Chapter Forty Six

A fireball launched by a lich across the chasm changed direction at the last second, rising high above the fortress before exploding harmlessly.

“A handy ability,” Trygvve remarked. Leo laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head.

“One I acquired a lifetime too late,” he admitted, hinting at some tragedy in one of his previous lives. They stood at the top of the tallest tower in the Stryk River Fortress, monitoring the siege from above. Were they not on a battlefield right now Artemisias might have asked for further information, but right now all that mattered was that his own fire mages were free to counterattack instead of worrying about defense.

“Return fire!” Artemisias commanded. At his order a dozen fire mages released the spells they’d been preparing. Colossal masses of swirling flame rose up in carefully calculated arcs before plummeting down towards the siege bridges across the fjord. Liches in the enemy army countered with orbs of water, boulders, and even masses of undead birds, intercepting most of the fireballs before they could strike their targets.

The concentrated barrage overwhelmed the less organized defenses of the undead, however, and some of the fireballs made it through to strike one of the siege bridges they’d prepared. These came down on not just the bridge but nearby undead as well, detonating on impact and incinerating dozens at a time. Those closest to the center were disintegrated entirely by flames more than hot enough to melt steel, with those slightly further away trapped and immobilized inside their slagged armor.

“Begin preparing the next volley immediately,” Artemisias ordered the collected mages.

“Sire, we’re exhausted,” one of the mages complained. Artemisias turned around at Count Solberg’s words; he found the entire group breathing heavily, a few of them even having collapsed.

“How many of you can still cast?” Artemisias asked. Four hands rose up. Two commoners and two nobles, he noted. Solberg, the most senior mage in the group, wasn’t among them. “We can’t afford to stop. Solberg, go find me eight other mages to fill in.”

“We’re the only ones capable of casting fire magic that advanced right now, Your Majesty,” Solberg argued.

“I’m aware. Fill out the numbers with other disciplines. Stagger your casting. Use water and earth magic to absorb any counterspells so that the fireballs get through,” Artemisias instructed.

“If we take any water and earth mages from the walls the ones left might not be able to stop the enemy from making temporary bridges using ice and rock,” Tryggve pointed out.

“Then the infantry will have something to do. Better that than allow a single one of those bridges to be moved into place,” Artemisias countered. Those bridges, each large enough to span the entire fjord, were designed to be raised up on the opposite side and dropped onto the ramparts of the fortress. Dozens of draugr could cross them simultaneously without overwhelming their structural integrity.

He didn’t know where the lich necromancers commanding the undead army had found siege engineers capable of constructing something like that, much less the materials and expertise to craft them. But already his scouts had caught the undead trying to use similar bridges to cross the Stryk at other locations. The siege here was clearly a diversion meant to lock as much of Selkark’s forces in one spot as possible while they snuck across elsewhere, but that didn’t mean he could afford to ignore it, either.

All Artemisias could do was hold the Stryk River Fortress himself while his generals patrolled the river and repelled other attempts at crossing. Fortunately there were limited locations where the fjord grew narrow enough to even be crossable, and the castle itself had been constructed at the narrowest of these precisely because it had been the best place for a bridge.

Eventually…in theory…the necromancer liches would run out of corpses to throw at his forces. His fire mages were whittling down the number of undead slowly by reducing them to ashes. The only question was whether he had the numbers to hold out for that long.

Count Solberg went downstairs. Several farspeakers were waiting there to relay orders out across the castle. They would contact the mages Artemisias wanted to summon far more quickly than any runner possibly could. It didn’t take long for the undead to take advantage of the mages pulled from the walls, though. Mostly because their attempts at creating new crosses were unceasing to begin with. If it weren’t for the half-dozen bridges still creeping ever closer Artemisias might be concerned he’d made a mistake, but the narrow arches of ice and stone only wide enough to be crossed by one or two draugr at a time posed little threat by comparison.

