23rd of Taka, 1000, midday

Pookkalam, Fort Kitapüru,

Silvia sat cross legged in the in the centre of the pookkalam. The hot desert sun was thankfully not beating down on her. The first two days had be absolute murder. It wasn’t until the third day when the captain came up to visit they had even registered that it was going to be an issue.

After fixing the pookkalam everyone had been able to get down out of the sun. The sole exception being Erica who’s role as sustainer of the shield seemed to require her constant presence on the roof. Two days of limited sleep, no exercise and exposure had been awful for Silvia. Erica was on day five or six.

It would have been so much worse if the captain had not intervened. He had taken one look at the flagging water mage and asked Silvia politely why she had not instructed a shade cloth be set up. The thought of his quietly enquiring face still made her’s red. She was in charge up here. How had she forgotten something so simple? It was embarrassing.

She thought about the battle so far. Every time they thought that they were onto something. Every time they eked out and advantage something came up and the enemy adapted. She supposed that was what made them the enemy.

At the start the enemy had been throwing fireballs at them. Standard mage battles typically used stone walls to defeat them. So initially they had started spending one cast and one nguvu unit per fireball to stop them. That strategy had worked well initially.

Then the enemy started to cast split. It took a lot of finesse and a high switch score to do that. It was a way to game the system. Form a cast and just as it’s dropping split it into two or more expressions. There was a nguvu penalty doing it. But if you had the aptitude you could split a cast four or five times. Each expression was weaker than the previous but most theorists speculated that total damage dropped by about 3% per additional split.

If you were casting a lightning bolt with a split cast suddenly there were two and the total damage only dropped by 3% but you could target two things. Naturally your ability to finesse the casts to your targets became crucial. The mental ability to switch between the two expressions and guide each was key. If your switch score was not high enough bad things happened but for the better mages a three of four split was theoretically possible.

In this instance, however, The enemy had tried to use a split in the snapper tunnelling attacks to trick her into believing the seventh mage had joined the fight. Her discussions with the captain lead her to believe that was unlikely. In any event it had forced them to change tack.

The enemy’s second standard attack had been to try tunnelling into the fort or at least get a hole close enough to the fort walls to destabilise them. Rather than casting directly against these tunnels they had opted to harden the rocking the tunnel’s path. Initially that was sound plan but as the tunnels had not been collapsed the cast had to remain running or the attackers would just restart the cast from the end of the last tunnel.

Holding these blocking casts had initially seemed easy. With the cast splitting, which started almost three days ago, they now needed to hold up the blocking casts for fourteen tunnels. Upkeep was becoming an issue. Each tunnel block required a small amount of upkeep bled from the overall coven recoup directly to sustain them. Total upkeep was now over three and a half nguvu per day. It was crippling the amount of nguvu they could devote to offensive casts.

At some stage she was going to have to make some decisions to drop some of them. The was not today, maybe. She glanced over at Erica again. That said maybe the time was coming sooner. Those holding casts were all tied into the shield that she was endeavouring to hold. She was also running some kind of silencing cast to make sure conversations up here remained private.

Silvia wasn’t a wind mage she didn’t understand how the cast whispering winds work. But it seemed to be that you grounded a cast on a person or place and then you could here what was said there. Initially they had been able to detect the enemy trying to get a cast lodged on roof. As all the attacks seemed to be timed to land at the same time it had been relatively easy to break them up coming in.

Someone on the other side was casting smarter. On of the wind casts a few days ago have been a spy cast. It allowed the castor to see something in the distance as if not was right there. This had been followed up with a whispering wind cast on one of the mage tower watchmen when they were off shift.

Nobody would have caught it if Erica hadn’t had a tied something else into her shield to wipe that as people came up the stairs. It was another thing that was contributing the crazy amount of upkeep being sacrificed to keep everyone secure.

Nguvu wasn’t the only cost. The castors in the coven where now on a rigorous shift schedule. Some things like recoup were unaffected by who was in the pookkalam. Other things were not like that. If they needed to drop a cast either she had to be here on the centre or Max had to be on his fire and sensitivity circle. That wasn’t too bad. Theoretically she had a half day off.

