the Jester
Legend
The massive triple gates of Fandelose rumble shut behind the last of the defenders as they pour back into the city. Below the city, the three wooden gates are falling before the ogres with their monstrously large rams. From his position high on the city’s third outer wall, General Argos watches, no emotion showing on his face.
“It looks like the dwarven trap has sprung, sir,” Colonel Jaxe observes.
Indeed: the Granite Wedge had stayed behind, drawing hundreds of the soldiers of the Hand into the Black Gorge- before triggering a massive rockfall that smashes down on their pursuers.
But Argos’ only reply is, “Now it will come to a siege.”
“Unless they breach the walls,” Colonel Jaxe answers.
”They shall not. Even if they make it through the first gate, the men in the gatehouse will be able to destroy them via murder holes. More of the same awaits them through each gate.”
Outside of the walls, the massive horde spills into the killing field surrounding the city. Thousands upon thousands of goblins, orcs, gnolls, kobolds and more pour forward, shouting gleefully for human blood. Their advance slows as more and more of them pour through the narrow gates, which- now breached- are already being torn apart and carted away, as are elements of the palisade surrounding the site of the first battle, material to be turned into more siege towers, more scorpions.
The front line of the mass of the Six-Fingered Hand rabble begins to edge forward faster, pressed by the increasing number of troops behind them. Suddenly, with the hiss of a thousand bow strings, a cloud of arrows rises from the city walls and arches over the foreground- and into the oncoming rabble. Screams ring out as goblins and lizard men fall, pierced, only to be trampled by their bellowing fellows.
The rabble of the Hand charges.
***
”There,” Kratos gestures from a rooftop near the market square nearest the main gates. “Siege towers.” He turns to the sergeant nearest him. “Focus on those towers!”
The sergeant is his spotter. He pulls out his spyglass and takes careful note of the position of the oncoming towers, then turns and begins shouting instructions into the square below, where the crews of the catapults begin reorienting them and adjusting their tension. And then they loose their first shots, huge rocks propelled by the catapult up and over the closer masses of oncoming soldiers towards the siege towers.
One stone hits a tower dead center. Orcs and hobgoblins are flung from the tower to their dooms below, but the tower keeps rolling forward, cracked but not destroyed. Another of the catapults deals a glancing blow to it. Still the tower rolls on.
***
On the field, several formations of much-more competent Hand soldiers are forming up into lines behind the massive mobs of rabble charging forward. “Hobgoblin elites,” grunts Vann-La. She glances around. She is atop the outer wall, along with hundreds of defenders. She is commanding a small section; Torinn and Ligir are several dozen paces to either side. Both soldiers and peasant volunteers are here; everyone in the city knows their lives are at stake. Small fires, heating cauldrons of sand or oil, are all over, as are long poles with a T of wood at the end, used for pushing scaling ladders away from the wall. Most of the peasants are firing shoddy crossbows into the mass of troops rushing forward, while the soldiers have bows. Arrows whistle out, wounding and slaying the Six-Fingered Hand’s first wave as they rush forward.
We’re as ready as we can be, the Kree warrior thinks.
Torinn strides forward to the edge of the parapet, looking out from between two of the merlons. “Here they come!” he shouts. He pulls out his spiked chain and cracks it like a whip. “Be ready!!”
Further down the line, Heimall has his pike out and is giving a speech to the men and women under his command. “This is it, soldiers!” he cries. “The moment of truth! This is more than our lives at stake- it is the entire Empire, our entire way of life! It’s all on the line, here, soldiers! Stand firm when they come- FOR THE EMPIRE!!”
With a roar, the rabble reaches the wall, many falling to the spikes and ditches around the perimeter, more to the arrows that speed out from the walls in lethal clouds. But more and more of them pour forward, some trying to climb the wall- which has been oiled at General Argos’ command- by hand and foot alone, others throwing up ladders.
Atop the wall, roughly half the defenders cast down their missile weapons in favor of weapons or T poles. Ladder after ladder is shoved over. Sta’Ligir and Hkatha launch fireballs and other destructive magic into the seething mass of Hand troops below. Bodies litter the ground, but some of the enemy attain the top of the parapet.
***
The Six-Fingered Hand’s scorpions come within range and hurling heavy rocks at the city’s gates. Immediately, Kratos redirects his fire. Soon the siege engines are exchanging fire, but the catapults of Fandelose win the first contest, and then turn their fire back on the siege towers, smashing the damaged one to rubble and then destroying another. More scorpions are rolling forward, but due to the catapults’ edge in range, the defenders annihilate them before they can close.
