Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Chapter 26

The clattering of boots and armour was interrupted by the fierce roaring of the river sprawling in front of the fort of Trivi.

The 5th Cohort halted at the edge of the rocky gorge. Across the churning, white-capped water stood Trivi, the stone fortress carved directly into the hillside. The heavy stone bridge spanning the river was empty. The massive iron-reinforced gates at the end of the bridge were shut tight.

I sat on my roan, standing next to Miklas, my instincts instantly flaring.

"Something is wrong," I murmured, squinting through the freezing drizzle.

I looked up at the semicircular battlements of the lower tier. There were silhouettes moving along the stone walls—men in armor holding pikes and crossbows. But the banners of the 7th Legion were missing. The soldiers pacing the walls didn’t blow the arrival horns; they weren’t signalling the gatekeepers to open the porticulus. They just stood there, looking down at our column of five hundred men with eerie indifference.

Miklas’s face darkened. His jaw set into a hard line. He didn’t ride forward to demand entry; a seasoned commander never walked blindly into a potential kill zone.

"Lieutenant Yuni," Miklas barked without turning his head.

Yuni spurred his horse forward and stopped beside the Captain. The officer didn’t ask questions. Miklas pointed at the closed gate. He looked at the closed gates and the strange guards on the wall, his eyes calculating the various scenarios that could play out.

"The garrison isn’t responding," Miklas said, his voice low enough that the rest of the cohort couldn’t hear the rising panic. "Leave your horse. When the shadows are high, slip under the bridge. Scale the lower rocks and get eyes on the inside. I want to know exactly who is manning my walls."

"It will take time to bypass their sightlines, Captain," Yuni replied smoothly, slipping off his saddle and unbuckling his heavy armor to move quietly. "Give me two days."

"You have two days. Go."

Yuni vanished down the rocky embankment, melting into the grey mist of the roaring river like a ghost.

Miklas turned his warhorse around to face the 480 recruits, who were already murmuring in confusion, shifting nervously in their saddles. "Dismount! We make camp here, out of ballista range! Pitch the tents and dig the latrines! We wait!"

The next two days were more tiring than the march.

Setting up a siege camp without a clear enemy was a recipe for dissent. The mud seemed deeper, the freezing rain sharper. I walked through the rows of canvas tents, my scarred cheek hidden beneath my dark hood, listening to the whispers of the Dormant Bud soldiers. The rumours were spreading like a plague. Those men, tired after a long walk where told to sleep here on the freezing mud instead of inside the keep in front of them.

"Did the garrison mutiny?" a young spearman from the logging district muttered around a smoking fire.

"Maybe the Mud and Blood Coalition finally took it," another replied, shivering. "Maybe we’re looking at a fortress full of barbarians."

Inside the command tent, the atmosphere was suffocating. Miklas and I stood over a sprawling parchment map of the West Border, illuminated by a single flickering lantern. Alysia and Kaelen stood on the opposite side of the wooden table, both radiating barely contained aggression.

"A barbarian raid makes no sense," I said, pointing to the topography around the fortress. "Trivi is a chokepoint. The Coalition prefers to strike the open villages and pillage resources. Taking a fortress requires a sustained occupation. Barbarians don’t do sieges; they do hit-and-runs. If they took Trivi, they would have looted the armoury and abandoned it by now."

"Elvit is right," Kaelen grunted, crossing his massive, tree-trunk arms. "Those aren’t barbarians on the wall. They’re maintaining strict patrol routes. I watched them for three hours through my spyglass. They change shifts with military precision. That’s a disciplined force."

"A mutiny, then?" Alysia asked, her face twisting in disgust. "The local garrison realized the 7th Legion was absent and declared independence?"

"No," Miklas said heavily, his amber eyes staring blankly at the map. "Trivi’s garrison was small, but they were loyal veterans. Someone else is inside my city."

We got our answer on the second night.

The flap of the command tent opened, bringing in a gust of freezing wind. Yuni stepped inside. He was soaked to the bone, covered in river mud, and bleeding from a shallow cut on his left shoulder. He walked directly to the table, grabbed Kaelen’s metal hip flask, and took a long, unapologetic pull before speaking.