In practice the finesse and the switch portions of the pookkalam had to be manned for those specific buffs to remain positive. She was forced to put the twins, Fitzhugh, Mandy and Claudia into an irregular paired shift arrangement. What usually happened however was that Mandy disappeared for long portions of the day with either Fitzhugh or one of the guards and the shifts devolved into two following the same work plan as she and Max.

Typically she got the twins, like right now and Claudia, and max were on shift with Max. Mandy typically turned up in time for the expected attack timeframe. Apart from a slight shift immediately following the pookkalam recast the enemy had stuck to a regular schedule. Mandy was right they were up to something. Whatever they were planning, it wasn’t good.

Then yesterday the enemy had brought rock throwers up to the siege. Rock throwers. She had me a guy from New Paris a few years ago, they had dated briefly. Ahh Pierre, such dreamy muscles. Ohh and that accent was so wonderful. A few years older granted but fabulous nonetheless. Her friend was so jealous. What was the name of the friend? She had forgotten. She was a fire mage sent to the Sarness boarder and they had lost contact.

Anyway back to the here and now. Pierre was a war engineer who had fought in the great southern wars. He had called rock throwers trebuchet. Whatever. The point being that he said he could build ones that would throw rocks the size of her head further than she could cast one the size of her fist. He had offered to prove it to her if the King was willing to hire him.

She smiled in self mockery at the memory. The had broken up over those comments. She had been a smart aleck mage overly proud of her power. She told him she couldn’t date someone who lied so blatantly. King had obviously had a similar opinion as there was no job and he had moved on. Joke was on her now, king to come to that.

Fujiama had started throwing the first rocks yesterday afternoon. If she allowed too many to hit the fort walls, they would come down. Having built Kitapüru the Fujikan military knew exactly where all the weaknesses were. The places the first rocks hit hadn’t seemed to be a big issue until the army engineers had been consulted. Now she had a big problem. The captain didn’t have anything the army could do to deal with them, so that fell to her and the coven.

Max’s solution to everything was to throw a fireball. But the range to the throwers was far. Further than a normal fireball could go. If they reduced the size of the fireball to get the distance it wouldn’t have power to destroy the thing. Max had naturally tole them he could use the pookkalam to pump extra nguvu into the cast to get both the range and the destruction. Not something they could afford to do.

The enemy had brought seven to the things. Two nguvu a rock thrower and it would take them three or for days of fully drained effort to destroy them all. If they ran their nguvu buffer low and the seventh mage attacked they would be done. Whilst she worked out what they were going to do she had told Erica to use the shield to take care of it.

She glanced over again. That water mage better not be snoozing. She internalised her venom. She should be so hard on the castor but water mages were evil. It was right that they suffer and she was suffering. In her more reasonable moments Silvia realised if she was in the water mage’s place she would be dead from exhaustion. But she just couldn’t bring herself to sympathise with the filthy water castor. Come to it she would need to check with Claudia that the upkeep numbers were accurate. If that evil mage was stealing nguvu for her own plans Silvia would take great delight in dropping a rock on her head.

Her interior diatribe was interrupted as one of the rocks in question came sailing in. With a groan, the object of her hatred rose and with a wave of her hands gestured towards the flying stone. She spoke “Cindy, you need to help of this could hurt someone.”

There was no answer.

“Cindy,” Erica shouted. “Catch.”

Cindy had obviously been snoozing in her circle and with a start flopped around trying to work out what she was supposed to catch. Obviously completely out of it still, she fell out of her circle.

At this point everything started to go wrong at once. The pookkalam’s normal 3% buff to controlling the outcomes of casts, specifically, control, direction and velocity flipped to a 27% debuff. The shield, still functioning, was originally a deflection type shield. It worked perfectly. The stone, originally aimed to high to be a good shot in the attackers opinion, skipped off the now protected parapet in the outer wall. It deflected high, rocketing between two parapet portions of the mage tower. It screamed across the roof, clipping Clara instantly breaking her shoulder. The rock didn’t slow or deflect as it zeroed onto a luckless guard facing the other direction. It turned her to paste as it smashed into the far parapet. Dislodging a large chunk stonework into the street below crushing a passerby while sailing onwards over the other side of the fort.

Clara screamed loudly passing out from shock.

Silvia turned angrily to Erica.”This is your fault you stupid woman. What do you think your doing deflecting that rock in this direction?”