Further out in the swarm of rabble, the siege engineers see more siege towers, moving forward in pairs. “They ain’t organized enough,” says one of the catapult crewmen, and spits. “If they was smart, they would send all the towers up at once.”
A good point, Captain Kratos admits. What does that tell us about their command structure? Are they having difficulty coordinating the races? It seems like the kobolds are actually the ones that can talk to everyone- I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones in charge, at least, beneath Arawn himself.
The catapults continue hurling stones.
***
Crawling like ants, falling to their doom from the slick wall, stabbed with pikes, pierced by arrows, scorched by spells, the Hand keeps coming even as dusk falls on the first day of the siege. All through the night the battle continues, lit by the smoky haze of the fires lit by the pounding artillery of both sides, by spilled oil and fallen torches.
Again and again the defenders push the attackers back, inflicting losses of almost 50:1 on the enemy. Trying to rotate fresh troops in to relieve the exhausted men defending the city with their lives, General Argos is up all night. The gates come under repeated assault, but when things seem almost lost, a quick sally from a postern gate shatters the Hand’s advance.
Dawn pours light onto a ghastly battlefield, the dead and their blood staining the ground everywhere. Blazing firestone rocks sail out over the field, cast by the general’s own war machines, setting aflame the hillside leading to the upper approaches to the city- not only difficult to cross, it is now made an inferno.
In wave after wave, the enemy pounds on the walls. Muscles aching, our heroes and the people under their command fight on, hour after hour, snatching short moments of rest whenever they can, but that is all they can afford.
Day after day, the assault smashes into the city, the Six-Fingered Hand trying to push through and crush the Imperial resistance. Looking out at the roaring army of humanoids, Loridell can’t help but wonder if there is any more resistance remaining. Does the Empire still exist? What of the Emperor? Are we all that still resists the foe?
Without a way out of the city, without an escape from the sea of troops encircling them, there is no way to know.
***
Cook is not going anywhere near the walls, no sir. He knows better. “That a place for soldiers and warriors, not cooks,” he mutters to himself.
But that doesn’t mean that he cannot contribute.
He cooks, massive amounts of food for huge numbers of soldiers and support troops. They aren’t looking for taste; they just need the strength to fight on. Good thing, too, as Cook can provide little of the one but has no problem with the other. Ladling large globs of dwarven grub stew into bowls, he nods respectfully to the warriors. These men and women are saving his life every day- and not all of them will survive.
He can do more, too. As the siege drags on into its second week of unceasing violence, he decides that he must. Secret ways, unknown to the humans, run from the dwarven operation in Black Gorge to the underbelly of the city. They showed him some of them when he was in the gorge before. Over the following weeks, Cook learns these passages well, using them to help ferry information and messages back and forth from Fandelose to the isolated dwarves in the Black Gorge- whom the Hand is mostly ignoring after a few costly attempts to attack them in their mountain hold failed.
It is not a glamorous job, but that doesn’t matter. It is important.
And he’s helping his friends.
And, most important of all, he is not in the damned Army.
***
After two weeks of virtually unceasing attack, the Six-Fingered Hand draws back just out of catapult range and begins a proper siege, trying to strangle the city and cut off its supplies.
General Argos is ahead of them. In the weeks before the horde arrived, he had his engineers redirect a mountain stream so that it now runs through the upper part of the city. Now, using his powers under martial law, he forces the aristocracy and businessmen that live in the upper part of the city to relocate. The buildings are largely razed, and the land leveled and turned into rice fields, flooded by the mountain river.
***
The siege settles in to a steady state. Time passes, weeks into months. The love affair between Kratos and Livia grows stronger, more passionate. She begs him not to make a fuss about removing her from the household in which she is stationed until after Fandelose is saved and he is a great hero; right now, her family’s status completely depends on her position. Reluctantly, he accedes to her request. “But soon, when we have saved Fandelose, your mistress will not be able to deny us,” he says. “I will be a hero, and I will have you for my wife!”
***
Sta’Ligir catches occasional glimpses of the gloomy unicorn when he steps momentarily into the fey realms to teleport, but is unable to make contact. He knows something, the wizard thinks, something important...
