Bloodstained Blade-Chapter 57 - First Siege

They spent half of the next day dividing their army in two and wading across the sluggish river. That was frustrating for the Ebon Blade but not as frustrating as the fact that the next two villages were empty.

“They run before us!” Var’gar announced to cheers as if that was a good thing. There were still buildings to sack and livestock to devour, but there was nothing good about the population deciding to get while the getting was good.

You knew this was going to happen the moment you saw survivors escape, the blade reminded itself. You will devour all of them eventually. They can’t hide forever. All they can do is retreat somewhere safe and wait for me to find them.

Of course, that only increased their need to push forward. Along the way to Holmen, they found only one target worth attacking, and that was a merchant caravan that apparently hadn’t been warned about what was coming. It was eight wagons and two dozen men, but that was only enough to whet the weapon’s appetite for the violence that lay ahead.

+282 Life Force.

+9 Human Souls.

This time, the blade did not let the orcs burn the wagons as much as they wanted to. “How will we roast the meat without fire!?” Var’gar insisted, raging at the voice of the god that only he could hear.

Your enemy will have real defenses this time, the weapon scolded the orc as it showed the oaf what it had seen in the mind of the human it had interrogated. There will be walls of stone and strong gates, with archers and other weapons beside. There may even be mages.

“If they have walls, then we will tear them down, stone by stone!” the chieftain responded, earning cheers from some of the nearby orcs who didn’t even know what they were talking about. The blade started to drain that vocal minority out of pure spit. Orcs were strong but not especially forward-thinking.

The next village isn’t likely to have any more people in it than the last one had, the blade explained slowly, trying to make its wielder understand. But they will have doors on their houses and a smithy. We can make siege shields for the arrows, and with a tree and a wagon, we can make a battering ram for the gates.

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“I fear no arrows!” Var’gar laughed.

At that point, the blade just gave up. It stopped trying to explain or make its host understand. If the chieftain was going to venerate it like a god, then it would simply command.

These were not requests. It thundered. These are commands. You will obey, or I will select one among your army who will replace you. Do you understand?

The blade had no intention of replacing its wielder. In the entire army, there were only a few orcs as strong, but even if he’d been the weakest, it was the duty of a weapon to fight with its owner. Still, in this case, the orc needed to be reminded of who was in charge here, and it would lash at his mind and spirit if it needed to.

“But this is not the way that orcs fight!” Var’gar complained. The tone was entirely different, though. The chieftain continued to whine and bellyache about the idea, but at the idea that his god’s power might be withdrawn and given to someone else, he obeyed, however reluctantly.

So, the following day, when they reached a village, they stripped its homes and barns of doors, along with any other planks they could find, and Var’gar explained to his men under duress how they would storm the city. “You march forward behind these wooden shields,” the chieftain explained. “So they get shot full of arrows instead of your big green asses!”

That got more than a few laughs and tangented the entire conversation until the blade prodded him to get back to the business of creating a battering ram. The shields the orcs figured out well enough on their own. Some of them already used crude shields paired with clubs or spears. Getting them to think of a vehicle as a weapon, though, was somewhat harder.

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That took the better part of a day, even with dozens of strong orcs, to fell and delimb the largest tree they could find. While it would have preferred to hang the thing from chains so it could strike harder, it settled for having its wielder attach the roof from one of the nicer houses to the top of the wagon to protect the orcs that were going to be pushing it.

Weight, at the very least, wasn’t a problem. Each orc was almost as strong as an ox, and though it took only two to move the wagon, four or even eight could push it very quickly. The blade wasn’t sure such a delicate construct would survive the battle, but it would serve its purpose.

That would be tested soon, in any case. The hamlet they looted to make their primitive siege engine was the last intact settlement they found. All the ones they found in the days that followed were abandoned and burned. Even the crops in the field had been destroyed to deny the orcs sustenance.

That did little to stop them, though. They might complain about being hungry, but they knew a feast larger than they could ever eat lay ahead. So, they were undeterred and continued to march.

A week after their last conquest, they saw Holmen on the horizon. The orcs cheered at that and wanted to press the attack immediately, even though that wasn’t the plan. The blade saw only a gray smudge at that distance, but it saw no surprises, either.

The town had long since outgrown the fortified bridges and keep that made up the core of the three-part city, and they had abandoned the near portion in favor of the other two-thirds, where they thought they would be safely behind the water. Even here, where the banks were closer together, and the water moved faster, the blade thought they could cross easily enough, though it would be under fire from the men on the far bank.

Var’gar wanted to do just that, but the weapon restrained him. We stick to the plan, it whispered to its wielder, and we wait for Groll’shank to strike on the far side. Only then do we assault the city.

The blade didn’t like waiting more than anyone else, not when there were so many people on the walls just waiting to be devoured. Still, there was good news. While they assembled well out of arrow range and waited, no mage lightning or anything similar assaulted them. The defenders didn’t even try an ambush or counterattack, though it had hoped they'd be foolish enough to do so.

Instead, they simply waited for the orcs to realize that they couldn’t penetrate the walls and leave. This was doubtlessly a tactic that had worked for them in the past, but it was just as futile to fling insults and it was to launch projectiles from the walls at this range. They would not be baited, no matter how many times they tried.

The Ebon Blade couldn’t see the walls well, even from this distance, which eventually annoyed it enough to waste the Life Force upgrading Increase Senses 3. Though it could easily afford to spend 750 at this juncture, it usually didn’t consider the ability to see farther than it could swing to be very necessary.

Increase Senses 3: The beauty of a meadow or a sunset will forever elude you, but the large things have become clearer, as well as the ways to destroy them, should the need arise.

You no longer see only the weakness in armor, but in structures as well, and you can see who is dangerous with only a glance.

For planning a tactical assault, though, the weapon would need a larger view, and as its upgrade cleared some of the remaining rust off its hilt, its view solidified. It still wasn’t perfectly clear out to the horizon, but the city walls were no longer a blur. It could see the sharp lines of the enemy defenses and the blurred movements of men pacing atop them. More importantly, though, it could see their weaknesses. That had been an unexpected gift. For a long time, it had been able to see gaps in the armor of others. That was its nature. Now, it could see where the walls might fall if a little force was applied, as well as the places that would be easiest to scale, even without a ladder.

It spent the day relaying that to its wielder as its plan began to solidify. Nothing else happened, but on the second night, the other half of their army slammed into the unprepared defenders, causing shouts of alarm and terror as the watchmen blew their horns. At this distance, the blade couldn’t see exactly how the fight was going,

The blade’s wielder commanded his troops forward then, or for the first few minutes, there weren’t even any arrows because the archers seemed to be under the mistaken belief that the army had moved to the other bank during the night. It only realized that there were two entirely separate armies when the orcs’ crude wagon battering ram began to hammer against the near gate.

The crude thing’s front axle broke on the second strike, but that was fine because the orcs lifted the log in their strong arms and kept hammering against the gate even after the wheels gave out. It took less than a dozen blows to crack the beam that was holding the thick gate shut, and after less than five minutes, the gates swung open to reveal the delicious defenders inside.