Chương 63: Chapter 64: Siege Time

When I hit accept on my final skill, I was brought back to real time. Mentally, I still expected time to have passed and things to have gotten hectic in the meantime. Maybe one day I could find out how that whole time-stopping thing worked, but today wasn't that day.

"Alright, I'm done," I said to Priest Lewys.

"How high did it take you?" he asked.

"26." I said.

"Whoa, that is impressive," Lewys said.

"How much mana do you have?" I pulled my UI up and saw that I had 2, 340/2, 340 mana. So I told Lewys.

"By the System!" he said.

"The maximum amount of mana per level is a hundred. Average is fifty. Johnstone is considered very gifted and he gets eighty per level. Ninety is mighty impressive. You probably would have manifested a Wizard class on your own if you were here much longer. We need to get you a Wizard class as soon as we can." He shook his head in awe, then said, "Well, go get your weapons, then go find your sergeant." I was excited about my new options with mana, but now wasn't the time to think about it.

After all, I didn't have any spells that would be useful yet. I'd noticed that it sounded like I needed mana to operate my new tractor repair skills, so a large mana pool looked to be mighty helpful. After this fight, I would figure things out. I thanked Lewys and quickly made my way to the stables. Colin was waiting there for me, my rifle and pouches in his hands. He handed me my ammo pouch belt first. I took my belt off and pulled the sheath for my bowie knife off of it and threaded it onto the new belt.

I looked at my sword, but left it with my tack. The sword was probably a liability. I could tell Colin was nervous, but there was also a glint of excitement in his eyes. He was sixteen after all.

"Where's your ma?" I asked.

"She's at the inn," he said.

"A bunch of the women are there right now. They'll go to the soldiers barracks if they need to. There's no one in there anyway."

"Yeah, that's too bad." I said. Then continued on, "The meeting didn't go how I thought it would, but we're all gonna be okay on that front. I'll tell you and your ma about it after this is all over." He smiled at me hopefully.

"Well that's good. I'm going to join you. I'm sure Hari will let me join up, I'm old enough anyway." I laughed. This seemed to be about the time in a movie where someone would say he was too young, but eventually we'd need him on the wall anyway during the most desperate time just before the enemy breached the walls. But the kid was sixteen and had militia levels. He was a better shot than I was. If his gun helped keep the walls from being breached, everyone would want it there before things got desperate.

"Well, let's go see," I said. We made our way to the central mustering area where there was a real hubbub of activity. I found Hari and Glenn, along with Brendan and four of the other seven men in our squad. I had talked little with the other men. They were all Laborers who worked at the docks. They didn't seem like bad guys, but there was a definite divide between the town guys and those of us who spent our time on homesteads. Hari walked up to us and eyed Colin for a moment.

"Well lad, what're you doin' 'ere? Do you think you're goin' to join up to fight?" Colin looked stricken, but he replied with force, "I have militia levels, I have my levels. I can shoot better than most." Hari smiled then and said, "Works for me! This won't count as your official welcome though, don't think you're gettin' out of your beers." I laughed at that, but Colin looked like he wasn't looking forward to the ritual.

"Where should we be?" I asked. Hari looked around for a moment, then said, "Why don't you two 'ead up to the northern wall and meet up with Sean. He's in charge of that section.

'E can use Colin for sure. If 'e doesn't need you, and Colin is okay with bein' with the Scouts on his own, come back to see me. I know the entire squad is in town, once we 'ave all ten of us, or nine if you stay with Colin, we'll be assigned a wall spot by Woolsly or Sean."

"Can do," I said. I looked at Colin and asked, "You ready boyo?" Colin looked nervous, but resolved. His response was exactly what you'd expect from a teenager.

"You're damned right I am John." The square was crowded. But as we made our way towards the northern wall, I couldn't help but notice that even with around three thousand people in town, it felt worryingly empty. I knew that Weston was intended to eventually house over twenty-five thousand full-time residents. Those long walls meant that we were currently woefully under-manned with fewer than a thousand defenders. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Once we cleared the crowd, we quickly made our way to the stairs up the wall next to the northern gatehouse. There weren't any guards at the base of the stairs, so we made our way up to the ramparts. I was planning on going to talk with Sean right away, but when I looked out towards the empty ground outside the city walls, I was momentarily stunned. There were thousands of goblins surrounding the city walls. On this north side alone, it looked like there had to be several thousand.

It looked like they were settling in for a prolonged siege, I could see goblins setting up tents and building campfire spots. The whole thing looked more organized than I'd expected it to. That was my prejudice rearing its ugly head, no doubt. In most literature I'd read, goblins were shifty creatures with low intelligence. I'd never actually seen a goblin, and I had been told it took a hundred years to defeat them and their troll allies, so they couldn't be too incompetent.

With my enhanced vision thanks to my evolution, I make out pretty good detail from this distance. The goblins looked like they were smaller than most humans, maybe by half a foot or so. They had olive-green skin. I couldn't see eye color or distinct features from this distance, but it looked like they had lean, more angular faces than humans. It was also too far away to see hair colors very well, but I could tell they all had very dark hair.

