Siege of Erlenberg Day 6…

“Ayax, is there a way we can ask your dad if he can give us some respite?” Martin asked.

Looking up from the large pot of stew she was cooking, Frances stared at her knight friend. He was putting half-loaves of bread into bowls of stew proffered by their battalion soldiers. She had to have mishearing. Martin complaining about work? That just wasn’t possible.

Ayax sighed as she ladelled more stew into a bowl. “I um, well I already did.”

“Oh, bother. He said no, right?” Elizabeth asked from where she was tending to another pot of stew.

“Well, to be exact, he said that we’re indispensable to the first line of defense right now,” Ayax explained.

“Which is true,” said Frances. Their battalion had been involved in halting every breakthrough for almost three days since the northern wall of Erlenberg fell. It was however, why every human and Alavari that grabbed their food looked utterly exhausted.

Elizabeth glanced around her and after sticking another log into the makeshift stone stove under the pot, she hissed. “I do not know how long our battalion’s endurance can last. Frances, how many casualties today alone?

Frances shut her eyes. “Eighteen. Two can’t fight any more. No, three. Four passed away.”

“That brings us to seventy-two casualties. We’ve lost eighteen percent of our combat strength, and only fifty-one of them might return to us” Elizabeth sucked in a deep breath and strode back to her pot. “Can you connect me with Alexander tonight, Frances?”

“I can, Elizabeth.” Frances reached to touch Elizabeth’s arm. “Liz, how can I help?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Elizabeth retorted, not looking at Frances.

Frances swallowed. “Then maybe we can just spend time together?”

Elizabeth hesitated, but sighed. “I… It would be nice if I had some company in my tent tonight.”

“I can do that,” said Frances. She squeezed her friend’s arm, but her smile faded as Elizabeth didn’t look at her.

Whatever was eating away at her friend, she hoped maybe she could share it tonight.

Elizabeth and Frances had talked. They’d chatted, they’d laughed, but try as she might, Frances could not get Elizabeth to open up. Any opportunity she’d given her friend to share what was bothering her was ignored, or side-stepped. Yet, Elizabeth seemed to have had fun because she’d fallen asleep mid-conversation and Frances had to tuck her into bed.

A whimper woke Frances. She normally was a pretty heavy sleeper, but a foot kicked her stomach and knocked the wind out of her. Choking, Frances pushed her blanket off and hummed a note to make a light.

Elizabeth was tossing and turning, whimpering as she flailed in her bed. Her raven hair framed a face contorted in anguish, tears pouring from her eyes.

Gently grabbing Elizabeth’s shoulders, Frances pulled her friend into a tight embrace, whispering softly.

“Elizabeth, it’s just a dream. It’s just a dream. Wake up.”

“Frances? I… I’m sorry. I…” Elizabeth sniffled, and Frances felt arms wrapping around her waist. “It… I was drowning. I… I don’t want to talk about it.”

It hurt Frances that Elizabeth didn’t want to tell her. Yet, she also knew that forcing her friend would hurt even more.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Frances asked.

“I know, but… it’s nothing. Not compared to what you have to do. I don’t want to put more on you, Frances,” Elizabeth whispered.

It was so odd hearing that from Elizabeth that Frances stared at the top of her friend’s head for several seconds. It sounded like what a much younger Frances would have said.

“It matters to me that you are hurting, Elizabeth,” said Frances. She tightened her embrace, not caring that Elizabeth’s tear-stained face was burying into her chest. “I think—I know I can listen to what you have to say. I’ve been doing much better of late, and I would love to help you.”

Elizabeth’s hands pushed Frances away and she stared at her.

“Love?”

Frances swallowed, but didn’t avert her gaze. “Elizabeth, I… maybe I should have told you, but we’ve been through so much. You’ve helped me so much that I… I think of you as my sister. You’re… you’re part of my family, no matter what happens. No matter where you go.”

Elizabeth sniffled, and buried her face into her hands, but Frances could just see a watery smile behind her arms.

“Oh Frances, you…you…” Elizabeth leaned forward, burying herself back into Frances’s willing embrace. “I love you too. Can you… can you wait, please?”

“I promise I will,” Frances whispered, holding her best friend.

---

That morning’s breakfast was interrupted by the sound of galloping hoofsteps. A messenger in Erlenberg blue and grey halted in the Northcross marketplace at the fountain and leapt off his horse.

Frances sighed and shoveled another spoon of oatmeal into her mouth. Her friends all had varying expressions of exasperation or exhaustion as well because the message was probably for the Lightning Battalion. Lu Anne’s Erlenberg Army Battalion was based in the marketplaces as well, but so far, it seemed that they were being kept in reserve.

“I have a message for Major Lu Anne of the Erlenberg Marines!” snapped the messenger.

