“Men, this is your chance to make the enemy bleed. Every man who falls in defense of Kozalin will rise again in Valhalla. Every ape you kill now is one less that you’ll have to face in the final battle. So let them come. We will break their assault today. We will break it again tomorrow. We will kill them until the walls of Kozalin are drenched in blood, and then rise to kill them again before the gates of Valhalla. Are you with me?”
A rousing cheer shook the room.
“That’s the spirit! We’re going to give the enemy a hell of a bad day today. Steelbinder, set up those new fire golems of yours behind the breach with a couple of Adepts in support, and give the apes a good roasting when they try to break through. Caspar, I want you to lead your band of heroes through the Dark Portal and raid one of the enemy camps at the height of the assault. Let them think about how they’re going to stop us from doing that again whenever we like. Generals, I’ll be leading the defense of the Trade District walls personally today.”
“Which camp?” The prince asked.
“Stay away from the big one with the statue of Gaea,” Brand advised. “Their general is there, and I’m told he’s one of Gaea’s sons. Take your pick of the others, but make it a fast raid. Get in, do as much damage as you can, and get out before they can mass enough troops to stop you.”
Prince Caspar nodded. “We’ll kill any ape foolish enough to stand against us.”
“Glad to hear it. Daniel, I need you to come out to the Trade District after dark tonight and repair the breach they’ve made in the wall. You can do that, right?”
I nodded. “Easily.”
“You aren’t keyed to the city wards,” Steelbinder put in. “I’ll send an Adept out to integrate the new construction as you work.”
“Make the new wall something bigger and harder to assault than the old one,” Brand added. “That will give them another hit to morale, and then we’ll unleash the mortars in a couple of days. I assume you’re going to have more surprises for the enemy after that, Daniel?”
I nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“Start with air defenses,” he advised. “The Griffon Knights are getting slowly whittled down. But bring anything new to me first, so we can plan the best time to reveal it. Remember, the objective here is to lure the enemy into bleeding themselves white against our defenses. We don’t want to scare them off.”
I frowned. “Alright.”
“Oh, and Edvin? I hear you have an announcement?”
The new Archpriest of Kozalin was surprisingly young for such a high position. Early thirties, maybe, with no gray at all in his beard. But the older priests had all died in Mara’s attack on the temple, and he was the most senior guy left. He stood, and nervously bowed to Brand.
“Yes, Exalted One. The Allfather has decreed that any woman wishing to follow her man to Valhalla may now do so. When a soldier falls in battle his lover may go to the High Temple, and step through the Door of Devotion to be reunited with him.”
One of the generals chuckled. “Is Valhalla running short on serving wenches? Or are we getting ready to repopulate Midgard after the war is over?”
“The latter, I think,” Brand said. “But it will ease the supply situation a bit, as well. Now, the enemy is starting to muster their troops, so let’s get moving. They’ll be trying the walls again in a couple of hours.”
The meeting room cleared out quickly at that, with most of those present following Brand out the door. Steelbinder lingered for a moment.
“Interesting allies you have,” he said. “Clan Nethwillin?”
“That’s them,” I confirmed.
“A useful contact, I suppose. The Conclave needs two more amulets made. When can you have them ready?”
At thirty minutes each that wasn’t a huge time investment.
“Tomorrow morning? I can bring them to the meeting.”
“That will do. Until tomorrow, then.”
He left, and I followed him out. The pair of wolfen I’d brought as escorts fell into place behind me, but Tavrin and I remained silent until we made it back to the transport. Brand was using a council chamber in Brokefang Keep for his daily planning meetings, and the place was so packed with soldiers and servants that it was impossible to talk without being overheard.
The armored skimmer we’d arrived in was still parked in the outer courtyard. I opened the door to find Sergeant Thomas lecturing the pair of warrior dryads we’d brought along as part of my escort.
“-were hunting a dangerous beast? This is the same thing, girls. You can do as you like when you’re safe at home, with stout walls between you and the enemy. But out here we could be attacked at any moment, and we’d better not be distracted when it happens. Understand?”
“Yes, sergeant,” they chorused. Their tone was suitably chastened, but there was a note of hunger in the looks they were giving him. Especially Euthalia, who I remembered being one of Corinna’s more devious warriors.
“Trouble, sergeant?” I asked as we boarded the transport.
“It’s handled, milord. Ready to head home?”
“Yes, let’s get moving. It’s going to be a busy day.”
The sergeant nodded, and turned to poke his head into the driver’s compartment. The dryads exchanged a look, and played a quick round of rock, paper, scissors. Euthalia won, and did a silent fist pump.
Sergeant Thomas turned back around, and they both adopted innocent expressions. He eyed them suspiciously for a moment.
“I don’t want to know,” he decided. “We’re on our way, milord.”
I elected to take a seat, and ignore the whole thing. It was none of my business who Corinna’s dryads decided to seduce, as long as no one let it get in the way of doing their jobs. I had more important things to worry about.
“What do you think of this demigod’s strategy?” Tavrin asked cautiously.
