“No, but when you talk of titles, it’s obvious what yours should be,” Miyasa said, looking me in the eyes. “I could tell from the very moment you sat on that throne, all those weeks ago. It’s your destiny. A legacy for you to claim.”
“Emperor isn’t a hereditary position in the Rogistran Empire. There’s no legacy to build,” I deflected.
“Even I know that to be a half-truth. Have not the past four emperors come from the Istar family? Evigilus was the first. Somnulus, the last. You said last night that you served them.”
Called out on Imperial matters by an oni. I couldn’t help but wince at how weak my own deflection had been. Sighing, I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“That is true, yes. The Royal Elector College always elected an emperor from the Istar family, if not necessarily the person some had expected, although that has only been since the Reforms. Between the reigns of Kaiser Lucius and Emperor Evigilus, there have been plenty of emperors from other families.” They just didn’t matter as much. The Reforms of Emperor Evigilus had given the Imperial family and the emperor the power he had to make the Empire as great as it was now.
“So you put in place your own reforms and establish a line of Ariums, who shall be emperors for far longer,” Miyasa said, smiling now. “You have that power.”
Given that I didn’t age, I didn’t really need the line of emperors even. Somehow, I doubted the people wanted an unaging, undying god-emperor ruling over them.
I kept my silence and Miyasa hers. We watched the others animatedly move markers around the map and argue over the best ways to take a city in a lightning assault. I found myself wondering when I had last felt like this. Energy filled the air.
Hish bounced her markers over the city walls while Yasno physically pulled her away from the table. Ilsa explained to the other officers how the mages could support different tactics, desperately ignoring the fighting oni. The adjutants and junior officers, oni and humans, smiled and pitched in what they could as they became more involved. At one point, half the tent dissolved into laughter as Terry attempted to explain a plan that evidently had no value beyond the comedic, although it was lost on all but the fairer sex.
“This is what you’ve given us, Mykah,” Miyasa said. “A place to belong for so many horns that never had one. There is nowhere else for them.”
Something about what she said seemed off. There was a whole oni territory to the north, yet I couldn’t help but agree while watching all these single-horned oni laugh, smile, and plan for a legendary victory alongside human soldiers. Just six months ago, we had actively planned each other’s deaths.
I felt something warm on my arm and looked down to see Miyasa’s head there. Things were almost perfect right now.
My mind needed that hint of perfection. A storm was coming, and we were bringing it this time.
Chapter 20
Thousands of soldiers descended on Talepolis as I watched from atop a tower. The lights of the streets hadn’t been lit tonight, save for a few that some poor beggars or stalwarts kept going. The sprawl was dark, visible due to my helmet’s enhanced vision. Beyond it were the bright lights of the outer wall. Countless torches and braziers burned bright against the dark figures running along the battlements.
Over the past couple of days, I had harassed the city with scouts and made our march as obvious as possible. We started on fortifications and our encampment at morning. My forces began to line up come late afternoon. Trebuchets and mangonels sprang to life, their prefabricated pieces slipping together easily. I had even lit a large number of stone piles on fire at the front of my formations.
The message to Otwin had been clear: evacuate the sprawl, or I would burn it to the ground before me.
A series of flares burst in the air above the sprawl, signaling yet more blocks cleared. Otwin was behaving, which was good news. The armored knights plowing toward the walls weren’t equipped for city fighting. The Empire’s tactics for city fighting required that mages be seeded throughout each unit. These mages provided mobile barrier coverage and enabled us to burn out individual buildings.
But I couldn’t spare the necessary mages; they were needed for taking down the walls. To make matters worse, my infantry had never seen how quickly a city fight became a shit fight. City fighting needed to be lived through. If Otwin forced us to fight block to block, then we would take tremendous casualties. The oni were powerful but lacked the experience necessary to carry a battle in the sprawl. My own victories over them had often come from exploiting their inexperience in cities. Tornfrost’s death had paved the way to such a victory as I butchered my way through five times our number of oni.
