Dearest Martha, we made it to Lenalune. The mayor took us in. She charged us a hundred and fifty dollars for the privilege, which is fair, because five hundred soldiers eat more than any town this size can spare. Decker is fixing Gospel. Clementine is fixing the men. I'm fixing the order of battle, because three companies walked into this valley yesterday and none of them have the right number of soldiers left in them.

  I slept four hours last night, and it's the most I've had since the fort.

  Hughes.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  I start the day at the barn door with Phelps and a roster that doesn't add up.

  Four hundred and eighty-six soldiers. Gerald died on the table last night, which drops us from four eighty-seven. The three companies that broke out of Fort Independence don't exist in their original form anymore. 1st Company under Phelps went into the fort with a hundred and eighty regulars and twelve sharpshooters, and fifty-three of those are dead or missing. 2nd Company lost forty-one. 3rd Company under Marsh lost fifty-one, including most of his sharpshooters when the east wall collapsed on them.

  The numbers as they stand: 1st Company at a hundred and thirty-nine. 2nd Company at a hundred and sixty-five. 3rd Company at a hundred and forty-nine. Plus Mercy, Clementine, Decker, and me. Plus thirty-three soldiers who got separated from their units during the breakout and ended up in whichever column was closest when we hit the river.

  None of that works for what comes next. Three understrength companies means three chains of command competing for the same pool of sharpshooters, chaplains, and field surgeons. It means three sets of sergeants managing squads that no longer exist, three captains' worth of overhead for a force that doesn't fill two companies properly. And 2nd Company doesn't have an officer to lead it, because the last lieutenant I had running it is dead at the bottom of the Chestatee with a musket ball through his throat.

  "Dissolve 2nd Company," I tell Phelps. "Split the men between 1st and 3rd. Two full-strength companies instead of three broken ones. Sharpshooters distributed evenly. Chaplains distributed evenly. Each company gets two field surgeons."

  Phelps writes it down without looking up from the notebook. "Sergeant Marsh is going to push back on absorbing men he didn't train."

  "Marsh can push back after he explains how a company of a hundred and forty-nine is supposed to hold a line that needs two hundred and forty." I take the roster from Phelps and cross-check the names against the casualty list one more time, because wrong numbers in a roster mean wrong formations on a battlefield and wrong formations mean dead soldiers who should've been alive. "Distribute 2nd Company's veterans evenly. Anyone with more than a year of service goes to whichever company is shorter on experience. Fresh replacements fill the gaps. I want unit assignments posted and chain of command established by the time the men come back from the fields."

  "And you?"

  "I command the battalion." I hand the roster back. "Headquarters element stays with me. Mercy, Clementine, Decker, four runners, and whatever scouts I keep on the ridgeline. I go where the fighting is and the companies go where I point them."

  「Army Reorganization: Initiated. 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry "Garryowen." Dissolving 2nd Company. Reassigning 486 soldiers across 2 companies + HQ element.」

  [UNIT: 1ST COMPANY] Leader: Lt. Josiah Phelps. 238 soldiers (198 Regulars, 16 Sharpshooters, 14 Chaplains, 2 Field Surgeons, 8 NCOs). Formation: Column (standard march). Stance: Standard. Power: 460. Morale: 44/100 (Recovering).

  [UNIT: 3RD COMPANY] Leader: Sgt. Elijah Marsh. 238 soldiers (200 Regulars, 16 Sharpshooters, 12 Chaplains, 2 Field Surgeons, 8 NCOs). Formation: Column (standard march). Stance: Standard. Power: 440. Morale: 40/100 (Recovering).

  [HQ ELEMENT] Commander: Cpt. Hughes Granthem. 10 soldiers (4 Runners, 6 Scouts). Attached: Sgt. Major Mercy (Hex-Cannon Operator), Sister Clementine (Chief Surgeon), Cpl. Amos Decker (Artificer). Equipment: 「Freedom's Edge」 (Legendary Sword), 「Lincoln's Resolve」 (Legendary Rifle), 「Mama Thunder」 (Legendary Hex-Cannon, 0 shells). Power: 120. Morale: 52/100 (Steady).