I sighed. “I think he’s asking to get a lot of people killed. He obviously doesn’t care about that, though. He’s expecting everyone to die no matter what, so the civilians are inconsequential as far as he’s concerned. Personally I’d rather we look for a way to cut them off at the source.”
“That would be difficult,” he pointed out. “Skogheim is an earth realm, and Gaea can easily open new paths from there to any cave or crevice in Midgard.”
“Hmm. I suppose that would make an attack on the Halls of Slumber suicide,” I said.
Tavrin leaned back in his seat, and thought for a long moment before answering.
“There would be a risk of Gaea appearing in person to protect it,” he finally said. “In Skogheim she would be at the height of her power, so a direct confrontation would lead to disaster. But she is not known for her subtlety. If she were distracted somehow it might just be possible to conduct a raid using the Dark Portal.”
“I’m not going to have anything to do with using that thing,” I objected. “Sacrificing souls is evil no matter what your goal is. Besides, the scale doesn’t work. This complex would have to be huge to hold that many suspended animation chambers, and if they have any brains at all they’ll have a lot of their best people guarding it. A small raiding party isn’t going to do much damage before it’s forced to retreat.”
“Not even with your destructive devices?” He probed.
“I doubt it. They look impressive, but they’re easy to shut down for anyone who understands earth sorcery. After what happened with the dwarves I’m going to assume the enemy will take note, and figure out how to counter them.”
“I suppose that’s the wise assumption,” he conceded. “Well, we certainly aren’t going to march an army through the hidden ways of earth without attracting Gaea’s gaze. A spy could get in with a trading party, but that has the same problem as the portal raiders.”
“Trading party? That’s right, you guys have done business with the andregi before. Do you think you could still get away with that?”
“Yes, we could easily impersonate traders from another clan,” he assured me. “The and
regi are not subtle enough to spot such a deception.”
“Interesting. I’ll have to think about that. On another topic, how tied up is your manpower on dealing with your own problems? You’ve probably noticed that I’ve got a desperate shortage of trained people, and so far your clan members have been amazingly capable at everything I’ve seen them do. I’m thinking about having you take over running the airship, among other things.”
“We could do that,” he agreed. “The war has forced me to shut down most of our trading network, and that’s going to leave half the clan at loose ends. How secure do you think the island is going to be? I’d like to relocate our Asian settlements as soon as possible, but we’ve generally avoided putting all our eggs in one basket.”
“I intend to make the island into a fortress that’s impossible to storm,” I told him. “We just need more manpower, and a couple more weeks to build up the defenses. You and Pelagia are both getting power stones in the next few days, by the way. I’m sure you can put that kind of power to good use.”
“Indeed we can. In that case I think the airship idea is a good one. Although perhaps we should paint it, and hide the fact that it’s made of mithril?”
“Oh, I have a different idea on that. I’ll show you when we get home.”
It was a short drive. I made a detour to my workshop complex to pick up a factory device, and made my way up to the dark elves’ floor. There I appropriated the smallest of the dozen rooms Pelagia had set up for the refugees, and set up the device. Sefwin wandered over to watch as I did so, along with a couple of other elves I didn’t recognize.
“That’s a really odd looking enchantment,” Sefwin observed. “What does it do?”
I turned it on. “Watch.”
The elves all took a step back when it activated, no doubt noticing the massive power draw. Well, that confirmed that being able to sense magic was pretty much a universal ability for elves, which I’d begun to suspect.
A thin rod of silvery metal appeared in the compartment on the side of the factory stone, and began to grow. The elves looked on curiously for a moment, obviously not getting it. Then someone gasped.
“Is that mithril?”
I grinned. “Yep. This is how I built the Intrepid. It conjures a ten-pound bar of mithril in about half a minute, and you can leave it running continuously if you want to. Tavrin, I’m still feeling a bit peeved with the dwarves over attacking us, and I bet you are too. Storming their fortresses looking for revenge doesn’t seem like a smart idea, so instead how would you like to crash the world mithril market?”
His lips slowly curved into a cold smile. “Economic warfare? What an excellent idea. Yes, I think this will get the job done quite nicely. We’ll start by selling to the dwarves through intermediaries, at a price calculated to suggest that someone is desperately liquidating a hidden treasure reserve. Then, when they get suspicious, we suddenly flood the hidden markets with fresh lots of mithril at a third of the usual price. They’ll try to buy it all up to maintain their monopoly, but we can just keep selling more until they run out of gold.”
“There’s nothing a dwarf loves more than gold,” Sefwin said. “This is going to hit them where it hurts. Do we get a commission?”
I chuckled. “This is a joint venture, Sefwin. Nethwillin gets half the take, I get the other half, and we all end up rich while our enemies lose their shirts.”
“You are a generous man, Daniel,” Tavrin said. “You do realize we’re likely to sucker them out of twenty or thirty tons of gold before the market collapses?”
“I figured. I’ve got plenty of ways to make money, so I can afford to be generous. Just don’t crash the economy here in Kozalin when you start spending it,” I told him.
“We won’t,” he assured me. “The money will certainly make our resettlement easier, but I don’t imagine we’ll be spending much of it here.”
