Birgitta sighed. Tor’s story was a sad one, but it wasn’t particularly rare. The Wolves were well known in the region, and before they arrived there had been plenty of other groups of the same calibre. It was only logical. The lack of law and security created opportunities for the strong to take from the weak. And where there was opportunity, there was always someone who was willing to try their chances. What was worrying was that the Wolves seemed to be expanding their territory, drawing dangerously close to the village.

If the boy was to be trusted, the Wolves had finally given up on preying on the small settlements that dotted the surrounding landscape, moving on to the more challenging but juicier targets like the village. Tor had only been a member of one of the Wolves lower-ranking bands of marauders. They were a fragmented organization and it was possible that the band he was from had been acting independently when they began targeting bigger villages. It was a tempting analysis that drastically decreased the danger they were facing. It was also an analysis they couldn’t afford to make. If the band wasn’t acting on its own, if this was part of a bigger decision coming from the top, then the village could very well be invaded.

In either case, action needed to be taken. Birgitta had to prepare the village for an attack, with all that entailed. Training the villagers, stocking up on arrows, building fortifications… It was a lot, and it needed to be done as soon as possible. She also had to prepare for the long-term storage of their two Wolves. They would probably end up in the holding cells, which meant that they would need to find a new place to store the few rowdy villagers that occasionally occupied it. She also needed to interrogate the other captive once he woke up. Hanna claimed she held back when she had kicked him. Judging from the fact that he still was out cold, she had done a so-so job of it. First things first though. She needed a fucking drink.

Birgitta put her feet on the table, glad to finally get off her feet. She had been through a lot, but fights such as the last one was out of the ordinary. Like always the death of her subordinates stung. They were her responsibility, and they were dead because she hadn’t prepared them enough. At least Hanna had pulled through. If she could just toughen the lass up a bit, she might turn her into a proper fighter. The village had far too few of those. Birgitta chuckled as she remembered the boot-print on Tor’s chest. That’s the kind of mark she expected her students to leave after them when they fought.

Jörgen shuffled over with her ale, his bald head as eye-catching as always. Rune was alright to look at, but Birgitta preferred a man with some meat on him. There had always been a spark between her and Jörgen, but the fucker went and married before anything could happen, and that was the end of that. A shame really, she thought as she studied his muscular backside. Birgitta took a deep swing at the ale. Björn was probably open for a rumble tonight. Gods knew she needed some kind of distraction.

Hanna sat down in front of her, interrupting her pleasant fantasising. That girl had an awful feel for timing.

“We need to talk” Hanna said. Birgitta took another swig.

“Josef, the one who led the attack. He’s like me.”

“What, sassy and annoying?”

The girl didn’t even roll her eyes. Birgitta was intrigued.

“I know him from before I got here” Hanna began.

The details that Birgitta knew of Hanna’s past were sparse. This was as good a time as any to get all cards on the table. The girl was steadily growing into a central part of the village. It was high time that they ironed out the mystery of her arrival in the valley. Hanna began her story with a description of the army she had been in. It was hard to believe that the girl had been a soldier. All soldiers Birgitta knew was made of sterner stuff than the lass was. At least if you considered how she was when she first showed up. She had improved quite drastically in the last couple of weeks.

A lot of the things Hanna described was alien to the point that Birgitta couldn’t grasp it. She claimed she had been in charge of a team soldiers, organisationally placed in something related to helicopters, whatever that was. The girl describing it as a “flying cart” didn’t do much to help. Imagination could only take you so far. Weirder still, this army she was in fought without swords or bows, instead shooting small metal projectiles and grenade launchers, which Birgitta interpreted as “small things that travelled far and then exploded”. The point she took out of it was that Hanna sat on a wealth of foreign concepts, that could be used to wage war in ways no-one was ready to deal with. And this Josef guy knew this as well.

That was dire news. The way she described Josef did not paint a pretty picture. Rash and arrogant, ambitious and with contempt for weakness. Unbothered by the damage he did onto others and often taking delight in his ability to manipulate his surroundings. If he also was from this different world, they’d be foolish if they didn’t assume that he too had Hanna’s disproportionate strength and her ungodly ability to heal. Such abilities combined with his sort of personality was a storm waiting to happen in the kind of organisation that the Wolves was. Josef would undoubtedly shoot through their ranks. Hanna was certain he had recognized her. The girl didn’t know how she ended up here and was hoping that this Josef might have some answers. Josef was probably of a similar mind. Adding things up, it wasn’t a question of if, but rather when Josef came knocking on their door. Given his resent loss, the boy would undoubtedly come prepared this time.

