When I woke, it wasn’t to the sound of Maggie barging into our room, or gentle sunlight drifting through a window. It was to the general indistinct sound of activity coming from the courtyard. I was the first one up, so I after I’d dressed, I went around gently shaking the others awake. I figured that since the courtyard was abuzz; it was only a matter of time before we were called on. And it was better to be in armor when it happened.

  I was right. Just as I was tightening my greaves, Maggie waltzed into the room, not even bothering to knock before she did so.

  “Oh good, you’re awake. Goblins started marching towards the fort in the last hour or so. Figured I’d come by and wake you all up.”

  Maggie’s words stopped all of us in our tracks.

  “What should we do?” Nora, who was still in bed, shaking off the last vestiges of sleep, asked.

  “The spiress is gathering all of her commanders and advisors in the war room. Gunilla wants your four there.”

  Within the next ten minutes, we’d left our room and were making the trek up to the top of the central spire on the forward wall. We crowded into the war room with nearly a dozen aranae warriors, three of the [Brood Guard], Gunilla, Saga, Senna, and the spiress herself.

  We entered quietly behind a pair of warriors and sat down, content to listen. Huddled over a map laid out and pinned down with two daggers on the central table, the spiress interrogated her commanders on what should be done.

  Hopefully, this meeting went better than the last one we sat in on.

  ~~~***~~~

  “We should mount an assault on the new wall before they can entrench themselves behind its aegis.” A warrior with two tails said.

  “We don’t have the numbers to assault a fortified position. We’d be throwing lives away.” Helle countered, heat rising in her voice.

  As the two women glared at each other, I idly wondered if they’d begun the conversation in the Trade Tongue or switched to it once they learned we’d be coming. While focused on the middle distance, I caught the spiress lean over to Gunilla and whisper a question, to which she got a shake of the head in return.

  “Devraak… Then what would you have us do!” The first warrior demanded, briefly returning to her native language before she caught herself and switched back.

  “We can do nothing but prepare for the bombardment and eventual assault.” Helle said casually, like she was discussing the weather.

  Helle got a round of agreement from the others present. Nobody else stepped forward to challenge her. The spiress let everyone stew in the moment, as the warrior who’d tried to argue thought over counter arguments.

  “Could we undermine the wall somehow, destroy it before they can make proper use of it?” The spiress asked.

  I heard Mika snort softly beside me, and if the look of reproach Saga’s six bronze eyes shot him told me anything she had too.

  “I watched the hoblite [Clerics] test the work done by the Rune Child.” Helle said. “From that, I can say that as we are, no. We have no way to consistently overload the runes without concentrating every caster on breaking them at once.”

  The spiress’ upper torso leant back, and she closed tired eyes, letting out a sigh that would probably see her punished by Saga. The weight of her mistake settling onto her for perhaps the first time.

  “If we cannot disrupt their siege, then we have no choice but to prepare for their eventual assault.” She sighed.

  The spiress spent the next ten minutes handing out assignments and orders for troops to gather. She had to repeat what she multiple times for some of her commanders as they simply didn’t have enough of a grasp on the Trade Tongue to understand. When she finished, the only people left in the room were us, and her advisors.

  “Mr. Hillhome. You will apply your new rune series to the bottom of my wall.” She commanded, and I noted that she’d omitted his new title. “You may rejoin your companions once finished.”

  When Mika didn’t immediately do as instructed and instead turned to Maggie for conformation the spiress huffed, making a shooing motion. Which set Mika grumbling towards the door.

  “Gunilla has decreed that the rest of you will be my stop gaps. When the assault comes, you will be by my side so I may distribute you to where you are most needed, clear?”

  “Yes, spiress.” Nora answered.

  This time, as we left, I noticed we’d been given no assurances she wouldn’t spend our lives frivolously.

  ~~~***~~~

  The first volley came hours after the meeting ended. A man-sized boulder nearly clipped the tunnel ceiling before it collided with the face of the wall. That stone preceded four more within seconds of each other. Three of the four got stopped by the wall, but the fourth bounced off the crenelations to crater into the courtyard’s gravel floor.

  All of us had been watching Mika work on the wall within the courtyard when the first rock hit; and once the volley ended, we tried to rush over to check on him, but Maggie held us back.

  “Mika’s as protected as he can be right now. They’ll call for us if we’re needed. Right now, the best thing to do is get under cover.”

  With a hand still locked around Ellen’s wrist, Maggie led us to a spot by the tunnel wall near enough to fort’s walls that the angle made it highly unlikely we’d be hit. A small overhang of stone further adding to our odds.

