webcrawl/APGTE/Book-3/tex/Ch-065.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-40-rising-action}{%
\section{Chapter 40: Rising Action}\label{chapter-40-rising-action}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``When approaching a siege, a general must draw distinction
between tactical and strategic importance. The costs of a victory on the
tactical theatre of a campaign may yield defeat on the strategic one.''}

-- ``Considerations on Warfare'', by Marshal Grem One-Eye
\end{quote}

Most towns and cities in the south were lightly fortified, but Dormer
was an exception. While it was true that since House Alban had united
Callow there'd been relatively little war in the south, the barony had
roots than ran much further back than that. In the days when the Kingdom
of Liesse had held sway over the south, clashing with a stubbornly
independent Marchford and the encroaching Kingdom of Laure, Dormer had
been made vassal to the rulers of the south by force of arms. That
submission had never sat quite right with the rulers of the city, and
they'd rebelled against the kings of Liesse several times. It all went
back to the Wasaliti river and the island it flowed down to: Mercantis.
The barons of Dormer had old ties to the City of Bought and Sold, and
grown wealthy as the middlemen between it and the rest of Callow.
Wealthy enough to afford tall walls, and later a fortress to overlook
their demesne. There'd been little need to keep improving these after
the unification of Callow, though, and revenue had been hurt by the
tariffs set from Laure that had the coin going into the pockets of House
Alban instead.

The city had grown beyond the ancient walls, with most of it now outside
the grey stone and the fortress behind it. It was not a particularly
large city, truth be told. At its peak after the Conquest there'd been
perhaps fifteen thousand souls living there. Now there were more than
twice that number of fae holding it, and no trace of the Callowans that
should be there. A disquieting thing, that, but also a relief of sorts.
If some of my countrymen had remained inside, I would have hesitated to
use some of the more brutal tactics in my arsenal. Considering the
opposition, that might have been costly. I'd beaten Summer once before,
in Arcadia, but I'd done so relying on tricks and a story. I wouldn't
have the benefit of either here, and that meant having to crush them the
old fashioned away. I did, however, have some advantages on my side. The
first was that this was a siege.

I'd grown up thinking of the Legions of Terror as a field army, but that
was a somewhat false perception. It was true the Legions were most
remembered for the Fields of Streges, when they'd near wiped out the
armies of the kingdom, but most the battles in the Conquest had been
sieges. The Blessed Isle, Summerholm and Laure. The campaign against
Daoine in the north had not been so clear-cut, but it \emph{had}
involved taking the Wall. To understand the Legions as an institution,
I'd come to realize, I had to keep in mind what Black had crafted them
for: conquering Callow. Warfare in the kingdom had been deeply
influenced by the nature of constant invasions, most of them Praesi. The
cities of the west and the north were hard fortresses meant to resist
Praes until House Fairfax could send an army to turn back the Legions,
and so Callowans had grown adept at making fortresses. Our mages had
learned protective magics and wards, passed down sorceries meant to
banish devils and disrupt great rituals. Our armies fielded more heavy
cavalry than any other on Calernia and around the professional core that
had been the Royal Guard, massed volunteers had formed the bread and
butter of Callow's hosts. All of it evolved to beat the large mage and
villain-led hordes that used to be the staple of Praesi armies.

When the Conquest had begun, what House Fairfax faced was an entirely
different beast. Orcs no longer used as meatshields for better-trained
humans but armed in good steel and taught to stand in ranks. Goblins,
once little more than expendables sent to die against walls or let loose
on the countryside, instead turned into crossbowmen and sappers. Mages
no longer standing at the back to unleash rituals but massed in the
ranks to replace a few dangerous tricks by continuous deployable
firepower. Summerholm, the famous Gate of the East, had fallen not to
devils and flying fortresses but trebuchets and ballistas backed by full
encirclement. The Legions of Terror had been built to take some of the
most heavily-fortified cities on the face of the continent, and while
the tight formations they used on the field were less effective in city
streets, those narrow passages where were munitions and mage lines
shone.

