Waking up to the sound of artillery impacting the wards was not exactly what Charry would call a relaxing way to start his day, but at least the company wasn’t bad.
The woman lying next to him shifted, grumbling unintelligibly about the damnable noise. He grabbed her waist and pulled her closer, earning a sleepy murmur of pleasure.
Once the cannons stopped, Charry opened his eyes and was treated to long brown tresses filling his vision. He sputtered, using his free hand to remove the offending hair from his face.
The ceiling of the small apartment he had been assigned greeted him. It was made of stone, dry, and not at all where he thought he’d be at this time of the year since summer was starting and the fields needed tending.
Even just a few months ago, he had been out patrolling at this hour, protecting his fellow slaves from animals and bandits alike so that the masters could steal their labor. Now, he was a Sergeant of the 4th Corps of the Revolutionary Army.
“Do you think they’ll be able to break through this time?” A feminine voice distracted him from his musings.
Turning slightly to see her better, Charry observed his bed companion for the last three days. Rhea, if that was her real name, had been a bed slave of one of the town of Margì’s minor nobles. Not pretty enough to become a mistress, but not ugly enough to be thrown away.
After the 4th Corps had swept through the town like a swarm of locusts, with General Doomspear eliminating all those who could pose a threat to their presence before moving on, she had been left without an income. Having never known a trade different from selling her flesh and being too afraid of death to join the army, Rhea had attached herself to him, the one who had freed her from her collar in the first place.
Charry wasn’t above accepting her gratitude. When that turned into a regular arrangement, he didn’t complain either. He made sure she knew she was free to go and that she needn’t fear hunger or cold, as the Revolution had a place for everyone.
The Hero would have never allowed newly released slaves to go back to their squalor. Poverty was exterminated with prejudice at his orders.
Another roar shook the wards, and Charry refocused. “I doubt they’ll manage this time. We have a significant supply of mana crystals, and even if those dry up, we have more than enough Journeymen to power them for a few days. Reinforcements will be here before then.”
He knew some of his companions would have liked to charge out of the walls and into the fray to slaughter as many of the masters’ dogs as possible, but they had their orders. They could only engage directly when the enemies tried to storm the walls, as abandoning their fortified position would lead to too many deaths to be worth it.
Not that the loyalists had any hope of breaking through the wards, but they could significantly stress them. Given enough time, it could lead to localized breaches, so patrols and timetables were organized and distributed to all soldiers.
All of this had been explained more than once to the soldiers of the 4th. Captain Rubeus had personally ensured the more thickheaded ones repeated his words verbatim, wanting to avoid anyone getting any ideas.
Charry thought the Captain was a bit too uptight, but since he was a veteran of the Incursion, no one gainsaid him. Especially since he was the only one with direct contact with the main army that was supposed to relieve them.
“Is the Hero as wonderful as they say? I heard stories and songs, of course, but they all seemed farfetched. More like a fantasy than anything real.” Rhea asked, snuggling deeper in his embrace.
Charry smiled, happy to be able to spread the good word. “The Light acts through him. That’s something you have to see for yourself to believe, but once you meet him, you can never doubt that he has the blessing of the heavens. I’ve seen him sit down with ex-slaves for meals, chatting with them like old friends, and resurrect dead soldiers a mere hour later.”
She looked up at him with shining eyes, curious and amazed at his words. Charry grinned boyishly and slipped a hand under the covers, earning a tinkling laugh. They had other things to think about.
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“I kinda wish I had taken the additional classes now.” Rupert huffed from beside him, loading another crystal into the rifle’s opening.
Charry laughed, observing the shimmer above their heads to make sure the ward was still holding. He knew it was supposed to be able to shrug off anything the enemy could throw at it, but the way it shook whenever they mustered up a cannon battery still made his heart leap into his throat.
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It didn’t help that he had seen the Hero cut through similar protections without effort.
Of course, he was the Hero. He operated on an entirely different level than puny mortals like him, but knowing it was possible to break wards at all made him nervous.
“Knowing exactly how you’ll die is not much use if you still cannot do anything about it. If you ask me, us common riflemen should stick to shooting at the enemy rather than fill our heads with numbers and all that tripe.” Anton grumbled from his other side. Not that it was a new occurrence since the only dwarf in the army liked to grumble about anything and everything.
Charry didn’t know if it was a racial trait, having never met another of his kind, but he thought a country couldn’t possibly work if it was made up of people like Anton. Nothing would ever get done. Or maybe not having some poor sod like him pick up the slack meant that the dwarves got to work sooner rather than later.
Apparently, a whole kingdom of them was hidden underneath Garva’s mountains, but that might just be another exaggerated story the dwarf told to pass the time.
“Charry here has been promoted to Sergeant. You shouldn’t include him when you talk about us lowlives,” Rupert replied amusedly.