Well, that was one issue dealt with. Now I just had to make good on my promise of defending the island.
The air defense problem was the most critical one, but resolving it was pretty straightforward. The guns we already had were almost good enough for shooting down flying animals, they just needed a few refinements.
So I put in a few hours in my lab that morning, building a new factory stone for something that would get the job done. The heart of it was a large gun, about .75 caliber, with a four-foot barrel and an extra enchantment that made every 5th bullet come out glowing red hot. I had to put a cooling spell on the barrel to make sure that wouldn’t cause problems during sustained fire, but it was an easy way to make tracer rounds.
One round per second was a pretty low rate of fire for an antiaircraft weapon, of course. So I also came up with a frame that four guns could be mounted on, with a single trigger and a big sight in the middle. I copied that part from the design they used on naval antiaircraft guns back in WWII, which seemed simple and reasonably effective. Thinking about that led me to add a metal shield to the frame, to give the gunner some cover.
Of course, creating the mounting frame involved a bit of enchantment and a bunch of finicky metal shaping. So I followed up by building a factory stone to make those too.
With factories for both components of the system I was able to make quad-mount AA guns in whatever quantity I wanted, although I still had to assemble and install them myself. I mounted four of them around each of the mortar bunkers, on heavy iron swivel mounts sunk deep into the stone. Then I built a small bunker on top the arcology block, with four more guns. No sense in letting the enemy just land on our roof whenever they wanted.
Marcus approved of the solution, and immediately suggested putting them on skimmers as well. Not a bad idea, since they were basically machine guns. But I still didn’t have a way to mass-produce vehicles, so that would have to wait until I had a little spare time.
Oskar seemed to get the idea, and promised to find some men from the garrison to man the rooftop bunker. But then he broached an unexpected topic.
“I think it’s about time I stepped down from running the garrison, milord,” he said hesitantly.
“Really? I haven’t had any complaints about your performance, Oskar.”
“Maybe not, milord, but I’m not too proud to admit I’m out of my depth. I’m a blacksmith by trade, not a soldier. I was happy to hold things together back when Marcus was our only real officer, but things have changed. It’d be better for everyone to have a seasoned expert in charge of the island’s defense.”
“Fair enough,” I conceded. “Who are you thinking of? Demetrios?”
“He’d do,” Oskar agreed. “Or Tavrin. Hell, any of the elves could do it. Those guards Irithil left back here were happy enough to pitch in, and they know their stuff. Turns out every one of them does forty years serving the clan as a soldier and another twenty as an officer, just to make sure they can handle themselves on the battlefield.”
That did sound like Nethwillin.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’d be happy just running the forge, milord. The way Marcus keeps bringing on more men there’s plenty of work to be done there.”
“Well, alright then. You’ve got a good point. I’ll see what I can do.”
There were several conversations like that one as the day went on. Avilla reminded me that she wanted out of the castellan job, so she could focus on magic. Cerise confided that she was having fun with the spy stuff, but she didn’t have time to keep up with it properly. Marcus mentioned the need to properly organize our growing assortment of military forces, and set up a formal chain of command. Gronir complained that his wolfen were being pulled off in too many different directions, and by the way he had a whole group of volunteers who wanted to join the pack if we ever killed some more felwolves.
I was becoming a manager. Ugh! I’d never wanted that kind of job. I’ve always preferred to spend my time actually doing things, but here I was holding meetings and dealing with personnel issues. I was sorely tempted to blow it all off in favor
of spending more time in my workshop.
But no, I couldn’t do that. I’d put myself in charge of this group, and now everyone was depending on me to make things work. So instead I listened, thought, and tried to come up with solutions without letting it interfere with anything essential.
Two power amulets for Steelbinder. I needed all the alliances I could find, so getting that done on time was essential. Speaking of alliances, I really needed to have someone working on more of those. I had no idea who the noble factions in the city were, and weren’t there supposed to be embassies here? I’d never have time to look into that at this rate.
The repair job for Brand was essential, too. I couldn’t afford to make an enemy of him, so I grabbed an escort and dragged myself out to the wall at sunset despite the inconvenience. I arrived to find several hundred laborers clearing away piles of charred corpses under the gaze of a familiar wizard.
“Good evening, Leo. Looks like you’ve had a busy day here.”
His visor was up, so I could see his grim smile. “Yes, we gave those apes a nasty surprise today. They thought this breach would be our downfall, but the Conclave is more than a match for a bunch of unwashed animals. They overran the barricades three times today, but each time we lured them into a trap and burned them down.”
The breach in the wall was easily a hundred feet wide, with an improvised barricade of timber and broken rubble stretched across it. Not exactly the stoutest fortification, especially against dinosaur cavalry.
“Yeah, I hear you’ve got fire breathing golems now. Why not just put them on the barricade, though?”
“That would expose the golem handlers to attack,” he explained. “The enemy is determined to kill every spellcaster they can spot, and most of our golem handlers are only apprentices. They don’t have a lot of defense against enemy spells, and we can’t afford to lose any more of them. Better to let the garrison hold their attention, and wipe them out whenever they think they’re making progress.”
Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) Page 25