If Otwin forced my hand, then the city was forfeit. Mage-supported mangonels would reduce the sprawl to burning rubble within hours and we could walk to the walls unhindered.
“He’s playing this by the book, Bulwark,” Yasno said from next to me. “Everything is going as planned.”
I looked at the oni next to me, noting the brightness of his face despite his usual dour look. The light from the next set of flares almost seemed to be inside of his eyes rather than reflecting off them. Yasno raised his fist, responding with a flare of his own.
That was the last flare, I noted, remaining silent. The whole point was to give Yasno command over the first phase of the assault. This was his battlefield, as Miyasa had told me it often had been up north against my fortresses. These rolling flares were his idea, along with most of the plans for the first phase. Undermining his command was disrespectful. I needed to remember that and let him lead.
“It’s time for us to join them, Bulwark,” he said, his face split by a small grin.
“Let’s,” I said.
The two of us leaped over the edge of the tower. We hit the ground feet-first, then sprinted toward the front lines. Confused faces of soldiers looked over at us, only to vanish as we raced past them to our destination. Buildings blurred past us. I thought I heard Yasno laughing.
Slowing as the wall began to loom over us, we took stock of where we were. Lights burst in the air above us. More flares. I could feel magic beginning to build, which meant that the enemy battlemages were about to fire. Something told me that this wasn’t going to be about testing their range. Battlemages on walls tended to have strong visual indications of how far they could fire. Even in this darkness, they would still be able to see us and make out their range.
Yasno clicked his tongue, staring up at the flares. “I’d hoped we’d reach my company first. This really is just a repeat of last time. Give me a second.”
Then he held up his fist and fired off the flare to call for barriers. A series of golden flares immediately shot up in return far behind us, and red flares joined them along the line of advance. They were followed by a field of silver light slamming into existence in front of us. The shudder I felt was real, almost as though somebody had pushed a thin film through my body. I shook it off. It simply felt strange to have powerful spells forcibly pushed through your body from such a distance. The mages were casting the barrier from the rear lines, which was a necessary evil. It let me enjoy a nice fireworks show as the enemy’s barrage burst uselessly against our defenses.
A cough brought me to my senses. “Are we watching or moving?” Yasno asked me with a raised eyebrow.
By the time the enemy’s barrage stopped, we caught up to Yasno’s company. The silver field of light flickered a good five or so meters off the ground, and the oni knights rested in the street behind it. I heard the rattle of breastplates as we approached. These were veterans, their weapons up and ready to go as the barrage ceased. None of their horns were glowing, either, unlike some of the other oni earlier. Glowing horns were too visible. They were a good way to get sniped by an errant civilian angry that his city was being invaded.
Yasno looked to me for assurance as he held up his fist for the next flare. This was the moment of truth. In my own dealings with the oni, I had long ago learned tactics of my own to hamper their barrier-
march tactic. Otwin should be aware of them. However, I did not think they were suitable for use here.
I nodded to Yasno, letting him give the order. The flare shot into the air and the barrier came down. We advanced, not under a hail of fire but merely with the sound of our clattering armor. The enemy was not making use of volley fire.
Maintaining a series of regular barrages of magic and arrows was the best way to handle an opponent using barriers while marching. Single, massive barrages of fire with large gaps of time between them weren’t as effective. The use of volleys weakened each individual barrage but let you fire more often. The advantage was that it forced the opponent to make a choice: either their advance ground to a halt or it continued under fire and took heavy losses.
The use of volley fire simply didn’t work unless you had the necessary raw numbers. Armored knights such as mine could shrug off weaker volleys. Knights could advance unharmed under volley fire if there weren’t enough mages firing in each volley. The sheer length of these walls stretched Otwin’s defenders thin. I was betting he wouldn’t risk his volleys bouncing off our armor and shields.
Otwin was textbook, but not stupid. Not that I would call him wise.
