Gruin woke up almost the moment we’d finished fighting, which is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in my entire life. The sheer depth of his rage at missing such a mass of violence was such that I, for one moment, feared he might decide to create a new one by just going on a rampage then and there. Then, as his ranting continued, I feared he might burst a vein and die on the spot. After a while, when it became clear he would hurt neither himself nor anyone else, I just enjoyed the sight of seeing him so furious. It was a much-needed break from my own troubles.

  Vara appeared to be enjoying herself, too, as she watched it. She was a good deal subtler about this fact than me of course, probably fearing, quite rightly, that she might be beaten to death otherwise.

  ++”I was.”++

  “They’re still there though, right?” Gruin snapped, somehow managing to make his question sound like a demand, as if he were expecting me to send out a messenger and bring the orcs back if they’d decided to leave. Unfortunately, they had not done so yet, and I told him as much.

  “They seem to be setting up our missing cannons, probably to make a breach,” I added onto my report. “That and I think they’re cutting down trees from a local forest, so I’m expecting siege engines whenever they choose to attack us next.”

  Honestly, I was a good deal less worried now than I’d been before. Orcish losses had sheared an estimated one tenth off their numbers, or just under, which meant that we’d finally made an actual dent in them. That, and every day they spent preparing for their assault was another day for Anglyn’s actual army to show up.

  But I knew better than to put all my hopes on that anyway, even back then. I’d been in enough fights to know that you often didn’t get to enjoy the cavalry showing up last second to save you, and if that’d been happening more often for me of late, that was only more reason to keep cautious and avoid letting myself grow complacent about it happening again.

  Gruin seemed to feel the same way, but of course for him this was reason to be happy rather than concerned. His temper retreated behind a fog of sudden good humour.

  “Aye, then I’ll be getting another fight soon.”

  He was right about that much, at least. The next week or so moved by as a great blur, with the twin sensations of agonized anticipation and shocked disbelief compounding to make it all feel surreal.

  I rested as I could, ate well—enjoying the greater rations afforded to me through Morlo’s machinations—and keeping my strength up in anticipation for whenever the orcs’ final assault came. While I waited, something interesting became known to me.

  Apparently, those morons I’d gotten stuck training had managed to not die during the fighting. Or, well, some of them had obviously, but I was hearing reports of a fairly low attrition rate among them compared to all the other groups we’d thrown into the meat grinder. What was more surprising was none of them had been hanged for cowardice, apparently my advice on looking the part hadn’t gone ignored either. I was almost proud.

  Pride didn’t last much longer than that though, fear had far too much ammunition with all the orcs outside Arvharest for any other emotion to last very long.

  “What are they even doing here?” I snapped one morning, speaking to Vara on account of Morlo not being here to theorise and Gruin never really caring why his enemies wanted to kill him.

  “I’ve been asking around,” Vara muttered between her practice sessions, “I haven’t heard a consistent answer yet. Most people think they’re just mindlessly attacking for the fun of it.”

  As tempting as it was to believe that, I’d learned better at least.

  “Most people are thick,” I pointed out, “they’d tell you the same thing about Gruin.” Vara looked at me just the way you would. “Okay,” I amended, “maybe Gruin is somewhat like that, but people wouldn’t think he’s as smart as he is either. The idea of Grynkori being better than us at engineering, architecture, how many people would be willing to believe that?”

  She had a thoughtful look on her face then, at least.

  “So you think there’s some deeper purpose here than just random violence?”

  “There usually is,” I shrugged. One of the many benefits to my travels, other than the mild justice of such a big cunt being tormented and miserable, was that it’d taught me to look beneath the skin of a situation. “I don’t like this. If we’re not even trying to understand what the orcs are after, we have no way of knowing that they won’t get it.”

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  Vara thought about that. “You sound paranoid,” she noted, “they’re attacking us at the walls, stopping them from succeeding there is a big enough victory right now, right?”

  “Maybe,” I grunted. I was still far from satisfied. My level of satisfaction wasn’t going to be very much of a factor, though. All that mattered was my level of readiness for a fight, and that…was actually looking quite good.

  I ended up asking Morlo about my physical abilities upon discovering that I was now able to jump almost as high in plate armour as I’d been able to do naked the week before.

  “Lots of people tap into Thaumaturgical elements without meaning to,” he grunted, “it’s why those tourney fighters were so inhumanly strong. Magical beasts do it too. Over time, the more you train and focus on your body, the more the effects will grow. I’ve heard of men ending life with literally ten times the strength they started it with.”

