Enlightened Empire

Chapter 392: Obsession

On a new day of combat, a young commander in Antila’s new allied army stepped on top of the walls. As part of the reinforcements from Port Ulta, he had just stepped off the ship and was ready to show off his prowess. His black hair was long and shiny, a proud achievement of his many victories over the years. His armor was polished to a mirror shine, gleaming in a bronze hue in the sunlight, ready to blind his enemies during his charge.

“Idiot! Get your head down!”

Herak’s giant hand grabbed the idiot commander’s shoulder and dragged him down behind the walls. A second later, several shots brushed over their heads.

“If you want to get killed, then go ahead and keep wearing your pretty armor, idiot,” Herak growled into the idiot’s ashen face. “Now unless you want a new hole in your head, get back down from the walls and change.”

Herak watched the idiot sneak his way back down the wall, his head now firmly kept below the walls. For the thousandth time since the start of the siege, the duke felt the same frustration that had become so familiar in battles against the merchant’s troops.

Dishonorable Cowards.

By now, they had learned that the southern kingdom had trained snipers to kill commanders, but it had been a tough lesson. After losing many valuable men, they had finally started to adapt, though all the replacements they had to bring for their dead commanders still didn’t understand the basics of this new type of warfare. Who knew how many more would die before they understood the dangers of this battlefield as well as Herak.

The duke himself was wearing a dull, light-gray robe over his expensive armor, so he wouldn’t recognized as anything more than a normal soldier at a distance. Even his mask had been blackened and hidden underneath a hood, so it wouldn’t reflect any light. Although their adaptation had cost them many important lives, it seemed like they had finally stemmed the tide, at least for now.

A week had passed since the siege of Antila had begun. The smooth plains around the city had long disappeared. Even before the appearance of the southern army, the defenders had already roughed up the ground. However, the second transformation by the attackers was even more thorough.

A crater-filled landscape had begun to form under the persistence of artillery from within the city. Yet there was still some order within this chaos. From the north, south and west of the city, a network of trenches had begun to spring up. Although the ground in winter was hard, the king’s forces insisted on their work against the backdrop of constant fire from the city defenders, who aimed to disrupt their progress. Yet they had found ways to get closer, even when under attack.

The trenches were almost as deep as a man, reinforced with wooden beams for stability, and built in a Z-shaped pattern. Thus, every forty or so meters, another trench sat perpendicular to the walls. All of them were connected through diagonal trenches, to make sure that no soldier on the wall ever had a clean line of sight at the attackers inside.

In this way, the attackers slowly inched their way towards the walls, ever closer. The closer they came, the more pressure they put on the attackers, and the more firepower they could concentrate on the walls, thus slowly eroding the advantage of the defenders. Not to mention that even the sturdy walls of the city had already been marked with the enemy’s artillery as well. Still, the walls had been built sturdy, and the trenches still had half the distance to go. As the attackers tried to push forward, the defenders tried to doggedly impede their progress.

For now, the war was at a standstill. The final victor would be decided by determination, and the longer breath.

Determination Herak had in spades. Still, the image from atop the walls made him depressed.

“Does that merchant never run out of his cheap tricks?”

As Herak watched the plumes of smoke rise from within the tricky trenches, he became more and more impatient. Over the last few days, these soldiers outside had started to use the cover of their fire to creep closer and closer towardsthe walls. The worst part of it all wasn’t the fire itself. He wasn’t afraid of a handful of lead balls, not at this distance. His armor would protect him from most hits, and even a direct hit wouldn’t kill him at this distance, unless it his him square in his eyes. No, the worst part was the smoke these boorish weapons produced.

The duke suppressed the irritation in his heart and slowly stood up behind the already prepared crenelations. Before the enemy army had arrived, they had been built so that he could stand and fire his bow without being under direct fire of the enemy. Thus, he breathed out and raised his weapon.

Past the metal hiding his face and through the narrow slits in the wall, he peeked into the trenches below, and tried to see through the obscuring smoke. For several seconds he held his posture, his body tensed like the bow in his hand. As soon as he saw the off-white color of Saniya’s uniforms peeking through the snow, he released his hand and let his arrow loose.

The projectile charged towards the uniform and disappeared into the smoke. He waited for a few seconds, but never saw any more of the off-white color.Whether or not it was a hit was hard to say, but Herak was just happy to keep them down in the dirt, and to slow their advance. Maybe these new weapons were nice for short distances, but his bow, with its arcing trajectory, was perfect to deal with the moles hiding inside their trenches.

As Herak reached for his quiver and another arrow, he peeked at the rows of warriors and knights to his left and right. Rows of his men stood atop the walls with him. Although none of them were shots like him, their numbers were more than enough to make up for it. All of them carried bows and arrows, and continuously fired over the wall in a high arc. When these arrows came back down from above, the trenches would do little to protect the attackers.

Maybe they wouldn’t kill many, but injuries were just as good as a kill in a battle, and just the fear of death from above would do its part to slow down the enemy. Of course, the bows were most effective close to their maximum range. It was hard to aim them up and hit right below the walls. Though for that, they had more than ten thousand men with fancy new rifles.

