Chapter 3: Wolves at the Border
Ten days of driving labor had transformed Amon Hen-dîr.
The palisade stood complete—eight feet of sharpened stakes ringing our northern exposure. Not elegant. Not permanent. But solid enough to buy us time if the worst came.
I stood on the makeshift watchtower platform at dawn, scanning the eastern horizon. My eyes burned from too little sleep. My body ached from too much work. The System counted down my condition with cold precision.
[STATUS: SLEEP DEPRIVED]
[CURRENT DEFICIT: 14 HOURS]
[EFFECTS: -10% COGNITIVE FUNCTION, -15% PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE]
I dismissed the notification with a thought.
Below me, the settlement stirred to life. Cookfires sparked. People emerged from shelters that actually held the cold at bay. The morning meal distribution had become routine—fair shares measured by need, no exceptions.
We're going to make it.
The thought was fragile. Temporary. True for exactly this moment and no guarantees beyond.
Maeglin materialized at the base of the tower.
"They're back."
[AMON HEN-DÎR — WAR COUNCIL]
We met in the planning corner—myself, Halbarad, Maeglin, Grimbeorn. The sun climbed toward its peak while Maeglin drew in the dirt with a stick.
"Here." A mark for our position. "Here." Another mark, two miles east. "I found their camp last night. Cold fire. Orc-make. They didn't stay long, but they were watching us for several hours. I counted tracks from six individuals."
"Only six?" Grimbeorn's voice rumbled with skepticism. "That's not a raiding party."
"It's a scouting party." I stared at the crude map. "They're assessing us. Our numbers, our defenses, our readiness. Someone's gathering intelligence."
Halbarad's expression darkened. "The tribes have been growing bolder. Without the Rangers to check them—"
"Where did they go?"
Maeglin pointed his stick eastward. "Toward the mountains. Fast. I tracked them for three miles before losing the trail on rocky ground."
Six orcs. Scouts. Reporting to someone.
I ran the math in my head. If this was just one scouting party, there could be others. If they reported back, their tribe would know exactly how weak we were. The half-finished palisade. The exhausted workers. The lack of trained fighters.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: ELEVATED]
[ESTIMATED ENEMY FORCE: UNKNOWN]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: ACCELERATE MILITARY PREPARATIONS]
I straightened. "The wall's done. Good. Now we need people who can defend it."
"We have forty-seven people," Halbarad said carefully. "Farmers. Refugees. Families."
"How many can fight?"
"Fight?" Grimbeorn barked a laugh. "Half of them can barely swing an axe."
"I didn't ask who was trained. I asked who can fight. Who's willing to pick up a weapon and stand on that wall if orcs come pouring through?"
Silence around the planning corner. Then Halbarad spoke, slowly.
"More than you'd think. These people have lost everything. Their homes. Their families. They're angry. Scared. Some of them would fight just for something to hit back at."
"Then we give them something to hit back with."
I called an assembly that afternoon.
The sun hung low and golden over the palisade as I stood before my people. Farren was there—pale but standing, his wife supporting his arm. The children clustered near their mothers. The old. The young. The desperate.
"Some of you know we've seen orc tracks near our territory." I kept my voice level. Calm. "Scouts. Watching us. Counting us."
Murmuring. A woman pulled her daughter closer.
"I won't lie to you. We're vulnerable. We're few. We're not warriors." I paused. "But neither were any of you when your villages burned. When you fled. When you survived."
Eyes met mine. Hollow eyes. Haunted eyes. But something else stirring beneath.
"I need volunteers. People willing to learn to fight. Not to become soldiers—we don't have time for that. Just to hold a spear. To stand on a wall. To buy time for others to run."
Silence stretched.
Then Farren stepped forward.
His wife grabbed his arm, hissed something urgent. He shook his head and walked toward me, still weak, still pale, but with his jaw set.
"I'll learn."
"Farren—"
"They burned my village." His voice carried across the courtyard. "They killed my brother. My father. I survived because I ran." He looked back at his wife, his children. "I won't run again."
Another stepped forward. A young man barely twenty, with the build of a blacksmith's apprentice. Then another—a grey-haired woman I'd seen sharpening a hunting knife every evening. Then three more. Then ten.
Thirty-two volunteers stood before me when the count was done.
[MILITARY EVENT: MILITIA FORMATION]
[VOLUNTEERS: 32]
[TRAINING LEVEL: NONE]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO BASIC COMPETENCE: 4 WEEKS]
Four weeks. We might not have four days.
Training began immediately.
I knew nothing about medieval combat. Oliver Smith had watched movies, read books, played games—none of which prepared him to teach anyone to fight.
But I knew physics. Leverage. The basic mechanics of violence.
"Spears." I held up one of the crude weapons Grimbeorn had spent three days producing—a sharpened stake on an eight-foot pole. "They're longer than swords. They're easier to use. You don't need years of training to put one end into something that's trying to kill you."
Thirty-two faces stared at me. Nervous. Determined. Terrified.