“Sire!” someone yelled from the stairs. Artemisias turned to find one of the farspeakers walking towards him. “Urgent report from downriver. Our scouts have sighted a large group of children escorted by knights bearing Count Keller’s heraldry!”

“Where are they headed?” Artemisias asked.

“Further downriver, reportedly. There used to be a bridge a few hours from their current location, but it was collapsed along with all the others,” the woman replied.

“We haven’t heard from Storrhamarr in days. It’s probably a trap,” Tryggve advised.

“If we guessed correctly, though, Cinna likely passed through there not long ago. This could be her doing,” Artemisias noted.

“She cares for the people, but she’s too pragmatic to risk her life with no chance of success. Frankly I find it hard to believe a group so large could make it as far as the river without being run down, and she would have made the same call,” Tryggve argued.

“Perhaps, but her mere passing may have created a sufficient distraction.” Artemisias sighed. “It doesn’t matter either way. The forces we have in the field lack the resources to effect a temporary crossing and bring them over to this side. There’s simply no way to help them.”

“I’ll go,” Leo volunteered. “I can leap across the fjord and defend the group while they cross. If we can find a narrow enough point for an earth mage to construct a temporary bridge, it should be doable.”

“No. We need you here. Without you we’ll have no choice but to divert mages to defense that we can ill afford to pull from other tasks,” Artemisias declared, fully aware he’d be condemning those people to death if Tryggve was wrong. He couldn’t throw away the rest of Selkarc trying to save just a few, however.

“With all respect, Your Majesty, I’m not one of your subjects. I wasn’t asking for permission,” Leo countered. His voice wasn’t harsh, but it was firm. Without waiting for a reply, the Hero spun towards the stairs and made to leave.

“You can’t—”

“Stop, Tryggve,” Artemisias interrupted, raising his hand. “He’s made his decision…and more importantly, we lack the means to stop him.”

“Damn it!” Tryggve cursed, shaking his head. “Without him to intercept incoming magical attacks, we’ll be forced to abandon our attempts to destroy the bridges.”

“Not…necessarily,” Artemisias replied thoughtfully. “It will be more dangerous, but if we station mages where the bridges will be planted we can destroy them up close.”

“They won’t allow the last few bridges to be destroyed easily. There’s going to be liches watching them closely,” Tryggve pointed out. He didn’t look opposed to the idea so much as intent on plugging up any holes it might have.

“We’ll concentrate our mages and overwhelm the defending liches, then blow the bridges. In the meantime we might need to pull mages from elsewhere along the walls, but once the bridges are dealt with we’ll be able to distribute the mages back out to eliminate any other crossings the liches put up in the meantime,” Artemisias explained.

“It’s a shame we can’t just push the damnable things into the fjord,” Tryggve grumbled. Indeed, the ends of each bridge were outfitted with hooks that would grab onto the inner side of each rampart and hold them in position. It would be difficult just to lift them, especially since each massed enough that liches would have to be employed just to raise them into position to drop them on the walls. Those same liches would likely be used to hold the bridges in place afterwards.

“If it were possible to take prisoners I’d have questions about where they sourced their siege engineers,” Artemisias said by way of agreement. “See to the deployments. I trust you to ensure we have enough forces at each location without compromising our defenses elsewhere.”

“Mm. Might have to recall the closest patrols to be sure, but I’ll see it done. Excuse me,” Tryggve replied, heading off to consult the farspeakers below.

Artemisias gazed out over the Stryk River Fortress as he waited for the arrangements to be completed. The castle was wider than long, covering the entire stretch where the fjord grew narrow enough to cross. Built with magic and intended to defend against magical assaults, the walls were dozens of meters tall and would be impregnable to a mundane attack. They were at their most formidable around the gatehouse overlooking the actual bridge, but Artemisias had ordered that structure demolished like all the others, so the gates didn’t factor into his plans any more than the rest of the walls.

