Chapter Five

A Lance of the War College

The goodbye I shared with Javis was short and clumsy, as many goodbyes are. He smoked a stick of tabak that he had procured somehow, most likely from the smoldering wreck of some Avengardian’s home. I pondered if it was from someone who was a stranger to him or another of Javis’ drells. Somehow, he always had a way of getting on someone’s good side, and unfortunately, that was not a skill he had been able to teach me. I had to settle for the masonry and tinkering that he had taught me over the weeks in the tents.

“The next time I see you, you’re going to be building something even bigger than the Cathedral of Avenor,” he had told me.

“No,” I answered him. “I think a cathedral like that would suit my work just fine.”

My goodbye with Isidora was much more complex. She had avoided me in the days leading up to my caravan taking off for the War College just on the outskirts of Kreuzhain, leagues and leagues away from Avenor. Leagues and leagues away from her. With Da having passed months ago during our escape from the war and with Ma freshly buried just outside the city walls, we were the only family that either of us had left. The only remnants of our past lives in Dalintaya.

We had no-one and nothing else.

“You better build something that can fix everything and get us back home,” she told me.

“I’ll die trying.”

“Don’t say that!” she exclaimed, slapping me stiffly and squarely on the arm. “That’s not funny, you know. I don’t know what I’ll do if that happens. I don’t even know how I’d find out.”

“When the time comes, I’m sure you’ll be such an amazing healer that you’d be able to Resurrect me, anyway.”

“Sure, when moonbears eat mashed wheat,” she said dryly. “Here’s something for you.” Isidora reached into her satchel and pulled out a pearl-inlaid ring attached to a simple chain string necklace.

“Dad’s ring,” I murmured in surprise. I hadn’t thought about what happened to it. In some way, I had assumed that it had lost during the escape, or maybe even used as payment for either of our parents’ grave diggers. After all, it was a fairly pristine piece of jewelry, with the centerpiece having been pearled by our dad right off the shores back home.

“I’ll keep Ma’s ring. You keep Da’s necklace. Sound good to you?”

I nodded. Ma’s ring had a pearl as well. They came from the same shellfish; Da said that it was good luck when he had pearled the shellfish that carried both, and that it was all the good luck he had needed in the world. I guess Isidora and I could really be using some of that fortune now.

“Then we’ll put the rings together as soon as I come back a veteran and a Master Mason. Does that sound good?” I asked her.

“That does.”

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Delmar, freshly triumphant from his trial of deceit and having just spun his tales of apprenticeship, joined me in sole wagon that led us towards the direction of Kreuzhain and the War College of Engineering.

Inside, we only had two compatriots traveling with us - the daughter of the town’s farrier, Maren, and a young littling named Ceecee who hailed from Helstendam. She was a sculptor primarily, but it seemed that even a small semblance towards masonry and engineering would be enough to be sent to the college rather than to the lines. This was all the better for young Ceecee, of course, as her height only brought her up to an average commonman’s waist at best.

We bid our goodbyes and waved to those we were leaving behind in Avengard as the wagonman urged the two mares forward with his leather straps. That would be the last glimpses of Javis and Isidora I would have for months at the very least, and the same could be said for Delmar and his elderly da.

The four of us looked stony faced as our wagon trudged on. This wasn’t my first time, funnily enough, traveling by carriage. My family’s flight away from home in Dalintaya took us first to Listerborough, a small fishing and sailing village to the East, and then to Fleur d’Lain by boat in hopes of Da finding work and bread there in the safety of the city’s walls and the Lifetree’s protection. Once it became apparent that the danger there was not from the war but from Fleur d’Lain’s own people and prejudices towards us, we hiked over to Avengard and with some luck, managed to hop on some farmer’s carriages for some lengths on their way back to the farming settlements common around the city. They were usually feeling more generous and jovial, headed home after having sold off wheat and barley to Fleur d’Lain merchants and warehouses, and were happy to allow us passage in the wagons where their harvests were once carried.

On those carriages and caravans, the people were happier, and I understood why. The farmer would be acting as a wagonman with his wife or child usually seated next to him, and their pockets were lined with a fair amount of pay, and they were headed home with their bellies full of warm inn-cooked food. And what’s more, they were fairly provided for. They had, at the very least, their wagon and a healthy horse or mare, and from my view, they had nothing much more to want from the world. They were content, and gratitude rather than want filled their chests.

And from my perspective, sitting with my legs and arms poked by stray needles of hay and clumps of mud next to Da, Ma, and Isidora, worn and beaten by months and countless leagues of flight and travel away from home in Dalintaya, I knew that that was the simple sort of uncomplicated life that I wanted most. I knew I wanted to live somewhere peaceful, create something of my own on my own time, and simply live with a wagon, a horse, and my family.

I daydreamed of the world my heart longed for, while my feet remained firmly rooted in the reality I found myself in.

