It was like a termite’s nest. It was an incongruous thought, but it was nonetheless what came to Tatar’s mind when he had first sighted the great stone edifice known as ‘Ten Huo’.
That opinion had only grown over the last day, as he watched the Domestics swarm across the city’s great walls. They were like insects, pouring from a hive that had been struck by a hungry predator. The only salient difference in his mind was that the wall had yet to be struck.
“How much longer must we wait?” Argat growled. “My belly aches.”
Turning away from the sight of the great Domestic dwelling, Tatar chuckled at his packmate's words. “You ate but an hour ago.”
“Aye, beast flesh.” Argat agreed as he rested upon his spear, the others of their hunting pack ambling around them. “It filled my body. But my spirit requires weightier foods. Kin flesh.”
The older man, the first streaks of grey having entered his beard this past winter, glanced over to where the other tribes were rallying. “This long march, with prey within sight, weighs upon me.”
Tatar nodded gravely. He well understood the sentiment. It was one shared by many in the Great Exodus. What the Beast Mother was asking of them was not natural at all. The tribes were not supposed to mingle like this.
It fostered weakness.
He dared not voice his discontent though. The shamans had, in the early days of the Unification, when the first of the New-Kin came to their camps.
There were no shamans now.
Tatar glanced back to where the monkey-kin stood. Not as a single tribe, but as small troops spread throughout the horde. Proof positive that the Herald and her champions were always watching. Always listening for those who would jeopardize the Great Exodus.
Quieting his discontent for now, Tatar turned back to his friend. “You need not wait much longer. Soon the stone hive will crumble and you may feast upon prey until your stomach is full to bursting.”
It was certainly large enough. The city, that is. Perhaps it might have awed him, had he not already seen the might of the Great Wall; both when it was whole, and now as a pockmarked ruin.
The breach created by the power of the Beast Mother only grew by the day, the Domestic towns and villages that had once supported the wall now little more than hunting grounds or burrows for the tribes as the horde and the armies of the Domesticated battle to and fro across the plains.
Tatar knew it was cowardice on his part, but he was glad to be far from that earth shattering conflict. There was no glory to be had there, merely an ignoble death beneath the blades of titans so far beyond the reach of his spear that they might as well have been divines.
And rumor held that that too might soon literally be the case. That the Domestic Ancestors were stirring from their meditations.
Tatar didn’t know.
“Thinking again boy?”
He smirked at his friend. “Aye.”
His fellow wolf-kin shook his head. “Shouldn’t. That’s the way of the Domestic. Too much thinking, it weakens you.”
Tatar laughed. “Even a wolf thinks, old friend. It considers. Picks its prey with care.”
“Bleh,” the other man waved a hand dismissively. “You sound like the Herald.”
“Perhaps.”
Tatar glanced down at the wolf-skin furs around his waist. He did not agree with all the New-Kin said. Some of it though? Some of it made sense.
For a thousand generations the Instinctive had thrown themselves at the Wall. For a thousand years the trickery of the Domestics had kept the Instinctive from the promised land.
So why not attempt something new. Even an animal evolved. Adapted. Tried new strategies.
“Just don’t let it go too far.” Argat counseled quietly. “Monkeys think. They scheme. They create tools. It’s in their nature. You are not a monkey. You’re a wolf.”
The older man gestured toward the city. “If you think too much, you’ll lose sight of your Dao. Become weak and ineffectual. Like them.”
Tatar scoffed. “Somehow I’m not too worried about that.”
He didn’t know how the Domestics lived as they did. Packed together like rats in a burrow. Or pigs in a pen. Why? He also did not know. Perhaps they were just too weak to brave the world beyond its borders?
“I’m curious though, how do we intend to scale that wall? It’s smooth and flat. Not like a tree or a cliff face,” Argat opined.
Tatar scoffed. “You ask that now?”
The other man shrugged.
“See those things?” Tatar gestured to a collection of long pole-like things held by the monkey-kin. “They’re called ladders. They will be placed against the wall and we shall scale them more easily than even a tree.”