It was sunny out, and I could see the glint of metal armor on a large percentage of them. All of this was shocking, but when I actually saw a large contingent of goblins riding wargs, that's when my blood really ran cold. My mind immediately went back to that day in the woods when Colin and I were attacked. I could feel the fear and adrenaline as I whirled around and took a shot at the beast streaking at me from behind. I could feel as it collided with me, throwing me to the ground.

I shivered and shook myself to rid myself of the remnants of fear the memory brought forth. The goblins were well outside the range of our city defenses, but I saw half a dozen goblin bodies around 800 yards out. That was the extreme range of most scout rifles. The goblins either couldn't pull them back, or hadn't tried. They had a set of red-painted stakes set up in a line that showed where they were safe to roam.

From my height, I could see that there was a large pavilion of the same brown canvas the smaller tents were made of being set up behind the rest of the tents. I looked behind me to see Colin standing there, as slack-jawed as I no doubt had been. I reached over and gently squeezed his shoulder before saying, "Colin, son. We need to go see Sean. These walls are plenty tall enough that they're not coming over them any time soon."

He nodded and started walking with me to where we could see a tent had been erected on the twenty foot wide walls. The front and both sides were currently pinned up. I could see Wall Captain Hawker, as well as several other lean-looking men talking and looking at a map on the table they'd set up. We waited until they were done talking before we tried to get their attention. I was probably the most powerful fighter in the city, but not very many people were aware of it.

I also wasn't a fighter with any special abilities, so my interruption wouldn't be helpful to the city's defenses. While we waited, I risked another glance back out at the goblins. From where I was standing, I only saw goblins and wargs. I took that as a good sign. The almanac said hill trolls could grow to be twenty feet tall. I thought the city defenses would be able to repel the trolls, but if there were enough of them, they could probably make it to the walls and cause damage.

I didn't see the goblins setting up any siege weapons, so I thought we should be safe within the walls for a while. The city granaries were full, and we had plenty of wells. We should be able to wait things out until the army came to relieve us. After I looked out at the goblins, I looked back in towards the city. Even with the entire population of the region inside the walls, it looked so empty. If we took everyone who could hold a gun, that still didn't seem like enough people to repel such a large force.

As far as I was aware, there were only two Wizards in town. Johnstone and one other man, a Fire Wizard named Gael. I was also told that Bishop Smythe and Priest Lewys were Cleric classes. They could heal injuries but didn't have any offensive spells. The almanac had a long section on the goblin Shaman class. They mostly used debuffs and earth magic at lower levels. Our wall enchantments were designed to counter their earth magic abilities, so they were safe from being brought down because of magic.

We had ten ballista and catapults on each wall, but they were slow. With our modern rifles, we would probably be better off having most men just shoot at the goblins. From what I knew, the goblins didn't have any firearms, just bows, javelins, and whatever melee weapons they carried. Colin broke me out of my musings.

"John, do you think those wargs we saw were just scouts for this bigger army?" I shrugged.

"Likely, but I'm no expert. I've never been in the army or anything before. Even if they weren't, this army is probably why we haven't seen big game all summer." He nodded.

"Makes sense. They'd need a lot of food to feed this army. I swear it looks like they have at least ten thousand goblins out there."

"Sure does," I replied.

"But like I said, these walls are tall and the granaries are full. I don't see any trolls. Hopefully we can just wait them out. I'm sure someone sent for the army." Right then, the meeting broke up, and Sean saw us. He waved us over.

"Gentlemen, how are we?" Sean said in a matter-of-fact voice.

"Oh, just another lovely fall day," I replied. Sean gave a small chuckle at that.

"Oh," I said.

"I've never been in a militia before this. When we're at war how should I address you and the rest of the guards? The army structure changes now right?" He nodded.

"Aye, My title is Wall Captain Hawker. Just call me Wall Captain until we've taken care of our goblin infestation. Up here, I outrank even Captain Castell. Each of the other three walls has their own Wall Captain. They outrank me on their section of the wall. It might sound silly, but each side of the wall is a mile long." He laughed, then said, "The nobles all bitched and moaned about the cost of these walls. I'm plenty happy the Grand Quest didn't give them a choice." I couldn't argue with that.

"Where do you want us?" I asked.

"I can leave Colin with you if you want. He's a heck of a shot, so he'd be better up on the wall all the time. I'm just an average militiaman." The Wall Captain eyed Colin for a moment before he shook his head.

"No. Have him stay with your squad. We're going to keep the scouts attached to their units for now. Once Sergeant Morgan has the other nine members of your squad ready to go, they'll be coming back up here and I'll put you all in charge of a ballista." He quietly said, "The ballista to the left of the city gate has an issue with one of the winches. It takes a strong man to run the winch to pull the cable taught."

He looked around to make sure no one was too close, then he leaned close to me and said, "Sounds like you're the strongest man in the city now."