Jian

His eyes hurt. It had been, after all, nearly thirty hours since he last rested them. And the distant click of the comms as some message came in felt like nails being driven into the side of his head.

Being so sleep deprived wasn't a strange feat today. Jian doubted many people in the City had slept much at all, since the Golems were first sighted. And some of those people, sleepless and weary, had been working ever since soldiers had pounded on their doors and pulled them out of bed.

His map of the City was half-covered with small tokens, odds and ends that his assistants could scrape up, and a few lottery tokens the soldiers had in their pockets. Most of them were now resting on the map, marking a few critical places where some of the most important fighting was happening.

And aside from Barleybarrel, the war was not being waged by soldiers.

"Any word from Siltmarsh?" Jian asked one of his aides, a military courier who looked distinctly less than happy to be here. Her disapproval was present, but never voiced, an unspoken protest that had faded over the long hours of work.

After all, unlike anyone who didn't rank quite a bit higher than she did, this aide knew what was happening in the City.

The aide flipped through several new communications for a moment, and tapped her finger on the map. On the east side, nearly twenty miles from the City proper, Siltmarsh was a harvesting depot that had grown into a town, and represented the largest grain hubs outside of the close fields behind Godichelli's Wall. The dot on the map representing the town had two lottery tokens and a hair clip stacked beside it.

Five lottery tokens for the hundreds of tons of grain that still needed to be pulled. And one hair clip for the labour crews working there.

"No, Commander," the aide replied after a moment. Commander, Jian recalled, a title that wasn't in the army's chain of command. A title granted for people who weren't normally in the command, but under certain circumstances would be obeyed as if they were. "Nothing about Siltmarsh."

Which meant work was in progress. Success — or disaster — would set the comms abuzz.

Forty-six lottery tokens lay on the map. Each one represented a source of harvestable food, mostly grains and vegetables that could keep for a long time. Each token represented about a week's worth of food for the City, one top of what was already in the silos. Nineteen of those tokens now sat inside the City, perhaps the second best piece of news Jian had received since the invasion began.

That good news wasn't an accident, wasn't simply good fortune. It was the achievement of the labours in the fields, the farmers and stonemasons and botanists and surveyors. The frontiersmen in a world where the frontier wanted to kill you. Unlike so much of the City, they knew the stakes. And had answered the call better than Jian had expected. As well, in fact, as he had dared to hope.

Far better than the army had, so far.

The hair clips represented the people Jian judged critical to surviving the invasion. Bringing down the Golems, surviving the lean years that would follow, and building back rapidly enough to grow the City past the heights it had already achieved, these were all part of what Jian was willing to call surviving. To achieve that, one of those clips rested on the stack of tokens beside Siltmarsh on his map.

Two clips rested in the heart of the City. One atop the Crafter Guildhall, where the City's mightiest weapons sat on their hands and waited for the end of the world to reach them. That it was being done by the command of the Lord Captain was galling enough, but the guildmasters, having just seen their chosen members die, would be happy for the excuse to keep themselves huddled beneath the rest of the City.

The other clip next to it represented the army. Or at least the bulk of it. And it's location actually pleased Jian. "Find me the survey reports from the Fourth," he said to no one in particular. His mind was too preoccupied to worry about names. "The ones about the effectiveness of cannon against the Golems."

It wasn't the first time he had asked for those survey reports. Documents written up during the Third and Fourth invasions, the only two where cannons had been tried against those walking mountains. And each time someone set those reports in front of him, he reflexively asked them where the rest of the reports were. Two invasions — two times when the only alternative to a Crafter was artillery — and forty-seven pages of notes were all they had to show for it.

He leafed through the notes, focusing on the Fourth. The Golem's march through the districts of Barren, Whistlewood Hill, fording the river, smashing through Gallowglass, and finally falling just past the walls of The Shadowless Streets, half a mile from High Central. It was the last Golem to fall, deliberately. The others were on the south side of the river; once the Golem forded the water, it had to abandon the support of the Gloamtaken, and the defenders during the Fourth could focus their efforts on it.

