“He refused,” Nege said to his White friend, the woman’s shimmering veil hiding a determined, beautiful face. “Eternine refused to abandon the city.”
The White sighed and said, “Then Hemend will attack. I tried to convince him to negotiate. He says it would show him as weak before his bloodthirsty soldiers.” The Prophet turned back to the army, waving at them as an indication all was well. Still the cavalry remained in a flanking position while the musket men had not snuffed out the matchlocks on their guns.
“I guess so.”
“You could have told me this without having to make a scene like you did.”
“I needed to see it for myself.” Nege also wanted to get a close sense of the Teljuks’ emotions. They thought of nothing but the grand jewel sitting behind the walls in front of them, a luscious apple waiting to be plucked. “Do you think there’s even a chance?”
“A what?” the White laughed.
“A chance?” Nege repeated. “They’re outnumbered, outgunned, out everything. But do you think the Truscans can win?”
Nege and the White looked to the three-strong walls of Eternon, walls that for a thousand years had held off armies, walls that were said to be protected by Infinity itself. Then they turned to the mass of red and yellow-cloaked, brown-booted soldiers marching under the morning star, and the line of cannon just coming into view.
The White sighed, a wise sound coming from an experienced Prophet. “It’s the emperor’s choice,” he said. “All we can do is see to it that the transition goes smoothly.”
Nege bit his lip, nodded, and slowly walked back toward the city gates. The Teljuks let him through, grudgingly at first. The Truscans were equally hesitant to let the Red return to their city. But as he walked, Nege gazed back and forth between the two banners of the opposing armies. The double eagle felt heavy with history, imposing on even a Prophet. The morning star felt electric in comparison, biting and eager like sparks scattered over timber.
The sensation of the two armies gave him such a thrill that he wished he could stand right there, in the center of the conflict, even when the battle started. As it was, he had no choice but to keep his staff dimmed and return to the gates before they closed behind him.
Poom!
Pa-poom!
“I felt that one from here,” Nege said with a smile.
“You don’t have to be here, you know,” Murel replied.
Kow, kekowkow koom!
“I know.”
A nervous silence followed, then came the poom papoom-koom of heavy iron balls slamming into the thick stone walls of Eternon.
The bombardment had been going on for days. Already a section of the third wall had collapsed. Even with the near constant shelling, overnight, the Truscan defenders had propped their bits of wall up again with hastily assembled wooden palisades and clay-packed mud. These softened walls came down daily, and were nightly put up again, with great risk to the builders. But with every passing hour the defenders grew more and more weary, and the walls grew harder and harder to keep from collapsing entirely.
“You’re only boosting the defenders’ confidence,” Murel said.
“How so? It’s not like I intend to fight for them,” Nege said.
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Murel turned to his fellow Prophet, casting a doubtful glance with his arms crossed as another volley rumbled through the stone they stood upon.
“What? I’m not,” Nege said as Murel turned away, shaking his head. “I just want to be here when it happens is all.”
“Is that why you ran like a madman toward the Teljuks?” Murel asked.
“Of course. What?” Nege laughed as he smiled up at the tall Gold. “You thought I was going to attack them? I’m good, Murel, but not that good.” Nege laughed again and stared out at the line of artillery crews dotting the horizon, his fist a white grip on his staff.
“Plus the Prophets with the Teljuks needed to be told Eternine wouldn’t evacuate,” Nege argued.
“Sono could have easily done that,” Murel said in a huff.
“I think face to face contact is more formal and necessary, especially in this situation. It makes both sides know we’re neutral.”
“Sono wouldn’t like it.”
“Well Sono is at Infinity’s Wisdom propping up the stained-glass windows so she won’t know where I am at all times anyway.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Then you’ll just have to trust me.”
Murel grunted in response.
As the two watched the puff-puff, slam-slam of the cannon fire, a coordinated triple shot hit a tower at its base in a triangular pattern, demolishing the structure. The falling brick and stone drowned out the screams of pain and terror as the tower’s occupants were crushed underneath the structure that had withstood a millennium of catapults but couldn’t take the roar of gunpowder’s blast.
A legion captain ordered his men to fall back to the second wall, to escape the bombardment, as Murel rushed to see if he could save the lives of any trapped in the tower’s remains. He found none.
The action on the southern harbor was equally nerve-racking. The well-ordered, proud crews of the sadly few Truscan galleys, and even some crews aligned with other kingdoms, waited in painstaking boredom as the Teljuk fleet ran mocking maneuvers only a few kilometers away. A dozen or so of the near hundred ships flying the morning star sailed the calm waters, just in sight of the sailors defending Eternon, baiting them to come away from the harbor’s defenses.
Now was the uneasy time Nege knew sadly well, the time when the attacker would gauge his enemy, exploring weak spots before testing them with assaults.
It would go according to this pattern, Nege knew, thinking on its due course as he watched the sparkling waters of the southern bay, the two fleets edging dangerously close to attacking. Hemend would bombard the city till he’d created a few visible weak spots. Then, one by one, he’d test those weak spots with assaults using lower-level troops. There would be mass slaughter as the Teljuks assaulted supposed chinks in the city’s armor that were actually quite solid. But eventually there would be a gap, progress would be made, before the attackers would be called back. Then more bombardment, more assaults at varying intervals to wear down the defenders. And then the true assaults would begin, ones designed to actually take the city.
Nege predicted that it would only take a few of these true charges for the morning star to be planted on the palace’s high roof.
Looking back to the palace, he wondered what the mighty emperor was doing at that moment. “Preparing for the defense,” Nege assumed out loud as he let soldiers pass around him on the wide ramparts.
Poom!
The bombardment had moved away from the felled tower and toward the part where Nege stood, a curve along a more southern tower’s edge where soldiers were attempting to evacuate. The harsh sun beat down on the walls and forced Nege to shield his eyes with his hand as he peered toward the cannons, shattered stone raining down from the wavering tower beside him.
He saw the cannon and its crew, hundreds of meters away on the low grass near the pilgrim road leading to Eternon. A crew of six stood, one with a long wooden pole, its tip blackened with ash, that the crewman swiftly yanked from the hollow, bronze tube. Nege saw all but two in the crew immediately put their hands to their ears while one yelled something Nege couldn’t hear. The final crewmember touched a smoldering stick to the back of the cannon.
A flash of red then a puff of smoke belched from the silent cannon. Half a second later the poom of the shot reached Nege’s ears as the Prophet spotted the iron ball careening toward him.
To the dozens of soldiers around him it looked like Nege merely twitched. What he did was use his power of speed and tremendous focus to watch the cannonball fly toward him and, at the last second, strike it down with the hardened end of his staff, knocking away the cracked ball with a burst of soil beyond the walls. The shockwave of his speeding staff was louder than the ball’s explosion to the men defending Eternon.
Seeing his interference had temporarily paused the bombardment, Nege nodded with satisfaction, then turned to see the many frozen faces of the soldiers he’d saved from what would have been a direct hit on the walls they stood upon.
“What?” Nege said, leaning on his staff. “It would have hit me.”
Nege’s emphasis on the word me didn’t convince the soldiers of what they believed his true intentions were.