Dearest Martha, they've been standing outside the walls for four days now, and I haven't slept more than an hour at a stretch. The dead don't need rest or food or water or powder. They just stand there in the mud and the rain, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at us with whatever's left of their faces. Some of them are wearing our blue and some of them are wearing gray, and it doesn't matter anymore because they all serve the same general now.

  I won't lie to you and tell you I know how this ends. But I know what I won't do, and that's enough to keep me upright.

  Give my love to the boy and tell him his father still remembers what right looks like.

  Yours in all things and whatever comes after,

  Hughes.

  * * *

  The fog sits on Fort Independence, heavy, thick, and it hasn't lifted in four days.

  I lean against the parapet with Lincoln's Resolve braced on the stone and look over the treeline through the scope for the ninth time since dawn. The ranging marks put the first row of dead at six hundred yards, standing in the churned mud of what used to be Harlan Creedy's tobacco field. They're packed tight enough that I can't see dirt between them, rank after rank stretching back into the fog where the tree line used to be visible from this position last week.

  They don't move, and that's the part that works on your nerves worse than anything, worse than if they charged or screamed or beat drums. They just stand there in their ruined uniforms and their borrowed weapons. Union boys and Confederate boys and old men and young men and a few that look like they weren't men at all when they died, mixed together without order or rank, holding whatever weapon was closest when the necromancers called them up. No sound from them, no shuffling, no groaning, just the rain hitting their shoulders and running off the same way it runs off the fence posts. They don't blink because most of them don't have eyelids anymore.

  Soldiers of yesterday from either side, raised by General Beauregard to serve again.

  「Liberator's Gaze: Undead infantry. Estimated strength: 9,000-12,000. Formation: static perimeter. Necromantic binding: strong. Individual combat value: negligible. Mass combat value: overwhelming. Commander intent: siege pressure. No hostile advance detected.」

  The Gaze confirms what my eyes already know, but the confirmation sits in my chest differently than the observation. Numbers make it real in a way that looking doesn't. Nine to twelve thousand, and those are just the ones I can see through scope and Gaze combined. The living Confederate army behind them has been building fires and singing hymns every night, voices carrying through the fog clear enough that I can pick out the words from the parapet. I can hear the ring of hammers on anvils when the wind shifts. They're building siege works and they don't care that we know it.

  I count standards through the scope and stop at forty-six because counting higher won't change our situation. Forty-six infantry standards means somewhere between nine and twelve thousand foot, and the Gaze's estimate tracks clean with mine.

  "Captain." Corporal Ezra Tuttle appears at my shoulder, collar turned up against the rain, a tin cup of something hot in each hand. He's nineteen and looks forty-four after the last week. "Sergeant Major says the eastward watch spotted movement along the creek bed again."

  I take the cup without looking away from the scope. It isn't coffee, just chicory boiled in rainwater, but it's warm and that's all I need it to be. "Same as yesterday?"

  "Cavalry screen, she thinks, but the fog's too heavy to get a proper count." Tuttle sips from his own cup and tries not to look at the field below us. He's been trying not to look for four days running. "And Lieutenant Phelps wants a word when you've got a minute."

  "Tell him I'll be at the war table in twenty minutes."

  Tuttle nods and disappears back down the stone steps, moving with the hunched efficiency of a man who's learned to stay below the parapet line. Smart boy, and he'll make sergeant if we live through the week.

  I take one more look through the scope before I go. The dead are still there, still watching the walls with their ruined faces turned upward, mouths slack, eyes that don't track but somehow point in the same direction. At the back of the field, where the fog thins just enough to make out shapes, I can see the outline of something much larger than a man, forty feet at the shoulder at least, bones the color of old tallow, wings folded against a ribcage you could park a wagon inside.

  That's Dixie, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard's skeletal wyvern, his prize from the Battle of Shiloh where he died the first time and came back wearing a Colonel's stars and a smile stitched across a face that no longer had the muscles to make one. He rides her the way he used to ride his chestnut mare back when he was still breathing, with a gentleman's posture and an aristocrat's contempt for everything below him.