For a moment shear surprise robbed Erica of speech. It was only a moment. “Me,” she screamed back. “Me.” Erica made to take a step before remembering she couldn’t leave the circle. “No, you cow, this is your fault.”

Silvia’s rage mounted. “How can it possibly be my fault? You’re in charge of the shield. Not me.”

Erica’s resentment at her poor treatment came flooding out. “How can it not? Ever since this coven was cast you have contributed nothing. You sit in your golden circle glaring daggers at me, chiding me if I try to sleep on your watch.” Taking the volume up a notch she bellowed. “I have benign this circle holding up your dam shield for seven days. Since they started throwing rocks I have to bonce one every 15 minutes. So I get 5 minutes of sleep a shot and that’s been my last eighteen hours.”

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“Why you…” Silvia started to speak.

Erica stamped her foot as she screamed at full volume. “I haven’t finished.”

Taking a calming breath she continued in a lower tone of voice. “What have you actually done? Max told us how to deal with the fireballs. Our current solution to the tunnelling problem wasn’t you. The guards discovered the wind whispering casts. Again, Max fixed that. Arguably the most important role in the pookkalam for casting it the finesse role which you haven’t filled, leaving it to Cindy or Fitzhugh to do.”

She took a breath as the tired continued. “Mandy and the professor found there was problem with the cast circle and fixed it. Once again it was Mandy who realised that the enemy was buffering nguvu proving that the seventh mage wasn’t being used. You use three people to drop one defensive cast per day, something I’m told mages normally do by themselves. That is your sole contribution. You are supposed to be a military leader. One with combat experience. But we have a problem with rocks, and whilst I agree with you that Max’s solutions isn’t workable, it the only one on the table. You told me to use the shield cast to stop them taking down the walls but you can’t be bothered to work out how to do that. You made that my job alone and you were unwilling to offer help or guidance.”

She took a breath. “All of that I might have overlooked but you never once visited the professor to see how his recovery is. And in our current crisis, rather than rush over to see if Clara is ok, you scream at me. Literally, the only person who can’t walk over there and slap you.”

Silvia took a breath to reply.

Erica wasn’t going to give her the free airspace. “Oh, but don’t you worry. You’re so proud of bing an mage you forget that it is only in this stupid, little country I am not recognised as a mage. I don’t need this little collection of powder to drop a cast. And I’m so ready to suck every little drop of water right out of your body. So please, pretty please, with a cherry on the top. Start with me again and I’ll show you up close and personal why people are afraid of water mages.”

Silvia opened her mouth but salvation for her and probably everyone else in Kitapüru came from another quarter. The captain arrived.

In a surprisingly calm tone of voice he addressed the fuming ladies. “Well, Erica, Silvia, seems like there’s some quality team bonding happening. Normally I would pull up a chair and start taking bets but there’s already blood on the professors lovely little circle.”

He nonchalantly turned to the panting Fitzhugh, who was just emerging from the stairwell. “Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t spilled blood give way to blood magic?”

Fitzhugh was fit and normally didn’t mind jogging up the stairs, but the captain was in a league of his own. Fitzhugh hadn’t been able to keep up, arriving at the top well behind the captain and out of breath. So he just nodded.

“As I thought.” The captain resumed. “Now, before you both get stuck into shedding more. You should probably get what’s here removed before whatever this pooky circle thingy gets changed by random castor blood splatter.”

Almost flippantly he remarked to the Fitzhugh. “My fencing tutor taught me never to mix drinks. Whilst I am sure he was exaggerating when it came to different kinds of beer. I am fairly certain he was spot on with weird and unknown blood magic combined with experimental power channelling.”

Slivia, started to open her mouth but the captain was not done.

In the same calm tone he continued. “I’m a military man myself. We don’t get to question our superiors the way that you have done, Erica.” Earning a self satisfied smirk from Silvia.

He continued. “I understand the points you were trying to make. I might have felt similarly too on the odd occasion.”

He turned to Silvia. “Command is not about exerting authority. Its about being worthy of its burden.”

Erica didn’t react as Silvia reigned in her temper and the captain continued. “Perhaps we can get on with the issues at hand.”

Getting a round of nods he resumed. “I see that Cindy has taken Clara down for treatment. I guess neither of you noticed during your screaming match. Who’s going to clean up that blood before it works its way into the fabric of your pooky thingy?”

