After a few minutes of standing at the parapet observing, I thought I had the elves’ strategy down. The siege engines were focusing on the tower gates and walls, while the large ram was moved up the switchback. They used their lightning mages to clear out the walls and towers. Since the eastern corner tower could only shoot at the ram twice, they had not spared more than a single mage, who I had most likely killed. Same would probably apply to the western tower.

I asked Lambert if that was the case. “You’re mostly right, Lord Karth. Except that the western walls are attacked a lot more. They face the pass, so much easier for the elves to attack them.”

“I see, do they ever attack from above?”

“Often, but as you can see the outcropping reaches out further than the castle walls, so we got some warning if they do try that,” he answered quickly, before turning back to barking orders at his men.

Looking down at the soldiers arrayed in the foothills, I gauged some of them to be at the edge of a rifle shot. Pointing at them, I asked Kiril, “Would you say the people down there at the front are around four hundred and fifty metres away?”

He took a look, before answering, “Thereabouts, Milord.”

“Splendid,” I said, dragging it out a bit. “Commander, might I borrow your spyglass again?”

“Sure, just be careful with it,” he grumbled.

“I will,” I replied with a smile. I picked out four targets, all looking to be leaders of some kind. At least they seemed to be barking orders at the other elves. After linking the rifles, I handed Kiril three of the balls and the spare rifle. I handed Alan the spyglass.

As soon as I had reloaded I fired. Switched rifles, fired again. Waited ten seconds for Kiril to finish reloading. Switched rifle and fired. Waited ten seconds, switched rifles and fired a fourth time.

“How did we do?” I asked.

“First one, hit in the stomach and carried off to the backlines. Second one, turned and got hit in the shoulder. Third one, hit in the chest, dropped like a rock. Might be dead. Fourth one, miss,” Alan reported. “At the time of the fourth shot, they had moved further back, I think the ball lost momentum and dropped to the ground. The entire battleline just moved back fifty metres or so.”

“Oh well, clean the rifles so I can try again later if they come within range,” I said. Alan handed me the spyglass. I looked around for any other tempting targets, but I could find none. I handed the spyglass back to Lambert. “Thanks for letting me borrow this.”

“Maybe I should let you keep it until after the meeting,” he said just as Hrothgar made it out onto the roof. The old man looked a bit winded, but he was in much better form than he was before I implemented my training program.

“Sure. Kiril, keep an eye out for any fliers heading in our direction,” I said and handed the spyglass to him.

“Milord,” he said and immediately started scanning.

I turned to Hrothgar, who had stopped a few paces away. “Commander, is the deployment of First Squadron finished?”

“Yes, Milord,” he replied. That was good enough for me, so I settled in to wait for the commander of Twelfth Squadron to arrive.

After a few minutes, the commander finally came huffing up the stairs. It would seem that cardio was not one of stronger suits, the way he was huffing and puffing. Lambert looked over his shoulder for a moment before returning to keeping an eye on the progress of the ram. It had made it to the second switchback of four, the first on the western end. It was moving at a surprising speed.

Lambert said, “Good, now that you’re here, let’s go over this quickly. Commander Assem, you’ve almost as long a service record as I do, but it’s the first time in the Bastion. Lord Karth, you’re relatively new here, and your Commander has never been here either.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Assem said between gulps of air.

I gave a wry smile, “Correct. Though understated.”

“Here’s how it’s going to work. Sixth Battalion has relieved the forces on the eastern side all the way up to the gate,” Lambert said, gesturing with his hand along the wall from the mountain to the aforementioned gate. “Fifth Battalion is doing the same on the western side. We’ll be holding the walls until midnight. With me so far?”

“Yes,” Assem said immediately.

“What he said,” was my contribution.

“First through Fourth Squadron are setting up in their barracks. First and Second is on quick response duty, while Third and Fourth are resting. Third and Fourth will be relieving us. Tomorrow we’ll be the quick response force, then we’ll have a day of rest and the day after that we’re guarding the wall again. Rinse and repeat. Any questions?” Lambert asked sternly.

