For three years, Oszrath and Narmen had made very little progress with the Lord’s House. Haven had sold plans to the stationary crossbows and portable ballistae to Narmen, eventually, and it hadn’t helped much.

While the end of the siege at Lookout had seemed like the perfect opportunity to restart the fight with the Lord’s House, it seemed like Oszrath had severely miscalculated.

During the previous war, the Lord’s House had been aggressive. They had pushed as hard as they could and treated their casualties as inevitable. They had outnumbered Oszrath’s professional fighting forces so badly that Oszrath had bought hundreds of indenture contracts from its citizens to try to swell their numbers.

A lot of those indentured people had ended up as bandits and raiders in the wastes, though most of them had moved to Narmen or Kzara over the years, sometimes with help from Jules and the Sand Crawlers, sometimes not.

Fresh from their defeat at Lookout, the Lord’s House was deeply invested in defence. As much as it had failed, in the end, the amount of effort they had put into developing their defences was the only reason the siege had lasted as long as it had.

Even outnumbered nearly three to one, in this new war, the Lord’s House had been more than able to leverage their bolstered defences to drag Oszrath and then Narmen into a near complete standstill.

People moved from Oszrath to Narmen fairly frequently, especially people who had freshly paid off their indenture contract. Even with the war, Narmen was both much safer from the Lord’s House, and much less likely to enslave them if they stole for hunger. In fact, they were quite unlikely to go hungry at all in Narmen.

In the last three years, it was increasingly frequent, though still quite infrequent, that people moved from Oszrath and Narmen into Haven. Haven had a strong air of safety about it, from the caravans still bearing replicas of Tengu’s mask, to the known fact that they’d defeated an army from the Lord’s House some fifteen times the size of their whole population.

Narmen had seen this as a perfect opportunity to work on their relations with Haven. A telegraph network had been started through Narmen and Oszrath to help with co-ordination through the war, and was gradually spreading across the rest of the two nations.

In only a technical sense, Haven and the Lord’s House were still at war. Neither had done anything about that fact over the three years since the end of the siege at Lookout, but Narmen was acutely aware of the fact.

Heft and Pest had not moved to Ivterran, exactly. They had, however, spent most of their time there for the last year or so. In the same way, Ato and Emen had not moved to Borirnna, but they visited Haven increasingly less often.

Tengu was rarely seen anywhere in Haven. She was around, everyone was pretty sure of that, but she didn’t seem to be anywhere in particular. Jules was still present, spending a few months at a time in the various settlements, helping with training and keeping everything orderly.

It would be uncharitable to say that Narmen had spies within Haven, but most people who had moved to Haven hadn’t done so because of bar will toward their old home. News came back from time to time. Narmen had a sense of what was going on in Haven.

Ato would have been a little surprised, but not at all perturbed, to discover how highly she was regarded in Haven as a commander. Like Jules, Ato was more than willing to take credit for her achievements.

Despite friendly relations, Narmen had thus far not asked Haven for permission to send troops through their land. For one thing, it wasn’t very necessary, and for another there was some worry that it would provoke the Lord’s House to attack Narmen directly.

What Narmen knew about the situation in Haven was that Ato was bored. She was young enough and interested in fighting enough that a year of relaxation was wearing on her. It was one of the reasons she stayed in Borirnna, where it was much more lively than Haven.

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So Narmen had good reason to hope that, if troops from the Lord’s House did manage to chase them back across Haven, Haven would do something about it. They were not aware that, back when the war between the Lord’s House and Haven had started, there had been consideration given to letting the Lord’s House invade far enough to reach Yarkot.

It was almost precisely three years since Narmen had joined the war between Oszrath and the Lord’s House that they sent a diplomatic party to Haven to broach the subject of allowing soldiers through the wastes.

Though Haven had settled further east over the last years, they didn’t have anything in the area that Narmen proposed to use. They barely even thought of that area of the wastes as part of Haven, though the general consensus was that Haven controlled the whole of the wastes. Up to the established borders of the nations surrounding the desert, at least.

Tengu wasn’t there for the negotiations, which was a bit of a surprise to the diplomats, but not to anyone else. Haven agreed to let Narmen through the edge of the desert without asking for anything in return. Though some saw the potential danger of retaliation from the Lord’s House, they just didn’t need anything from Narmen.

Haven was technically not self-sufficient, but there were a couple of copper mines through the Independent Cities. The copper was provided for free to Haven while they still had people in the Independent Cities teaching about electronics and the like.

The trouble that Tengu, Jules, Ora, Ato, and Emen had been debating on and off since the independent cities had been liberated and the war with Wasolan conclusively ended, was that they didn’t much like Oszrath.

If they joined back in the war with the Lord’s House, it seemed to them that they would be aiding Oszrath much more than they would be aiding Narmen. As far as they were concerned, that was good enough reason to leave the war at a standstill.

The opportunity that Narmen might have just presented them, was a way to help Narmen in particular push into the Lord’s House. Given than Narmen didn’t actually border the Lord’s House, it was so far only a speculative benefit. Narmen was less likely to take land that wasn’t directly connected to them.

Ora, as ever, was the voice of reason. ‘Can’t we just tell them this directly? They don’t like Oszrath too much either.’

‘You talk to everyone, right?’ Ato asked. ‘What’s the best justification you’ve heard for Narmen joining the war?’

‘They don’t want the Lord’s House getting any closer to them,’ Ora said. ‘I know. But half the people who moved here moved because they don’t like Narmen helping Oszrath so much.’

‘And if they do manage to take Lord’s Shield or whatever that fort is called, they’ll just give it to Oszrath,’ Ato said. ‘And that’ll solve their problem as long as Oszrath holds it.’

‘The Lord’s House still doesn’t have enough troops to push in from the north, either,’ Jules said. ‘So there’s no chance of battering Oszrath enough to force more change.’

The admittedly vain hope that Oszrath would suffer enough losses for Narmen to force change was among the reasons Haven had left the situation alone. It was also among the reasons that Narmen had joined the war, though that wasn’t common knowledge of course.

‘Can’t we just say that, though?’ Ora asked. ‘We’ll only help them take Lord’s Shield if Narmen is in charge of it? Narmen could use it to push Oszrath to give them that border land.’

‘Does Narmen want the border land?’ Ato asked. ‘If they want to keep the Lord’s House away from them.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Emen said. ‘If we do what Ora’s suggesting, we either force their hand or keep out of it. Either they’ll take it, or they won’t.’

Narmen was not happy with the offer from Haven. They didn’t want a border with the Lord’s House. But Ora had been right, talking about it more openly was the key to a successful negotiation.

Despite the massive population difference between Narmen and Haven, and the massive disparity in the size of their armed forces, Narmen wanted Haven to involve itself. It seemed clear to everyone around that Haven had mastered war to an exceptional degree.

Even Ato and Jules would have said that people were giving them too much credit. They still would have taken the credit, of course.

As Narmen had known it wouldn’t, being able to send troops through Haven made no difference in the siege at Lord’s Shield. It was just too difficult to get anyone close enough to the walls to do anything.

It took Narmen longer to agree to Haven’s terms than it took Oszrath to agree to give Narmen the chunk of land that separated them from the Lord’s House. The standstill was getting on everyone’s nerves and besides, there was nothing there anyway.

While Ato had technically never conducted a siege, she was very confident that she could get it done quickly. Jules, Tengu, Emen, Ora, Ryoko, and Heft and Pest were less confident, but they had enough experience to have faith in Ato.

Sure Ato hadn’t liberated the Independent Cities by herself, but they might still be controlled by Wasolan if she hadn’t been there.