"It’s not a mutiny. And it’s not the Coalition," Yuni reported, his voice devoid of emotion, though his eyes were darker than usual. "It is a mercenary company. They carry no banners, wear mismatched armor, and speak with strange accents. They took the fortress from the inside out."

"How?" Miklas demanded, his fists planting heavily on the wooden table. "How does an unknown mercenary band breach a closed fortress?"

"They infiltrated as refugees a week ago," Yuni explained, wiping mud from his face. "When the storm hit, they struck. They slaughtered the stationed garrison in their beds. I saw the bodies piled up in the lower courtyard like cordwood. They have completely subjugated the local civilian population. They have hostages in the upper tier to prevent a rebellion from within."

A heavy, murderous silence fell over the tent.

An unknown mercenary company had stolen an Imperial fortress. They had taken advantage of the 5th Cohort’s long march to seize the most critical chokepoint on the West Border.

"Hostages or not, they are in our home," Miklas growled, drawing his broadsword and slamming the pommel onto the map. "Tomorrow at dawn, we take it back. We break the gates."

At first light, the 5th Cohort assembled in tight formation at the edge of the stone bridge. Kaelen and his heavy infantry formed a massive turtle-shell of iron shields, protecting our makeshift battering ram. Miklas, Alysia, and I stood at the vanguard. The plan was a simple, frontal assault: march across the bridge, absorb the crossbow fire, and let the Swelled Bud lieutenants use their magic to shatter the iron gates.

"Advance!" Miklas roared.

The heavy boots of five hundred soldiers thundered against the stone bridge. We waited for the hail of arrows. We braced for the heavy thwack of the ballistas.

But the mercenaries on the walls didn’t shoot. They just watched us approach.

When we were fifty yards from the gate, the air hummed. A high-pitched, vibrating frequency drilled into my teeth. Suddenly, the space between the bridge and the fortress violently warped.

A massive, semi-transparent bubble of shimmering blue light erupted from the base of the fortress walls, perfectly snapping into a dome that covered the entire lower tier of Trivi.

"Brace!" Kaelen yelled, driving his shield forward as the vanguard hit the bubble.

The impact threw the first row of soldiers backward, sending them crashing into the ranks behind them. Kaelen swung his massive war hammer, his Ember flaring, channeling enough force to shatter a boulder. He struck the transparent barrier.

CLANG!

The sound was deafening, but the bubble didn’t even ripple. Kaelen was thrown off his feet, sliding across the wet stone. Miklas cursed, channeling his own immense magical reserve into his broadsword, delivering a two-handed downward strike that could cleave a warhorse in half. The blue light simply absorbed the kinetic and magical energy, deflecting the blade completely.

"Fall back!" Miklas roared, realizing the trap. "Back to the camp! Retreat!"

We spent the rest of the day analysing the failed attempt to breach the gate.

"It’s a arcane ward," Alysia said that evening, pacing around the command tent. "But I have never seen a shield projection of that magnitude. To maintain a barrier that size... you would need an entire circle of Bud Burst mages channelling continuously."

"These are mercenaries," Yuni pointed out logically. "Mercenaries do not have Imperial Academy mages. And if they did, they wouldn’t waste their time stealing a rural fortress."

"Then there is another way in," I said, looking down at the map. Thinking about the long history on Earth, an idea came to my mind. "No fortress is perfectly sealed. If they have a magical dome covering the surface, what about the underground? How does the city expel its waste into the river?"

Miklas looked at me, a slow realization dawning in his eyes. "The drainage tunnels. The grates empty directly beneath the lower tier, near the waterline. It bypasses the gate and the shield entirely."

And so, on the second day of the siege, the command structure went underground.

It was a highly classified elite infiltration. Miklas stayed behind to command the camp and maintain the illusion of preparing another frontal assault, while the three lieutenants and I waded waist-deep into the freezing, foul-smelling muck of Trivi’s sewer system.

The stone tunnel was dark, cramped, and stank of rot. We moved in absolute silence. Yuni took the point, his short spear ready, his eyes adjusted to the pitch black. Kaelen was behind him, barely fitting through the narrow brick archways, while Alysia and I guarded the rear.

We navigated the labyrinth for an hour, slowly ascending toward the lower tier’s armory level.

"Light ahead," Yuni whispered, holding up a fist.

At the end of the tunnel was an iron grate leading up into a stone corridor of the fortress. Four mercenaries were standing guard. They weren’t holding swords or spears. They were holding long, wooden staffs with strange iron pipes running along the top.

