Chapter 72

  I was happy. Which was a strange thing to be before a battle that promised to be as hard and vicious as the previous one, if not more. In the past I’d either been calm or terrified before engagements; I couldn’t recall ever being happy. But as I inspected my twenty-five catapults, lined up along the western section of the wall, and the dozens of flameslime-pots behind each, I felt happy. Or perhaps giddy would have been the better word.

  My catapults were beautiful, each and every one of them; the black wood with red veins, the dark grey metal fixings and fasteners, the winding mechanisms, the long arms, the rope-springs so tense I was waiting for them to break loose on their own … ah, all of it was beautiful. If we all lived through this, the crafters were all going to get medals. I couldn’t wait to climb up to the battlements, look out at Camp Colosseum and witness the first test shots fired at the bastards — which would also signal the beginning of Operation Snowball in Hell as we didn’t want to alert the enemy to our new capabilities by doing actual test-shots; a surprised and unprepared enemy was what we wanted. Now or never, all or nothing, live or die; my brand-new pseudo-artillery regiment was going to rain down fiery death on the enemy.

  A lot of people would argue that old fashioned artillery was a couple of hundred years out of date — a couple of thousand in the case of catapults, probably — pointing to the Navy’s current capabilities both for precision strikes as well as large scale bombardments. But the Army had its reason for not phasing them out; I had heard stories about how a few self-propelled or towed guns had saved the day at times when the Navy hadn’t been available. And sure as hell, I wasn’t seeing any spaceships in orbit around here, so the enemy camps would have to make do with copious amounts of burning flameslime instead.

  Neither my entertainment library nor my collection of manuals had information on how an artillery regiment would be organised or how the pieces would be operated, and I wasn’t sure if any of it would have applied to demon-made catapults anyway. So, I had explained to the crafters the little I knew about the topic and left them to it, as they were going to be the ones operating them — as the soldiers were still hung up on the issue of EXP.

  The crafters had done a great job; taking Zeneth’s reports into account from the Garoshek crafters, they had worked everything out — demons were very smart when they needed to be. They had formed the crews, determined and allocated the roles; loading, aiming, and everything else, and they organised themselves into three batteries. And thus the 1st Orroth Artillery Regiment had been born, consisting of the Hell’s Fury Battery of nine catapults, the Fire of the Fourth Battery of eight catapults and the Hellguide’s Hammer Battery of eight catapults. I hoped the Genius — otherwise known as the Hellguide — was feeling at least a little pride and gratitude that someone had named an entire artillery unit after him.

  My new favourite general, Riaret the Catapult Complainer, had been furious when the crafters-turned-gun-crews had decided that to adjust aim quickly and efficiently, the regiment needed appointed captains. Unfortunately for Riaret the Cat-cuddling Strike, her own captains had agreed with the crafters, and so I didn’t need to pull rank to give them what they needed. Once this war was over, I’d need to look into the possibility of making the artillery regiment an official army with their own general and captains.

  In a Fourth Ring demon army “general” and “captain” were the only ranks; the general holding overall command as well as facilitating power boosts and communications between his or her captains, and each captain leading hundreds of soldiers while being able to talk with their colleagues and coordinate at large distances. These communication and coordination abilities were exactly what the catapult crews needed. Riaret had agreed to appoint two captains per battery, under the condition that no-one would refer to them as such. I had suggested the words “spotter” and “comm-operator”. The demons hadn’t been enthusiastic about the names — apparently, they weren’t scary or demonic enough — but as they hadn’t had any better ideas, the names had stuck. And so, spotters were already on the battlements of the western wall, ready to relay to the comm-operators whether their respective batteries needed to adjust aim. They were ready.

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  And so was I. We had done everything we could think of to be as ready and prepared as it was humanly and demonly possible. As morning arrived, five thousand soldiers formed up in front of the catapult batteries on the square at the western gate: ten demon companies — vicious and thirsty for minotaur blood — under the command of ten captains. Half of Riaret’s army. Behind them, dispersed among the streets, our second wave of six companies waited patiently along with five thousand civilians — crafters and builders — who had been selected to travel with us to the gate after a successful breakout.

