Dawn came with iron in its breath. Oakwatch blinked — . (ready); fog lay ankle-high across the Barley Flats; the horn cairns along Founders' Way hummed one clean note when Jory touched them—each syllable ready. 🙂
— Dawn Brief — Barley Flats Engagement• Enemy: Five Nails (~300; tubs/mauls/hooks; mirror cart hub)• Ours: foot in diamond (Garran W hinge, Orla E, Fen N, Piet S); fox wing (Lucien)• Battery: Thorn/Bramble masked behind sheds; Measured Bite → mirror cart• Doctrine: Don't-Chase; NO GREEDY SHOT; horn net low-volume• After-Sight: Ready (0/1)• Spawn Window: 24–36 hrs (watch)• Morale: Steady-bright, jaws set 🙂
The Five Nails came down like a workshop that had decided to be mean: tubs up, mauls over shoulders, hooks for dragging, mirror shutters on a wagon with a mast like a smug tooth. Their banner bobbed—five iron nails point-down—ugly and earnest.
Elara walked the front with her helm under her arm. "They're built for shove and drag," she said. "We answer with hinge and breath. Garran takes the western mouth; Orla refuses the eager; Fen is the stone men break their week on; Piet keeps tomorrow."
Jory tuned low, rain-hat snug on the gourd. "Two short when you want carts to be clever," he said. "Eight falling if pride tries to turn a corner."
Rinna patted Thorn and Bramble. "One bite at the mirror, then silence," she told the crews. "You don't get to be interesting."
Lucien's fox wing grinned like men who enjoy being useful without witnesses. "We'll show their hooks a serpentine they'll fail to own," he said.
Aiden thumbed After-Sight once. The world admitted two small lies the field loved to keep: a slick seam at the low swale (turn ankles), and a cart rut aligned to swing our shed shadow into a trap if we stepped wrong. "Sand the seam," he told Ras. "Brush the rut. Put a stem of rope where a man's foot will want to leave the sentence."
— After-Sight• Used: 1/1 (field geometry) — swale seam sanded; trap rut brushed; rope stem placed• Cooldown: 12h
The Five Nails struck the west first, predictable and proud. Tubs slammed Garran's hinge and learned why semicolons exist: wait; and. Garran gave a half and took back a whole; mauls fell on wood, not men; feet found sand, not sermon.
"Five rising—left," Jory carried, early by a breath; Orla refused the wrap—Row Rhythm in the ribs, shields like grammar. Fen's middle didn't move enough to be poetic; it moved just enough to be tomorrow.
The mirror cart tried to bite light into orders—shutters flicked, sending winks along a cheap relay. Rinna lifted her palm. Thorn spoke once; the wagon's mast stuttered and then remembered it had never been a tree. The mirrors died with a sound like a plan becoming quiet.
— Battery Doctrine — Measured Bite (Applied)• Target: mirror cart hub → deleted• Enemy cohesion: −small; panic pulse +small• Battery status: silent until end of contact
Lucien's fox wing took the hooks into a curve and refused to let them be anchors. They harried, herded, never hunted—feeding the Don't-Chase pocket without giving up a flank. 😌
On the south, a tub line tried a drag—hooks out to catch a shed corner and make our scorpions talk when we didn't want them to. Piet stood the reserve like a door leaned on, then stepped into the drag with his pole and made the shed heavier by will and timber. The hooks learned to be embarrassed.
"Eight falling," Jory breathed when two eager boys tried to run our east angle into a hero story. The line declined the offer; Orla's pennon didn't move; the eager boys decided to be alive instead.
Bryn's Pathfinders strafed behind tub lines with whipline and sand—not to cut men, to cut moves. Hale flicked a string from a wrist; Ras tipped a bucket of pebbles right where maul feet wanted to preach; both apologized to nobody.
Mara ran Night Soup to the east shed and refused to care if she looked like a quartermaster during a hymn. "Eat," she told anyone with breath enough to argue. 🍲🙂
The Five Nails had bark and good lungs, but their clock depended on mirrors that no longer lived and on hooks that never met meat. They pushed, they shoved, they discovered that grammar holds.
Jory's calls stayed small: 1 long for spine when shoves got noisy; 7 steady on the sheds when men forgot they were buildings and wanted to be songs; 2 short to pull the front together when rain threatened to turn it into mud.
