“You said that she would burn down half the province in order to defeat you, Mykah,” Miyasa said, her eyes fixed on the map. “I am beginning to understand what you mean. We haven’t even seen any sign of her main army, only scouts and dragons. Who is she to do this?”
The question drew all eyes to me, including Ilsa’s. Silence fell. Even those who had recently entered the tent could tell something was happening. As much as I would prefer to keep Lyria on the other side of the Empire, mentally and physically, she was doing her best to prevent that.
I sighed. “A long time ago, Lyria and I were officers in the military together. It was the only time we were there for the same reason. In the Empire, nonhumans could only hold an officer’s position with the sponsorship of a noble—although things are clearly different now. We were both sponsored by the same noble and held the same rank in the same regiment. After the onslaughts of the demons along the Nahaum Mountains, our paths parted.
“I was rapidly promoted within the Imperial military. Eventually, I became an Imperial Knight, in direct service to the Imperial family and His Majesty. That led me to becoming a mage and therefore a magister-general. By contrast, Lyria had to maintain her sponsorship under a noble. Instead, under Prince Belar, she became lord-general, the highest military position in the Taranth Princedom.”
I saw confusion around me. Presumably, this was because I was giving a history lesson rather than explaining why Lyria was important. Fortunately, at least one of my listeners remembered the past as he rubbed his chin.
“You called her an old, bad memory a long time ago. I take it you never got along?” Yasno asked with a frown.
“We did, actually. Once,” I said. “When fighting demons, we worked extremely well together. We kept in touch over the decades. Then, when I took over from Tornfrost, I realized what she was truly like.”
The old man had died due to political issues with the princedoms. Refusals to move troops around, evacuate certain regions, and ensure we had somewhere to safely battle the oni. We had planned to funnel the onslaught of oni to another killing ground when they finally overran my brand-new Bulwark, but we were betrayed. I didn’t even get to see his body, such was the ferocity of the fighting. There had been no time to grieve. I had to ensure that the thousands of soldiers holed up in the Bulwark didn’t starve. The oni couldn’t be allowed to establish a foothold. Hundreds of thousands would have died if Tornfrost had lived, I knew. I still didn’t know if I could say it was worth it.
I took a deep breath to steady myself. My old mentor was a man to miss like no other.
“There are two facts from that time,” I said. “One is that the oni would not be here had I accepted the proposal of Lyria and… others at that time. Countless soldiers would have died, the marshlands practically burned to the ground and the war won forever. We would not be standing here together today. I refused, naturally.
“The other is that Matthew Tornfrost would still be alive. The armies necessary to save him would not have been held back by one particular dragon.”
I looked into the eyes of each of my officers. They understood now why I didn’t speak much of Lyria. I despised her.
The problem was, she appeared to hate me, too, and was much better at using her hatred than I was. Without supplies, taking Talepolis was but a dream.
Chapter 18
The tent fell back into chaos after my story about Lyria. The officers started bickering with one another over the most appropriate strategy: how we could take back our supply lines or bring the oni south or undertake a forced march to Talepolis or—
I cut the chaotic chatter from my own thoughts. There was a standard solution to this. We had a city to besiege, supply lines to reestablish, and a dragon to put back in her place. The map held all the pieces to the puzzle; it was merely a matter of spending the time to rearrange them and then issue the orders. The oni to the north were key to this. Surely Vasi would have already been moving her forces south, given the intelligence-gathering abilities of her race.
Somebody grabbed my arm. Sound returned. Yasno seemed to have the floor right now. He was telling the others that, whatever plans we had, anything we did to reestablish the supply lines depended on being able to actually fight dragons.
“Mykah, what are you doing?” Ilsa hissed at me, her face right next to mine.
I blinked and looked down at her. Then I looked at the rest of the assembly. Everybody else was too caught up in the chaos that was pretending to be a planning session to notice or hear Ilsa.
Her unvoiced thoughts had just blown up, it seemed. This needed to be taken outside. I nodded toward the tent’s entrance, and Ilsa took the hint. She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the exit. That was definitely noticed, and more than a few heads turned toward us. I had no time to explain.
“Well?” I asked her, glancing back in the tent as we stood in the entrance. The torches outside were still brightly lit, and the soldiers keeping watch were wary, given the circumstances. Lyria’s force could technically reach us with a dragon here.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said. “Look in there and tell me what you see.”
I looked. Only the senior officers were talking: Yasno, Hish, Aaron, and Miyasa. Even they spent a lot more time trading ideas than making actionable plans. Yasno would say something, and Hish would say something completely different. They weren’t bouncing ideas or building off one another so much as it was simply saying whatever they felt while their minds ground away in the background whenever they weren’t talking.
Stress. It was written all over their faces and their actions. I’d call this a brainstorming session if anybody was paying attention to what was being said. Instead, my officers were throwing everything at the wall.
“It’s a little more chaotic than things usually got at the Bulwark,” I admitted, crossing my arms and frowning. “Once there’s a plan of action in place, things will come back together and it won’t be so bad.”
Then Yasno shouted, “And who fights the dragons?”
I stood there, as dumbfounded as everybody else. It was the first time he had exploded like that.