  “I thought that was the ability of Heroes,” I frowned. Morlo shook his head.

  “Heroes drained power from magical enemies they killed, and other things like that. They grew much more quickly and explosively than us. The strongest of them…well, most are glad they aren’t around anymore for a reason.”

  And I was going to be posing as one. Now that I’d seen the range and lethality of arquebuses first-hand, the thought of inviting so many powerful people to shoot one at me suddenly seemed like a much worse idea. Still, it was hardly the most pressing source of danger in my life, so I just got back to focusing on preparation for the orcs’ next attack.

  It came sooner than I’d have liked.

  This time they did have siege towers, big things looming over the battlements by a good yard or three as they were rolled right for us. Men shivered and swore at the very sight where they lined up in anticipation, and I waited right alongside them. My plate armour had been repaired since the last battle, only having suffered minor scratches, though I’d not yet been lucky enough to have the second set made, the set that would be linked to my first through Thaumaturgy and make me a veritable juggernaut.

  Still, looking at the mere cuirasses and mail everyone else was making do with, I found it hard to complain.

  Attack by siege tower was a different beast altogether to the escalade we’d been treated to before. Partly because another escalade was coming, keeping our attention split even as the siege towers loomed. There must’ve been two, even three-scores of the things and all of them propelled impossibly fast by the vast orcish musculature driving them on their wheels. The first of them set down right before me, then opened.

  Three orcs burst out at once, clad in head to toe with heavy iron armour. They fought like a trio of demons and cut down twice their number in defenders before finally falling. By then, a dozen more orcs had spilled out after them. They’d used the three elites to make a foothold on our wall, and now it was just a clash of arms as the space available limited our superior numbers to applying only a few men at once, just like them.

  I’d been in enough fights by now to know that, long-term, my odds of survival were best if I took more risk now to help keep the enemy from strengthening their position. So with no small amount of reluctance, I made my way across the wall and got stuck into fighting them alongside everyone else.

  Of course a fireball drawn from nearby bodies is always a good way to open up any melee.

  My sword and arms felt lighter than ever, and I put all of that newfound strength and speed to full use by chopping away at everything in front of me. This time I was fighting somewhat out of my comfort zone, though, boxed into a tight position alongside allies, I wasn’t able to take any of the liberties a duelling ring had trained me to accept as my due.

  On the other hand, there was also a shade less risk involved for the extra cover of fighting shoulder-to-shoulder, and being able to cheat with Thaumaturgy never hurt. I’d learned better than to belch out power without restraint as I had last time, and paced myself more now. Parry, parry, stab, hack, blast of flames, parry, stab. I alternated and dragged the fighting out, letting my enemies tire themselves or grow over-focused on the threat of Thaumaturgy. It wasn’t magic I used to kill most of them, not so early in the fight, but the threat of it. A blade to unguarded joints was deadlier than jets of fire anyway.

  Granted, actually finding those unguarded joints got harder as the fight progressed. Orcs came with better armour and better defenses, each of my enemies fresh and rested while I grew more tired by the exchange. It was clear enough that we wouldn’t be holding out forever, not this time, so I didn’t try to do anything stupid and heroic, just focused on holding my own.

  Apparently everyone around me had a similar idea, and we managed to keep the damned orcs back for minutes before lines broke and chaos descended across the whole section of wall. We were probably giving Morlo’s area a run for its money in madness, and that really was saying something if the periodic explosions seen over there were any indication.

  One particularly big orc made himself known by smashing a human soldier in the head with some ornate hammer and tearing it fully off, helmet and all. That pretty much told me what would happen if I let my new armour take a clean connection, so I shifted to a defensive posture instantly.

  His advantage was a bigger shield and an anti-armour weapon, mine was Thaumaturgy. We clashed thrice before it became clear how much my fatigue was helping him, and I started stumbling back just to keep my breastplate from being caved in and ribs smashed apart. The orc felt like he was grinning, though I couldn’t see his face under the helmet. I was certainly grinning under mine, for entirely different reasons of course.

  My advantage of reach saw the Thaumaturgical steel of my blade scraping against his armour a score of times, though not a one of them did anything more than deface the metal. Meanwhile he didn’t need to tap me over and over, one hit from that hammer would end things and we both knew it.

  Time for me to change the game then. I moved in, surprising the orc by sacrificing my reach advantage and adjusting grip on my sword. I smashed the pommel of it hard against his visor and sent the bastard stumbling almost to the edge, then helped him over it with a hard kick. He disappeared to fall below, freeing up that much more space on the wall.

  And I got back to fighting.

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