  Their general walked forward and approached me for one last meeting before the operation commenced. The metallic gleam of her dark armour under the burning sky, her halberd’s blade sharp and sparkling with red light, and her horns jutting out from the helmet she wore — she was the personification of the might and fury of all of Hell. Right until Mickey jumped out of my storage, and the good general lost her composure. I was absolutely willing to overlook this lapse in the image she was projecting; it was kind of cute, to be honest, to see this kind of contrast in the behaviours of a demon, and I would have dwelt on this more if we didn’t have a battle starting in the next ten minutes.

  ‘Well, Hyde, we’ve done more planning than Ugrathar had ever done in his entire, stupid life, so tell me this will all work!’ Riaret addressed me after she had satisfied her urge to pet Mickey and collected herself.

  ‘No guarantees in battle, Riaret,’ I said. ‘But you know that, so why ask? Are you having second thoughts?’

  She glared at me from under her helmet, giving me a look that could probably kill.

  ‘You are insufferable,’ she grunted the words, then sighed. ‘No second thoughts. We will fight, plan or no plan. What I want you to say is that we’ll win and we’ll win again and again.’

  ‘That’s the plan.’ I nodded, smiling.

  ‘What are you grinning for?’ she demanded.

  ‘I like your enthusiasm; it puts a smile on my face.’

  ‘Stop acting like a fool or I’ll put something else on your face!’ she growled at me, smacking the ground with the butt of her weapon so hard that the stone tile cracked.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ I raised my hands in mock surrender, still grinning, and then put my helmet on. ‘Let’s get ready, shall we?’

  ***

  I stood on the wall next to Riaret, looking over the battlements, almost pitying the unsuspecting Camp Colosseum and its roughly seven thousand occupants, as well as the somewhat smaller Camp Styx on its right and Camp Acheron on the left. All those tents, all those defensive structures and all the enemy soldiers getting ready for their day without having an inkling what was coming their way, were to be bathed in literal and metaphorical hellfire in a matter of minutes.

  ‘Reinos! Are you ready?’ I asked my general via the RMS.

  [We’re ready my Lord.] He replied immediately.

  ‘Riaret?’ I turned to her.

  ‘Do you even have to ask?’ She snorted, but as I looked at her, her eyes were gleaming with anticipation.

  ‘Burning Darkness?’

  ‘Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the cats of war!’ My sword misquoted something from my entertainment library — perhaps intentionally, and with characteristic excitement.

  ‘Mickey?’

  ‘Meow.’ His voice echoed in my soul, coming from my storage, and I knew that in a critical moment I could depend on him to teleport me to one of the dozens of different locations out there that he had marked yesterday on a pleasant and unnoticed evening stroll amongst the enemy.

  ‘Zeneth? Are you here?’

  ‘I am.’ His voice came from somewhere behind me. I didn’t turn around to look. ‘And you and your guys are …’

  ‘We’re observing,’ he said.

  This time I knew what he meant; a few of his compatriot Kralsenites present in the city were out there, all dark and invisible, keeping an eye on enemy movements. And I arrived at the last and favourite item on my checklist.

  ‘1st Orroth Artillery?’

  ‘We’re ready, my lord,’ the spotter — technically a captain — of the Hell’s Fury Battery, standing a few steps to my left, replied without hesitation. Yes! My catapults, my very own artillery unit, finally getting into the action.

  All that remained was to give the order to begin the operation and to unleash the opening salvo of artillery fire upon our foes.

  I took a deep breath as I looked out at the enemy camps once again, my heart suddenly thumping harder, faster and louder; I wasn’t sure if it was excitement, fear or something else that was making my throat dry and constricted to the point I couldn’t utter a single word. I cleared my throat, swallowed hard; the moment had come, and I gave the order.

  ‘Commence Operation Snowball in Hell!’