Lyssa led Bouda back to the stables, where the other horses had been returned from the paddock, and the stable boy was trying to be brave, while also convinced another attack was imminent.

He paced around the large space in the middle, every few minutes checking the horses were fine, and pressing his face against the wooden walls to look outside through the gaps. The boy had also locked the door to the stable and was reluctant to light any of the torches.

The only light they had came through the same gaps in the wood he remained vigilant at. Lyssa didn’t bother to interfere, because she could take Bouda’s tack off in the dark, and had done so multiple times, and she had to save what was left of her patience for when she went back to the village green.

The only annoyance was that his agitation was spreading to the horses. She had already told him another attack was unlikely today, and if it did happen she doubted the stables would be their target. Much more likely would be the food stores or other valuables.

She had yet to see a bandit riding a horse. Probably because they were relying on stealth to surprise their targets and then disappear back into the forest. That was much harder to do on a horse.

The boy settled a little, but still maintained his routine of checking outside. At least in between he was now doing useful tasks instead of bothering the horses.

This allowed Bouda to calm down from being battle ready. Then all it took was some of the sweet local fruit, unfortunately not the Maro fruit Bouda preferred, a brush down and a few words whispered in the language of the centaurs to settle her down.

Of course the horse still gave her a few playful nudges and her own version of looking Lyssa over, which involved a lot of horse saliva on the warrior’s face and a few new bruises.

By the time Lyssa made it back to the center of the village, which was a large flat area that seemed to be used mostly as a meeting place, but somehow maintained the grass without it looking trampled, most of her suggestions had been followed. Not to the extent they should have been, but that wasn’t a surprise.

Hulna had one major defensive feature that would give them any hope of defending the village. It was a big rock wall that stretched across a significant portion of ground, and made attack from that side impossible.

Hulna’s cliff dominated the centre of the village, and could be at least seen no matter where you stood. The other side of the cliff was a meadow that sloped down to the forest and a barn where they kept the livestock.

Their reluctance to cut down trees made it valuable space for grazing their animals. They had the same attitude for finding space for crops.

The cliff looked like it had once been a hill and somehow the other half had been sliced away, or that a section of ground had been chosen and then lifted higher. She suspected magic or some other supernatural event. It wasn’t the first time she had come across some unnatural feature that was probably god made.

Her home of Vylnava had its own oddities that she had used to defend against would be conquerors. Fang’s Edge, where she had based her army was one of them, and had been a key to victory.

The frozen spires around the mountain had already been intimidating, and that was before the battle on its slopes that had stained the ice red for months. It had been an unmissable warning sign for miles upon miles that her enemies hadn’t heeded.

More blood had had to stain the ice before Vylnava was safe.

There were many buildings that sat in the shadow of the cliff, and surprisingly they were actually buildings that needed to be protected. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised, because Hulna had sat here for centuries if not longer, so they did know how to survive.

The other feature dominating the village green was a massive tree, bigger than any in the forest around it, with branches that spread to touch the houses built around it.

The locals called it Maro, but she wasn’t sure if that was just the Ghandan word for tree, as the Cahan word for tree was Mara. It was one of the many differences that tripped her up between the languages.

Any suggestion of trimming the tree, or using it for defence had been met with horror.

Lyssa was starting to think the tree was just as much a product of a supernatural event as the cliff was. Asking questions about either though just led to more confusion, both on her side and theirs. They were definitely playing up the language barrier for certain topics.

Wooden barricades barely at chest height had been erected to block the main path into the village, and guards stood boldly behind them, as if they couldn't be picked off by enemy archers from the trees.

At least they had given those villagers selected for guard duty proper armour. She had doubted this village contained anything professional, or that the blacksmith would have the skill to make it.

The lookouts had been arranged on rooftops to cover key lines of sight. Only a few of them had bows, but she highly doubted many of them would be able to kill a person if given an opportunity. They would find aiming to take a human life was very different from hunting. People rarely became killers unless they were forced into it through self defense.

The placement of the few archers they had wasn't as effective as she would have liked. They needed to be where they could do the most damage, and still have cover from returning fire. Ideally they should also be hidden from sight, the enemy should never be sure of the source of the attack or where they needed to defend from, but this was a village not the high towers of a city and they would have to make do.

Despite all of that, it looked like if they were attacked at this moment they had a chance of holding the defences. From what she had seen the bandits weren’t the most organised, and she doubted they would continue to attack if met with much resistance.

The village’s previous plans for a siege had involved them trying to hold the entire village, with very little change to the surrounding area. Her first suggestion of cutting down the trees to separate the village from the forest had been met with outrage. Almost as much as trimming Maro.

One particular little man had come very close to being introduced to the hilt of her sword, but his age and stooped frame had stopped her taking any action against him.

So she'd held her temper, and tried to make her orders sound more like suggestions. The next suggestion was to protect less of the village. This had reignited their previous outrage, led by the old man who seemed determined to get into a fight with her. She had kept her calm while they raged, and had made sure the important people had seen sense. Those people being Mayor Dralhond and Kyla. That hadn't won her any friends but they weren't going to like her anyway.

This was when she had found out they had no plans to retaliate other than waiting the enemy out.

Archers had been the compromise with the promise they were only to be used for self defence. Agreeing to that had been hard, but with the ferocity they had for protecting their village she had no doubt that if it came down to it, she could lead these people to fight back. They would see wishful thinking didn't end war.

Not that they would need to fight back today because another attack wasn't going to happen just yet. This had been an opportunistic attack, and very unlikely to result in anything more, especially when the bandits hadn't been expecting as much resistance out on the road.

The next attack would come another day, no matter how much Lyssa itched for another more challenging fight, so she could burn off all her restless energy. Anything other than the forced slow march through a forest while trying to keep an overly aggressive horse, fresh from battle, calm.

Still, the village was more chaos than it should have been for people who had been under attack for months. When they had first got back it had looked like an ant’s nest that had been kicked. People had been running in all different directions, getting in each other's way, while others tried to shout orders over the noise.

Now that chaos seemed to have melted into some sort of order, but the structure wasn't obvious. This was more people than the village ever contained during the day, and they seemed to have no idea how to handle it.

Calling everyone in wasn't necessarily a bad idea, there was strength in numbers after all, but there had to be a plan. Lyssa reminded herself for the hundredth time that these people weren’t soldiers. They were just farmers in a very bad situation.