Novel Full Chapter 1489 The Siege Begins
Chapter 1489 The Siege Begins
A gasp rippled through the soldiers on the wall. A few stepped back. One woman made the sign of the Goddess across her chest.
Then just as quickly as it came, it passed.
Aldren steadied himself against the battlement and forced his breathing even.
He knew this man. Everyone did. The reports were extensive, contradictory, and mostly useless, but certain facts had survived the noise.
Quinlan Elysiar was dangerous. That was beyond dispute.
He was also a coward.
The same man who fled from Queen Morgana when she cornered him. The same man who ran to the Elvardian alliance because he couldn’t crack the barriers protecting the kingdom’s settlements on his own. He needed dwarven siege engines to do what he couldn’t. He needed an army to open the doors so he could walk through them.
Without the war machine behind him, the Primordial Villain was a lone wolf howling at a fortress.
Impressive noise. No bite.
Aldren turned to his soldiers.
“That man is a vulture!” His voice was steady now, carrying the authority of a commander who had processed the threat and dismissed it. “He circles. He waits. He picks at the corpse after the real predators have done the killing. He has never broken a barrier on his own. He has never taken a city without the dwarves handing it to him.”
With a shout, he decreed, “That man is a weaker version of Morgana Ravenshade!”
He pointed toward the southern tree line where the siege engines were rolling into position.
“Those are your enemy. The bombards. The catapults. The crews loading them. That is what will crack our walls if we let it.” His sword swept toward the floating figure in the sky. “That is a buzzing fly waiting for someone else to open the jar. Ignore him! Focus your fire on the artillery! Every engine you destroy is another hour we survive! Every crew you scatter is another day Duke Tharion has to reach us!”
The soldiers stared at the black figure in the sky for one more heartbeat.
Then they turned to their stations.
“Man the ballistae! Wardkeepers, reinforce the barrier! Archers, I want suppressing fire the moment those engines clear the tree line! Move!”
…
The first dwarven engine cleared the forest at midday.
It was enormous. A siege bombard mounted on a reinforced platform of iron and oak, dragged forward by a crew of thirty dwarves who hauled it into position with chains thick as a man’s arm. Runes lined the barrel, etched deep into the metal, glowing faintly as the crew began their calibrations.
A second engine followed. Then a third. A fourth.
By the time the fifth cleared the tree line, the southern field looked like a foundry had emptied itself onto the grass. Bombards, catapults, and ballistae of dwarven make, each one larger and meaner than anything Whisperfield’s defenders had seen in their lifetimes.
Behind the artillery line, elven rangers fanned out in loose formations, bows drawn, watching the walls for any sign of a sally.
Aldren counted the engines from the battlement. His jaw tightened with each new frame that appeared.
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
They kept coming.
“Barrier status!” he barked.
Below the wall, in the reinforced chamber built into the gate’s foundation, twelve mages sat in a circle around the barrier crystal. Their hands were pressed flat against the floor, veins of light running from their fingertips into channels carved in the rock, feeding mana into the artifact that held the city’s protective shell intact.
The barrier shimmered above Whisperfield like a second sky. Translucent, faintly golden, visible only when the light caught it at the right angle. Projectiles could pass through from the inside, yet nothing passed through from the outside.
“Barrier holding steady, my lord!” a runner shouted from below. “Wardkeepers report full capacity!”
“Good. Rotate them in shifts. I want fresh channelers every thirty minutes. No one burns out on the first day.”
The first dwarven engine fired.
The sound was different from anything the defenders had heard before. A deep, rolling crack that echoed off the ridge and bounced through the valley, followed by a whistling that climbed in pitch as the projectile arced across the field.
A shot wrapped in steel bands struck the barrier dead center.
Light erupted across the shell’s surface. The impact point flared white-gold, ripples racing outward in concentric rings.
The barrier held, and a moment later, a cheer went up from the wall.
But no one cheered twice. The soldiers knew what was coming.
“Battlemages, to the walls!” Aldren commanded. “Wardkeepers, hold your positions! No one leaves the circle!”
The distinction was simple.
Wardkeepers were the mages who fed the barrier. Large mana reserves, steady output, and the endurance to channel for hours without collapsing. They were the foundation. Without them, the barrier fell and the city died. Healers. Enchanters. Divination specialists whose talents could map a battlefield but couldn’t dent a shield.
In a field battle, every one of them had a role. In a defensive siege behind a barrier, most of them were dead weight. That’s why they were trained to become Wardkeepers.
