The days started blurring together, long days full of boring watches, routine, and vigilance, interspersed with moments of actions when the elves attacked. Losses started mounting up and by the end of the first month in the hellhole called the Bastion, I had lost over fifty troopers, including two senior squad leaders. The only platoon not to take any casualties was the 6th, but with them being support personnel that made sense.

On the days off, I took all of the troopers down to the portal cavern and led them through physical training for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Would have preferred to do it outside, but the occasional shower of rain and lack of space made that a non-starter. Mostly I focused on melee combat. It kept them occupied and hopefully it would keep them alive as well.

Morale was not too bad all things considered. We had fresh vegetables from the garden, mostly root vegetables like potatoes. However, they were still a nice addition to the dried and old fruits and meat that the High Lord provided us with.

We kept mostly to ourselves, not intermingling with the other squadrons, because of some early incidents. The fact that I had women in my squadron was not going over well with the other squadrons. Some of their less disciplined troopers had tried to force themselves on some of the women. I had personally maimed two of the troopers to make an example, which had soured my relationship with the other squadrons and the high commanders further.

My own training progressed as well. I was able to hold three bonds at the same time, my standard loadout was Emma’s shapeshifting, Nathalie’s healing, and Mary’s fire magic. Though shapeshifting was usually only helpful at night, I could not drop it, because I was not able to recreate the bond over any distance, I needed to touch the person when I established a bond.

It was around an hour before the eleventh shift on the wall that it happened. Something that I had been dreading for a while. I had just been told that we were to be partnered with 2nd Squadron, Anders’ squadron. We were assigned to guard the western gate tower.

Standing in the infirmary where the meeting was held, I looked at the fed. He looked thoroughly pissed. Slapping a fake smile on my face I made my way over, with Hrothgar hot on my tail. “So, how do you want to do this?”

“I guess we’ll have to talk,” he grunted, managing to turn his scowl into a minor frown.

“Hrothgar, go and get the men ready to move out,” I said without looking away from Anders.

“Milord,” I heard from behind me.

Anders looked past me for a second, fixing his eyes on Hrothgar. “If you could pass the message to my troops as well. I’ll meet them at the tower.”

“Of course, Lord Anders,” Hrothgar said and a moment later he headed out the door.

Anders and I stood staring at each other. I gave him a wry smile. “This is not awkward at all.”

“Nooo, not at all,” he said sarcastically. “How do you want to deploy your slave army?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Talk like that ends with you hurting. I thought we were going to avoid that, this time.”

“And we’re back to threatening,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Let’s just focus on getting through the day. Without killing each other.”

“I’m not the murderer.”

Anger was welling up, making it hard to maintain composure. Another deep breath. “No, you’re the guy who attacked me. Twice.”

“I did not!” he protested.

“You tried to sucker punch me.”

“For buying slaves!”

“And then you drew a pistol on me,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t. It was only half-drawn,” he protested. “It was a reaction to you getting in my face.”

“Right,” I said with a snort.

“You put a dagger in my shoulder, I’m the injured party here,” he grumbled.

“Fine, I’m sorry. I overreacted to someone trying to pull a gun at me,” I said sarcastically.

“It wasn’t like—” he started protesting, then stopped and took a deep breath. “Alright, I can see how it might have looked. I forgive you.”

“Forgive me?” I laughed sardonically. “Right, sorry. Moving on. How are we going to do this?”

“The tower can hold seven platoons per floor,” he started.

“But only if packed together, we don’t need that many on top of the roof at the same time,” I pointed out. “And definitely not that many on our half of the wall. Not all the time.”

“Right. Three platoons at a time on each spot?” he suggested.

“Sounds reasonable,” I agreed. “Two platoons on standby to help for both.”

He looked at the ground for a moment. “Four hour shifts?”

“Make it three.”

“Switch between whose platoons are on guard?” was his next suggestion.

I thought about it for a moment. “One of us has the wall, the other the roof, then we switch. The quick response platoons come from the other squadron.”

“Reasonable. Are you going to be there?” he asked.

“I’m not asking my troops to do something I’m not willing to do myself,” I said. My answer seemed to shock him.

“Stay out of each other’s way?”

“Definitely.”

“Seems like we’ve got an agreement,” he said.

“It does, doesn’t it?” I replied. I gestured towards the door. “After you.”

He hesitated for a moment. With a sigh, I said, “I’m not going to attack you.”

“You attacked Adam.”

“Fucker was disrespectful to my people,” I said with a growl and stalked out of the infirmary.

“Let me guess. Something sexual.”

“Yeah. Why aren’t you crawling up his ass, the way he flagrantly parades those poor girls around?” I asked.

“I did before you arrived,” he said. “Fucker bragged about how he had four girls turned into copies of some girl who spurned him.”

