"Why didn’t you let us take that deal? Even with your cut, it’s still a huge amount of money.” Ellen asked, not hostile, just curious.

  “It was too open-ended. There’s a good chance she never takes back the fort, and we’d be stuck working for her forever unless we break contract. Plus, y’all aren’t strong enough to try and assault a fortified position yet. Especially with the limits in tactics down here. Not that it’ll matter after the girl’s mistake.”

  “What do you mean?” Nora asked.

  “She told the goblin we’re staying, so when it’s revealed we aren’t here anymore, it’ll look like we’ve broken contract. She’s put us in a position where, if we want to work down here again, we’ll have to publicly call her a liar. Even if she’s dead, it’ll be a blow to the Virtanen’s image and put y’all in a heap of shit.”

  “Then we’ll just have to wait until we’re strong enough to not worry about her to return.” I said in an attempt to shift the conversation away from our employer’s politicking, though Ellen shot me a glance as if I was a na?ve puppy. “Speaking of, do you guys think you’ll be able to advance once we get back to an Awakening Stone?”

  “I’ll be pretty close, eighteen or nineteen if I don’t reach twenty.” Ellen said with a glance at Nora, who’d fumed quietly since Maggie told us what Sylvie’s words meant.

  “Do you know which direction you’re going to advance?” I asked.

  “Might not advance my main yet. I’ll probably end up picking some kind of [Mage]. Start after my dad, y’know? Mika, what about you?”

  “Not sure how much I’ll have advanced by the time we’re done here, but I’m looking to pick up some kind of runic crafting class in Tier 3 either way.”

  “Rebecca, Helena’s mother, is aiming to be a [Runic Jeweler]. Maybe if we go into the Emerald Ocean on our next campaign, the two of you can share notes.”

  For as long as I’d known her, Rebecca loved runes, and as much as I listened to her, the knowledge of how they worked just slid off of me. I hoped that if I introduced the pair, Mika might be able to engage with her better than I could.

  “What about you Nora?” I asked.

  “I’m ready to advance right now. I was pretty close when we got down here and that first battle put me over the edge. Personally, I know I’m going to advance my [Mage] class, only real question is if I want to pick up [Sorceress] as well or wait.”

  Maggie nodded speculatively at Nora; a small smile had bloomed across her face as the conversation emerged.

  “Bran?” she asked.