And, with as much subtlety as I could muster, I wept. Warm, small beads rolled down my cheek slowly, then more, then a stream as I sobbed and choked back further tears. I bit my lip and contorted my face, angrily holding some resolve towards a further burst of emotions. Maren slept and Ceecee pretended not to notice, gazing out the wagonpath, but Delmar placed a consoling hand on my back. I didn’t say anything to him; instead I nodded, acknowledging him, but still, I wished he simply had pretended not to notice as well.

But then Delmar began to weep as well. And with that, in some shape or form, I began to feel some genuine consolation.

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Time passed, and our journey to the War College stretched from hours to days. Upon arriving at its hallowed granite and marble halls, days turned into weeks, then months, and before long, we became bona fide Lances of the War College.

Six months had passed since our departure from Avengard.

Life, in some form, had fallen into a sense of routine and balance. The first few weeks were the most difficult, of course. We weren’t allowed many letters. Caravans in between Avengard and the War College were extremely rare, and we had just taken the most recent one. One possible route for letters would have been Avengard to Kreuzhain, and then a second, separate journey of a few hours from Kreuzhain to the War College, but no trips were being made on this route apart from resupplies and official trips sanctioned by the Provincial Kaiser.

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My mind obsessed over speculating on what may have been happening in Avengard at the time. How my sister was doing during her time with the sicksisters, how the city’s defenses were being raised to prevent another raid from the Empire of Sevisk. Would that even be possible? Could it be done?

That was one driving motivation for Delmar and myself in our studies, of course. Everything we studied, every book we devoured, we did so that we could build just one more line of defense for the Free Cities to shield itself with against the Seviskian onslaught. Another theorem for structural integrity was going to be another life saved.

Maren and Ceecee joined us in our pursuit of engineering excellence, in some shape or form. They didn’t exactly have the same domain masonry knowledge that I had learned from Javis, or the same fervor that Delmar had poured his grief into, but they were good students on their own. Maren was adept in ironworks and forging robust and strong beams of metal for others to reinforce their creations with, while Ceecee’s nimble hands were perfect for more intricate designs.

Together, the four of us mostly kept to ourselves. There were other masons in training from Outer Free Cities like Avengard as well, some drafted and some volunteered, from the likes of Fleur d’Lain, Helstendam, and Halle, but the vast, vast majority of masons were from Kreuzhain. At least a good eighty of them were Kreuzhainers, with at least a quarter of them being urban dwarves. Every Kreuzhainer was arrogant about their skill and talent in their own way, as if they were born in a forge, but the dwarves were a step beyond.

Worst of them was a dwarven Kreuzhainer named Kazador Grimshatter. He was a stout, cruel sort of personality with a thick, brambly ginger beard and braids that were intertwined with golden trinkets so delicately designed that even Ceecee would stop to admire them as he passed. Kazador was a noble of the city, his father some sort of councilman or lord to Kreuzhain’s fealty-sworn settlements. And he was oft to remind everyone of that fact without shame nor hesitation.

It was no consolation as well that Kazador was, in all objectiveness, an expert in every field of engineering and masonry that we were to study at the War College. His sketches and models for Fortress Design and Siege Defense were remarkable, and he pushed the boundaries of what might be made possible with simple brick and mortar. Battlefield Structures and Tactical Engineering was like second nature to him, and Structural Mechanics and Loadbearing was intuitive for him, with every calculation that he wrote up accurate and true. Masonry and Magicks Integration was easy for him as well.

But one matter did not come so easy to him. And that was the Alchemy of Explosive Compounds and Siegecraft. He seemed to think himself above the use of blackpowder for fueling cannons and rockets for one reason or another. His father, he had explained once, had taken over countless fortresses and sieges with trebuchets and contraptions of war, and the level of imprecision of a cannon was too impractical to be trusted versus siege weapons that could be calculated.

He was right on some level, of course. Cannons introduced a wild degree of variance to the battlefield, we had learned, that not many generals were comfortable with. A cannon, they said, would just as likely harm your own men than it would your enemy’s.

Kazador listed countless battles where this had happened. The War of the Roses, where a lord had quelled rebelling militae against their Imperator. The naval battles between Helstendam and Highbury, where Helstendam’s barb-harpoons seemed to find and ignite Highbury ships’ blackpowder stores seemingly at will.

But still…Kazador had a weakness. And the arrogance he savoured while looking down on foreigners, especially me, with my reddish-brown skin and with me never even having stepped foot within the city walls of Kreuzhain, propelled me to the levels of obsession on understanding Siegecraft and all of its alternative compounds.

One night, under the magick-lit lamps of the College Library, I was studying, reading a tome on how Kreuzhain had built its walls to be impenetrable by trebuchet-lobbed boulders and projectiles, and I sketched how a smaller, more concentrated point placed on the right spot on its masonry might bypass that.

A hand pulled at my shoulder, and I stood up, gasping sharply in surprise, almost knocking over an inkwell.

Delmar blinked at me. “Scip, you look like you haven’t slept in days. You look horrible.”

I took my seat again. “That’s not true. You’re being dramatic.” I turned to the next page and dipped my quill into the inkwell. “Besides, you’ve been staying up later and later yourself, haven’t you?”