Battlemages were those who could kill at range. Firecasters, stormcallers, siege-class elementalists. Mages whose offensive output could match or exceed a ballista bolt at four hundred meters. They lined the walls alongside the archers, adding their firepower to the barrage that passed through the one-way barrier.
On the field, the dwarven artillery sat still after the first shot.
A single flare, a single impact, then nothing.
The first bombard had been a declaration.
We’re here.
Now the real preparation began.
From the tree line, dwarven crews rolled out smaller machines. Bolt catchers. Shield platforms. Rotating mantlets designed to absorb return fire while the main engines reloaded. They assembled around the bombards in practiced formations, each piece locking into the next, creating a defensive perimeter around the artillery that turned the open field into a fortified position.
Behind them, ammunition wagons emerged. Heavy carts stacked with mana-packed shells and steel-banded rounds, each one sorted by type and calibrated for a specific engine. Loaders moved in teams of four, heaving projectiles into place with the grim rhythm of men who measured their day in volleys.
Then the chanting started.
Low at first. A rumble that rose from the dwarven ranks like something crawling out of the earth.
“♪Born of stone… return to stone…♪”
Deep voices joined in layers, guttural and rhythmic, building into a drone that vibrated through the ground and into the walls of Whisperfield itself.
“♪Forged in fire… tempered in blood…♪”
Fists struck breastplates in time with the rhythm. Boots stamped. Engine crews joined in, their hands still working chains and levers while their voices added to the wall of sound that pressed against the barrier.
“♪Steel remembers what flesh forgets…♪”
The chant grew heavier. Darker. The rhythm slowed, each beat landing like a hammer on an anvil, and the words that followed were not a boast.
They were a eulogy.
“♪Mother of the deep… count their dead… and find them worthy…♪”
The dwarves mourned their enemies before the first volley. They sang the funeral rites in advance, and when the song ended, they would bury them without hesitation.
Aldren felt it in his teeth.
Many dozens of bombards. Scores of smaller engines. Thousands of crew. Tens of thousands of infantry. An entire war machine oriented at his walls, and they were singing.
The count turned from the battlement.
“Wardkeepers, thirty-minute rotations starting now! First relief standing by! Battlemages, hold fire until my command! Archers, conserve your ammunition. Don’t waste a single bolt on their shield platforms, wait for exposed crews!”
His officers relayed the orders down the wall. Soldiers moved. Positions shifted. The city settled into the grim, measured rhythm of a defense that knew it had to last.
Aldren found Velara at the base of the eastern tower.
The Arch Priestess was sitting on a stone bench with her bandaged hand resting in her lap. The color had not returned to her face. The basin lay dark and cracked beside her, spent.
“Arch Priestess. Is there anything else you can do? Can you ask the Goddess for aid?”
Velara looked at him.
For a moment, something that was almost a laugh crossed her face. Almost. It died before it reached her mouth, settling into a tired, knowing expression that made her look older than her years.
“The elves are children of the Goddess. The dwarves are children of the Goddess.” She looked toward the wall, toward the sound of chanting that bled through the stone. “Why would she play favorites? Her heart must weep, watching her children kill each other for mere land.”
Aldren’s jaw worked. “They allied with the undead.”
The words came out sharp. Pointed. The kind of argument a man made when he wanted divine intervention and was willing to build a legal case for it.
Velara was quiet for a moment.
Her eyes dropped to her bandaged hand. The hand she’d cut open to purge the tunnels of the undead. The hand that still trembled when she closed it.
“A mother does not stop loving her children when they make terrible choices. She grieves. She rages. She waits for them to find their way back.” Her gaze lifted. “That is what the Goddess does. She does not pick sides. She endures, and she hopes.”
She flexed her injured hand. The bandage darkened at the palm.
“Our duty is to survive long enough for her hope to mean something. That is all prayer has ever been: buying time.”
Aldren studied her face.
This woman had bled herself half to death to purify the ground beneath his city. She hated the undead with every fiber of her being. If anyone had reason to demand the Goddess smite the enemy, it was her.
And she was telling him no.
He exhaled.
“Buying time,” he repeated.
“Buying time,” she confirmed.
The chanting outside grew louder.
Aldren stood, adjusted his sword, and walked back toward the wall.
…
The first full volley hit the barrier like a drumroll from hell.
Quinlan watched from above the cloud line as dozens of bombards discharged in rolling sequence, each impact blooming white-gold against the shell.