Milc/C.J. Milnes
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Chapter 32 - Be subtle
🕑 Added 2025-04-02 19:48:11 +0000 UTC“You have no records?” I asked in shock. The Legion had better records than your average tax enforcement organisation back home.
“We have records of the events and the ones who fell but we have no record of a Harvester dying of anything other than old age or violence. None of them went back, as far as we can tell,” Pertabon replied slowly.
I was jogging alongside the Huskar at the front of the Legion column. We’d pulled the lead elements back so they were only an hour or so ahead of the main force. Glimpse was circling above, any shenanigans on the front lines and I could issue orders immediately to send the giants or a squadron of cavalry to deal with it.
“And the Sources, the Souls that power them, they’re all dead competitors?” Wilson padded over and sniffed my hand. “Go on, bloke, go hunting,” I told the wolf and he shot off to the east of the column to find fluffy things to eat.
“The only one we are confident of is Narbo. He returned to the Source when his body began to fail and he died touching it,” Bon replied.
“How the hell do you know that? You lumbering bastards can’t even get to it!” I snapped in frustration.
“We had human elements among our forces back then. After Narbo died… Would you want to stick around a different species, two or three times your size, who are no longer forbidden from eating you?” he asked with a sad chuckle. “Not that we did. At first. After we fractured, then the ferals did their own thing.” He sounded disappointed at the end.
“What can your guys do at range?” I asked as we trudged through the knee high grass. Behind us it got churned into mud. The Huskars didn’t care, their feet were big enough to spread their weight far more than a human’s could, and the wagons were rumbling along to one side in the rear, steering clear of the brown trail we left behind us.
“Initially we can do tremendous damage. Our artefact weapons were crafted by Harvesters far more powerful than you are currently. They take a long time to recharge though. After an all out strike… perhaps a week to try again? Don’t underestimate our power,” he rumbled.
“I don’t, but a week long cooldown is a pain in the ass, Bon.” I sighed. “I guess it’s not so different from our casters. They take a few days to recharge as well. How was it handled back in Narbo’s days?”
“The normal approach was a massive barrage on sighting the enemy. If the artefacts and spells largely cancelled each other out, as was the norm, it would come down to close quarters violence. If one side had an advantage in magic… the other side would die and run. Sieges were usually short and brutal if the attacker had the advantage. Long and brutal if they didn’t.” He removed his helmet and ran a hand back over his hair.
“The towns won’t pose much of a problem. Any humans are to be told, from a decent distance, to fuck off south ahead of our advance. A small group goes in and if anything boils up from below the ground they run and we nuke. Bonus’ will be in order for the brave ones who go in first,” I said.
“What bonus can you offer us?” Bon laughed, drawing the eyes of the nearby Legionnaires marching along next to us.
“Double rations? Gold? Scratch that, we don’t have any. Ivory maybe? What do your people want? In my world there used to be a crown of gold given to the first man to scale the ladders and attack the defenders of a wall in a siege. His name would be carved into memorial stones to celebrate his bravery. Corona Muris they called it, or something like that. It was a great honour and the weight of gold was enough to retire on. What does the Legion want?” I repeated my question.
“Glory in the service of a Harvester. Don’t worry about this Legate. Human walls aren’t much to us. If we can get to them we can kick them down.” I looked up and he gave me a savage grin that I returned in kind.
“Getting to them is going to be the trick, isn’t it?”
***
“Yep, It’s definitely going to be the trick,” I grumbled. Glimpse had been overflying Settal for the last day while the Legion formed a series of camps opposite the four city gates, while the cavalry spread out in patrols intended to prevent reinforcement and resupply. We had to keep our distance though. Mortimer had introduced a few weapons from our world, just as I had at Riverwheel.
Ballista lined the tops of the stone towers that jutted up along the massive, mudbrick construction that was the wall. Behind the walls houses had been wiped away to create large open spaces with turntable mounted trebuchets, three in each newly cleared space, that had slowly rotated to track the simple forts the Legion had thrown up.
We had set up comfortably outside of their range but should any of us step within half a mile of the city proper, we’d be subject to heavy fire. A few trial shots with three hundred kilogram rocks had demonstrated what the machines would do to any tight formation approaching too close.
The engineering teams in the Legion were planning counter batteries, Huskar scaled construction should easily out range the cities weapons, but it would take weeks to organise and build our siege engines. All of this was only the beginning of our problems.
Cadres of what I assumed were trinket-armed wizards and soulbound, hundreds of them, patrolled the walls. Tens of thousands of undead stood sentry, waiting for our ladders, in rows three deep along every foot of the defences. The outer layer of the wall pulsed and moved. It looked alive but it was clearly an undead abomination so vast it could encircle the miles of walls to serve as adaptive defence. A ladder assault was off the menu for now.
I guided Glimpse as he circled above. The city was a couple of miles across, far larger than any permanent settlement I’d seen thus far in this world. A river ran by, heading south towards what would have been the Black Sea back home. I was fairly confident this was the Dnieper river but the locals called it the Jerul.
The city was clearly ancient and had grown with little regard to planning the layout in a sensible way. The streets were all narrow and twisted away from a keep that sat alongside the river and connected to the wall on the north side. South of the keep was a dock area, pontoons reaching out into the half mile wide river. Two legions had forded the river yesterday, miles north of the city, along with a couple of thousand cavalry to head south and set up a blockade and prevent boats from delivering food.
The buildings were all stone construction on the ground floor, then most had one or two wooden levels above that. Glimpse flitted down the streets, listening to the thousands of still living residents as they worried and pretended to go about their business as usual. I sent the bird to the market area, an open space with canvas roofed stalls, lined with permanent shops around the edges.
