Gabriel Thequen was a soldier in the 3rd Arcane Corps, a mercenary unit which had recruited him the moment he finished his first year of studying formal magic. The Corps was comprised partly of mage school dropouts like Thequen and a handful of actual career soldiers. Despite having ‘Arcane’ in the name, most of the Corps was barely able to form mana into proper spells. That aside, Thequen had been with them for three peaceful months, spent camped mostly in an unused field near Lord Ghol’s fortress. Before that they’d fought a couple border skirmishes with barbarians and goblins. Those three little battles were the sum total of all of Thequen’s combat experience.
Peace had ended abruptly when Lord Ghol suddenly declared war on half of the city-states which dotted his borders. The 3rd Arcane was moved directly to the front, where even they managed to easily cut through what little opposition they encountered. That was, until they reached the town of Zyban.
Gabe was near the front of the march, close enough to be one of the first score of people to break through the forest into the fields, and then crest the final hill and see what they were really going to be dealing with. A wall. The Zybanites had built a sturdy, fifteen foot high stone wall. It made a bit more sense now why every village they’d passed through this week had contained barely any people, and only a small fraction of the expected enemy troops.
“A gods damned wall. They built a wall.”, Sergeant Graydon grumbled as he scowled at the construction. Along one portion of the wall there was still scaffolding and a few workmen doing something to the top of it, even though the sun had started to dip below the horizon line. Graydon shouted orders. A runner was sent back along the marching line to inform the Commander of the situation.
Three hours later Thequen was in his sleeping bag, stomach full of the default warcamp mystery stew. Throughout the night one squad cut down small trees and saplings, carving them and tying them together by campfire light. They would work all night to make the ladders, which would excuse them from being on the front lines tomorrow. Thequen was not so lucky. He had been assigned to first wave ladder duty. He slept poorly that night.
At dawn Sergeant Graydon strutted through the camp, banging a pot and ladle together loudly as he took extra care to walk right past the outside of each and every tent. “Up and at em’ boys and girls! Daylight is a burning and the Commander wants this assault fast, efficient, and over by lunchtime!”, he shouted.
Thequen moved sluggishly, limbs stiff from a night on the hard ground. Clothes, boots, breastplate, helmet. He belted his handaxe to his hip, along with a dagger and his belt-pouch. Before he crawled out of the tent, he patted the pouch and felt the reassuring warmth of the single remaining green mana crystal which he owned within, pulsing with naturally contained magical power.
Outside men were gathering. Some ate hard bread dipped in barely-heated soup. The camp cooks had only lit the fire minutes ago, probably. Graydon stood near the meal line and seemed to take careful note of each person as they moved about. A man on horse rode into the camp, dismounted and passed a rolled scroll to Graydon. As fast as he’d come, he got back on his horse and left. Thequen got his food and then sat on a stump. He figured it wouldn’t be long until it was time to march. “Looks like we’re the leftmost flank. The Commander along with a few companies of Lord Ghol’s elite troops will strike from the center. Our goal is simple. Take the wall, go down the other side of it and open the front gate, if possible. We assemble for march when we hear the horn, and march when we hear it blow twice. The third time, three notes, we attack.”, Graydon said as he approached the knot of other men that Thequen sat among.
All too soon the note of a horn sounded through the trees. Thequen and the others, their armor mismatched, except for their standard Arcane Corps blue tabards. A few minutes later Thequen had drawn the short straw, much to the relief of everyone else in the line for the ladder. He would run point. Exactly how dangerous that was didn’t really sink in to his mind until some time after the second horn, when they crested the hill and he really saw what they were up against.
To his left and right, there were about twenty other groups with ladders, mixed in among general footmen, with archers in the rear ranks. Far to the right in the distance Thequen could see a much larger grouping of men, weapons and shields glinting in the morning sun, presumably the main force of Lord Ghol making ready to attack.
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The wall no longer had scaffolding, nor any sign of plain workers along the top. Instead a line of men two or three bodies thick, all glinting in chain shirts lined it as they strung up their bows or clutch their spears. “That… is an awful lot of defenders.”, Thequen muttered as he adjusted the chinstrap of his helmet.
“No mages?”, the guy behind him asked.