Assem was quick on the reply. “None.”

I did have one. “What does being on quick response mean, exactly?”

“We need to be able to reinforce any part of the wall within ten spans, though one squadron is on duty at all times, which have to be there within two spans,” Lambert answered. “We do the duty roster by squadron number. Two hours per squadron. Since you’ve First Squadron, your squadron will be on duty for the first two hours after we’re relieved. Any other questions?”

“Just one, six barracks, six battalions. Does that mean one for each battalion?” I queried.

“You’re correct,” was the reply.

“Seven floors, so two squadrons per floor?”

Lambert looked back at me as he answered, “Thought you said one question? But yes. Bottom floor is one squadron and the infirmary.”

“Can I get the top floor?”

He shook his head. “People normally want to avoid the stairs, but it’s Ballard who’s in charge of assignments, so you need to speak with him.”

I gave a smile. “Thanks.”

“If you have no other questions, go see to your men. Make sure that you’ve fresh troops for the rest of the day, we still have twelve glasses until we are relieved,” Lambert said and went back to watching the switchback.

“Hrothgar, go take care of that. I’ll find Ballard and talk with him,” I ordered.

Assem was helpful and said, “Saw him heading to the gate tower.”

“Thanks,” I said before heading down the slope. It was definitely easier getting down than up, but you also had to take care to not gain too much speed.

I found Ballard at the foot of the east gate tower, talking with one of the other high commanders. He looked at me when we stopped a few paces from him. “Lord Karth, shouldn’t you be at your post?”

“My Commander is taking care of that. I was hoping for a moment—” I started saying.

A shout interrupted me, “Arrows incoming!”

“Quickly, inside,” Ballard said and moved into the tower itself. The other high commander and the rest of us followed quickly. We had been inside for just a couple of seconds when arrows started raining down outside. A few screams of pain echoed down from the top of the tower.

“I thought they were out of range? They were the last time I looked,” I asked.

“They probably still are. The wood elven longbowman can probably get a distance at around four hundred to four hundred and fifty metres unaided,” the other high commander replied.

“Unaided?” I questioned as arrows started to rain down outside.

Ballard nodded. “They use aeromancers to boost their range and power, and can easily reach between six and seven hundred metres depending on the aeromancer.”

“And because air magic is rather obvious when it’s being used, you—we have time to get in cover,” I finished for him.

“Exactly,” Ballard said. “What were you looking to speak to me about?”

“In regards to accommodations. Are the roofs of the barracks used for anything? As far as I could see from the towers, they’re not.”

“No, why?” he asked with slightly narrowed eyes.

“I brought supplies with me to make a garden, the roof would be fine for that. At the same time, I would like to request that my squadron gets assigned to the top floor of the barracks,” I explained. Figuring there was no reason to hide what I wanted to do.

He shook his head. “We can certainly give you the top floor, no problem. But there is no access to the roof.”

“Can easily be made with a lapomancer,” I pointed out.

“Be that as it may, we can’t allow a second entrance into the barracks. Especially not with winged elves around,” the other high commander said, earning a slight glare from Ballard.

“We can open and close the opening permanently every time we’re done using it,” I countered.

“I’m not going to waste the few lapomancers we got here for that. We need them to keep the walls repaired,” Ballard said with a tone of finality.

“I brought my own,” I said with a smile.

He looked me up and down. “Fine then.”

“Thank you,” I said and we stood and waited for a few minutes before the arrows stopped raining down upon us. I gave a smile. “I’ll take my leave then.”

“Wait,” Ballard said, stopping us just before the first of my bodyguards were about to exit the tower. A few seconds later, the arrow rain started anew. It only lasted for a few seconds. I looked at him expectantly. He shook his head. “Not before the lookout gives the call.”

A minute later another few flights of arrows impacted the ground outside. It was littered with broken arrows out there. A source of metal and wood that I could utilize if we were free to take them of course.

After another dozen flights of arrows at intermittent intervals, the shout we had been waiting for came. Ballard gave me a last look. “Just take the northern end of the seventh floor on the barracks farthest east. I’ve to see how far the ram has made it.”