One day, about two months into the siege, the High Civilizer approaches him with a bunch of pictures of eladrin architecture and a ton of strange questions for him, saying that he might be able to glean some ideas that will help the city in the siege. (Many of the pictures are of eladrin battlements and the like.) Iggy shrugs and answers as best he can. The high priest of civilization is as good an ally as anyone or anything is likely to be, under the circumstances.
***
The Hand still often throws minor attacks at the besieged, but it is clear that they are content to wait, for the most part. Starvation is on their side- or so they think.
In Fandelose, food is rationed, but the rice crops- assuming that they survive and flourish- will relieve the situation in the spring.
Cook begins visiting the rice fields after he meets a trio of Mao Maos while serving food in a cafeteria. (Mao Mao is a human land of rice farmers and ancient, decadent cultures prone to dragon worship, surrounding Cook’s own home of Muk Nam on the north and west.) They have features and accents similar to Cook’s, and speak the same Eastern tongue as him. They are overjoyed to see someone that is, if not their countryman, at least from the same continent as them. The Mao Maos are three brothers, named Lao Bin, Lao To and Lao Ping. They befriend Cook, inviting him to their hovel at nightfall for some sake. They live on the upper parts of the city, where they tend the rice fields, and over the next few years they become great friends with Bum Po the cook.
***
Autumn becomes winter. Heimall is visited by several of his cousins, who have been hearing tales of his exploits on the walls and understand that he is one of the heroes of the battle. They are extremely solicitous of his good will and offer to arrange for reasonable quantities of normal gear to be provided for 50% of normal price. They also give to him a magical dagger that their father claimed in war from a dwarven assassin, and opine that they hope it can help the war effort. After the rest leave, one of them- Vedreich- stays behind for a few moments.
“Cousin,” he says, “I understand that you have put out feelers to the city’s underground, asking for help with the war effort.”
“True enough,” Heimall replies.
“Your cries for aid have not gone unheard- or unheeded. In future, if you need to... get the word out... I am your man.”
“Thank you, cousin.”
***
On the hundredth day of the siege, General Argos gets his first good night’s sleep since it began.
When he wakes, his mind is especially clear. I needed that, he thinks. It has been too long since I have been properly rested. But my mind must be sharp. We are holding- we can hold forever. But that is not enough.
He dresses, then strides to his map room, where a miniature version of the battle is set up. Several officers are murmuring and gesturing at one particular group. “Gentlemen,” Argos nods to them. After the customary exchange of salutes, the general studies what they are looking at.
“They’re building more siege towers, using the wood from the palisades. This time, they will send them in all at once. We must be ready.” He turns to Colonel Jaxe. “We have a lot of raw materials from those mansions that we demolished. Use them to build more catapults. Use the brick and stonework as ammunition. We need to be ready when the attack comes- but we have time.”
“How do you figure?” demands one of his new officers, taken from the local political establishment.
“Because, Lieutenant Keflingorn, it is winter. The rains have already started, and by the looks of the sky, we’ll have a storm rolling in tonight.”
“So?”
“Mud,” explains Colonel Jaxe. “The siege towers will bog down and become sitting ducks.”
“At least until the weather turns, we are safe- from that particular avenue of attack.”
***
At midwinter, Loridell is initiated into the Fraternity of Battle, a group of warriors whose numbers have been depleted by the fighting. They accept only the worthy, but in skill at arms and in moral certitude, and they test the young paladin. She passes with honors, displaying both valor and judgment during her tests.
When she returns to the barracks, she is exhausted, but pleasantly so. She throws herself into her bunk. Briefly, just before she falls into a deep sleep, she wonders, Whatever happened to the warforged? Many of them were outside the walls when the siege hit. Do we have any communication with them? Are they even still alive? If so, what are they doing? Then sleep steals her thoughts away, and a blanket of oblivion comes over her.
The next morning it’s back to the walls, with sleet coming down and soaking the field. General Argos’ assessment of the siege towers proves accurate: it is not for several more months until the towers begin rolling at the head of a new assault.
But the citizens of Fandelose have seen that they must all work together to survive. They have seen, by the annexation of the Upper District, that General Argos will not give the rich the preferential treatment they desire, but rather the same treatment as everyone else. Work. Contribute. Give us what you have that we can use to survive. Damn your antique furniture- those chairs are going to be fashioned into the parts of new T poles. We’re housing soldiers here, because they need to be able to reach the wall there quickly. If you won’t work, we’ll put you on the wall to fight.
