Chương 188: Book 3 Chapter 45.5: Generals and Champions

++To find an eighteen year-old girl who could cause such trouble for my family was, of course, beyond unacceptable. My poor ancestors, they truly did not know what order of being they had just encountered. ++ - Commentary by Maria Voret. 1, 938 A. E. The bulk of the enemy's army was still together by the time they reached the walls, and their surviving magicians wasted no time in making that the defenders' problem.

Instantly their aether walls shot ahead, melting and warping to wrap around the cannons before re-solidifying. Agrian recognised the trick for what it was, and had to appreciate the ingenuity if nothing else. With solid surfaces a mere foot or two from their barrels, the weapons were essentially neutralised. Their projectiles exploded on impact, and right now those explosions would go off close enough to destroy the cannons themselves.

He started making his way over to clear them out as the first warriors leapt onto the wall. Instinct took over, and Agrian Vornholt became an unthinking thing of reflexes and steel. The first warrior was a young man of the First Class, too slow to even react before Agrian's lunge took him twelve feet forwards and sent his sabre ripping into the soldier's guts. He freed it with a twist, then turned to parry the swing of another.

Other warriors were circling around him, he could hear their boots scraping on the ground. All First Class, but that wouldn't matter if they swung from behind. He didn't have eyes in the back of his head. Agrian went low and flung himself back. The good thing about being a warrior was your whole body was a weapon, literally. He powered himself into the man right behind him faster than a normal human could've sprinted, and the supernatural strength of his torso gave it a solidity akin to an Agrian-sized boulder.

The poor sod went flying and hit something hard enough that the thud was audible. By then the other enemies were closing in, two strikes at once from two directions. Agrian didn't take either head on, just jumped over the men to land behind the one ahead of him. By the time the warrior turned, Agrian's sword had flashed again and split him from shoulder to hip. More were foaming up from the ground below, flying like a flock of birds taking off then landing like those same birds flying through a cloud of toxic gas.

They weren't especially impressive specimens, but each of them was fast and strong and young where Agrian was old. Fortunately, he wasn't fighting by himself. One of the nearest warriors went down as a large portion of his chest just exploded. Agrian glanced to the side and saw Blakely wielding a gun that looked every bit as magical as Isabel's cannons, already whirring it up for another shot. Then he turned back to the fight.

Agrian continued to swat a few more flies among the enemy before he faced serious resistance. One man cleared the wall with ease, landing almost over it before turning to surge after Agrian from behind. Agrian spun, parried his blade, then felt his cheek stream with blood as the sword whipped around unspeakably fast and was barely turned aside a second time. He stepped back, his enemy stepped forwards, and the man pressed the attack. In his prime, Agrian would've enjoyed an even fight here.

Maybe won or maybe lost but done it by a narrow margin either way. He was twenty years past that prime, and his exhaustion was building fast. The other man knew it, too. He was fighting with the lack of restraint that came only with youth, but that didn't mean anything for Agrian. If his enemy tired after killing him, he'd still not be around to see it. The sword seemed everywhere at once, and each of Agrian's parries came slower than the one before it. His arms were feeling heavy. Heavy.

His own human weight was starting to register to his inhuman strength, that's how tired he was. The blade being knocked from his grip was all but inevitable. But his end, apparently, was not.

"Fuck you!" came a new, oddly familiar voice. Agrian turned just in time to see Qaigor rushing the warrior. The boy had grown maybe an inch since he saw him last, but more notable than that was the armour covering him. Archaic metal that rattled and scraped as he moved. The blade in his hand seemed just as ancient in design, and Agrian had just enough time to feel his guts squirm with dread before his son engaged their enemy.

The man lashed out with an inhumanly fast strike that Qaigor caught with the edge of his own weapon. There was a flash, then Qaigor's sword simply split right through the enemy's and took his arm off at the elbow. Agrian just stared. The warrior stared too, though more in horror than disbelief as his eyes locked onto the gushing stump where his arm had once been. He had just enough time to open his mouth for a scream before Qaigor swung again, this time sending the sword right up into his enemy's chest.

Powerful warriors rarely wore armour, simply because any amount of steel that would stop a blow capable of threatening them would be unfeasibly bulky and encumbering, doing more harm than good. So it was that Qaigor's clearly-enchanted sword met only the flesh of its target and sank deep. The boy was drenched in blood by the time his enemy died, split almost head-to-toe. Agrian still saw him grinning through the mask of viscera and felt a sudden wave of pride as Qaigor looked his father's way.

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"You said a man doesn't stop fighting till the fighting's done," the boy told him, eyes narrow with focus.

"The fighting isn't done Father, let's go!" Agrian took a moment to stare and truly soak up that his boy had become a man, then he snatched his fallen sword back up, paused to regain his breath, and got back to work. Even with Qaigor's help, it was hard fighting. Agrian focused on the cannons first, having Qaigor cut apart the aether while he defended his son.