Many eyes, including that of Frances and her friends, shot towards the other side of the marketplace, where they saw some of the marines scramble to their feet.

Lu-Anne, in her armor despite the early hour, ran up to the messenger. Frances couldn’t hear what it contained, but from the orders that the marine commander snapped out, they were on the move.

“Looks like Alex-dad listened to you, Liz,” said Ayax. “What did you say to him?”

Elizabeth scratched the back of her head, a sheepish look on her face. “It wasn’t actually Alexander who wanted us in the front. Elowise did because she saw us as the most combat-experienced battalion with the most firepower. After our talk, she realized that we did need a break.”

“I also think we can learn a thing or two from the Erlenberg Army. I’ve noticed that we’re not nearly as disciplined as they are,” Frances added. She pointed at Lu-Anne’s battalion, who were forming up into a neat column. “We need to be able to fall into formation quickly. Some practice at that today would be a good idea.”

“I guess we know what we’re doing after breakfast then,” said Martin, cracking his knuckles. “Nothing like a good drill.”

“Is there nothing I can do to bribe you, any of you?” Ginger whined.

They all shook their heads, chuckling

Lu-Anne’s battalion achieved their mission because they came back, marching proudly back into the square. To add to the good mood, the Lightning Battalion cheered them as they walked in, which was a rather good turn of events. After the rather acrimonious first meeting, both battalions had kept apart but that night, members from both sides crossed the market square to intermingle with one another. Few officers of Lu-Anne’s battalion came over to the Lightning Battalion’s side, though.

Except for one surprising visitor.

“Commander Elizabeth? Is this a good time?” asked Lu-Anne. The bronze-skinned woman had her helmet off, revealing dark maroon hair tied into a ponytail and a hesitant expression that she was trying to hide behind her long lashes.

Elizabeth, who’d been talking about the day’s training with Frances, Martin and the others around their camp fire, glanced at her friends. They all nodded, equally curious.

“What can we do for you, major?” Elizabeth asked.

It may have been Frances’s keen observation, but Lu-Anne seemed to tilt her chin up.

“I was satisfied with my battalion’s performance today, but… how do I convey this… there were areas in their fighting that could use improvement. Things that I believe that your battalion is rather good at. Thus, I would like to facilitate an equal exchange of information with you.”

Frances blinked, but she got the gist of what Lu-Anne was asking. She turned to Elizabeth, wondering how she would respond.

Unfortunately, her friend looked utterly lost.

“Excuse me?”

“I believe the major is asking if we can ‘compare notes,” Elizabeth,” Martin translated, without a hint of mockery. He smiled, “It just so happens that we would like to inquire into the methods that allow your battalion can achieve such disciplined maneuvers.”

“Oh, with much practice and drill. That and a strong cadre of officers. You got to know who to put in charge,” said Lu-Anne airily.

“Then I think we have a lot to discuss,” said Elizabeth, inviting Lu-Anne to sit beside them. Frances levitated over a steaming hot cup of tea to the major, who accepted it with a restrained smile.

The chat with Lu-Anne was quite informative. The teens knew quite a bit about fighting, but they were keenly aware they’d been thrown into commanding the battalion without much warning, or training. Martin had more training from his noble upbringing, but he knew more about logistics than actual military command. Ginger knew some squad-based tactics, but anything at a battalion level was out of her experience. Lu-Anne had gone to the Elrenberg Officer’s College, and so had an education in warfare. She was a wealth of information.

In turn, Elizabeth, Frances and Martin were more than willing to explain to Lu-Anne how their looser discipline and focus on initiative helped their troops fight. Lu-Anne was also fascinated in how all of them were involved in the planning of their attacks, and how they worked together to quickly come to decisions.

“Don’t you discuss things with your officers?” Ayax asked.

Lu-Anne winced. “Yes, but they have a tendency to just agree or disagree with me, rather than offer up suggestions. Makes things less awkward I suppose.”

“But it discourages feedback,” Frances remarked.

Lu-Anne didn’t reply, but her hiding behind her cup of tea spoke volumes.

“By the way Lu-Anne, aren’t you related to General Yuan S. Antoine?” Ginger asked.

That made the major tense up even further. “Yeah.”

Martin frowned. “Ginger, that’s perhaps not the most appropriate question.”

“No, it’s appropriate, given his cowardice. Bastard abandoned his army faster than he abandoned my mom.” Lu-Anne met Ginger’s eyes. “He’s my dad, though not really my dad. My mom and him live apart. House Antoine has a number of factions and well, mom found herself on the one opposing my father. It’s very complicated, but let’s say my family is not happy. We lost at Aijin Fields and now a Windwhistler is commanding the city’s defense, and one not even born in Erlenberg at that.”