  [SPECIAL ASSETS] 1x War Golem "Gospel" (Under Repair). 1x Hex-Cannon "Mama Thunder" (0 shells).

  「Army Reorganization: Complete. Total Combat Power: 1,020 (consolidated from 950 fragmented). Overall Morale: 43/100 (Recovering). Status: Understrength but structurally sound, combat-fatigued, ammunition low.」

  Two companies at full working strength is better than three at sixty percent. Phelps and Marsh each get a unit big enough to hold a line, anchor a flank, or march independently if the column has to split. The sergeants from 2nd Company slot into the existing chains of command, and the privates fill holes in squads that have been running short since the Blackwater. It's not perfect, because nothing built from wreckage is perfect, but it's functional, and functional is all I need it to be.

  Half the column goes into the fields by seven. Harwell's foreman, a man named Josiah Buell with hands wider than shovels, assigns squads to the wheat harvest along the south slope. Soldiers who were killing dead men yesterday are cutting grain today, and the adjustment takes about ten minutes because a tired man with a scythe doesn't need to know farming. He needs to know which direction to swing and how far apart to stand from the man next to him, and that's close enough to drill that the sergeants handle it without instruction.

  The other half stays in camp. Wounded detail, equipment repair, perimeter watch on the east hill. I put six of my scouts on the ridgeline facing the Chestatee with orders to glass the river crossings every thirty minutes and report any movement, any movement at all, to me directly.

  Column status, morning of Day 3: Five days under siege, forced march, river crossing, six miles through ridge country. Sleep debt averaging four hours per soldier across the last hundred and twenty. Rations stable at two weeks of half-issue purchased from Lenalune, supplemented by whatever the field labor earns. Most of 3rd Company's cartridge paper dried overnight by the barn stoves, but powder quality is still degraded from the ford crossing. Musket reliability sitting around seventy percent on a warm day, lower if the rain comes back. Fatigue: critical. Morale: Recovering, which is the stage between Shaken and Steady where men start caring about food and sleep again instead of just staring at their boots. Combat effectiveness: fifty-five percent overall, with 1st Company running closer to sixty and 3rd Company closer to forty-eight because Marsh's people took the worst of it on the east wall.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  Decker has Gospel's shoulder plate off and the joint mechanism exposed on a tarp behind the smithy.

  The shoulder assembly is a twelve-component system, and I know this because Decker explains it to me while he works, thoroughly and without any concern for whether I understand the technical details. The main rotator is a cast-iron cylinder eight inches in diameter that sits inside a steel housing and turns on a set of four roller bearings packed in rendered fat. The bearings distribute the load across the joint so the rotator can move the arm through its full range without grinding. When the bearings are packed and lubricated, the arm moves smooth and quiet. When they aren't, the rotator grinds against the housing and the friction generates heat, and heat warps iron, and warped iron cracks.

  The four bearings from Gospel's left shoulder are laid out on the tarp in a row. Three of them are scored and discolored from friction damage, heat-stained at the contact surfaces where metal met metal without anything between them. The fourth is cracked clean through.

  "That one's gone," Decker says, holding up the cracked bearing between his thumb and forefinger. It's the size of a hen's egg and it weighs about two pounds, and the fracture line runs through it at an angle that says the failure was thermal, not impact. "The other three I can resurface with the smithy's grinding wheel if the smith lets me use it, and I'll need four hours to do all three. The cracked one needs replacing."

  "Can you make one?"

  "Not without a forge and a mold and iron stock that's been tempered for load-bearing work." He sets the cracked bearing down and picks up a rag and wipes the grease off his hands, and his hands are still greasy when he's done because they've been greasy for six years and the grease doesn't come off anymore, it just redistributes. "Village smithy's got the forge, and might have the stock. The mold I'll carve from soapstone if they've got any, or hardwood if they don't. Call it eight hours total, four for the resurfacing and four for the new bearing, if the smith's got what I need. If he doesn't, I'm looking at two days."

