Click
“Banron on low frequency. Can you hear me?”
Click
He released the transponder’s actuator to fiddle with the Crafting in front of him: a large, complex version of the Observer Craftings. Copper conducting wires, coiled gold reservoirs, and dozens of actuators and other contraptions hummed frantically inside the wooden box frame. The entire thing was connected by copper cables to a copper plate and tall steel pole mounted to the roof above his top-floor workroom in the Crafter’s building in Trylla. More cables ran through the floor to the sub-basement, where another long steel rod had been driven into the ground and capped with another copper plate.
He heard only a faint crackling noise from the device for nearly ten minutes before he decided to try again.
Click
“Aelic, can you hear me? Aelic, this is Banron at Trylla Station. Can you hear me?”
Click
Ban had been doing this every first hour of every day for the last three days. Emrael and his army had been gone for nearly a week. The same day, Ban had sent one of his best Crafters, Aelic, back through the mountains with the plans and parts to build a Crafting just like this one in Whitehall. He would then go on to do the same in Larreburgh. Within a few weeks, he should have a communication network operational in this corner of Iraea, at least.
Even better, if the Craftings worked at this distance, with a small mountain range between them no less, his math said that he should be able to build a bigger station to reach as far as Myntar and beyond! Absent Gods, given time, he could probably extend the range to reach Ordena and the Ithan Wilds! Of course, the Citadel would be ideal for broadcasting, or maybe even a station built on the peaks of the Duskan Mountains behind it.
He wondered for an idle moment what would happen if one of these were installed near an infusori Well or even an undeveloped focus point like the Ravan temple. Emrael had been able to cast his voice through the original Observer Crafting over one hundred leagues from a temple west of Lidran, after all, and the frequency had been all wrong to travel that kind of distance. Curious.
A louder crackling noise came through the speaker assembly of the Crafting in front of him, then:
Click
“Banron, this is Aelic! I’m in Whitehall Keep. Well, on top of it, really. Sorry for the delay, there was a bit of a storm earlier and I didn’t fancy being roasted alive by a lightning bolt. But by the Faceless, I can hear you! Do you know what you’ve done?”
Click
The Crafting went back to its quiet hum and crackle. Ban hooted with delight and jumped in the air, but cursed when he knocked his knee on the table.
Still smiling while rubbing his knee, he pressed the actuator on his newest invention.
Click
“Aelic, you beautiful man! I knew you could do it. Does Dorae have what you need to build another? Emrael will want more.”
Click
Aelic responded with a choking noise nearly the instant Ban let go of the actuator.
“Ban, I have your plans, but even with the Crafters left here and Dorae’s supplies—if he’ll give them to me—that’ll take time. Weeks, probably.”
Click
Ban sighed.
Click
“Make it quickly, Aelic, or Emrael might come after you himself. Send this one with a Crafter you trust—maybe Paia?—up to Larreburgh. It should work there more easily than Whitehall. The next one you build stays there with you. I’ll work a big one up here to send to Myntar.”
Click
Aelic sounded dejected when he replied.
Click
“Yeah, Ban, I’ll try. I’ll send this up to Larreburgh and build another.”
Click
Ban got a queasy feeling in his stomach at having to pressure his friend. He suddenly appreciated the work Emrael had taken on himself much more. Giving orders put distance between friends, no matter the necessity. The compassion and pride he felt for his brother calmed his nerves as he replied.
Click
“Good, thank you. See that you do, Aelic. You are saving thousands of lives, you know.”
Click
Aelic started to respond, but Ban’s attention was drawn away by a bell clanging somewhere to the north. Another tolled, and another. Something bad then, to sound that many of the warning bells on the recently constructed outer wall. Middle of the city wall. Whatever.
He hadn’t heard whatever Aelic had just said, but he didn’t have time. He pressed the actuator in a panic.
Click
“Aelic, the bells are ringing, so I might not be in contact for a while. Get the Observers built.”
Click
He disengaged the actuator and disconnected the large Crafting’s cables without waiting for a response. These new Observers weighed nearly as much as he did—they were stuffed full of gold and copper and other heavy metals, after all—but he lugged it to the wheeled cart waiting in the hallway himself. He didn’t have time to shout to anyone else for assistance. He wasn’t sure they would have heard him, anyway. The bells meant an invasion of the city, and everyone was doing the same thing he was—racing down the halls with whatever of their latest research they could carry.
