Chương 83: Aelfwine's Birch

The scouts. I bolted to my feet.

"That was fast," Anchor said.

"Get the men up," I told him and Brawl.

"We might have trouble brewing." They both nodded, then scattered. While they worked, I rushed to the north, where the call had come from, then ran over to the mounted scouts. They both dismounted, out of breath, and faced me.

"Were you followed?" I asked.

"Not as far as we know," one said. I glanced at Lute, who had made the call.

"Get your squad positioned to the north. Keep an eye out, make sure nothing is coming toward us."

"Yes, sarge," Lute said, then gathered his men. Turning back to the scouts, I asked, "How close are the orcs?"

"Closer than we thought," one said.

"Three leagues west. We rode hard."

"It was the main army," the other scout said.

"Or what they'd gathered so far. It looked like mostly siege equipment. They were building siege towers and catapults. Trebuchets, ladders."

"How many orcs?" I asked.

"About four-hundred, in total." I chewed my lip. Even ambushing them, there was no way we'd take that many down. Probably not even if my squad and I were full sappers.

"They're tearing apart the trunk of Aelfwine's Birch to make their camp," one of the scouts provided.

"They've already dug into it for firewood. They'll fell it in a few weeks, given the chance." I'd only heard of Aelfwine's Birch a few times, but from what I'd gathered, it was a massive bogland birch that had stood for nearly as long as Gate had.

"They're under the tree?" I asked.

"Seems like they're using it for shelter and fuel."

"How tall is it? Be as precise as you can."

"Taller than any castle," said one of the scouts.

"Take one of those"—he pointed at a nearby copse of aspens—"and stack twenty of them root to tip. The canopy is a little broader, 'course, but it's covered in ice and snow." I nodded, then sighed.

"We can't let them take the tree, sarge," one of the scouts said.

"That tree has stood for hundreds of years. I know you may be a soul-stealer and all, but—""I won't let them take the tree," I promised. We could go back and try to get help from the 294th, but that wouldn't help us all that much. They were too busy fighting other battles to spare a whole army to take on the siege force. I rushed back through the camp, then found Anchor and said, "I wanna see something. Anchor, can you shoot one of those trees?" I pointed at the same copse of aspens as the scout had.

"Yes, sarge?" Anchor said. He nocked an arrow. Before he fired, I said, "What would be the best place to hit it to knock off all the snow and icicles? Without destroying the entire tree?"

"I'll try to show you," he said. He fired the arrow, and it soared through the air until it hit the tree, about two-thirds of the way up the trunk. The tree shook, its leaves rattled, and snow and ice tumbled off, creating a pile at its base. I nodded.

"I have an idea. Get those trebuchets hooked up to our horses. We're going to need them." ~ ~ ~ Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. We couldn't use the horses to take the trebuchet's far. They weren't meant for dragging heavy loads, and there was no way we could use them to get the siege weapons back to the camp. But we could move them a few leagues. Besides, the orcs hadn't been the most efficient at it, and we could do better.

They'd been dragging the weapons through the mud on slim wheels, which caused them to start sinking in. It might have been frozen, but it wasn't frozen solid, and wheels sank into the ground. They'd been dragging it through the muck just as much as they'd been rolling it.

We cut down as many nearby trees as we could find, ripped off the branches, then laid them down beneath the trebuchets' bases to help roll them along, which made it far easier on our horses when we roped them up to trebuchets and began dragging the weapons. It wasn't fast progress, but we moved at about walking speed. Some of us followed beside the procession, lifting up the logs as the trebuchets rolled past and shuffling them around to the front, then laying them in front to keep the weapons rolling.

As we travelled, I raced through our small army, hunting for anyone with experience using artillery. None of us had any real experience, save for a few lessons that some of the Dupes received at homecamp. It meant we'd have to take a few practice shots to set our aim and figure out how far we needed to throw the rocks. The second problem was finding ammunition for the trebuchets.