The second was that I was dealing with an enemy who knew little of this
breed of warfare. The winner of the war between Summer and Winter was
decided either behind closed doors or on a battlefield, not by borders
and walls. The forces of the Count of Olden Oak had taught me a hard
lesson when I'd taken the Gallowborne scouting in the grass, but when
we'd assaulted his fortress his army had crumpled under the pressure.
Summer was not meant to be on the defensive, and what I'd come to
consider the greatest weakness of the fae was that they were not
\emph{adaptable} the way a mortal host would be. They would have learned
from our clashes in Arcadia, of course. They weren't that crippled by
their nature. But when faced with an unknown, something unprecedented,
they tended to revert back to pattern. That made them predictable, to an
extent, and the handful of monstrous tacticians I had on my side could
make a lot out of the enemy being predictable.

I knew better than to think I knew all the cards the other side had to
play. Even putting aside the fact that the Queen of Summer was on her
way and she'd be a whole mess of her own, I'd glimpsed powers in the
dream that had followed my becoming Duchess of Moonless Nights that I'd
yet to see them deploy. They were out of princes and princesses to lead
them, but there was at least one Duke left and they were not entities to
take lightly. Summer, by now, would be desperate to take back the
Princess of High Noon. They wouldn't be pulling any punches, and even
though crossing into Creation would have weakened them this time I
didn't have Winter to use as fodder on my flank. It'd be my armies that
took the brunt of the losses, and like the Summer Queen I couldn't
afford to take too many of those. Not when Diabolist was still on the
loose, growing more dangerous by the day. On the other hand, I also
couldn't afford to be overly cautious. If the fae in Dormer weren't in
deep trouble by the time their Queen popped out, she wouldn't even
consider treating with me. Which I really, \emph{really} needed her to
do. Actually taking her out was beyond my capacity. The best Hierophant
could do was delay, and when that failed it would swiftly begin going
downhill for us.

It was Marshal Ranker that opened the dance.

After the first few fae patrols were repulsed by sheer numbers, Summer
had retreated to the city. No sign of the Immortals yet, which we'd
taken to mean they would be behind the walls. Thief and Archer were
already gone to deal with that. Out in the streets and houses we'd could
only see Summer regulars, and those were the first obstacle moving
forward. Hard to gauge numbers on grounds like those, but there should
be at least thirty thousand. Using the buildings as cover, they would
turn Dormer into a butcher's yard if we advanced\emph{. So we take away
the cover.} The trebuchets let loose and the ballistas with them,
ripping through the centre of the outskirts. Houses collapsed, a handful
of fae crushed, and the sappers began their work. The ballistas were
faster by a fair margin, but it was the trebuchets that did the heavy
lifting. Stone after stone, they began reducing the outer city to
rubble.

``And now we see if they take the bait,'' Hakram gravelled.

I hummed but did not reply. The Gallowborne had given the two of us wide
berth, save for Tribune Farrier. He carried my banner, though he'd pass
it when we entered the fray. Juniper had predicted that after we began
smashing the outer city the fae would try to grab back the initiative by
breaking our siege engines. For the average Legion of Terror, that would
have been a problem. We were lighter on archers than most Calernian
armies, since mage lines effectively served the same function. Wouldn't
be the case for us, though. We had something the Empire had never
fielded before: the army of Daoine. Flatly inferior to legionaries when
it came to heavy infantry, save for the Watch, but when it came to
archers? They'd used longbows to defend the Wall for centuries, and fae
were nothing new to them. It might be greenskins that had tried their
borders most of the time, but Praesi had made attempts too. There wasn't
as much difference between winged devils and fae as the latter would
like to think.

``And there they go,'' I muttered.

Ten thousand wings lit up and the Fair Folk rose into the sky. The
height of the flight would be the most pressing issue, here. It wasn't
like the Deoraithe could shoot halfway to the moon, while fae could just
pour arrows downwards while staying out of range. That was our first
trap. Hierophant wouldn't be taking the field for most of this battle
because I needed him to control the three wards he'd prepared, and I
watched the soldiers of Summer as they flew straight into the first of
those. They didn't have time to ever fire a volley before a buzz so loud
it was half a thunderclap filled the air. Their wings winked out for two
heartbeats, then the buzz sounded again and they reappeared. Only a
handful fell, making it to the ground before being filled with arrows.
An oscillation ward, Masego had called it. He'd essentially made a
massive rectangle in the sky where ever two heartbeats the flow of
sorcery would be disrupted. I'd asked him if he could just shut them
down, but apparently that would have been too much of a drain to
maintain. Even with the new Name he still had limits.