"Stand in a line. Shoulder to shoulder. Keep your spear pointed forward. Don't try to be heroes. Don't charge. Just hold. One row stops the enemy. The second row stabs anything that gets through."
We drilled until the sun touched the horizon. Thrust. Brace. Hold. Simple commands repeated until they became reflex. The volunteers stumbled. Crashed into each other. Dropped their weapons.
But they kept trying.
[SYSTEM UNLOCK: BASIC SCOUT NETWORK]
[MAXIMUM SCOUTS: 5]
[CURRENT SCOUTS: 1 (MAEGLIN)]
[SCOUT EFFECTIVENESS: 60%]
The notification appeared while I was demonstrating a bracing stance. I processed it in a fragment of attention, filed it for later.
By nightfall, the militia could hold a formation for thirty seconds without collapsing. Not impressive. Better than nothing.
Night watch.
I took the midnight shift myself, despite Halbarad's protests. The palisade felt solid beneath my feet. Real. Something we'd built with our own hands.
The stars blazed overhead.
I recognized them now. Not from memory—from movies. Peter Jackson's films had burned certain images into my brain. The Sickle. The Valacirca. Seven stars that had guided the Dúnedain for ages.
I'm actually here.
The thought hit differently in the silence of night watch. No System notifications. No demands, no crises, no desperate calculations. Just darkness and stars and the slow rhythm of breathing.
Middle-earth was real. Not a story. Not a film. A place where I stood, where I breathed, where I might live or die based on choices I made.
Somewhere south, Bilbo Baggins was probably reading in his study. The Ring sat in his pocket, dormant but aware. Sauron gathered strength in the east. Saruman's corruption festered in Isengard.
And I stood here, on a broken wall, training farmers to hold spears.
The timeline stretched before me. Sixty-one years until the Ring left the Shire. Decades of preparation possible. Decades of building, growing, strengthening.
But orcs were watching us now.
Cold wind cut through my cloak. I pulled it tighter and kept scanning the darkness.
The next week ground forward.
Morning: militia training. Afternoon: construction work. Evening: planning sessions. Night: guard rotations that I took more often than I should have.
[STATUS WARNING: EXHAUSTION APPROACHING]
[RECOMMENDATION: REDUCE ACTIVITY LEVEL]
I ignored it.
Maeglin ran solo patrols, covering ground that should have required three scouts. The orc tracks didn't reappear. That worried me more than if they had—silence meant planning.
The palisade held. The militia improved. Food supplies stabilized at a fragile equilibrium—hunting parties brought in enough game to balance our consumption, barely.
Twelve days after the orc sighting, I stood in the planning corner and stared at numbers that still didn't add up.
[CURRENT RESOURCES]
[TIMBER: 23 UNITS]
[FOOD: 15 DAYS]
[GOLD: 18 COINS]
[POPULATION: 47]
[MILITARY: 32 MILITIA (UNTRAINED)]
Thirty-two untrained militia against however many orcs decided to test us. A palisade that would slow an assault, not stop one. Food that would last two weeks if nothing went wrong.
Halbarad appeared at my shoulder. "You're doing that thing again."
"What thing?"
"Standing here staring at dirt like it owes you money."
I almost laughed. Almost.
"The math doesn't work, Halbarad. We don't have enough people. Enough food. Enough time. If the orcs come in force—"
"If the orcs come in force, we fight anyway." The old man's voice was iron. "You've given these people something they haven't had in years. A wall. A leader. Hope."
"Hope won't stop spears."
"No. But it'll make them stand on that wall instead of running." He gripped my shoulder. "Stop counting what we don't have. Count what we do. We're still here. We're still standing. That's more than most expected."
I looked at him—this old Ranger who'd wandered into my life and decided to believe in me. Sixty years had worn him down, but something burned in his grey eyes that age hadn't touched.
"How do you do it?" The question slipped out before I could stop it. "How do you keep believing when the odds are this bad?"
Halbarad smiled—a rare expression that transformed his weathered face.
"Because I've seen worse odds turn. Because our people have survived catastrophes that should have ended us. Because somewhere in your blood, there's the same fire that built Arnor and Gondor and everything the Dúnedain ever achieved."
His hand tightened on my shoulder.
"You're not pretending, lad. You're becoming. There's a difference."
He walked away before I could respond.
I stood alone in the planning corner, watching the sun set behind the palisade. Watching my people prepare for night. Watching everything I'd built in a month of blood and sweat and desperation.
The wall rose stake by stake. The militia drilled. The scouts watched. The settlement breathed and grew and refused to die.
Tomorrow, I would add three more scouts to the network. Tomorrow, we would begin the second layer of defenses. Tomorrow, we would take another step toward something that might survive.
But tonight, I let myself feel it—the fragile, terrifying reality of what we were building. A home. A kingdom. A future.
If the orcs came, we'd face them.
And somewhere in the darkness beyond the palisade, I knew they were counting too.