyone into launching a siege.

‘What about a slave revolt?’ asked a woman called Stone.

‘Elaborate,’ Ato said, pointing a chicken bone at her.

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It was unclear if she had been nicknamed Stone because of her roughly spherical build, impressive strength, or general slowness. Stone was the definition of ponderous. She was prone to good ideas if you gave her a couple of days to deliberate on the matter.

‘When I was in Ovek,’ Stone started slowly. ‘There were… at least two uprisings that I heard of. And there was one big one, a while ago, that’s why a slave could earn their freedom with enough work and good luck.’

Ato nodded along. ‘We try to start one in Borirnna?’

Stone nodded. ‘I wasn’t in Wasolan as long,’ she said. ‘But slaves are definitely treated… worse, here. And they are in the process of losing a war.’

Ato looked around at the old slave soldiers from Wasolan. ‘Any sense of if that’s feasible?’

Pest shook his head. ‘We wouldn’t know.’

‘We haven’t been among the people for years,’ Heft said.

‘No one wants to be a slave,’ Tarry said. ‘And all those losses against Kzara, back in the day. You remember, they were inspiring.’

Stone nodded. ‘Before… when they were going to sell me back to Ovek. We’d heard of raids on caravans headed north. We were hopeful.’

Stone had been rescued from a slave trader not long after Outpost had been completed. Back when slave traders from Wasolan still tried to make it to Ovek. Another idea ticked the back of Ato’s mind, but she put it aside for now.

‘We could try breaking some people out of Borirnna,’ she said. ‘A couple of domestics maybe? Start something, and see what the temperature is like.’

Stone pointed a chicken bone at Ato. ‘Yes.’

Despite the anxiety, the rescue went exceptionally well. No one died. There wasn’t even any fighting. Just a bit of choking. A butcher woke up to find that his guard had a livid bruise around his neck, and the two slaves who were supposed to work in the shop were missing.

‘Oh, can I get like a sword? To fight back against the masters?’ Skin, the younger of the two slaves, asked with great excitement.

Ato grinned at him. ‘Swords are expensive, my friend,’ she said. ‘Spears are better, trust me.’

Skin looked at her spear. ‘Alright. I’ll trust you. But I’m going to get a sword some day. Mark my words.’

Ato nodded, fished out her notebook, and pretended to write it down. ‘Noted.’

Skin grinned. ‘Ok, but like, when do we start?’

Emen looked at Vallan, the other of the slaves they’d rushed out of Borirnna with. ‘Is he… representative?’

Vallan shrugged. ‘He’s a bit more excitable than most,’ she said. ‘But Kzara’s going to win, right? If we could have gotten ourselves out, we would have.’

‘So it’s an issue of capacity?’ Ato asked, still smiling. ‘Lucky we have a new iron mill to make spears with.’

‘What is the spear situation?’ Skin asked. ‘Why spears?’

Ato put a hand on Skin’s shoulder. ‘Spears are cheap to make and easy to use,’ she said. ‘When they got me out of Rhatal, they gave me a spear. I like spears. Everyone likes spears.’

Skin put a hand on Ato’s shoulder. ‘I’m on board with spears. Can I have yours?’ He grinned.

‘No, it was a present.’

‘Can’t blame a man for trying.’

Over the course of two months, more slaves escaped from Borirnna than had escaped in the past eight years. When someone went to Ivterran to complain about the problem, he failed to come back. Luckily, Borirnna was too big a city for anyone to recognise his freed slaves when they came back in nice new clothes with nice new spears.

The uprising arrived much more quickly than anyone had really expected. It was a case of repurposed good luck. A stash of weapons was discovered in the slave quarters at a spinnery. The owner was in the process of calling for guards when he was stabbed with one of the spears.

Borirnna had an absolute skeleton garrison, barely enough soldiers to keep the peace. Not only did slaves outnumber free people in the city, but there were, of course, an equal number of slave soldiers to free soldiers.

Just as free workers had left Rhatal with the freed slaves, and free soldiers had defected to Haven, Altok, and Kzara over the years, not everyone was willing to fight for the institution of slavery. Most people in Borirnna owned no slaves, and many of them struggled to find work because of the prevalence of slave labour.

There would be a lot of talks in the coming few weeks about how you couldn’t reasonably blame a slave for taking your job. There would be a great many talks in the coming few weeks about all sorts of things.

Borirnna didn’t exactly join Haven. For one thing, there were more than four times the number of people in Borirnna. For another, the uprisen slaves were much more excited about the idea of gaining independence.

It was inevitable that Borirnna would be very close to Haven, though. The usual suspects had trickled in over the past months of preparation, and had a lot of experience guiding people toward the conclusions that had made Haven into what it was.

Not to mention that Haven’s skirmishers were absolutely instrumental in preventing a siege from so much as starting, when Wasolan did muster some troops to take the city back.

With frequent reassurances that Haven did not want to take over the city, only wanted to help them hold onto their freedom, only a few dozen people moved from Haven into Borirnna to start up various sorts of lessons, following the style of the school in Haven, and help the soldiers who had sided with the uprising to set up large scale training.