  I knew him before the war split him in half and put the halves on different sides. He was my commanding officer when I still wore Federal blue and believed in the chain of command, a good tactician and polite to a fault, the sort of man who invited junior officers to dinner and quizzed them on Napoleon's campaigns over brandy and cigars. That was before the Confederacy offered him something the Federal Remnant couldn't match: a second life and an army that never breaks.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  Fort Independence wasn't built to hold what it's holding right now.

  It was a Federal border garrison designed for two companies of regulars and a supply depot, stone walls twenty feet high with four corner bastions and a parade ground big enough to drill a battalion. The Federal Remnant built it during the first year of the Fracture and then forgot about it, the way they forget about everything that isn't within shouting distance of the capital.

  Now it holds the 2nd Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, the Garryowen, six hundred and thirty-one soldiers as of this morning's roll call, down from the seven hundred and twelve we marched in with nine days ago. Eighty-one dead from the skirmishes along the river, and none wounded, because the things Beauregard uses for scouts don't leave wounded.

  And then there are the civilians, two hundred and sixteen men, women, and children from the townships of Millhaven and Porter's Creek, gathered up during our fighting retreat because leaving them behind meant leaving them to the infernal engines. I've seen what those engines do to the living, how they burn one soul at a time to fuel the dead, and the process takes hours while the screaming carries for miles.

  I walk the interior of the fort and take stock of what we've got. The garrison is stretched past anything it was designed for, and four days of siege have ground the margins down to nothing.

  Powder stores: enough for six hours of sustained fire, maybe seven if we ration volleys and pray for accuracy. Rations: nine days at current distribution, but that's feeding eight hundred and forty-seven mouths on supplies meant for three hundred. Water: the cisterns are full from the rain, which is the one mercy this weather's given us. Morale: Steady, but it's the steady of men who haven't been tested yet, not the steady of men who've been tested and held. One bad day turns Steady into Shaken, and Shaken into Breaking if the second bad day follows too close behind the first.

  The five war golems stand in a row along the north wall, each one twelve feet tall and shaped roughly like a man if a man were built from boiler plate and bad intentions. They're old Federal models, Mark IV Sentinels, powered by steam cores that wheeze and rattle like consumptive old men. The Army stopped making these fifteen years ago, and the replacement parts dried up not long after. Corporal Amos Decker, our best artificer, has been cannibalizing one to keep the other four operational. He's named the donor golem Lazarus, on account of how many times he's pulled parts off it and put them back.

  "Morning, Captain." Decker looks up from the open chest cavity of the nearest golem, his hands black to the elbows with grease and soot. He's got a wrench in one hand and a prayer book in the other, which about sums up our maintenance situation. "Got number two's left knee working again, but she's pulling to the right and I can't figure out why."

  "How long can they fight?"

  Decker wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist and leaves a smear of dark grease across his temple. "Honest answer or the one you want to hear?"

  "Honest."

  "Four of them can go maybe six hours on a full head of steam before the cores start overheating, and that's if nobody hits them hard enough to crack a seal." He taps the boiler plate with his wrench and it rings dull, which isn't what it's supposed to do. "Number four, Big Greta, she's running on about sixty percent. I've been bleeding steam from three since last night just to keep her pressure up."

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "Can they hold a gate?"

  "They can hold anything for a while, Captain." Decker puts the prayer book in his breast pocket and picks up a second wrench. "Everything holds for a while."

  Unit readiness on the golems: Fatigued. Four operational, one stripped for parts, and the four that walk are running on patched seals and borrowed time. Six hours of sustained combat before the steam cores redline. After that, they're twelve-foot statues and nothing more. Decker can keep them breathing, but he can't make them young again.

  I leave him to his work and keep walking.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  The war table is set up in what used to be the garrison commander's quarters, a room with stone walls and a fireplace big enough to roast a hog. We haven't had a hog in weeks. The fire burns low on scraps of broken furniture, and the room smells of wet wool and lamp oil and the sour stink of men who haven't bathed since the retreat from the river.

  Lieutenant Josiah Phelps is already there, standing over the map with both hands flat on the table. He's twenty-six, thin as a fence rail, and the best tactical mind I've got since Silas Vane took a musket ball through the hip at Porter's Creek. Phelps doesn't have Vane's gift for seeing the whole board, but he's methodical and honest and he doesn't sugarcoat numbers, which is worth more to me right now than brilliance.