With that, he turned around and hastily made his way up the tower, while the other high commander was out the door and moving towards the other gate tower. I made my way back to my own people and started giving orders. Sixth Platoon, would start moving into our new quarters and start collecting some of all the arrows. Though broken, I had both a metal and a wood mage with me, who could repurpose the whole thing. I also sent half my bodyguards to the quarters, where two would rest while the two others would guard our section. I felt better taking that precaution.

The rest of the day I spent keeping watch with my men. Nothing happened on the eastern wall, but there were several attacks on the gate and the wall around it. As it had for a thousand years, the walls held.

The barracks were massive structures meant to house almost five thousand people. The entrances were in the back towards the mountainside. There were two sets of doors, one very large leading into the infirmary, a smaller one leading into a corridor that led to the troop accommodations on the ground floor.

Besides the two sets of doors, there were also two openings leading to the stairs. The sets of stairs on the right were for going up, the one on the left for going down. Since we had the top floor, we had the pleasure of a lot of steps. However, the top floor was needed for both of my plans.

Reaching the top of the stairs, there was a set of doors leading into the corridor that would take us to the quarters assigned to us. At the end of the hallway, I could see one of my bodyguards standing guard, as I had asked.

The door into our assigned quarters opened up into a big room, large enough for almost all of my troops to bed down on pellets. There were also pits for cooking fires, light, and keeping warm. The southern wall had a lot of doors in it, all leading into small dark privies. The north wall had fourteen doors, thirteen of them leading to small chambers for the senior squad leaders, and one for the commander.

I commandeered the commander’s chamber and had most of my retinue sleeping there as well. Kiril and Hrothgar doubled up on one of the smaller chambers, as did some of the other senior squad leaders, while Ethan got one of his own. That way we ended up with a chamber for the healers to work in. One of the others we used for the stairs leading to the roof, though we still had not opened up to it.

I turned to Gudrun, the most powerful of my stone mages, and asked, “Are you guys ready?”

The large woman, with a giant somewhere far back in her ancestry, nodded. “Nysa will stay behind, Milord.”

“Okay, you got the food?”

“Yes, Milord,” she replied but looked pensive.

“What is it?”

“Milord, I’m not sure we’ll have enough mana to accomplish everything as fast as you want it,” she answered a bit hesitantly.

I smiled at that and took out a pouch filled with manacrystals, which I handed to her. Half of what we had liberated from the Cardinal after he had been killed. “Don’t worry, this should help. However, don’t use them unless it’s necessary for creating the bridge.”

“Milord, it’s a fortune in manacrystals,” she gasped. It was. All the crystals were the size of large grapes or larger. They held a lot of mana, and more importantly, it was a priest’s mana, meaning that there was no loss of mana to convert from one type to another. Not something widely known, and only a handful of my mages knew about it. Gudrun included.

“Anyway, have Nysa make an opening for the roof. Wait, stay low and start making the bridge to the mountainside,” I ordered. She gave a nod.

Over the next hour, the four stone mages switched summoning rocks from another plane of existence and created a bridge spanning from the edge of the barracks to the mountainside. Every time the light mages on duty used light to search for intruders, we held our breath, scared that we would be found out. We did not.

Hrothgar approached me at some point. “I’m not sure your plan is wise, Milord.”

“Oh, why not?” I asked. I had just informed him of the plan a little while ago.

He looked uncomfortable, but eventually answered, “Milord, the dwarves will take it as affront if you burrow into their mountains. The kingdom of Gen Faldur claims these mountains.”

“I know that already, I had a lovely chat with Overseer Six One Nine at the outpost last time I delivered apples to them,” I said and mentally added, ‘And smuggled in some barrels of ale.’

“Oh, so you already know that they can monitor any changes to the mountains and they take it as an act of war if someone starts digging in their mountains?” he asked stupidly. Of course, I knew.