“Well, Charry would get more respect if he stopped fucking around and started nailing the enemy.”
Light give me strength. I might have gotten the position because I’m the best shot here, but I’m sure it was a punishment for how much I annoyed the trainers by flirting with the girls at the camp.
At least the punishments there had been more training and lectures and not the whip like at his old master’s.
If there was one thing Charry would never complain about, it was how shitty life was compared to what it used to be. Even in the middle of a besieged town, things were still better than working in the fields with barely enough to eat.
Shaking the memory away, he refocused on his task. Peeking from behind a crenellation, Charry saw that the enemy line hadn’t moved much. With the wards still active, there was no reason to, but he still preferred to verify things with his own eyes. After all, they had been under cannon fire for days now, which made no sense if the enemy commander didn’t think doing so would gain him more than the wasted ammunition.
Did he know something about the local wards they didn’t? Charry had tried to take his worries to Captain Rubeus, but the man had been too busy handling the supplies issues and the civilian population. Considering that they had been given strict orders from General Doomspear not to loot the stores meant for the common people, they were currently a bit tight. Not enough to make anyone hungry, but the Captain couldn’t be too generous.
But why are they wasting so much ammunition if they aren’t pushing to overwhelm the wards?
The question kept buzzing in his head. Nothing, not even Rhea’s sweet embrace could fully distract him from it, and now that he was back on the wall, occasionally shooting at whoever got a bit too daring, Charry couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Standing up abruptly, he began to count the enemies he could see in the distance. Immediately, they focused the fire on him, which would have ordinarily sent him back down behind the stone, but this time, he trusted in the magic to protect him.
The more he counted, the bigger the pit grew in his stomach.
At the beginning of the siege, he had seen at least five hundred men manning the cannons and occasionally shooting with rifles, but there were now less than a hundred. Enough to still operate the weapons, but certainly nowhere near as many as in the beginning, and he knew for a fact that they hadn’t killed more than fifty.
Where are they? They cannot be too far, and we would have noticed hundreds of men retreating. If this were a way to pin us down in the town and free up men to attack another settlement, we would have seen it. They built up earthen walls to hide behind, but even from here, I can tell there are not enough fires for everyone that should be in their camp.
Meanwhile, more enemy riflemen noticed him and increased the mana bullets coming his way. They all splashed uselessly against the wards, which made Charry purse his lips.
We are all new to this. They must have noticed it took just a few shots to send us ducking back behind the walls, even with the protections up. We gave them free rein to do whatever they wanted to. Fuck, I still don’t know what they are up to.
Unless the enemy soldiers had been granted expensive invisibility cloaks, which Charry very much doubted since his teacher at camp stressed they cost at least a golden coin each, they must still have been around somewhere. They hadn’t flown away, that much was sure. They’d have been shot down immediately.
So where are they?!
“Are you tryin’ to get yerself killed?!” Anton bellowed, grabbing Charry’s arm and pushing him back down, “They’re gonna light us up if ye keep standing there like a mole in the sunlight!”
Charry was about to roughly answer that he was doing something important when the dwarf’s words registered in his brain.
A mole? Like a mole? Oh, fuck.
“They’re below us.” He whispered, eyes widening in fear.
To his credit, Anton didn’t take long to understand what he was saying. The dwarf’s face whitened abruptly as blood rushed from it, making his dark beard and bushy brows stand out even more, and after a second of standing stock still, he charged down the closest stairs, bellowing to raise the alarms.
Charry took a moment longer to recover from the realization and then followed, grabbing Rupert along the way. The rifleman grumbled at the rough treatment but didn’t put up resistance.
By the time they got down to where the stairs led to the main gatehouse, several soldiers were peeking out of the nearby buildings, alerted that something was wrong by the dwarf shouting at everyone he saw to arm up.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Came the rough rumble of a massive man, who stepped out of a stone building nearby, greatsword at the ready and eyes still unfocused with sleep, “There better be a good reason to wake me up so soon after my shift!”
The earth began to rumble under their feet before Charry could explain the terrible suspicion that had taken him.
“They're digging up!” Anton shouted, rushing away from the stairs and towards the gatehouse, trying to get to cover.
“The enemy dug a tunnel to bypass the wards! Prepare to fight!” Charry echoed, bringing his trusty rifle at the ready and motioning to make space.
That was when the stone at the stairs’ base cracked and, with a heave, exploded upwards, showering those few soldiers who still hadn’t gotten to cover with debris, causing many to cry out in pain.
A moment later, a cloaked man emerged from the newly opened hole in the ground, hands extended and panting with effort. A thin, shimmering shield covered his form, protecting him from the falling rocks and allowing him to open the way for the hundreds of men Charry was sure were coming behind him.
Before the man could do anything else, Charry aimed his rifle and let loose.
None of these bastards are gonna pass.