A week later the new fence line at the village entrance looked like something out of a mid?tier fortification guide instead of a sad collection of sticks.

  The planks we’d coated in resin had gone from scrubby pine to dark, stone?dull slabs. Kael swung a mallet at one of the posts, put his back into it. The head bounced. The post didn’t even flinch.

  Kids whooped. Someone started a round of polite, grown?up clapping that turned into real applause.

  I leaned on a fence rail and eyed the inventory piled under a stretched canvas awning. Barrels of sap: two, both scabbed with dried resin around the lids. Racks of glowgourds in their husk?dull daylight state, stacked three high. A single dented bucket of fat, white and waxy, already portioned for soap.

  Gideon stood near the awning with a slate and a scrap of parchment, lips moving as he wrote.

  “In my father’s day,” he muttered, “we would mark the gathering routes by the old boundary stones, then draw lots for shifts…” His chalk squeaked as he drew a neat grid. “If we send four teams, staggered over… no, three, then we’d still have men for watch duty…”

  I stepped closer and tapped the slate with a knuckle.

  “You’re scheduling like you have ten extra bodies and no monsters.”

  He blinked up from his grid.

  “Well, traditionally the charter calls for—”

  “Traditionally you didn’t have wargs in the river and a murder?ostrich on retainer.”

  His gaze flicked past me to where Beakly perched on a wagon tongue, feathers fluffed in the weak sun. He watched the bustle with that flat, unimpressed stare, beak resting on his breast like he judged the entire project.

  Gideon lowered his voice.

  “The wood will hold. But we’ve… used more tallow than expected. Mara tells me the soap nearly emptied our stores. And the resin”—he glanced at the barrels—“drinks sap.”

  “We’re fine on glowgourds,” I went. “Sap and fat, though, yeah. For the next batch we'll need to tap until the trees complain and kill more pigs.”

  Finn popped up on my other side, face smudged with resin.

  “Grumbleboar patrol?” His eyes lit. “Can I come?”

  “No,” three adults around us answered at once.

  I pushed off the rail.

  “I think we outsource.”

  Beakly watched me approach, one golden eye tracking my steps. His feathers flattened as if he already knew he wouldn’t like this.

  I stopped in front of his beak and folded my arms.

  “Count Chocobo,” I told him, “Oakhaven humbly requests your assistance in acquiring one (1) extremely unlucky boar. Payment in head scritches and the choice bits of the carcass.”

  He clicked his beak once. No enthusiasm. The big talons shifted on the wagon tongue, claws scraping wood. His wings lifted and settled in a slow, annoyed shiver.

  “It’s not like you don’t hunt them anyway,” I went on. “This time you just bring one back mostly intact instead of turning it into modern art.”

  A soft rumble rolled out of his chest. I scratched the feathers where his neck met shoulder, felt the corded strength under the plumage.

  “Please. We need fat for more soap and armor dressing and I would like this fence between Finn and anything with tusks.”

  Gideon hovered a cautious distance away.

  “Are you quite, ah, certain he… understands?”

  Beakly swung his head toward the mayor, fixing him with a long stare that made Gideon’s shoulders draw up. Then he snapped his beak twice, sharp, like punctuation, and hopped off the wagon.

  “Nope,” I answered. “But he knows ‘hunt’ and he knows ‘boar.’”

  I pointed toward the treeline where the first attack had come from.

  “Boar, Beakly. Big, smelly, tusks. Bring it back here, not to the river, not to wherever you stash your leftovers.”

  He held still a breath, as if weighing the insult, then launched into a ground?eating trot, claws chewing divots in the packed dirt before he vanished between the trees.

  Finn whistled low.

  “That’s… one way to fill a larder.”

  I watched the forest swallow that ink?dark shape.

  “Welcome to just?in?time inventory,” I muttered. “Predator edition.”

  The boar hit the fence like a cannonball.

  The impact rolled under my boots. Resin-darkened posts shuddered, took the weight, and held. On the far side of the wall, something squealed, high and furious.

  People jerked upright all along the lane. A child started crying. Kael’s hammer hung mid-swing over a nail as his head snapped toward the sound.

  Another slam. Dull, heavy. The kind of noise ribs made when they broke.

