The little farm called Outpost grew rapidly. A tower, thinner than the one at Lookout, but still quite sturdy, was finished within a fortnight. A low wall of cement and brick surrounded the farm on two side, and two large, brick and cement buildings had gone up to replace the apartments.

The old apartments weren’t removed, in the end. Enough people were working and staying in Outpost that they needed the housing. No houses were constructed in Outpost, only these apartment blocks.

Within two months, Outpost’s permanent population had grown to around a hundred and fifty. As much as the people of Haven didn’t exactly want a war, a war struck many of the more hot-blooded types as the perfect opportunity to finally use these combat skills they had been training for nearly four years.

Enough people argued against installing ballistae, on the grounds that they weren’t precise enough to target only free soldiers and overseers, that a new weapon was invented for Outpost: the stationary crossbow.

The militia of Haven had never taken up crossbows, despite the relative ease of use over longbows, because they failed to offer enough range to take advantage of the generally open and flat terrain of the wastes. The stationary crossbow solved this issue with aplomb.

A man called Lekko quite successfully strapped a warbow to a carved plank and demonstrated that it could fire almost as far as a normal warbow. A week later, a crank-operated version that could fire about four times as far and pierce any metal plate light enough to be worn as armour was installed in Outpost.

Among the twelve stationary crossbows installed in Outpost, there were three different designs as Lekko, Osmond, and Weir iterated quickly. From a book on firearm designs, a distance-graduated aiming device was designed for the crossbows, and everyone was duly impressed.

It took almost four months Wasolan to send a second attack on Outpost. The residents had not been idle.

A lot of the energy around Outpost was motivated by Tengu’s distinct change in attitude. No one told her that, everyone knew she wouldn’t want to hear it. But when she started leading regular forays out of the wastes, the rest of Outpost wasn’t far behind.

As Ora explained on Tengu’s behalf: if they were going to have a war, they ought to do their best to make it winnable. Wasolan treated their northwest around the wastes as generally safe, aside from the odd slave escapes. Tengu thought Wasolan needed a change in attitude.

Haven did not have the capacity to pose as much of a threat as Kzara, that was an unavoidable truth. Despite assurances from the freed slave soldiers that Wasolan’s military command were dense as bricks, Tengu was confident that Haven could get itself into the position of being not worth the trouble.

The first step was making the area around Journey and Altok as hostile to Wasolan as possible. Before Heft and Pest’s troop had been sent into the wastes, raids left Outpost at a pace of once a week, maybe twice if things went particularly well.

As the stationary crossbow was being invented, raids were leaving Outpost at a rate of more than one a day. Tengu, Ora, and Ryoko were only ever in Outpost overnight before they left again.

Though Sand Crawlers were a constant presence in Outpost and the raids, Jules herself stayed in the northwest of the wastes, continuing to keep an eye on the ever dwindling slave catchers there.

By the time Wasolan sent a battalion after Outpost, not a single slave trader had made it from Wasolan to Journey in two months. Almost half of the Sand Crawlers spent most of their time in Outpost. Jules complained that they were the Sand Crawlers and not the Outpost Crawlers, but didn’t do much else.

Of the over two hundred people in Outpost, a solid half had been rescued from raiders, slavers, and slave traders in the past three months. The town had a much more chaotic energy than Haven ever had, but there was also a distinct sense of focus.

When three hundred soldiers from Wasolan appeared over the horizon, they were expected. People were worried, but they were just as surely ready. Everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing.

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The first stage of the ambush came at two kilometres from Outpost. Though the stationary crossbows up on the tower could shoot further than that, even the most seasoned and trained operator had a maximum of two months’ experience.

Twenty people with bows appeared seemingly out of nowhere around the back and flanks of the battalion. Arrows nearly the size of spears pelted the front ranks. The battalion spread out, got low to the ground. Sixteen of the overseers were dead, eleven more wounded. Eleven of the free troops were dead, six more incapacitated, eight more wounded.

