Chapter 104

 

This situation needs to change quickly. Until now I’ve mostly been using a defensive focus.

The siege over the dwarven walled mining village continues.

Within the first ten minutes there are already a lot of goblin bodies down in the barren area outside the walls. I wonder how long it will take for their bodies to start to smell…these bodies won’t dissolve since they aren’t in the demon realm or born from the demon realm.

But we need to clear away as many goblins as we can before nightfall without slowing down or having any mercy. If we can’t do that in time…we might as well throw in the towel and flee if there’s no dent in the progress of the goblins.

Are we supposed to feel bad that the goblins are dead?

Even in death, their faces look twisted with hate, grime, and filth.

While we’re working the smoking ruin of the burned up dwarven house is wafting bad air over near us that doesn’t feel good to breathe. It doesn’t help the fact that the burned house was near the middle of the keep area. Because of it, most of us have neckerchiefs, or handkerchief like material tied while wet around our faces to cover up our nose and mouth.

But it’s not that immediate in being able to move forward.

First there’s a lot of work.

The hard working dwarves have to load up huge barrels of water to get ready for more fires and having all the water that they can ready and prepared. Although everything is made of stone on the houses and walls, they’ve just seen magic make stone burn so they are feeling like they had to do some kind of preparation. Plus if we’re in for a long siege we will need a lot of water ready and stored on hand.

And to be fair they do use lumber in building the frames for the stone houses, as well as certain parts of doorways, and sheds or barns that often touch the houses or are really close.

I watched their preparations carefully.

Typically this means having large barrels nearby.

When empty these large barrels still weigh a ton and when full they also weigh even more, taking several athletically strong people to move comfortably, with each one being nearly about the size of a dwarf in height. Then we have to help load them full of water. There’s a huge line of people dipping buckets and water to get things worked out. I’m also sure this water connects to the water table of the stream nearby.

When possible they’ll use a horse drawn wagon to move things...but tonight they are using anything available.

They also have another area that is connected to the stream and moat somehow where they have like a protected and enclosed water trough that they can release a lever from to fill water barrels quickly. But to man this location depends on nothing getting inside the walls.

Then there’s also the work of carrying buckets of crossbow bolts up to the top of the ramparts.

We decided this was the best job for Rina to do. She of course needed reassurance that we wouldn’t forget her and leave her behind or let her die. But it’s true that we really need people to do a wide variety of jobs for the defense to work. It will keep her away from the front lines too, and I haven’t had a choice before to have her avoid the fighting but because she’s not that healthy I didn’t want to always have her taking risks.

There are other jobs too, like someone has to keep an eye on signaling from the bottom and top of the walls with each other what the crossbow bolt supplies are like and what needs are. This is in part because the people at the bottom of the walls on the inside can’t see what’s going on from up top. Sometimes there are needs for spears or swords to be replaced and brought up as well, since we find out that some of the dwarves using swords find their weapons aren’t indestructible and can be broken quicker than people think. All it takes is a heavy blow at the wrong angle and with enough force.

Also people have to run to and from the headquarters area with command messages, both for and from.

There’s need for wood, and food in addition the problem of the water for all kinds of purposes. Those supplies have to be kept close since it might be days before people can leave guarding the walls. Then someone also has to be ready to punish anyone that tries to go all coward and abandon the wall while coordinating the defense strategy overall and communicating with the officers. The dwarves have their equivalent of the sheriff doing this job, according to Deinan; which she takes about a half hour to explain and show me the complexity of this place.

The local shrine…or is it a church is going to be the place to put the heavily wounded and dying, but because of my skills that has been lessened to the point of not being needed. However I don’t expect that to last forever, since I have to prioritize my own survival before that of the others.

There are also all kinds of civilian volunteers running around wherever the action is. These are also signaled by one of the dwarven sheriffs. But as Deinan explained to me, in dwarven culture there isn’t really volunteers per se, but a civilian militia that’s on call and had been training part time for this while doing their day job during the rest of the week.

Is that similar to a National Guard unit on Earth?

I find that quite interesting.

Apparently dwarven towns have several sheriffs even when they are small settlements. But the human version of a sheriff and a dwarven version of a sheriff differ quite a bit. In both versions they serve public order, but the dwarven sheriff has more to do with siege fighting and siege defense than he does with preventing crime and is a separate position not counted with the local population per se. Per Deinan, he or she is expected to have a blend of skills like part mercenary, part smith, and part leader coordinator.

And there’s temporary sheriffs that can be called up just for nights like tonight when they are being attacked.