  Only this time the crack came from tusk, not bone.

  We ran.

  By the time I reached the gate, half the village had crowded onto the platform above it. I pushed through, breath burning in my still-not-perfect chest, and leaned on the parapet.

  The grumbleboar below pawed at the packed earth, sides heaving. Bigger than the one from the forest. Bristles stood in a ridge down its spine. One tusk ended in a bright, fresh chip. It shook its head, foam and spit snapping from its mouth.

  The section it had picked to ram glowed a shade darker than the rest of the fence. Resin-soaked wood. No splinters. No cracks. Just a smear of boar slobber and a faint scuff mark.

  Something in my chest unclenched.

  “Oh, that’s pretty,” Lysa breathed near my elbow. “Go on then, ugly. Try that again.”

  The boar obliged. It backed up, hooves tearing furrows, and threw its weight into the wall.

  Thud. The post flexed, like a man taking a punch to the gut, then straightened. Dust rained from the top rail. That was it.

  A rippled cheer rolled along the platform, ragged but real. Someone whooped. A man near the ladder slapped the post beside him, face split in a grin.

  The boar staggered back from its own momentum, shook itself, then turned to pace along the fence.

  “This is where it gets less fun,” I muttered.

  The resin section ran maybe ten posts in each direction. Past that, the wood went back to original: grey, weathered, uncoated. The boar’s snout traced the line, huffing, nostrils flaring where the scent changed from tacky pine-fat to old oak.

  “There,” Kael grunted, bracing a hand on the parapet. “He’ll find the soft bit.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Gideon hovered behind him, slate forgotten at his side.

  “It can’t push through in one go,” he ventured. “Not with the ditch.”

  “You want to test that with your back garden?” Kael didn’t bother to keep it gentle.

  The boar stopped at the uncoated section. Scraped its tusks along a post, testing. Wood creaked. A flake came off.

  My stomach tightened. Well, we needed the fat anyway.

  “Kill it,” I said.

  Silence dropped around me fast as a curtain.

  Lysa straightened. “If we go out with hooks and spears now, before it finds a run-up—”

  “We’ll be outside the wall,” Gideon cut in. “Without Beakly.” His eyes flicked at the empty paddock below. “You sent it off, remember.”

  Right. My personal raid boss had left the instance.

  The boar backed up a few paces from the unreinforced section, angling its shoulder.

  “We wait, or it’ll—” Gideon started.

  Another slam. This time the post groaned, louder. A thin crack skated across the grain, only a handspan, but it was there.

  “Gideon.” My voice came out flat. “This isn’t a committee thing. If that fence goes, it’s inside your neat little grid.”

  Harn pushed his way through the knot of onlookers, cap askew, breath coming in short gulps.

  “Please tell me that’s not the same one from last month,” he blurted, then squinted over the edge. “No. Bigger. Of course it is. Should’ve known it’d come pestering the fresh work.”

  He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

  Kael’s jaw worked. “If we let it go, it comes back with three brothers.”

  “And if we rush it and fail?” Gideon rubbed at his forehead, sweat shining along his hairline despite the cool air.

  Lysa put a hand on his sleeve. “We’ve spears, hooks, the ditch. Emily.”

  Half a dozen faces turned to me. The weight landed between my shoulder blades.

  Right. Shiny paladin. Human shield on legs.

  “I can stand in front of it,” I told them. “My armor’s good. I can drag it where you want and not fall over.”

  Relief flickered around the platform.

  “But,” I pushed on, “I can’t hit it. I mean that literally. You want somebody to charge and land a clean blow, grab someone else.”

  A little laugh rippled through the crowd. Not mean, more the noise you made when your aunt claimed she couldn’t cook and then produced a feast.

  Harn snorted. “Oh sure. When you ‘can’t hit’ something, it ends up in the stewpot.”

  “That was luck. And gravity.” I pointed at the boar. “I’m not joking. I can defend. I can’t fight.”

  Lysa propped fists on hips. “We saw you with those river-beasts. You smashed its skull in.”

  “I had help.”

  Kael eyed the boar, then me. “You’ve the armor. You go in first. You take its attention. We follow. You don’t have to be pretty, just keep it pointed the right way.”

