It was the end of March, Fred was now 12, with his drills and doctrines he brought over from the other world, he had gained enough command points to command a Platoon, he was currently drilling with 30 marines, these would be his platoon in the war.

They had full plate armour, albeit, slightly modified to allow them to fire muskets. He was also practising with a Musket with the troops.

*Dong, dong, dong, dong*

The city bells started ringing, the enemy was finally here. “To your stations’ men!” Fred shouted out.

He was a bit young to start his military career, normally they don’t start till they are 14, however, as the ‘war flag’ of this war, he had to fight. It helped that he was taller than his peers and a lot stronger than them as well.

He was now level 10 but had not capped out his exp. He gave all the stat points from levelling up, to power.

Status

Name

Frederick

????

Age

12

year

1

month

Ascension

3

Level

10

Body

Pre-teen

Super-Soldier

Esper

Race group

Human

Culture

Franconian

Social

F Earl/ M Duke

Bastard

Exp

10050/20480

49%

Exp Mod

190% (Pre-teen)

Sub-Race

Adeptus Astartes

Assimilation 41%, *4.28 modifiers to stat points

Military

Rank

NCO

Level

18

Command structure

30

6

Affinity

Lightning

33% (+143%)

Fire

12% (+67.6%)

Metal

8% (+59.6%)

Legion Trait

Thousand Sons

Class

Scholar

Legion Trait

Iron Warriors

Class

Engineer

Subclass

Subclass

Subclass

Subclass

Stats

points

Condition

Thousand sons

Iron Warriors

Health

200

755074

Stamina

200

638651

Mana

200

1256447

Modifiable

Power

2650

1088.83

100%

100%

Density

3185

1504.95

100%

115%

Dexterity

1965

807.38

100%

100%

Vitality

2369

973.37

100%

100%

Endurance

2745

1297.05

100%

115%

Intellect

3811

2521.04

140%

115%

Wisdom

3725

2464.15

140%

115%

He noticed that after his affinity became over 30% his eyes had a flash of lightning every now and then, it was similar to his mother, Fred always felt Isabella had a fiery glow in her eyes. And her body temperature was always abnormally warm. Fred had cut himself the other day in combat training, and his blood had very small cracks of lightning around it.

Fred met up with the general staff for the battle.

“We should be seeing the enemies banner in the next 10 minutes” George narrated the scout’s report.

“Are they following the main road straight here, or have they diverged?” Daniel asked.

“They are following the main road,” George answered.

“Where do you reckon, they will set up camp?” Mendes asked.

“Here and here would be the main camp.” George pointed to two hills on the Model, “then they would wall off across this section and this section.” George drew a line measuring half a mile from the city.

There were two hills roughly 2.5 miles east of the fort that would make good places for the headquarters, during this period it was common to build a palisade to trap the defenders in and to defend against sallies.

“Do you know of any siege weapons they brought?”

“About 15 trebuchets, and 50 ladders, due to this land being mostly farmland they cannot really build stuff here.”

*Knock, Knock, Knock. *

“Come in,”

It was a deputy, “Flags are visible.”

“Understood.” The group left the grand hall and headed for the fort walls.

When they got there, they could see the army marching towards the two hills, where they started to set up camp.

___

“What a strange castle?” Duke Derek exclaimed to his advisors.

“It seems the child wants to break our armies atop his walls, this is quite daring.” One advisor said.

“Not to worry, this kid is a fool for challenging us, even their main family has only sent a token force.” Another advisor said.

“Do not underestimate this kid, he may be young, but he has attracted a lot of attention.”

“That is only proof of his naivety.”

“It’s fine, we know what to do, this will all be over by the end of the month,” Derek said to stop the bickering. “Let the men rest after they set up camp, tomorrow we will start constructing the palisades.”

___

It took them over a week to construct the palisades, Fred hadn’t given the command to fire the cannons yet, he wanted the enemy to commit the trebuchets, once the trebuchets were knocked out, the enemy would have to resort to scaling the walls, this would swing the battle hugely in their favour.

“They haven’t been doing anything all this time,” Derek pondered out loud.

“They are probably shit scared.” The same idiot advisor spoke out, Derek would have gotten rid of him ages ago if it wasn’t for the fact that the advisor was his cousin.

“It is strange that they haven’t sallied out,” one of his more sensible advisors spoke, “our forces are divided giving him ample opportunity to hit and run.”

