The attack came on the ninth day.
Not from the northern gap — which was exactly why I had also prepared for every other possibility. Three weeks of careful reconnaissance, a pulled-back scout line, and the deliberate appearance of a Coalition force that had been deterred by reinforcements — it had all been precisely calculated misdirection. They were not cautious. They had simply been waiting for us to concentrate our attention on the wrong place.
They came from the southeast.
The alarm went up at four in the morning — that particular hour when human and wolf instinct alike are at their lowest, when the body's rhythms conspire toward heaviness and the mind moves a half-second slower than it should. I was already awake. I had been awake for an hour, sitting at the desk in the gray pre-da
