Adjusting Fire

Scanning the horizon, our mage-general pinpoints the next target for the trebuchet, a distant hill, a likely command post for the grendel to oversee his assault.

Artillerists adjust the trebuchet, extending its range by loading rocks into the counterweight, reinforcing joints with stout winds of ropes. Each modification is risky. The tolerances are sensitive, requiring constant monitoring after each shot. Alarms are set as assistants constantly survey each cross-member for any sign of stress or fracture.

Our arsenal is half empty, the terracotta pots of Greek fire and wineskins of naphthalene that have created the blasted landscape beyond our walls have been replaced by a new munition, this one encased in globes blown of glass. If the naphthalene was clear, this one is crystal, almost sharp and pointed in its clarity. Less caustic than the Red, more deadly than the Clear, its alchemy is insidious, infectious and mutagenic. The artillerists ease each round into the leather sling for firing.

The trebuchet creaks and sways as we release the catch, increased tensions threatening to tear the machine apart. As each impact rattles the grendel further, our mage-general warns us to expect changes in his operational details.

The grendel's primary tactics remains unchanged, waves of assaults behind a curtain of night followed by harassing fire each day to deny our hero sleep, keeping our forces off balance and fatigued. Shattering glass brings continued queasiness as bitter vapors mingle with the screams of dying partisans trapped beyond the wall. Should the wind shift, that poisonous fog could envelope our position, mutating her own white company into a undead army that heeds the grendel's call, defecting like Genovese crossbowmen gifted bags of de' Medici gold. We sprinkle counter-bribes among her citizen militia, hoping to shore their loyalty with scant distributions of silver.

Necromancers to unleash new spells, imps and familiars. Their elemental magic manipulates the weather, targeting our hero with flashes of stultifying summer that only she can feel. Invisible gremlins dog her heels, bludgeoning her legs and back with shot filled saps and miniature truncheons cored with lead. Between beatings, they steal her salt and sprinkle her food with copper. Giggling maliciously, they release pet leeches to sting and numb her fingers, and rats trained to gnaw her nails or carry them off completely.

After the round, our scouts report a change in the grendel's disposition. The bulk of his forces retreat to a rise at the edge of the trebuchet's range, seeking to draw our undisciplined infantry into the valley. Our veterans are immune to this deception, holding ranks of energetic recruits from surging into a slaughter. Dark cavalry sits astride the roads, congregating on our flanks in ambush, seeking any opportunity for a lightning counterattack. Instead, her housecarls pound spear to shield in resounding defiance that echoes into a taunt before transforming into a song as thousands lift their voice in a unified chorus like Anglo-Saxon partisans in an alto-soprano rendition of "Rule Britannia!" to drown out opposing hooligans at the site of a beautiful game.

As the grendel retires to the relative safety of distance, our forces raise a cheer. Our isolation is broken. Innumerable white-cloaked girls pour through the water gate now perpetually open to visitors and supplies. Her red company remains depleted, the postern their only route for reinforcement until the main gate stands open and the road unbarred.

Despite the celebrations, our war council reminds us that we are neither at the beginning of the end nor the end of the beginning. We stand at the middle time of history, the fulcrum of a battle turning yet unwon. A time when we must redouble our vigilance lest the grendel recapture the initiative and scale these walls anew.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III