The girls looked at each other. Ftizhugh intervened because the solution was obvious. “Me obviously.”

“Why?” The captain decided to occupy minds.

Silvia was still angry, hurt and offended by the comments made by a lowly water castor. But if she was honest with herself she’d heard worse on occasion with less legitimacy too. It was time to get over her issues. Even if it was only temporarily. “Only those recently arrived from the HMCC have any idea what to do on that front. The professor is indisposed, as are the twins. Erica can’t leave her circle.” She nodded. “Has to be Fitzhugh.”

The captain sat down on a chair at the edge of the pookkalam. “Now that’s underway. Perhaps one of you ladies can tell me why I have another dead guard and why I have to visit old misses Kirby to tell her that her husband was pancaked by a rock the size of a large watermelon.”

Silvia looked at the still unresponsive Erica, hoping for a sign. Any sign to assist in that explanation. Nothing was forthcoming. So clearing her throat, she responded. “It’s the rock throwers, sir. A stone comes in every twelve to twenty minutes and we have to deflect them or they will break down the walls by Joseph’s gate, as you know.”

She paused. “The latest one was deflected by Erica. But instead of it falling safely, as previously, this one came up here, hit Clara, killed the guard and knock part of the parapet down.”

Erica’s eyes narrowed. As she looked at Silvia.

Seeing this the captain faced Erica. “Something to add Erica.”

Erica’s gaze snapped to the captain. “Yes, as a matter of fact.” She tuned back too Silvia. “Cindy was on shift to man the finesse station and fell out of the correct portion f the pookkalam. This had two results. Firstly she couldn’t guide the rock I had already released to her. Secondly an unmanned finesse station changes makes magic more likely to backfire. Which is the best description of why the rock did so much damage.”

“Will this backfire happen now?” The captain asked reasonably.

“No, it will be worse,” Erica responded. “We have no switch person either. If they hired a rock at us now I might not be able to even deflect it.”

The captain cocked his eyebrow.

With a sigh Erica continued. “The way the professor adjusted the pookkalam, it must be manned always by four, filling specific roles to function well. There are varying buffs depending on who’s on when.”

“Which is why we had the shift arrangement,” Silvia added brightly.

The captain looked around. “Well, I don’t see two new castors rushing up here to fill in the empty roles. Am I supposed to wish upon a star that they will arrive soon?”

Silvia cringed. “Mandy’s going to have join the shift arrangement. She can take Clara’s place with Cindy.”

Erica cleared her throat. “Actually as she as the highest finesse score, Fitzhugh should take Clara’s role and Mandy can move to finesse.”

The both looked at the captain. He rolled his eyes in despair. He turned to one of the watchmen. “Guard Clive. Please can you go and wake lady Claudia. Tell her there’s been an accident and she needs to get to the pookkalam as quickly as she can. Then go in search on lady Amanda, my daughter, and give her the same message.”

As the guard trotted off down the stairs. The captain turned back to Erica. “As you had some disparaging things to say about the efforts of both Max and Silvia to deal with the rock throwers I anticipate a better solution from yourself.”

The question hung in the air for a couple of moments. Sufficiently long enough for the silence to get a little awkward.

A timid voice cam from the stairwell. “I do.”

“Oh,” the captain turned to Cindy as she emerged from the stairwell. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

Her face was white. “It’s my fault that he guard is dead and Clara’s hurt.” Summoning her courage she continued. “I can’t make that right but I have to try.”

The captain regarded her for a moment. “Most soldiers fall asleep at the posts at one time or another. Sometimes the result is what happened today. Someone dies. In the military its life for life, and you would be executed.”

Cindy’s face drained of colour.

The captain continued. “You’re not in the military and so safe. You also have a vital role to perform and so I am very glad I do not have to such drastic action. There is one task you will perform as recompense.”

Cindy gulped feeling very small. “What’s that?”

“You will join me when we go to inform misses Kirby of her husband’s death. You will also write to guard Martin’s mother.” The captain cleared his throat. “Now you said you had an idea to deal with the rock throwers.

Summoning her courage she spoke. “Clara and I were messing around just before our shift this morning with some of the military engineers. They say that rock throwers break all the time if they aren’t made right. If you have just one thing wrong they kind of explode. They recon that the spring force is so big that they are supper dangerous and kill everyone close all the time. It’s most dangerous just before firing.”

