Chapter 10
February 4th, 1664. Bickenstadt.
The Grand Imperial Army surrounded the town of Niefdorf. This town was slightly larger than Kopfhafen, though not by much, and it had the same amount of defenders. However, it had something that Kopfhafen didn’t have: Artillery, and an ice mage.
Karl von Hausenhafen stood on top of a building with a relatively flat roof. He had an experimental tool created recently in Waffenstadt: a periscope. It allowed him to look over the walls without having to be physically higher than them, and it allowed him to watch the howitzer shot fly over the attackers below.
When it was over a large knot of men, densly packed and marching in a column, he detonated the ice, killing nearly a dozen Imperials at once, and wounding many others. A circle of dying men opened up in their column as massive shards of ice pierced their bodies, sticking them to the ground and causing horrific, gaping wounds. After a few seconds the magically created ice rapidly began to melt and vaporize, leaving the men to bled out at the feet of their comrades.
Karl laughed and ordered the men to load another ball, covered completely in a thick layer of ice. He palmed the explosive given to him by his former commanding officer. He was told that if it looked like the Imperials would overtake their position, to destroy the howitzer, and kill himself before he's captured and tortured for information. He assumed that included the periscope as well, but he wasn’t told explicitly, so he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.
A cannonball flew overhead and slammed into one of the last remaining buildings poking above the walls, leaving it a pile of rubble strewn about the street below. The howitzer crew loaded and fired, and Hausenhafen killed even more Imperials.
Not nearly enough, though.
Imperials marched forward, undaunted by the comrades who lay dead and dying at their feet. The walls of the city were smashed and fully crumbled in many places. Imperials advanced from all around the city, bearing down on it from every angle possible, thirty thousand men attacking a town with just one thousand two hundred defenders.
It would be a slaughter, and everyone knew it. However, no one even considered surrendering. They had heard what happened to Kopfhafen, burned to the ground, every single inhabitant slaughtered. They knew that all the Imperials were willing to offer them was steel and shot, and so they stood tall, ready to move on to the next life in a blaze of glory. At least, that's what the soldiers did. All the regular citizens could do was pray to the gods that they got out of this alive, or pray for their next life to be one of luxury.
Bickenstadters made sure their muskets were loaded and their hammers cocked. They shifted uneasily in their positions, watching the neat columns of the Grand Imperial Army slowly approaching. They cheered as they heard another boom and saw a hole open in their column.
The Imperials marched steadily closer, and soon enough men were jumping down into the trenches. The parapets erupted in acrid black smoke, killing dozens at once with their carefully aimed volley. Imperials crawled over the bodies of the fallen to get to cover behind the blockers.
Men with the strongest arms lit their grenades and chucked them as hard as they could. A few made it onto the walls and exploded before the defenders could do anything, sending men tumbling all around, falling to the ground or into the arms of their comrades.
Howitzer shots burst in the air, impaling more men to the ground and smashing another as the iron ball landed in his chest. A man screamed as an icicle the size of a young tree pierced his chest, pinning him to the ground on his knees. The ice swiftly began to vaporize and the man slumped to the ground, cold and dead, water mixed with blood pooling below him.
Imperials got closer to the walls, led by the Imperial foot knights with their heavy, bulletproof armor. A knight raised his longsword high in the air and cheered as his comrades surged forward. Bullets pinged off his armor as he yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Kill them all! Kill the traitors! For the Empress! For the Empire!”
Longswords clashed with muskets and lopped off limbs. A knight thrust his longsword over the guard of Bickenstadter, piercing his neck. He stepped forward and pushed down on the sword, driving deeper into the Bickenstadter. He kicked him off and stumbled as another defender thrust his bayonet at the knight’s back, bouncing off harmlessly.
All around the town of Niefdorf men fought hard and desperately, defenders slowly being pushed back from their walls. Karl stood on top of a building, seemingly dancing during all of the chaos. His eyes began to glow blue and hundreds of tiny icicles formed in the air. He stomped his front foot and thrust his fist forwards, sending them flying at a company of Imperials marching through the street. The icicles ripped through them with ease, killing a full twenty men in less than two seconds.
Despite his best efforts, soldiers of the Grand Imperial Army continued to flood the city. It became increasingly clear that the city would fall, and so the defenders resolved to do one thing and one thing only: to take as many slavers with them as possible.
Knights slammed into defenders, sending them tumbling to the ground before finishing them off, moving on to the next traitor as soon as their swords left flesh. The Grand Imperial Army marched through the streets, firing at defenders and inhabitants alike.
Karl took a deep breath before slapping his cheeks and piling the periscope on top of the howitzer. He placed the explosive on it and pulled the cord, listening to it hiss as he moved away. The explosion rocked the building, and the spot where the howitzer sat collapsed in fully, taking the weapon of war with it.
Karl took out a pistol and steeled himself. He looked over the edge of the building as saw men kicking open the door, and a few seconds later he heard the screaming of the inhabitants. He listened to the heavy footfalls of the knights as they ran up steps.
He took a deep breath as the knights drew closer and closer. And finally, when he saw shiny helmets cresting the stairs, he put the pistol to his temple.
“Long live the republic.”
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February 8th, 1664. Bickenstadt city.
A crowd was formed around Bickenstadt harbor, far larger than usual. Docking there was a fleet of ships in a similar style to that of Imperial warships, though with flags the crowd had never seen before. As the gangplanks dropped and men marched off the ships, the crowd began to cheer.
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Each man had pointy ears, and they wore a uniform somewhat alien to the people of Bickenstadt. They wore blue waist coats over which they had white sashes crossed in an X pattern. Under that they wore white button up shirts, and on their legs white trousers and black boots. On their heads they sported black shako with plumes and pompoms of various different shapes and colors, as well as a brass plate with different symbols to denote companies.