“I’ve been kind of just sitting on my hands since I got here”, Hanna said. “I think it’s time I step up”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Well, I could probably help with organizing the defence..:”

Birgitta guffawed. “You might know a bit about your kind of warfare, but we don’t have any… What did you call them?”

“Grenades?”

“Right. We don’t have those. What do you know about battles that I don’t?”

Hanna smiled and cracked her knuckles. “Let me tell you a little about a thing called video games”.

Birgitta was amazed. The girl had more experience of warfare than any fighter she had met. It felt utterly wrong that for every scenario Birgitta came up with, the girl instantly had a reasonable counter. The worst part was that this unfathomable knowledge wasn’t hard earned, but learned for fun, something you did after a hard day’s work. It was disgusting. That aside, Birgitta was almost looking forward to the attack. If they could manage half of the ideas Hanna mentioned, no-one would dare to disturb them again.

Hanna’s throat was sore from all the talking. It felt good to drop some of her secrecy. There really wasn’t any reason for it anymore. Unless she left them right now, her fate was tied to the village. At least until the impending attack was over. Perhaps she ought to open up to the rest of the villagers. All the speculation regarding her and where she came from certainly wasn’t doing her any good. Hanna had tried to keep somewhat mum until now, out of fear that her alien heritage would cause the villagers to shun her. That had worked out great.

Hanna didn’t doubt for a second that Josef was coming. Even if he didn’t know shit about how they ended up in this world, she still wanted to talk to him. He was the last remnant of a world that she would probably never see again, and that meant something. Connected them. On the odd chance that he didn’t feel the same, he would come either way. The knowledge they possessed unavoidably changed their surroundings, and she knew him well enough to know that he would never accept the indirect threat that posed to him. With her out of the way, he would be able to do with this world as he pleased. It was just a question of time. How long would it take for him to have bombs? Rifles? He might be focused on more violent fields, but just the economic might that could be made from their knowledge was a force to be reckoned with. This world hadn’t even gone through an industrial revolution. The concept of specialization alone would be ground-breaking.

Hanna took a deep breath. It was high time she pulled her thumb out of her ass and became a good deal more proactive. The village might not know it yet, but they absolutely needed her. And she needed the village, at least if she wanted to stay alive for a while longer. It would be a day of much talking. She had already spewed out more words at Birgitta than she cared for, now she needed to do the same with Gunnar. Birgitta had listened attentively enough, the only problem was that she was a doer, an A-grade ass-kicker, and that was all she was. She was not a tinkerer or an organiser, she was the one who got shit done once that was taken care of. Both kinds were necessary, but right know they needed someone like Gunnar, who’d take notes and then start dividing out tasks, finding the people who would make the idea grow on its own.

Hanna spent about half an hour looking for Gunnar until she found him bothering Gunn, who by the way did not take kindly to Hanna’s visit, closing shop at the first sight of her. Unbothered by Gunn’s rudeness, Hanna hooked arms with the old man and told him a rerun of what Birgitta had gotten, all the while leading him through the village so she could explain her plans for the actual locations. They didn’t get far until Gunnar demanded that they stop by his study so that he could fetch some pen and paper. It was probably a good thing, because Hanna felt like she was on fire. The village was a strategist’s dream, and the funky semi-communism of theirs meant that she didn’t have to worry about money. Someone else probably would, and then Karin or Gunnar would decide that the communal need for a wall was greater that the communal need for Ale, and then those resources would be transferred to the wall instead. Neat, undemocratic, probably impossibly problematic in a larger economy, but at the moment a rather agreeable solution. It left Hanna free to focus on the continued survival of the village.

The village had a very haphazard layout. Buildings had been added over the ages as was needed. It gave it an organic feel. It also made it horribly inefficient and hard to defend. That was going to change though. Hanna’s main goal was to make the village into a stronghold, something that would be very hard to conquer. At its core, that would be achieved by three rings of walls that sectioned the village into three different parts. The outer wall would be located on the ground next to the mountain and would be very traditional walls. Thick, sturdy and tall, with a heavily fortified main gate. Towers and overhanging sections would be needed so that the enemy could be shot at from all angels. Outside of the wall would be all things that were too large to be inside or that required flat ground. That meant farms, eventual stables and the like.