“Didn’t they have new weapons?” Derek exclaimed.

“Those were ballista, they weren’t as powerful as Trebuchets, their strengths lay in their ease of deployment, cost and rate of fire. You could even man 3 ballistae with the crew of a trebuchet.”

“What about those reports of loud sounds.”

“When we investigated, it looked like they were testing out new mining technology, they are already employing it in the mine over the river.”

“O, how effective was it.” Derek was interested.

“Reports say the output quadrupled.” The adviser informed him.

“Wow, holy crap, we need to get this method.” Derek was shocked. Even Normandy was having metal shortages, if this war went well, that would be two extra mines.

“The report also mentioned a device that produced smoke and pulled up water from the mines, removing flooding.” The advisor gave even more juicy news.

“Damn it, how has he not become an even bigger target, that alone would reopen our 4 mines on the mainland.” It wasn’t that mines were depleting on the mainland, it was that most of them were flooded, nearly all mines went more or less straight down, this was due to the metal mana spring, like all other mana springs, that connected to the core of the planet

“Alright, have the forward palisades been made for the Trebuchets?” Derek asked, the problem with being an attacker is that a trebuchet on a wall had a longer reach, this meant putting their own trebuchets in exposed positions.

“Yes, the trebuchets are in the process of being set up.”

“Excellent.”

They had committed all 15 trebuchets, there was no point in keeping some in reserve, the best way to protect them was to bring a wall down as fast as possible.

Derek looked over to the positions, “Have we not dug them in.”

“The enemy hasn’t put any trebuchets up; it is better to start firing and prevent them from setting one up.” His idiot cousin responded.

Derek had a headache, he knew his cousin had used his influence to command the positioning of the trebuchets, this cousin always wanted to be the boss, and if it worked, he would get the credit.

It was too late now, he could see the first beam going up, hopefully, his cousin was right for once.

---

“The trebuchets are almost complete,” George said, there was five at the east of the fort, 5 at the southeast of the fort and 5 and the northeast of the fort.

“Excellent, once you see them start to set the Trebuchets open fire.”

It took over 3 hours for all trebuchets to be installed. As soon as one artillery officer saw the trebuchet arm start to go down in the northeast, he ordered fire. The cacophony of 30 cannons going off from north to south was deafening.

___

Derek was watching the fort; he had just received news of the completion of all trebuchets and gave orders to start firing. But as soon as the first beam was starting to lower the fort suddenly let out fumes of smoke all over the walls in the directions of the trebuchets,

Then he heard it, the loud rumbling of thunder, the horses were going wild, and he nearly fell off his. Many of his men were shaken from the noise. When he looked around the battlefield, he saw raining dirt all over the positions of the trebuchets.

“Ian, go check on the trebuchets!” Derek ordered his cousin,

“But…” Ian was scared, he had no idea what that was.

“You took over the command of positioning them now you go sort it out.” if his cousin wants to take control of the trebuchets then he can take the responsibility.

Ian hesitated, “It’s your battle why are you ordering me about.”

“Cousin or no cousin, if you don’t go sort it out, I’ll have you flagged.”

Ian had never seen his cousin so angry and rode off to the trebuchets in the north.

“Is that wise,” his most trusted advisor said.

“That boy has messed up time and time again, if it wasn’t for my grandfather, you would have been my second in command.”

“If those, things go off again, and kill your cousin, your grandfather won’t be happy.”

“If we win this war, his opinion will be irrelevant.”

“It will if he takes over the princedom from you.”

“If, Corinth, If. And are you not sick of cleaning up after Ian? Your level of competency, in my grandfather’s eyes, is only useful for keeping his kids out of trouble, while staying in the background.”

Corinth went silent, he hated his position, his Lord Derek was a pragmatist, and valued people on their ability more over their pedigree, with cousins like Ian, Derek couldn’t value pedigree.

However, the real master was the duke. And the duke was a staunch believer in pedigree.

Reports were coming in from all three positions, 3 of the trebuchets were broken and over 20 were confirmed dead, and 50 were injured, 40 of them out of action.

“Bloody hell, what hit them.”

“We don’t know as of yet sire, there just seems to be a path of destruction straight from the fort walls, and then a crater and more destruction behind it, but it was messier after the craters.”

“where’s my cousin,”

“I just passed him on his way to the northern side.”

“Ok. Go call him back.”

The scout had just ridden 100 meters off when the second cacophony of thunder rung out.