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  We stayed in that small corner for twelve hours, the four of us huddled together under the shadow of the overhang. Like the beating of a divine war drum, stone smashed against the fort wall in a consistent rhythm. Occasionally, the beat faltered as a stone missed the wall to sail into or above the courtyard. Six hours in, a stone looked as if it might sail completely over the fort when it cratered against a stalactite. Bioluminescent moss splattered out from the impact to paint the courtyard in an azure blood splatter.

  The boulder ricocheted from the impact and shot backwards to hit the forward wall, destroying one entryway up to the spires and breaking one of Mika’s rune series. His runes fizzled for a second before the break in the circuitry caused the mana to explode. Shards of stone shot outwards into the courtyard like a swarm of bees, killing two laborers and wounding several scholars who huddled nearby.

  The beat continued and although I couldn’t see what kind of damage was being done to the exterior, from our hiding place I could see several indents on the walkway between spires, and portions where crenelations were missing or had fallen to land in the courtyard.

  After twelve hours of prayer, muffled cries, flinching, and hoping an errant five-ton stone wouldn’t snuff us out like a candle, there was an abrupt break in the siege. All around us, people emerged from their shelters. Some looked dazed, others frantic. While the loudest of them were those who screamed the names of their friends. Desperate to know whether they were among the dozens of red smears that painted the courtyard.

  Shortly after the reprieve began, the goblins started another barrage that lasted for five hours. The first stones sending us back to our hideout.

  Two hours into the new barrage, a boulder bounced right in front of us to skip across the courtyard and smash into the rear wall. Gravel exploded out from underneath it as it first impacted and lines of fire darted across my face as stones imbedded themselves into the wall behind me.

  Nora cried out, the scream hoarse and terrified, and dropped to a knee. Beside me Ellen was already on a knee, huddled to protect herself. The impact still echoed in my ears as Ellen and I checked to see where Nora was hit. Blood flowed freely in streams down her arm to pool amidst the red and grey gravel. A jagged chunk of stone the size of my index finger lodged into her bicep, just beneath the shoulder.

  It took us ten minutes to extract the stone from Nora’s arm because she flinched each time the dull boom of rock on rock echoed through the courtyard. More often than not, driving the stone deeper into her flesh.

  As the hours passed, and lack of sleep drew on us, and we all huddled closer together. Nora wasn’t bleeding anymore, but her sodden robe still stained the side of my armor, and pressed together, I could feel the gambeson beneath it taking on some of the blood. Ellen sat next to me, both of us leaning on the other for comfort. Behind us, Maggie had her hand possessively on mine and Ellen’s shoulders.

  All of us knew our fates were entirely up to the math ability of the goblin [Siege Engineers]. None of us, not even Maggie, had a spell or a skill that came even close to enough to stop a multi-ton boulder flying dozens of kilometers per hour from crushing us.

  Our anxiety was relieved when a nervous laborer, who kept darting looks up to the rust red ceiling, handed us a letter written in the Trade Tongue. It was a command from Sylvie to join her at the top of the wall by the center spire.

  We only got it halfway across the courtyard, in a carefully chosen path Maggie thought had the best chance of avoiding being crushed. When it became clear the goblins had stopped their barrage, and the aranae around us burst into movement.

  People rushed in every direction to either grab tools or drag the wounded away to be tended. Thankfully, most who got hit by the stone directly died immediately, because the screams of the dying with no one brave enough to rescue them had been haunting enough.

  It was only once we squeezed our way up to the top that I saw the force arrayed against us and the damage done to the walls.

  Six siege engines sat partially hidden behind the wall I’d just bleed and killed to defend. From what I could see, I guessed they worked by having a counter-weight that dropped and used that forced to lob the stones at us. I knew vaguely what they were and was pretty sure I’d read about them in a book somewhere. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the word was in the Trade Tongue.

  “Hey Nora?”

  “Yeah?” She answered, her attention split between her still tender arm and the massive siege weapons.

  “What are those things called?” I asked and pointed.

  “What? The trebuchets?”

  “Trebushay?” I tried, repeating the syllables as I’d heard them.

  “Sort of got it.” She corrected absently, still occupied with her wound. “Like this; treb-u-chet. You’re getting caught up on the ch sound.”

  Built upon the songs sung underneath the Grace Mother’s branches by the Divine Visitor during his meditations. The Grace Chant had slowly adopted aspects of the Trade Tongue as time passed. That slow drift created the Low Chant as Ylena refused to allow the true Grace Chant to be changed. However, even with its influence, neither High nor Low Chant contained the ch or sh sounds which made them the hardest for me to say when speaking the Trade Tongue.

  Forcing myself to gather my attention again, I surveyed the rest of the goblin’s new forward position. Even as far away as I way, I could see thousands of goblins milling about. Tents stretched for hundreds of feet back from the wall, large paths cut between clusters of them like roads.