  "You've got until tomorrow morning."

  "Then I'd better go talk to the smith." He stands up and pats Gospel's leg plating on his way past, two quick taps, the unconscious habit of a man who's spent years talking to machines that can't answer back. The golem doesn't respond, because Gospel is powered down, core temperature dropping toward ambient, the iron chassis cold to the touch for the first time since Decker fired the boiler at Fort Independence nine days ago. A powered-down golem is twelve feet of dead iron that sits in the dirt behind a village smithy and waits for a man with greasy hands to put it back together, because that's what machines do when they break.

  「Unit Status: Gospel (Mark IV Sentinel War Golem). Core Status: COLD (powered down for repair). HP: 52%. Steam Pressure: 0% (offline). Shoulder Joint: Disassembled. Bearings: 3x damaged (resurfacing), 1x destroyed (replacement required). Left Arm: Non-functional until joint reassembly. Chassis Integrity: 84%. Estimated Repair Time: 8-16 hours depending on material availability. Operator: Cpl. Amos Decker. Note: Golem must be powered down during bearing replacement. Minimum 2-hour cold start sequence required before combat readiness.」

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  Clementine's surgery report comes at noon, delivered in person because Clementine doesn't trust anyone else to give me numbers she's responsible for.

  "Alden's stump is clean, no infection, no fever." She holds the notebook open with one hand and reads from it with the brisk efficiency of a woman giving a briefing she's already memorized. "He was awake this morning and asked for water and then asked where his leg was, and I told him the truth because lying to a man about his own body is worse than the truth itself. He took it and didn't say much after."

  She flips to the next page. "The three critical cases from yesterday are stable. Corporal Hines, the stomach wound, I cleaned and packed and he's holding food down, which is more than I expected from a perforation that deep. Private Lowe, the arm, I set the bone and splinted it and he'll keep the arm if infection doesn't set in over the next forty-eight hours. Private Dunbar, the head wound, is conscious and can follow a finger with his eyes, which means the skull fracture didn't do what skull fractures usually do."

  「Wounded Status Update: 27 stretcher cases (26 stable, 1 upgraded to walking wounded: Pvt. Reese). 36 walking wounded cleared for light duty. 4 walking wounded restricted. 1 amputation recovery (Pvt. Alden, stable). 1 KIA on surgical table (Pvt. Gerald, chest wound, deceased Day 2). Total combat-effective: 432 of 486. Total non-combat: 54 (wounded) + Clementine (medical) + Decker (artificer).」

  "I need more bandages," she says, tucking the notebook back into her apron pocket with the practiced motion of someone who does it forty times a day. "I've been cutting bedsheets from the church storage and the minister's wife is starting to give me looks that could curdle milk. If Harwell's general store has cotton cloth, I need twenty yards of it, and I need it today."

  "Buy it, whatever it costs."

  "Already did." She smooths down the front of her apron, which has bloodstains on it that predate our arrival in Lenalune by at least two days. "Put it on your tab. Six dollars."

  「Treasury: 124 Dollars (6 spent on medical supplies from Lenalune general store).」

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  The afternoon is labor and waiting, and both of those eat time at the same pace.

  Soldiers work the wheat field in shifts, four-hour rotations that keep men moving without burning through whatever reserves they rebuilt during the night. Mercy takes Mama Thunder apart on a blanket in the barn and cleans every component: barrel, breech mechanism, firing pin, hex-chamber. She lays them out in rows and inspects each one for stress fractures and corrosion and carbon buildup from the fourteen shells she fired at Fort Independence, and then she puts it all back together with the methodical attention of a woman who treats her weapon the way Clementine treats her patients. The hex-cannon is clean and functional and completely useless without shells, but Mercy maintains it anyway, because you take care of the weapon you've got so it's ready when the ammunition shows up instead of rusted.

