Chapter 54 ： Calling for Help
The alarm bells in Lion's Roar Fortress began ringing before the column had fully stopped. Commander Richard climbed the wall and looked out at the evening light. He counted what he thought he saw: four hundred cavalry in two groups approaching from the flanks, and perhaps a thousand more figures moving in the camp three li out. His garrison numbered two hundred.
What he was actually seeing was one hundred cavalry split into two groups, with Evan's Mirror Image spell running over the formation. At this distance and light, the magic could multiply apparent numbers threefold without any observer noticing the seams.
A rider came forward: "We are Robin's army. Surrender your weapons or we take this fortress and leave no one alive."
An arrow answered him. He raised his shield, deflected it, and rode back.
"Loose," Evan said.
Eighty archers sent two rapid volleys simultaneously. In the mirror image, it appeared as three hundred and twenty arrows. The enchanted ones were fire-based — small fire-element cores wired into the arrowheads through inscribed arrays, designed to detonate on contact. When the first volley hit the fortress's defensive magical array, which was just starting to stabilize from cold rest, the detonations overlapped each other and the expanding energy staggered the array's output. Two soldiers on the wall were caught in the pressure wave and fell.
Richard went pale. The array had been dormant for ten years, and neither he nor most of his garrison had seen it activated under fire before. He thought the array was failing rather than simply warming up.
It wasn't failing. The array steadied and held.
Evan read the situation from outside and recognized the opportunity had passed. He switched to throwing spears — a hundred of them, which the mirror image multiplied to four hundred lines through the air. These hit the stabilized array and detonated without penetrating it. Satisfying noise, no result. He added several fireballs, then stopped.
He knew what he'd accomplished: the garrison had seen magic used against their defenses repeatedly in a single engagement. That meant the attacking force had a mage, and a mage accompanying an assault suggested a serious operation rather than a probing raid. He had done what he came to do. The rest was theater.
A rider went forward as darkness fell: "You have one night to decide. Surrender or we take it."
The column rode away into the dark, quickly, before the mirror image's time ran out.
There were two reasons Evan had chosen dusk. One was the spell's duration — Mirror Image couldn't run indefinitely, and the gathering dark would hide the column's actual size during the withdrawal. The other was that darkness was the right time for a besieged garrison to send for help.
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The gates opened quietly. Four riders slipped out. Evan's scouts, already positioned, intercepted two of the eastern riders cleanly. The western pair they let through.
The report came to the tent where Evan was meeting with his squad leaders: "Two confirmed eliminated, two released, heading west, as expected."
The squad leaders had formed a more functional opinion of Evan than they'd had twelve hours earlier. Not quite respect, not yet. Something moving in that direction.
"Tomorrow," Evan said. "Fifty riders to keep the pressure on. And I need the men from the town — all of them — cutting timber. We're building trebuchets."
"To actually breach the fortress?" Andrea asked.
"These won't breach anything. The fortress has an active magical array and the trebuchets I'm thinking of won't touch it. I need the townspeople occupied. Idle men in a confined situation become problems. Tired men who've been working don't." He paused. "And if I ask them to operate the trebuchets tomorrow evening, it adds to the picture. Also, I want scouts two hundred li to the west."
One of the squad leaders pushed back on the range.
"I need to know when Normandy turns around," Evan said. "He will turn around — that's the point of all of this. But if he moves fast enough that we're still here when he arrives, we have a serious problem. I'd rather know early." He pulled out the scroll case he'd brought from the camp. "Each scout gets one of these. Spotted, tear it open. It alerts me and gives me your approximate direction. We need those scouts to come back."
In the forest, Normandy's advance was going poorly. Robin's fighters weren't fighting — they were dissolving before contact and reappearing in different positions, leaving dead behind and taking almost none. The musket companies were bleeding steadily. A musket was devastating when a line of infantry fired together against another line — it was nearly useless when the targets were archers in trees who had already moved by the time the smoke cleared.
Bonarpan, commanding the parallel column, had solved the problem partway by grouping his musketeers in threes with one knight per group. The knight's presence provided suppression and awareness; the musketeers provided reach. His casualties were a fraction of Normandy's.
When Normandy heard about the solution, he felt the particular frustration of someone who had gotten there second. He reorganized, and it helped.
The army was still moving. The harassing fire had cost them several hundred but hadn't stopped them. Normandy knew that direct confrontation, when it came, favored his side — he had twice Robin's numbers, ten cannon, musketeers, and knights. He just had to close the gap.
Then the riders from the fortress arrived.
Two of them, clothing ruined, eyes red. They had been riding since the previous night.
"My lord — they're attacking Lion's Roar Fortress. Robin's men. A large force."
Normandy's expression went through several things in rapid succession. His instinct for self-preservation was faster than his battlefield reasoning. "Is the fortress still ours?"
"It was when we left. But they had — there were hundreds of cavalry, and they used enchanted weapons, mass detonations against the magical array. A mage was with them. In the rear camp, there were more —"
They produced a letter from Richard, hidden in their clothing. Normandy read it.
Richard's account was vivid: four hundred cavalry in the initial approach, a mage deploying repeated magical attacks against the array, a rear encampment with additional forces visible in the distance. The letter made it sound like the main body of Robin's strength had relocated to threaten the fortress.
Normandy did not stop to ask why a force capable of threatening a fortified position would do so openly and then withdraw without pressing the advantage. He looked at the letter and saw what it was designed to make him see.
He gave the order to turn west.