Inside of the wall would be houses and warehouses, meant to decrease the logistical problems related to production. The road leading up from the main gate would be walled on both sides, with smaller gates appearing regularly to make it easier for the villagers to move around. Those walls didn’t need to be particularly thick or tall, just enough to box in whoever walked on the road. Because of the mountains steep elevation, the second ring of walls could easily be made tall enough that archers could comfortably fire at anyone who had breached the main gate. The second wall would be thicker than the walls that followed the road, but it wouldn’t need to be as sturdy as the outer wall. If they could manage to scale up the crossbow into proper ballistae, then they could mount those on top of the second ring.

The main part of the village would be between the outer and the second wall, but behind the second wall they would place all vital buildings: workshops, garrisons, warehouses and the like. Hanna had decided to have two zones of warehouses because of redundancy. The outer warehouses were meant as drop of points, while the inner ones would be meant as the reserves that would be needed in order to survive a siege. That meant that they could afford to fall back from the outer ring just to make the invaders pay dearly when they moved towards the second ring. Hanna hadn’t settled on all the specifics yet, but she had quite a few ideas that would make moving along that walled in road an absolute nightmare.

The last line of defence would be an absolutely massive wall, at least in thickness and height, but it would only cover the relatively short opening that lead to the valley. The only thing that would be behind that one would be storages for food, defence materials and some rudimentary housing. That would be the village’s very last chance at survival, an open-air version of a bunker.

Moving about in this new version of the village would be annoying and shifting goods around would be a proper pain. Hanna had a solution in mind for the later problem. To the side of the village was a steep cliff, the natural boarder for the planned walls. If they could create one flat area per level of elevation, then they could create a series of pullies that would allow them to easily and efficiently move goods between the village’s various sections, without giving the enemy a fast-track into the village’s core.

This whole project was a massive undertaking, and it would be made worse by the fact that they would have to raise major parts of the village to get it done. New houses would have to be built as the old ones went down, and given that they soon had proper planks to build with, that probably ought to wait until the sawmill was finished.

There was no way this could be done fast enough, not even a tiny part of it. The first thing that they needed now was some form of outer defence. The village had nothing of the sort at the moment. They had a bit of stone lying around, but not enough to begin constructing a wall right now. It was a bit depressing, her grand schemes would have to be put on hold, and the first thing they would build was a measly palisade, built by timbre that they could harvest in the valley. Ideally, they ought to build that at the outer edge of the village, but that would massively increase the amount of work needed, and the flat ground would make the palisade much less effective. The annoying compromise was to build it halfway up, sacrificing a lot of the village, but instead saving timbre, time and increasing their defences.

When Hanna and Gunnar finally were done with all the planning, Hanna was totally spent. Sparring with Birgitta was less exhausting than this. Hanna resolved to not speak another word for the rest of the day. Maybe the week. Her plan now was to reward herself by finally dragging Rune to bed. He was wounded and all, but he would probably be fine. She would try to be gentle.

Gunnar stopped her before she could set off to find Rune.

“Where are you going?”

“Uh…” Gunnar felt a bit too grandfatherly for Hanna to outright say that she was about to bang a bartender until she forgot about the impending attack, a village full of resentment and the loss of the world as she knew it.

“The funeral is about to begin”, he said.

Gunnar looked tired when he saw Hanna’s confusion.

“Did no one tell you about the funeral?”

“No?” Hanna said, making Gunnar sigh.

“I would tell you to dress up a bit, but I guess those clothes are all you have?”

“Yeah, sorry”, Hanna winced as she studied her clothes. She was covered in dirt and some blood that must have stuck on her as she desecrated the corpses of her enemies. It was hardly worthy of a funeral, but it was what she had.

The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows over the village as they walked through it. Hanna and Gunnar travelled to what she called ‘the square’, for lack of a better word. It was just a small open area that was used for various purposes. Pretty much all of the village had gathered around a large stack of firewood. Gunnar ditched her immediately when they arrived since he had to prep for the funeral. As she moved among the crowd, people moved away from her, giving her odd looks and making her feel like a shark among fish. She would like to say that she didn’t care, but it kind of stung and she felt more alone than ever before.

