The round trip from Lookout to Altok and back took just shy of three weeks. Ora, Ryoko, Tengu, Ato, and Emen did not miss the attack from the Lord’s House. Though they did miss the first report of troops mustering at Outer Light, as things continued normally in their absence.

The Lord’s House organised their military differently to Wasolan, even aside from the lack of slaves in their fighting forces. For one thing, every man in the army of the Lord’s House was trained to use a crossbow. For another, every platoon of thirty soldiers included a siege engine with five operators.

If Wasolan had expected to find a fortress out in the wastes, they would have sent their own siege engines, but that wasn’t what they had expected. Even if the Lord’s House hadn’t known what they were dealing with, they still would have sent catapults and ballistae. As it was, the growing camp outside of Outer Light boasted two trebuchets and three, steel-faced battering rams used for breaking down walls.

Wasolan had also thought they were dealing with bandits, and had not put much effort into the attack. The Lord’s House knew they were dealing with heretics, and the war camp was growing rapidly.

The scouts’ reports were sent back to Haven by telegraph, and from there onto Outpost and the Sand Crawlers’ base. Lookout, too, was growing rapidly. As the last of the apartment buildings were completed, Lookout’s population was rapidly approaching four hundred. More hands made for light work, and the wall was completed well ahead of schedule.

Rather than come to Lookout, Jules took about twenty people from Outpost and finally went back to her old base. From there, the Sand Crawlers sent reports of scouting trips up to Deep Illumination and along the border between the Lord’s House and Ovek.

Thankfully Outpost continued to report very little activity in the wastes and northeast of Wasolan. It was down to about fifty people. Haven had sent some people to Altok and Kzara, really just to update them on the situation. It felt silly to have to actually travel somewhere to talk to people.

The messengers took a half dozen pamphlets on telegraph machines, compiled by Hobbs, Mu, and Weir.

It took three months for an army of two thousand to set out from Outer Light. Lookout had reached just over five hundred people, Haven’s population was smaller than it had been in over four years. Telegraphs were beginning construction in Kzara.

Among the many benefits provided by Jules to Haven was the extremely widespread training in both archery and stealth. Even those people freed from Rhatal, who wanted to fight, had been training for nearly a year. Most of those freed from Outer Light had been training for more than four.

It seemed completely obvious to everyone in the wastes, that even with their sturdy wall and preponderance of siege engines, Lookout would not survive a direct attack. The difference of numbers was just too significant.

The difference of training was only advantageous.

You may recall that crossbows have only a single advantage over bows: training speed. They are more expensive to produce, they have a shorter effective range, they are much slower to reload, and they don’t look as cool to use.

The army marching to glorious battle from Outer Light had been on the road, so to speak, for two days when the first hail of arrows appeared unexpectedly out of the sand. Their camp was freshly broken down and a couple of the priests had just started up the first chant of the day.

A few soldiers were wounded, none were killed, and ten of the nearly hundred platoons split off from the centre of the column to chase after whatever heretics had fired those arrows.

Eight soldiers were dead, forty-one wounded, when two hours later, the sixteen platoons that had split off from the army returned empty-handed. There had been no sign of the heretics, other than their arrows.

Two platoons were sent back to Outer Light with the wounded, but the army’s resolve was still strong and their chants were still loud. Late in the afternoon, shields were ready for another barrage of arrows. The main body of the army stopped early to set up camp while twenty platoons rushed off into the sand.

After twenty-one more deaths and twenty-nine more injuries, two more platoons were sent back to Outer Light in the morning. On their way there, they were horrified and appalled to find that the graves from the previous morning had been dug up and emptied.

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The main body of the army split into groups of a hundred and twenty. They moved slower, shields raised to defend against another ambush. Their chants still rang through the desert. They were getting close to a full day behind schedule.

It was past midday and shield-carrying arms were starting to get tired. A quarrel the size of a spear smashed through a shield near the back of the army. The whole phalanx shifted course to follow it back to its source. Eight more shields were broken by the time they found wheel tracks in the sand.

