Nissilât hadn’t bothered to wait for Birnah’s response before ordering her men to assemble the handful of siege weapons they’d brought. Unfortunately, as they had expected to be welcomed with open arms, the army had packed light. She had just two disassembled trebuchets and twenty scorpions, not enough to do more than tickle the walls if half the work hadn’t been done for them already.
The assembly could be done out of sight, hidden behind the walls of the broken outer fortress, but the barricades on the bridge would have to wait, she decided, knowing that the handful of towers the city had repaired on the bridge were manned by watchful archers who would not fail to notice her movements.
Not that it mattered much, as Nissilât was certain her offer would be rejected. The prideful people of Birnah had been a thorn in Stryn’s side for millennia and she knew they would not give up without a fight. Still, the offer was worth making, for the sake of her reputation amongst the citizens. With any luck, she would be their new overlord soon, and it was better if her future subjects knew that she had tried to avoid a fight.
After overseeing the siege engines' construction, she took stock of her remaining resources. The mages were her most important asset although, like everything else, her uncle had skimped. He had spared her just two healers, both of whom lacked the spell needed to restore lost limbs as they had yet to reach level 50. He’d been slightly more generous with the other mages he'd assigned her, sending six - three who specialized in pyromancy, a fourth whose talents lay with wind, and two who had been trained to break wards; of course, as with the healers, all of them were still rather low-leveled. In all all, the mages she had at her command were less than ideal, but at least reported that Birnah had just one offensively focused mage remaining, with the others specializing in wards and healing. Of course, that was assuming the priests would stay out of the fight - in theory, they were supposed to be apolitical, but Birnah was their home too, and she wasn’t willing to count on it.
But what she lacked in mages and siege weapons, she made up for in sheer manpower. As the breadbasket of the Empire, Stryn had been the third most populous province even before the invasion of the Zalancthian and, in the aftermath of that disaster, was now second only to the northern province of Celestia. Their spies had estimated Birnah had six thousand soldiers; she had brought thirty thousand.
When the third hour had passed, she returned to the bridge and received the expected response. So be it.
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Marīltu’s soldiers were already massing at the gates when S̆ams̆ādur and his men reappeared. Jasper thought the prince looked a little pale as he waved the prince over. “Where were you?”
“Burying my men. Until it wasn’t necessary.”
“Wasn’t necessary?” It wasn’t like death was a recoverable ailment - well, aside from the faint possibility of resurrection.
“Your patron spoke to me; offered me a deal to aid my men,” the durgu responded shortly.
“You spoke to Kas̆dael?” he blurted out.
S̆ams̆ādur nodded stiffly and waved off Jasper’s questions. “There’s time to discuss the details later, but for now-” He frowned as he surveyed the gathering soldiers. “I take it that negotiations were not successful?”
“They demanded our surrender, and Marīltu refused,” Jasper explained.
The prince arced his brow. “Just Marīltu?”
“The city was divided on its response,” he admitted, “But Marīltu is the one with soldiers, so…”
“His opinion was the only one that mattered,” S̆ams̆ādur concluded.
“More or less,” Jasper agreed. Shadows loomed at his feet, and he glanced up to find the others had joined him. “We talked about it amongst ourselves, and we’re inclined to help the city,” he continued, “But that depends on your plans, since our main objective was to protect you from the men of Mūt-La’is̆.”
“Unfortunately,” S̆ams̆ādur’s face twisted in a grimace, “it seems my men and I will be staying for a little while longer. The Lady of Last Light did not grant her services lightly.”
Did she really resurrect his men? Jasper’s curiosity was piqued, but they didn’t have time to stand around and chat. Cries echoed from the top of the wall as the men of Strynn appeared at the base of the bridge - the battle had begun.
Most of the battles Jasper had fought had been short, frenetic bursts of activity that rarely lasted longer than a few minutes. Even the final battle against the undead queen had only taken an hour or two. Nissilât’s forces, however, moved with considerably more caution.
Her men advanced down the bridge slowly and methodically, erecting shield walls around the workers who labored to tear down the barriers and spikes Marīltu’s men had set up. The city's defenders weren’t idle while they did this; the archers in the surviving towers and the defendants on the wall maintained a heavy barrage of arrows on the workers. They took their pound of flesh, yet, for every man that fell, another stepped up to take his place in the wall and, by the time night had fallen, the bridge was cleared of obstacles and the Stryn commander's forces had withdrawn with only moderate casualties.
Suspecting a night attack, Marīltu kept most of the men on the walls as the night stretched on, cycling small groups to the barracks for sleep, but all seemed silent till the wee hours of the morning when one of the guards noted a faint fluctuation in the wards. The alarm was raised, but it was already too late. Cloaked in the cover of both spell and darkness, Nissilât’s mages had snuck beneath their watch and, with a hissing crack, the ward in front of the gate shattered.
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As morning dawned, the sun god gave his blessing to Nissilât’s troops - the incessant rains ceased as the rosy rays of the sun banished the clouds that had dogged their journey.
