Seven
In the end, Nick wasn’t as fortunate as Lucian thought he was.
The Drakes weren’t willing to accept what Angelique had negotiated for them.
In fact, they weren’t willing to negotiate at all. They wanted nothing to do with Nick and any part of him. They simply were unwilling to leave their home, regardless of the fact that Angelique and her kin were leaving.
Flapping along either side of Nick were Angelique’s children.
Though calling them ‘children’ felt like a misnomer.
They were both half the size of her, but clearly able to obliterate most humans they came into contact with. One of them was rather boisterous and proud. Trying to tell Nick about the Drakes it had fought with, animals it killed and ate, and that it had even killed some humans and begun a hoard for itself.
The other one didn’t speak much, other than a few terse and gruff responses. They sounded like a grumpy teenager, mad at their mother they were moving.
Angelique’s clutch had been literally deposited into the Randolph vault. Under Lucian’s protection and oversight.
He apparently knew how to care for eggs and had been responsible for raising his daughter from egg to Dragon. Angelique had been quick to take him up on the foster care and now her, her two children, Nick, his royal guard and circle, were all on their way back to the northern wall.
Since leaving it to search for a Dragon, it’d been almost an entire week.
It was entirely possible that Marshal Ferish and the army had already arrived and were getting settled.
Ahead, Nick could see the distant smear of darkness that was his camp. Given the size of it, he genuinely believed that the Marshal had indeed arrived.
Angling for it, he kept moving onward.
“The kingdom is actually quite nice,” remarked Angelique, sounding a lot like a mother who was evaluating the safety of a home for her family to move in. “I’ve sensed no predators at all that would be an issue, nor opposing Dragons.
“Just a great deal of Humans. Though they don’t seem to be running as we fly overhead. They stop, stare, and I noted a few waved.”
“They’ve seen Lucian flying overhead a great deal,” admitted Nick. “Lucian has also stated that the land itself tends to remove unwanted predators that it doesn’t consider desirable.”
He left out that up until he took the crown, there’d been a lot of random monster attacks in the country-side. Precisely because the land didn’t care what happened so long as it wasn’t being held by a Randolph.
“Yes. Yes, this’ll do very nicely. I think my family and I will remain past the contract if this is the type of reception we can expect everywhere,” Angelique murmured, her head turning and looking to the distant west.
He imagined she could see a considerable ways compared to him.
“You’ll likely get a bit more of a fantatic welcome in the capital, but otherwise, yes, fairly the same,” Nick confirmed for her. “Lady Angelique, I’m sorry, but what do you see in front of us? My eyes aren’t as keen as yours I’m afraid. Is it a large human army before a wall?”
“It is! It is indeed. There’s also a large number of humans moving through the land beyond toward the wall. They appear to be moving very slowly,” Angelique offered up easily.
“Yes, that’d be our enemy. They’re trying to not get caught in traps, magical or otherwise,” Nick explained.
“Oh! I could go launch a breath attack over them. That’d cause them to slow down a great deal, yes?” Angelique offered, sounding rather pleased.
Nick got the distinct impression she was feeling far more secure with her clutch secured in a literal Dragon’s entombed remains that served as a hoard and a vault.
He’d briefly wondered how she could leave them there so easily before he realized that it was part of the agreement he’d made with her. The clutch didn’t need that much oversight other than warmth and turning and he’d offered to take that burden from her.
That or he’d missed something entirely, which was possible.
“Please do. I’ll ask Lucian to join you,” Nick confirmed and then brought Lucian into being not far off above them.
“Ahhh, I’ve never… well, this should be fun I suppose,” Angelique replied and tilted her head upward at Lucian.
“I would prefer to go first, Lady Angelique,” Lucian offered. “They cannot harm me permanently. Death is merely an inconvenience for me.”
“Of course, Lord Lucian. Please do,” Angelique replied.
Then both Dragons dipped out of the sky and began speeding toward the front.
Nick watched them go with a troubled feeling.
He had only achieved a minor success.