  “I hit level ten during the battle. I know I’m going to continue down my class line. It’s Rare, so it’d be a waste not to. I’m not sure yet what direction I end up going with for my second class, though. Might just take one of the foundationals and seek to specialize further from there.”

  ~~~***~~~

  It felt odd to be at the edge of the wall. The crenelations coming up to just below my chin. In every other battle we’d fought alongside the aranae, the spiress placed us elsewhere. Either as a reserve force or in the thick of the fighting, not just another person along the wall. Beside me, Ellen stood in her battered armor alongside the last of Mika’s golems.

  He was already beginning the process of building new ones, having just requisitioned the [Quarry Master] for a block of rust red mesa stone. The work would be slow, but according to him, he’d have it functional within the week.

  That work had to be put on hold, unfortunately. Early the night before, the goblins pushed more of the shelters they’d used to get close to the wall into the courtyard. Rather than the domed slabs used previously, the ones they hauled in now were flat planes of stone, which I guess they intended to use to ramp projectiles away from themselves.

  Being forced to watch something you know is dangerous approach without being able to do anything about it was such a strange feeling. It almost felt like watching a tree fall on top of you without being able to move away.

  The limitations in my ability did not hold true for the [Archers] and casters within our force and as soon as the goblins hefted the things past their destroyed gate, the spiress ordered a never-ending barrage against them.

  Clearly designed to take punishment, the stone roofs chipped constantly, but each time they did, all it revealed was another layer of runed stone beneath, completely fresh. With the sheds nearly against the wall, the use of the bricks and stones piled at our feet by laborers earlier in the day finally clicked with me.

  Hollow cries and screams echoed out from the sheds as hundreds of goblins screamed in defiance and charged the last dozen feet to the wall. The impact of their flat-faced constructions reverberated across the courtyard and echoed so much I would have thought hundreds were placed if I wasn’t looking at them.

  An animal thrill surged within me as I picked up chunks of stone and hurled them as hard as I could against the roof of the structures. I delighted in the small chunks I managed to crack off and the brief reveal of goblins before they shuffled away from the exposed areas. Ellen felt it too, and together we raced to see who could throw the most stones, small laughs escaping us as we did so.

  The sounds of goblins sapping into our walls snuffed our nascent excitement quickly, however. Like hundreds of chittering rats, the impact of pickaxes echoed from beneath the protective structures and runic light pulsed constantly. Ten battering rams impacted the walls like the ringing of church bells in near unison.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  With each impact of the ram, the shed below Ellen and I rocked back slightly to briefly expose the teams of goblins working with pick and hammer to bring down the wall’s defenses.

  Rather than continue throwing the stones provided us at the top of the sheds, Ellen and I started waiting until the battering ram pushed the shed back slightly to hurl our stones down at the heads of the goblins beneath. When that didn’t work or the gap was too small, I did my best to try and block the sheds’ return with a well-placed stone.

  “Bran, help me with this.” Ellen said and drew my attention to the pot of boiling water two laborers set down beside her. Tongues of steam wafted into the air as filled the air with a slightly metallic scent.

  Sieges are almost always disgusting business. Every account I’d ever read and every assault I’ve ever taken part in has only reinforced that idea in my head. Now, as Ellen and I hefted the slightly too hot metal onto the space between crenelations, I desperately wished I had Iona’s grip around my throat so I wouldn’t feel the full effect of what I was about to do.

  The shelter rocked back with a bang from the ram and Ellen and I tipped the black iron pot to spill the boiling water onto a pair of goblins. Their armor covered most of their skin, but what little I could see of the deathly pale flesh blistered into a lobster red color almost instantly. Agonized, gurgled screams ripped from their throats as the pair dropped to writhe in torturous pain.

  I caught glimpses of their faces as they writhed, their boiled and blistered skin and howls of torment brought images of a rotted log cabin in the heart of the deep woods. Their screams and the sounds of similar wails all across the wall faded into the rhythmic tapping of finger nails against rotted, hollow logs, in time to drops of scalding water against my eyelids.

  “Bran?” Ellen asked, concern painting her features as she gently shook my shoulder.

  “I’m okay. I apologize.”

  “Yeah…”

  {Iona, battle draws near. I beg with all humility that you take me into your grasp so that my experience may sustain the Howling Winds.}

  I prayed desperately. Memories I so wished to remain buried clawed at my mind. I did everything I could to turn my attention away from the cries of the goblins beneath us, which now echoed out from beneath the shelters. I tried to ignore the scent of scalded flesh and burnt metal.

  Iona’s grip on my soul never arrived, and I instead focused my effort on hurling stones down at the goblins below us. Desperate to end the screams of at least one of the two below us.

  For hours, all I did was throw stones; at some point the boiled goblins either died or received treatment. Even after they were silenced, their screams echoed within my head like the impacts of the battering rams below us. It was lost to me, but at some point, the pile of stones got replaced and the pot of water refilled.

  Ellen, may the Grace Mother bless her, didn’t ask for my help lifting the pot again and instead enlisted the help of the warrior next to us.

  Rocks weren’t the only thing to batter against the shelters; spells, arrows, and javelins launched in waves. I knew I saw mist and other area of effect spells gather beneath the shelters. The shelters were sturdy, however, and even from what little I knew of rune work, I could tell it was excellent.

  Excellence meant little in the face of the sustained assault we put the runes under and eventually they failed. For hours, larger chunks of stone flaked off the upper layer of sheds and the rune work beaten. It was a shelter in the center that failed first. The sound as the roof snapped in half was hidden beneath the impact of nine rams against stone, but the cries of the crushed goblins were not and instead played grim harmony to the echoes of impact.

