The clans had their blades out, but no order held them. Lumina saw it at once. River trolls pushed one way. The old chieftain's fighters pushed another. They shouted over the grinding and drowned each other out. If they ran at the orchard like this, the machines would kill them in pieces. Lumina climbed onto the moot stone and raised her arms. "Wait," she called. "Not scattered. We go as one, or we go to our deaths." No one listened. A hundred voices argued at once. Lumina had united them in spirit. She had no plan to send them forward. A slow voice cut through the noise. "They will not follow shouting." An old purple troll stepped from the ferns. White beard, white topknot, a gray sash across his chest. He walked like the ground belonged to him. The arguing died as he passed. Lumina knew him by name only. Thalgrim Deepknower, who kept to himself and was said to know more than he told. She had never expected him at the moot. "You know the orchard," Lumina said. It was half a question. "Better than any here." Thalgrim reached the stone. He knelt and swept a flat space in the dirt. With one thick finger he drew the grove, the narrow gap between two ridges, the single path the machines had to take. "They came through here. Wide land behind them. Narrow land ahead. Send your fighters at their front and they cut you down." He looked up at Lumina. "Send them here, where the ground pinches, and their machines cannot turn." Lumina crouched beside him. She saw it now. The lights, the falling trees, the one throat of land the enemy had to squeeze through. "We split," she said. "River clan holds the mouth. The rest strike the flank while the machines are stuck." "That is the shape of it." Thalgrim smoothed a fresh line in the dirt. "But only if they move together. One clan late, and the plan dies." Lumina stood. She pointed at the river troll with the waist-long braid. "You hold the narrow ground. Do not charge. Make them come to you." The troll gripped her blade and nodded. Lumina turned to the old chieftain. "Take your fighters to the ridge. Wait for my horn." He did not argue this time. He gathered his clan and went. The shouting was gone. The clans moved in three parts now, each with a task, each waiting on the next. Lumina felt the change in her chest. This was an army, not a mob. Thalgrim rose and brushed the dirt from his hands. "They will hold the plan until the first troll falls," he said quietly. "Then we will see what your banner is worth." Lumina lifted the horn to her lips. Below, in the cold light, the machines ground on. She blew, and the clans of Mossrot began to move as one.

Lumina reached the narrow gap and knew the plan was breaking. The river trolls stood in the throat of land, blades out, but nothing stood between them and the machines. No wall. No stakes. Just wet ground and bare rock. The grinding machines rolled closer, and their treads chewed the earth. The river trolls could not stop steel with their bodies alone. Lumina saw it clearly. They would be crushed, and the whole flanking plan would die with them. "Where is the barricade?" she shouted. The river troll with the waist-long braid turned. "We had no time to build one. They came faster than the horn." Thalgrim appeared beside Lumina, moving slow through the ferns. He did not seem to rush, yet he was there when she needed him. He studied the machines, then the ground, then a slow shape at the edge of the gap. "You are looking for a wall," he said. "You already have one." Lumina followed his gaze. A great tortoise sat in the mud, its shell taller than a troll. Moss covered its back in a thick green mat. Its head and legs were bright pink and purple, and it chewed slowly, ignoring the noise. Lumina had seen the beast graze the gap for years. She had never thought of it as anything but slow. "That will not move for us," she said. "It moves toward the blue light," Thalgrim said. "It always has." He pointed with one thick finger. Along the ridge wall grew a panel of clustered mushrooms, glowing bright blue in the dark. Small beetles crawled among the caps, their backs shimmering with the same blue shine. Lumina understood. She scraped a hand across the fungal panel and tore loose a clump of glowing caps. Beetles scattered up her arm. She held the light low, in front of the tortoise's head, then walked backward into the mouth of the gap. The tortoise lifted its bright head. It took one step. Then another. It followed the glow across the throat of land, until its huge mossy shell filled the narrowest point. "Now brace it," Lumina called. The river trolls jammed rocks and logs against the beast's legs and sides. The tortoise settled, chewing, and did not fight them. Its shell made a wall of living stone across the gap. The first machine hit it. The tortoise did not break. Metal shrieked and treads spun, but the beast held, and the enemy jammed against it. The machines could not turn in the narrow ground. They ground against each other, stuck in a heap of their own steel. Lumina climbed the ridge and raised her horn. The trap was set now, not by a wall, but by a beast no one had valued. She blew, and the chieftain's fighters poured down onto the stalled machines. The gap held. But she saw the enemy's rear ranks halt and turn, already reaching for the ridge behind her fighters.

By dawn the carts stood in a clearing, loaded with the enemy's spoils. Lumina walked the row of captured machines and fuel drums. Her trolls had won these prizes at the depot. But no one among them knew how to wake the machines. She had one night's lead. When the enemy found the false beacon empty, they would turn back. She needed these weapons working before then. Grok Chainbreaker heaved a drum upright and thumped its side. "Full," he said. "But we push these like ox-carts. Their fire sleeps inside, and none of us can rouse it." He wiped his chain and looked at her. "We have the enemy's teeth. We cannot make them bite." Lumina climbed onto a machine's flank. She pulled levers. She struck panels. Nothing moved. The metal sat dead under her hands. Grok tried too, forcing a hatch until his shoulders shook. It held shut. The morning wore on, and the machines stayed cold. Thalgrim Deepknower came out of the ferns. The purple elder had turned the tide at the moot stone once, and the arguing trolls near the carts fell quiet when he passed. He set a broad hand on a fuel line and traced it to a sealed valve. He did not rush. He watched the valve the way a man watches a snare he has seen spring before. "You want the fire," Thalgrim said. "You need the hands that lit it." "Whose hands?" Lumina asked. "Not ours." He turned the valve a quarter and stopped. "There is a market that trades in offworld work. Glowmire. Petra knows the way." Lumina thought of the risk. A day's march. A stranger's price. "And you trust them?" "No," Thalgrim said. "But one there speaks flat truth. Mace Edrow. He posts what will happen before it does." They found Mace at the market board, a gaunt troll in a black robe threaded with blue light. He read a warrant to the crowd for a theft not yet done. He did not soften it. He did not look up until Lumina named her need. "The machines answer to a key," Mace said. "Not metal. A code, spoken through the panel. Your enemy carries it in a light blue case. The one who holds the case gives orders to the fleet." He closed the subject and returned to his board. Lumina's breath caught. The knowledge was clear, and the price was steep. The case was not in the clearing. It rode with the enemy commander, out west, chasing the false beacon. She walked back to the carts with a plan half-formed. Her trolls could not arm themselves from these spoils alone. To wake the machines, she had to steal one blue case from the force now turning back toward her forest. The weapons were hers. The key was still the enemy's, and she had a day to take it.