The Fireseed Wars

II

Colonel Catos returned a candle later, saying: "Your Majesty, my officers believe the gatehouse is too strong for a direct attack. It has two outside towers and is made of solid stone reinforced with iron bars and runs almost a quarter of a march long. It runs to a tunnel inside the walls, with three inner gates all with iron doors."

"That's what Captain-General Verkan was telling me. They needed a strongly fortified gatehouse to keep the nomads out. He suggests we forget the barbican and breach one of the outer walls."

I could sure use a good Mobil road map right about now, Kalvan thought. They had passed Lake Calumet, which was about ten miles behind them. Too far for all the animals, water and the sanitary requirements of a long siege. According to Verkan, the city had an extensive network of cisterns and reservoirs or he might have considered damming up the Chicago River. However, that would have only hurt the noncombatants and he had some plans for them after the siege that making them angry at him might foul-up. He wanted to undermine Theovacar's rule far more than he wanted to punish Greffa City and its inhabitants.

The best place for a base might be at Riverside in west Cook County. There they'd have plenty of water and plenty of space to work in.

It took the rest of the day to move the Army of Greffa and the siege train to the rear of Greffa City. The curtain walls and circular towers were just as stout here as at the gatehouse, but not in as good repair. Kalvan had Colonel Nathros and his First Royal Engineers and Sappers Company scouting for weak links in the walls. He turned to Colonel Catos, "What about the sally ports? Anything to fear there?"

The Colonel shook his head. "There aren't enough defenders on the wall to support a sortie party."

"Verkan, what about using the ports to breach the walls?"

"The sally ports are really six tunnels that run through the City Walls and continue for another hundred rods where they're buried in stone and dirt. The City itself is about a rod higher than the ground outside the walls; at one time the sally ports were above ground, but they have since been buried. The tunnel support beams inside the tunnels are surrounded by flammables such as turpentine. If the enemy breaks through the port doors, the flammables are set afire and the entire tunnel complex past the walls will give way, burying the invaders under an avalanche of stone. They're set to go off when the tunnels are full of men. However, with our superiority in soldiers and fireseed, I suspect those bangs we heard last night were the sally tunnels falling in."

"Aha. I thought they were blowing charges to test their guns."

"The defenders don't have enough fireseed to waste testing artillery. They'll save every barrel they have for us."

Kalvan smiled. "It's a good thing your men burned your fireseed factory or we might be facing a lot more firepower. Instead, our biggest problem is finding a good target."

Verkan pointed to a small party with the First Engineers banner of a black artillery gun on a white field with red sparks at the top and sides galloping away from the Walls. "There's your answer, I suspect."

A dozen or so crossbow bolts were shot through arrow loops in the battlements but the scouting party was out of range and they rained down haphazardly onto the grass. Several gunshots from Verkan's special sniper team rang out. The two-man sniper teams were set behind movable shields, with gun loops, big enough for two riflemen to rest comfortably. There was a flange over the top to keep out stray shots, although for the most part they were out of effective arquebus and crossbow range.

"Quick response," Kalvan noted.

"Your promise of a gold Crown for every enemy kill has them out for blood!"

Since it was impossible at that distance and from behind walls to document individual casualties, that meant a gold piece for every member of the day's sniper teams for each observed kill. The uncertainty and "demonic" aspects of their kills were worth every Crown in undermining Greffan morale. Rifles were unknown in the Upper Middle Kingdoms and kills from this distance had the appearance of black magic. They also had the advantage of making the crossbowmen wary of approaching their murder holes too closely, which meant fewer aimed shots and more random firing.

Colonel Nathros galloped up, slowing his horse in a spray of dirt clods and dust. The movement of several thousand horses and hundreds of wagons over the area had alligatored the top soil, chewing it up and burying most of the grass and small shrubbery. "Your Majesty, I believe we've found a chink in the walls. He pointed to a section of the wall between two of the rounded towers where there was a large discoloration in the plaster about a rod up the wall.

"What about it?"

"Close up, sire, you can see they repaired the wall with brick, not stone. It was too tall for me to reach, but appears as if there was some damage to the wall many winters ago. There are lots of weather cracks in the plaster and they may have allowed water to get behind and weaken the joints of the stone in back."

"Good going, Colonel. Tell Colonel Catos it is my command to bring the batteries into position, using that patch as his target. Tell him to move his guns as close to the walls as possible. I think a half-march away would be just about right. That will keep his gunners out of effective crossbow range. At the first sign of return fire, have his men take out any guns the Greffans fire out of the towers or on the battlements. We don't want to encourage return fire. We'll put snipers on both flanks to ensure their cross-bowmen stay out of the fray."

"I don't think they have any guns small enough to move, Your Majesty. Most of them are the older style hooped-guns that shoot stones or iron balls."

"Don't count on it. They have plenty of time to move anything they want to. It's our job to keep their guns as quiet as possible so our gunners can concentrate on taking out that wall."

Kalvan turned to Verkan as Colonel Nathros wheeled his horse. "Verkan, why in Dralm's name would they use brick to repair their walls?"

Verkan laughed and rubbing his thumb and fingers together in a motion that appeared to have crossed all cultural lines. "Theovacar's father and grandfather were noted for their tight purses. Besides, the walls are too strong for the barbarians' primitive catapults and stone slingers. These walls have never known the kiss of fireseed. They will pay for their foolishness now."

Kalvan grinned. "Even if their folly only saves us a few days, it will grant us that much more of a time advantage on our return to Thagnor. As a wise man once said, 'Ordinary people think merely of spending time. Great people think of using it.'"