Liar King (Tower of Babel Book 2)

by Adam Elliott

  The sudden flinch of his soldiers forced Aleph to a knee, mere moments before a ballista bolt rocketed just overhead. It wouldn't have hit him in either case, but even with a couple of dozen feet of clearance between them, the weapon had come too close for comfort.

  “Do you mind?!” Aleph shouted over one shoulder, to the mirth of his soldiers. His heart beat heavily as he stood, a glare alternating between his men and the enemy. The latter was a far greater concern, the first of their great siege ladders moving into position. “Looks like they're so impatient they won't even let me finish my speech.” He snickered. “You know what to do. Smash their ladders, break their heads and we'll be back in Bastion in time for dinner.”

  A deep, low horn sounded on the Warden side of the field, a terrible and unnatural air that split what little calm remained in the air. The sound of it reverberated across his skin, prickling gooseflesh as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. There was nausea and fear, like the sound of some great animal growling nearby. The humans had a name for the noise, but it was one Aleph hadn't bothered to learn.

  He'd already heard the noise three times in a week; he knew what it meant. The Wardens were coming.

  As the deep note faded, a new noise replaced it, a sound far more familiar to any common soldier. The harsh snap and clattering whistle of arrows in flight. Hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands.

  His pep-talk hadn't been entirely accurate. While it was true that the Warden forces numbered somewhere above ten thousand, they were only facing a fraction of that number. The section of curtain wall that bordered the river was only two miles in length, and even though it expanded slightly on the opposite side of the river, the space was still just large enough for about twenty-five hundred men at any one time.

  Twenty-five hundred men could still shoot a lot of arrows. Fortunately, they had among the best defensive positions one could hope for, including a high battlement for just this sort of situation.

  Almost as one, his men pressed forward, locking their shields together in an impenetrable wall above their heads as they sheltered behind the thick stone battlement. Hundreds of arrows clattered off stone, and hundreds more overshot the wall entirely to land in the courtyard below. Only a few dozen found any purchase on the top of the wall itself, and of those, the majority came nowhere near a shield, let alone a soldier.

  As a single attack, the volley was less than useless. The complete failure sparked another round of laughter among Cayden's men, their morale soaring in the face of such a flimsy first strike. Then the second wave hit, followed by the third. The Warden archers had thousands of arrows, and the lack of an opposing force of artillery left them free to fire until they had spent the entirety of their ammunition.

  Each round of the withering fire took its toll, wearing down arms and inflicting the occasional injury here and there down the defensive line. The laughter didn't last, especially since every man on the wall knew what was coming next.

  The Wardens had used a similar tactic in their assault on the outer wall, to great effect, forcing the defenders to keep their heads down while their infantry got into position to begin to storm the defenses. They hadn't even lasted the full morning, not with so much wall to defend. The Wardens had shattered them in three separate places, forcing a complete retreat mere hours after the battle had been joined.

  They could have lasted longer, Aleph believed, if the players had devoted the militia to the wall instead of whatever madness they had put them up to in the city. Even just having them absent might have been enough, considering how damaging it had been to morale to watch as Islo's citizens tore their home itself to shreds.

  Aleph couldn't begin to fathom their plan, why they had devoted so much manpower to ripping the city to pieces. Some little parts of it had made sense, such as the barricades they had constructed as they'd shattered structures, and thrown belongings into the streets, but there was no rhyme or reason to where they'd placed them. They didn't help the retreat, in many places they actively impeded it, in fact.

  The Wardens wouldn't have to destroy Islo once they captured it, the humans had done it for them.

  Despite their earlier setbacks, however, he was confident that they could hold the Royal Quarter for quite some time, even if the Field Marshall didn't need them to. Defending the outer wall had always been destined to fail, with the Warden forces able to bring the entirety of their numerical advantage to bear the odds were too great. Here the odds were, if not in their favor, significantly strengthened.