“Oh, is that why your officers are—” Ginger winced at Martin, Frances, Elizabeth and Ayax glared at her “—can be a bit…abrasive?”

“Yes. Most of them were trained by my family, and we pride ourselves on being one of the oldest families in Erlenberg. We all feel we got something to prove.” Lu-Anne took another sip. “Which is I know, silly. We are in a war, we’re all together in this. It’s all I can do to reign them in.”

“Yeesh, that sucks,” said Elizabeth sympathetically.

Frances agreed, but an odd sound was turning her head. Her eyes peered into the dim light where some kind of altercation was breaking out in the Erlenberg 7th Battalion’s camp. “Speaking of reigning them in, I think we might need to get over to your camp.”

Lu-Anne’s reaction was priceless. “Oh come on!” wailed the woman, leaping to her feet. She stormed off, scowling. Frances and her friends exchanged a tired, if amused glanced, and got up to follow her.

---

The altercation turned out to be a minor affair. A woman in the 7th Battalion had been flirting too aggressively with a man from the Lightning Battalion. One of the officers of the 7th Battalion misinterpreted the situation and confronted both of them, and that led other Lightning Battalion members to fall in. That led to other 7th Battalion members falling in and the whole thing nearly exploded.

Lu-Anne and Elizabeth got there in time to prevent tempers from flaring out of control, and the situation was defused relatively quickly. It took the rest of the night, though, and so everybody turned in for the evening.

Yells suddenly flung Frances eyes open. Having slept with her wand, armor and weapons beside her, she grabbed Ivy’s Sting, slipped on her brigandine and ran out of her tent.

The Lightning Battalion soldiers were running around like frightened cats. Frances thought about calling out to them, but decided to cast a spell to amplify her voice to make herself heard.

“Report!” she bellowed, her voice echoing across the square.

“There’s a night attack! We don’t know where, miss!” yelled Helena, one of their newly appointed sergeants.

“How do we know there is a night attack then?” Frances asked, frowning.

That prompted a couple of her soldiers to open their mouths, pause in confused or consternated thought, and glance at each other with increasingly widening eyes as they all realized they wore a similar expression.

“Who brought the news to us?” Frances asked.

“A messenger. They told us to be ready for action and that there was a night attack,” stammered a young orc soldier.

“I think they also said it was at Northcross street,” added a human.

Frances frowned, but it made sense that the Alavari were attacking Northcross. It was the main road that led directly into the Northern Ward’s market, the centre of the Northern Ward. She considered waiting for orders, but promptly realized that given how caught-off guard they were, they might come too late.

“Right. I want a runner to tell Elizabeth that I’m sallying with 1st Company and she needs to defend the square with Major Lu-Anne. Helena, rouse Ginger and gather 1st Company. Let’s go!”

“I swear it’s the day I decide to get a good night’s sleep instead of—”

Frances coughed, “Ginger, I would prefer not to know more.”

The convict-soldier muttered a sorry that Frances barely heard over the clank and jingle of their armour. Their company was tearing down Northcross road as fast as a hundred tired soldiers could.

From what she could tell in the distance, Frances could see that there was something wrong. She knew the 31st and 9th Erlenberg battalions posted at Northcross street had lit lanterns to illuminate the barricade. Instead of the glow of lights in the distance, though, there was a raging flickering fire.

She soon found out why. Fire was dancing across the wood making up the barricade. It’d spread to the roofs of the nearby houses. The 31st and 9th battalions were doing their best to douse it, but they didn’t seem to have much success.

A rain of fire arrows from beyond the barricade explained why as it sent soldiers scattering. Immediately, a hail of rocks from the night sky followed.

Those don’t look like catapulted rocks. Frances burst out into song, pointing Ivy’s Sting at the black curtain of the night sky. Finishing the final key note, she threw her “starshell” spell into the sky.

Harpies, more than a hundred of them were circling in the air. Many of them were carrying bags.

“Open fire!” Ginger ordered.

Frances was already casting her spell, ripping shards of cobblestone from the road into the air at the harpies. She didn’t want to damage the road, but she didn’t think they were going to be able to hold the street without forcing the harpies away.

The moment they were illuminated, the harpies began to fly away, but the volley of lead and stone cut several of them down. Screaming their raucous, almost brassy calls, they flew away weaving through the black sky.

“I got the fires, Ginger, reinforce the barricade and start firing on the enemy once I’m done!” Frances yelled.

“Yes, ma’am!” Ginger exclaimed.

Frances focused on the fire. There were a couple of ways she could put it out. One obvious way to put it out was by summoning water to douse the flames. Frances decided against that because whole Erlenberg had canals, none were nearby.

Instead Frances combined a little of what Edana taught her about how fire worked, a little about what she knew from her world’s science, and a little bit of imagination.