“Five Onz? Are you mad?” demanded an irate shopper, an older man with thinning hair and the extra weight around his midriff that spoke of significant wealth in this world.
“Flour has risen four fold! It costs so much I’ve had to raise my prices! I’m still losing out!” protested the younger shopkeeper. “How about these? The flour is of a lower quality so I can offer these for three Onz.” The man’s hands were fluttering over smaller loaves of bread laid out to one side. Both types were a dark brown and I could feel Glimpse’s eagerness to swoop in and steal a smaller one.
“Three Onz for subpar bread? Do you have any idea who I am?” the older man yelled, causing the merchant to raise his hands defensively.
Glimpse flew on. Food prices were already spiking, as was anything made from metal. Arrow heads were being forged in earnest, to the east was a street lined with blacksmiths. Losing access to fuel from outside the city would slow down their production but there was a lot of wooden construction they could cannibalise if they wanted to.
I directed Glimpse to the keep that formed the heart of the city's defenses. Five stories tall it loomed over the docks and east side of the wall, shielded by the river on one side and the city on the other. After we broke into the city this would still remain a formidable strong point, able to launch sallies and force us to fight street to street through the narrows and twists of the badly laid out urban battlefield.
I guided my crow from window to window, eavesdropping on the conversations within. Most were simple soldiers, grumbling about their bad luck very quietly. It became clear early on that those who complained too loudly would quickly join the bandaged men standing atop the wall.
“Did the courier get away?” snapped a voice from a window on the third floor. Inside the room was stark, a large table covered in maps, held open with goblets on their corners. The speaker was a tall man, wearing the unwieldy iron armour they had based on the old bronze design. A metal breastplate with hoops of metal, perhaps an inch across and gradually increasing in diameter like a skirt down the man's thighs, was coupled with ornate grieves to protect his legs below the knee. A helm like a handleless cooking pot sat on the table in front of him as he paced back and forth in frustration.
“Lord, we don’t need to summon the army. No one could hope to storm our walls. If the people fail to maintain order we can force them into the Undying,” a counsellor in rich orange robes said. “You know what can happen when the army has to be involved! We’ve got enough forces to make the Jerul run red with Ur-vile blood! There’s only a few thousand of them!”
“I agree with Sal Hadin, Lord. The army should be left out of this. If the savages catch the courier they would be doing us a service!” This man had a wheezy voice, like a man who’d smoked heavily for decades and had chronic asthma on top of it.
“Sal Fadra, you think we can hold? Ashrot and the Undying can hold the walls?” snapped the armoured man. Sal Fadra sighed and Glimpse hopped to the edge of the window sill, head turned so one eye could watch but so he was ready to fly away if they started paying attention to my spying crow.
The lord grabbed up a metal cup from the table, causing one of the maps to partially roll back up, and took a long drink before putting back down gently. He grimaced and shook his head.
“Have I doomed us by calling for the army?” he said quietly.
“It’s a week-long ride to the first watchtower. So three to four weeks before we can expect them to arrive,” Sal Hadin said quickly. “If we can rout their army before then we will be spared the wrath of the demigod who leads the response. But only if we can dispose of them first! Otherwise we’ll all join the undying!”
“We’re all Aspirants, and powerful ones at that. King Mortimer wouldn’t waste his investment. He’s very conscious of using resources efficiently,” offered Sal Hadin. To my ears it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as the others in the room.
“Can Ashrot be persuaded to come off the walls?” asked Sal Fadra. “With its help we could wipe these savages away. Allying with the giants? It’s disgusting!”
“I can ask Ashrot but those things will only act on the King's orders. If I can persuade it that the King would want it to attack the army before they move against the walls… How do you reason with things like Amalgams? My wife is in there somewhere… lost in that mountain of dead flesh.” replied the lord.
“The necromancers say some spark of the person is retained by the Undying. Perhaps that will be an advantage?” offered Sal Hadin. The lord slammed a fist down on the table and snarled.
“Yes. Perhaps my dead wife will be able to sway the tens of thousands melted together in that nightmare!” His voice was thick with hate and self loathing.
“I’m sorry, lord,” stammered Sal Hadin. “I meant no disrespect!” He bowed his head and folded his hands across his stomach. The lord growled and resumed pacing.
“How soon can we pull the Undying off the walls and organise a sally?”
“Lord, the necromancers can arrange that in a few hours of you giving the order,” said Sal Fadra. “If we do it in the night the enemy may not notice, it’s not as though our troops need light to see so it won’t trouble them. Then we could attack with surprise on our side an hour or two before sunrise?”
So, the old “hit them just as the nightwatch are knackered and the morning shift hasn’t shook the shit out of their heads yet” stratagem. Not a terrible idea. Glimpse blinked and cocked his head, throwing my perspective off.
“I’ll speak to Ashrot. Pass the orders to the necromancers. I’ll be in the chapel for an hour to pray, then I’ll try to find what’s left of my wife in a monster,” ordered the lord with a wave of his hand. He picked up his helmet and rattled out leaving the counsellors to follow behind him. Glimpse finally let out the caw he’d been suppressing for several minutes and swooped up into the sky to look for a suitable roost where he could watch the keeps gate and track the lord as he went to speak to Ashrot.
“Pertabon. Be subtle about it but we need to come up with a plan to deal with an attack tomorrow morning,” I said, turning the giant beside me.
“They want to come to us? How kind of them!” Bon’s laughter boomed out across the camp, making me wince.
“Subtle, please Bon!”
