Chapter 125: Trench Lines
Every night, the Marquis Burton returned to the safe rooms with his family, so Princess Alexis and Dominic took over his suite on the top floor of the keep, where they would be close to the reports, and in a position to see most of the city.
It wasn’t the greatest accommodation, but with a bit of alteration, the room now contained two beds, and the guards were staying right across the hall when they were not on duty.
It might have been considered unconventional, but Alexis had deemed it inefficient to have them going up and down five flights of stairs every day, when their job here was to protect someone who didn’t leave the tower.
Over the course of the next week, the airships reported three more mechanized convoys coming for Burton, none of which ever made it to them.
With their vehicles crippled, they would have to move on foot if they weren’t going to retreat, and that would take weeks. Long enough that even the airships would have to return to restock on fuel and food before the majority of the enemy troops arrived.
On the seventh day, the Dagos force began to work on new trench lines, moving them a hundred metres closer to the city.
That still wouldn’t be close enough that they could launch an effective artillery bombardment of the city, as they were downhill. But every time that they moved forward gave them a little better position.
All around the city, the cannons fired periodically at the workers, but at the extended range, there wasn’t much they could do to the soldiers hiding below ground level.
However, Dominic wasn’t idle as they waited.
He had spent most of the first day making ammunition for the few riflemen that the city guard held.
Then the second day, he had spent casting mana pistols using [Clay to Steel], as the city of Burton was nearly depleted of iron and steel stores.