  Off to the side, I could see small sections of the tunnel wall being carved out and shaped into the stones lobbed at us. The goblins dug far enough away from the new wall that it wouldn’t weaken the overall structure, but their efforts had significantly widened that section of tunnel.

  Tottering over the rough terrain from the goblins’ caverns, I could vaguely see the shapes of two siege towers. I wasn’t sure how the goblins planned on getting them past the wall, but a quick look to the center saw a team of goblins breaking apart the stone encrusted corpses with picks and hammers.

  The bodies were mineralized by the spells and rather than chip away a small layer and carry away the corpses; the goblins had to break apart the wall. Idly, I wondered if some pieces being broken still looked like the people they’d once been, but I shook away that morbid thought quickly.

  With the siege towers nearing, I peered over the wall and saw the face of it was pockmarked like an acne-riddled teenager by meter wide craters in the stone. Beneath the wall, I noted that the aranae casters weren’t idle and the dozens of boulders thrown at us had transformed into a new domed outcrop that spanned nearly the entire width of the wall.

  Along our path to the central spire, we passed several warriors barking commands in the aranae language. The sounds so inhuman that I was tempted to try and learn the language, just to see how many words I could actually make with my mouth.

  When we got the spiress, she was busy receiving reports and handing out orders. Laborers ran from her position in constant waves. Six of the [Brood Guard] stood around her in a semi-circle, keeping all but her advisors from getting within five feet of the woman. Our visit was brief. She only reiterated our orders, but she did send Nora off to work with the casters while we went to join the people on the wall.

  ~~~***~~~

  A warbling note echoed out from where the scholars and Nora gathered and the spell volleys began. Mana of all aspects, sizes, and shapes shot towards the new goblin defense. Most lacked the range to reach the stone and of those that did were easily absorbed into Mika’s new runes. That didn’t detour the aranae, however, and over the course of five volleys, all preceded by that strange note, they honed their aim so that eighty-five percent of all spells hit. The remaining fifteen that didn’t, soared over the wall to land amongst the goblin tents.

  Some were crushed by stone, doused with water, ripped up by wind, and the occasional fire started amidst the camp, but those were all quickly snuffed. I wasn’t sure what they hoped to achieve with this. After the first volley, the goblins pulled back their siege engines to a place within camp that was out of range. Portions that had once looked like roads now revealed to be spots for the trebuchets to retreat from danger.

  The sound of the explosion was the first thing to reach us. It echoed off the cave walls over and over, growing louder each time. The sound still echoed around us when a flash of grey light caused spots to appear in my vision and forced me to shield my eyes. When I opened them again, I saw rubble spray in every direction and a trebuchet toppled to collapse a section of tents.

  I wracked my brain for what could have caused that, slightly disorientated from the noise which now fought with a hollow ringing in my ear. The only thing I could think of was that Mika’s runes had been overloaded before they could vent the excess. The aranae had continued to hone their aim and this time, whoever commanded them, instructed the casters to bombard a single runic series.

  That much mana within seconds must have overloaded everything, and that explosion was probably the uncontrolled release of all that stored energy.

  In the explosion's aftermath, silence fell over the fort for the first time since I’d been here. Even from my spot on the wall, I felt like I could feel the exact moment officers on both sides of the conflict came to the same conclusion.

  A concentrated volley of spells was launched at the wall. None of the runes overloaded, however, and we were all forced to take cover as five boulders the size of wagons launched at us. Whether that was the crenelations or the spires, most were lucky enough to make it, but I saw a trio of laborers to my left turn to paste as a boulder that took an unlucky bounce and landed within a foot of the interior of the wall.

  The next hour was filled with that exchange. During the time the goblins took to reload their trebuchets, the aranae managed two or three volleys of coordinated spells. Most of which were blocked by goblin casters and [Clerics]. During all of that, the siege towers never ceased their slow approach.

  The towers navigated single file through the destroyed corpse wall. Their tops swayed dangerously as teams of goblins pulled them across the rubble and uneven ground. Past the wall the spiress demanded spells be refocused on stopping the towers. Fire, water, stone, and more flew at the equipment, only to be absorbed or deflected as hazy orange runes lit up and down the face of the siege weapons.

  Even physical projectiles proved little more effective than the spells, their points and edges blunted or shattered against the stone exteriors. Watching the towers roll ever closer, unchanged by the attempts to stop them, felt like watching a boulder roll down a hill. The thing it hit along the way might slow it briefly, but nothing could stop it.

  The towers took their sweet time positioning themselves in front of the wall, during which the only resistance they faced was from arrows and thrown spears; the spiress having called for her scholars to spare their mana.

  Time stretched, and my anxiety built in time with my humming as we waited for the towers to drop their bridges. When it finally happened, the battle cries and screams from the hundreds of goblins waiting to be unleashed drowned out the crash of hundreds of pounds of stone landing on the crenelations.