Territory War (5)
KRRRRAAASH!
The colossal curtain wall toppled forward. For a moment, thick smoke billowed up in choking clouds. The soldiers who had either dodged the collapsing masonry or never drawn close enough still could not quite grasp what had happened. No—they understood the fact of it well enough. The wall had fallen. In the simplest reading, the situation was straightforward. But watching a fortress wall crash down right before their eyes left them stunned all the same.
Smoke curled and drifted. Dust still muddied the view. Even so, Duke Randolph finished his assessment in a heartbeat.
“The enemy has brought down their own wall! This is our chance! Reform the lines!”
The general at his side answered at once.
“Indeed, Your Grace. Better still. With the wall gone, all that remains is open-field battle. We still hold the overwhelming advantage in both total numbers and cavalry!”
The smoke began to thin, though the sheer violence of the collapse meant it took time. Randolph’s forces did everything they could to restore order.
“Form ranks!”
“Assemble!”
“Close up!”
Click, clack. They locked into neat rectangular formations, ranks and files squared away.
“Hm?”
Duke Randolph rubbed his eyes. As the haze settled, another wall stood beyond the ruined one.
“There’s another? Two walls?”
Not one curtain wall, but two. The duke tilted his head at the bizarre sight. This second barrier looked even stranger than the first. Common sense demanded a high, sheer face to keep enemies out. Yet the wall before them sloped gently outward—toward the attackers.
Relief flickered across the soldiers’ faces.
“Heh. At that angle…”
“We can simply walk up it!”
“Are they inviting us for a stroll?”
One general lifted his spear with a sneer.
“Your Grace, we can just climb it on foot. That isn’t a wall—it’s a hill.”
Krrrrrrr…
A low, grinding roar rolled down from the crest. At the unnatural sound the soldiers craned their necks upward.
“What is that?”
“Some kind of round mass…?”
KRRRRRRR!
At the top of the slope a huge, round, glittering something heaved into view. It looked like an enormous sphere of glass—transparent, with yellow and blue stripes embedded inside.
“Wh-whoa!! It’s coming down!”
“Scatterrrrr!!”
The giant glass orb began to roll. First ten. Then twenty. Thirty, forty… In an instant a cascade of massive glass spheres poured over the rim. House-sized orbs thundered down the gentle incline in a mad rush. They gleamed softly, painted in bright stripes—pretty, yet radiating a grotesque, crushing menace.
“Aaaagh!! Get clear!!”
“Somebody help me!!”
The spheres plowed straight into the ranks.
KRA-KRA-KRAK!
The giant glass balls punched through the infantry lines as if they were paper. Cavalry fared no better. Mounted knights might outpace foot soldiers, but nothing outran spheres that had gathered speed racing down a slope. By the time they reached the bottom they were practically flying.
“Your Grace! Look out!”
“Tch!”
Even the duke had to dodge. The spheres’ reach was brutally wide. Horses screamed and went down; riders were flung hard into the dirt.
“It won’t stop!!”
“It’s heading straight for us!!”
The scene was carnage. Of the force that had once numbered over thirty thousand, barely half seemed left. The duke decided to gamble.
“Five Generals, to me!”
Eyes blazing with fury, Duke Randolph roared.
“We only need the count!”
This war would end the moment they seized the entire territory—or killed the opposing lord. They had lost half their army without even fighting properly. At this rate they might have to tuck their tails and retreat. They needed a decisive stroke now.
Rodriguez’s fortifications had been stunning, yet the duke knew they lacked true high-tier knights. The only famous blade in Rodriguez was Knight Commander Carlton. On this side, including the duke himself, there were six peak Experts. Rodriguez had only one. If tactics failed, elite force would settle it.
“Follow me!”
“Yes, Your Grace!”
The five generals grasped the plan and fell in behind him.
Krrrrr. Another giant glass sphere came hurtling. But spheres could simply be avoided. To ordinary troops they were disaster; to peak Experts, dodging something that flew in a straight line was hardly difficult. The duke’s party sprinted up the very slope the orbs were cascading down.
“Hoo…”
From the top they saw, further in, yet another castle of proper stone—the original Rodriguez keep the duke remembered. So both the outer wall that had fallen and the hill-fort that had launched the spheres had been nothing but offensive works.
“To the real castle!”
Rodriguez troops still manned the crest of the hill-fort, but they could not stop the duke and his five generals. If anything, the defenders seemed to be avoiding the elites.
“It’s the duke and his knights! Stop rolling and take cover!”
The duke snorted.
“They see the enemy and refuse to fight? That tells me everything about Rodriguez discipline.”
He concluded their fortifications might be impressive, but their soldiers’ training was a shambles. So he ignored the rabble, passed the hill-fort, and faced the true castle.
“Make us a path.”
“Yes!”
One of the five generals loosed arrows.
Thwip, thwip, thwip!
The shafts sank deep into the stone—far deeper than any ordinary wall should allow. More than twenty mana-charged arrows stood in a neat vertical line, forming a ladder of sorts. For peak Experts it made a perfectly serviceable staircase.
“We’ll clear the way first!”
Expecting fierce resistance from the main keep, the generals charged ahead.
“Haaah!”
Generals and duke scaled the wall together.
Ffft-ffft-ffft!
A rain of arrows. Then—
Shhhk!
—a gigantic ballista bolt.
“Dodge, Your Grace!”
“Thunderstorm!”
Zzzzzzt!
“Gaaah!”
General Number One, leading the climb, took a bolt of lightning square and plummeted. Yet the duke still had Numbers Two, Three, Four, and Five. They weathered the barrage and clawed their way onto the battlements.