  Their forces were shaken from the morning engagements, true, but they were also concentrated. They had a river between them and the enemy, and had ruined the bridges in their retreat. If the Wardens thought they would take the Royal Quarter with ease, they were in for a sore surprise.

  A hard thud struck the wall, causing it to shudder beneath Aleph's feet. His first thought was catapult, but then, that had been his first thought this morning as well. The Wardens seemed aware of how ineffectual their heavy artillery would be against the powerful and ancient walls of Islo, so while they did take the occasional pot shot, as evidenced by his near decapitation earlier, they had saved the weapons for last on their first assault. The sound wasn't a weapon; it was a tool.

  "Siege Ladder!" Aleph cried, rising from behind the defensive merlon, sword, and shield in hand. "Come on you apes! Do you want to live forever?"

  Another hail of arrows rained down upon them as the Fighting First rose to confront the new threat, the weapons blessedly finding nothing but shield and air in their flight. There would be no more; Aleph knew, not with enemy forces rushing up to meet them with all speed.

  His word choice hadn't been entirely accurate, he now realized. What had appeared to be a ladder on first glance, had been assembled into a device that was as much ramp or staircase as it was ladder. Unable to cross the river to fix it near the wall's base, as they had done outside the city, the Wardens had relied on a much larger contraption, one that was supported in a half dozen places by great pillars of earth that erupted sometime during the enemy's volley fire.

  The magics had helped create a much more able siege weapon, one that would be simultaneously easier to climb and harder to detach. A worrisome combination.

  "Axemen!" Aleph shouted. They had some time before the first of the Warden troops reached the top of the weapon, and they needed to do work while they could. Below he could see that the earth supporting the device had wrapped around the very frame of it, giving it an incredibly stable base. This would not be so simple as pushing the ladder over; they would need to destroy at least a few feet of its top if they had any chance to disable it.

  Perhaps just as concerning, was what he saw below.

  The bridges that they had taken great pains to destroy upon their withdrawal had been replaced by the same infuriating sorcery that was supporting the Warden's siege weapons. A pair of twenty-foot-wide stone arches now extended from one river bank to the other, Warden soldiers flowing over them faster than the river ran beneath. In the lead up to the battle, he'd questioned the wisdom of leaving some five hundred of their men in the garrison. He no longer did.

  Nor did he have time to gawk and ruminate over strategy, not as the first of the Warden soldiers reached the crest of the ladder, spear in hand.

  Three blades pierced the Terracotta warrior before he could even lay a foot upon the battlement itself. In an instant all semblance of life drained from the creature, the unnatural elasticity of its earthen limbs taking on a sudden rigidity as it toppled from the ladder, no doubt to shatter on the ground far below.

  A cheer ran through his men, many of whom pressed forward in an attempt to get a swing at the next warrior as it arrived. First blood was theirs, such as it was. As was second, third, fourth and fifth.

  Aleph had never had the misfortune of assaulting the walls of a keep, but he could not imagine how any Elan could rush into the waiting point of the enemy's blade the way these Wardens could. They were relentless and without fear, arrivi
ng two or three at a time and being struck down nearly as quickly. Each tried something new, a few taking faint swings at their Elan executioners, others trying to block or parry from their awkward position.

  Eventually, a strategy paid off. One of the advancing Wardens took the blades of his attackers, a sword to each shoulder and a third through her abdomen, but the stone-faced woman kept coming. She threw herself bodily onto one of her attackers, unyielding hands closing about the man's throat as she bared down upon him. She was slain a moment later, but not before her distraction allowed two more of her comrades to find purchase on the battlement.

  Slowly but surely, Aleph's forces were pushed back, until a small pocket of the Warden soldiers had formed. A brief skirmish erupted, one of his men falling under a crooked dagger held by one of the dirt-fleshed monstrosities. Then the tide swung again, the Elan pushing forward, laying low the few Wardens who had dared to challenge their supremacy.

