Book 4: Chapter 45 |
Things were tense in the meeting room, not because of anyone there but because of the pressure pushing down on all of them. Months of preparations had gone mostly well; soldiers and adventurers had been trained, walls had been constructed, defenses built, cannons secretly installed, and Cindy had brought a small force of gunners to Avalon City with her the month before.
“Scouts have confirmed the information we received about the army’s movement; they’ll be hitting the edge of our territory by later this afternoon at the earliest.” Curcius Mapsight, leader of Avalon’s small military reported. Kay faintly hoped that this debacle earned him a General Class or something similar to bolster their military even further.
“Status of the evacuations?” Kay asked the table.
“Almost complete,” Meten responded, “We started pulling out the farthest out towns and villages first; all that’s left are the ones closest to the city. We should have everyone behind the walls by tomorrow with no trouble.”
“The walls?”
“Construction is complete for the first layer. We don’t have time to start the second layer that we planned for expanding the city, but we have some replaceable defenses in a few places to slow the enemy down where the second layer is going to go. As it is, we have walls at every entrance into the valley and a stretch at the top of the mesa to prevent anyone coming in over our heads.” David, the Minister of Planning, gestured at the map in the center of the table. “We added in extra stairs here and here to allow soldiers to get to the upper walls faster, and we installed barracks to sleep in since it's a long hike up for anyone lower than tier four.”
“Manning on the walls has been focused on the main entrance to the valley on the Eastern side,” Curcius tapped the map in that section, “The enemy shouldn’t have perfect knowledge of our defenses, which makes it likely that they’ll just head straight to the easiest area to move through. Climbing the mesa would be a pain for them, as would drilling through it, and moving around the go over the mountain to the south would take time and would involve them crossing the lake or wasting a bunch of time climbing a mountain and then detour right back into our defenses. Any of those three would be very noticeable for an entire army to try, so we’ll have plenty of warning to move troops around if necessary. It’s entirely possible that they’ll have smaller groups of troops try that or any other routes that don’t involve coming right at us, so we have scouts, patrols, and checkpoints set up to intercept anything like that or get out a warning at minimum.” He pointed at several sections of the map, “We have major checkpoints here, here, and here, between the western walls and the main body of the city. There are smaller checkpoints in these sections, and we have patrols on varying routes throughout the rest of the areas between the walls and the city.”
“Good. Supplies?”
“We’ve been stockpiling as best we can, and while we wouldn’t be able to hold out forever, we can weather a pretty substantial siege if necessary.” Murunel consulted a long list of supplies as she answered, “We have enough food to feed our entire population for at least six months stored, and there are farms in the western section of the valley that are still running. Those, plus the fishing from the lake, as well as any monsters we can hunt, will keep us fed for some time. The lake is functionally a massive reservoir, so we’re not worried about running out of water, and we have mages and enchanted items available to make sure it stays clean enough to drink, even if they try contaminating it.” She glanced over at Isla’s illusionary human disguise. “I’ve been told we shouldn’t have to worry about that, but we prepared just in case.”
“Thanks. After that, we have enough medical supplies to last, although many of them aren’t easily replaceable, so we’ll start to run out if we end up in a prolonged siege. Construction and crafting materials are in similar positions, although we do have some harvestable wood in the valley, and if we needed to, we could send miners up the mountain for some metals. We’d have to send guards with them, though.”
“One way or another, I’m not expecting this to turn into that long of a siege, but the planning is good.” Kay stated calmly, “From the reports we’ve received, the army they’re bringing isn’t enough to encircle us, which means we’ll have some methods of getting people out to get what we need, whether it's food or materials.” He paused and considered what he’d just said, “Sorry, let me rephrase that. I’m not expecting us to be truly besieged for a prolonged time. They don’t have the numbers to completely block us in, and if they try, they’ll be spread out enough for us to start chipping them down piecemeal. And at the end of the day, whatever the motivations of the constituent pieces that have come together to create the army marching for us, the main overall goal they have is to remove me and any other ‘vampyr’ who are in the city tricking everyone. The longer they stick around, the more chances we have to show them that there are no vampyr here, and vampires are a different thing.”
“Are you going to make an Oath that they can witness?” David asked.
“No, there’s no point. I’ve already made more than one in front of credible witnesses, and they’re still coming to kill me. Enough influential people are so caught up by vampyr being a threat that they’re ascribing anything I do to prove I’m not a vampyr as trickery. If they aren’t willing to believe that the world can change beyond their preconceived notions of what it is, I’m not spending levels or experience to try and convince them. Especially when they’re coming to kill me. I’ll kick their asses up and down our territory, and they can believe me or not after we’ve won.”