What it accomplished was make it exceedingly hard for the fae to just
hover over the engines and leisurely set them on fire. If they wanted to
make a dent, they'd have to descend into arrow range. Our little
surprise spread chaos in their ranks. Half kept trying and failed
repeatedly while the rest went down out of the ward's area and began to
trade fire with the Deoraithe. They had the better of it, to my
distaste. Kegan's soldiers were spread out, tight ranks would have been
a written invitation to be hit with the fire arrows, but a loose
formation was far from the equivalent of flying in the godsdamned sky.
As soon as the situation steadied below, the fae who'd been struggling
with the ward joined the others and I watched as five knots formed led
by fae nobles. By the feel of them, nothing higher than a baron.

``That,'' I said, ``is going to be trouble. Ritual?''

``Close enough,'' Hakram grunted. ``No more than twenty in each
formation. We'll hold.''

We'd better. The battle was going to get a lot harder if we lost those
trebuchets. All five knots formed large spears of flame easily the size
of ten men in a line, and after a heartbeat they shot down at our five
trebuchets. My fingers clenched as the projectiles fell, crackling
loudly until they hit thin air. The shape of blue domes covering our
engines shone as the fae sorcery tried to tear through, and though they
shivered in the end they held. Close. Much too close for comfort. The
entirety of the Fourth's mage contingent was feeding those shields and
the fae had almost broken through anyway.

``If they keep pounding away at us with those I'm not sure we'll hold,''
I murmured.

``Hope Marshal Ranker read them correctly, then,'' Hakram replied.

The old goblin, when going over the battle plan, had made one
prediction: \emph{they will not be willing to get into a slugging
match.} Whoever led the host of Summer would be trying to minimize
casualties at all costs, and that meant backing away from tactics that
were effective if they got too expensive. The Deoraithe continued to
trade arrows, losing two men for every fae they took, and I grimaced. We
couldn't afford to slug it out for too long either. Another volley of
flame spears descended, and finally we have answer. The Fifteenth's
mages had gone through the College same as any other legion's, with one
major difference: Masego. Who was occasionally willing to throw my mage
lines a bone in the form of a ritual, if he was in the right mood for
it. In Marchford, when it had become clear that our numbers in
legionaries had far outgrown the quantity of mages that traditional
legion structure dictated we should have to match it, Juniper and I had
diverged from standard doctrine. We'd consolidated them under Kilian and
drilled them in use of rituals. Now we'd see if that was going to pay
off.

Two massive javelins of lightning formed above our shields and struck
across the sky. The fae scattered around them even as the Fourth's mages
desperately tried to keep the fae fire from reaching the siege engines.
The javelins blew and streaks of lightning spread, killing scores of
Summer soldiers but failing to disrupt any of the knots that forged the
spears. \emph{And so now we begin our staring contest, you Summer
fucks.} There were only so many times the javelin ritual could be cast
before my mages started burning out and dying. They knew that. I knew
that. What they couldn't know was \emph{how many} times they could. If
they were lucky, they might shatter our shields and torch our siege
engines before their losses got too high. Or we could trade blows for an
hour as they racked up casualties they couldn't afford. Another wave of
fire, lightning gave answer. My mages aimed at a knot this time, and
killed a few. Useless, as it turned out. If the way a handful of fae
from the ranks went back to fill the numbers was true indication, any of
them could participate. It must be the barons that were the key.

Two more exchanges. On the last we lost a trebuchet, damn their stubborn
hides. The moment the spear went through and touched wood the entire
damn engine turned to ashes faster than I could blink. My mages weren't
fools, though. On the first round they struck the sides with javelins,
herding fae towards the centre, and when they struck there with the
second they did real damage. After one success, the fae dug in. A
mistake. At least a dozen of Ranker's mages must have died when the
shield broke, but the rest went to reinforce the other shields. Another
two exchanges where they failed to break through, and I smiled coldly.
They'd blinked first. Of the ten thousand who'd come there must have
been a little less than eight thousand left, a trade that had cost me at
least two lines of mages and over two thousand Deoraithe archers. More
of the Summer soldiers had died to the lightning ritual than the bows,
by my count. We'd starkly underestimated their agility.