As before, there were plenty of warriors scrambling over to stop them, but once the first barrel was free the tide of bodies slowed as another shot of that infernal energy struck just short of the wall beyond and blew apart men by the score. That produced a convenient opening to move onto the next cannon. As they went, Agrian saw a few men frozen up or stumbling around clearly lacking anything to do. Inexperienced fighters often got like that when their superiors were killed, like bodies without heads.

"The cannons!" he roared.

"Cut away the aether around the cannons!" Apparently that was all they needed, instruction to galvanize them and a strong, booming voice to snap them from their reverie. Not all obeyed, but enough did that Agrian was sending men to sweep along the wall and finally mount some determined resistance. And it wasn't a moment too soon, because the enemy's magicians had started making their way up now to add firepower to the conflict.

Isabel's weird Estalian magicians came up to meet them, and spells were soon being flung over the heads of fighting men. It felt like being caught between an artillery duel. Agrian kept his head low and made sure Qaigor did so as well. The boy's courage was commendable, his caution about being decapitated by a stray spell? Not so much. Granted, Agrian wasn't sure what magic would even do to the boy right now.

If that armour he wore was as magical as the sword then he might well bounce a fucking howitzer shell off his chest. Two more cannons were freed up and the crews dragged back to fire them into the enemy's masses, but more and more were scaling the walls. By now the enemy magicians had started setting up actual staircases, fully enclosed structures of aether that led from the ground to the top of the wall and allowed for their men to rush up in near-total safety.

Twice the cannons aimed for them, but they were the most fiercely defended parts of the assault. Agrian ordered the artillery to fire for the masses of soldiers instead. That was the nature of a siege. It was a race. The attackers wanted to get a sizable bulk of their men inside, while the defenders in turn worked to whittle away their enemy's numbers and ensure there were as few of them as possible by the time the breach finally came. Every advantage was on the defenders' side save for numbers. Three to one.

That was the golden ratio, three attackers for each defender, or else attackers of high-enough quality that they averaged three defenders each. Agrian had counted Isabel's forces at around six hundred, with a similar proportion of magicians to the enemy but far fewer warriors. There were those damned machines too, 'golems' she called them. Those would probably skew the ratio. So call it two and a half attackers for each defender.

Which meant they needed to whittle the enemy's numbers down to fifteen hundred before the walls were abandoned just to stand a chance. Agrian was doing his part as best he could, killing his way to the next cannon, but from the corner of his eye he saw the first one already getting swamped. He cursed, momentarily torn between heading forwards and back. Qaigor saw his indecision and wavered with him. Then Isabel made her appearance, and it all stopped mattering.

She flew down in a strafing run over the enemy's forces, trailing liquid fire behind her. It was like burning oil, though it produced flames of a far greater heat and intensity as it rained down on the enemy. Agrian smelled cooking meat instantly as bodies were engulfed and the screams of agony became louder than the screams of bloodlust. By the time the first men were collapsing, his daughter was already tearing back skyward in the wake of countless hastily-aimed gunshots.

The enemy's eyes were on her, and for a brief moment their flow was too disrupted to reinforce the men already on the walls.

"Qaigor, rush back to hold the cannons we've already taken," Agrian roared as he began surging forwards. Many young men disobeyed orders in their first battle, taken by adrenaline and dreams of heroics. Qaigor was smarter and more reliable than that, and it seemed there was no limit to the ways in which he would make his father proud. He headed back without so much as a question.

Agrian fell upon a set of warriors still shakily guarding one of the cannons and started lashing out, first with his sabre, cutting past theirs and into close quarters, and then with a mighty headbutt to what looked like their leader. It turned out Agrian's cranium was structurally superior to his target's, because the man's face caved in like a mundane human who'd just had a boulder dropped on him. Before he even fell, Agrian was killing the ones behind him.

He saw Isabel flit by from the corner of his vision and watched a new wave of flames sprout up. Twelve. Isabel had been twelve, maybe younger, when she'd finally surpassed her father in power. She was over eighteen now, and by the sounds of it she'd never stopped accumulating strength. Agrian found himself genuinely, deeply terrified of his little girl. And he found himself, even more intensely, glad to have her on his side of the fight.

He riposted his sword through a man's guts, then twisted it free with a motion that left entrails unfurling from the stomach like bloody sausages in a string. Agrian turned to gaze fully at the mass of men beyond and felt his blood chill as he did. Someone was emerging from among them, someone whom Isabel's fire did not seem to touch. Someone Agrian recognised as Aravon Voret. Fire rained down on the man, and he brushed it aside with a wave of his hand.

An aether staircase was crumbling, and he reinforced it with another. A cannon fired at him directly… The man raised both arms and conjured up a barrier that stopped the shot with his own power alone, even as the ground shook around him. Isabel aborted her dive bombing to arc straight for him, and Voret turned to meet her. Agrian's breath caught in his throat as he waited for the two magicians to clash. This would be what determined the victor. The rest of them barely had a say.