Apparently, the Herald possessed other tools as well, but they were things beyond his ken. That he knew as much as he did was only due to his position as one of Mistress Cota’s advisors.
Just as he began to feel the beginnings of his own impatience start to rise, a loud horn sang out from the camp.
“Finally,” Argat breathed.
“Hunters, forward!” The tribe’s champion called from her position at the head of the hunting part as she waved her claws in the air, Mistress Cota’s inhuman form towering high above even the tallest man present.
Such were the blessings of Ki.
Across the line, disparate tribe’s hunting parties started to advance as one as they emerged from their various camps. It was an electrifying sight, and the sound was no less inspiring, as thousands of feet rumbled across the earth.
The sound was at once both the same and disparate to the marching of the horde. This was akin to the drumbeat of war.
Yet, for all its awesome intensity, it was drowned out by the sound of loud thumping that came from the city as the Instinctive started their advance.
“What’s that?”
Tantar ignored the words of one of his kin as he strained his ears to listen as more thumps rang out.
He’d heard that sound before. Or at least, something similar to it. It was the sound the Domestic male cultivator’s weapon had made when he came to treat with the Herald.
Tatar had not been close enough to see the duel that followed, but he had heard it. A loud bang that made him and even many of the Champions flinch away.
After the fact, he’d learned that the Domestic had used some trick to cheat.
Was this sound then the prelude to more Domestic trickery?
“What’s that whistling?” Argat asked.
Tatar started to answer that he had no idea, when he was forced to leap away in fright as something slammed into the ground mere meters from where he was standing, throwing furrows of dirt up into the air.
The tribe tensed as one, waiting impatiently for something to happen.
Nothing did though.
“It’s a catapult,” Mistress Cota finally said. “It’s a tool the Domestics use to throw rocks. Give it no heed.”
Argat laughed. “A tool used to throw rocks? Pathetic.”
At his words, the tension that had been building seemed to flow out of the tribe. They actually laughed as more thuds rang out around them. Sure, there was an unfortunate crackle as one of the rocks plowed into a tent behind them, but by and large the threat posed by these ‘catapults’ seemed negligible.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Come,” Mistress Cota instructed. “Ignore this Imperial trickery. We adv-”
And then she exploded, and Tatar’s world became pain as something stabbed him in the gut.
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Zu stopped in the act of searching for which device had launched the strange metal blocks when said blocks exploded.
The shockwaves buffeted her, but she stood her ground, feet gripping the earth beneath her as her wings moved to shield her.
She needn’t have bothered. As powerful as the blasts were near the blocks, from her hilly vantage point they were little more than hot air.
Still, she did not regret her actions as her wings peeled back and she took in the devastation created by the unexpected attack.
Her Mother had warned her, but she had not truly believed. Or rather, she had been lulled into not believing. The Imperials at the wall had not changed. They had behaved exactly as Zu’s tutors had taught her they would.
Vaingloriously. Arrogantly. Skillfully.
…Predictably.
Until she had arrived here.
She had lost one of her council to learn that her new foes would not be so familiar. Baidar had been a quiet but valuable voice of caution amidst a sea of cries for action. Murdered in an unfair duel by a male of all things. One who cloaked himself in the guise of an all-prey.
Now she was gone. Likely already dead.
And who knew how many more, were now also gone as she took in the scattered cohorts of the Ice Crag Tribe as the wolf-kin warriors ran or stumbled in every direction. Cota was gone. Zu had seen it happen. The fool girl had moved to inspect a fallen block and been stood almost directly atop it when it detonated.
Zu scowled. When she had lost Baidar she had vowed not to underestimate domestic duplicitousness again.
Yet I find myself taken off guard once more, she thought.
She watched as the hunters of the Icy Crag tribe rushed back to check on their dependents – many of the blocks having landed within the Northern reaches of their camp. Well, most were checking, some were likely simply fleeing, their instincts calling on them to do so.
It was annoying.
