After a night had passed, dawn was just breaking. The lookout at the Small Fortress northeast of Blue Lake Bay had begun changing shifts, and the sentry who had stood watch for half the night stepped down from his post.
The sentry replacing him still looked half asleep. No one could blame him: he had spent all of yesterday fighting to defend the walls and was utterly exhausted.
He poured a little water from the jug in the watchtower and splashed it on his face, hoping to wake himself up. Then he noticed a mass of figures on the distant plain.
Before the water could wash away his drowsiness, the sight jolted him fully awake.
The Barbarians were back. They were about to attack again. The sentry was reaching for the alarm bell when the Barbarian horns sounded once more, their long notes echoing across the land.
Alarm bells soon rang through every fortress in Blue Lake Bay. The Barbarians had launched another assault.
The bells roused the fortress from its slumber.
Under their detachment leaders' orders, soldiers pulled on their armor, took up their weapons, and climbed the walls to face the Barbarians again.
But the Barbarian army advanced slowly. They made no attempt at a surprise attack, approaching the Small Fortress at their leisure before forming ranks around it.
The defending detachment leader was still trying to make sense of their behavior when he noticed movement behind and to the side of his fortress, toward the Main Fortress. The Barbarian forces there were acting differently from yesterday: they had begun attacking the Main Fortress.
His expression turned grim. The battle ahead could be difficult. With the main Barbarian force attacking the Main Fortress, his troops might receive no support from its ranged units. Those units would naturally have