“Can we not get any of the trebuchets that are left to fire back.”

“I’ll go relay your orders,” A scout responded and headed to the north site, two of his buddies rode off to the middle and south site as well.

A minute later 4 scouts came back, three of them reporting the damages, another 4 went down, and over 30 were killed and another 65 were out of action. The fourth scout handed Derek a metal ball of some sort.

“What’s this?” Derek asked.

“I found it in a crater with 3 bodies.” The scout reported.

“Is this what they have been throwing at us?”

“It seems to be moving too fast for people to confirm, sire.”

___

Fred heard the first shot to his left, he was watching the enemy camp, trying to see any commotion there.

He quickly looked over to see the results and more and more cannons went off.

“Bloody hell,” Daniel exclaimed, their vision was being impaired by the smoke.

“Scouts, get me a damage report!” Fred ordered.

Two ran off to the North and South, he was on the centre gate tower and would see what had happened to the Trebuchets in front of him once the smoke cleared.

Once the smoke cleared, he saw a pile of wreckage where one of them should be, and a lot of craters, it was still raining dirt at this point.

“George, do you not put dirt piles in front of the trebuchet during a siege, surely the defender has the range advantage,” Fred asked.

“Normally, yes, we don’t have a trebuchet up though, so they probably feel safe,”

“They have 15, are they rare or expensive?”

“No, why?” George asked.

“Cheap enough for our enemy to presume we have some.”

“Yes,”

“Wouldn’t you presume that I have ulterior plans than simply not be able to afford a trebuchet?”

“Their commander is probably stupid.” Daniel chimed in.

“Derek couldn’t be stupid; he wouldn’t be able to pull off a successful claim to the princedom,” Henry commented.

“No, Daniel is right.”

“I am, I mean of course I am.” Daniel gloated.

“What do you mean?” Henry asked,

“The person who positioned the trebuchets should be an idiot or at least someone who only sees that which is in front of him,” Fred commented when he spotted a knight leaving the command centre, heading north. “Scout,” he called out.

“Yes, sire,”

“See that knight running north from the command centre, find out his coat of arms, on that shield he’s carrying,” they were too far out to see the details.

“Yes, sire,” the scout rode away.

“Is that man important?” Mendes asked.

“If he isn’t Derek, he’s our idiot, and an idiot Derek doesn’t like.”

“Why would you have an idiot you don’t like as a commander?” Daniel asked.

Fred turned to look at Daniel with a blank expression for a few secs before turning back to look over the battlefield.

Daniel felt insulted for some reason and was about to complain when the second barrage of cannons went off.

It wasn’t long before the scout returned.

“Report,” the scout said.

“Go ahead.”

“The coat of arms belongs to a family member and cousin of Earl Derek, Count Seathan de Normandy. Commonly referred to as Ian.”

“Haha, I know him, he’s your idiot alright,” Daniel commented. “He likes to take over, even when he has no knowledge or experience in what he is trying to take over.”

“I see, and how would he get his position in this army.”

“His grandfather,” Mendes spoke up this time. “That man is pedigree first, there is probably someone more suited to that position shadowing him to clean up after him.”

“What’s the pros and cons of kill, or capture.”

“If we can kill him while he’s in the front lines, then that would be great, other than that, he’s worth a pretty penny, if you think Percy was a gold chest, then he’s a gold mine.”

“Was Percy not that great?”

“He was a part of the side families, not in line for a succession of the duke, and had to struggle for that backwater county he would get when he turns 18. This Ian could claim a rich county.”

“Why is it best to kill him on front lines.”

“Because His grandfather would question Derek as to why Ian was even in there in the first place. It could look like Derek was trying to get him killed.”

“I see,”

“Scout, go to the northern battery, you heard the conversation if that knight enters the trebuchet area, give the captain new orders to target him. But only if he gets into the trebuchet areas.

___

It took over an hour to fell all 15 trebuchets. It was getting harder and harder to hit with less of them and the troops were starting to pile dirt to protect them.

At the end of it, Bristol had managed to inflict 350 casualties. The attacking troops were withdrawn to the 500-meter palisades. Fred had ordered the cannons not to fire beyond the trebuchets to give the enemy a false sense of range.

At this time, the scouts returned to Fred, “Report,”

“Go ahead.”

“We have not managed to visually see if the target Seathan de Normandy exited the Trebuchet encampment during the bombardment or the retreat to the palisade walls.”

“Understood.”