Emperor Forged Page 19

  The dwarf chewed on his lip, thinking it over. His eyes rested on Miya’s bow. “That bow. Do all the oni use stuff like that?”

  “They don’t have the weird runes and they’re a tad smaller, but yes. They enchanted their bows but not their arrows.”

  He nodded. “Give ’em the arrows then. We have the scale for that. Normally we’ve avoided enchanted arrows because the benefit is lower compared to enchanted bows for the elves down south, but the oni have their own portable ballistae. What’s your usual tactic to blunt their raw strength?”

  Ah, so that was what he was going for. Lyria would use my oni-fighting tactics against me now, particularly those that I had developed to oust them from any fortresses they took. Fortunately, I knew my own tactics well and also knew enough about the oni to modify theirs and make it harder for Lyria to so easily use my own—especially with the new equipment that Malenko could give me. A week was a long time for foundries the size of Talepolis’s, and we would reuse designs from all over the Empire where we could.

  We spoke for some time, Malenko taking a brief break once his craftsmen were ready to get them working while we ironed out a few prototype designs. The prototype blade for Hish’s unit took far more time than the others. I felt that something that fed on magic would work best. The runes would be dangerous, particularly to the craftsmen, but I trusted Malenko to get them right. A single misfire when forging a rune that consumed magical energy could kill the smith, to say nothing of those around him. They were rare for good reason, whatever power they had.

  Finally, I could turn my attention to the real battle. The weapons for Lyria. The heart and soul of the battle. Miya and I would need to fight as one in the siege. We had become one in another way already, which gave me hope.

  My hammer moved, night and day. The forges roared, the smelters sizzled, and the water never stopped running. These arrows, this armor, my sword, and the runes would not forge themselves.

  Lyria would die to these tools. We would slay her.

  Chapter 34

  Rank after rank of soldiers clad in black and gold stood at attention outside the city as I watched from the inner wall. Half her army was still putting together the encampment, her cavalry was idly patrolling the hills nearby, and there was a train of carts and men as far as the eye could see around the ridge to the north. But Lyria was here, putting on a show of force and reminding me that she could move at any moment.

  The sprawl teemed with life, despite her army’s presence. I had prevented any evacuation to the inner sections of the city. It was cruel but necessary. The city’s interior was too small to cope with the sheer number of residents and Lyria would take advantage of any weakness.

  At first, I had worried that refugees would pile up at the gates, remaining there only to be trampled by invaders in one of the most morale-shattering events I would ever witness in a battle. Fortunately, the grim faces of my soldiers had turned them away. Most returned to their homes, no doubt hoping that the next invader of the city did as little damage to it as I had. The rest began trooping out into the foothills.

  The dragon flapping about in the foothills had scared a lot of those people back into the city. At least the lizard had yet to start torching them.

  The hours dragged on, the sun lazily descending to the west. Soldiers began to venture into the city, finding naught but scared civilians cowering in their homes. The outer wall was bereft of life and traps. Without the resources to defend both walls, I had elected to stick to the one that was both shorter and sturdier. The thicker my volleys, the more damage I could do to armored foes.

  Smoke began to rise from the outer ring of the city as dusk arrived. I had no choice but to ignore it. The reason was simple.

  Any sign of weakness in front of Lyria would not merely be pounced upon but shredded with absolute relish. Should I attempt to protect the people of the city by trying to evacuate them, even though they would make easy targets for dragons should they tightly cluster deep within the city? Then Lyria would know that I cared for their safety. If I didn’t raise a finger to protect them, she had no information either way. Both of us had been taught not to draw inferences on a foe based on inaction. She knew I likely cared for the safety of the people in the city and my inaction didn’t prove otherwise.