“He has a point, but I have a better one,” Ilsa asked quietly once the shock of Yasno’s outburst wore off. “Who makes the plan?”
“I’m sorry?”
Running a hand through her hair and breaking it free from its ponytail, Ilsa took a few moments to gather her thoughts. “You said this is worse than up at the Bulwark. That’s because there aren’t fifty years of plans to fall back on. We don’t have a network of overlapping fortresses to rely on. Even your decades of experience aren’t as valuable now. When things got rough, you were a beacon. Nothing up north was new to you. Now everything is new.
“I said this before, but for you, this is just another day in the week. On Monday, you rebelled. On Tuesday, we set up our supply lines. Today, they got cut off. Tomorrow, you reestablish them and chase away some dragons. Friday, you take Talepolis. You’ve fought demonic armies that spanned the length of the Empire, battled in more wars than I’ve ever read about, and basically retired to a life of constant warfare. Adapting is normal for you. But for us, this is chaos.”
Ilsa let out a long, ragged breath. Then she gave me a shaky smile. “There, I said what I’ve been thinking for a while. You tell these wonderful stories and I wish I was part of them. But that can never happen and I think you forget that. Not unless you make us part of them. Lift us up, Mykah. Help us achieve all that we can.”
The torchlight flickered around us as I rocked back on my feet. Yelling and shouting continued to stream out from the tent, and I didn’t tune it out this time. There was more than stress in those voices.
I looked back at my officers. The humans were here because they believed in me more than the Empire; they had cast aside their loyalties for their homeland for my sake. But the oni were here because I had proven that I was a great leader.
Respect was what had gotten me here. I wondered if I h
ad been returning it. How long ago had I stopped returning it? Leadership was about more than giving out orders.
I was only one man. But just as I had an empire behind me for the last century, so too did I have great people supporting me right now.
“I guess I am getting old,” I said, stroking my beard. “Am I going gray yet?”
“I wouldn’t share my bed with you if you were,” Ilsa said, her smile much more confident now.
“Harsh.”
“Someone has to be.”
These were words I needed to hear. More than anything else, I was now questioning my approach.
I chuckled. “I was reacting to this situation as if this was the Bulwark, where everything is so normal. But it’s been over fifty years since I’ve done something like this. It’s not another day of the week, despite what you say. I’ve never fought Lyria at this level of power in earnest. Never gone up against the full might of the Empire in anger.”
The tent remained animated as we stepped back inside, my arm around Ilsa’s back. The arguments had quietened down and my officers had poured out much of their stress and anguish. Or perhaps somebody had noticed that I wasn’t here and wanted my opinion.
All eyes tracked me.
Whispering to Ilsa before we got too close, I finished my thoughts. “Thank you for reminding me of what I learned so long ago about being a leader. I’ve needed somebody like you for longer than I think I can remember.”
Ilsa’s face was extra bright as I stepped up to the map and cast my eyes across the assembled officers.
“Sorry for stepping away. I think I’m ready to hear from all of you how we’re going to take Talepolis now,” I said, giving everybody a soft smile. “After all, we already have everybody and everything we need to take it.”
Chapter 19
Talepolis was an underwhelming city in many ways. It was a large city but relatively small compared to many others in the Empire. As the former capital of the Aghram Princedom, its size stood out given it was dwarfed by all of the other capitals. Too far from the rest of the Empire, it had been recently added to the Empire’s holdings and was constantly threatened by demons from across the Nahaum Mountains. The fact that it was the capital of a princedom simply didn’t make sense—except it held the greatest foundries in the world outside dwarven hands. The city was proof of the industrial power of the Rogistran Empire.
Whether or not the city was underwhelming in size, those foundries required strong defenses. It had two defensive walls and a central citadel almost as large as Tornfrost Watch. The city had been converted into a capital in my own lifetime, so it was relatively modern. It was built to withstand both demonic invasion and magical sieges, as the walls showed. The outer wall stood twenty meters high and half that thick. Past that, the inner wall and citadel were taller again, at thirty meters high. The barriers of the walls were strong enough to repel anything that wasn’t a trebuchet supported by a battery of mages. Even the geometry was menacing. The walls formed jagged shapes that left no attacker safe from bombardment.
Then there was the sprawl. Defending miles of wall was an impossible feat without a massive army. The Empire was wealthy, but a permanent garrison able to protect that much was still a waste of money. As such, the majority of the city—an unrestrained sprawl of residences and commercial buildings—sat outside the walls of the city. Warehouses next to apartment blocks, with a textile factory just down the road and markets bustling with traders around the corner. I was once told that you could get lost in Talepolis and follow a single road until you died of old age yet never starve or else desire for water or shelter.
“Speaking of water, where does it come from?” Yasno asked, tracing a finger along the map. “I see rivers around the city but not through it. This other city farther south has a river.”
“Aqueducts,” Aaron answered. “Water is carried down from the mountains to the city. The reservoirs are supplied by a dozen of them plus natural water supplies from the foothills they’re built into.”