Even if he’d wanted to try and look for another Dragon, now that he’d found one, it was now infinitely harder.
Any crystal used would’ve likely have just pointed him back to Angelique until she made it back to Dolphen. He’d have to send people out with crystals in every direction and see if they could find others.
Pulling on the gryphon’s reins, Nick angled himself toward the camp.
He needed to check in with his people.
Even as Angelique and Lucian began to savage the enemy forces Nick brought himself in.
Landing the gryphon right at the center of the command area of the army’s encampment, Nick found he didn’t have to go far.
The royal guard, Sara, Delaney, Harlowe, all hopped off and started leading gryphons away. Jessie and both young Dragons remained with Nick.
Ferish, his Dukes, Distis, Ternahl, and Rahak, were all here.
“I recruited a new Dragon to assist Dolphen. Her name is Lady Angelique and she’s become my Dragon Champion,” began Nick. “There’s also a ravine I want to send some animal tamers or beast masters to. There’s a hoard of Drakes I’ve found that I want to see if we can capture some and begin a breeding program for.
“Before you ask, yes I can buy more gryphons but the cost is prohibitive. We couldn’t outfit a force large enough to fight there gryphonf orce. But certainly enough to outfit a force to cause problems with.”
Marshal Ferish looked thoughtful about that then nodded his head.
“They come back daily,” he said. “Sometimes twice a day. Our top promotions can give them troubles, but only just. They stay so far up in the sky that they might as well be specks. Then they rain hell down on us.
“Even the top promotions can’t reach that far.”
Blowing out a breath, Nick nodded his head. It was more or less what he expected.
“Alright. I did contract with the Dark Elves. They’ll be providing more forces,” Nick started.
“I met their commander. They came through already, Sire,” Ferish said when Nick took a breath. “Thank you. We’re all aware the terms aren’t something you’d wish for, but we need the soldiery.
“Scout reports have been sent back and what we’re getting is that the first force of Dark Elves has been devastating to the enemy. Supplies burnt up, assassination, poisoned food, broken equipment, you name it.
“They’re causing absolute mayhem. To the point that they’re pushing through before the mud is completely dried.”
“It’s not even dried yet?” Nick asked in surprise. That was unexpected. He’d assumed that the fields had lost their swamp-like features.
“No. They’ve just decided they’re not going to wait around,” Distis answered.
Ferish grimaced at that then blew out a breath.
“We’ve brought in fresh recruits, got everyone drawn up, took up all the soldiers we could across the whole of the country, per your orders,” Ferish murmured. “We’re sitting at around ninety-thousand, though forty-thousand of those are in their second promotion or higher. The rest follow normal breakouts.
“From what we can tell… the enemy has close to three-hundred thousand soldiers moving in our direction now. Though that’s also-well, we have no way to verify that claim. It’s fair to say they outnumber us.”
Nick rubbed at his jaw.
“Am I an idiot or is this the part, or point, where we all just say… ‘guess we make them pay for every inch’ and just fight them the whole way in?” Nick asked.
“I don’t really fight you all the way in to me but you do make me pay with every inch of you,” Jessie blurted out from behind him. He had genuinely forgotten she was there.
The immediate flush that ran through him as he felt the embarrassment torch him alive.
Ferish blinked, his eyes rounded out, and his eyes flicked to Jessie behind Nick.
Everyone around him was all staring at Jessie.
Who even now was no longer breathing behind him, her fingers clutching to him.
Followed by Ferish suddenly barking out a laugh, a grin spreading across his face from ear to ear.
“Well!” Ferish said, still laughing. “Better us fucking them, then them fucking us. My ass was pretty chapped the last time I went up against the Randolph line. I’d rather not volunteer for another ride around.”
“I mean, he could have at least offered you a bridle so you have something to bite. It helps me a lot and it’s better than me grinding my teeth?” Jessie blurted out.
To which, all the crusty old fighting men around Nick laughed.