Every man, woman and child in Fandelose that is able to contribute does.
Except one.
***
The first hot day of spring. The ground has finally dried out, and sprouts of grass have begun trying to repopulate the killing field outside of Fandelose. They are doomed to be torn up beneath the churning wheels of the towers, the rush of booted feet. The roar of the renewed assault. The stink of sweat. The catapults bouncing, almost ripping their moorings free of the ground, as they hurl huge masses of stone into the oncoming towers. The archers on the wall fire wave of wave of arrows at them, killing the exposed orcs and hobgoblins.
Mixed rabble rushes towards the wall again, and peasants pick up their T poles. Blood, burning oil, the crash of arrow on shield, the screams of the injured and dying. Total war.
Tower after tower falls, battered to pieces by the siege weapons. The scorpions hurl stones at the gates again, and there aren’t enough catapults to assault them too without letting the towers reach the walls. The outer gate cracks and bends, but does not break- not yet.
Cursing as the reports reach him, Kratos turns his engines on the enemy scorpions, letting the towers creep forward. It doesn’t matter if we stop the siege towers if the gates fall, he thinks to himself. But now half of the scorpions are focusing on the catapults, and a lucky shot hurls a large, oblong stone directly into one, smashing it to pieces and pulverizing two men. Kratos reels back as shrapnel smashes into his breastplate, then regains his bearings.
“Shoot those damn things! Destroy them!” he shouts.
One by one, the scorpions are annihilated. But before he can turn his engines back on the siege towers, one of them reaches the outer wall. A ramp slams down, bridging the gap between tower and wall, and a wave or berserk orcs rushes forward.
Iggy is there, and he meets them with a fireball, slaying many of the attackers outright. But not all. More pour forward, to be met by a hedge of pikemen that rushes forward, bristling like a porcupine. Orcs and goblins scream as they are impaled or hurled from the wall to die on the bodies surrounding the wall.
The tower is pelted by withering fire from Fandelose’s archers. Orcs pour out of it, only to fall, arrows in their vitals. The wounded are pushed down, trampled, finished by the pikemen when possible.
But more of the peasants and the pikemen are falling, now, victims of the besiegers in the tower plus the rain of arrows that is coming more heavily from below. A mass of goblins and kobolds on a ladder manage to fight their way to the top and spill out onto the parapets. The pikemen in the area rush forward, but the goblins hold long enough for one of the orcish priests to attain the wall. More hobgoblin warriors pour up to fill the gap in the kobold and goblin line made by the pikemen, and then they are pushing towards the tower and the area around it.
Iggy blasts them with spells, but the hobgoblins are clearly more elite soldiers than have previously reached the walls. More scorpion attacks smash into the troops atop the wall not far away, smashing merlons to bits. A wide chunk of parapet cracks and slides away, crushing lizard folk and goblins below it as it does but taking half a dozen soldiers to their doom.
The Imperial soldiers form up on Heimall, Loridell and Torinn, while Ligir retreats through the line and pulls out his sunpowder pistol. The hobgoblins form a wedge before the orc and then march forward, hacking peasants down as they come on towards the pike formation. They roar as they reach the pikes, charging forward. Several of the hobgoblins are caught in the bristling hedge, but others slip through, or the long weapons turn from their armor. They begin hacking into the defenders.
Torinn is there, his spiked chain ablaze with the power of Lester as he holds the line. Heimall, Loridell and Iggy back him up, and after a moment wherein their morale looks about to break, the pikemen steel themselves and force their way forward. Torinn spits a blast of electric energy into the midst of the soldiers.
With a roar, the pikemen attack.
The hobgoblins are thrown back. The orcish cleric’s god cannot protect him from the wrath of Lester’s priest. The remaining siege towers are obliterated by the Fandelosian engines, and the scorpions forced to attempt to withdraw. They fail, and are reduced to broken slats and pieces of rope by the catapults.
“The day is ours!” proclaims Heimall to the soldiers. They cheer.
“But that one was closer,” Loridell gasps as the attackers withdraw for the day, harried by a sortie from the sally port on the city’s west side.
“I’ll be damned,” mutters Iggy.
“Huh?” Then Loridell notices that the soldiers are chanting a word, rising in volume as more and more of them pick it up.
Dragon. Dragon. DRAGON. DRAGON. DRAGON...
They have hoisted Torinn on their soldiers and are carrying him, hollering wildly in victory.