The few who talked did so with low voices. Hanna moved to the outskirts of the crowd and waited for this shit to be over. As much as she thought it sad that Gudrun and Karl had died, the way she was treated by the villagers made her more pissed-off than anything else.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Hanna stopped her brooding and turned around. Oh great. It was mud-girl and her side-kicks.

“You have no right to be here.”

“Are you sure? Because Gunnar brought me here and all”, Hanna said unperturbed. “You are not one of us. My cousin is dead!” The female side-kick cried. Hanna was a little bit touched by the genuine sadness in her voice. Not a lot though. People being offended by your mere presence made it rather hard to feel sympathy for them.

Mud-girl stepped closer to Hanna.

“Leave right now or we will need to hold another funeral”, Mud-girl threatened, then she paused for a second, thinking over what she had said. “… which no one will come to!”

Hanna laughed. It sounded a bit more cynical than she liked, but what the hell. She was growing tired of this shit. They had already stabbed her once. She had survived that, but only because of her healing, which they definitely hadn’t taken into account when they stabbed her. Hanna itched for a fight, but it would have to wait. Classy people don’t fight at funerals.

Hanna noticed a growing unrest among the rest of the villagers. They were watching their argument closely and was growing more agitated by the moment.

“People are grieving here Birgitta”, Hanna said. It felt super weird to call her by her name.

“What do you care? You didn’t help him in the fight, you couldn’t even bother to dress up for his funeral”, the crying sidekick cut in.

Come on, Hanna thought. It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t changed, and they didn’t know shit about what happened in that fight.

Mud-girl tried to shove Hanna, but she was ready for it. This would not be a repeat of their last rumble. She smacked Mud-girls hands away and gave her a push in return. It wasn’t quite the level of force that sent Birgitta and Elsa flying the day before, but it wasn’t far from it. Mud-girl flew a solid meter or so, hitting some of the onlookers in her fall.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Karin asked. Hanna hadn’t seen her approach. What should she say? ‘She started it’ probably wouldn’t cut it.

“That monster attacked Birgitta!”, the male sidekick said, holding his female counterpart in a protective hug. The crowd was growing unruly, and a few of them looked outright hostile.

“That is not what happened. I…” Hanna began.

“I don’t want to hear any excuses. This ends now!” Karin cut in. She studied the villagers for a while. “Hanna, I think it’s best if you don’t attend this.”

Whatever, Hanna thought. It is not as if she knew Gudrun or Karl particularly well. But Karin should be better than this. Making her leave wasn’t right. She wasn’t the one to cause this.

“This isn’t right”, she said to Karin and fled the scene. Things like this made her furious. There was no winning this. Right or wrong meant nothing at all here, and stomping Mud-girl into the ground would do nothing to improve how the villagers felt about her. It wasn’t the first time that Hanna was in this kind of situation, it was just the first time things were this severe. If you weren’t a part of the whole, which Hanna usually wasn’t, people always picked up on that. Not everyone, just the mindless sheep that unavoidably made up the bulk of any group. Either you thrived in group-think, or you couldn’t stand it. Group-thinkers were always jarred by individuality, it had been the same in school and in the army. Hanna’s usual tactic of just ditching them had worked fine then. Not so much here though, were leaving the group also meant leaving civilization.

Hanna had been walking for a while without thinking about her destination. She chuckled humourlessly when she realised that she stood in front of the Alehouse. Her feet knew what she needed alright. But there would be no alcohol for her. The door was locked and nobody seemed to be around. There was probably no reason to keep it open with everyone attending the funeral. Everyone but her that is.

Hanna felt lost. The few that she knew in the village were at the funeral, and she honestly didn’t know what to do now. She could probably return to the bunker, but that might be locked as well. Gunnar had said something about lodging in a communal house before, but she hadn’t checked it out then. If memory served her, one of the rooms ought to be hers. It felt weird to just walk in a take a room in a house she’d never been in, but Hanna was quite out of fucks to give. If someone complained about it they would just have to take it up with her fists, Hanna decided.

Now she just had to remember where it was.