These were all Dukes, counts, knights, and men, who had probably said horrible things to one another, committed to horrifying deeds in war, and made gallows humor to break their fear.
Jessie had somehow jumped the track from anxiety ridden sex talk to black humor.
“Oh, aye?” asked an older Duke. “I’ll make sure to buy one.”
The tension around him had been broken under Jessie’s random diarrhea of the mouth.
“Well, let’s send the enemy a bridle then and see about doing just that,” Nick offered and dismounted from the gryphon. He turned to help Jessie down as well. Who scurried off no sooner than her boots hit the ground. “Let’s get ready to fight for every inch.
“For now, what do we need to alter for the defenses? Higher walls? More stakes? Pits? Oil pots?”
“Working on all of that. For now… we just wait,” Ferish answered.
There was a loud yet distant roar that carried on the wind.
“Sire, Angelique is quite formidable. She’s only a smidgen less combat worthy than I am, but I think that’s more to do with experience,” Lucian stated in his mind. “We will remain in the field for a while.”
“Well, let’s have a meal and chat then,” Nick suggested and looked to Angelique’s kids. They weren’t far off and everyone had been politely ignoring them or giving them space. “This is Angelique’s children. They haven’t shared their names with me yet so I cannot introduce them further.”
The Dragon’s young seemed perfectly fine with how this had gone and interjected not at all.
***
Nick gazed out from the enhanced earthworks.
Through a narrow slit that’d been put into the heavy stones and reinforced earth. Gazing out toward the path that led up to the wall.
The sides of the approach were still the rocky and mountainous approach that prevented the enemy from moving through them. This was the true only path through to Dolphen that the enemy could use.
Over the last three weeks, they’d clawed their way through the heavy and intense traps that’d been laid to slow them down and take from their number.
Apparently they’d died in the thousands from the start of their push until they arrived to where they were now.
Roughly fifty feet ahead of the wall and settled in with defensive emplacements and inching their way forward toward the wall.
They’d tried an aggressive assault once and only once and had been beaten back brutally. Losing hundreds in the first minutes and then more when they weren’t able to take the wall immediately.
Several of the top promotion casters had dropped some disgustingly awful spells straight into the enemy ranks. To which it’d taken them a bit longer than it truly should’ve to neutralize it and respond.
While they’d wanted to try and take the wall, they hadn’t been ready to do so.
“The magical scouts are reporting that the reconfiguration of supply lines looked like it was finished yesterday, Sire,” Marsahl Ferish reported from Nick’s left. “Today or tomorrow would likely be their next push. Especially now that the ground has completely firmed and they’ve developed simple roadways and paths to get their supply line in order.”
Nick grimaced at that. He peeled his teeth back in a snarl as he stared at the enemy.
The Dark Elf’s had arrived and passed through. Joining their countrymen on the other-side of the wall and got to work. Slaughtering back-line soldiers, support infrastructure, and causing chaos.
The traps had worked exactly as planned. Killing indiscriminately and making it so no enemy soldier wanted to move outside the explored areas at all.
Angelique and Lucian constantly attacked the enemy and caused them significant casualties. The two Dragons working in tandem to quickly overwhelm shields and cause untold devstation.
Surprisingly, the enemy hadn’t brought their gryphons back and it’d left Nick feeling ill at ease. If they weren’t being used to keep the wall pressed, it meant they were being held in reserve for a large attack, or were being employed elsewhere.
Yet no news came from anywhere else as far as he’d heard.
“We won’t be able to hold the wall if they genuinely push and don’t care about losses,” Nick stated, pulled his head back from the slot, and looked to Ferish.
Jessie squirmed past Nick and peered out the same hole he’d been looking out of.
“No, Sire,” Marshal Ferish confirmed.
Disits, Fash, Ternahl, and Denahn all shook their heads as well.
“Fine,” Nick grumbled and sighed. “Make the enemy pay for it. Take every ounce from them that’s possible but… don’t waste our people. Once it’s obvious it’s lost, let it be taken. We’ll continue to bleed them and take from them, but not at the cost of our own people. That’s not a price I’m willing to pay just yet.”
