Enlightened Empire

Chapter 399: Routine (2)

“Positions!”

The usual shout woke Chalco from his thoughts. He stretched out his hand and Qori stepped forward to help pull him up.

Is it already here? They’re a bit early today.

Just as he had the thought, the loudmouth child interrupted him.

“Quick! The heretics are coming!”

Annoyed, the architect looked over to the kid who had already drawn his weapon.

“Calm down, boy,” he said. “Do you want to throw your fancy axe down the wall? Put that thing away, and follow me.”

“But-”

“No, I am the most senior member of this group, so I will be in charge. If you fail to follow my orders, you will be punished later. Understood?"

Although the kid glared at him, he finally managed to squeeze out an "understood."

“They’re coming!” he heard Qori shout.

"For now, just remember one thing: Keep your head down,” Chalco said to the boy and sped towards his designated position. After he was done talking, he had already reached his spot on the walls, the same spot he had been defending for several days now.

With concern he looked out at the fields in front of Antila’s walls. Just like the walls themselves, the fields had been riddled with scars by their enemies. In order to get closer to the city defenses, the enemies had dug trenches in awkward, criss-crossed patterns. It was an approach Chalco had never seen before, but it was scarily effective. Enemies remained in cover until they were almost to the walls, which minimized the advantage the defenders had.

“What do we do now?” the timid child asked.

“Well, just grab a weapon of your choice,” Qori replied. “But be careful, they have to last us the day.”

At the same time, the veteran pointed to the barrels set up against the crenelations. When they had first been assigned to this place, the barrels used to be filled with javelins, enough for them to throw until their arms fell off. That had been a month ago.

Now, they left with about forty improvised, poorly balanced spears and some rubble from the destroyed buildings in the city.

“Unless a miracle happens and the armory remembers us, this will be our ammunition for the day,” Chalco emphasized again. “So we have to be strategic with our throws. Are either of you good with a javelin?”

The cocky child tried to raise his hand, but Chalco could tell that he was just showing off again. His second of hesitation was enough for the architect to make a decision.

“Alright, so you will be throwing stones for today,” he determined. “And none of you start throwing before I do. At this point, we cannot waste as much as a single stone.”

In fact, Chalco would have rather not let the children participate at all. Forcing them to join the war was irresponsible from their master in the first place. But the reality was that they could really use the help. Thus, after he had given his instructions to the children, he simply began to observe the attack again. It took a while, but he could finally see the shadows of the enemies move closer within the trenches.

Their flags moved in as well, to signal a general attack on the western section of the wall. At least this much of their sign language had been deciphered since the start of the war, though it wasn't a surprise. In this position, the lower cement wall had been heavily damaged already, so their fire power in that area was reduced.

In anticipation of the attack, Chalco ducked behind the crenelations. He pulled down timid kid with him, who simply had stared at the battlefield like an idiot.

Soon, the shot of cannons followed, from within the trenches, followed by the shot of muskets. From the vibrations he felt through the stone, it seemed like some had splashed against his section of the wall, but he knew he was safe behind the twelve hand-lengths of concrete. At first, this battlefield with the constant noise and danger had been unbearable for Chalco, but now he was numb to it all.

He just waited until the first three salvos of the enemy were over. By that point, they would usually slow down since they would have finished their advance. So he took the chance to glance past his defenses and onto the battlefield. He spotted one enemy soldier who had his elbows out on the dirt that was the edge of the trench, carefully aiming with his rifle for any enemies that would pop up on the wall.

Probably a new recruit.

Someone with this little self-preservation would either learn quickly, or wouldn’t live long on the battlefield. It was Chalco’s job to make sure the second happened. He gauged the distance and realized that a stone wouldn’t be enough. So he picked up a javelin. Remembering the position from before, he only leaned over the wall for a second to throw before he fell back down.

Damn.

As he sank back into cover, he watched his spear sail past his opponent’s arm by a mere finger’s width and then burrow into the muddy wall of the trench behind him. Now, the rookie would learn his lesson and duck away. He wouldn’t get another easy shot like this.

Again, Chalco returned to his cover position and observed. It seemed like their exact position wouldn’t be the main target of attack this time. Every day, the enemies would concentrate their fire on a specific, small section of wall, to cover for their workers who would deepen and lengthen the trenches, to further close the distance to the city. And every day, their position would change, to make early preparations impossible.

Of course, their own troops could not allow the enemy to burrow unimpeded, so these attempts would be met with fierce resistance. Rains of projectiles would go down on the enemies, and the new cannons Antila had received from the foreigners and from Huaylas would focus on collapsing the new earth works. Sometimes, lords would even lead raids outside the walls if the situation was particularly dire.

“Quick, we have to do something,” the loud kid shouted. Chalco looked over and saw him trying to get up, held down by a disinterested Qori.

“No moving until told otherwise!” Chalco shouted. “If you leave your position without orders, that is treason!”