The fae did not retreat. They flew north, and landed on the plains
behind us. That, we had seen coming. There were few things more
dangerous to a besieging army than being hit in the back as they stormed
the walls. I'd wanted to keep at least two out of the three wards Masego
had judged he could handle to bolster our offensive, but Juniper had
talked me out of it. There was no point in breaking through ahead if our
back was collapsing, she'd said. Our second trap was in that very field
where they'd landed. The Fourth under Ranker and the Twelfth under
General Afolabi stirred and began to march against the fae at our back.
They numbers less than eight thousand, considering Ranker had a chunk of
her sappers manning our engines and all her mages shielding them. The
Fourth would be significantly weakened because if it. But the cognomen
of Afolabi's Twelfth was \emph{Holdfast}. Defence was their speciality,
and that was what the two legions had been charged with. A holding
action keeping the fae tied up. Masego abandoned the ward in the sky and
activated the second one. Wind howled across the plains, surging forth
from a line ahead of the two legions. Though it wouldn't kill anything,
by our reckoning it should make flight all but impossible and for the
fae to keep in tight ranks exceedingly difficult.

There was a drawback, of course. It needed Hierophant's full attention
to keep active, and that meant it would cease when the Fifteenth made
for the walls. That was the bet we'd made: by the time the engines had
finished demolishing us a clear path to the walls, the fae at our back
would be in bad enough a position that the two legions holding them
would no longer need the help. Risky, Ranker had called it. If we were
wrong we'd have to pull back some of the Deoraithe to bolster them, and
there was chance if we did that we wouldn't have the numbers to punch
through into the inner part of Dormer. It was coin flip. We could not,
in the end, predict everything. For one, none of us had thought they'd
sent fae nobles out this early. When we closed on the walls had been my
own call, and that mistake had come mighty close to fucking us over.
Even now, I winced at the notion that General Afolabi was going to have
to deal with five barons. The ward could only help so much. If I hadn't
sent out Archer already I would have told her to back him up, but the
chalice had already been filled.

Even under bombardment by Summer, the engines had not paused. How long
had passed, since the battle had begun? At least an hour, maybe more.
The trebuchets had levelled us an avenue and cleaned fae out of it, but
it would take hours longer yet. We should be done before nightfall,
unless we were disrupted. Behind us the two Legions of Terror dug sixty
feet behind the edge of the wards and let the fae come to them. It was
bloody work. The Summer soldiers found that the empty space beyond the
ward was a meat grinder of sharpers and crossbow bolts leading straight
into tight ranks of heavies, and hundreds died before they stopped
rushing into the killzone. After that, though, they wised up. Masego's
ward was a line that couldn't cover the entire plain. It couldn't even
be a curve, since apparently for arcane reasons that would have been
much harder to maintain. The fae began going around and the fight turned
truly nasty. General Afolabi pulled back sappers and crossbowmen to back
up the regulars he sent to block them, but that weakened his centre.
Enough that two of the barons got a foothold.

Those were, to put it bluntly, beyond the ability of munitions to deal
with. One of them lit up like a golden bonfire of gold and torched
through a solid hundred heavies before being driven back by the
Twelfth's mages. The other one screwed with the ward, bending the wind
across a dozen feet of the line until it turned around and blew into the
lines of the legion. Fae began pouring through immediately and it all
went to the Hells after that. Twice, as the hours passed, I almost went
to reinforce them. Both times Hakram held me back. We couldn't afford
for me to start using my aspects yet. I would say this for Afolabi's
legionaries, they stood their fucking ground. When the fae formed a
beachhead and it looked like the centre was going to collapse, four
lines of heavies went into the thick of it with lightning bolts clearing
them a path. There were a few sappers behind their shields, and though
half the heavies got wiped in a single stroke of the sword of the baron
twisting the wind the goblins threw a dozen demolition charges at him
and blew half his head off. Of that near one hundred legionaries that
went in, less than twenty made it back to their lines. They'd bought
General Afolabi the room he needed, though. The moment the ward returned
to full effectiveness, he plugged the gap and forced back the other
baron with concentrated spellfire.

An hour before Evening Bell night began to fall, and by then the field
was littered with dead. But Ranker had accomplished what she'd set out
to do. A straight line to the northern gate of Dormer had been carved
out of rubble, the fae still in the outer city split on both sides of
it.

``Our turn, now,'' I quietly told Hakram.

``Do or die,'' he said.

I gestured at the Gallowborne, and the Fifteenth stirred to march. To
war, to Dormer, to doom. Whether it'd be theirs or ours, I could not yet
tell.