Herak and his allies had learned from their last war against the merchant king. Thus, over the past three years, he had managed to get together several thousand flintlock rifles from various sources, not much fewer than what their merchant enemies had. For once, that little king didn’t have an advantage in numbers. Better yet, the rifles were far more effective in defense than they were in attack. While the trenches helped even the playing field, they still weren’t as good for cover as the walls. Not to mention that the difference would only grow larger over time.

These days, the enemy soldiers were getting closer to the walls, but that only made their situation more and more dangerous. As they closed in, their shallow earth defenses would provide them with less and less cover. At a closer range, the angle of fire for the defenders atop the wall became steeper, which meant that more of the attackers’ bodies would be exposed in the trenches.

At the same time, they would also have a much poorer shot on his soldiers high up on the wall. This was an inherent defender’s advantage, which had become far more pronounced with the popularization of gunpowder weapons. Now, the merchant would taste the full horror of these tools that he himself had dragged onto the stage of history.

Herak sneered as he thought about the enemy king’s sour face, and fired another arrow. This time, he could see the body fall back into the smoke before another enemy salvo spewed more smoke and took his sight again. It was a solid hit. Although he still didn’t know whether the victim was dead or alive, he had a pretty good idea.

While his arrows wouldn’t poison people like the new lead balls did, they were far more destructive. His arrows were not much slower than a ball, and much heavier. Their power could fell a bear, as they often had in the past. Even if they were only hit in the arm or other non-lethal areas, the commoner soldiers of the merchant king wouldn’t stay alive for long with their flesh mangled and their bones splintered.

Again, Herak reached for an arrow. As he got into a rhythm, his mind turned into a terrifying calm, as it always did during battle. As he mindlessly ended the lives and happiness of more and more enemies, as he continued to stem back the approaching tide, he thought more about their position. As the enemies got closer to their walls with their own trenches, their speed slowed down, due to the heavier fire from above.

If they wanted to retain their cover from the trenches despite the worsening angle, they had to dig deeper into the frozen earth, which would only further slow down their advance. At this rate, it would be the end of winter by the time they managed to reach the walls.

Luckily, Herak was well prepared for war this time. Ever since they had made concrete plans with House Ichilia, Saqartu, and Ogulno, he and his temporary allies had spent months to put together the supplies for their war against the south. By now, they had plenty stocked up in Antila. Even better, the Uskaylla River gave them a strong supply line from here directly to Port Ulta in their hinterland, while Port Ulta itself connected them to half the world.

If that king thought he could starve them out with slow pressure, he was in for a nasty surprise. Since they didn’t break immediately from the enemy’s evil tricks, all that was left to do was to hold out, show no weakness and slowly squeeze the enemy morale. Sooner or later, repeated failures to conquer their supposedly weak and god-hated foes would grind down the abnormal morale of the attackers. After seeing what some had called the lightning miracle, these soldiers had turned into fanatics who would willingly dive into this deadly battlefield for their faith.

Herak didn’t believe in miracles. He only believed in what he could reach with his bow. The clouds and the stars were too far away for him to consider. He would teach those soldiers that these imaginary clouds of lightning were not as good as the bow in his hands. A firm will wouldn’t protect them from his arrows.

Compared to the attackers' shaky morale based on superstition, the defenders had their backs against the wall. There was no retreat for them, so they would fight for their lives, to the last man if necessary. In their desperate position, they would never break. By the time the attackers would wake up from their delusions and realized as much, their absurd morale would take a turn for the worst.

All he needed then was one firm push, one decisive counter charge,to confuse that king’s army and break through. He had long learned the detailed information from the retreating warriors out of the old league of lords. As far as he could tell, this was it, the entire army of the southern kingdom.

They looked very fierce on the surface right now, but their strength was still fragile, propped up by nothing but these few thousand soldiers. A single defeat could topple their entire kingdom and drive their merchant king into despair, which was exactly what Herak intended to do. All he had to do was wait, wait for their morale to be ground down against the walls of Antila.

Though even if this southern kingdom managed to raise more soldiers, or if their routed army managed to recover, Herak didn’t care. To him, it really didn’t matter who would win this was. His goal was only one: To kill the merchant king. For him, it was sweet revenge, but it was also so much more than that.

The King of the South was the local king who was most hostile to Arcavia’s influence in the region. He had caused much damage to the interests of their merchant fleets. If Herak could manage to kill the king, another reshuffle for power would happen in the local area, and Borna could further strengthen their hold over the locals. Thus, Herak’s mission would be fulfilled, and he would finally be allowed to return home, victorious and worthy of regaining his lost lands. All he needed was a chance to get close, a moment of confusion in the enemy army to push through the lines and drive his arrow through the fat merchant’s eye.

A look west, beyond the enemy army, towards their camp where his old nemesis would hide, and the duke couldn’t repress a smile. Although his tensed skin hurt from the movement, Herak didn’t care for once. The pain couldn’t dull his anticipation. The enemy’s progress was already slow, and he intended to slow it down even further. Everything was ready for the tides to turn, for Herak to kill the merchant and regain what had been robbed from him. All he needed to do was stall for time, and wait for his chance.