Even then, Gallowglass had been called Stonefarm until the Golem marched through it, leaving dead and broken glass from ruined buildings. And The Shadowless Streets, where six Crafters let their broken rage run unchecked, didn't bear that name because the district was left unscathed.

There was a single strange passage in the reports. A throwaway line Jian had largely discounted before now. They had tried a barrage of Valkyries before the river, a failed stand that had cost the City Crafters and guns it could barely afford to fail. But the scouts who waited on the far side testified they couldn't see any damage. That line now put a bitter chill in Jian that wouldn't leave, no matter how warm the room was.

"The Lord Captain is making a mistake," Jian muttered.

Saying that aloud was also a mistake. His worries weren't something the military couriers around him needed to hear. But the thought that inspired it deserved to be acted on.

Jian took a charcoal stick and scribed a note on a piece of paper.

For Alessandra Dremora, as follows: reports from previous invasions suggest the Golems heal in some way. This can be verified, since every Golem now marching should have been left chipped and scarred by the Guild. Recommend having a scouting team inspect one of the advancing enemies before we have to make a stand.

Jian handed the message to an aide, and waited for the now familiar clicking of signal-code being entered, before he returned his attention to the map.

"Is this the most recent position of the Golems?" Jian asked.

Of the seven Golems still standing, not one had advanced beyond the walls where they had fought the Crafters. It had been five hours since the last Golem had actually breached the wall after its battle with the Crafter strike team, and the Golems hadn't yet advanced to break through the next layer of the City's defences. Reports from the walls waiting for them mentioned the monsters stood so still the troops could almost believe them to be the statues they looked like.

Like they were waiting for something.

"It is, sir. We asked them to verify that someone wasn't just forwarding an old message by mistake, the last six have read exactly the same," the unnervingly young woman working the comm relay said. Jian wasn't sure if she was just that young, or if his perception of youth was coloured by how fearfully unprepared the City now looked as the Golems kicked in the walls.

Lost in his own musings, and still paying attention to the near constant clicking from the comm machine, Jian almost missed that young woman asking, "Commander? Why have they stopped?"

Jian wished he had an answer to that. Had wished so for hours. But to potentially the doom of the entire City, he had nothing more than guesses to offer. "I don't know. There's nothing in the records about the Golems stopping for hours, during any of the earlier invasions."

"And if you had to guess?" she asked.

Jian sighed, and tapped on one of the seven dud Salamander shells, sitting on their bases, that represented the seven standing Golems. The eighth lay on its side, the greatest single victory anyone in the City had ever achieved. A miracle Jian could not hope for again.

A miracle, Jian worried, the City might need to be repeated, if things kept going the way they were.

"There is a suspicion that the Golems can heal their wounds somehow, that the damage the Crafters did to them can be undone." Jian felt cold as he spoke, the words like plunging his thoughts and his head into icy water. Saying it aloud, the possibility made a dreadful sense, answering the mystery of the Golem's pause almost too comfortably. "I suspect it's the case. A Golem is as tall as an apartment tower, and is considerably heavier. Its blows shatter walls a hundred feet high, and nearly half as thick. Every act damages its body, else it ignores the laws of nature even more thoroughly than a Crafter."

"Does that mean we should be sending teams after it, sir? Strike them before they recuperate?"

"No," Jian said immediately. He knew his answer was true, but the question inspired a dozen different questions that deserved answers, and he laid three reports from stacks on the floor beside him onto the table. "We missed our window. By the time we put enough cannons on trains to make a difference, they would have finished. Those pauses," and here he tapped the survey done after the Fourth, "were only a few hours long. Half a day, at the most. And right now, the farming crews of Siltmarsh, and all of Barleybarrel, are still out there because we don't have enough trains."

"So what can we do with that, sir?" she asked.

"Pick our stands carefully. And make sure they succeed," Jian replied. "The Crafters bought us half a day to make preparations. Every hour the Golems stop, is an hour to bring in food and people, to strike more Valkyrie rounds, to prepare ourselves for where we fight them next. Perhaps even pick where the battles will happen."