  I was stuck in a frustrating situation. Helping the people of the city would get tens of thousands of them killed. To protect them, I had to leave them unprotected and at Lyria’s mercy. I had done the same on my march south, when I had completely disregarded the safety of every village and town between my army and that of Tornfrost Watch when she first attacked. Until she was defeated, nobody was safe. All lives were forfeit. Those fires, whoever or whatever was burning in them, would stay lit.

  I was no Otwin. I had not embraced death.

  Eventually, the smoke dwindled. No flames roared through the city. That was a good sign. Whatever Lyria did out there, we would simply wait and watch. I was under no illusions about the loyalty of the local Talepolis soldiers. They would be calculating if they could keep the gates open long enough to let Lyria destroy us, but there was a reason they were sidelined for this battle. Fortunately, Lyria grew bored with burning the city and I didn’t need to face down a rebellion.

  The first day fizzled out like those flames. The watch changed. I shared an ale with Yasno and played some cards to while away the time. Lyria was unlikely to attack us at night. The same could be said for dawn, given that the sun would be in their eyes. My guess was on a dusk assault, when the sun would bother our archers and mages.

  The second day brought with it an advance. Lyria’s force moved into the city proper. It lined up inside the outer wall, well out of range of my force, save for Miya and our ballistae. Bombarding the besiegers from afar could be an interesting tactic, but Lyria’s dragons could harass us with magic if necessary. Deliberately antagonizing them had no real advantages.

  Lyria wanted the plazas. The city restricted her use of siege engines, as it had against me. Siege towers were out, even if she lit the whole city aflame, due to the sheer amount of debris she would need to deal with. It was laughable to try to use ladders to scale thirty-meter-tall walls. That left her primarily with trebuchets and rams.

  The beehive that was Lyria’s army made it hard to count her force, especially given the size of her supply train. Scouts estimated that it outnumbered us between three and five to one. My eye said four to one, which meant she had good odds of grinding us down. To do that she would need some way of constantly hitting the walls to do actual damage. Without ten soldiers to our one, it wasn’t like she could surround us and wear us down. If she did, she risked leaving herself open to a counterattack as she lacked the numbers to cover all of her weaknesses.

  Prefabricated parts were being carted in from the camp outside the city. I watched closely with my enhanced vision as engineers put together their weapons of war.

  Rams. Not a single ballista or trebuchet in sight. Lyria intended to end this swiftly. She had been reading my tactics on fighting the oni.

  A single bad engagement could weaken her elites to the extent she would never be able to slay the oni in the decisive strike. Grinding us down was never a reliable option. The oni tired, like humans, but they never ceased to be dangerous fighters. Yasno could crack a man’s skull with his bare hands even after a week-long siege had ground down his spirit.

  On day three, dawn came with a thick fog. A thin film of water coated my armor as I stepped into the warm interior of the wall. I had ill thoughts about the day.

  “Joining us for a morning of watching nothing, sir? Can’t see a damn thing down there,” Terry greeted me from the viewing slits. He had a metal mug of coffee in hand, the magically heated dispenser of thick brew right next to him. I greeted him and filled my own mug with the foul stuff.

  An oni yawned nearby as more soldiers filed in. Dawn was a predictable time of attack, so we didn’t change shifts so much as overlap them. He would have his chance to rotate of
f in an hour or so.

  “Visibility isn’t as bad as I thought it would be from up here,” I said. The outer wall was still visible, even if the ground wasn’t. It was still a prime chance for an attack to take place if we couldn’t see their troop movements.

  “Captain Mayer sent round a message to be ready for an attack, so we’re bringing on the noon shift early,” Terry said. “Do you think their siege is ready?”

  “We built our prefab in an afternoon, Terry. What do you think?”

  He nodded, making the face of a man who knew he asked a rather stupid question. Silence reigned for a while as we simply sipped at our horrendous coffee. At least it was hot, even if it had the consistency of tar.

  Something black flickered in front of us. It was distant and fleeting enough that I questioned if I had seen it.

  “What the…” Terry said, leaning closer to the slit.