She took her place on the walls of the ruined fortress, watching with satisfaction as her soldiers finished setting up the siege weapons they’d assembled and prepared for the day's attack. The pair of trebuchets were dragged to the top of the ruined fortress’ walls and aimed at the gate, while the row of scorpions were assembled at the base of the bridge with their sights set on the nearest of the towers. The men paraded in front of her, their colors flying free in the brisk wind rising of the River, raising their weapons as they passed. “Ana Bayt-Mus̆ḫus̆s̆u, ana bēlū Stryn!”
With cries of allegiance, the first battalion stepped onto the bridge, their shields snapping into a tortoise formation as they marched toward the city’s gates.
Of course, Birnah was not without its defenses. Nissilât wanted to look away as a withering hail of fire rose to meet her men, cutting down their ranks with arrows and boulders dipped in burning pitch, but she could not dishonor their sacrifice thus.
Surrounded by her commanders, her eyes stayed glued on the battle even as the moat’s water disappeared beneath a logjam of fallen bodies and the bridge was stained red by their blood. The casualties were monstrous, yet well within her calculations.
For every man that fell, another took his place as a continuous line of reinforcements joined the formation, continuing their inexorable advance toward the gates. And sheltered beneath the soldiers’ shields marched her trio of fire mages, decked out with every single protective amulet she could lay her hands on.
It took nearly half the day for the archers’ towers to fall, and the column to finally reach the base of the gates with all other obstacles on the bridge destroyed. She had no idea how many had fallen - a thousand? two, three? - and had nearly given the call to retreat more than once as the losses mounted, but she knew the die had been cast the moment her troops crossed the bridge; to retreat now would be folly.
And the wisdom of her approach was proven when the troops finally reached the base of the gates. There, protected by the angle of the walls, Birnah’s siege weapons could no longer target them, and the soldiers’ ranks parted, revealing the mages they’d ferried. She held her breath as the mages raced the last few feet toward the gates, a barrage of arrows testing their strength against the protective amulets they wore. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before their strength was depleted; the only question was if they could complete their task first.
A whirlwind of fire rose around the trio, a voracious column of flames that lapped at the wood-infused walls like a pack of hungry dogs. In truth, Nissilât expected the walls to go up in smoke in a matter of seconds, but that was not what happened. As her mages combined their attack, a small figure appeared on top of the bulwark, his hands raised in concentration. An unknown mage.
She cursed her spies' faulty information as the battle between the mage and her pyromancers dragged on. The fire spread rapidly, racing across the odd gates like a wildfire on dusty plains, yet everywhere it found purchase it was quickly stomped out as fresh, new wood blossomed where it had been scorched. Even worse, two more mages joined him at the gates, bombarding her pyromancers with fire and lightning.
Her heart rate spiked as one of the pyromancers collapsed to the ground, though whether from essence exhaustion or the breaking of his amulet, she could not tell and Nissilât felt the first fear of failure - but she needn’t have worried.
The unknown mage collapsed soon after as his essence guttered out, and the remaining enemy mages were helpless to prevent the fire’s fast spread. Her men withdrew into the shelter of the shield formation, leaving the fallen mage behind, and so too did the enemy mages as the defenders on the wall quickly tried to form a bucket brigade to quench their doom.
Their efforts were useless. The thrill of victory returned to her as the battalion safely withdrew to her position, and they waited for the gates' inevitable fall, watching as the defenders tired themselves out with their pointless labors.
But the fall took longer than she’d expected. The gate burned for four hours before the damage to the structure reached a critical mass. With a thunderous roar that could be heard for miles around, the massive iron doors and ponderous stones collapsed, tossing up a thick cloud of dust and smoke that enveloped the walls in a nearly impenetrable haze. By now, the sun hung low in the sky, its tip brushing against the distant horizon, and Nissilât’s spirits sunk. We can’t press the attack now - between the smoke and the night, the terrain will be to the defender’s advantage.
The thought of retreat sat sour in her stomach, but they had already lost more than she’d expected. True, she had the numbers to press forward, but that was no reason to throw away her men’s lives unnecessarily. With a bitter sigh, she stepped away from the ramparts and turned to her commanders. “We should pull back for the night. Let the men get a good meal and a night’s rest, and we can press on in the morning.”
“We should press the attack, my lady.” She wasn’t surprised when one of the commanders quickly objected. He was one of her uncle’s lackeys, a lifelong soldier who’d never risen above the rank of captain despite thirty years in service, largely due to his lack of tactical skill.
“It’s too risky,” she replied. “We’ll be on unfamiliar ground in the smoke and darkness, while the defenders assault us on all sides. We might be able to push through on sheer numbers, but the losses would be unacceptable. We will wait for morning, and attack under S̆ams̆a’s gauze.”
“There are no unacceptable losses when it comes to taking Birnah,” the man quickly replied. “We must attack-”
“I said we will wait,” she responded testily.
“No, my lady, we will attack.” The man smirked as he drew a letter out of his pocket and waved it in her face. “Your uncle suspected you might lack the will to succeed,” he said smugly, “so he saw fit to give me a letter of command.”
She took the letter numbly, her hands shaking as she read the treacherous words. He never intended to allow me to succeed, she realized. It was always his plan to have his lackey step in and take the credit for my victory.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” the captain continued. “If you give the order to retreat, I’ll be forced to countermand you in front of them. Or, you can do as I say and save a little face.”
The letter seemed to weigh a hundred pounds as she scanned it again. “I...”