Those twenty people with bows were nowhere to be found.

Pest and Heft had called the first stage of the ambush experimental. The experiment failed, but that was an expected part of the process. There were still too many overseers and free soldiers for the slaves to feel confident turning on them, Heft and Pest figured.

The second stage of the ambush was less experimental. At only five hundred metres, with twelve more free soldiers taken out of the battle by the stationary crossbows, eighty people with bows and swords appeared out of the sand.

Archers fired from the cover of the low wall around Outpost, and within the couple of minutes it took for more fighters to join the battle, the battalion had descended most of the way into chaos.

Like the troop Heft and Pest had arrived with, the slaves didn’t turn on the overseers and free soldiers as a single unit, ready for violence. Some were more optimistic than others, some had a stronger desire for revenge or freedom.

Technically speaking, the free soldiers in a battalion of Wasolan’s army were not actually expected to stop the slaves from escaping, if the issue came up. They would also certainly be punished for returning without any of the slaves remaining.

The pincer effect of a charge from Outpost and the slave soldiers who turned the quickest, combined with archers, huge crossbows, a second ambush, and the fear of retribution led nearly a third of the free soldiers in the battalion surrendering, many of them without having drawn their weapons at all.

The overseers weren’t given the option of surrendering.

It was a surprise to most of the freed slave soldiers that a majority of the surrendered and recovered free soldiers of Wasolan decided to join Outpost and Haven. It was less of a surprise that most who didn’t want to join headed for Ovek and not Wasolan.

A hundred and eighty new people did not help the chaotic energy of Outpost. What did help was the arrival of Jules and most of the rest of the Sand Crawlers. Fork and Wall were left in charge of the remaining ten Sand Crawlers at the base. Wall was mostly there to operate the telegraph.

Jules had three important qualities that Tengu did not: she was bigger, she was very happy to tell people what to do, and she loved being given credit for her actions. She also raised the casual nudity level of Outpost significantly, but that was a largely neutral development.

As much as Jules was on board with Tengu’s democratic mission, it was fair to say that she was more pragmatic than Tengu. More than two hundred freed soldiers, previously slaves or not, were in need of much more structure that Tengu was willing to provide.

Unlike the residents of Haven, or even the mass of freed slaves from Outer Light, the democratic process did not come very naturally to people used to being told what to do.

Despite the palpable tension between Tengu and Jules, Tengu seemed quite happy to let Jules have free reign over Outpost. It also freed Tengu to proceed with the next stage of the plan.

There had been surprise, but not opposition, among the people of Haven when Tengu had proposed that they attempt formal alliances with Altok and Kzara. For all of Tengu’s unsociability, it was not a move that was expected from her.

It took more than a month for Haven, Outpost, and the Sand Crawlers to work out a process to elect representatives to go to Altok and Kzara. Tengu and Ora were a given, despite Tengu’s protests. Accompanying them were Andros, the shopkeep, Weir, Beln, better known as Asmon Varalagos, Beetle, Eastin, Ryoko, and Heft and Pest.

There were no raiders or slavers to fight off on the trip to Altok.

Discussions in Altok went very well, and impressively quickly. Altok was primarily a trading city, and Haven and Tengu had been very good for trade over last eight-odd years. Given the current state of relations between Altok and Wasolan, a formal declaration of war wasn’t really seen as much of an ask.

Negotiations in Kzara were much slower, but went equally well. Tengu was very unhappy to learn that she had been one of the motivating factors for the formal declaration of war with Wasolan. If she hadn’t cleared out the trade route through the wastes, Kzara would have had to give much more consideration to relations with Ovek.

In the five months that the diplomatic party were out of Haven, the Sand Crawlers grew to a hundred and twenty members, and a second battalion was sent from Wasolan to Outpost.

Ryoko, Pest and Heft were disappointed to have missed it, but it went even better than the first time. No fighters from Outpost were killed, and even more of the free soldiers decided to join Haven.

All things considered, the war with Wasolan was going very well.