After locking his Observer in a storeroom, Ban hurried from the building and toward the city center square, where he could hear soldiers shouting commands.
He found Captain First Garrus in a command tent near the center of the square, senior officers and runners all around him milling about in near panic.
Ban hung back, staying at the edge of the group for a time, studying the map of Trylla and its surroundings that had been laid out on a large table. Clerks and junior officers bustled about the map, updating it with various shapes of different colors. Ban hadn’t spent enough time with the Legion to know all of the particulars but quickly ascertained enough to understand that the hill forts outside the city had fallen and that enemy troops had been sighted at the edge of the ruins. Red triangles pointing southward crowded the map to the north of the city. Far fewer blue triangles speckled the map around the recently constructed wall along the river that cut through the ruins to the north of the city center.
At best, Trylla was about to be under siege. At worst, they had only a few hours to evacuate the city or die.
Ban hurried forward, weaving among the bustle of soldiers to seize Captain Garrus’s elbow. Before he could speak, a man with the rounded facial features of a Sagmynan wearing a Justicer’s armband shoved him back roughly.
Ban let out an involuntary yelp, but instead of cowering as he might have done not so long ago, he rolled backward over one shoulder and came up on the balls of his feet.
The Justicer stalked forward, the other officers standing back to avoid the sudden commotion.
“Justicer Yudin!” Garrus barked. The cold anger on the Captain’s face surprised Ban, but it made the Justicer—and everyone else—stop cold. The man was normally so calculated and composed that when his anger burned through the calm, everyone knew the man was serious.
Garrus shouldered past the Justicer to take Ban by the shoulder.
“My Lord Banron, I am very sorry for my Justicer’s behavior. They are overzealous in their duties, at times.”
Garrus then turned back to the Justicer, his calm manner already returned. “Yudin, I expect all who serve as Justicers to recognize our senior officers and other leaders. Lord Banron Ire is the brother of Emrael Ire, our future king.”
The Justicer’s eyes widened with fear. He held out one hand and began stammering an apology.
Ban cut one hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Forget it. It was an honest mistake. We don’t have time for this nonsense anyway.” He pointed at the map, which aides had already resumed updating in a flurry. To Ban’s point, more red arrows had been placed all around the city, though none seemed to have moved into the ruins just yet. “Are you confident you can hold the river wall against that many, Captain?”
Garrus’s face sagged slightly but his voice was calm when he spoke. “No. When I told your brother that I could hold the city with five thousand men, I didn’t think we’d be up against thirty thousand. Honestly, I don’t know where they’ve found the men, and how they moved so quickly. Lord Ire has scarcely been gone ten days! How could they have known?”
Ban shrugged off the question and moved to the table that held the map. “But you could hold the inner wall with your five thousand?”
He and Garrus had worked together in recent days to begin work on a wall that surrounded a much smaller section of the city—the center square and a few blocks of surrounding buildings in each direction.
Garrus eyed him. “Yes … but that wall is not complete, Banron. As of this morning, my engineers reported it three-quarters done. But if it were finished, I think we could hold it. For a while.”
Ban ran a hand through his long hair and tugged, thinking. “Could you hold the river wall for a day or so? Give me your engineers and craftsmen for that long, and we can finish it.”
The Captain First nodded slowly, and so did several of the officers surrounding them. “Yes. We can do that much, I think. With those … explosive projectiles you’ve given my engineers, we may be able to scare them into holding off longer. We’ll just have to hope they don’t get wise and decide to find a way across the river away from the city to come at us from behind. I don’t have the men to defend the wall properly, let alone the river.”
“Would a full retreat be any better?” Ban asked.
Garrus’s face blanched. “No, I don’t think it would. They’d pick us apart as we moved. We’d have to leave the settlers behind if we wanted to survive, or engage for a day anyway to allow them to escape. And I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell your brother that we lost the city and everyone in it.”
“Nor would I,” Ban said with a wry smile. “I don’t see that we have much choice, then. Tell your engineers to meet me here in fifteen minutes. I’ll gather my Crafters. Hold them for a day, Captain.”