And there, standing ready, was a familiar face.
“Ho? Duke Randolph himself graces us with his presence?”
The speaker was Rodriguez’s pride—Knight Commander Carlton, magnificent white beard flowing long. Beside him stood more than twenty knights in formation. Farther off, a head of golden hair flashed as it turned away. Illys.
The duke’s gaze locked onto the fleeing figure.
“Running, are we?”
He leveled his spear.
“Two and Three, hold the rear! Four and Five, clear the path!”
The generals surged forward.
Clang! Clang! Steel met steel in a storm of ringing blows.
“Old Carlton! Time you crawled into your coffin!”
“Ho-ho. Even cold water has its proper order—how could this old man enter before Your Grace?”
“You insolent—!”
Clang-clang-clang!
Generals Two and Three locked with Carlton and the knightly retinue. Foot soldiers formed a circular ring, enclosing the duel of experts while dazzling techniques flashed and clashed. Meanwhile Generals Four and Five, with Duke Randolph, raced after Illys.
The gap was more than fifty meters, yet for fighters of this caliber it was a single breath. The duke called out to the fleeing youth.
“Where do you think you’re going?!”
“Hmph! Wherever I please!”
“A mere brat using that tone with me?!”
“You’re the enemy—why should I care? Ice Bolt!”
“Useless!”
Illys was a mage. The generals and the duke were knights. A mage needed distance; knights thrived by closing it. Illys bolted into a building.
“Almost got you!”
The duke roared. In that instant Illys reached a certain spot and unleashed a magic circle.
Ziiing.
A circular barrier sprang up—layered, not single. Multiple overlapping shields. Breaking them would take a little time, but they were far from unbreakable. And while the multi-layered barrier stood, Illys could not attack either.
The duke stepped closer, voice dripping scorn.
“You fled all the way here just to hide behind a shield?”
Illys answered softly.
“Farewell.”
Clunk.
The floor beneath Illys’s feet opened; the youth dropped cleanly out of sight. With the multi-layered barrier still sealing the area, the duke’s party could not follow into the hole. They had been a heartbeat from victory—only to lose their quarry.
Then a strange thought struck the duke. Farewell? Did that mean leave this place… or die here?
He glanced around. They were inside a building. Torches lined the walls, so it was not dark. The ceiling was solid, and strangely there was not a single window. The floor was a bed of black gravel.
Click.
“Hm?”
One after another the torches toppled, flames spilling onto the floor. A chill of foreboding raced through him.
“Get out!”
The duke and his knights spun to flee—
Fwoooosh!
The moment the fallen flames touched the gravel, far larger fires erupted.
FWOOOOOSH!
The blaze leapt sideways to the next patch of floor.
BOOM!
The fire jumped, exploded, jumped again.
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA!!!
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!
“Your Grace!”
“Protect the duke!”
Generals Four and Five hurled themselves over him. The world turned white.
The remnants of Duke Randolph’s army had gathered near the outermost fallen wall. Even after everything, when they finally reassembled they still numbered something over ten thousand. Many had been crushed under the collapsing masonry or the giant glass spheres; the losses were severe. As a result the soldiers were now terrified of drawing too near any wall. Among the ten thousand a fair share were wounded. An army of more than thirty thousand had shriveled to fewer than ten thousand almost without a real fight. At this point the men were beginning to wonder whether this territory war was even winnable. Morale lay in the dirt. They simply wanted to go home.
The problem was that the duke and all five generals had charged deeper inside, leaving no senior commander. Still, when the general is gone the lieutenant takes charge. An officer of that rank gathered the men.
“All units, assemble! Dress the ranks! Lines! Lines! An army lives by its lines!”
An aide beside him asked,
“Sir! What do we do? Do we advance, or wait for the commanders?”
The lieutenant scowled. It was a hard call. Part of him wanted to push in and seize glory, yet after the wall collapse and the rolling glass spheres he had no idea what other horrors waited ahead. A full general might react with pure reflex; he did not trust himself to do the same. He hesitated.
In that instant—
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA!!!
“What in the—!”
A ground-shaking explosion hurled stone and fire into the sky.
KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA-KRA!!!
The blast was immense. Roar and shockwave slammed into the lieutenant.
“Urgh!”
Dust boiled upward into a bizarre, towering shape. The lieutenant stared in stunned disbelief.
“That’s… a mushroom cloud?”
Still watching the cloud, he turned to his aide.
“We… will not be going in.”
Illys had already evacuated before the great explosion. Once the blast and dust had settled, the youth returned to the site to confirm whether the enemy lived or died. Back at the place where the duke had stood, three figures lay huddled together. The two generals had shielded their lord with their own bodies. Both generals were already dead; within their embrace the duke had barely survived.
Illys discovered them and cast a simple spell.
“Wind.”
Whoosh.
A breeze rose; the two generals crumbled into ash and collapsed. A closer look showed the duke’s own body was already half destroyed. No matter how loyally the generals had covered him, no one at the Expert level could endure an explosion of that magnitude. A Master might have managed it—perhaps. An Expert could not.
“Your Grace. You kept remarkably loyal retainers.”
The duke looked up at Illys.
“An extraordinary technique… Sixth Circle? No—Seventh? What circle are you… No. The name of that technique… what is it?”
He seemed determined to learn the name of the art that had taken his life.
Crack. The duke’s body continued to break apart. Illys offered a final courtesy to a duke of the kingdom.
“It is called Kongal-tan.”
A last spark flickered in Duke Randolph’s eyes.
“Kongal-tan… I see… You fought well…”
Crack.
The duke’s body crumbled into dust.