  Marsh runs 3rd Company through close-order drill on the flat ground west of the church, integrating the 2nd Company veterans he absorbed this morning. Basic formations, the kind that keep men alive when the fighting starts: column to line, line to square, square to column. The sergeants call cadence and the men respond, and for an hour boots stamp and muskets crack to shoulder and the drill echoes off both hillsides. The new men from 2nd Company slot in rough but willing, learning the calls that Marsh's sergeants use instead of the ones they're used to, adjusting spacing, finding their place in squads that were strangers' squads twelve hours ago. Harwell watches from her porch with the ledger on her knee and doesn't comment, but I see her writing.

  Drill status: Marsh's company responded clean on the basic formations but sloppy on the transitions, which is what you get when you mix two units the morning after a forced march. Column to line took eleven seconds with the new men in the ranks, and the standard is six. Line to square took sixteen, and the standard is eight. The 2nd Company veterans are competent but they're learning new sergeants' voices and new squad positions, and that takes repetition, not talent. By Day 5 the transitions should tighten to within two seconds of standard, but right now these men fight in the formation they form up in because switching under fire will cost them seconds they can't afford. Readiness: Fatigued. 3rd Company needs two more days of food and sleep and drill before I'd call them Steady.

  Phelps runs the same drill with 1st Company on the south slope after the wheat detail rotates out. His people are crisper because Phelps has been running 1st Company since the Blackwater and the veterans know his sergeants' cadence in their sleep. The 2nd Company men he absorbed are catching up faster than Marsh's batch, because Phelps puts them in buddy pairs with experienced soldiers and the experienced soldiers do the teaching without being told. Column to line in eight seconds. Line to square in eleven. Not standard, but close enough that I'd trust them in a defensive engagement by tomorrow morning.

  I spend two hours on the east hill with Lincoln's Resolve, glassing the ridgeline to the east. Five ridges between us and the Chestatee, and the cart track we marched in on is visible from this elevation, a brown line cut through green scrub, winding over the ridges and down into the hollows. Nothing moves on it. No dust, no flash of metal, no color that doesn't belong to the landscape. The river crossings are too far to see, but the ridge crests are clear, and there's nobody on them.

  「Tactical Assessment: Eastern approaches clear. No observed Confederate movement on cart track or ridgeline. Visibility: 4 miles (hill elevation + scope). Estimated detection range for mounted column: 6+ miles (dust signature). Weather: Clear, light wind from the south. Assessment: No immediate threat detected. Note: Absence of observed enemy does not confirm absence of enemy.」

  Decker works through the afternoon without stopping. The smithy's grinding wheel is foot-powered and Decker sits at it for three hours straight, holding each scored bearing against the stone and turning it a quarter-degree at a time, wearing down the friction damage until the surface is smooth enough to roll without catching. The smith, Josiah Buell's brother, watches for the first hour with his arms crossed and his jaw set, and then he starts handing Decker tools without being asked, because the work is the work regardless of whether you're shaping horseshoes or golem bearings, and a craftsman recognizes another craftsman's hands even when the craft is different.

  By late afternoon, Decker has three resurfaced bearings and a soapstone mold for the fourth. He pours the replacement bearing at the forge just before sunset, cast iron heated to orange and poured into the mold and left to cool in the evening air. It'll need four hours to set and another hour of hand-finishing before it goes into the joint.

  「Repair Progress: Gospel (Mark IV Sentinel War Golem). Bearings: 3x resurfaced (complete). 1x replacement cast (cooling, 4 hours to set). Joint Housing: Cleaned, inspected, no structural cracks. Lubricant: Rendered goose fat + tallow mix (village-sourced, adequate viscosity for temporary operation). Estimated completion: 0200 hours, Day 4. Cold start sequence: 0200-0400. Combat readiness: Dawn, Day 4. Projected status post-repair: HP 52%, Steam Pressure: Full (after 2-hour warm-up), Shoulder Joint: Functional (field repair, 70% original tolerance). Note: Field-cast bearing won't hold under sustained heavy combat. Replacement with factory-grade bearing recommended at earliest opportunity.」

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  The scout comes in at dusk.