Stopping and turning around, I asked with an arched eyebrow, “And you chose to draw a gun at me, and not him?”

“It was instinctual when you got in my face. I’m sorry, alright?” he said putting his hands up and taking a step back.

“Let’s call it water under the bridge and move on?” I suggested though I did not mean it.

He thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re still keeping slaves, so how about a truce?”

“Until we get out of this hellhole alive?”

Nodding his head, he said, “Sounds good to me.”

As we made our way out of the infirmary, I asked in English, “I know I pissed off my High Lord to end up here, but what about you?”

“He was not too happy about me closing down a slave—I mean, serf market in my Hold.”

“You’ve to be careful about all that abolitionist agenda,” I pointed out. “Might cost you your life.”

His eyes narrowed for a moment. “Don’t worry, I had a perfectly valid reason, they were cheating on taxes. I’m a fed, remember? We excel at bureaucracy.”

I chuckled at his joke. Though I did not like him, it was good to talk with someone who was from back home.

It was around midday when the attack began. I was resting with the two platoons that were on standby, while Anders were on top of the tower with his three platoons. Like me, he led his men personally, though without relying on a commander.

“Attack incoming!” was the call that warned us that something was going on. Immediately the two platoons, Eight and Ninth, got to their feet and started arming themselves with their bows and shortsword. They left the spears for the moment. Though we had not talked about it, when we had the quick response duty, I also kept Seventh Platoon on the top floor. They could support with musket fire through the arrow slits.

Meanwhile, I moved up the ramp to get a better idea of the situation, with Kiril and two bodyguards following close behind. Stepping out on the top of the tower, I was surprised to see it was darker than I thought it should be. However, it quickly became clear why, because Anders had created a giant barrier of stone. I could hear the arrows striking it repeatedly. Around me, men were groaning from where they had been hit with arrows.

“What’s the situati—” I started asking, but was interrupted by a giant crash, which shook the entire tower. “What’s the situation?”

“See for yourself,” Anders grunted and waved towards the front of the tower. The shield he had created started at the top of the battlement, angled backwards, and was at least five metres long. It was also more than a metre thick. Impressive, since it had only been a minute since the call went out. However, it was also a preventative and effective response.

I had to haunch over, because the battlement was made for shorter people than me. Peering out between the crenels, I tried to take in as much of the battlefield as possible. Even before I peered out, I could feel the wind, meaning that they were using mages to boost their archer’s range.

Thousands of archers were firing arrows at us, while many more were moving closer. The trebuchets were lobbing stones at the gate. The heavy stones striking it or the towers, falling to the ground, before starting their roll down to ground level. Lying down so I could get a look at the skies, I saw thousands of harpies flying in formation, approaching as well.

“Kiril, send runners to the high commander. This is a big push! Tell Seventh to concentrate on the harpies, and get Hrothgar up here,” I shouted. “Anders we can’t retaliate with this shield up.”

“If I drop it, we’ll be skewered like them,” he protested and pointed across to the western tower where the troops were all pressed up against the battlement, but they were too many to effectively get in cover. Looking around our own tower, I could see he had been busy getting the wounded downstairs.

“Fuck,” I swore. “Isn’t there a way you can raise the shield a bit from the battlement, make a gap? Otherwise, we can’t respond and we’ll be swarmed with harpies.”

“I need the support of the battlement to support such a thick shield,” Anders replied.

Frustrated I yelled, “It’s fucking arrows, we don’t need a metre thick shield to ward off arrows!”

“But the trebuchets!” he protested.

“We’ll probably be squashed then, but if we don’t hold off the harpies, we’ll be dead anyway,” I argued.

“Fuck, I hate this place,” he shouted and started muttering curses as the stone shield started shimmering. A sign that magic was affecting it.

“Milord!” I heard Hrothgar call out. “What are your orders?”

“Take command of the wall section. Take the men into the towers, leave only one or two lookouts. Right now they can’t do much from the gate,” I called back.

“I’ll see to it, Milord.”

“And Hrothgar,” I called after him.

“Yes, Milord?”

“See that you don’t lose too many of my men.”

He nodded once. “Of course, Milord.”

With that, he vanished downstairs. I turned my attention to the stone shield. Anders had started building more supports on the roof, and it had grown thinner as he moved the mass from the shield to the supports.

Looking back at the field I saw that the ground and air troops had moved closer. They were within five hundred metres, still beyond the range of our weapons. I took a look around the troops that Anders had. Archers all of them, and all clustered around beneath the shield, but back from the battlement.

“Get the fuck over here and get ready to shoot some elves,” I growled at them. They just ignored me. Irritated, I shouted to Anders, “Get your men into position damn it.”