“Yes Hrothgar,” I said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s the reason why the elves don’t just burrow in from beneath us, or from behind us. It’s why the portal chamber was exceedingly expensive to have created. But you weren’t listening when I told you the plan it seems.”

He looked confused. “Milord, I don’t understand. You said the stone mages would create a set of stairs going up to the overhang, through it, and possible all the way to the top.”

“Yes. But they’re not going to be carving it out of the mountain, they’re going to summon rock at night and slowly create a hidden staircase all the way up,” I explained.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Milord, that will work only until we get to the overhang.”

“Yes, I know. But the overhang is not part of the original mountain, so they’re not as attached to it. I’ve already paid for permission,” I said. ‘At only two barrels of ale upfront, it was rather cheap in fact. Even with the twenty that I need to deliver for free after I return, it’s still cheap. Unless the Overseer is screwing me over.’

“I see. Seems you’ve things well in hand, Milord,” he said. “What about provisions?”

“They’ve food for a week, then we’ll do some reprovisioning. An aeromancer and an aquamancer will be going with them to ensure fresh air and water is not a problem.”

He thought that over for a while longer. “You’ve thought of everything, but what happens if they’re discovered?”

“Hopefully it won’t happen. It’s why they only work at night. During the day they’ll create manacrystals. If they are discovered, we’ll confess to the high commanders, but until then we’ll just go ahead,” I said. “Fuck if I’m going to be stuck here with no way out, except that controlled by priests back in Central City.”

“An escape route can be used by the enemy to attack you, Milord,” Hrothgar pointed out.

I nodded at that. “I know, but I’d rather take the risk of it being discovered, than the risk of being here with no way out. The chances of dying in a siege are too high for my comfort.”

There were no calls for actions during the night, so when morning came around I had Nysa open up access to the roof again. I enlisted most of our troopers to do the hauling of wooden boards, sacks of soil, and a lot of other stuff from the portal cave to the top of the roof. At the roof, the wood mage I had brought along was busy fashioning raised beds for our roof garden.

I had brought along my two soil mages as well as Ilmadia and Siphanien, the two herb mages. My hope was that some fresh vegetables and so on would be available within the month, with their magic encouraging faster growth.

I explored the portal cavern a bit more, having not really taken a look around at the time of arrival. It turned out that there were rooms for some more permanent staff. The staff included a priest that was in charge of a hundred or so serfs. There was also a smattering of light mages, ice mages, healers, and a lot of stone mages to repair the castle. They were provided by the Church, while the Kingdoms provided the soldiers to guard the castle.

Each squadron also had several storage areas. The first was for normal supplies, what we had brought with us and would receive over the next few months. Then there were two smaller rooms that were kept at a little over freezing for storing provisions.

Lastly, there was a large room that was kept well below freezing, and for my squadron, it was filled to the brim. Six oxen, plus the provisions that were brought over for us for the first month took up all of the space. Some of the spillovers had been put in the refrigerated rooms.

Despite being called to reinforce on the walls a couple of times during the day, we saw no action because the probing attacks were over before we got there.

It was after dusk on the evening of our fourth day at the Bastion. We had just gotten back on guard duty again. With 13th, 12th, and 4th Squadron we were assigned to the western wall. 13th and 12th had the corner tower, while 4th had the wall between the corner tower and the first tower, as well as the tower. We had the rest of the wall and the second tower. Hrothgar and I divided the area we had to cover into twelve sections, and assigned a platoon to each section. The squads in the platoon would switch off every three hours. Those not on guard relaxed and slept in the tower.

I took my place in the tower together with 7th Platoon. To stave off boredom, I was experimenting with my magic, not the normal linking two objects together, but another kind of link. By accident, I had discovered I could create links between my mana pool and someone else’s and gain access to their magic. I had not experimented a lot with it, however, in the days before we left I had managed to train myself to keep two of those links active at the same time.

My primary, and strongest link, was to Emma. That meant I was able to transform myself into a cat if I wanted to. I had not gone that far, only played around with changing my eyes. Much better night vision. I had also played around with growing claws. Not very successful in that regard so far.