  Private Leland Cobb, one of the six I put on the east hill this morning. He comes down the slope at a run that's too fast for the terrain and too urgent for the hour, and men who run downhill at dusk with that kind of recklessness in their stride don't run because they're late for dinner.

  I'm at the barn door when he reaches me, and his breathing is hard and his face is flushed from the sprint and he's holding one of the regiment's standard-issue scopes in his left hand.

  "Captain." He takes two breaths before the rest of it comes out. "Riders on the third ridge. I counted eight, Confederate cavalry in standard gray, moving west along the ridge crest. They stopped at the high point and one of them had a scope and he spent about two minutes glassing the valley from east to west before they moved on."

  "Moved on which direction?"

  "West, sir, along the ridge." He swallows and his throat works and his hands are still shaking from the run but his eyes are steady. "They didn't come down into the valley and they didn't turn back east. But they saw the village, Captain. From that ridge, on a clear evening, they can see the rooftops and the fields and the smoke from the smithy where Decker was working the forge all afternoon. They saw all of it."

  Eight Confederate cavalry on the third ridge. That ridge is two miles from Lenalune. They didn't ride in, which means they weren't looking for a fight. They glassed the valley and moved west, which means they were scouting, mapping the terrain, identifying settlements, cataloging what they found for someone who sent them out with orders to look and report.

  Breckinridge didn't pick up our trail. He fanned out. He's got cavalry patrols sweeping the hill country west of the Chestatee, and they're doing it a full day earlier than I expected, which means he's either got more riders than I counted at the river or he's pushing the ones he's got harder than standard doctrine requires.

  Either way, the window just got narrower.

  "Get Phelps," I tell Cobb. "Get Mercy and get Marsh. War table in the church, ten minutes."

  I look east toward the ridgeline. The light is going and the ridges are black against a sky that's turning the color of old iron, and somewhere on the other side of those ridges there are more riders, and behind them there is an army, and they know this valley is here.

  I need to tell Harwell before I tell anyone else, because I made her a promise about early warning and the promise starts now.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  === CAMPAIGN STATE: YEAR 3, DAY 3 (DUSK) ===

  Location: Lenalune Village (Hill Country, 6 miles west of Chestatee Ford)

  Virtue & Reputation: Honored (70/100)

  Treasury: 124 Dollars (150 paid to Lenalune Day 2; 6 for medical supplies Day 3)

  Army: 486 soldiers, reorganized into 2 companies + HQ element

  - 1st Company: Lt. Phelps (238 soldiers). Power: 460.

  - 3rd Company: Sgt. Marsh (238 soldiers). Power: 440.

  - HQ Element: Cpt. Hughes (10 soldiers + Mercy, Clementine, Decker). Power: 120.

  - Total Combat Power: 1,020. Overall Morale: 43/100 (Recovering).

  - Combat-Effective: 432. Non-Combat (wounded): 54.

  Golems:

  - Gospel: Powered down for repair. HP 52%. Shoulder joint disassembled, 3 bearings resurfaced, 1 replacement bearing cast and cooling. Estimated combat-ready: Dawn, Day 4 (70% shoulder tolerance, field repair).

  - Big Greta: Abandoned south bank of Chestatee. Core intact. Salvageable but behind Confederate lines.

  - Old Faithful: Destroyed (magazine blast).

  - Temperance: Destroyed (artillery).

  - Lazarus: Stripped chassis in fort ruins.

  Hex-Cannon: Mama Thunder (cleaned, functional, 0 shells remaining)

  Supplies: 2 weeks half-rations (Lenalune agreement). Labor details active in wheat fields.

  Wounded: 26 stretcher (stable), 1 upgraded to walking wounded, 36 walking wounded (light duty), 4 walking wounded (restricted), 1 amputation recovery (Alden).

  ◇ ◆ ◇