“What happens if this grow bigger?” Murunel asked, “Let’s say we win, which, as confident as everyone is, I’m more than willing to say we will. What if we don’t convince anyone that you’re not a vampyr, and reinforce in their minds that you are a threat? What happens when the bigger nations, like the Empire and the Concord, send bigger armies at us? They’re already sending troops with the army that’s here now.”
Isla’s illusion shook its head, “That’s unlikely to happen for multiple reasons. First, this campaign that’s after Kay’s head is being driven and motivated by the Shatterplate Order and the Itarian Crusade, not any nation. The two premier vampyr hunting groups are terrified of us becoming a vampyr Nelam, so they want Kay taken out. The rest of the force that makes up the army is after a handful of other objectives and aren’t going to be willing to come back after we spank them a bit.”
“Wait.” Kay held up a hand. “Explain that bit about being a vampyr, Nelam.”
“Oh, that’s simple. Between the last nation that tried to use slavery on a wide scale falling and Nelam’s rise, slavery was mostly on an individual or small scale level, and anyone that wanted to free slaves they encountered or deal with slavers and slave traders could mostly do as they pleased. Find someone who’s keeping people as slaves? Kill them, free their victims, and you’re done if you’re inclined to take the simplest and most violent route. If the authorities want to punish you for killing someone, it isn’t that hard to argue that you’ve actually done them a service, and they should let you go. Similarly, if you just waltz up in the dead of night and ghost away the slaves to freedom, the criminal slave owner can’t report the theft. If they do, they get arrested for owning slaves, or if this hypothetical experience takes place in a place that frowns on owning slaves but doesn’t technically outlaw it, the former slave owner still isn’t going to get any help ‘reclaiming their property’. After Nelam came around, there was a whole nation where owning slaves wasn’t just legal; it was encouraged. Guards can and will arrest you for helping slaves get free, and anyone who wants to save people from slavery has to become a criminal in the eyes of Nelam’s law. Now imagine if there’s a country whose leader is a vampyr. Avalon would become the same thing to the vampyr hunters that Nelam is to abolitionists.” The illusion waved its hand, “I’m sure that they don’t expect that to happen immediately, but putting yourself in their shoes, it's not hard to work out. Avalon allows vampyr to go about their lives unmolested, except we call them vampires instead; this is running with the assumption that they are the same thing, and Kay is just lying, of course, which the vampyr hunters seem to believe right now. Not only are vampyr allowed to continue existing, we’re even allowing them to grow in numbers, since Kay is ‘saving’ people from becoming vampyr by making them into vampires. Meanwhile, the vampyr continue their reign of terror and madness in secret, helped by our very government! Now, cut back to the vampyr hunters. It’s their job, nay, their duty, to destroy vampyr wherever they can, in order to make the world a better place and save people or whatever. They would all be driven to come here and wipe out every vampyr they can get to, whatever the locals call them. But they wouldn’t be supported by the local authorities, military, and/or adventurers, they’d be actively hunted, making it even easier for the vampyr to both evade them or counterattack. It’s a hypothetical nightmare for them. The ones that are thinking ahead, at least. The less intelligent ones are probably expecting Kay to lure everyone into a false sense of security then turn us all into vampyr and unleash the entire population like a sadistic torturing plague. The even stupider ones are probably going ‘Powerful vampyr! Kill it!’ with no other thoughts in their minds.”
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“That was a longer explanation than I expected when you said it would be simple,” Eleniah snarked at the illusion with a cheeky grin.
“Simple and short are two different words.”
“Thank you for explaining.” Kay cut in, ignoring the teasing. “I knew there had to be a better reason to assemble an army and march it up here than thinking I would actually be able to convert all of Avalon’s population into vampyr without getting killed, but that wraps it all up neatly. I’m still confused about why they decided an army would be the best thing to take me on with, though. Wouldn’t a smaller group targeting just me make more sense? It’d be more in line with the Shatterplate Order’s modus operandi, too.”
The illusion perked up, and Kay could imagine Ilsa beaming beneath it, not that she actually was beneath the illusion. “Oh, that’s an interesting tidbit I picked up now that the enemy is closer and easier to spy on. The Shatterplate Order absolutely wanted to do that, but things got out of hand for them. It looks like Alice’s father, one Edric Ravenhome, Commander of the Order, went to the Crusade for help because he felt that he needed it in order to get to you, and some of my sources also believe that he was trying to hand off responsibility for killing Alice onto someone else. From my reports and what Alice had told us, he’s a very responsible man, but if he brought others along, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for them to take pity on him and take out Alice themselves.”
