Silver powerforce's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Silver walked the hall at first light with a lamp and a length of twine. She had held the place for a week, but a week was not a wall. The main door opened straight onto the long room. The long room opened onto the yard. A rider with ten friends could stand at the gate and see her chair from horseback. She stopped in the center of the floor and set the lamp down. She needed the layout fixed before another rider tested her. She called Celeste and Pearl in from the yard. Celeste came with her sword still on. Pearl came with chalk on her hands from marking drill lines. Silver uncapped the red-tipped marker and drew the hall on the whiteboard: door, long room, chair, kitchen, side stair. Then she drew a second wall three paces inside the front door. "Inner gate," she said. "Timber and iron. Two guards, always. Nobody sees the chair from the yard." Celeste read the board and shook her head once. "Timber burns. Put stone on the outside face." Pearl leaned over the table. "And move the chair. If it faces the door, a knife throw ends you. Turn it to the side stair. You see them coming, they see your hair, not your throat." Silver looked at both of them. She wiped the chair mark and drew it again against the side wall. They worked through the morning. Celeste marked choke points. Pearl walked the yard with the twine and staked out where the inner gate would sit. Silver sent two recruits for stone and two more for beams. By noon the plan had four rooms the guard could hold even if the front door fell. By dusk the frame for the inner gate stood rough but standing, and the chair sat where a thrown blade could not find it. A rider from Maplecrest came in at last light. Green hood, pocket watch on a chain. Sierra dismounted at the gate and did not wait to be led. "Goldie sent me," she said. "A party of six left the eastern ridge this morning. They asked for your hall by name." Silver's hand closed on the marker. "How long?" "Two days. Maybe less." Silver walked Sierra through the half-built hall. Sierra looked at the inner gate frame and at the turned chair. "Hold here," she said, tapping the choke behind the gate. "Not at the door. The door is bait." Silver nodded. She sent Pearl to double the night watch and Celeste to finish the gate by dawn. She wrote the warning on the board in red and capped the marker. The hall was defensible. The warning had come in time. But six riders were coming, and Silver had built a stronghold she had not yet tested. She sat in the turned chair and watched the door she had made into bait, and waited for the count to start.