  Sergeant Major Mercy stands in the corner with Mama Thunder propped against the wall beside her. Eight feet of sanctified iron and consecrated brass, the barrel thick as a man's thigh, the stock reinforced with bands of cold-forged steel. Mercy is close to seven feet tall herself, shoulders broad enough to fill a doorframe, arms heavy with the muscle that comes from years of hauling golem parts before she decided she'd rather carry the biggest hex-cannon in the battalion than fix someone else's machine. She doesn't speak until spoken to in these meetings, but her face tells you everything you need to know about how she reads a situation. Right now her jaw is set and her eyes haven't left the map since I walked in, and Mercy's face doesn't look that way unless we're in real trouble.

  Sister Clementine sits by the fire with a flask tucked in the crook of one arm and a field surgery kit in the other hand, stitching a wound on Private Sullivan Ballou's forearm. Ballou's gritting his teeth and trying not to make noise, because Clementine doesn't believe in wasting the good anesthetic on anything that won't kill you.

  "Waste of laudanum on a scratch," she says, threading the needle through skin without looking up. "You want numbness, Private, you should've joined the Confederacy. They've got a whole program for that."

  "Captain's here," Phelps says, and straightens up from the map.

  I close the door behind me and move to the table. The map shows Fort Independence at the center, the river to the south, and the Confederate positions marked in red charcoal based on what our scouts could see before the fog rolled in. The red covers a lot of the map.

  "Give me what's changed since midnight," I say.

  Phelps runs a hand through hair that hasn't seen a comb in a week. "Two things. First, a rider came through the Confederate pickets under a white flag about an hour ago. Confederate colonel named Breckinridge, one of Beauregard's staff officers. He's waiting in the gatehouse under guard. He's carrying a written message from the General."

  "And the second thing?"

  "We finally got a pigeon through to Federal Command at Columnus." Phelps pauses, and the pause tells me the news before his mouth does. "They responded."

  "And what did they have to say about our situation?"

  Phelps picks up a folded piece of paper from the table and holds it out to me. I take it and read the contents, which don't take long because there isn't much to read. Four lines in a clerk's neat hand, stamped with the Federal seal. It says that the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry is to maintain its current position and await further orders. It says that reinforcements are being considered but cannot be guaranteed at this time. It says that the Federal Remnant appreciates our service and sacrifice.

  I read it twice to make sure I haven't missed anything. I haven't. There's no timetable for relief. No mention of the civilians. No strategic guidance beyond stay where you are, which is what men write when they've already written you off and they're waiting for the official confirmation to make it permanent.

  "Stay and die well," Mercy says from her corner, and her voice carries the flat certainty of someone who's read this letter before under different names and different seals. "That's what it says if you scrape the polish off."

  "It says what it says." I fold the letter and put it in my coat pocket. "What about Beauregard's message?"

  Phelps pulls a second document from beneath the map, this one on heavier paper with the Iron Confederacy's seal in black wax. The handwriting is Beauregard's, elegant and precise, penmanship that comes from a man raised to believe presentation matters as much as substance. I recognize it from the commendations he used to write for his officers back when those officers included me.

  I read it aloud so the room can hear.

  "Captain Granthem.

  You are outnumbered and without relief. I respect the fighting quality of your regiment and I have no wish to spend my soldiers, living or otherwise, on walls that will fall regardless. I offer you terms. Surrender the civilian population under your protection and you and your men will be permitted to march south under arms to Federal territory. I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman. You have until dawn tomorrow. After that, I will take the fort and everyone inside it. Sincerely, Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, Army of the Shenandoah."

  The room goes quiet when I finish reading.

  Clementine snips the thread on Ballou's stitches and pats his arm. "Go on, Private, you're done." She waits until Ballou leaves before she speaks again. "He wants the civilians for the engines."

  "Yes, he does." There isn't any point in pretending otherwise, and every person in this room knows it.

  "Two hundred and sixteen souls to keep his dead army walking and his wyvern in the air." Clementine takes a pull from her flask. "And the Federal Remnant's answer is stay put and look pretty."

  "That about covers it." I look at the map and the red marks that surround us on every side except the south wall, and even that's only clear because the river's there and Beauregard knows we can't cross it fast enough to matter with civilians in tow. "Phelps, what's the military assessment if we refuse his terms?"