“None of the pointy hat and robe variety.”, Thequen said with a shrug. The stronger a spell, the more likely it was to fail if you messed up an arm motion. Thequen didn’t have this problem. The third note blew. Urged on by mounting adrenaline and a stream of curses, shouts and insults from Sergeant Greydon, the entire group of ladder-men ran forward at a jog. Thequen inhaled a deep breath as he started to move, and then a jumbled incantation spilled from his lips. He performed the gestures as best he could with his free hand, his other hand occupied as he tried to also balance the ladder on his shoulder.
Atop the wall the enemy soldiers knocked their arrows. Thequen’s spell effect sprang into existence. There was no visual to be seen, but he felt the rush of cold air as most of his body and the area around him was buffeted by a conjured wind. Wind armor. If he was lucky, it might deflect arrows. At his negligible level of affinity for wind magic, without other defensive spells layered in, it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. If he had not been running, he would have shivered at the cold, but he had other concerns. The defenders loosed their first wave of arrows. For a moment a black cloud hovered over the ladder-men as they ran.
Then the arrows rained down. Thequen’s little group broke into a sprint as all around them arrows pierced flesh and people screamed in pain. One crew faltered, their lead runner tripped. Tangled in the ladder they fell to the ground. The group behind them had to slow down and curve to avoid them. Somehow the surviving squads closed the gap to the wall. Thequen crouched down, setting the end of the ladder in the dirt near the base of the wall. Almost immediately other bearers righted it, pushing it upright and leaning it against the wall. Thequen gripped the base of it, along with another man as almost immediately a few of the defenders pushed against the top, trying to tip it away from the wall. Other ladders went up, some successful, some not as more arrows rained down. Suddenly Sergeant Graydon’s voice cut across the shouts and screams of the battlefield. “Up! Up the ladders you dogs! Ten coin bonus to anyone who lives to tell the tale!”, Thequen heard.
Money was not what motivated him to climb. Fear was what motivated him to climb. How did he want to die? Peppered by arrows at the base of the ladder? Or up top, weapon in hand, with at least a chance to do something to whoever was going to try and take him out? He chose to fight. He went up just behind another person, hand over hand, bit by bit. He kept his eyes on the wall, hoping that his helmet would keep his head intact. Looking up might be a good way to catch a thrown stone or arrow to the face.
The man above him screamed and topped backward as the ladder swayed. He clutched his shoulder as he lost his grip with his other hand and toppled backward. He fell down, past Thequen, who hugged the ladder tight and managed to not get tangled up or kicked by the falling man. Thequen cleared the top of the ladder without getting stabbed and put his feet on the stone parapet of the wall.
The nearest defenders were both busy poking at a man on the adjacent ladder with their spears, as the man under attack tried to somehow climb one-handed, while holding a metal shield above his head as he advanced. At a glance, the defenders seemed to still be in total control of the wall, though all along it’s length ladders had been raised, and in the center near the main gate a battering ram lay on the ground, the bearers around it in various states of injury, surrounded by a knot of troops in the dark tabards of the defenders as Lord Ghol’s troops swarmed around them trying to break them apart and retrieve the battering ram.
An arrow whizzed past Thequen’s shoulder, deflected by his wind armor. This snapped him back to the present. He dropped down onto the stones of the wall proper as one of the spearmen ahead of him took notice of him and turned to face him. All told, the walkway along the wall was only about six feet wide. Before the bearded man could bring his spear to bear, Thequen dashed forward while pulling his hand axe free from his belt. He screamed. The spearman screamed. Thequen clutched the spear at mid-haft with his free hand while flailing with the hatch, which bashed and cut against the opponent’s sturdy metal helmet at resistant chain shirt. Behind Thequen, another of the Arcane Corps topped the wall and turned the other way, which left Thequen free to not worry about being stabbed from behind, at least for a moment.
Thequen was thrown off balance as his opponent let go of the spear and rushed forward tackling into him. Before he knew what was happening, his feet were no longer on the ground. He yelled incoherently, adrenaline pumping through him as he and the defender fell down, rolled along the edge of the wall, punching and kicking at each other viciously. Then they tipped over the edge into free-fall and plummeted toward the ground. Thequen shouted wordlessly as he let go of his hand axe and reached for the pouch on his belt. His opponent’s fist slammed into his face and he felt his nose crunch, pain blossoming throughout his head.