The next day dawned and all on both sides rose from their nightly slumber. At least, all rose save for Kain himself, who had been up all night doing… things. He had some surprises in store for the Ruskians if they tried to do what they did yesterday again today, but as the Darksol-aligned forces took their positions the military might of the People’s Union of Rusk simply stayed together outside of the range of the artillery. Kain and the rest of the forces loyal to him waited for a while, but the Ruskians did not budge from their position, for the course of a single day had made them realize that assaulting the Teutonians and the undead was suicide; the far better option was to wait for… something.

Kain had prepared for this eventuality. He figured that someone would eventually be smart enough to know that numbers alone would not defeat his forces, but what he had not expected was that it would only take a single day for the Ruskians to come to this conclusion. He sat upon his undead and demonic-looking Pegasus, his Nightmare, and looked to the skies. Pluton was flying just out of sight overhead and had far greater vision range than a normal undead would.

The dragon touched down and the two powerful beings began to talk. Kain was… disappointed. The reason that the Ruskians were holding their position was now known to him. Rather than it being a tactic to draw the might of his military out of their defensible position, it was instead a way to delay the fight until the absolute fuck-ton of reinforcements arrived. If what Pluton had told him was true, the ratio against him and his servants would go from the nearly 1 to 1 that it was now to nearly 8 to 1 in the Ruskian’s favor.

This would not do. No, it would not do at all. There was not enough equipment here, let alone personnel, to hold off that many. Add in that the enemy reinforcements were bringing siege weapons of their own and this was a recipe for disaster. Kain ordered the infantry and cavalry to pull back to base camp and began to formulate a plan to defeat the massive wave that was coming.

…

Six days of planning and fortifying their position with materials brought in through the dungeon fast-travel network led to this. The enemy had completely surrounded us; an ocean of hostility surrounding a small island of defiance. The quick-dry cement and the other goods that had been brought in meant that the hill was now far more defensible than it was before, but there was still the issue that there were not enough people to deal with the numbers that they were facing. At the very least, we had easy access to fresh, clean water and decent food.

Thanks to the fast-travel network we, the people in the fortified camp, did not have to worry about eating terrible rations. Instead we could dine on decent meals, not the hardtack and overly salted meat and fish that the other nations were forced to eat.

As the enemy had piled in, Lord Kain had been doing… something during the night while most were asleep. No one in here knew what he had planned, but he had repeatedly moved out and into the camps that lay just outside of artillery range. How he was never spotted by the enemy, none of us could ever figure out. Whatever plot he had hatched during the buildup was known only to him and that dragon of his. But, for some reason, the ground outside felt… odd. Almost like it was altered each night in some barely noticeable way. Come the seventh day, the mass of Ruskian bastards finally decided that they outnumbered us enough and began to form up.

For a good five hours they screamed profanities at us and called us all manner of names. Heretic, infidel, apostate, traitor to humanity, the works. After that, Lord Kain, seemingly irritated by the noise, erected a barrier that prevented their noise from getting past, and we all got the chance to continue fortifying our position without the constant distraction that the Rusk bastards tried to cause. That night we were told to get a good night’s sleep, for it was highly likely that the Ruskians would attack first thing at daybreak.

The night watch, made up mostly of the undead, took over, and the majority of us hit the hay.

The next day we woke up bright and early. We fully expected that when our superiors said that the enemy would likely attack ‘first thing at daybreak’ that they were referring to the Teutonian usage of that phrase. Turns out that was not the Ruskian way that it was used. To them, ‘first thing at daybreak’ meant that the sun had to be fully visible and their morning prayers had to be finished.

The best thing about being in a society where religion is not allowed to take over military matters is that you don’t have to pray several times a day to your god. We were all glad that Lord Kain had spoken with the rest of the religions that still existed in the greater Darksol Empire and had the ‘weight and terrible price of not praying when people were supposed to’ placed on his own shoulders. As long as you were in the military you could focus on your job and not have to worry about your immortal soul, as Lord Kain would willingly bear the weight of your sins so long as they were not too great and/or terrible. Pretty neat, huh?

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Anyways, the Ruskians finished their prayers and whatnot and began to mass in a massive ring of infantry around the hill we were on. They tried to pull their catapults up, but the very second that they got within range of the cannons we started shelling them, which forced the Rusk bastards to pull their siege machines back. After a while, they would seemingly forget that we had a ranged advantage and would pull the catapults forward, only to be shelled again and forced to pull back.