“Understood,” came the universal reply.
“We’ll have the second lines set up and ready to be defended,” Ferish continued with a nod of his head. “It won’t be as defensible once they have the wall behind them as our original lines, but we’ll be able to bleed them again.
“After that, we’ll need to move back to the next prepared position.”
What the man didn’t say was that once the enemy had their foothold, it’d be near impossible to dislodge them. They’d have their breach-head and Dolphen would no longer be as defensible as it once was.
Even with the next ‘prepared position’ which was a wall just as wide, just as tall, and just as ready to be defended as this one, it wouldn’t be the same.
The distance was much greater and far more to defend. The enemies numbers were just too great in the moment.
He knew as well that the enemy was getting a steady stream of reinforcements, too.
They weren’t completely replacing their losses, but it was most certain that their total manpower wasn’t shrinking as quickly as Nick would wish it to, based on their losses.
“Their cavalry mounts were spotted,” Denahn added, sounding as if he weren’t really sure he wanted to bring it up. “It isn’t confirmed though. It was part of a trace report. ‘Large number of warhorses’. Halfway between the front and the back, a few days ago based on the date.”
“Right. In other words, once they push through this wall, they could try to go for an open run and get their cavalry into our heartlands,” Nick mumbled. It was bad enough that the enemy had clearly slipped infiltrators into the backlines at some point as there’d been a number of losses in the rear.
They weren’t as good as Dolphen’s Dark Elves, but the enemy wasn’t just sitting aroudn doing nothing either. Nick had experienced six attempts on his life already, and Ferish had two.
Duke Fash’s younger cousin had been stabbed by someone when he was getting his armor on as well, though he’d been in the Duke’s tent at the time.
The Duke’s themselves were being targeted as well as Nick.
Nothing was going his way as much as he would like and this was only the beginning.
“Everyone get to your positions then,” Nick ordered and then pulled Jessie away from the hole. He started moving to where he would be overseeing this from the middle of the camp. He wasn’t allowed to be near the front when things started to get heated.
In Ternahl’s own words, it would be the moment he sent his own assassins to kill someone. The chaos of battle was a great way to take down an opponent that wielded great strength.
Just with a knife in the back rather than wielding a sword.
Leaving the front, Nick moved back to where his personal ‘command’ was.
A location that he had designated where he would remain as well as those closest to him.
It was far enough from the front to avoid being instantly targeted, close enough that he could move forward or backward if he needed, and could be reached if he absolutely needed to be.
Because in the end, he wasn’t going to lose this wall if he didn’t have to.
He didn’t want to spend his own people’s lives on this if it wasn’t required.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to spend to keep the wall.
Moving for a table and chairs that’d been put up in his command area, Nick took one of the seats after seating Jessie in the chair next to the one he would take.
Pulling out the ledger from his backpack he put it down in front of himself.
He went to the front and wrote in ‘instant purchase’ then went to the following listing.
It was a hefty fee of a thousand gold coins, but his account would be upgraded so that he could have things transported to him instantly if they were available.
He sniffed, hesitated a moment, then dumped in the coin from his coinpurse.
If he needed to hire mercenaries directly and have them on the field in seconds, this would be how he did it. Because there were entire companies he could hire with the explicit purpose of holding the wall to the death.
They were expensive, steeply expensive, but they were there.
“I personally approve of the usage, Sire,” Lucian advised him. “Coin can always be returned, earned, or acquired. People, their levels, and experience, is much harder to reacquire.”
Agreed.
It’s why I did it.
A long mournful call came from somewhere in front of him.
The enemy was moving.
Nick looked to the ledger and wrote in his first purchase request.
Indirect high-explosive support magic mercenary company.
The ledger did what it was meant to, and provided him with what was available.
A new listing was there as well to the right of the old one.
Which ones could be employed immediately.
He bought four of them, draining five percent of his kingdoms wealth in a flash.
Worth every coin.