Several days later we were encamped before the Aurelian fortress that safeguarded their border from the pass. It was a massive, sprawling thing that ate up the mouth of the valley and sat far back enough for our natural elevation advantage to be nullified. Our encamped forces grew by the day and we had erected our own series of entrenchments and forts designed to support each other in the event of a counter attack.
"It's a wonder they haven't done the same thing as us, building a fortress here," I remarked to Dorman as he and I stood atop one of our hasty stone towers. "I thought it took years, sometimes generations to erect a castle."
"It takes years or generations to erect good castles. Yes, we have invested a lot of magical power into this structure, but without us here to maintain it, the magic will eventually fade and the melded stone will become brittle. Without maintenance it would be but a few years before this pile of rocks was once more a literal pile of rocks in the vague outline of a castle. Places like Castle Heart, which is a triple-walled drum castle, are quarried normally and laid brick by brick. Once the bricks are lain and the mortar applied, the mages can cast a grand working to solidify the entire structure, or we can solidify one structure at a time. True engineering cannot be rushed if you want it to last," he informed me as he scratched away on a journal of his, drawing the vista.
I looked in the distance at the fortress opposing us and took in it's many different features. The fortress was allegedly named Darkhallow since it stood in the shade of the mountains. It consisted of four consecutive walls, with the first starting at 16 feet high by 6 feet wide and the last reaching 22 feet high by 8 feet wide. They had clearly expended a large amount of labor, coin, and magic to construct the fortification, and it showed. It was supported by the attached town behind it, and could levy many defenders to it's walls. It would be a very serious battle for us to overcome, and it's presence changed our plans drastically. Clearly the Aurelian's had been spending their time well to prepare for our coming, since the fortress had seen renovations to ensure that we could not safely skirt it's edges and flood into the open plains beyond.
Still, it's placement at the mouth of the valley meant they had a lot of wall space to cover and we had the elevation advantage over those first and second walls. We were already in the process of constructing mighty towers up both cliff sides in our controlled territory and as far forward as we could go. The general plan was to launch artillery spells from towers built fifty feet into the air, and cripple the infrastructure they needed to maintain their defense.
"Come Zerial," Dorman called out, "We have a war council to attend," he said as he started the climb back down the stairs.
Pervalian War Council, Aurelia-Hexenguard Front
"That," began Gerald, looking out of the rough stone window towards the mighty edifice, "Is one whopping pain in my ass. How are we going to overcome it?" Gerald glanced at Dorman, who stood to address the assembled commanders, mages, and nobility.
"Our first stage is nearly complete, which is to secure our own position. Since we currently possess the mage advantage, we should be able to counter-spell any earth-based spells they target us with. We have a constant rotation of fifty mages attending to the enchantments holding our walls together. The hasty construction of this fortress might be our biggest weakness, and if Aurelia manages to stall us here indefinitely, we should see to replacing our mage-walls with properly quarried stone."
Dorman turned to the hastily drawn map depicting the new fortifications in front of them. Despite it's haste, it seemed to have been masterfully drawn as it denoted hard points precisely and even numbered the general forces we had seen at each tower and gatehouses as well as patrol schedules. "The first wall will be our biggest challenge, since proximity is a huge part of how earth-shaping spells work. Once we make that first wall, we will be closer than their primary mage forces unless they risk bringing them forward. Our strategy - normally - would be to hammer their walls with spell-driven and traditional artillery, and indeed we should. We need to begin that immediately." Gerald nodded and for a few minutes the room debated the placement of traditional artillery and their mage counter parts, which would operate from the tops of towers while the engineers went forward to acquire range.
"Our actual goal," Dorman continued as the room quieted down, "Should be to gain the elevation of the cliffs on either side, and punch out and around. We can build up the cliff here, on our side, which will give us massive towers to launch artillery from and reach further. Once we gain the elevation needed, we can perform a grand working and lob an artillery spell over the fortress and into the town behind it. If we can cripple or destroy the town, this siege becomes a matter of time as opposed to an indefinite grind at their walls, which I doubt our ability to take without even more mages," Dorman looked to Gerald and Tika.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Tika shook his head, "If we remove mages from our eastern border with the United Cities, we will be exposing ourselves to an invasion. The same goes for Dather, and Seaward itself is eating up a very large portion of our mage forces to ensure their attack can coordinate. Any mages we draw here will be matched by Aurelia over time, and we'll be back to a stalemate since they need less to counter us due to our distance disadvantage," Tika crushed that faint hope, but really everyone in the room knew that they had all the magical forces they could get. Levies would continue to flood in, as Kind Eddard had ordered a further draft on the middle and western duchies to ensure that Seaward and Hexenguard had enough forces. They would hold in muster until the path into the Aurelian plains was opened fully, but the total army forces had been swelled to over half a million that we could count on when we got past Darkhallow - a very significant amount for a country of our size. If we lost this war we would be looking at retaliation from Aurelia and opportunistic behavior from the United Cities and Dather.