While we’re working and getting ready there appear to be like two or three dwarven sheriffs all shouting stuff around the walls. They in turn are reporting to Svinn, who is in charge of them and seems to be one of them.

I still have runic shielding cast on Rina with a protection from normal missiles spell. These two buffs can last for many hours, so that’s no problem. I still haven’t been able to get the elemental resistance buff duration as long as I want it to be at so casting it now on her is a waste of time. I can’t keep both my eyes on her, but she’s with younger teenage and older children of the dwarves that make runs, moving as fast as they can carrying the heavy buckets up the stone staircases.

It’s actually a very important job to keep the buckets which resemble buckets of giant nails flowing up from below; because with as many dwarves as we have up on top shooting pretty much non-stop, that means someone has to be in charge of ammunition supply. I’ve been curious about how this works out, since we don’t have guns. So I’ve timed things and the dwarven crossbow is pretty formidable. In the hands of someone with proper training it has a rate of fire of about two bolts per minute. Then with the fifty or so odd people up here at the top that means we’ve really needed the constant transport of crossbow bolts in buckets being brought up here constantly from the armory on the ground floor.

They did initially already have a lot of crossbow bolts stored up here at top, but they weren’t expecting a siege and so those supplies were gone within the first half hour.

I went through the math in my head.

2 crossbow bolts per minute for each shooter; they could shoot blindly but also need a few good seconds to aim right. Plus pulling the winch back on those big frames takes a special tool that requires a bit of force.

Approximately 40 dwarves firing bolts; aiming as best they can.

80 Crossbow bolts per minute counting all shooters but less some to account for technical issues that pop up; Thus we’ve worked out a reduced firing rate of maybe 70 to 75 bolts minute instead.

In the first hour, we’ve already burned through approximately 4200 to 4500 bolts gone in the first hour, since real life and physics are a bit different after you factor in chaos. That’s also not counting there’s a handful of master crossbow experts that have a slightly higher rate of fire, probably closer to three per minute.

Even with great marksmen not a lot of bolts hit. And sometimes the purpose of firing wasn’t to hit but to inspire fear, drive someone away from a certain position, provide an assist or setup a kill shot for someone else.

I’m surprised how fast the supply gets used up. All kinds of civilian dwarves have to help that get worked out. They also have to hug the ramparts coming up to avoid the goblins return fire.

Do they have someone that makes the bolts all the time, going non-stop or how?

We don’t seem to be running out of crossbow bolts, but that doesn’t mean I’m not nervous about it happening anytime soon.

Most of the adults that live in the town are up here, including the women. They even have their own armor, which is no less than that of the men folk. They can hit goblins just like any other male dwarf. But still, some of the goblins have been shooting their whole lives too. So nobody gets out from under cover when possible.

The only ones that aren’t up here that are adults are the Dwarven Heavy Armor team, which are lined up in front of the gate in case there’s a breach in the wall or if something attacks the front door. Even though their defense is colossal I can still see they flinch when large numbers of goblin arrows are flying everywhere. They are allowed to rest, since we’ll need their stamina later when it gets more intense.

The heavy armors are impressive!

I had Asakura stay with me and borrowed a large heavy body shield to have her cover me with. Even though I have the runic shielding I’d rather not miss any chance for protection. Occasionally she and I roam around to heal with her covering me when a dwarf gets wounded.

Within the first hour this happens twice, but both are only minor wounds of goblin arrows grazing someone’s arms. Still, because we know they sometimes use poison we couldn’t have known that they weren’t serious wounds without actually taking a look. We close it up quickly on both of them, and also use cure poison spells.

We aren’t able to shift into offense mode as quickly as I liked, because of having to keep people alive. It’s not easy when I know we need to do offense but have to shore up others from dying.

We finally get to a point where we can return fire.

With Asakura in front of me covering things up, we decided to change things up.

On either side of me are two older dwarven sharpshooters. I’ve tried an experiment of blending the light globe spell on a bolt with a paladin holy light mixed in. For some reason casting light before doing the paladin holy light makes it burn less. It now hurts to cast the paladin holy light I’ve found, which I try to keep the pain masked.

The dwarves probably think my pain is actually mana exertion because of trying to not let it show, but small amounts of it getting through. It’s like when you have a toothache and people can tell something is wrong with you, but not what’s really going on when you are hiding it. Really heavy effect spells also make me feel like a ricochet effect when released that affects the body. Over time that all builds up.

The light globe for some reason has also improved the radius of the paladin holy light small explosions. I’m not sure why. It shouldn’t do that. There shouldn’t be any effect.