“Looks like someone got himself a new nickname,” Loridell says wryly.
“It also looks like the soldiers now have a lucky charm,” Ligir replies.
Next Time: The siege continues!
“It looks like the dwarven trap has sprung, sir,” Colonel Jaxe observes.
Indeed: the Granite Wedge had stayed behind, drawing hundreds of the soldiers of the Hand into the Black Gorge- before triggering a massive rockfall that smashes down on their pursuers.
But Argos’ only reply is, “Now it will come to a siege.”
“Unless they breach the walls,” Colonel Jaxe answers.
”They shall not. Even if they make it through the first gate, the men in the gatehouse will be able to destroy them via murder holes. More of the same awaits them through each gate.”
Outside of the walls, the massive horde spills into the killing field surrounding the city. Thousands upon thousands of goblins, orcs, gnolls, kobolds and more pour forward, shouting gleefully for human blood. Their advance slows as more and more of them pour through the narrow gates, which- now breached- are already being torn apart and carted away, as are elements of the palisade surrounding the site of the first battle, material to be turned into more siege towers, more scorpions.
The front line of the mass of the Six-Fingered Hand rabble begins to edge forward faster, pressed by the increasing number of troops behind them. Suddenly, with the hiss of a thousand bow strings, a cloud of arrows rises from the city walls and arches over the foreground- and into the oncoming rabble. Screams ring out as goblins and lizard men fall, pierced, only to be trampled by their bellowing fellows.
The rabble of the Hand charges.
***
”There,” Kratos gestures from a rooftop near the market square nearest the main gates. “Siege towers.” He turns to the sergeant nearest him. “Focus on those towers!”
The sergeant is his spotter. He pulls out his spyglass and takes careful note of the position of the oncoming towers, then turns and begins shouting instructions into the square below, where the crews of the catapults begin reorienting them and adjusting their tension. And then they loose their first shots, huge rocks propelled by the catapult up and over the closer masses of oncoming soldiers towards the siege towers.
One stone hits a tower dead center. Orcs and hobgoblins are flung from the tower to their dooms below, but the tower keeps rolling forward, cracked but not destroyed. Another of the catapults deals a glancing blow to it. Still the tower rolls on.
***
On the field, several formations of much-more competent Hand soldiers are forming up into lines behind the massive mobs of rabble charging forward. “Hobgoblin elites,” grunts Vann-La. She glances around. She is atop the outer wall, along with hundreds of defenders. She is commanding a small section; Torinn and Ligir are several dozen paces to either side. Both soldiers and peasant volunteers are here; everyone in the city knows their lives are at stake. Small fires, heating cauldrons of sand or oil, are all over, as are long poles with a T of wood at the end, used for pushing scaling ladders away from the wall. Most of the peasants are firing shoddy crossbows into the mass of troops rushing forward, while the soldiers have bows. Arrows whistle out, wounding and slaying the Six-Fingered Hand’s first wave as they rush forward.
We’re as ready as we can be, the Kree warrior thinks.
Torinn strides forward to the edge of the parapet, looking out from between two of the merlons. “Here they come!” he shouts. He pulls out his spiked chain and cracks it like a whip. “Be ready!!”
Further down the line, Heimall has his pike out and is giving a speech to the men and women under his command. “This is it, soldiers!” he cries. “The moment of truth! This is more than our lives at stake- it is the entire Empire, our entire way of life! It’s all on the line, here, soldiers! Stand firm when they come- FOR THE EMPIRE!!”
With a roar, the rabble reaches the wall, many falling to the spikes and ditches around the perimeter, more to the arrows that speed out from the walls in lethal clouds. But more and more of them pour forward, some trying to climb the wall- which has been oiled at General Argos’ command- by hand and foot alone, others throwing up ladders.
Atop the wall, roughly half the defenders cast down their missile weapons in favor of weapons or T poles. Ladder after ladder is shoved over. Sta’Ligir and Hkatha launch fireballs and other destructive magic into the seething mass of Hand troops below. Bodies litter the ground, but some of the enemy attain the top of the parapet.
***
The Six-Fingered Hand’s scorpions come within range and hurling heavy rocks at the city’s gates. Immediately, Kratos redirects his fire. Soon the siege engines are exchanging fire, but the catapults of Fandelose win the first contest, and then turn their fire back on the siege towers, smashing the damaged one to rubble and then destroying another. More scorpions are rolling forward, but due to the catapults’ edge in range, the defenders annihilate them before they can close.