“Busy,” he said through clenched teeth.

Grounding my teeth for a moment, before I shouted, “Get the fuck over here and man the battlements, or I’m going to kill you myself!”

They all looked at me for a moment but did not move. Seeing their response pissed me off, so I drew a dagger and threw it at their feet, which definitely got a response. I glared at them and drew another dagger. “Next one will be aimed at someone.”

Slowly they started getting their butts in gear and approached the battlement where the shield had started making a gap that would enable us to fire back. In the meantime, the wind had started dying down, however, the arrows were still raining down upon the shield. Looking out, I noticed that the archers in the back had stopped firing, but was now moving forward. Meanwhile, the troops that had moved forward before, had stopped within range and had taken over the suppressive arrow rains.

“How long is your range?” I asked one of the men standing next to me.

“Not that long, we need them closer, even with our elevation,” he replied. “The harpies need to be much closer.”

“Fuck me,” I groaned as the arrows started landing on the floor. The shield had retreated enough that a few arrows could make it through, however as long as we stayed flush up against the battlement, it would be very hard to be hit. Then again, there were thousands upon thousands of arrows being shot at us, which meant that the law of averages was against us.

Taking a peek, I noticed all targets were too far away for me to make a solid link with anything specific, nor could I make out any leaders. Then again, there were a lot of targets out there. I started firing my musket without creating any links, and I could hear I was not the only one. Whether I hit anything, I could not say at this distance.

As I was reloading after a handful of shots, one of the men nearby pointed to the two unused rifles leaning against the battlement and asked, “Why do you have so many muskets?”

“So you can ask stupid questions instead of concentrating on defending,” I snapped in response and then muttered, “Damnit, I wish I had that damn spyglass.”

Taking another peek, I saw that the elves had been moving closer, but kept a distance at around three hundred metres. The extreme range of our archers. The harpies still hovered above the army and had not gotten closer than the three hundred metres either.

What had gotten closer was some kind of siege engines, they were still closing in on the ranks of archers. It looked like wagons with giant shields to protect against arrows and musket fire. I counted at least twenty of them. A quick estimate would put fifty troops under each shield wagon. I also noticed one of their shielded rams. It was definitely one of the largest attacks I had seen so far.

For the next ten minutes, we continued exchanging arrows and bullets as the siege engines got closer. The only saving grace was that the trebuchets had stopped firing at the gate. They had shifted to the western and eastern tower, where their large boulders would not impede the advance of their other siege engines.

“What’s the situation?” I suddenly heard Ballard call from down below.

Anders who stood underneath the shield, well away from any danger at the moment, shouted back, “You can come up, I’ve made sure it’s safe.”

My gaze fell on the floor behind me, it was littered with arrows. Because of the slanted nature of Anders’ stone shield, a large pile was starting to gather. Looking at the guy who asked the stupid question, I ordered, “Find a way to clean those arrows up.”

“What? Why?” he asked.

“Because it’s becoming a liability, soon we’ll be dancing around on top of sharp arrowheads and round shafts. Instead of focusing on not getting hit by the arrow rain, we’ll have to focus on not slipping and get hurt,” I explained.

Shaking his head, he said, “You’re not my commander.”

“Anders, tell your man to do what I say,” I shouted to my fellow earthling, who was busy talking with the High Commander. No response. Peeking over the battlement allowed me to see the progress of the siege engines. They had just started up the road to the gate.

“Kiril, you and the bodyguards wait here,” I said to the three troops on the roof that was under my command. I waited for a lull in the arrow rain and as soon as I thought it was relatively safe I darted across the gap between the battlement and the stone shield. As predicted, the broken arrows made it a bit difficult to move across.

Just as I was about to pass under the edge of the shield, I felt a sharp pain in my right calf. The sudden pain made me stumble, which coupled with the loose arrows lying around sent me to the ground. Rolling around on the floor sent another stab of pain through my leg.

“Milord!” I heard Kiril shout, as I crawled forward a bit. The fact that no new arrows were striking me, told me that I had reached safety under the shield.

Not even looking in his direction, I waved him away. “Stay the fuck there. I’ll be fine.”

I looked at my leg and found an arrow sticking out of my calf, or rather a quarter of an arrow. It must have broken when I fell. Hands grabbed me and pulled me further in.

“We’ll have you sent to the infirmary, Lord Karth,” someone said. Looking up at the trooper I saw that it was one of Anders’ troopers. A squad leader, if I had to guess by the insignia Anders had his troops wear.

“I’ll be fine, just yank that sucker out,” I grumbled and fumbled for one of the small leather cases on the back of my belt. Finding one of them, I opened it and pulled the roll of cotton bandage out.

“I don’t think—” the squad leader said.