“What does that have to do with the army on our doorstep?”
“He handed too much of the reins over to the Crusade, and they went with their normal strategy over the Order’s. The Crusade marches in troops; they don’t sneak in and out, and they decided they needed even more troops to deal with an entire city rather than the towns they usually deal with. By the time Ravenhome realized things had changed on him the Crusade was running most of the show.” The illusion leaned in with a grin, “But that’s where the Crusade started fucking up.”
The meeting was hanging onto the illusion’s every word, and Kay mentally applauded Isla’s showmanship. “Oh? Do tell,” He said drolly, giving her the opening she was looking for.
The illusion shot him a quick grin, “They started recruiting nobles, mercenaries, and military leaders with personal troops to reinforce them. Wrapping back around to what I was saying earlier, the actual military troops from the Concord and the Empire aren’t coming here officially; they’re attached to the generals leading them, who are both ‘on vacation.’ They have orders to help remove any potential vampyr that may or may not be in Avalon, but their governments sent them out here for different reasons. As far as those generals know, they’re here as part of a general and deniable plan to poke us with a stick and see what happens, the normal behind the scene political shit that happens when a new kid shows up and starts to look interesting. What I’ve discovered, however, is that both of these generals have been making waves back home that certain movers and shakers in their general area aren’t fans of, and they got sent here to be out of the way for a while or maybe never come back. The Empire general has been making eyes at an Imperial Princess’ consort, and the general from the Concord has been dipping his toes into politics against people much better than he is. Neither the Empire nor the Concord are actually interested in having a real war with us, mostly because it would cost too much and get them too little. We’re too far away and not rich enough to conquer just yet.” The illusion looked over at Murunel, “Does that answer your question?”
“Perfectly, thank you.”
“The rest of it is similar, if not the same. Each itty bitty piece of the army has its own goals for this, mostly fame and glory, or loot and land, although the people who think they’re going to set up their own little fiefdoms down here off of our hard work are idiots, none of them have brought enough troops or supplies for that. The only sections we have to worry about are the Nelamian troops we’ve learned about and the portion of a Clan Legion that joined the army a few weeks ago. The Nelamians want to crack down on us to try and stem the escaped slaves filtering through our borders and out into the rest of the world, and the Clans want us to stop existing entirely, but they’re mostly marching on us as some kind of demonstration that their traditions are better and stop the flow of people immigrating here. I think that’s moronic, but I didn’t grow up in that culture.”
“I can understand it.” Ahthia muttered, “I agree that it’s not very smart, but I can work through their logic.”
“Should we be worried about them?” Kay asked her.
“During the fighting, as much as anyone else on the field. After? No, not really. Some of the information that my people and I have uncovered recently points to some interesting information about why the Clans are the way they are and some motivations for attacking us. If we beat them, I can talk to whoever’s left in charge or send someone to the Clans themselves, and we should be able to talk them down.”
“Yes, we’ve been combining our information to help each other, and we can disarm any casus belli the Clans come up with later fairly easily,” Isla’s illusion added, “Nelam, we just wipe out the Clans we beat down enough, and they’ll pull back, they’ll be more concerned about their losses than dealing with us.”
“And everyone else?”
“The patchwork force that barely had enough time to work out the best way to fight together, let alone set up a truly robust chain of command that would be able to deal with losing leaders? We take out the driving force for the campaign and let the army implode. If we either convince the Crusade and the Order that they’re entirely mistaken and shouldn’t be here at all, or we wipe them out. The remaining hodgepodge force won’t have any real motivation left to work together or keep attacking us, especially if we’re winning handily. That’s with extra emphasis if we manage to convince the Crusade and the Order that they’re wrong. The rest of them who want glory won’t get any if they keep prosecuting a war based on a mistake, and the ones after loot won’t have the handy excuse to cover their bad behavior.”
Kay stared at the illusion for a moment before smiling. “I think that recruiting you is going to go down in history as one of the best decisions I ever made.”
The illusion puffed up with a big grin, and Kay could picture the small smile Isla normally gave in response to heartfelt compliments, wherever she happened to be hiding at that moment. “Thank you, my lord. I deeply appreciate that.”
Kay nodded, then looked around at everyone. “Alright, what’s next? We need to work at making sure that we’re around long enough for someone to write history about my good decisions.”