There was no discipline or unity in the wolf-kin’s actions as they moved. Only blind panic and desperation. Whatever small modicum of preparedness she’d beat into the tribe had been lost as they rushed about – and her enforcers powerless to stop them despite them lashing out with their whips and staves.
“Tell our kin to let the wolf-kin’s panic run its course. Attempting to stop them now is just wasted energy.”
Nearby, one of her stern faced underlings nodded before running off to relay her commands.
“I assume this has spelled the end of our offensive?” Jiguur opined from nearby, the cold blooded snake-kin’s scaled form taking in the disarray the same as her.
“For this camp,” Zu shook her head. “This setback is unfortunate, but the other camps will continue their advance.”
Her comrade and friend nodded before moving to relay her orders. When she was done, Zu turned to her.
“You saw what did that.”
It was not a question.
“Falling metal.” The snake-kin acknowledged.
“I did not see any of the catapults on the wall move. Did you?”
Jiguuer shook her head, her mottled brown scales glinting in the dawn light. “None moved.”
Zu hissed irritably as her companion confirmed her suspicions.
This meant that the Imperials had developed new tools. A new form of catapult. One that was not mounted on the walls.
That was unfortunate. It meant it would be harder to get at.
Already she was beginning to devise schemes involving the more flight capable members of her horde, when a sound rang out once more.
More thuds.
Her response was instantaneous.
“Scatter!” Swelled both by ki and intent, her words could be heard clearly across the camp. “Avoid where the metal lands.”
Her people were quick to obey her as more of the objects landed, throwing up spouts of dirt into the air.
Spouts that she noticed with some dismay had landed almost entirely within the grounds of the camp.
--------
Huang watched with a dispassionate expression on her face as another round of explosions rippled through the enemy’s main camp.
That was important. As Magistrate of Ten Huo, she could never show surprise. Or frustration. Or gratification. Those things implied a lack of control.
And a member of the Imperial clan was always in control.
Theoretically.
She was well aware that she did not always perfectly adhere to her mother’s standards. Which was perfectly fine to Huang’s mind. After all, her mother did not always perfectly adhere to her own standards either.
In fact, she rarely did.
Still, even as she kept a placid expression on her face, allowing only the smallest upturn of her lips to be seen, internally she was all-but whooping with joy.
Would that one of those exploding stars would land on that abomination’s head, she thought as her gaze picked out the form of her distant enemy, stood on an opposing dirt mound.
Alas, the stars were falling far from her hated foe. On the bright side, they were falling directly on her main camp.
And that was a gratifying sight to see, as one of the main prongs of the incoming assault had been thrown into total disarray. Likewise, the advance of the other tribes had come to an almost total stop as they tried to make sense of what they were seeing and hearing.
Ideally they would have faltered after coming into catapult range so that the defenders of Ten Huo could add their own vehemence to Jack Johansen’s most unexpected assault, but alas, even the primitives were wise enough not to loiter in an area where they could be fired upon.
Which was why she found herself resisting the urge to send a messenger instructing him to change the location of his attacks. The main camp had already been savaged by two – now three as another set of booms rang out from the city – salvos. More could yet be done, but greater damage still could be inflicted if the gonnes changed targets to the yet untouched camps.
Camps that would soon start to move the moment that her enemy figured out that the gonne fire would not stop.
And Huang did not fool herself into thinking that the gonnes had unlimited range. She had heard the big gonnes described to her, and for all their size and peculiar method of attack, like bows or catapults they would have a finite range. A long range certainly, but finite all the same.
When the enemy moved their camp, it might well be beyond the range of those gonnes. To that end, they needed to hit them hard now.
All of them.
“Have the cavalry sally.”
“As you command, Great One.”
It spoke to the efficiency of the Imperial Command structure that within moments of her command, a series of flags had been raised and the gates of the city started to open. To Huang’s further delight, the sight made the tribes hesitate, torn between continuing their advance on the now open gate and returning back to their camp. As if the gate being open made any difference whatsoever. They were far enough away that even if the enemy started sprinting, it would be closed once more before they reached it.