My second link was at the moment to Nathalie, giving me access to healing magic, which I was using to keep myself refreshed. She had warned me against using the magic for such a purpose because too long without sleep could have detrimental effects on my sanity, something she could not cure.

The reason for my link being stronger with Emma, despite her being so far away, was that the link was a link between souls, according to Ethan. The mana pool was not just where we got our mana from, but it also contained what they called souls, which was why the collars and manacles could be used to control people. They burrowed their way into the mana pool, or the very soul, of people and exerted their vile influence on them.

I said vile. Because that was what they had started to feel like for me. After my near-death experience from mana combustion, where some spectre of a Goddess saved my life, the collars and manacles had started to give off a vibe that felt wrong, vile even. It was not only the collars that gave off those vibes, but also a special dagger that the Cardinal had carried that gave off that feeling.

According to Ethan, the blade was what the priests called a Heretic Blade, used to punish people for especially vile crimes that did not warrant death. Any wound created by a Heretic Blade could not be healed by magic. If a limb was cut off with the blade, it could not be regrown.

I had shared the new feeling with Emma, but she had no answer for me. Like with so many other things regarding human priestly magic, she did not know. The human priests had simply wrapped themselves in so much mystery over the ages, and cut themselves off from the rest of the races. They only reluctantly dealt with the dwarves to get metals from the depths of the earth.

Looking out across the pass for the umpteenth time that day, I changed my eyes to that of a cat, it had become so routine already that my eyes for a second did not register the movement that was there. When it finally registered, I focused on it and saw that a group of maybe fifty or so elves were trying to approach the wall.

They were still a couple of hundred metres away, aiming for where the wall joined the mountain. I was not sure what their plan was, because they would have to climb at least twenty metres of mountainside before getting to the wall. There was no way they could get up without equipment or magic.

I shifted my eyes back to normal and turned to the squad leader on top of the tower with me. “Elves incoming. Send one of the men and rouse the men in the tower. Have them send runners to—”

I had to think for a moment. Hrothgar supplied me the answer, “First and Second Battalion.”

“—and inform them of the attack so they can stand ready. We also need to spread the word along the wall. Send the light mage up here,” I finished.

“Milord,” the man replied and set about doing what I had ordered. Half a minute later the runner returned together with a man in rumpled robes. The light mage assigned to the tower.

“Mage, can you light up the area over there,” I pointed in the direction that I had seen the elves. “Approximately two hundred and fifty metres out from the wall.”

“No, Sir. If they were heading for the tower, I could, but I can’t reach that far away,” he informed me.

“Okay, then you’re coming with me,” I ordered. To the squad leader, I said, “Prepare the squad to fire on the elves as soon as they’re visible. Inform your senior squad leader of my orders. Kiril, we’re going closer to the action.”

“Milord,” they both said.

While the light mage started complaining, “I can’t leave the tower, I’m not supposed to put myself at risk on the wall.”

“Shut up,” I said as I grabbed his voluminous robe and dragged him after me. When we made out on the walls, he started throwing a fit, but Kiril slapped the back of his head for me and repeated my last command. It seemed to work.

Though it was dangerous, I took the chance to shift my eyes for a moment, when we were halfway to the mountainside. The runners had already informed my men, and they were slowly shifting closer to the mountainside, and all attention on where they had been told the elves where.

The elves had gotten around halfway to the wall. Before turning my eyes back, I pulled on the incomplete links I had created for the ball that was loaded in my musket. I connected both of them with the elf that seemed to be in charge.

After I had a good solid connection, I shifted my eyes back and looked at the light mage. “There. Can you illuminate that area?”

“Yes, but I should be in the tower when I do this,” he protested.

“When I fire, illuminate the area,” I ordered.

“But how can you hit anything if I’ve not illuminated the area?”

Kiril was the one to answer for me, “Just do as you’re told.”

The troopers around me raised their crossbows, while the ones further down the wall already had their bows at the ready, last that I had seen. When my link told me I was right on target, I pulled the trigger. The light mage was a little slow on casting his magic, only reacting after two seconds.