While that phalanx followed the winding trail of some kind of cart across the sand, three more stationary crossbows, much more mobile than they had once been, opened fire on the army.

Lekko, Weir, Osmond, Mu, and Hobbs had been hard at work on those crossbows.

Once again, the search was futile and only served to slow the army down. Eighteen more soldiers had died, twelve more were injured, and thirty-two shield were destroyed.

The platoons sent back to Outer Light would discover, with horror and indignation, that the graves from the previous night were empty.

During the night, demon servants of the Mistress herself managed to set fire to several tents and one of the eight trebuchets. The trebuchet was saved, but the wounded had to sleep in the open on their way back.

The chanting was quieter on the fourth day of the march. The turtles were smaller, but faster-moving. The army finally reached the official border of the Lord’s House in the late afternoon, a day and a half behind schedule.

A pair of trebuchets, glistening oddly in the afternoon sun, were not a surprise. Had it not been dishonourable, the army would have taken a nice, wide diversion around them. Even with moral starting to flag, the soldiers would not tolerate the dishonour, and the prospect of a stationary target was far too appealing.

To avoid dozens of men being killed at once by the trebuchet’s projectiles, the army scattered and spread out into a wide arc that approached the trebuchets’ position much more quickly than they had been moving the last couple of days.

For the first time, the soldiers actually caught sight of the hundreds of archers who pelted the loose formation with arrows. Rather than the massive, building-destroying stones the army was dragging for their own trebuchets, the heretics’ flung a hail of crushed stone and broken pottery.

The army scattered further. Those soldiers who reached the trebuchets, shields raised and resolve strong, found burning timber and footprints. Those soldiers who rushed after the archers were whittled down, split ever further, and stabbed with spears.

While some of the soldiers who made it back to the army, wounded and panting, were certain of foes killed and wounded out in the sand, there was no chance they could be counted. Nearly four hundred soldiers had died in the effort, more than five hundred were wounded, some so badly that they succumbed to their injuries before the sun had even finished setting.

More minions of the Mistress managed to burn more than a dozen tents, one of the trebuchets, six of the catapults and four of the ballistae before the army finally found some peace in the early morning light.

The Holy Book of the Lord’s House had metrics for a soldier to determine whether or not giving up would be the honourable choice. More than half of the army was dead or wounded. There were almost as many injured soldiers as not, and to send them back safely would require the entire force to retreat.

Still, at least a thousand soldiers were well enough to continue into the wastes. One thing that was not honourable was retreating at the prospect of danger. Even though it was all but certain that more ambushes would continue to whittle the army down, the enemy didn’t stand before them to assess.

A little shy of a thousand soldiers set off in the late morning, after extensive discussion among the commanders and priests of the army. Feet dragged in the sand, shield arms shook with exertion and sleeplessness.

Nearly six hundred soldiers, mostly the wounded, stayed by the burned husks of the two trebuchets, rather than risk the trip back to Outer Light.

The commanding priests of the army could, most likely, have made just as good a case for turning back right there as they would eventually make for fleeing from Lookout.

As had been observed more than two years ago, in an argument against making the tower so tall, if the tower could see approaching soldiers, so too could approaching soldiers see the tower. The tower was even taller now.

Despite the many advancements since the invention of the stationary crossbow, it could not hit a target at the twenty-seven kilometres that could be seen all around from the top of the tower.

A year and six months or so more training and practice for the more seasoned operators, as well as optical sights with lenses, meant that the tower could hit a target who was not yet close enough to see the bottom of the wall.

Six kilometres is a long way to expect a soldier to march while quarrels the size of spears are crashing through their comrades’ shields. It’s a long way to expect a soldier to run, loaded down with all their equipment and travelling supplies.

There was no dishonour in the army turning their backs and fleeing. They were not reprimanded or punished when they returned to Outer Light, about five hundred smaller than they had left.

It was no surprise in Haven that no soldiers chose to stay. They hadn’t expected it.