I looked at one of the normal troopers squatting down next to me. “Yank it out.”

He just gave a nod, reached out, and I had to struggle really hard not to scream in pain as the arrow yanked out. I started wrapping my lower leg as soon as the pain let me move again. As I wrapped it, I also flooded the wound with healing magic, letting it start to close it, but not too fast, I needed the bandage good and well bloody.

“Give me a hand, will you?” I said to one of the troopers standing around. Holding out my hand for him to help me back on my feet.

After being hauled to my feet I limped over to where Anders and Ballard were standing. They seemed to be talking about implementing stone shields on all the towers. Anders was saying, “I’d be more than happy to lead the construction. It makes a big difference.”

“Yes, right up until the harpies attack, then we can’t fucking shoot them,” I said with an irritated sneer. “What about concentrating on the fucking siege that’s happening right now? Their foot troops have started ascending the switchback. The harpies will probably attack soon, and we can’t return fire in any significant way.”

“They’ll have to stop firing arrows when the harpies attack, I can take the shield down then,” Anders quickly said.

“Yes, but not if you install them in every tower,” Ballard commented. “You’re right Lord Karth, let’s concentrate on the current battle.”

“About time,” I mumbled. “I’m going downstairs to shift some platoons around so I can amass musket fire on the siege engines. However—”

Ballard interrupted me, “They’re heavily shielded, which will make it ineffective.”

“Exactly,” I said. “So we need something substantial to stop them. Anders, can you conjure some boulders or something to throw at them?”

“I’m almost out of mana, forming this much rock took a lot out of me,” he replied with a frown.

“Great,” I grumbled. “Do you’ve enough to make the shield explode?”

“Explode?” both of them asked worriedly.

“Yes, explode. My stone mages have come up with a way to make their construct explode outwards, turning it into shrapnel,” I explained.

“No, I can’t do that,” Anders admitted.

Ballard looked thoughtful. “I think I’ve read about that in the history books, but we rarely use mages in combat these days, since most of them are serfs.”

Anders looked incredibly angry at the mention of serfs. I gave him a nearly imperceptible shake of my head, and he seemed to realize the folly of such an argument because he schooled his expression.

Ballard nodded. “Well, you got things in hand here, they make this kind of push once every four moons. We’ll be fine, we still have quite a few defensive measures we haven’t had to use yet. I’ll go see to the preparations.”

With that, he started down the ramp again. Anders and I looked at each other, both saying a variant of “What the fuck?” at the same time. Because I had observed Gudrun doing the exploding trick with her stone constructs, I could easily explain to Anders how he could do it. As I made my way down the ramp, he ordered some of his men to find a way to get rid of some of all the arrows.

On the top floor, I gathered up Seventh Platoon and led them down to the next floor, where I found Hrothgar. The large door to the walkway above the gate was open and I could see some of my troops out there. There were more men out on the walkway on the other half of the wall, but they were taking more hits from the relentless arrow rain.

While I had said a roof cover on the towers was a bad idea, it would be a good idea to have on the wall over the gate. Since there were two towers that could easily cover the air above the wall, it would lead to a much stronger defence if the defenders on the wall did not need to be flush up against the battlement.

“Milord, we’re taking a lot of injuries,” Hrothgar said as soon as he saw me.

“I can see that. Use Seventh Platoon to fire from the door and the arrow slits. If we use four or five at each point, we can keep up a continuous fire while they remain safe,” I ordered. He immediately went to work. Making my way up again, I took the time to heal my injury completely. I also stopped to provide orders to my two platoons on the top floor.

When I got back on the roof I rushed to the battlement, having better timing and luck this time around, and managed to get there without injury. I picked up my musket and leaned out to take a shot.

The siege engines were approaching the third switchback, meaning they were almost halfway up. The harpies were still holding their position, waiting for something. The archers were still keeping to the extreme edges of our archers’ range.

A large explosion caught me by surprise. As I was already scanning the progress of the battlefield in front of me, I saw where the explosion happened. Where the third switchback was, the side of the mountain exploded out, with a torrent of water following. I realized it was one of the defensive measures Ballard had mentioned. The water tore down the road, a wall that was made of water that would push the siege engines off the road and down the side of the mountain.

At least that was what I thought would happen. Instead, as soon as it was about the ram in the lead, earth walls shot up out of nowhere and something else seemed to slow down the water. The water was diverted away from the leading element, to fall upon the lower switchbacks with less ferocity. It still took with it a handful of the trailing siege engines.

I heard troopers around me starting to swear, but it was what I did not hear that sent chills down my spine. Looking up, I saw that no arrow rain blotted out the sky, but the harpies were on the move.

“Here they come!” I shouted as I watched a few thousand harpies speeding towards the walls.