The area I had indicated was lit up by a small ball of light that appeared out of nowhere. It was a little off, but still revealed most of the elves. Immediately my troopers released their bolts and arrows. I knew the arrows would mostly fall short or long since they had not had a lot of time to train them. The bolts, on the other hand, slammed into the startled elves. The muskets of the four bodyguards with me barked as well. Then the almost simultaneous reports of my musket troopers firing sounded and even more elves were wounded.

I was already in the process of reloading my musket, creating incomplete links because I had not decided on a target yet.

Before the second set of arrows could strike them, the elves were already retreating. Which was great, but my paranoid side said that it was too easy. Throwing caution to the wind I shifted my eyes and looked around. I could not see any other forces out there. If I filtered out the cheering of my troops, the painful screams of those wounded, all I could hear was the flapping of wings.

‘Wings,’ I thought with alarm and looked up. Hundreds of winged elves had dropped down and were flying along the bottom of the overhang. Cursing myself, I shouted at the light mage, “Light up the overhang. Men look up, fliers!”

My shout drowned out the closest men’s cheering, and they quickly repeated it up and down the wall. The mage managed to follow orders more quickly this time around, and I had to shift my eyes back to not give away that I could perform magic that only beastkin priests should be able to.

The light alerted the winged elves that their plan was discovered and they immediately picked up speed and started diving. Some for the wall, some for the inner castle. My musket found a winged elf and sent her spiralling to the ground.

The fliers responded in kind and fired arrows of their own at us. The light mage did not need to be told what to do, he was already moving the light around, illuminating fliers as they took aim at my men. A barrage of musket fire from the tower took down four of the ten elves illuminated, while arrows missed them completely.

Then more light sources started popping out, meaning that reinforcement was starting to arrive. Which made the elves discard their bows, and draw their melee weapons. Kiril was the one shouting the command, “Prepare for melee.”

Meaning half of the squad would prepare for melee, while the other half would continue to fire. Around me, I could see that the troopers were confused about who should be doing what. The whole thirteen men to the squad were unwieldy, I had to break the squads down further. However, that was for another time.

Right at that moment, it was all about killing enough elves to survive. I managed another shot at the elves before the elves got too close. One of them tried to impale me with his dive. I stepped aside as I drew my sabre. I used the motion of the draw to turn it into a slash that clipped his wing, and he careened over the side of the wall.

Another one had aimed at the light mage, but Kiril had managed to stop her, and the two were engaged in a melee. Another one approached me, and I had to concentrate on him. He opened with an overhand chop, wielding the sword in two hands. Simple sidestep, deflect, turn, stab with the shortsword in my left hand, and I had scored a minor wound in his leg. Would have been his stomach but with a flap of his wings, he had risen enough to lessen the severity of the wound.

He snarled at me and was about to launch another attack when my left hand snapped forward, sending a dagger into his heart. The link made sure that the dagger struck true. That enemy dealt with, I drew my shortsword in time to deflect a lunge from another elf. I returned the favour by slashing her deeply in the left wing, sending her dropping to the ground inside our wall.

“Milord, watch out!” I heard Kiril shout. I spun around as another harpy dive-bombed me. I slashed at him, making him flare his wings out, coming to an abrupt stop. He still managed to stab me in my left bicep. Kiril’s sabre slashed him down from behind. I nodded my thanks to Kiril and moved to engage an elf that had just killed one of my troopers.

I heard a horn signalling. The elf looked irritated, giving me a look full of hate. I thought for a moment he was about to attack but instead, he shot into the air and all around me I could see the winged elves retreating.

Looking around me, I saw some dead elves, but some of my men were down as well. Including one of my bodyguards and the light mage. I would probably get in trouble for that. Immediately I ordered, “See to the wounded. Get them to the infirmary. Squad leaders, remind your men to be extra vigilant. The elves like to attack in waves.”

I did not know if the last part was really true, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I shifted my eyes once more and looked out across the pass, and up. However, the only unfriendlies I could see were retreating. I wondered what the butcher’s bill would be.