The pre-dawn air was still and cold. A low mist clung to the ground, muffling all sound. It was a perfect cloak for an army. From my command post on a high ridge, I looked down at Fort Drakon through my spyglass. The fortress was a formidable structure of grey stone, its battlements sharp and clean against the paling sky. A single, lazy plume of smoke rose from a cookfire within its walls. They were sleeping.
My signal, a shielded lantern flashed three times, was relayed silently through the darkness. The symphony of destruction began.
The first movement was silence. A hundred of Kai's Ashen archers, moving like ghosts in the gloom, nocked their arrows. Their targets were the lone sentries walking the walls, their figures silhouetted against the first light. A hundred arrows whispered through the air as one. A dozen figures crumpled and fell without a sound. The walls of Fort Drakon were blind.
The second movement was thunder. "First volley!" I commanded Ulf and the siege crews.
The onagers, which we had painstakingly wound to their maximum torsion, were released. With a sound like the cracking of the world's spine, the three massive throwing arms whipped forward. Three huge boulders, the size of small goats, soared through the air in a high, graceful arc. They crashed into the fortress walls with titanic force.
BOOM! CRACK!
Stone exploded inwards. The impact didn't break the wall, not on the first hit, but it sent a shockwave through the entire structure. Lights appeared in the fortress barracks. Shouted, confused alarms began to echo. They knew they were under attack, but they had no idea from where or by what.
"Second volley!" I ordered. "Target the barracks roof!"
The crews worked with a desperate, practiced speed, reloading the great machines. Again, the onagers fired. This time, the boulders crashed through the timber-and-slate roofs of the main barracks, showering the waking soldiers with splinters and stone, turning their armory into a deathtrap.
Now, the main assault began. From the woods emerged 'Grak's Fist', the massive, iron-capped battering ram. It was carried on the shoulders of twenty of the strongest Ironpeak warriors, who charged towards the main gate, a solid iron shield roof protecting them from arrows. They moved with the unstoppable momentum of an avalanche, roaring Grak's name as their war cry.
Simultaneously, Borin's infantry advanced, their shields locked, a slow, inexorable wall of iron and wood, while Kai's archers now shifted their aim, laying down a continuous, harassing fire on the battlements, forcing the dazed defenders to keep their heads down.
The ram hit the gate with the force of a thunderclap. The thick, iron-banded wood shuddered and groaned. Again and again, the Ironpeak warriors slammed it into the gate, their rhythmic grunts a counterpoint to the crash of the catapults and the whistle of arrows.
The garrison commander, a flustered, minor noble, finally managed to organize a defense. Archers appeared on the walls, but Kai's bowmen, firing from concealed, elevated positions, were far more effective. Boiling oil and rocks were poured from the gatehouse, but the ram's iron roof held firm.
The siege was systematic, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient. This was not a chaotic raid; it was a dissection. My system-granted knowledge was being put into practice, and the result was overwhelming.
After a dozen earth-shattering impacts, the main gate splintered and broke, collapsing inwards.
"BORIN!" I roared, my voice carrying down to the field. "NOW!"
The Oakhaven Dragoons, who had been waiting patiently in the woods, burst forth. Twenty heavy cavalry, clad in captured royal plate, mounted on massive warhorses, with Borin at their head. They were a vision of royal power, now turned against its master. They charged through the shattered gateway, a spearhead of pure destructive force designed to shatter the garrison's last vestiges of morale.
The sight of heavy horse inside their own fortress was the final psychological blow. The provincial levies, already battered and terrified, threw down their weapons and fled, or tried to surrender. The battle for Fort Drakon was over. It had lasted less than an hour.
I walked through the captured fortress, the leader of a victorious army. The royal lion banner lay trampled in the mud. My allies, the nomad, the smith, and the farmer, stood together in the courtyard, their faces dirty and blood-splattered, but filled with a fierce, triumphant pride. We had done the impossible. We had marched into the heart of the kingdom and torn out its tooth.
But as I looked at the burning barracks and the bodies of the fallen—ours and theirs—I knew this victory was not an end. It was a beginning. A bloody, fiery, and glorious beginning. We had shown them our power. Now, we had to show them our resolve.