A wise person would know that I wrote the textbook he was using against me.
We came to a stop in the killing field just outside of the wall. The buildings stopped some hundred meters short of the wall, leaving a barren wasteland full of ditches and holes. Twenty meters above us was our target: the tops of the walls. The wall brimmed with the ends of spears, arrows, and magical spells. Defenders readied themselves to make the killing field more than just a name.
In front of us was the southern gatehouse, a beast of magically reinforced wrought iron and wood. Its barriers were visible to the naked eye, light shimmering on the surface of the doors. Such was its strength while mages actively reinforced it.
“Guess this is what we brought the ram for,” Yasno muttered, looking at the same thing I was. “Where’s Miya?”
“Mykah!” If one spoke of the oni, she would appear. Miyasa burst into the field one city block away from us, her sword drawn and a company of knights behind her. Her oni were lugging our main method of entry into the city. It was a steel ram head on a tree trunk thick enough that I suspected nothing less than fifty oni could carry the thing.
Now we needed to cover them long enough that they could knock down the gate without being obliterated by the enemy mages above. Light and fire were already beginning to pour down on our shields, the enemy’s controlled barrages giving way to indiscriminate assault. Only armored knights could hope to survive in the killing field.
A thousand or more of my soldiers had poured onto the field already. I looked along the length of the wall. The field lit up as bright as day as spells poured down from the fortifications. Our wall of shields kept up a relentless march. We only had ladders and rams, so we needed to get close.
An oni went down next to me, an arrow in his arm. Two stepped forward to cover him as he snapped it off and recovered. Time was of the essence. Every second meant more dead and wounded.
“Bring up the ram,” Yasno shouted, gesturing with his arm at Miyasa’s company. The oni were lugging the massive thing behind a still-forming wall of shields. Spells poured down on them. Fireballs skittered off their shields. I could feel my beard burning and blasted a pulse of raw magic to put out the blaze. The chuckles nearby made it clear that the soldiers had noticed. I ignored the laughs. My facial hair was an important matter.
I looked around for Hish, my compatriot in the next step. It could be minutes before she arrived. The knights had led the advance, in case the enemy unleashed volley fire and our advance needed to absorb the enemy’s artillery fire from the walls. For all her company’s viciousness, it was no substitute for heavy armor. The shield wall was what would keep them alive. Not seeing her, I resolved to stick close to Miyasa and Yasno as the shield wall pushed toward the gate.
The wall’s barrier rippled momentarily, and I glanced to one side, spotting Miyasa with her bow out. She pouted at my look.
“I did want to try,” she said, slinging her bow over her shoulder.
“In a way, the wall is tougher than even Lyria’s scales. The enchantments in the wall are rooted in the stone across the entire length of the thing,” I said. Casually deflecting a magical lance that was aimed at her, I kept pace. “You’ll have your chance. How are you feeling?”
“This is our night. Of all the parts of the plan, this was the sole aspect I was uncertain of. In our assaults against your fortresses, getting this close was a struggle,” Miyasa said, smiling broadly. Both of her horns glowed bright red in the night as she walked and deflected magic with her bare blade. The display was impressive enough to remind me that she was the Herald of the Oni.
“Yet this Otwin has let us so easily get right up to the city walls. In minutes, the gate will collapse, and from there, we shall break his city, and then him, in two.” A pair of magical circles rippled out from Miyasa, one from each hand. The series of magical lances aimed directly at her, presumably as she was standing unprotected behind the shield wall, shattered into prismatic light and dissipated.
“Glad you feel so positive,” I said. “Speaking of positive, I think my partner is here.”
I patted Miyasa on the shoulder, returning her smile. The ram was already going up. Human knights passed prefabricated wooden beams along a line from the rear. They relied on the oni shield wall to protect them. In minutes the magically enchanted head of the ram would be striking the gate with the strength of Yasno, Miya, and the oni.
In the meantime, I had a date with Hish. I looked up at the wall, then at Hish and her assembled company of oni.