"Once we cripple their ability to sustain this fortress," Dorman continued, "We can build down the opposite side of the cliff, here where it should turn away from their sight-line, and get raiding forces around. We can transfer forces to that side and threaten any caravans they might try to resupply with, and keep them from worrying about our real object," Dorman paused and looked around the room before walking to a window and pointing at a sheer cliff face hidden by one of our towers.
"Which will be to tunnel entirely through the mountain," there were several gasps around the room and everyone looked at Dorman like he was insane.
"Will that even be possible in our life time?" asked Captain Djikstra
"Yes, with the heavy application of magic and many hands to cart dirt and rock away, it's doable," Tika said after some consideration. "We can perform a grand working to soften a direct line through, and figure everything else out. We will need literal tons of lumber though... And magic can solve the issue of oxygen," Tika seemed to gain a gleam in his eye as he considered Dorman's plan further.
"This would allow us to transport our entire army at need to the opposite side, and we would be able to sortie easily with our cavalry forces - which we wouldn't be able to do with the up-and-over strategy since horses don't do well with stairs and carts don't do stairs at all. Wenches could be utilized to get supplies up the cliff, but that would be very vulnerable to enemy spells..." Roderick said thoughtfully.
"Very well then. What is our timeline looking like?" Gerald asked the room.
"We can have artillery-spells up and firing from the word go," Dorman supplied.
"Siege artillery will take roughly a month to get set up," said Engineer Commander Hork. "We brought a small train with us, but to provide any kind of threat to that fortress we will need to construct trebuchets and prepare the ground ahead of time with defensive fortifications."
"The tunneling spell is an unknown at this point. We will need to present the plan to the King and get his approval to pull Master Hork from his work in the Iron Duchy mines. I'd gauge our odds pretty good if we're asking for only one master mage instead of fifty scholars," Tika added.
"Very well, that's our plan for now. Our main priorities for now will be getting the traditional artillery set up for their work, and scaling the cliff in order to gain the height needed to rain artillery on their town, which will only work once so we had better make sure it works the first time." Gerald summarized for everyone before dismissing them to their regular duties.
I followed Roderick out and the two engaged in some practice bouts with Gerald's honor guard, getting their daily training in. Though exhausted, I sought out the quiet solitude of a relatively abandoned spit of land and sat down, feeling slightly foolish.
"Okay Zer," I said to myself. "How hard can thinking be?" and with that I crossed my legs like I had seen Jordan do when meditating and closed my eyes. My mind was turbulent as I sought to bring myself under control, and I found my attention continuing to drift back to the siege before us and in the darkness of my own eyelids I couldn't help but start to daydream. It took me quite a while to exhaust my daydreams of what would come. Even after letting myself think about the topic until I ran out of steam, I found I had other thoughts that would immediately pop into my head.
As my mind wandered I found myself thinking about Jordan, Sebastian, and Tameral. Though all three were with the army I had not had much opportunity to meet with them lately, and I doubted I would get much time in the immediate future. I found myself missing their company fiercely even when I was distracted with heavy training and following the various experts around to learn from them. I spent quite a bit of time ruminating about my past adventures with them before I felt a subtle shift in my thinking.
Over the next three hours I tried my best to empty my head of all thoughts, but had no luck in the long run. Eventually I got up, cramped from sitting so long in such a position, and made my way back towards my quarters. I needed food, I needed a bath, and I needed sleep in that order.
From Afar
Tika watched as Zerial got up from his meditating pose and made his way back towards the more populated sections of camp. He had noticed an odd feeling coming from Zerial lately, and knew he would have to have a discussion with the young scion soon. It was clear to Tika that Zerial was practicing the same style of meditation the Scholars used, and continuing down the path he had chosen could lead to devastating results for both Zerial and the Duchy.
Tika shadowed Zerial all the way back to camp before splitting apart and going his own way. He had his own tasks to perform and he had wasted enough time today watching the foolish young man try and learn about things that were not his to learn.