  My heart had stopped. “Dragon,” I muttered. I was already racing for the stairs.

  “Dragon!” a voice bellowed from above me. “Dragon!”

  Screams and shouts echoed inside the walls. I heard the twang of a ballista and felt magic being channeled. Bells were going off—our alarm system for attack. Hundreds of pairs of boots slapping against stone echoed within and through the walls. A cacophony of panic filled my ears as I raced to the top of the walls.

  Lyria had begun her assault.

  Chapter 35

  Dragonfire greeted me when I got topside. I unslung my shield out of reflex and pumped magic into it. Then the flames exploded against the wall’s barrier, white against white, and I remembered where I was.

  I looked around. Three dragons were bombarding the walls, their gargantuan forms cast like beacons within the fog by the magic and flames they were pumping out. Flares exploded ceaselessly above me. The endless chiming of bells never left my ears. Ranks of archers and mages began bombarding the city with coordinated volley fire. The attackers slapped up barriers in response, then let them fizzle out once they realized our barrages weren’t stopping. They either had to advance under fire or stand there forever. I wondered if the enchanted arrows we were using were punching through the armor of the knights advancing on our walls.

  Ballistae twanged and the dragons scattered. I saw the black one I encountered earlier, a particularly nasty bolt sticking out of its side. It hurled a globe of energy at a tower, lightning arcing off it. It burst on the barrier uselessly, those same arcs failing to breach the wall of white light that kept us safe. These were walls of the Rogistran Empire, and it would take a far more powerful spell to break through with brute force.

  I cursed, realizing there was a far more open area to attack. The bells continued to ring as I raced along the walls. Soldiers streamed out from their barracks and took up their positions. I saw no small number of flares fly up across the walls, indicating that a ram had reached them. The enemy was already hitting the gatehouses. If the dragons had been able to fly over the walls and sweep the rear with impunity, as had no doubt been planned, this battle would have been over before it started. Only the fact that we were actually hurting the lizards kept Lyria’s force at bay.

  Another explosion rocked the barrier near me. A dragon futilely unleashed spell after spell against the ballista crew. Another bolt loosed with a twang. A roar exploded forth from the dragon. He let himself drop, the bolt missing his wing by the smallest of margins. Without missing a beat, the mages started the ritual and prepared for the next shot. All it would take was a solid hit to a wing and that dragon would be a sitting duck. Malenko’s work didn’t care about how majestic the dragons thought they were.

  I leaped off the wall. Below me was the southern gatehouse, which Miya had completely vaporized in our siege. We had replaced it with earthworks with the help of a greater earth elemental, but it was still the weakest link in the wall. No amount of structural magic could make this segment as strong as the walls elsewhere. A dragon could swing a claw and turn it into rubble.

  A wall of shields and spears approached. Yasno opposed it with his own wall outside the earthworks. Balls of light flew over the heads of the Imperial soldiers. They impacted on Yasno’s shields in great bursts of lightning. The enemy mages were arcing them just under the wall’s barrier, but the result was the same. The runes that lined the shields of Yasno and his knights shrugged off the weak magic of Lyria’s battlemages. The lightning found no purchase and fizzled out.

  Yasno’s knights held strong, even as the enemy wall of spears came ever closer. Volleys of arrows clattered against the barrier overhead. In return, we hammered the advancing wall of knights with arrows of our own. I watched as the edges of the approaching wall of soldiers slowly peeled away. Malenko’s enchanted arrows punched through the shields and armor of the knights like they were made of paper. Many of those hit were still moving, however. As good as our weapons were, we were still firing upon heavily armored knights of the Empire. Lyria’s knights kept up their advance, with more soldiers pouring forth to reinforce their advance.

  “Back up,” Yasno yelled suddenly. I blinked.

  A lance, twenty meters long, appeared out of nowhere. It struck the wall’s barrier. My heart stopped. The lance’s black steel and momentum carried its tip an inch through the white barrier. Then it snapped. Physics took hold, and the lance bounced back and broke into three pieces.

