The barbarians reached the town of Kellsworth on the eighteenth day of their southward march and Kellsworth taught them that not every soft target was soft.
The town's garrison commander was a captain named Merritt who had been reading the dispatches from the northeastern campaign with the attention that survival demanded. He had read about Fort Harken's fall. He had read about the Snowe dominion's defense. He had read about the earthworks that General Snowe had built using techniques adapted from the orcish army that the kingdom had been fighting on the eastern front.
Merritt had three hundred soldiers and a town whose stone walls were twelve feet high and not designed to resist thundermakers. He had four days before the barbarian column arrived. He used the four days the way Snowe's dispatches suggested they should be used.
He dismantled the stone walls.