Further out in the swarm of rabble, the siege engineers see more siege towers, moving forward in pairs. “They ain’t organized enough,” says one of the catapult crewmen, and spits. “If they was smart, they would send all the towers up at once.”
A good point, Captain Kratos admits. What does that tell us about their command structure? Are they having difficulty coordinating the races? It seems like the kobolds are actually the ones that can talk to everyone- I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones in charge, at least, beneath Arawn himself.
The catapults continue hurling stones.
***
Crawling like ants, falling to their doom from the slick wall, stabbed with pikes, pierced by arrows, scorched by spells, the Hand keeps coming even as dusk falls on the first day of the siege. All through the night the battle continues, lit by the smoky haze of the fires lit by the pounding artillery of both sides, by spilled oil and fallen torches.
Again and again the defenders push the attackers back, inflicting losses of almost 50:1 on the enemy. Trying to rotate fresh troops in to relieve the exhausted men defending the city with their lives, General Argos is up all night. The gates come under repeated assault, but when things seem almost lost, a quick sally from a postern gate shatters the Hand’s advance.
Dawn pours light onto a ghastly battlefield, the dead and their blood staining the ground everywhere. Blazing firestone rocks sail out over the field, cast by the general’s own war machines, setting aflame the hillside leading to the upper approaches to the city- not only difficult to cross, it is now made an inferno.
In wave after wave, the enemy pounds on the walls. Muscles aching, our heroes and the people under their command fight on, hour after hour, snatching short moments of rest whenever they can, but that is all they can afford.
Day after day, the assault smashes into the city, the Six-Fingered Hand trying to push through and crush the Imperial resistance. Looking out at the roaring army of humanoids, Loridell can’t help but wonder if there is any more resistance remaining. Does the Empire still exist? What of the Emperor? Are we all that still resists the foe?
Without a way out of the city, without an escape from the sea of troops encircling them, there is no way to know.
***
Cook is not going anywhere near the walls, no sir. He knows better. “That a place for soldiers and warriors, not cooks,” he mutters to himself.
But that doesn’t mean that he cannot contribute.
He cooks, massive amounts of food for huge numbers of soldiers and support troops. They aren’t looking for taste; they just need the strength to fight on. Good thing, too, as Cook can provide little of the one but has no problem with the other. Ladling large globs of dwarven grub stew into bowls, he nods respectfully to the warriors. These men and women are saving his life every day- and not all of them will survive.
He can do more, too. As the siege drags on into its second week of unceasing violence, he decides that he must. Secret ways, unknown to the humans, run from the dwarven operation in Black Gorge to the underbelly of the city. They showed him some of them when he was in the gorge before. Over the following weeks, Cook learns these passages well, using them to help ferry information and messages back and forth from Fandelose to the isolated dwarves in the Black Gorge- whom the Hand is mostly ignoring after a few costly attempts to attack them in their mountain hold failed.
It is not a glamorous job, but that doesn’t matter. It is important.
And he’s helping his friends.
And, most important of all, he is not in the damned Army.
***
After two weeks of virtually unceasing attack, the Six-Fingered Hand draws back just out of catapult range and begins a proper siege, trying to strangle the city and cut off its supplies.
General Argos is ahead of them. In the weeks before the horde arrived, he had his engineers redirect a mountain stream so that it now runs through the upper part of the city. Now, using his powers under martial law, he forces the aristocracy and businessmen that live in the upper part of the city to relocate. The buildings are largely razed, and the land leveled and turned into rice fields, flooded by the mountain river.
***
The siege settles in to a steady state. Time passes, weeks into months. The love affair between Kratos and Livia grows stronger, more passionate. She begs him not to make a fuss about removing her from the household in which she is stationed until after Fandelose is saved and he is a great hero; right now, her family’s status completely depends on her position. Reluctantly, he accedes to her request. “But soon, when we have saved Fandelose, your mistress will not be able to deny us,” he says. “I will be a hero, and I will have you for my wife!”
***
Sta’Ligir catches occasional glimpses of the gloomy unicorn when he steps momentarily into the fey realms to teleport, but is unable to make contact. He knows something, the wizard thinks, something important...
One day, about two months into the siege, the High Civilizer approaches him with a bunch of pictures of eladrin architecture and a ton of strange questions for him, saying that he might be able to glean some ideas that will help the city in the siege. (Many of the pictures are of eladrin battlements and the like.) Iggy shrugs and answers as best he can. The high priest of civilization is as good an ally as anyone or anything is likely to be, under the circumstances.
