Chương 84: Aelfwine's Birch II

The first two trebuchets fired. Wood groaned and ropes creaked, and the counterweights dropped.

"Get back!" someone shouted. The trebuchets' arms whipped up, flinging the payloads at the orcs. The rocks wobbled in the air as they raced toward the tree.

"Not far enough…" Lute said, tracking the arc through the sky and tapping his foot. Sure enough, the rocks' arc fell slightly short. The stones whistled through the air, then impacted the ground in front of the orc camp, sending plumes of stone and dirt through the air, showering the camp with mud but doing no real damage. The orcs screeched and shouted.

"Can you get any more range out of the trebuchets?" I asked hurriedly.

"Not like this. We wound them tight as we could."

"We have to get closer," Anchor warned.

"No, wait," I said. I wasn't about to endanger all of us like that, and the time it took to move the trebuchets would let the orcs regroup—or escape our one shot at killing them. I knelt down, then planned my gravity Art. I squinted, letting the knowledge woven into the skill show me the arc of the rock. I could create a gravity well in front of the payloads' trajectory, and as the stone shot forward, I could funnel it through a tube of enhanced gravity.

But if I did that, I'd accelerate them too much, and they'd overshoot their targets. I had to adjust the angle. I couldn't match their firing angle perfectly—I had to dampen it slightly. It might hit the tree a little harder, but this way, we were guaranteed to knock all the snow and ice free.

"Keep the same trajectory," I said.

"And fire again, one after another. On my mark." The Dupes manning the artillery watched me.

"Three," I said, pointing to the third trebuchet, which hadn't yet fired its payload.

"You're first." I created an angled channel of enhanced gravity, then shouted, "Fire, three!" The trebuchet launched. A stone rushed out, and I caught it in the channel. It flew true, almost exactly as I had imagined it, and struck Aelfwine's Birch two-thirds up its main branch. A deep wooden clack rang out. There was a puff of sawdust, and the entire tree swayed. The snow and ice chittered, but its branches clung to their loads.

"Four, now!" I shouted, timing it as the tree swayed back, then created a second tube of gravity in front of the trebuchet—not catching the trebuchet itself, but grabbing its stone and flinging it farther than ever before. The stone flew on the same course as its counterpart had, and as the tree swung back, it hit the trunk at the same place, hard enough to double the tree's shaking. The orcs tried to scatter, but it was too late. A swell of heavy, wet snow and ice plummeted from the canopy.

It was louder than standing at the base of a waterfall, and I wanted to plug my ears. Icicles impaled siege towers and shredded catapults, and the weight of the wet snow avalanche crushed the orcs. I waited until the falling snow stopped. It couldn't have destroyed everything. But if we were quick about it, we could clean up the stragglers while they were reeling, destroying their camp before they had a chance to regroup and defend.

I waited on the ridge for a few seconds, trying to judge how many of the orcs had survived—and if it was worth it to attack. If there were too many of them, and we attacked without thinking, then we'd be in trouble.

"Anchor," I said, glancing over at our archer.

"How many of them are there?"

"I'm seeing about twenty survivors so far. More emerging from the snow as time goes. I can't give you a good estimate." I had to make a choice. Wait, and we'd all survive, but we couldn't make sure we had destroyed everything, and we'd get no Presences. We had to go now. I shouted, "Unhook the horses. Get them ready! We charge down the slope and take out the stragglers." The rest of the Dupes hopped into action without hesitation, scrambling about to get the horses ready.

I helped cut them free from the trebuchets, then climbed onto Burr and gathered my squad. We were the tip of the formation. Once everyone was up and ready, Anchor reported, "I see about forty orcs down there, now."

"Go!" I shouted.

"Before more get out of the snow!" I could see the orcs as well, watching them form up and scramble out of the snow. They hunted for their weapons instead of searching for the dead or injured, which made them slightly more prickly targets. And for them, it was probably the optimal choice—aside from running away. But maybe we could convince them to run away and scatter if we hit them hard enough. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I snapped Burr's reins, and we charged down the other side of the slope, racing toward the orcs. We rode through the path they'd cleared in the aspen grove at the tree's base, trampling a few scouts. As we neared the camp they'd cleared out, the snow grew thicker—nearly four feet—and our horses couldn't make it up. I glanced at Brick and said, "Take two of your men, our supply bearers, and have them watch over the horses. Keep them here, and ready for a quick escape. Everyone else, you're with me. On foot."

We dismounted, holding our weapons out, then stepped up into the deep snow. Shattered icicles formed shards of ice. Some had impaled ogres, others had ripped orcs in half. The blanket of snow had snuffed their fires. There were a few plains trolls who staggered out of the mess, but we took them down quickly, using resonance Skills.

