Chương 48: CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT: SUMMER RAIDS

The summer brought three incursions in six weeks. They were not the coordinated testing engagement of March — they were different in character, smaller in scale but more frequent, hitting different points of the march's northern territory in patterns that Hollis analyzed with careful precision and presented to the council with the measured language of someone who did not want to alarm unnecessarily but also would not soften a conclusion he believed was accurate.

"They're mapping us," he said.

"The March incursion tested the main defensive capability. These summer probes are testing the territory — the patrol coverage, the response times, the positions of the outlying farms, the road network." He laid the map on the table with the incident locations marked.

"The distribution isn't random. It's systematic."

"Which means the intelligence is being used," Marcus said.

"Which means something is using it," Hollis said. The three engagements themselves were managed — the garrison's expanded size and improved training made the smaller incursions manageable without the militia activation, and the response times had improved as Hollis continued refining the protocol. But managed was not the same as comfortable, and comfortable was not the same as secure. After the third engagement, in the first week of August, Marcus made two decisions.

The first was to begin rifle training for Hollis's four selected operators. The rifle was not ready to be deployed operationally — they needed a minimum of six weeks of training before anyone carried it in an engagement — but the summer's incursion pattern made it clear that waiting for optimal readiness was a luxury the threat timeline did not support. They would train toward operational readiness while managing the current threat with existing capability. You could be reading stolen content.

Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. The second decision was to contact the Ironwyrm. He had been sitting on Corvan's account since January. He had been tracking the patrol intelligence, building the model, developing his hypothesis about what the creature was and why it was there. He had been waiting — waiting for more data, for better understanding, for the moment when the risk of inaction exceeded the risk of action.

Three coordinated intelligence-gathering incursions in six weeks, with an engagement in March that had demonstrated tactical adaptation, made the balance of risks clear. He went to the council.

"The thing in the north," he said.

"The Ironwyrm. I want to establish contact." The room was quiet for a moment.

"Contact how?" Okafor said.

"Go north," Marcus said.

"With the hunter who's seen it. With Hollis. With Danny." He paused.

"And with the Ironwyrm's own reports in mind — because everything the patrol intelligence has shown us suggests it has been watching us without aggression for eight months. Something that watches without aggression is either waiting for something or being patient about something, and I want to know which."

"This is extremely speculative," Vance said.

"Yes," Marcus said.

"So is everything we don't have enough information to analyze properly." He paused.

"The information we have is insufficient. The only way to get more is to go get it."

"The risk," Hollis said, not as an objection but as a parameter to be assessed.

"Real," Marcus said.

"Mitigated by the behavioral evidence of eight months. I'm not going alone and I'm not going unarmed. But I'm going." He paused.

"Because whatever is in the deep north is using the goblins, and the goblins are a problem I can eventually manage with a garrison and a wall, but the thing using the goblins is not a problem I can manage with a garrison and a wall, and the only way to address it is to understand it."

The council approved the expedition, with conditions: a full patrol escort to the boundary of the safe zone, a signal protocol so that the garrison knew when to expect return, and a committed withdrawal time — if contact was not established within six hours, they came home. Marcus accepted the conditions. They were reasonable.