***
The Hand still often throws minor attacks at the besieged, but it is clear that they are content to wait, for the most part. Starvation is on their side- or so they think.
In Fandelose, food is rationed, but the rice crops- assuming that they survive and flourish- will relieve the situation in the spring.
Cook begins visiting the rice fields after he meets a trio of Mao Maos while serving food in a cafeteria. (Mao Mao is a human land of rice farmers and ancient, decadent cultures prone to dragon worship, surrounding Cook’s own home of Muk Nam on the north and west.) They have features and accents similar to Cook’s, and speak the same Eastern tongue as him. They are overjoyed to see someone that is, if not their countryman, at least from the same continent as them. The Mao Maos are three brothers, named Lao Bin, Lao To and Lao Ping. They befriend Cook, inviting him to their hovel at nightfall for some sake. They live on the upper parts of the city, where they tend the rice fields, and over the next few years they become great friends with Bum Po the cook.
***
Autumn becomes winter. Heimall is visited by several of his cousins, who have been hearing tales of his exploits on the walls and understand that he is one of the heroes of the battle. They are extremely solicitous of his good will and offer to arrange for reasonable quantities of normal gear to be provided for 50% of normal price. They also give to him a magical dagger that their father claimed in war from a dwarven assassin, and opine that they hope it can help the war effort. After the rest leave, one of them- Vedreich- stays behind for a few moments.
“Cousin,” he says, “I understand that you have put out feelers to the city’s underground, asking for help with the war effort.”
“True enough,” Heimall replies.
“Your cries for aid have not gone unheard- or unheeded. In future, if you need to... get the word out... I am your man.”
“Thank you, cousin.”
***
On the hundredth day of the siege, General Argos gets his first good night’s sleep since it began.
When he wakes, his mind is especially clear. I needed that, he thinks. It has been too long since I have been properly rested. But my mind must be sharp. We are holding- we can hold forever. But that is not enough.
He dresses, then strides to his map room, where a miniature version of the battle is set up. Several officers are murmuring and gesturing at one particular group. “Gentlemen,” Argos nods to them. After the customary exchange of salutes, the general studies what they are looking at.
“They’re building more siege towers, using the wood from the palisades. This time, they will send them in all at once. We must be ready.” He turns to Colonel Jaxe. “We have a lot of raw materials from those mansions that we demolished. Use them to build more catapults. Use the brick and stonework as ammunition. We need to be ready when the attack comes- but we have time.”
“How do you figure?” demands one of his new officers, taken from the local political establishment.
“Because, Lieutenant Keflingorn, it is winter. The rains have already started, and by the looks of the sky, we’ll have a storm rolling in tonight.”
“So?”
“Mud,” explains Colonel Jaxe. “The siege towers will bog down and become sitting ducks.”
“At least until the weather turns, we are safe- from that particular avenue of attack.”
***
At midwinter, Loridell is initiated into the Fraternity of Battle, a group of warriors whose numbers have been depleted by the fighting. They accept only the worthy, but in skill at arms and in moral certitude, and they test the young paladin. She passes with honors, displaying both valor and judgment during her tests.
When she returns to the barracks, she is exhausted, but pleasantly so. She throws herself into her bunk. Briefly, just before she falls into a deep sleep, she wonders, Whatever happened to the warforged? Many of them were outside the walls when the siege hit. Do we have any communication with them? Are they even still alive? If so, what are they doing? Then sleep steals her thoughts away, and a blanket of oblivion comes over her.
The next morning it’s back to the walls, with sleet coming down and soaking the field. General Argos’ assessment of the siege towers proves accurate: it is not for several more months until the towers begin rolling at the head of a new assault.
But the citizens of Fandelose have seen that they must all work together to survive. They have seen, by the annexation of the Upper District, that General Argos will not give the rich the preferential treatment they desire, but rather the same treatment as everyone else. Work. Contribute. Give us what you have that we can use to survive. Damn your antique furniture- those chairs are going to be fashioned into the parts of new T poles. We’re housing soldiers here, because they need to be able to reach the wall there quickly. If you won’t work, we’ll put you on the wall to fight.
Every man, woman and child in Fandelose that is able to contribute does.
Except one.