In the meantime the bridges crept ever closer, each supported by a combination of dozens of draugr and a small number of liches. Most of the enemy liches continued to bombard the fortress with the elements of their choice or attempt to build makeshift bridges. On the defenders’ side, mages dropped large stones onto the latter to collapse them and threw up shields of all sorts to intercept incoming projectiles.

Arrows and stones rained down on the ramparts in intermittent volleys, but most were repelled by shelters made of wood and hide. Of the remainder, few made it through the defenders’ shields and armor, but the constant barrage prevented the defending soldiers from relaxing. It served more to drain morale than to cause real damage.

Soon Tryggve returned to report that the arrangements had all been set into motion. One of the farspeakers accompanied him, risking the exposure in order to ensure orders could be passed along more quickly when the time came. All they could do now was wait. From so high up Artemisias could identify the shifts in the concentration of forces along the walls with ease. He watched as the bridges came steadily close, then began to rise into the air, tilting upwards impossibly under the influence of magic.

Then, they fell forward.

One by one the closer ends of the bridges came down upon the castle walls, slamming down with such force that the stone crenellations themselves cracked from the impact. Even the steel frames of the bridges must have taken some degree of damage from that, but clearly not enough for them to collapse outright. Draugr poured onto the bridges in droves.

“A foolish waste of mana,” Artemisias muttered as one of his own mages washed the draugr back across one of the bridges with a deluge of water. The instant the attack petered out the undead climbed back onto the bridge and reclaimed the lost ground in moments. More damaging attacks were swiftly countered by enemy liches as Tryggve predicted.

“Probably hoped to freeze the floor, but it doesn’t look like it worked. Someone must have stopped the water from freezing,” Tryggve guessed.

Soon draugr began to clash with the Selkarcian soldiers waiting on the walls. The draugr advanced fearlessly, throwing themselves upon the defenders with a deathless fury and forcing them away from the bridges. But the Selkarcian army rallied quickly to prevent the undead from gaining any more ground, locking ranks and reforming the wall of shields that had been broken up by the initial assault. With so many of them now on the walls the draugr lost much of the initial momentum that had allowed them to advance so far in the first place.

“Signal the mages,” Artemisias instructed.

“All non-fire mages are ordered to attack,” the farspeaker relayed into thin air. Only a few seconds passed before mages on the walls began to direct concentrated attacks at the bridges from every angle. Liches across the fjord lifted themselves into the air, suspending themselves above the chasm in order to position themselves better to intercept the boulders and spikes of ice flying towards the bridges.

“Excellent. Now—”

“Artemisias, look!” Tryggve interrupted. Following the general’s outstretched finger, Artemisias looked to see what had been so urgent.

“A…lich? Wait, she looks familiar…”

“Too far away to tell for certain, but those wounds match the reports of Countess Moller’s death,” Tryggve confirmed.

“…her son. Where was he deployed?”

“I didn’t assign him a location personally, but if I had to guess…” Tryggve said ominously. “Artemisias, she’s not the only mage we lost before we pulled back to the river. If they’ve held all of them back to use them at this moment, there’s no way of predicting how many of their family members will falter.”

“Tch. Farspeaker, order the fire mages to attack immediately,” Artemisias commanded, grabbing his helmet off the wall.

“What on Ennos do you think you’re doing!?” Tryggve demanded as Artemisias marched for the stairs. As he walked, he counted the number of explosions he heard behind him.

“If we could hear only four explosions from here, so could our people on the walls. They’ll start to panic as soon as they realize something’s gone wrong and the flow of undead isn’t stopping. I’m going to rally the troops until our mages can reorganize,” Artemisias replied.

“There’s two bridges remaining. I’ll take one while you handle the other,” Tryggve said, trying to follow.

“I need you here. Pull back any mages whose family members are attacking us…those that survived the first clashes, anyway. Organize the rest to mount a counteroffensive and distribute the troops the remaining bridgeheads. Until then, I will hold the line.”