That shut the kid up right quick, so Chalco could go back to observing. To be honest, they were holding out much better than Chalco would have thought. After being ground down like this, Chalco had thought that they would have long fallen apart under the pressure of the enemy attack. However, they had somehow managed to survive for a month. Not least because they had a real monster on their side.

About a hundred steps away from him, Chalco could see the imposing figure of the faceless demon the foreigners called ‘Herak of Balit’, surrounded by his ‘knights’, foreign warriors armed with their own muskets and bows. Their strength and precision were above even the soldiers of the southern kingdom, and they always moved to wherever the enemies tried to advance at the first sign of an attack. They had been instrumental in protecting Antila throughout the siege, no one more so than their leader Herak.

The creature stood tall, half a head taller than even his warriors. He was impossible to overlook, even now that he had colored his mask of bronze black to hide from enemy shooters. Many said that the bronze mask was meant to reflect the sunlight back into the eyes of his enemies.

At least that was the current rumor going around for the stranger’s weird dress. Others included barbaric foreign customs, or the face of a demon hidden underneath his mask.

Either way, the foreign lord’s presence gave calm to all those around him. This wasn’t down to some unrealistic horror stories, or the belief that a real demon may be on their side. It was due to presence, and strength.

As they watched, huddled behind the safety of the walls, the lord stood high atop a tower recessed behind the main walls, covered by specifically designed walls filled with narrow slits for the lord's arrows. Tall and proud he stood, his giant war bow in hand, as he loosed one arrow after another. Every time an arrow landed, it would weaken the attack down below. Every shot would kill a man.

Maybe that was an exaggeration, but it surely felt like it. Herak’s presence itself, with his rate of fire and deadly precision, was more intimidatingto their enemies than an entire battery of cannons. Even more, the arrow’s slower flight speed allowed him to fire at an angle, which made the trenches of the enemies far less useful.

As usual, the texture of the battle changed as soon as Herak appeared. For hours on end, the southern army outside continued to prod and attack Herak’s area of the wall. Yet in all that time, Chalco and his people were never once called over to reinforce the main direction of attack.

All the enemies could do was slowly dig in further, under heavy fire. Every once in a while, someone would come closer to Chalco to check if the area was still manned. Every time, they would be rebuffed with projectiles from above. Bit by bit, the barrels got emptier, but they were never in any great danger.

By the time Chalco could see the bottom of the barrel, the enemy troops began to retreat back along the scars they had dug after hours of prodding and skirmishing. Once more, they disappeared along with the evening sun.

As had become custom, the enemy was just posturing, and nothing was achieved in their attacks. Later, the night shift would go out and fill in the trenches of today again, but that wasn’t Chalco’s concern.

“We did it!”

“Yeah, you run, you cowards!”

The young people were leaning over the walls and cheering their retreating enemies. Chalco just watched them in silence. When Qori wanted to step up and stop them, he held his arm.

“Let them.”

“They should know what’s coming to them,” Qori insisted.

Of course the veteran was right. Today, they had been lucky that they hadn’t been the center of the attack, and that the attack had been particularly soft. However, they wouldn’t get so lucky every day. Still, Chalco couldn’t bring himself to ruin what might be the last fun in the lives of these kids.

“They may be better served with ignorance for now. Just let them have this one day. Let them believe that we are winning, at least for now. They will learn the truth soon enough.”

Exhausted from a day atop the wall, Qori and Chalco turned around and stepped down, back into the city. Meanwhile, the kids were still up there, celebrating their great victory. Just like the walls and the fields, the city itself had also been covered in scars. However, unlike the damage to the other parts of the city, these scars had not been inflicted by the enemy, apart from a few stray cannon shots that had crossed the walls by accident.

No, most of the damage here had been inflicted on purpose, by the mighty lords who had deemed to make Antila their battlefield, though they would surely claim that the one at fault for the damage was the southern king.

The kingdom’s army had long surrounded the city on three sides. All contact to the south, west, and north was cut off. As a result, all supplies had to be routed through the Uskaylla River, from Port Ulta straight into Antila. To make transportation easier, long, straight roads had been built from Antila’s river ports straight to the walls. Any house in the way of these roads was simply demolished, and the families living there thrown out into the streets. Conveniently, the lords then used the materials from the destroyed houses to barricade the gates, repair the damaged walls or chuck the pieces down to fight the invaders.

The local Chalco’s heart hurt whenever he walked down these roads, and Qori also kept a somber silence. This was no way to treat the people who had stayed loyal and remained in the city when they heard that an enemy army was approaching. On top of that, many of the houses here were important parts of Antila’s history, though the architect doubted that anyone else still cared by this point. Worst of all, the roads weren’t even helping. Even with all that space, they were still running out of materials. Slowly, bit by bit, the army of the southern king was strangling them to death, and there was nothing they could do.