Ignorant savages, Huang thought with some glee as the staccato clatter of armored cavalry preceded them streaming from the gate in organized blocks, the lances of the riders glinting in the sun as their spirit beast mounts ate up the distance between them and their foes.
The riders did not plunge into the mass of the enemy. Even in their disorganized state, that would have resulted in the enemy surrounding and bogging them down. Instead, like a shoal of fish, the Imperial Lance formation turned right, cutting into those exposed flanks that had been created by the uneven advance of their foe.
Tribesmen were speared through by expertly placed long lengths of wood and steel or run down by powerful spirit beast hooves. Groups found themselves cut off from one another by the powerful armored wedge of horse-borne cultivators, and they quickly crumbled and were run down as the elite Imperial Force wheeled around as one.
All the while the whistling of the gonnes continued overhead – and to Huang’s delight – this time they fell on the as yet untouched camp directly to the right of the main one.
Perhaps, in an ideal world, that would be the moment the enemy broke.
This was not an ideal world however. As effective as the cavalry were, as devastating as the gonne’s were, the enemy’s numbers alone meant they were not so easily shattered. Eventually order would reassert itself. Enemy champions would congregate and cut off the ongoing rampage of the Imperials.
Advancing elements of the horde would get close enough to threaten the gate, forcing it to shut. At which point the cavalry would be locked out of the city – and not even the mystical power of the spirit beasts her elite rode were capable of scaling a sheer vertical wall.
To that end, Huang raised an arm and a horn rang out from the walls signaling for them to retreat. Which they did, as organized blocks, they streamed back toward the city, seamlessly meshing together into a single line that pounded through the gates and back into the city. It was a surreal sight to see, and a sterling example of Imperial discipline as the disparate mass of women and animals moved like a single river.
Those elements of the opposing horde that hadn’t been savaged by the sudden attack attempted to give chase, only to come under fire from the catapults on the walls. The massive stone blocks the machines fired were more of a psychological terror than a physical one as they slammed down, crushing one or five men as the stone tumbled down between the enemy lines.
And all the while the gonnes continued to fire – now onto the fourth camp.
Horns were ringing out from the ruined main camp now, grotesque flyers flitting between them as the enemy leader attempted to relay orders.
The main advance stalled once more, before reversing motion, and from her vantage point Huang could see where men, women and children were now streaming from camps both untouched and ruined with whatever they could carry held in their hands – the rest of their belongings left to be ravaged by the gonnes once they finally turned their baleful gaze towards them.
It seemed her opponent had realized that the barrage would not stop, that whatever means Johansen was using to finance these blows was not as finite as she might have hoped.
Finally, the Magistrate of Ten Huo let out a satisfied sigh. The first battle for the fate of her city had come to its conclusion. And it had been a total defeat for their enemy.
“Incredible,” someone breathed to her right as the gonnes continued to ring out.
Huang couldn’t bring herself to disagree.
Idly, she made a note to summon Jack Johansen at his earliest convenience. An allowance on her part, but he’d earned that much consideration from her. To do anything else would be to deny him his well deserved face and make her seem miserly.
He would also likely require rest after this mammoth undertaking. She could not imagine this masterstroke of strategic and technical brilliance had been easy to concoct.
------------------
Jack scratched his ass as he sat on the toilet, slowly flipping through an old fashioned comic book on his datapad.
Idly, he listened to another distant boom from his artillery and for a moment wondered how Gao was doing and if the artillery was having any effect on the battle?
...Well, he’d not received any messages from the man saying that the gonnes had exploded or anything, so he figured it was going ok.
He momentarily considered switching apps to check on the wall cameras before deciding against it. He knew the sight would just ruin his mood. Just because he acknowledged that bombing a bunch of non-combatants was 'necessary' didn't necessarily mean he wanted to view it first thing in the morning in high definition.
He’d check later.
Besides, a man’s morning dump was ‘him’ time.
It was sacred.