  Gideon chewed the inside of his cheek, then let out a breath.

  “Very well. We’ll… we’ll make a proper hunting party. Hooks, ropes, spears. No boys. Men only.”

  Lysa rolled her eyes so hard I could feel it.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “But when this goes sideways, I want it on record that I warned you.”

  Harn clapped me on the shoulder.

  “Sideways is just another word for the way things usually go.”

  He tried for a grin. It came out strained.

  By the time we clanged out through the gate, I remembered every reason I’d risked death to strip this armor off.

  The Stonewall cuirass hugged my ribs like a stubborn ex who refused to move out. Every breath met resistance. The weight dragged at my hips. My helmet narrowed my world to a slit of bright afternoon and the dark, moving shapes of men on either side.

  Spears. Two of them we’d borrowed from the old militia chest, points still sharp. A meat hook Kael had hammered straight into a brutal spike. Three stout poles tipped with scrap steel. Rope coiled across shoulders. Kael carried his hammer on a short haft, one he could swing in close without overbalancing.

  Harn trudged just behind me, face pinched under his crooked cap.

  “I officially withdraw my application to be on the front,” he muttered. “Remind me never to complain about hauling resin barrels again.”

  “You’re behind the big tin can,” Lysa called from the gate tower, leaning over the parapet with half the younger crowd. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Come down here and say that,” Harn yelled back. “We can swap places, see how fine you feel then.”

  Out beyond the ditch, the boar rooted at the base of the fence, still fixated on that weak post. It had chewed a shallow notch into the wood. Each snort came out wet. It looked mean. Tired. Hungry.

  So did the men beside me.

  Kael pointed with his hammer.

  “We circle wide. Emily walks straight. When it hits her, we close on the sides. Aim for the neck, behind the foreleg. Don’t jab once and flinch. You drive it in, you keep pushing.”

  I felt eyes on my back again. Expectation layered on top of fear.

  “This is going to be ugly,” I warned.

  “We’re not courting it,” Harn muttered.

  We fanned out. I went down the center, boots slipping a little on the short grass. Each step set the plates whispering against each other. Under the helmet, my breath sounded too loud.

  The boar lifted its head. Small eyes locked on me. It snorted and pawed, readying itself.

  My palms slicked inside the gauntlets. The warhammer felt longer than I remembered, weight out at the end like a pendulum that wanted to control me instead of the other way round.

  “Straight on,” Kael called from somewhere to my left. “Let it hit you square. Don’t twist.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered behind my visor. “I’ve been here before.”

  The boar squealed and charged.

  It came in low, head down. The ground’s tremble arrived a heartbeat before contact. I planted my feet the way I’d plant for a falling patient, braced through knees, hips, spine.

  Impact slammed into my belly plate. Air blasted out of me in a grunt. My health bar barely twitched; numbers flickered at the edge of my vision and vanished.

  The boar bounced off like it had hit a cartwheel. It shook its head, confused, then lunged again.

  “Now!” someone yelled.

  I hauled the hammer up, muscles shrieking protest. It rose slow, slower, and when I swung, everything in me went with it. Too far. Too fast. The head carved a high arc over the boar’s back and smashed into the ground, throwing a spray of dirt in the air.

  Two-Handed Hammers: 5/100.

  Silence hit harder than the hammer.

  Even the boar paused.

  “That was… a range-finder,” I wheezed.

  Harn’s laugh came out strangled. “Give it time to think about its choices.”

  I hauled the hammer free. The boar, perhaps deciding I counted as weird rock, swerved and slammed my thigh plate this time. My leg shuddered, but the armor held. Still zero damage.

  “Hold it there!” Kael barked.

  I sucked air in, forced my feet to stay planted. Another swing, narrower. I tried to drop the head straight down on its spine.

  The hammer whooshed past its right shoulder and hammered a divot in the turf.

  Miss. Again.

  My UI cheerfully notified me of increased proficiency. I wanted to punch it.

  The men ringed us now, but their spears hung back, uncertain. Nobody wanted to dart in under that flailing hammer.

  The boar shoved into me, tusk scraping stone-hard chest plate, frantic now. To it, this was a nightmare: food that wouldn’t bleed.