  When the goblins played their terrible string instrument and called a retreat, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. My entire being focused on the burning pain in my shoulders and back. My Endurance and Constitution were high enough to allow me to keep up with Ellen and the other Tier 2s, but the pain helped me focus and after five hours of gruesome work, my muscles screamed in protest whenever I did anything.

  Squatted down beneath the crenelations, so I didn’t present a target for the goblin [Archers], I did my best to stretch out my shoulders and arms. Content to miss out on watching the goblins flee across the courtyard. Ellen stopped me before I could even begin, however, and rapidly tapped my shoulder until with a groan I stood up to watch what she saw.

  The retreat cost the goblins more than the last six hours of bombardment had. Goblins from every shelter fled as they slowly lugged their shed back, but it was the goblins from the broken one that had it worst. Those who survived the collapse of their roof did their best to carry the splintered siege engine back to safety until enough of them died that it forced them to abandon it to the pieces of debris it kept getting stuck on.

  Unguarded by stone, the sight of their backs focused all of the aranae casters and [Archers]. Fifty goblins, the entirety of those who’d avoided being crushed, died as they sprinted back to the safety of their conquered wall. Ellen’s hand never left my shoulder during the retreat, with each death her fingers dug ever so slightly harder into my tired muscles. By the time the last goblin fell limp to the floor, half his head a mess of bubbling flesh, her hand was locked in a white knuckled grip on my armor.

  I couldn’t keep looking at the corpses in the courtyard absent the cooling presence of the Touch of the Black Hand. Instead, I turned my attention to the damage wrought against the wall. To my mild surprise, it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be. Scattered almost equal distance from one another, ten holes smashed a foot into the stone. Each hole had a central divot where the rams impacted, surrounded by a halo of hundreds of pickaxe strikes.

  We stayed long enough to watch as orders got passed down from the spiress, who’d remained in her bedroom the entire time, to the casters. Officers along the wall called out, and the scholars aided by the occasional laborer who made up the [Mage] core used the rubble along the base of the wall to create a small forest of jagged stone spears.

  Our stay ended when the first volley of trebuchet stones fired from behind the lost wall. We got lucky in that the goblin [Engineers] miscalculated and sent the stones hundreds of feet behind us, missing the fort entirely.

  The retreat into the safety of the wall was far more orderly this time, and because we hadn’t received any more orders, we followed Mika’s golem back into our room, where he, Maggie, and Nora were already present.

  Mika and Nora were already taking off their gear and winding down for the night when we got in. Ellen and I soon joined them, taking turns to wash up in the small copper basin provided us. Mika drew the short straw and was the last to wash up for the night.

  Once out of my armor, I started into a series of back and arm stretches, trying to keep my gaze locked away from my party to allow them whatever little privacy we could have in here. But my eyes kept being drawn to Maggie.

  Seated at the foot of her bed, still in the clothes she escorted us to the wall in, her eyes focused into the middle distance and never left the door. In a larger display of nerves than I’d ever seen from her, her fingers drummed against her knees while one of her legs wouldn’t stop bouncing. I wasn’t the only who noticed because Nora, who’d gotten out of her battle regalia and settled into bed, asked what I was thinking.

  “Something the matter Maggie?”

  Maggie chewed her lip for a moment, another sign of nerves I’d never seen from her. She scanned the four of us and weighed each against some scale before a surety settled into her features and she spoke.

  “The girl is going to lose the fort, and soon.”

  “What?” Ellen asked.

  “She has maybe half the troops she started with, and a fifth of those are casters. Which no offense, Mika, Nora, just aren’t as capable of holding fortifications as [Warriors] in the first watershed. She has no siege engines of either kind, person or mechanical. Once the goblins launch a full assault on this wall, it’s lost. It’s not a matter of if at this point, but when.”

  “What does that mean for us?” Mika asked.

  “Good news or bad news first?” She asked, a hint of her normal levity returning to her voice.

  “The bad.”

  “If the wall falls while you’re still under contract, you’ll be forced to join the retreat.” Maggie said.

  “And the good?”

  “As soon as the wall is lost, any orders relating to its defense are considered suicidal by Guild law and I can extract you from here without breach of contract.”

  “Who decides if the wall is lost?” Nora probed.

  “I do.” Maggie replied. “But I have to do so in good faith. I doubt the girl would take us to the [Guild Arbiters], but I have no doubt Gunilla knows the laws well enough to do so.”

  “So what’s the plan for if the wall falls and we’re still under contract?” Ellen asked.

  “More bad news. Hired muscle isn’t going to be on the priority list for a noble child so deep in the shit. Which means we’re going to go over how to retreat now, rather than have y’all caught out when it happens.”

  Maggie brought out a small stack of paper from her storage ring, along with a small black feather pen and a square glass jar of metallic red ink. Quickly, she sketched out a drawing of the tunnel system back to the city we’d been hired in.

  She went over the basics of what to do in a full retreat and did some quick math for how long it would take to walk back to the city based on the six-hour carriage ride. The total came out to just under twenty-four hours, but the number depended on how fast the aranae non-combatants in the cavern behind us could move.

  “Hold on. If the fort falls, why would we stay and not just retreat on our own? Wouldn’t it make sense for us to run ahead of them?” Ellen asked.

  “Two issues. If the fort falls and they don’t give any more commands related to its defense, it means you’re still under contract and will have to do as commanded if we ever want to work down here again. The second issue is that if the girl dies on the retreat and y’all don’t make at least a token effort in help, getting the money from the Virtanen is going to be a nightmare.”