And who will do that fighting, ideally. Get the Rangers back to Colonel Dremora, and especially Polden's apprentice.

Vincent Hearthsward. Perhaps the single most unexpected thing since the Fifth began was Jian trying to prevent the end of the City, and remembering the name of an apprentice Crafter. But the boy had stood the walls as his master and her comrades fought a Golem. That alone, was worth noting. But one of the three reports he dropped on the desk, a comm missive submitted by the now somewhat infamous Corporal Redgrave, insinuated that some power had deliberately reached out and quashed one of Vincent's Crafts. A feat the Guild had no real explanation for.

Because until that moment, there were no reports of any other power behind the Gloam, asides from the puppeteered dead, and the mountains of stone. Which meant that either it had never happened before, or no one had ever survived to report it before. Either possibility meant that whatever Vincent had been doing at the time, the powers behind the Gloam considered a threat.

"But the Lord Captain is ordering a stand against all seven of them, isn't he? Sir?"

"He is," Jian said, and he tapped the spots marked out with small rocks. There had been a dearth of tokens to use to mark the map without writing on it, these had been chiseled from a nearby wall. "Two reasons we need to pick our fights carefully. First, if we don't succeed in a fight, the damage we do will be fixed before we fight it again. Second, there's a good chance we will lose the resources we use to fight a Golem, if we don't succeed. Ideally, we should pick three, and make sure we succeed."

"Which three?"

Jian tapped on the map. "These four won't have to cross the river to reach the heart of the City. Once the Golem crosses, they leave the support of the Gloamtaken, since the dead cannot cross the river. They also leave the support of the Gloam, since it's easier to redirect the fires and keep the Gloam at bay when the dead aren't trying to kill you."

"But isn't it better to try the Lord Captain's plan, and fight all of them before the reach the City? The damage even a single Golem can do is..."

"Something you and I will witness, even if we win. Mark my words, the Golems will march through the City streets. Abyss below, we might very well lose against every one," Jian shuddered. "Hell, unless we manage to drop at least two, we've lost."

"But our chances are better if we try against all eight, aren't they?"

"The decision is out of our hands, regardless," Jian admitted. "All I can do, right now, is try to make sure one will succeed, then try to make sure a second does."

"And your first one, that will be Colonel Dremora with the First?"

"Glad to see you've been paying attention. After her, I need to pick another two, who are likely to hold even when things go wrong, and will still have the sense to pull out when things look hopeless. The worst thing that can happen is the guns are left behind, and demolished when the Golem comes through the wall," Jian said.

A moment after he stopped, so did the clicking coming from the comm machine.

"Finally done your novel?" Jian asked.

"One minute, sir," the comms officer said, ignoring the barb. Which Jian suspected meant the information he was transcribing was startlingly important. "This is a report forwarded to us from Barleybarrel. It details a second encounter with what they describe as 'a power behind the Gloam' that actively tried to quash some of the fires burning in the field, along with the torches of a platoon of Rangers. As well as their ammunition."

"The Rangers? Are they?"

"Three wounded, one killed. Special Talent Hearthsward intervened, covered their retreat back to the town. Captain Dremora and Hearthsward suspect this enemy cannot extinguish the fires pumped from the Spire," the comms officer reported.

Which made sense to Jian. Else, what need for the Golems. As for Vincent Hearthsward's intervention, well, the need to have him return to the City has only grown.

"Sir, I'll have the rest of this over in a minute. Master Sergeant Redgrave is concise, but there's a lot in this report. I don't want to miss anything."

Jian frowned. "Redgrave?"

"Yes, sir. Master Sergeant Valen Redgrave. Comm listing 1-1-1-4-1," the comms officer said. He frowned, and scratched his head. "Odd, I didn't think the Rangers had four platoons."

Jian smiled, and tapped one of the reports on his table. "Ask the First Stone to verify that, but I suspect the Rangers have picked up some people, since they went to Barleybarrel. And if Redgrave is a sergeant, I would very much like to know who his lieutenant is."

Because whoever it was, to be pulled into the rangers above even Redgrave, was someone Jian suspected would be a name he needed to know, before this invasion was over.