He took a seat next to me. “Maybe, but I’ve been taking care of myself still. You look like you’ve been pushing your limits for a while now. Is there something wrong?”

I rolled my eyes. “Delmar, there are many things wrong, don’t you think?”

He sighed. “Okay. I just thought I could help maybe, somehow.”

“Then don’t disturb me when I work,” I snapped at him, hard.

He gave me a look and stood up, and right when I thought he was about to leave me, he stopped and said, “You didn’t have to be so mean of heart, brother. Everyone is having a difficult time. We’re all just trying to survive. You don’t need to make things harder by being such an ass.”

I took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.” After another moment, I continued, “I just want to save lives, that’s all. I still see Ignisclaw gliding over the damned night sky when I close my eyes for bed. I don’t want that to happen again.”

Delmar crouched down to have a closer look at the tome I was reading and my notes and protested, “If that’s true, then why are you reading on cannons? And siegecraft? That wouldn’t have protected the city against Ignisclaw, and you know it.”

“It could stop the war.”

“You said you wanted to build cathedral spires, Scip. What you have in your hands is a machine to fell them.”

“I don’t have a choice now, do I?” I asked him, my voice tired and weary.

Delmar looked at me, and I looked at him, and we held that gaze for a few moments before he raised his hands and looked away. He cleared his throat, took a similar tome from the stack next to me, and said, “Have a good night then, Scipio.”

“Good night, Delmar.”

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The morning after, we were scheduled for Fortress Design and Siege Defense at the main class hall, and already, I saw that Ceecee was being picked on by Kazador and some other Kreuzhainers. I considered intervening, but before I could do anything, our Professor had arrived. I probably would have made it worse anyway; I wasn’t exactly known for having a way with words.

We took our seats, and I found one free in between Ceecee and Delmar. “Are you okay? What was that about?” I asked.

“I-It’s nothing. Just the usual.” When I didn’t say anything, Ceecee continued in her usual stammer, “S-something about littling history.”

“What about it?”

“We littlings used to be closer to the dwarves. Like allies, or s-something like that. He was talking about some battle or what have you from long ago where some clan of littlings didn’t show up, even though we said we would. Or something. I don’t know. I’ve was raised in Helstendam. I’ve never been to any of the littling c-colonies.”

“Are there still many out there?” I asked, curious.

“No,” she curtly replied. “It was safer for us to move to the Free Cities.”

The Professor had the class settle down, picked up a red Helstencrisp apple, and he introduced a board from the backroom with a white sheet covered on it. With the contours of how the sheet would rise and fall over the board, it was apparent that this was a model of something, most likely some especially ingenious field fortress or stone citadel that he would lecture on.

Finally, with some attempt at flourish and showmanship, the Professor unveiled the sheet, revealing a fairly crude construction of normal stone and pebble.

“This fortress does not exist anywhere in the world - yet. But someday it just might. For you see, this model was not created by myself as an imitation of a fortress by Fleur d’Lain nor a siege gangway from Voxden. This model was created by a student, much like yourselves, as a speculative attempt at what a fortress may look like. If you were to be magicked and shrunk down to the size of a small mouse, I promise you that would be comfortable in this model. Each wall, each set of turrets is set to size, and you’d be able to walk in between the walls, same as a soldier or guard patrolling a wall on the battlefield.

“But at the same time,” he continued, “It is structurally sound.” He placed the model on the table right by the first row of students, and took a few steps back, taking a bite out of his apple. “So, if you in your magicked mouse form were being besieged by say, a horde of invading foxes, with their trebuchets, with their catapults, with their horrible machines of war…” Instead of completing his thought, the Professor flung his bitten Helstencrisp apple straight at the model where it made direct contact on what would have been the model’s gateward wall, and the apple bounced off harmlessly onto the floor.

“T-that was a waste of a good Helstencrisp,” Ceecee muttered under her breath.

“…It would be impenetrable to an enemy siege, just as is the mark of any invention borne out of Kreuzhain engineers and masons,” the Professor concluded. “And I would to give you the opportunity to make one of your own. And if the joy and gift of learning weren’t enough incentive for you to try, then I believe that I can help make things interesting.”

The class perked up. The College was, after all, one with the express purpose of churning out as many quality master masons and engineers for the war effort as quickly as possible. Professors did not normally take time nor effort to devise “incentives” and there simply wasn’t many opportunities for fun excursions or distractions outside of straightforward class activities.

“Whoever makes the sturdiest model - a working, functional model, mind you, with walkways and calculations to prove that it would be able to support its own weight - that can withstand an assault from your peers…whoever builds that model, I have a pass waiting for them. And with this pass, you’ll have a week’s leave and permission to borrow one of the horses from the stables. And you’d be able to visit home.”

Visit home.

I’d be able to see how Isidora is doing, and share my learning journey so far with Javis, and enjoy some peace of mind that they’re doing alright…

I took a look at the model of war and siegecraft that the Professor was holding in his hands, and I thought to myself, I’m going to build my own.