“Care to start climbing?” I asked.
Chapter 21
I soared through the night air, Hish’s cackling laughter in my ear. As we flew overhead, we saw the horrified faces of the soldiers on the walls below.
That was the problem with the barriers on most walls; they stopped projectiles, not people.
Screams of panic erupted as we began our descent. Fifty oni and one human plummeted toward the dirt on the other side of the wall. Arrows, fireballs, and magic lances uselessly flew into the air behind us. It was going to hurt when we hit the ground, however. My muscles were still singing from the initial leap, but the landing stung no matter how much I rolled.
“When you said climb over the walls, I thought you meant actually climb, boss,” Hish said afterward, still cackling through her own pain. “I didn’t think we could actually jump that high. We never tried that up north.”
That was because there wasn’t a fortress in the Bulwark that had walls less than thirty meters high. Lessons had been learned. Even thirty meters wasn’t enough in some cases with oni and demons. Noble demons, who were a danger even to Miyasa, could easily bound atop forty-meter-high walls. And there wasn’t a herald who couldn’t simply leap into a fortress to duel me at a moment’s notice, either. Miyasa had never bothered with a direct confrontation and instead simply tried shooting my head off from afar, the barriers on our walls too weak to resist her power. My inability to detect build-ups of spiritual energy had nearly cost me my life several times.
“Didn’t you say you had the idea yourself, when you said you wanted to make use of all that time learning to jump higher as a child?” I said, looking around at the panicking enemy soldiers.
“Yeah, but I figured we could just jump up, stab our swords in the walls, then climb.”
“You can’t stab reinforced stone with a sword, Hish,” I replied. Well, maybe with my sword, although even it would take damage. “Look alive, ladies. It’s time to meet the welcoming party, and she’s out for blood. Literally.”
The assembled oni snapped into formation and stopped moaning about the hard landing. However pathetic the regular soldiers by the gate had been, the cavalry charging headlong at us were not. I recognized the leader. These were heavy mounted knights of the Empire, the pride
of Aghram. Ordinarily, they were a terrible opponent for sword-wielding infantry, especially when they outnumbered us two to one.
Fire began to rain down on us from above. We rushed forward, not wanting to remain out in the open.
“Looks like it’s working,” Hish said.
The gate was abandoned. The hundreds of soldiers protecting it had fled in fear at the sight of barbarous oni who were capable of leaping over the wall in a single leap. Their mages were splitting their attention. They flung magic at us as well as at the soldiers on the other side of the gate. Wood was spilled all over the ground, a sign that they had not yet reinforced the gate from inside. That was good for the ram. This was pure chaos, to sum it up. Hish cackled again.
I had to admit, this sense of chaos was exactly what I lacked in my own planning: the idea of simply doing something crazy that would make the enemy react stupidly.
Case in point, the vampire captain charging headlong at me.
“Traitor General Arium, your head will be mine,” shouted the vampire. Her pole-axe gleamed in the torchlight of the gatehouse. The thunderous hooves of her knights boomed in the air around us, drowning out all else.
For several moments, I couldn’t hear the screams of the enemy above us, the shouting of my soldiers outside, or even Hish’s cackling. It sounded like death approaching on horseback. A hundred lances pointed toward us, and I felt a scythe curled around my neck.
Then the moment shattered with a boom, the entire gatehouse moving with it. The knights faltered in their charge, their horses whinnying at the sound. Dust fell from the old stone above. The battering ram had struck.
“Charge,” I said.
We exploded forward, magic blasting through our muscles. The same energy that had propelled us over the wall sent us flying toward the knights. Fifty oni slammed into the front line of the Empire’s knights and sent the entire formation hurtling to the ground. We leaped over their lances or cut straight through them with our swords. Horses crashed into each other. Lances fell to the ground or were knocked aside. I saw men sent flying as a ton of horse came to a screaming halt and inertia took hold.
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