  And so it went. In the thick of combat Aleph could spare little thought and even fewer glances up and down the line of the battlement, but what he did see looked remarkably similar. The Elan were giving better than they got, but it was by no means the sure thing they had hoped for. Here and there a failure produced a threat, exhaustion leading to further mistakes that cost yet more lives. A small breakout to their left threatened their flank in a way that might have been fatal had reserve forces not stepped in to cover them.

  Time was barely a thought in the maelstrom of combat, only that persistent reminder at the back of Aleph's mind. Just a few hours.

  “Heave!” Aleph shouted, throwing every ounce of his strength into the aching muscle of his shoulder as the latter in turn was braced against the back of his shield. Behind and beside him, his men did the same, putting all their weight into driving yet another successful cluster of Warden soldiers from the crest of the wall.

  Each of the six stone soldiers were somehow heavier than they looked, and the footing was treacherous with a tangle of limbs, but the Elan prevailed. The weight lifted in stages as the stoneheads toppled one by one from the edge of the wall, back down onto the ladder from whence they'd come. “Now!”

  The mass of soldiers parted as the axemen returned. Their work was almost done, and the warriors they had toppled back down the ladder had opened just the gap they needed.

  A sharp crack accompanied each swing of the ax, loud enough to be heard over the ever-present sounds of combat. Each impact was music and salvation to the Elan soldiers who watched their fellows, balanced precariously on the edge of the battlement, taking swing after swing with reckless abandon. The sound of splintering was heaven itself as the head of the ladder gave way, parts of it plummeting to the ground below while remnants clung to the wall where their metal spikes had pierced it.

  It wasn't perfect, the opened gap only three feet wide, but with a few men left to dissuade jumpers, it would be enough. The Wardens weren't coming up this ladder.

  Only twelve more to go.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Day 10 - Evening

  Resources – F – 700 +20, Z – 750 +30, M – 260 +5, I – 620 +20, P +40, R +20

  Completed – Keep Repair III (Library)

  “Is everyone in position?” Cayden whispered. A chorus of affirmations resounded through his display, some voices he recognized, almost with many more that he didn't.

  One voice came through more clearly than the others, with a soothing calmness he certainly didn't feel. "You can stop worrying. It is going to work."

  "Prepare for the best, plan for the worst," Cayden said wryly.

  “I am ninety-nine percent sure that isn't how that expression goes.” Came Shifty's reply.

  "Well, you sure as hell better hope it is." Cayden laughed. "You're sure you don't want backup?"

  He could almost hear the Carnivalist's eyes rolling through the audio. “We've got two stealthy characters, one at each gate. So unless you've got an extra one you're just planning to spring on me, no-”

  “Okay, okay. I get it.” he relented.

  A quick glance at the timer in the corner of his display told him that it was almost time. The Warden evening turn was going to begin any moment now, so it wasn't like they had time to fix things if something had gone wrong.

  Not that anything as simple as that would stop him from worrying.

  “Roberta. You're sure he wo-”

  "For the third time, Field Marshall, Yes." It had taken considerable prodding to get the Elan woman to travel back to Islo when he'd concocted this plan, but it had taken far more to get her comfortable enough to use a player mirror that they had left in the Royal Quarter. "I have reinforced and jammed the four remaining gates, and no, the enemy will not be able to detect it unless they physically try the gates."

  "Hey, can you blame me for-"

  “Yes!” Came a chorus of voices too numerous to count.

  Apparently, he'd been a bit neurotic about the plan.

  “Time is coming up.” Silver said quietly.

  “Okay. Good hunting, everyone. Silver, you give us the word.” Cayden said.

  With that said he sunk back against the wall, the final rays of the setting sun cascading in through a nearby shattered window in a way that sent a rainbow skittering across the floor of what had once been the common room of the Inn of the Dizzy Sheep.

  This had been the part of his plan that he'd liked the least, the one that pained him still. And he'd only spent a few months with this city as his home. He couldn't imagine what the Elan had felt when they'd been ordered to smash everything in sight, to pile books and clothing, to topple buildings that had once been their homes. Some had nearly rioted at just this indignity, let alone what would come next.

