In the quiet after the fight the commanders gathered, reviewing losses, counting the soldiers. A thousand small human things — water for the injured, blankets for the cold, the reassignment of scouts — had to be done. The army's victory was a narrow band of order in a day that threatened to become a spreading wound.
Kreg watched the field from his own vantage at a distance, a man wrapped in shadow and strategy. The news of the defeat of the first wave — word carried to him in ragged packets by riders who moved like remorse — did not distress him. He had expected it. He had placed his men like pawns designed to be sacrificed when a particular domino tipped.
A small, private smile creased his mouth. In his mind the picture was complete: he had drawn the army into a space where they would commit their forces and show their hands. He had watched who moved where and how a commander like Colins would rely on his reserves. This was the point of an opening skirmish: to observe reaction, to chart the map of muscle and moral.
"So they bite," he murmured, half to himself. "They bite and show their teeth. Perfect. When the main hammer falls next day from now, the places they have given strength will be empty and the places they have ignored will be the ones we take."
He laughed quietly then, a piece of sound that looked small and fragile because it was only an internal chord. The men around him heard nothing; he kept his pleasure to himself. The first wave's rout was not defeat for him; it was the expected opening move, the reveal he had planned for so he could shape the second act.
When the last of the routed enemy's bodies were counted and the immediate triage done, the field quieted into the small hum of men mending.
Colins looked down the ridge toward the inner ring where the city's smoke still curled. He could see, faint as a promise, the roof where some of gis comrades had once been posted but now none of them are with him, in this warlike situation, some are missing while they have found some of them's body. He looked at Bronn — young but solid — and at Solis's name in a list he had been given earlier as a Postknight to watch.
Selvine, who is standing near him, tightens her hand around on his arm. "We have to buy them time." She said. "That's all we can buy today."
Colins' gaze flicked out to the horizon, to the distant camp where Kreg's banners had nested and then fled. (Sigh) "Time is an essential currency for now." he said. "We should spend it wisely now. Tonight we should mend and prepare. There is a chance that we have to hold them tomorrow again."
Selvine nodded. Her face was filled with a blankness of resolve. "And what if tomorrow requires more than holding? Then what will we do?"
Colins did not answer with words then. He had the look of a man who had learned that sometimes you must accept the loss of an old map and draw a new one with dirt and blood. He raised his voice then, and the men turned to listen because in his voice there was not fantasy but the steadiness of a man who will get them through.
"Tonight we will tend the wounded. But for tomorrow we have to be prepared anew. Rest while you can. We stand together in this situation."
They did. They moved through the field to pull the blankets close and to mop the blood from hands that had been given terrible work. The Grand Prism Army had stoked its engine and bought a day. For a sliver that mattered, the city would not fall.
For now at least.
---
Meanwhile Kreg, alone in his tent, watched the stars with a patience that smelled almost clinical. He plotted the next chords of his campaign: the second hammer stroke would fall where the city expects the least. He smiled in a way that was more demonic than a human. The first wave's failure, in his perspective, was not a failure at all but the pleasing sound of a secure safe beginning to open.
Outside, the wounded were carried, women and children are being counted in order to ensure if anyone is missing, medics tirelessly running various directions to tend the needed ones and in the middle of this mess, Solis kept running his circuits of pity and action. The day had offered a small victory — and also the weight of the knowledge that a single such victory could be turned into a larger loss by the hands of a man who understands the public theatre as a weapon.