Fire was fed by oxygen and fuel. Edana and other fire mages had also realized on their own that fire was not an element but a chemical reaction. What Frances also knew was that air itself wasn’t all made of oxygen but from nitrogen as well.

She imagined a wall of nitrogen, air that fire couldn’t react to, coasting over the burning wood on the roofs and barricade. On the other side, she imagined oxygen, flammable, feeding the fire, and drawing it away. The image in her mind, Frances sang.

Tendrils of flames flickered and didn’t snuff out, so much as swayed away. Exactly as Frances had pictured, the fire scooted back up the barricade, over its side and exploded in a great wave of heat at whoever was the other side.

The arrows very promptly stopped, cut by cries of horror and pain. Frances ran up the smoldering barricade. On the other side, Alavaria soldiers were fleeing, the attack aborted. They left quite a few burned corpses behind them.

Ginger peered over the barricade and winced. “Have I mentioned how having you in our battalion makes things easier?” she asked.

“No. I don’t mind if you mention it more, though,” said Frances smiling grimly. Swallowing, she hoped that wherever the poor dead were, they were in a better place. “Let’s get moving. This may not be the only place where they conducted a night attack.”

There were several other night raids. Unfortunately, Frances, the Lightning Battalion and even Lu-Anne’s Battalion weren’t able to counter all of them. The dawn broke with all of them exhausted, sleepy, and limping into tents to try to get some sleep.

All of them, but for the commanders of the two battalions in the northern market square.

“Elizabeth, I’m sorry, but I don’t know how long I can stay awake.” Frances didn’t like complaining, but she was barely able to stay on her feet. She had magic to spare, but an interrupted sleep wasn’t something that even magic could put aside forever.

Elizabeth took Frances’s arms, gently, but the touch made her eyes fly open. “What—”

“Frances, I think that’s been their plan all along. They wanted to weaken us. Force us to stay awake the whole night putting out fires with a small number of their troops before hitting us,” Elizabeth said.

Frances felt the clogged gears of her reasoning click into place and she stammered, “Oh Amura and Rathon you’re right. How did you—”

Elizabeth let Frances go and scratched the back of her head. “Lady Igraine also asked Forowena to give me some lessons. That being said, Frances, you need to sleep tonight. I’ve already requested the commander to be reinforced, but you need to rest or else we won’t be able to counter their plans the next day.”

“Elizabeth, you need me,”

“We are going to counter-attack tomorrow, Frances and without you we won’t have a chance at success.” Elizabeth glanced at the others. “What do you think?”

Martin yawned. “I think Elizabeth’s right. We know the Kingdom of the Alavari are very fond of these kinds of ploys. They are going to try to take advantage of our exhaustion.”

Ginger waved her hand, leaning heavily against the shorter Martin. “Seconded.”

“Thirded, if that even is a word,” groaned Ayax, her tail dragging on the ground.

It made her grit her teeth, but Frances knew Elizabeth was right. “I just wish I will be able to sleep.”

“About that, cuz, you have sleep potions don’t you?” Ayax asked.

Frances flinched, she’d told Ayax about the potions that she used in emergencies, but... “I can’t use them during a campaign. I never know if I need to get up.”

“Frances, you probably should take one. You need to rest,” Martin pointed out.

“But what if you do need magical assistance? What if you do need my help and you can’t wake me? The potions will keep me asleep for at least five hours. What if all else fails and—” Frances swallowed that thought down. It wasn’t fair to her friends, who she trusted with her life.

“I swear you will not wake up back in the Otherworld, cuz,” said Ayax, smiling grimly.

Elizabeth nodded, as did Martin and Ginger.

Frances, blinked her watery eyes and wiped them for good measure. She wondered what she would do without her friends. “Thank you. Please… please stay safe.”

“Liz, can you tell me what are our chances, Liz?” Ginger asked as they watched their mage friend snore peacefully in her bedroll.

“It depends, but I don’t think we’ll be able to hold the first defense line entirely. We did divide the areas behind the first defence line into sections, though, to make the city easier to defend. I think we’re probably going to be holding the market square,” said Elizabeth.

“How are you making that guess?” Ginger asked.

“A bit of guesswork, but we know the army is about fifteen thousand strong.” Elizabeth closed her eyes, brows furrowed. “They used at least two thousand to launch the raids last night. They will be resting today. So they will be hitting us hard, but they won’t try to exhaust themselves. Our frontline soldiers are tired, though, and that’ll be enough for them to break through, but probably not take the square.”

“Then we best get to fortifying the square,” said an unfamiliar voice, approaching from behind them.

“Lu-Anne, you agree?” Elizabeth asked.

Lu-Anne nodded, a grim smile on her face. “I do. Let’s get to it,” said the major, extending a hand. Elizabeth shook it.