Chapter Thirty-Nine - The Empress On the Wall

The Limpet. Empress Limpet--that was still taking some getting used to--stood atop the walls of Yu Xiang and observed her incoming doom.

The army had arrived atop the hills to the south of the city late last night. Her advisor in military matters... and the person in charge of everything military related at the moment, Captain Seventeen had warned her that the enemy wouldn't be attacking during the night. And if they did, then the undead had a clear and powerful advantage.

He was right. The enemy had retreated back and away from the hilltops after being bombarded by their undead trebuchets. A few thundering shots had rang out through the night.

She'd like to blame those for her lack of sleep, but in reality she'd always been a heavy sleeper. The exception was over these past few days, where her nights were filled with tossing and turning and attempts to read herself to sleep.

That had never worked before.

She'd start reading, and get into what she was reading, then by the time she was actually too tired to understand what was on the page, she had to pee, which required getting up and padding over to the washroom. By the time she returned, the act of standing up and walking about had awoken her enough that she wanted to read more, and then the next thing she knew the sun was up.

This was as predictable as it was unavoidable.

It led to moments like these, where she was standing on the walls of a city that was ostensibly hers, watching an entire army unfold itself into a great formation with thousands of soldiers within it, and the entire time all she could think about was going back to bed.

But she could hardly ask for the enemy to come back tomorrow, and it wasn't like she'd be getting any more restful sleep, not until they were all gone.

"Rem, could you get me some tea, please?" she asked over her shoulder.

Rem glared at her. Or that's how Fenfang read the mantis's expression. It wasn't easy to do at the best of times. "Fine. Stupid empress," the butler mantis said before stomping away.

They weren't alone on this section of the wall. There were a couple of under officers from Captain Seventeen's officer corpse, some of the braver members of the city council, and a half dozen of the calmer mantis sisters.

One of them, a scar-covered mantis woman named War, was standing at attention nearby, her gaze scanning over the army laid out in front of them. She was keeping the others in line while Mem was away trying to get her other sisters into position.

"How are you handling things, Apprentice Limpet?" Captain Seventeen said as he walked over. He had switched out his tweed necromancer's uniform for a tweed officer's uniform. It was freshly pressed and adorned with a few subtle medals over his chest and a large tricorn hat stuck through by a few feathers.

"Well enough, I suppose," she said. She gestured closer to the edge of the wall, and he accompanied her there. Then she cast Prestidigitation. The spell created a low hissing noise. Enough to scramble her voice for anyone trying to listen in.

She was sure that her master had spells to keep conversations private, or maybe to create a bubble of where sound wouldn't escape, but she only had a few scant spells to work with and she had to make due.

"Tell me, what are our odds?" she asked.

Looking over the battlefield made things seem... somewhat bleak.

Their forces were arrayed in several box formations out on the fields before Yu Xiang. There were fortifications covering the fields here. Long ditches had been dug out across the hill sides, entire fields had been levelled and hills removed to make the land flatter.

Some farmers were upset, but they'd be more upset if the army ran them through, so Fenfang paid them enough to be quiet about their suffering for the moment.

The battlefield, their side of it at least, was now a maze of ditches. These were twice as deep as she was tall--which really didn't make them that impressive--dug out by tireless undead. The dirt from these was stacked up into low walls behind the ditches themselves.

Now, any enemy force coming to them on foot would have to either find a way to bridge the ditches, or they'd need to jump down into them and climb out of the other side.

The ditchworks were connected together by small tunnels, some too small to allow a grown man to use them, but not so small that a much thinner and more flexible skeleton couldn't use them to ambush and cut off the path of an invader into the tunnels.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

There was more. The city's woodworkers had been put to work building ballista and catapults. The city's walls had been reinforced and the long poles of trebuchets on the inner side now poked out over the walls, primed and ready to launch.

"We are prepared to endure a siege," Seventeen said. "Our food reserve for the living should last up to six months. Longer with half rations."

The Limpet nodded. "Will it come to that?"

"I certainly hope so," Seventeen said.

"You do?" she asked.

"Oh yes. We are against a numerically superior foe, with elite units that match or surpass our own elites on an open battlefield. But our army is tireless and requires no food, and every enemy death means one more undead added to our ranks. Every necromancer worth their bowtie knows that siege warfare is one of the stratagems where we can put our greatest advantages to work."

"I guess I see it," she said. "So, all of this will push them to siege?" She gestured to the battlefield-to-be.

"Indeed. The walls of Yu Xiang aren't too impressive, but they are quite thick and well fortified. I am currently having some of our strongest units parade around the inner edge of the battlefield. The enemy cultivators will know that these are a mild threat even to them."

"Why?" she asked. "Wait, no, let me think."

She considered it from a cultivators viewpoint for a moment, then nodded.

"You're trying to play into their self-interest? Their fear of dying?"

"Indeed! Master selects his apprentices well," Seventeen puffed his chest out. It didn't do much. "Warfare is about deception. When you are stronger than your foe, you must appear weaker. When you are weaker, you must appear stronger. We are currently weaker."

"Haven't we killed a number of them already?" she asked.

"We have successfully eliminated approximately two percent of the enemy force so far," he said.

She slumped. That was it? The reports she read painted the constant attacks as super effective actions that were decimating the enemy. Two percent was not decimation! It was... two tenths of a decimation!

She glanced back at the army stretching out below them. A sea of soldiers, their armour glinting in the morning sun, standards flapping in the light breeze. She could almost see the disciplined ranks breathing in unison, a living, cohesive entity ready to crush them.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of claws clicking against the stone. Rem returned with a steaming cup of tea hovering before her in the grip of a three-fingered Mage Hand, her expression as sour as ever. She handed it over without a word, and Fenfang accepted it gratefully, feeling the warmth seep into her cold fingers. She stared at the tea. "Rem, where's the tea?"

"In your hands, stupid," Rem snapped.

"This looks like clear water?"

"It's warm, isn't it?"

"We must play a waiting game," Seventeen continued. "The longer they sit out there, the more time we have to strengthen our defences and potentially sway the battle in our favour. Every day we hold out, our position improves, however incrementally."

"And we can attack them by night," she added. "I read the report on last night's assault. It sounds like it went well."

"Indeed. The issue is the testing. Any army of this size led by inexperienced generals will test our defences. We need to repulse the first assault and do so in such a conclusive fashion that they won't dare to try again."

"We need to make them believe that any direct attack on our walls would be their end," Fenfang said, staring out at the army once more. The weight of command pressed heavily on her shoulders, but she straightened, drawing strength from the resolve of those around her.

Seventeen nodded. "Exactly. The initial wave must be met with overwhelming force. We need to break their spirit before it has a chance to solidify. Which is why, Apprentice Limpet, I would like to make a suggestion."

"Go on," she said.

"By my estimates it will be another hour before the enemy is ready to begin their assault. I would like to start a counter-offensive before that time."

"Oh," she said.

Well, that was certainly one way to meet the enemy with overwhelming force. "If you think that's what's best, then you have my go-ahead."

"Fantastic! Let's put the fear of the undead into our foe!"

***