The Army of Greffa had faced little opposition as they approached the City, as most of the villages and farms that dotted the land had been deserted. He assumed most of the peasants and villagers were encamped behind the great curtain wall that surrounded the city. It was common practice here-and-now during sieges to kill or run off the peasants, loot and burn their cottages and fire the towns.
The few soldiers they'd captured had cursed Theovacar for taking the army and leaving Greffa City poorly defended. But not quite undefended: there were about five thousand garrison troops and another two to three thousand "volunteer militia" who'd been given crossbows, half-pikes and halberds. According to Count Vinaldos, less than half of the Greffan militia had any military experience and he expected that they'd fold at the first real exchange of firepower once the Hostigi breached the City Walls.
Last night they had taken one of the nearby towns along the Galfryth Sea (Lake Michigan) and captured several small boats and one larger trading vessel. They'd put the four lighter guns on the fishing boats and loaded the two-masted merchant ship with fireseed and tar. Verkan had led the night attack on Greffa Harbor, where they had burned eight warships tied up at the dock and destroyed three others in the harbor along with a score of merchant and fishing boats. Squat fingers of black smoke were still rising from several of the vessels that had been too close to shore to founder.
Verkan had left several companies of Ulthori soldiers, familiar with boats, to man their small ad hoc navy and keep supplies and reinforcements from entering Greffa Harbor. They'd be all right as long as Theovacar didn't send the Grefftscharr Fleet back. Verkan had also brought back two boats loaded with fish, which were heartily welcomed by the troops. Traveling on horseback had restricted their foraging and the men were tired of stale bread, succotash, squash and buffalo jerky.
Colonel Catos, the officer in charge of the Army of Greffa Royal Artillery, rode up on his horse, saying, "With Galzar's help, Your Majesty, we shall break these walls down within a moon."
Catos was another of his bright and upcoming young men who would get an opportunity to prove himself in this spring's campaigns. Still, Kalvan would have preferred to have old Thalmoth, who'd died defending Tarr-Hostigos, or General Alkides who was in charge of the guns defending Thagnor City. Catos was long on ideas, but short on experience.
"The gods help those who help themselves," Kalvan answered, quoting one of his father's favorite aphorisms. He wondered once again what his minister father would think of here-and-now's pantheon of gods and goddesses. He remembered one of his father's quotations on the subject from Exodus: "Thou shalt not make unto me any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Tnou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them…"
Once his father recovered from the shock of finding himself here-and-now, he would've spent the rest of his days trying to convert the heathen to Christianity.
Catos wheeled his horse and rode away to talk over the siege with his officers.
Captain-General Verkan sidled up and leaned over in his saddle, asking, "How many of the artillery shells did we bring with us, Your Majesty?"
Kalvan leaned back in his saddle trying to recall the exact number. "We brought fifty. We left most of them as surprises for the Grand Host."
Verkan grinned. "They'll be surprised all right, when they get some lobbed into their laps!"
II
Colonel Catos returned a candle later, saying: "Your Majesty, my officers believe the gatehouse is too strong for a direct attack. It has two outside towers and is made of solid stone reinforced with iron bars and runs almost a quarter of a march long. It runs to a tunnel inside the walls, with three inner gates all with iron doors."
"That's what Captain-General Verkan was telling me. They needed a strongly fortified gatehouse to keep the nomads out. He suggests we forget the barbican and breach one of the outer walls."
I could sure use a good Mobil road map right about now, Kalvan thought. They had passed Lake Calumet, which was about ten miles behind them. Too far for all the animals, water and the sanitary requirements of a long siege. According to Verkan, the city had an extensive network of cisterns and reservoirs or he might have considered damming up the Chicago River. However, that would have only hurt the noncombatants and he had some plans for them after the siege that making them angry at him might foul-up. He wanted to undermine Theovacar's rule far more than he wanted to punish Greffa City and its inhabitants.
The best place for a base might be at Riverside in west Cook County. There they'd have plenty of water and plenty of space to work in.
It took the rest of the day to move the Army of Greffa and the siege train to the rear of Greffa City. The curtain walls and circular towers were just as stout here as at the gatehouse, but not in as good repair. Kalvan had Colonel Nathros and his First Royal Engineers and Sappers Company scouting for weak links in the walls. He turned to Colonel Catos, "What about the sally ports? Anything to fear there?"
The Colonel shook his head. "There aren't enough defenders on the wall to support a sortie party."
"Verkan, what about using the ports to breach the walls?"
"The sally ports are really six tunnels that run through the City Walls and continue for another hundred rods where they're buried in stone and dirt. The City itself is about a rod higher than the ground outside the walls; at one time the sally ports were above ground, but they have since been buried. The tunnel support beams inside the tunnels are surrounded by flammables such as turpentine. If the enemy breaks through the port doors, the flammables are set afire and the entire tunnel complex past the walls will give way, burying the invaders under an avalanche of stone. They're set to go off when the tunnels are full of men. However, with our superiority in soldiers and fireseed, I suspect those bangs we heard last night were the sally tunnels falling in."
"Aha. I thought they were blowing charges to test their guns."
"The defenders don't have enough fireseed to waste testing artillery. They'll save every barrel they have for us."
Kalvan smiled. "It's a good thing your men burned your fireseed factory or we might be facing a lot more firepower. Instead, our biggest problem is finding a good target."
Verkan pointed to a small party with the First Engineers banner of a black artillery gun on a white field with red sparks at the top and sides galloping away from the Walls. "There's your answer, I suspect."
A dozen or so crossbow bolts were shot through arrow loops in the battlements but the scouting party was out of range and they rained down haphazardly onto the grass. Several gunshots from Verkan's special sniper team rang out. The two-man sniper teams were set behind movable shields, with gun loops, big enough for two riflemen to rest comfortably. There was a flange over the top to keep out stray shots, although for the most part they were out of effective arquebus and crossbow range.
"Quick response," Kalvan noted.
"Your promise of a gold Crown for every enemy kill has them out for blood!"
Since it was impossible at that distance and from behind walls to document individual casualties, that meant a gold piece for every member of the day's sniper teams for each observed kill. The uncertainty and "demonic" aspects of their kills were worth every Crown in undermining Greffan morale. Rifles were unknown in the Upper Middle Kingdoms and kills from this distance had the appearance of black magic. They also had the advantage of making the crossbowmen wary of approaching their murder holes too closely, which meant fewer aimed shots and more random firing.
Colonel Nathros galloped up, slowing his horse in a spray of dirt clods and dust. The movement of several thousand horses and hundreds of wagons over the area had alligatored the top soil, chewing it up and burying most of the grass and small shrubbery. "Your Majesty, I believe we've found a chink in the walls. He pointed to a section of the wall between two of the rounded towers where there was a large discoloration in the plaster about a rod up the wall.