This went on for two days in a row, both during the day and the night, until the vast majority of the catapults were reduced to splintered wood and the Ruskians realized that they couldn’t bombard us. Perhaps they thought they could force us to expend all our ammunition, but thanks to the fast-travel network we never had to worry about supply problems. Either way, the next tactic they used was even more insane. They tried to send slowly moving siege towers filled with people to dock on the walls or on the cliff tops of the hill we were on. That went as well as you could expect, with the cannons, cursed trebuchets, ballistae and catapults collapsing them on top of their own people.

The Ruskians then apparently realized that only a mass infantry charge equipped with ladders had a chance of taking our fort, and they attacked on the sixteenth day with an all-out assault. Our artillery crews and ranged infantry had a field day. You could fire anywhere away from the fort and hit someone, usually fatally. We never wanted to be in their position, as the crossbow bolts and arrows fired were laced with a mix of filth from the latrine and a special concoction made by Lord Kain himself. If that stuff even nicked you, you were not going to have a nice day, and the enemy’s utter lack of decent armor made that engagement as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

The ladders had tried to dock on the sides of the hill without an earthen ramp up, but they were far too short. They did not even reach the top of the hill, let alone the tops of the walls we had built just a half meter away from edge. It was a riot to see the faces of the ones who tried to put the ladders up, only to be overcome with the realization that they were never going to get up to face us.

The skeletons and zombies that had been fighting alongside us were ordered by their necromancer masters to jump off the more defensible position we were in and into the mob that was around us. Since more undead formations could be brought in at will, the necromancers decided to play it fast and loose. They were no longer to be used just to bolster the defenses, now they were being sent directly into the fray. They got torn up pretty quickly, but they did their job and held back the Rusk bastards long enough for a few more of them to die in various ways.

Still, the mass in other places was getting dangerously close. As they reached the gate that we had built and began to pound against it with all manner of improvised weapons, we feared the worst. I was lucky enough to get a front row seat as Lord Kain himself walked to the top of the gatehouse and flashed a smile that could only be called a shit-eating grin.

As if a switch had been flipped, the tide of people attacking the wall just fell down. Not that they fell to the ground, rather it was that the ground itself just fell away as if it had never been there. The hill we were positioned on had, in a single moment, instantly become a plateau, and everyone on both ways up the hill had just fallen anywhere from a few inches to forty meters. As you can guess, bones were broken on the way down, but not ours. The confusion that took hold of our foes was too great to ignore and the ranged specialists wasted no time in laying down even more fire.

It was then that Lord Kain’s plan began to be put in motion. I was one of the ones who spotted the ring of tents in the distance going up in flames. Soon after, the forms of shambling bodies emerged from the enemy camp and began to move towards the Ruskian peasantry. I looked over at the incoming undead reinforcements that Lord Kain had secretly buried under the foe’s very own encampment without them noticing and felt a sense of schadenfreude at what was about to happen.

Somehow, the Ruskian peasantry did not notice the incoming zombie hordes until they were nearly upon them, but by then it was too late. The zombies attacked the rear of the disorganized mob of people and the morale shock began to set in. They had no way forward, no way backwards and they were getting hit with artillery and marksman fire. I didn’t know how long it took for their morale to shatter, as I was too caught up in the moment, but I do remember it seemingly taking a few minutes for the ones closest to the cliff face realize that they were doomed.

Unfortunately, there were not nearly enough zombies to fully deal with the Ruskian peasantry. A large portion of them managed to rout through the wall of undead and escape to their still-burning base camp, but the rest died in horrible ways. After the battle, Lord Kain remade the natural ramps that led up to our position and had the zombies stick around and act as kind of meat-shield in the event that the Ruskians managed to pull themselves together and attack later on.

…

The daylight was fading fast, and the second battle was over. The Ruskian camp was nearly gone with only the private tents of the nobility remaining intact. Kain smiled as night fell and hopped outside of the fort and began to prepare for the next battle. A little bit of Earth Magic would go a long way to making sure that his next surprise would be just as impactful as the one he had used today. The earth shifted a bit more as Kain laid the groundwork for what he had planned. Overnight, grass grew up to the average man’s knees. If the people of Rusk were smart, they would try and mow the grass before their next assault, but Kain had gleaned quite a bit as he infiltrated their camp each night.

All he needed to do was put his people in a potentially dangerous situation and the elites of Rusk would almost certainly throw caution to the wind. As Kain placed the final surprise on the ground and concealed it beneath a bit of loose soil and some decently tall grass, He used his magic to raise the dirt around the hill and prepare it for use as an impromptu elevator. He could not wait for the cavalry charge that was almost certain to happen tomorrow.

Things were going to get brutal, and Kain would have it no other way.