“Which is the other problem,” Yasno continued, rubbing the stubble beginning to form on his chin. “The entire rear of the city is built into the damn mountain range. That could give us a height advantage for a siege if we had time—time we don’t have. I had been counting on that given how huge the walls are. This place looks as intimidating as everything you put in our path up in the Nahaum Pass, Bulwark.”
“That’s to be expected, given that I had some involvement in the design of the walls and knew their strength. The bulk of the ideas came from brighter minds who had seen widespread magic and demons transform siege warfare over the past few centuries,” I said. “Many of these ideas made their way north, where I reused them for the fortresses in the Bulwark.”
Miyasa cocked an eyebrow. “So other cities have less impressive walls?”
Chuckling, Ilsa shook her head. “No, they’re different in design or smaller. The older the city, the more the Empire must retrofit the walls. Installing metal panels, making the walls taller, building turrets. They won’t be as thick, and many cities and fortresses won’t have multiple layers of walls or sections.”
“I don’t see sections here. Tornfrost Watch has a bunch of courtyards with walls between them,” Hish said. “So this place is weaker than Tornfrost?”
“It’s a city. It can’t match a fortress,” I said. “Longer walls means spreading your forces more thinly. The sprawl means archers and mages can’t see approaching foes clearly. Once we breach a wall, they can’t isolate us and attempt to hold the rest of the wall. The only true fortress the foe has is the citadel.” I placed my finger on the large block in the rough center of the city. “Otwin has been conservative so far, so I think we can assume he is being defensive. We can expect heavy resistance at the citadel while he holds out for Lyria’s arrival. He will do everything he can to draw us into a drawn-out siege. He knows we need the citadel, given it sits atop the most specialized forges.”
“Specialized?” Ilsa asked.
“Those are the only forges capable of producing the weapons that can slay dragons. The dwarves weren’t keen on their secrets being spread to all and sundry, so forges capable of producing product that matches theirs are under lock and key. Royal lock and key, to be exact. The prince of Aghram controlled access to them directly. If we want to defeat Lyria, we’ll need to oust Otwin from the citadel,” I explained.
A mutter rose up among my officers. I had laid it all out there: the defenses of the city, Otwin’s own predilections, my tactical knowledge of what besieging a city would mean, and our true objective. Now I needed to do as Ilsa advised and trust in my officers to tell me how we were going to do it. Oni and human alike were exchanging heated arguments about the city, what we were up against, and how we could punch through our foe. Six months ago, the sight would have amazed me.
“The barriers will stop anything short of dedicated siege weapons. Can you and your mages set that up with what we have, Ilsa?” Aaron asked.
“Forget that. Won’t they just shoot back? Why not go in for the gates?” Yasno said.
Miyasa shook her head. “Between the oni and Mykah, we have the power to punch through the gates. However, they can torch us from above in the time it takes us to break through.”
“Why not just go over?” That was Hish.
“We’re talking twenty meters, Hish. Not everybody can fly like our general can,” Aaron said with a laugh.
“That’s not crazy, however,” Ilsa said, looking between everybody. “What is the purpose of their defense on the outer wall? What keeps them there?”
All the other officers looked at Ilsa, their faces thoughtful. It seemed to come to them all at once. All of the officers shared grins.
“We’re on the outside. They’re on the inside,” Ilsa said. “Ordinary soldiers rally around something so simple in a siege.”
Miyasa smiled. “The core of our plan then, Mykah, seems to be that we must sow chaos in the foe. Even past the outer wall, I wonder
if this is not true of the citadel as well. Marshal Otwin wants us to battle him in the citadel in a drawn-out siege. Why are we bothering to play his game? It seems our objective is different.”
With a nod, I took in the gazes of everyone around me. Everything had been positive. Noticeably missing was a fear of Lyria. The question wasn’t whether we could do anything; it was if we could do it fast enough while minimizing losses. I had been asking the wrong thing of them all along. Then again, I didn’t think I had been asking them at all. That had been my greatest failing so far, and I would see that I didn’t repeat it.
“You’re right. Let’s make it clearer. We’re taking Talepolis in a single night,” I declared. “If chaos is our objective, then the night is our element. We then need to crack each and every part of the city open, one after the other, before dawn comes.”
“Do we start calling you the Lightning Bulwark after this then?” Yasno said.
“Maybe think up your own names first. I think everybody will be deserving of titles after this,” I said.
I wasn’t sure if there ever had been a case of a city the size of Talepolis being captured in a single night. Perhaps by demons. Certainly by the catastrophe that had brought about the badlands. But by an ordinary army? I didn’t know.
In the back of my mind, I could remember somebody telling me about how I had to craft my followers into myth and legend if I wanted to become emperor.
My thoughts drifted as I recalled the memory. Emperor.
“It’s technically yours for the taking,” a voice whispered next to me.
I jumped. A pair of red horns was in my peripheral vision, and I realized it was Miyasa, who had crept closer to me. I stepped back from the table, beckoning her to follow. The others surely noticed as we stepped into the shadows of the tent, but they continued with their planning.
“I spoke out loud, I take it?” I asked her once we were out of casual earshot. Technically, they could still hear us if they cared to focus any magically enhanced hearing our way.
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