  I heard Kael swear under his breath.

  “Emily,” he called, softer. “Stop swinging. Just stand.”

  I froze. The hammer sagged to my thigh. I grabbed the haft with both hands and used it like a brace instead of a weapon.

  The boar hit me again. I rocked but held. Its shoulder pressed against my greave, churning the earth.

  “Now,” Kael growled.

  Spears jabbed in from both sides. One slid along the boar’s ribs, leaving a shallow groove. Another hit lower, bit in behind the shoulder, drove deep. Harn, face set in a kind of panicked focus, threw his weight behind the pole, boots digging for purchase.

  “Push!” he yelled through clenched teeth. “Don’t you stop until it stops, you hear me?”

  The boar screamed, high and human-sounding. It thrashed, hooves tearing at the ground. A hook bit into its flank. Kael stepped in and brought his short hammer down in three sharp blows on its skull, each crack riding the squeal like a drumbeat.

  Then the sound cut off. The weight slumped against my legs. Hot blood soaked into the ground, steaming in the chilly air.

  We stood there, chests heaving, around a heap of meat and bristle.

  Nobody met my eyes.

  My arms shook from holding the hammer. Shame ran hot under the armor, under the sweat. I wanted to shrink into the plating and disappear.

  Harn cleared his throat.

  “Well,” he announced to the ground. “Not every swing can be a… success.”

  A few men snorted. One choked on a laugh and turned it into a cough.

  Harn forged on, voice a shade higher.

  “Every man here knows what it’s like when you mean to perform and, ah, circumstances… don’t cooperate. Nothing to be embarrassed over. Happens to everyone, doesn’t it, lads?”

  He glanced around wildly, searching for backup.

  A reluctant murmur went up.

  “Mm. Aye.”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Cold day, long shift, you know…”

  The mutter gathered strength, men nodding, some with the air of people who would rather face another boar than this topic.

  “Absolutely,” one of the older farmers threw in, now committed. “Perfectly normal. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Common as mud,” another agreed, a little too forceful.

  Heat hit my face so hard it felt like I’d taken my helmet off. Of all the analogies available in the rich tapestry of language, Harn had grabbed that one.

  I shut my eyes for a second.

  “Please stop talking,” I muttered.

  A strangled laugh burst out of someone. The tension cracked. Men barked short, embarrassed chuckles, smacked each other’s shoulders, stared anywhere but at me.

  Harn winced.

  “Just saying,” he mumbled, then louder, to no one in particular, “We can handle this bit. Right? We’ve got it.”

  Kael wiped his hammer on the boar’s hide.

  “We’ve got it,” he echoed, more solid. “You did your part, Emily. Held the wall.”

  He didn’t look away, at least. That helped, a fraction.

  The others moved in around the carcass, the rhythm shifting from fight to work. Hooks went in, ropes looped around back legs. Someone fetched a sled. They talked about fat yield, about where to drain the blood, about Mara wanting a portion for whatever she brewed.

  I stood a little apart, warhammer planted in the churned ground, armor still bearing the smear of tusk and mud.

  Held the wall.

  That was all I’d done. Let something break itself on me while other people did the actual cutting.

  In a raid, that was fine. That was the job. Here, watching Harn and Kael and three farmers move like a single, practiced organism around the carcass, I couldn’t shake the sense of imbalance.

  They risked their ribs and guts every time they stepped beyond that fence. I had plate and stats and a UI. And I couldn’t land a basic blow on a barnyard mob.

  I rested my chin against the rim of my helmet and stared at the hammerhead, dull with dirt.

  “I need to learn how to use this thing,” I told the metal under my breath. “For real.”

  Not just swinging at tutorial pigs until a number ticked up. Footwork. Leverage. Where to aim so bone cracked and not just dirt.

  Tomorrow, or as soon as my arms stopped shaking, I’d find a quiet corner of the yard. A stump. A log. Kael, if I could talk him into it. I’d hit something that didn’t move until the motion felt like part of me.

  No more blaming the weapon. Or the game. Or my build.

  If I was going to stand in front of things with teeth for these people, I had to be more than walking armor.