"Fan out!" I said.

"Kill as many orcs as you can. If you can't kill something, shout, and we'll come help you." We had to make ourselves look larger. It was better if the remaining orcs scattered—that way, they'd either get stuck in the boglands, or the 294th could send smaller patrols later to clean them up. I marched across the snow-covered plain. It was heavy and thick snow, and my boots only sank a few inches into it. A heavier horse with its small hooves would fare worse, though, and Brick's men led our horses away to safety.

Orcs rushed toward us without a formation, and we took them down. Anchor and the other archers killed most of them before they reached us, hitting them with unenhanced arrows. A troll sprang up behind us, but I pierced it with a spear resonance Skill. It might have been a waste of a Presence, though I was more concerned about killing it quickly than wasting a point of Presence now. When we reached the trunk of Aelfwine's Birch, we stopped and turned.

A few more orcs were escaping the weight of the snow behind us, so we turned around and swept back across the battlefield, killing them as we went, until they began scattering. The orcs made screeching calls, and when others emerged from the snow, they began running away from us instead of trying to engage in combat. We stayed wary for nearly a half-hour, circling the orc camp, killing any injured orcs and dealing with any stragglers who did try to attack us.

Once we were confident that most were dead, I got one of Lute's men, who had a Perception skill—like Shave had—to scan the battlefield, looking for more survivors. It took us a little longer, but there were a few others buried beneath the snow, who we killed as well. Once we gathered the small army again, I said, "That probably won't be the last convoy. But there wasn't a Black Captain here to keep them organized, right?"

"I sensed nothing," Anchor said.

"And I couldn't see anything, either."

"If there was a Titanium or a Silver here, we would've known," Romance said.

"I'm sure there was." I motioned to the corpse of an ogre, who had an icicle sticking out his back, laying face first in a pool of melted snow and black blood.

"Just they were dead before we arrived." Romance winced.

"Are you saying we killed a Black Captain with an icicle? We should probably try to find the body."

"Likely not," I said, thinking of Mugreth and how difficult he'd been to kill. A falling icicle wouldn't have been enough. Certainly not a heavy layer of snow.

"One probably wasn't here."

"They wouldn't have sent a Black Captain until their army was ready. Too risky," Elf provided.

"Because something like this could have happened. Orcs have numbers in their grunts, but Black Captains are harder to come by. So they try to overwhelm us with numbers."

"They make hundreds of bets, and if one works out, they send a Black Captain to roll with it…" I grumbled. And we'd only prevented one of their bets.

"If it wasn't for us," Anchor said, "this would have worked out for them, and we'd have another siege to break."

"More will come," Romance said.

"We must hope that they see this destruction and scatter," Lute provided.

"No," I said.

"We need to turn this to our advantage. Material can't make up for lost men, but we need to gather all our loot, Presences, and see if we can salvage any of the catapults. The 294th can make good use of some of it, at the least. And with all this scrap metal, we should be able to get the entire battalion better armour." Judging by how they were all equipped, they'd need what they could get.

"Maurifus is going to be busy." The others looked at me, then a few of them nodded. Finally, Elf said, "Levi, to the thegns and Ealdormen and those above them"—by that, he probably meant the Warlord—"we're just numbers. Fodder, that can solve every problem by throwing enough of us at it."

"And that hasn't worked out too well for them," I countered.

"I may not be the exact same as you, but I'm not letting anyone die who doesn't have to. Not under my watch, and not in the future. That means you guys need better armour and equipment."

"You heard the sergeant," Anchor said.

"Hop to it! Let's loot some corpses!" We scattered through the wreckage, pulling the dead orcs to the side and stripping off their armour—anything salvageable. Maurifus and his smiths would melt it down and forge it into something useful for us. As the others gathered armour, I used my siphon to gather the Presences of the dead orcs, then handed them out to sergeants to divvy up among the squads.

Of course, that meant I saved some for our squad as well, but I made sure it was fair—to the point that the other sergeants were insisting that I took more, considering it was I who had brought down the canopy on the orcs. I tried to make a show of reluctance, but it was a relief. I needed to keep up my Presence intake. And now, the other sergeants were trusting me more and hopefully would be more willing to serve under me. Then we judged the salvageable catapults and trebuchets.

Some were broken beyond repair, but we unearthed seven that were usable, plus the original four we had stolen from the convoy. The bigger problem was getting them back to the 294th's camp. We could pull them all with horses—two horses each, rolling them on logs—but that was a long way. It would take us weeks to get back to the camp like that. Before I could ponder the problem any longer, though, a new, non-Dupe voice shouted from behind us: "What is the meaning of this? What are you doing here?"