I’m now trying to figure out why…but will have to look more closely at it later. Is it because light boosts its own element and because paladin holy light is light based?

The first bolt hit a squad of five novice goblins and four of them die instantly. The last remaining one is wounded but gets under cover.

If even one of them gets away who knows how much trouble it will cause…

Hmm…the speed isn’t bad, but every bit of mana lost means I’m gambling later with the possible need later of having had to use it for something else. That makes me antsy.

The second bolt I asked him to aim at some veteran goblins. It hits and has another small blue flame like explosion but this time none of them die. All four of the veteran goblins are wounded however. It wasn’t hard to pick out the veteran goblins once you learn to look for the ones with more salvaged armor bits and fancier war costumes, and more tattoos. The novice and newer goblin grunts also tend to be less clothed, often only having a loincloth or a type of short leather skirting.

So I’ve also learned also that the goblins have a lot of diversity in toughness. I have to time these types of attacks to be unexpected and not trackable or predictable however. We have to pace ourselves. I can’t risk running out of mana. We also have to watch for signs of those four shamans that are hiding out somewhere. They will also see the light globes from the bolts and where they are coming from. Though I’m using the stealth magic spell I’d learned recently to keep up and it’s helping but you can see the light globes pretty easily.

How long will it take them to notice where I’m at?

When they do the firing on my position could get Asakura hurt or worse.

I have to be strategic and move around!

The stealth spell also forces us to use more mana, because it blankets the same amount of mana cost with an opposing mana charge in the opposite direction.

Because I am considering that the cannibalistic vile goblin shamans are hunting us, I take the two dwarven sharpshooters with me and we change firing positions after every five minutes. I’ve also instructed Deinan to have two other groups of dwarves dressed and looking as much like me and my two sharpshooters with each acting as decoys and also moving around. They have a taller person with a shield too. The decoys can’t last forever and it’s imperfect but maybe it will help. It’s worth the chance.

The dwarves didn’t like it at first with me acting like I was in charge, until I told them the house that was burned out was really targeted to me and that the shamans would likely be back as soon as they could pick out leader locations to set up assassination ambushes. After pointing out that once I’m dead, the local dwarven leaders would be next on their list they were very quick to lend support.

So now we move on a stopwatch. There are also enough floors and towers in this keep that we don’t run out of firing positions anytime soon.

But why is the light globe taking the sting off the paladin holy light also? That part I still don’t get.

Confused…

The third bolt is a few minutes later and we blow up as many novice goblins as we can; six wounded with three dying.

They have a general or tactician!

This is not good for us!

We ended up playing cat and mouse a lot. Someone had unexpectedly decided to target ‘the dwarven mage team’ from the enemy’s side. So as soon as they see the light spells light up they are trying to concentrate their fire. It’s obvious the enemy commander is looking for our side’s leaders and champions to take out.

Even though we’ve blocked the fire, and the full body metal shield, Asakura is carrying has helped with the runic shielding it becomes very alarming having dozens of goblin arrows being shot at you per minute. Within the first minute, before we ducked down under cover the enchantment for protection from normal missiles fails on both me and Asakura.

We both duck down under the rampart’s cover as I pulled her on top of me. I hadn’t meant to do that. I had ducked down and tried to pull her down too because she looked like she was being aggressive and exposing her neck to attacks; it ended up being her lying on top of me falling horizontally on top of me with the shield covering both of us. Wow, this is warm and very comfortable…I probably like it too much. Plus having her chest pushed against me feels heavenly.

I resume fighting as quickly as I can fighting off the distraction.

The sharpshooters near us are fine because they use the wall’s crenellations and have more training in siege fighting than we do. They give us a cheesy grin. It’s partly their grateful to be alive, thinking we look silly, but feeling helpless themselves all mixed into one.

We resumed shooting some more.

The fourth hit blasted another goblin squad, two dead and four wounded.

The sharpshooters like this game. I also learned they have a lot of rivalry with each other and a lot of them are keeping score. Aernvein it seems is in the lead. He’s one of the sharpshooters that’s roaming with me and has the best eyes. He’s got a snow white beard that isn’t fuzzy at all but is a long sheen of hair that looks like it’s almost dripping wet with water in the way it flows down from his head and beard. Despite also being old, he has a lively gait but still limps while hobbling around.

The younger dwarves can’t keep up with him because he can shoot so well, not just with a good steady fire rate, but primarily with how many of his bolts hit and kill or maim goblins. Some of them are giving him outright looks of jealousy.