The reserve leader answered Eli from a room where somebody was passing water from hand to hand. Behind his voice came the scrape of hunters lifting their packs.
“Don’t move yet,” Eli said. “I need your limits before I authorize the response.”
“We can get there.”
“That isn’t the whole question.”
The leader was silent for a breath. Then he told Eli about the team’s earlier shift, the hunter with a stiffening leg and the replacement defender who had not trained on this route. They could deploy for a limited interval. If the threat became a long defense, they would need either relief or a withdrawal into the settlement’s fallback. There was no relief already assigned.
The surface officer on the shared line asked for one more scout report. “We don’t even have a count.”
Ilyan looked toward the instrument as though the officer stood in front of him. “They moved the equipment because we promised a response to a threatened approach. The approach is threatened.”
“Two shapes beyond a wall.”