My heart completely stopped. My blood turned to absolute ice.

I knew those shapes. I had seen them in history books, in museums, and in the hands of soldiers in my past life on Earth.

Guns.

In a world governed by magic and swords, they were holding muskets.

"Take them quietly," Alysia whispered, drawing her scimitars. She and Yuni surged forward, their Embers pushing their speed to the absolute limit. They planned to close the distance and execute the guards before they could even draw a blade.

"No! Wait! Cover!" I screamed, my voice echoing violently in the cramped tunnel.

I was too late.

The mercenaries didn’t panic. They raised the iron pipes to their shoulders and pulled the triggers.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

The deafening explosion of gunpowder shattered the silence of the sewers. Brilliant yellow muzzle flashes illuminated the dark stone. Alysia spun violently, a lead ball tearing right through her leather pauldron and grazing her collarbone. She hit the muck with a splash, gasping in pain. Her body shield made with ember flickering violently.

"Shield!" Kaelen roared, shoving his way past Yuni and slamming his massive iron shield down into the muck, creating a barricade just in time to absorb the next volley.

PING! PING!

The lead balls struck the heavy iron shield with terrifying force, denting the metal.

My mind was racing, trying to process the impossibility of the situation. Muskets are early firearms; they should take at least thirty seconds to reload.

"Push them now! They have to reload!" Yuni yelled, preparing to sprint past Kaelen’s shield.

"Don’t move!" I grabbed Yuni’s shoulder, pulling him back.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

Another volley of deafening gunfire echoed down the tunnel, striking Kaelen’s shield again. I stared in absolute horror. Two seconds. It had only been two seconds since the first volley.

These weren’t rudimentary flintlock muskets. They were rapid-fire, repeating firearms. Technology that shouldn’t exist in this era. Technology that rendered our armor, our swords, and even the physical enhancements of the Dormant Bud entirely obsolete. Only when you were a Bud Burst, the level Miklas was, did your ember cover your entire body continuously, protecting you. If we stepped out from behind that shield, we would be shredded into meat in less than a heartbeat.

"Grab Alysia! We have to retreat!" I yelled, pulling the bleeding lieutenant up from the foul water. "Now! Fall back!"

We scrambled back into the darkness of the tunnels, the sound of the mechanical gunfire echoing behind us, completely outmatched and outgunned.

The third day of the siege began in a grim, suffocating silence.

The command tent was tense. Alysia sat on a wooden stool, her shoulder heavily bandaged, her face pale from blood loss. Kaelen stared at his massive iron shield, tracing his thick fingers over the deep, spherical dents left by the lead balls. Yuni was uncharacteristically quiet, his mind trying to calculate how to fight a weapon that struck faster than the eye could see.

Miklas stood at the head of the table. He looked older today. The Captain of the 7th Legion looked like a man who had just realized the rules of the world had changed overnight.

"I heard the explosions from the camp," Miklas said heavily. "I have read about weapons like this in the restricted archives of the Imperial Academy. But they were prototypes. Toys for eccentric engineers. You are telling me an entire mercenary company is armed with them? And they fire continuously?"

"One shot every two seconds," I confirmed, my voice deadpan. "No reloading time. It is mechanical, and it is lethal. Our armor is paper to them. A single squad holding a chokepoint could slaughter the entire cohort."

Miklas closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, and when he looked at us again.

"If they have a magical shield generator capable of covering a fortress, and repeating firearms capable of shredding Knight-Mages... then this is not a mercenary company," Miklas stated, his voice dropping to a terrifying register.

"Who are they?" Yuni asked, his eyes narrowing.

"They are an invasion force," Miklas said, pointing a heavy, armored finger at the eastern edge of the map, far beyond the borders of the Empire. "The weapons, the technology, the tactics... they belong to the Republic of Sfirt. A nation built entirely on industry, not magic."

The tent was dead silent. The Republic of Sfirt. A name I only read when I was apprenticing for the Magister of Yute.

"If the Republic of Sfirt is taking our fortresses..." Alysia winced, holding her bandaged shoulder. "Then this isn’t a border dispute anymore."

"No," Miklas agreed, looking at me with a grave intensity. "This is the beginning of a war."