***
The first hot day of spring. The ground has finally dried out, and sprouts of grass have begun trying to repopulate the killing field outside of Fandelose. They are doomed to be torn up beneath the churning wheels of the towers, the rush of booted feet. The roar of the renewed assault. The stink of sweat. The catapults bouncing, almost ripping their moorings free of the ground, as they hurl huge masses of stone into the oncoming towers. The archers on the wall fire wave of wave of arrows at them, killing the exposed orcs and hobgoblins.
Mixed rabble rushes towards the wall again, and peasants pick up their T poles. Blood, burning oil, the crash of arrow on shield, the screams of the injured and dying. Total war.
Tower after tower falls, battered to pieces by the siege weapons. The scorpions hurl stones at the gates again, and there aren’t enough catapults to assault them too without letting the towers reach the walls. The outer gate cracks and bends, but does not break- not yet.
Cursing as the reports reach him, Kratos turns his engines on the enemy scorpions, letting the towers creep forward. It doesn’t matter if we stop the siege towers if the gates fall, he thinks to himself. But now half of the scorpions are focusing on the catapults, and a lucky shot hurls a large, oblong stone directly into one, smashing it to pieces and pulverizing two men. Kratos reels back as shrapnel smashes into his breastplate, then regains his bearings.
“Shoot those damn things! Destroy them!” he shouts.
One by one, the scorpions are annihilated. But before he can turn his engines back on the siege towers, one of them reaches the outer wall. A ramp slams down, bridging the gap between tower and wall, and a wave or berserk orcs rushes forward.
Iggy is there, and he meets them with a fireball, slaying many of the attackers outright. But not all. More pour forward, to be met by a hedge of pikemen that rushes forward, bristling like a porcupine. Orcs and goblins scream as they are impaled or hurled from the wall to die on the bodies surrounding the wall.
The tower is pelted by withering fire from Fandelose’s archers. Orcs pour out of it, only to fall, arrows in their vitals. The wounded are pushed down, trampled, finished by the pikemen when possible.
But more of the peasants and the pikemen are falling, now, victims of the besiegers in the tower plus the rain of arrows that is coming more heavily from below. A mass of goblins and kobolds on a ladder manage to fight their way to the top and spill out onto the parapets. The pikemen in the area rush forward, but the goblins hold long enough for one of the orcish priests to attain the wall. More hobgoblin warriors pour up to fill the gap in the kobold and goblin line made by the pikemen, and then they are pushing towards the tower and the area around it.
Iggy blasts them with spells, but the hobgoblins are clearly more elite soldiers than have previously reached the walls. More scorpion attacks smash into the troops atop the wall not far away, smashing merlons to bits. A wide chunk of parapet cracks and slides away, crushing lizard folk and goblins below it as it does but taking half a dozen soldiers to their doom.
The Imperial soldiers form up on Heimall, Loridell and Torinn, while Ligir retreats through the line and pulls out his sunpowder pistol. The hobgoblins form a wedge before the orc and then march forward, hacking peasants down as they come on towards the pike formation. They roar as they reach the pikes, charging forward. Several of the hobgoblins are caught in the bristling hedge, but others slip through, or the long weapons turn from their armor. They begin hacking into the defenders.
Torinn is there, his spiked chain ablaze with the power of Lester as he holds the line. Heimall, Loridell and Iggy back him up, and after a moment wherein their morale looks about to break, the pikemen steel themselves and force their way forward. Torinn spits a blast of electric energy into the midst of the soldiers.
With a roar, the pikemen attack.
The hobgoblins are thrown back. The orcish cleric’s god cannot protect him from the wrath of Lester’s priest. The remaining siege towers are obliterated by the Fandelosian engines, and the scorpions forced to attempt to withdraw. They fail, and are reduced to broken slats and pieces of rope by the catapults.
“The day is ours!” proclaims Heimall to the soldiers. They cheer.
“But that one was closer,” Loridell gasps as the attackers withdraw for the day, harried by a sortie from the sally port on the city’s west side.
“I’ll be damned,” mutters Iggy.
“Huh?” Then Loridell notices that the soldiers are chanting a word, rising in volume as more and more of them pick it up.
Dragon. Dragon. DRAGON. DRAGON. DRAGON...
They have hoisted Torinn on their soldiers and are carrying him, hollering wildly in victory.
“Looks like someone got himself a new nickname,” Loridell says wryly.
“It also looks like the soldiers now have a lucky charm,” Ligir replies.
Next Time: The siege continues!