  Phelps doesn't hesitate, which means he's already run the numbers before I walked in. "They'll breach the walls within six hours of a full assault. We can slow them down at the bastions with the golems and Mercy's cannon, but we don't have the powder to sustain a defense longer than that. If they commit the wyvern, it's closer to four hours. If they attack at night, the dead get a combat bonus from the darkness and our accuracy drops by half. Best case, we hold for a day. Worst case, they're inside the walls by noon."

  「Tactical Assessment: Fort Independence. Defensive viability: 6-24 hours depending on enemy commitment. Garrison combat effectiveness: 72%. Supply constraint: powder (6 hours sustained fire). Critical vulnerability: wyvern. No counter-air capability. Probability of successful defense without relief: 8%.」

  Eight percent. The Gaze doesn't round up for morale and it doesn't factor in stubbornness. Eight percent means we lose this fort and everyone in it ninety-two times out of a hundred, and the eight where we survive probably involve a miracle I don't have the rank to requisition.

  "And the civilians during all of this?" I ask, because the numbers don't matter if the people behind the numbers are dead either way.

  "The magazine basement holds about a hundred. The rest would be exposed in the courtyard. If the walls come down, they've got nowhere to go."

  I look at Mercy. She hasn't moved from her corner, and Mama Thunder leans against the stone beside her, barrel angled toward the ceiling, stock resting on the floor. "What do you think?"

  "I think we've got six hundred soldiers and two hundred civilians and an enemy that wants the civilians alive and us dead or gone." She shifts her weight, which is the closest thing to fidgeting I've ever seen from her. "I think we aren't leaving those people to the engines. So the question's just how we go about refusing."

  I turn back to the map. The fog outside presses thick against the windows, and below us in the courtyard I can hear the low murmur of soldiers who know that something's being decided above them. The dead in the field are still watching the walls. They'll watch all night. They'll watch until Beauregard tells them to do something else.

  Dawn is fourteen hours away. That's what I've got to work with.

  ◇ ◆ ◇

  I stand at the parapet after the meeting and watch the dead through the scope one more time. Colonel Breckinridge is still in the gatehouse, waiting for an answer I haven't given yet. The fog has gotten thicker. I can barely make out Dixie's silhouette now, just the suggestion of bones and folded wings against the gray.

  Six hundred and thirty-one soldiers. Morale: Steady, but untested against a full assault, and every hour without a plan erodes that steadiness by fractions I can feel even if I can't measure them. Two hundred and sixteen civilians who trusted a Federal uniform to keep them alive. Five war golems running on borrowed steam and a mechanic's prayers. One hex-cannon with a woman behind it who doesn't miss. Fourteen hours until the killing starts, and powder enough for six of them.

  The Union says hold. Beauregard says surrender the innocent or die. Neither of those is an answer I can live with, and both of them know it.

  I fold the scope and pocket it and head back down to make a decision that's going to get people killed no matter which way it goes.

  * * *

  === CAMPAIGN STATE: YEAR 3, DAY 1 ===

  Location: Fort Independence (Federal Border Garrison)

  Virtue & Reputation: Pragmatic (50/100)

  Treasury: 340 Dollars

  Army: 631 soldiers (2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry "Garryowen")

  - 5 War Golems (4 operational, 1 parts donor) [Readiness: Fatigued]

  - 1 Hex-Cannon (Mama Thunder)

  - Infantry: 580 Regulars, 22 Sharpshooters

  - Cavalry: 18 Scouts (dismounted)

  - Support: 6 Chaplains, 4 Field Surgeons, 1 Artificer

  Morale: Steady (55/100), untested against full assault

  Supplies: Low (9 days rations, powder for ~6 hours sustained fire)

  Civilians: 216 (Millhaven and Porter's Creek refugees)

  Key Intel: Confederate force est. 9,000-12,000 undead infantry + unknown living forces.

  Beauregard's ultimatum expires at dawn (~14 hours).

  Skeletal wyvern (Dixie) confirmed on station.

  Recent Political Impact: Federal Remnant orders to hold position; no relief promised.

  Tactical Assessment: 8% defensive viability without relief.

  ======================================