  And then there was Sarah. Her reaction had been one of just barely restrained violence. Cayden couldn't even say he blamed her.

  The sound of heavy footfalls shook Cayden from his ruminations and caused him to sink even deeper into the shadows behind the bar. It wasn't the first patrol that had marched past his hiding place since the Wardens had taken the city that morning, but with luck, it would be the last.

  Cayden wondered if the sight of Warden troops in motion would ever stop being eerie. Eventually, probably just in time for him to be faced with some equally unsettling creature.

  It was the fluidity that bothered him. When they stood still they looked like any picture he'd ever seen of the Terracotta army he'd first heard about in a second-grade social studies class, even down to the individual wear and tear. He'd seen a fully functional Warden soldier with a head half crumbled away due to imperfection in its craftsmanship. When they moved, it was uncanny, as though he were seeing a different statue in each instant. They didn't move like people; they moved with the facsimile of how a person should move.

  He shuddered as the two soldiers marched out of sight, his revulsion put on hold as a text message appeared in front of him.

  Bammer: Cayden, I've got someone special here.

  “Special how?” Cayden asked. The message wasn't from one of his party members, but the name was familiar. Samuel, the other thief. Bammer, as his fellow soldiers called him.

  When there was no immediate reply, Cayden frowned and pulled up his display, typing out the same question in text. Bammer was in a very precarious position, so it made sense he didn't want to talk. But it was still strange he wasn't on the call at all.

  Bammer: Special as in officer.

  Cayden: Can't be an Officer.

  A prompt interrupted Cayden before he could explain further, an text box materializing on his display, informing him that Bammer was trying to bring him in on a video call. He quickly accepted, and the center of his AR display was soon dominated by a video of a Warden officer on horseback.

  Special was indeed the correct word to use, as was officer. Possibly even general. If he'd been on foot, the man would have stood a head taller than any Warden soldier, or even any Warden officer, that they had seen thus far. More telling was the intricate way this one ha
d been constructed. He was painted, and appeared to be dressed in fine silks as well as armor, silks that moved so convincingly, and yet so unnaturally that it made Cayden's eyes hurt to look at them for long. This was a Warden built to stand out.

  "Okay. So maybe it is an officer." Cayden admitted begrudgingly. "Back to the drawing board on that theory."

  “Skill use: Observe.” The words were barely more than a breath, but they had an immediate effect as Cayden's view of the officer was further enhanced with a less than helpful status readout:

  Temüjin

  Level 35(Boss)

  HP: ????/????

  MP: ????/????

  TP: ????/????

  Skills: Unknown

  Resistances: Unknown

  Weaknesses: Unknown

  Special: Construct Traits

  "Yeah, that certainly looks like final boss material." Cayden murmured. A few more figures wandered into frame as the officer passed, a compliment of soldiers Cayden suspected to be bodyguards followed directly in his wake, with a second set forming a close rank around a robed Warden that Cayden suspected must be the caster.

  “Level 28.” Bammer seemed to be of a mind with Cayden as he continued to whisper. “If that is the caster, we might want to try and make a run at him. Make things at Bastion a lot simpler.”

  “Too risky.” He replied. “If you can keep an eye on where he goes, and we get a good shot then maybe. But if he keeps sticking around with his boss he's too much for any of us to handle.”

  "Maybe we'll get lucky, and we'll get him in the bargain," Michael said, adding his two cents to the conversation.

  Cayden scoffed. “We should be so lucky.”

  “Quiet down boys.” Silver said abruptly. “Looks like it is almost time.”

  He started to reply, then thought better of it. Instead, Cayden took a moment to draw a few deep breaths focusing on the rise and fall of his chest to steady his nerves. If this doesn't work.

  Seconds passed in silence, as Cayden turned his focus once more to the timer at the corner of his display. Six minutes into the Warden turn, shouldn't he be able to hear the start of the battle? Or was he just too far away. He began to stand as Silver's voice cut through his thoughts with a single command. “Do it!”