Casualties came like honest math:
Ours: 0 dead; 3 bruises; 1 sprained wrist; 1 cut scalp (Calder stitched with thread and insult).
Five Nails: 3 down hard (maul missteps into sand seam); 9 leaving with bent pride; 1 mirror-man under his own wagon.
After twenty damp minutes of meeting a sentence and failing to edit it, the Five Nails began to tire. Their banner bobbed lower; their chant lost teeth.
"Hold the Door Shut!" faltered into "Hold—" and then into something nobody wrote down.
Elara raised her hand. "One long," she said, because the day had been said already. Jory breathed it, warm as a period.
The Five Nails stepped back in chunks, not a rout—credit where the boys were paid to be brave. Lucien's fox wing shadowed them without owning them. No chase. Policy, not glory.
Bryn plucked two tub-men from the mud where they'd argued with pebbles and won nothing. They were given water and a stool and the chance to be useful.
"Who bought your banner?" Venn asked, pen ready, voice gentle. The first man scowled. The second considered the soup in his lap, the rope on his wrist, and the fact that nobody had put a trophy on a stick all morning.
"Varlo sold the job," he said, which traveled badly but arrived intact. "A man with clean glass counted the coin. Not Pike. Not Fort. Said we only had to blind you and scare the sheds."
Elara's mouth went flat. "The unknown mirror," she said.
The tub-man nodded. "He wore a pin like a white moth."
Clove, who had been waiting for the world to admit something it already knew, sighed like a ledger closing. "The Moth pays well for timing," he said, almost apologetic. "He'd have liked you to chase."
"Tell him we didn't," Mara said, and scooped a ladle that meant the conversation was over. 🍲
*— Contact Log — Barley Flats (Five Nails)• Enemy: ~300 (tubs/mauls/hooks; mirror hub)• Actions: Diamond standards; Measured Bite (mirror cart deleted); fox herd; Don't-Chase doctrine• Ours: 0 dead; 5 minor (treated)• Enemy: ~12 down/limping; morale decay +small; prisoners 2• Outcome: raid repelled; sheds intact; roads open; mirrors neutralized *
Elara walked the front once more and put her palm to each pole. "You held time," she told them, which is a blessing in this story.
Rinna traced NO GREEDY SHOT again, because victory makes fingers itchy. Hadrik tightened a rail that did not need tightening and claimed it did. Jory polished a mouthpiece and discovered it was already clean.
The Five Nails rolled off the Flats like a decision revisited. Their banner looked smaller. Their chant had holes. On the ridge, their captain turned once and raised his hammer as if to say next time. Elara didn't wave.
Venn took the prisoners' words down neat. Varlo again. Moth pin. Blind, not break. He boxed the names as if boxes could do more than they can.
Calder held a boy's head while he threw up quiet pride and a bowl of soup. He patted the back with a rhythm that would not be in any doctrine and should be.
Jory stood on the shed step and listened to the road. Pretend thunder would not be used tonight. A hill to the north was still practicing silence too well.
— Reputation Update• Tag earned: Kept Roads Open (merchants +small trust; panic −small on market days)• Doctrine synergy: Diamond Calm (four standards within 30m → discipline +1 to foot)
"Spawn clock is still on its jaw," Ras said softly, looking east. "He'll push soon, with weather."
Elara nodded. "And now he does it without mirrors on the road."
Aiden exhaled once, long. "Boards nailed. Brooms used. One bite spent where it lived."
"Good arithmetic," she said, because it was.
"Novaterra," Aiden told the cairns and the tower and the road that prefers trade to sermons, "we met hammers with grammar, took one clean bite from a mirror and left the rest of the day uneaten. The banner that wanted to shut the door learned we like it open. No heroics. Just work." 🙂
— Evening Summary — Novaterra / Barley Flats• Five Nails raid repelled; sheds intact; roads open• Measured Bite effective (mirror hub deleted); Diamond Calm held• Prisoners: 2 — revealed Varlo broker; Moth-pin paymaster (unknown mirror)• After-Sight used (seams/ruts) → mitigations held• Spawn Window: 24–36 hrs (tight)• Morale: Quiet-proud; steady; soup excellent 🙂