  The lance’s pieces flew through the air, disintegrating into prismatic light. Seconds later, the pieces exploded. My vision filled with light. My ears rang.

  “Brace!” That was Yasno. I was too far from him. My vision began to clear.

  A blue dragon burst face-first through the flames of the explosion. Its maw was wide open, its roar filling the air. Yasno was right in its path. Steadying himself, he and his knights faced it head-on—shields raised, hammers up, faces grim.

  It happened in a flash. The dragon snapped its maw at Yasno. My sword hummed as I charged in rage. Yasno swung.

  Yasno’s hammer slammed into the dragon’s head. It snapped to the side, the dragon’s whole body twitching with the movement. Its muscles rippled, the momentum of its charge thrown off. Runes flared like tiny torches on the hammer from the strike as Yasno followed through and brought up his shield to take the dragon’s body slam.

  Then time sped up. The dragon crashed into fifty oni armored like dwarves. Dust and dirt exploded everywhere. I could hear the yells of Yasno’s soldiers rise in pitch as they rammed their shields against the body of the dragon as it crashed into them. They held fast, and their yells became cheers. Their hammers crashed down on scales.

  The roar of the dragon became a whine. The oni began to climb the dragon. I and the Imperial soldiers could only watch as a massive dragon instantly became the pickings of Yasno and his company. In a single moment, it seemed like the momentum of the battle had shifted. Our weakest link had become our strongest. One of Lyria’s greatest assets had been felled by my strongest warriors.

  The air split in a roar.

  I exploded forward and leaped over the dragon’s unmoving body and Yasno’s company. With a crash, I landed in front of the Imperial soldiers, shield already unslung. Magic filled my veins. It was harsh, pure, and utterly seared every fiber of my being. Golden light spilled out across my vision as I projected the most powerful barrier I could manage in front of me.

  The world disintegrated before me. A strange black light replaced everything. It ate away at the stones of the ground, the Imperial soldiers, the buildings nearby, and even the dirt below. Despite the pitch-black quality of the light, I could see through it as easily as daylight. This was a bizarre light formed of magical energy rather than some form of shadow or darkness. As humanity’s sorcery rose to match that of a dragon, I felt my limits being tested, as they always were against this level of magic.

  When the spell faded, all that remained in front of me for nearly ten meters was a crater. I stepped back as the ground began to crumble into the gaping hole before it, the barrier no longer keeping it stable. Far
ther beyond the crater were the remaining Imperial soldiers. They had collapsed to their knees, staring in terror at what their commander had done to their comrades.

  Above them was Lyria, flying high in the air. She was a black dragon, over two hundred years old, and nearly the size of a castle keep. Spikes ran all along her body, and her golden eyes glared down at me. Her enormous claws glowed with another spell.

  Now how would I get her down here?

  Chapter 36

  I sucked in air, my lungs heaving. My nerves burned like somebody had replaced them with molten lava. The new runes on my shield gave me an edge against the raw power of Lyria’s spells but fighting her was still exhausting. I was drawing on the same level of power as the wall’s barriers. Doing so repeatedly would kill me before Lyria did, if I wasn’t careful.

  “Mykah!” Yasno shouted from behind me. He was atop the unmoving blue dragon from earlier. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was the same one from the battle that had started this all. The one that Miya had kept busy. At least one of those dragons had met its end after all, it seemed.

  “Keep the gatehouse safe. Miya and I will deal with her,” I yelled back.

  The ominous black glow between Lyria’s claws was a bad sign. Ballista bolts bounced off her scales in a futile attempt to stop her. I thought I’d told Ilsa not to waste the efforts of her mages. Something to address after the battle.

  I hefted my shield again, took a deep breath, and waited.

  Lyria paused, and I held back the urge to curse. I urged her to fire the spell and keep hovering. Even a second longer was fine.