We couldn't carry any large rocks with us, and I didn't want to permanently damage a landmark that the rest of the Dupes seemed to hold quite dearly. At least, not too much. But the farther west we travelled, the more boulders we found scattered across the boglands, on the high ridges. Anything else had sunk beneath the muck in the summer. Ammunition wouldn't be an issue. Finally, after about two hours of dragging the trebuchets, a shout rang out from the Dupes at the head of the cluster.

I rushed forward with my squad, worried that we were about to run into a column of orcs. When I reached the top of a muddy ridge, I stopped. Here, the land grew more solid—not perfect, but solid enough that the distinct hills had returned. Ahead, in a low patch, a massive aspen and birch forest grew. But at its center was the largest tree I'd ever seen. It was about the height the scouts described. If anything, if was taller.

It had a single white-and-black marbled stem, which didn't seem thick enough to support the massive canopy of branches. Being the winter, the branches were bare, but there was plenty of snow. And best of all, stalactite-shaped icicles taller than me, accumulated over many months of humid but cold weather.

"Keep the trebuchets back," I hissed.

"Stay low. We don't know if they have any lookouts." I dropped to my stomach and crept to the very edge of the ridge. The orcs had cleared a route through the regular birch forest at the bottom of the tree, but they had only cut what they needed to get through. Then, they had begun harvesting the forty-foot thick trunk of Aelfwine's Birch.

"What's wrong with them?" Romance whispered, laying beside me on the ridge. Lute and Brick rushed over as well.

"They have an entire forest, and they go for the hardest tree to chop?" Anchor shook his head.

"Standard orc tactics. Demoralization is their goal. You'll hear their agents spouting lies in every big city and at every academy, claiming that we can't win, that we can't even defend our lands."

"And we can't let them be proven right," I said. After a pause, I asked, "If this tree is so important, then why was it just left unguarded?"" Important is a matter of perspective," Romance said.

"It's not materially important to the war effort. We wouldn't harvest it for wood, not when there are plenty of other trees around."

"It was the tree that the first king of Gate, Aelfwine, planted when he arrived on these shores," Elf said.

"In the summer, the wisemen and the sages make pilgrimages to seek its wisdom, but with the mountain passes closed, South Gate is empty of pilgrims." I nodded.

"And the Orders?"

"There are a few Orders who tend to these lands. We may encounter some Greencloaks here, but they are spread thin," Anchor said.

"What are the Greencloaks?"

"Rangers, and all Path-walkers. They take on the stronger foes while we worry about the orc armies." I nodded again.

"The longer we wait, the more of that tree they tear down." The orcs had set up a camp in the base of the tree. Tents made of hides and fur were scattered in disorderly patterns, and hundreds of orcs milled about, carrying scrap wood to and from wagons, or using them to construct siege towers and more artillery. All of them sheltered beneath the canopy. After a few seconds, I asked, "Lute, can your men hit the tree with the trebuchets from here?

Anchor will tell you where to hit, but I'll need your men to target it." Lute clasped his hands.

"We'll get working on it, sarge. Give us a few minutes to get set up, and find us as many rocks as you can."

"We have four shots," I said.

"Ready them all. Use two shots to sight your target and test the range, readjust as quickly as you can, then fire the next two shots immediately after. We can't give them even a moment to see what we're planning." I placed lookouts on the ridge, then slid back down to the rest of the squads.

"Get the trebuchets up to the ridge, and line them up abreast. Everyone who isn't working on sighting your target or charging the payload, you're with me. We're going to dig up as many rocks as we can get." I gathered a team of nearly ten Dupes, including Brawl, and we darted around the plains nearby, searching for any rocks we could get our hands on. We were looking for stones that were all about the same mass, and as round as we could get them.

When we found them, we pushed on one side until it dislodged, then rolled them up to the ridge and loaded the trebuchets.

"Sarge, they're ready," Lute told me.

"We can't waste any time. Fire."