“How does that help?” Silvia asked.

Her confidence growing Clara replied. “Well, I was thinking we don’t need a big fire ball to blow them up. Maybe if we can talk to the engineers, or even show them the rock throwers through a far seeing cast. Perhaps they can tell is how to break them with just a little cast. Then we could use a normal fireball or a rock knife or something like that to break them.”

Erica didn’t wait for anyone else to act but turning to the nearest watchman she recognised she spoke. “Guard Wilson can you find the head of the army engineers…”

“Purcell,” the captain supplied.

She continued. “Purcell. Right. Yes ask Purcell to join us immediately.”

“Better make that an order from the captain Wilson.” The captain instructed.

He turned to Cindy. “That’s actually the best idea I have heard concerning those rock throwers. Saw a New Parisian demonstrating one once. Dam near killed me let alone himself and half his crew when the binding snapped and the wood delaminated. The exploding thing shot a splinter the size of my forearm though the empty chain next to me. Had to change my pants right after that demonstration. Or was that a beam thrower. Not sure. Anyway you should give it a try.”

Fifteen minutes later and engineer Purcell, Cindy and Max all huddled around a far see showing, looking at one of the rock throwers. Eventually Purcell pointed to a part of the rock thrower. “You see that beam they use to rotate the arm around, the shaft. Once the trigger is pulled the weight can’t be stopped. You then need to hit the rotating shaft mount. Pick a side it doesn’t matter which one. But if your timing is right the weight will twice and pull the arm around smashing everything.”

Max looked up from the far cast at the rock thrower in question. “It will take the fireball a long time to get there. We will have to fire before they do for the fireball to land when you say.”

“I suppose hitting it in the same place when the arm is loaded and the trigger hasn’t been pulled will lead to a similar failure.” Purcell replied

“Lets try it whilst we have this far seeing cast and they look like they are ready to fire soon.” Max was eager to give it a try.

After getting the agreement of the captain who had remained and Silvia they cast a fireball. Max compressed it’s size sacrificing some of it’s nguvu for distance and speed. Cindy managed to get the cast close to the target. But the result wasn’t what they anticipated.

For a moment noting happened. Then with a loud crack the securing plate for the arm pivot shaft sheared through. The counter weight immediately started to descend twisting the shaft introducing a spin as the shaft ripped free it flipped the mounting frame into the air and out to the side. The shaft now free flipped end over end horizontally in the opposite direction the half of the A frame stand. The weight hit the ground and the unsecured arm twisted before falling like a logged tree to crush some tents behind and off to the side. The A frame landed buckling, and with a crack the binding ropes tore free. But not explosively as the captain had hoped. In fact they weren’t sure anyone died.

Every one was genuinely disappointed, except for Purcell. “Wow, that we better than I hoped.”

The captain glared at him. “It did’t explode.”

Purcell looked at him like he was daft. “The thing is made of wood and steel, relying on gravity for its energy. Those things are so safe you can transport them for leagues without any fear. They’re so robust they survive for decades with minimal maintenance. The Fujikans aren’t fixing that one that’s for sure. From the damage I could see all the important bits are broken or bent. It’s take them days to bring a replacement from Minapüru if there’s a spare there. I don’t think there is. It’s a fantastic result.”

He turned back to the coven. “Ok so lets do the rest.”

Mandy snorted. “Do the rest. You’re a funny guy. With that far see cast we spent two nguvu on that one rock thrower. Max throwing a ginormous fireball would do the same thing and cost the same. We need to remember we're still short on nguvu. We need to reconsider this approach.”

Deflated the engineer sat down on the parapet looking out at the swarm of Fujikan soldiers hurriedly trying to move the other rock throwers. “But we have the run.”

Patting the man on the shoulder, the captain spoke. “Yes they are. It’s a positive outcome for sure. We’ll win in the end. But for the moment lets leave the mages to their jiggery pokery. They need to make some plans. So do we for that matter. How are you coming along with my plan for the West side?”

As they turned for the stairwell Silvia heard the gruff Purcell start to discuss some weird spring loaded contraction she didn’t understand. She had her own issues to resolve. “All right you lot. We need to change it up a bit. We need to free up more nguvu. I need some suggestions before we start looking at alternative shift plans.”