After them came men on horseback. Some of them wore hussar jackets with gold colored tassles across the chest roughly creating the look of a skeletonized rib cage. On their heads they also wore shako with various different colored plumes and pompoms. Behind them were men wearing ornate cuirasses on their chests and burgonets with red feather plumes.
The infantry shouldered muskets as they marched and the cavalry shouldered their sabers, all waving to the crowd as they passed by.
Thousands of men from Napoleon’s Grandé Armée marched through the streets of Bickenstadt, the first elves to come to the Imperial continent as free men in over a hundred years, besides Jean, of course. They marched to castle Bickenstadt, where their commander met with Wolfgang von Bickenstadt.
“Greetings monsieur Bickenstadt, I am Général de Division Armand d'Hubert, leader of these fine men I ‘ave brought to you today.”
Wolfgang smiled politely and extended a hand, which d’Hubert shook.
“Excellent. It is my pleasure to work alongside you. I am Wolfgang von Bickenstadt, son of the Baron von Bickenstadt and functional baron of Bickenstadt province. Come, let your men rest in my castle.”
d'Hubert nodded.
“Sounds good.”
The soldiers marched to castle Bickenstadt, and d'Hubert continued to ask Wolfgang questions.
“So, when should we expect to enter combat?”
Wolfgang bit his thumbnail as he thought.
“...well…I would say in a couple of weeks, perhaps. Maybe a month. Our army was pushed from the Great River, and so we need time to coalesce.”
d'Hubert nodded.
“Of course. As soon as you ‘ave gathered your men, we will march alongside them. For Liberty.”
Wolfgang smiled and gave d'Hubert a salute.
“For Liberty.”
The two men shared a chuckle before Wolfgang continued.
“So, may I have proper numbers for what you have brought?”
d’Hubert nodded.
“Oui, of course. We ‘ave two divisions, twenty thousand men ‘ere for you. Fifteen thousand fusilier de ligne, three thousand hussars, and two thousand heavy chevalier.”
He turned to watch his men march with pride.
“We ‘ave cut our teeth against the royalist scum in the west and those fanatics to the south. They ‘ave been fighting for ‘undreds of years, you will not find a more experienced group of soldiers anywhere in the world!”
Wolfgang nodded his head, impressed.
“Well, I am sure they will be of great usefulness. I cannot wait to see them in action.”
d’Hubert laughed.
“The feeling is mutual!”
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March 9th, 1664. Leibenstadt.
The Baron and the other commanders crowded around a table with a map of Bergzitadelle Freiderick on it. It was a coalition of various different people, from Bickenstadter and Waffenstadters to men from the Ottoman empire far to the south, from the Brayherds of the south-east to those of the far off Tlanzoman empire to the west.
“Men, we are going to take the second layer of defenses tomorrow.”
The men all murmured to each other in their native languages.
“The bombardment has already commenced, as I am sure you have noticed, it’s been going for two days now.”
He pointed to the gatehouse of the second layer.
“The bombardment will continue as we take this gatehouse.”
He pointed to the courtyard behind the house.
“The bombardment will continue here so that reinforcements will not be able to come and assist. Any men who attempt to cross the courtyard will be blown to smithereens. Essentially, we use the time bought by the bombardment to take and open the gatehouse.”
He smiled at Yaotl.
“The honor of the initial assault will be given to the Tlanzomans. They will lead the charge and take the gatehouse before opening it for us. The rest of us will flood the second layer of defenses, clear out any remaining defenders, and then strengthen our position there so that they will not be able to overtake us.”
Everyone around him nodded.
“The Tlanzomans will be given a rocket to fire into the air when they have taken the gatehouse. That will signal the bombardment to cease. The gatehouse opening will signal our men to push, then the first layer of staircases will be cleared by Ottoman engineers and the next layer of staircases will be blocked. Is this acceptable to you all?”
Everyone nodded their heads.
“Excellent. Then, all we have to do is wait for the time to come. Tomorrow, at three AM. Dismissed!”
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The Baron lounged in a chair, sipping on a glass of elven brandy and reading a book. It was a treatise on the nature of magic by the preeminent researcher Klaus von Bechshafen. There weren’t many copies of it, so he had yet to read it, which he aimed to rectify now.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!
Explosions rocked his chair, but he didn’t particularly mind. He was listening to the chorus of guns constantly firing, with men working around the clock to continuously load and send ordinance over the defenses of Bergzitadelle Freiderick.
The sound was almost comforting to him. If artillery was firing so close to him it meant that it was his, and if his artillery was firing it usually meant he was winning.
Klaus von Bechshafen’s most recent work suggested that mana did not exist. However, that raised the question of how exactly magic was done. His theory was that, instead of mana, magic simply transmuted regular, mundane elements, into something different.
He aimed to prove this by using a vacuum chamber. He was a wind mage, and that sort of magic, theoretically, required air to use. He attempted to cast spells in the vacuum chamber and found that they simply would not even start. If mana existed and it was the substance that was transmuted for magic, then this would most likely not occur, unless the vacuum chamber also sucked out mana, though that seemed unlikely. Only mages could physically manipulate mana, at least that's what conventional wisdom held.
The Baron thought his research was sound, it would explain somewhat why magic required thermal energy, however, it still didn’t explain exactly how magic is done, or why elements got transmuted, simply that it is done that way. As far as anyone could tell, there was no real method to test how magic was done, it was simply something that, with enough training, mages could learn to ‘feel out’, which was not a satisfying explanation to any academic who took their studies seriously.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!
He threw the book over his shoulder and sighed.
“Will we never find an adequate explanation?”