Lord Summoner's Freedom Philosophy: Grimoire of Love-Chapter 500: The Siege Begins (2)

"Late to the party, Commander?"

"Fashionably," he shot back, unable to keep the grin from stretching his cheeks.

Behind her, Emilia urged her destrier forward—no subtle mount, this beast, but a hulking black charger that tossed its head like a furnace bellows. The red of Emilia’s hair seemed almost to glow in the cold morning, matching the glint in her eyes as she hefted her greatsword across the saddle-bow.

"You mean to stare all day, or kill something?" she barked, voice carrying over the din.

Lyan’s spirits chimed in unison.

(You should answer her,) Cynthia advised, half amused.

Lilith purred, (Tell her you can do both.)

He settled for a lopsided salute with his glaive, then wheeled to take stock. Tara and Sigrid thundered in next—Tara’s brown curls plastered to her cheeks by sweat, Sigrid’s pale braid already flecked with ash where arrow-fire had seared the tower she toppled. Behind them rolled an avalanche of warriors: knot-armoured shieldmaidens banging axes against rimmed shields, barefoot berserkers daubed with runes, mounted archers in patchwork lamellar who rode so low their chests nearly brushed horse withers.

Flaming shafts arced overhead in staggered flights. Every arrow left a comet tail that hissed as pitch-soaked rags guttered in the wind. One found a timber watch-tower on the mid-wall; another lodged in a crenel beside a ballista crew. When the fire reached the fletching, the shaft burst, cracking the dried pine like a matchstick. The entire platform collapsed, taking screams with it.

Wilhelmina saw the towers fall and raised her voice like a whip-crack: "Infantry! Up the causeway! Ram to line!"

Her shield line answered with a rumble of boots. They surged, a wedge of battered helms and dented breastplates. In front six engineers shouldered the makeshift ram—a trimmed oak trunk bound in iron scraps—each man grunting as it slammed again and again into the northeast gate. Splinters flew. Every third strike Wilhelmina snapped a hand upward, and archers behind her loosed covering fire: quick, precise, more to keep enemy heads down than to kill.

Surena spurred from stillness to lunging gallop so fast her mount seemed to teleport. "Forward!" she bellowed, sword flashing over her head. The blade was single-edged, mountain steel, its fuller etched with snow-fox tracks for luck. Lyan’s horse jolted forward in the same heartbeat, almost as if his blood pulled the reins tighter without consulting thought. Pebbles sprayed behind their hooves.

Cold air sliced his lungs. He leaned across the gap between them, catching the apple-sweet scent of the soap she favoured—something hauled half across the world from her father’s trade caravan. The battlefield felt bizarrely intimate, like the moment before a kiss in a lamplit corridor, only the corridor was full of mud and arrow shafts.

He stole that kiss anyway, quick and light. Surena’s grey eyes widened; colour flared high on her cheekbones, and she answered with a laugh that sounded like steel striking flint.

"Steady seat, commander," she teased, swiping her sword sideways to deflect an oncoming pike. "I’d hate to explain to your army how their hero got speared because he was puckering up."

Behind them Emilia made a sound halfway between a groan and a chuckle. "If you two start mating in the saddle I’m steering wide," she warned. A Varzadian sergeant lunged at her bridle; she swung, blade humming. Metal met flesh—the man split from collarbone to navel. "Besides, there are children present!" she added, pointing with the gore-slicked weapon toward a gawking eighteen-year-old lancer in Lyan’s third rank.

"Eyes front, soldier!" Wilhelmina barked at the boy without looking back.

Up on the rampart, Lara’s silhouette sprang between crenels. She loosed an arrow that punched clear through a tower-shield slit, then another that pinned the shield to the parapet so its owner couldn’t angle it away. "Focus, lover boy," she called, voice hard but playful as river stones rolling together. Her next shaft found the knee of a crossbowman foolish enough to peek.

Lyan felt heat in his ears—caught again. But there was no time; the gate groaned, timbers hanging by a single hinge. Wilhelmina shouted, "Brake clear!" Her engineers scattered and the ram teams ducked aside just as the oak trunk crashed through. The gateleaf folded inward like rotten parchment.

A roar went up from the infantry, raw and ragged. They flooded the breach, shields high. Lyan and Surena rode the shock wave, cutting down the first ring of defenders before those men realised the line had broken. Surena’s sword carved glittering arcs, each stroke punctuated by a fierce grunt. Lyan swung the pole of his glaive low, hooking a captain’s ankles. The man thumped into mud; the returning stroke drove the blade through visor and brain. Warm spray dotted Lyan’s cheek.

(One down. Six thousand to go,) Griselda crackled, sparks skittering at the edge of his hearing.

Less than thirty paces away, Wilhelmina formed up again, reforming gaps with shouted numbers rather than commands. "Left pivot two, push!" Her unit obeyed instinctively; even a berserker slamming a Varzadian halberd off his shield managed to shuffle where she indicated.

From somewhere in the whirling melee a Varzadian banner—yellow serpent on black—thrust into view. Surena cursed and kicked free of a bridle-grab, eyes narrowing. She and Lyan angled toward it, horses smashing through half-hearted spear thrusts. At ten paces they vaulted from the saddles in near unison, boots skidding on the blood-slick stone.

The banner’s bearer back-pedalled. Lyan lunged, catching the pole with the glaive’s crescent hook, yanking downward. Surena stepped in, sword lopping the man’s hands at the wrist. He screamed; she silenced him with a vicious pommel blow. Then she turned and, with theatrical flourish, snapped the banner-pole across her thigh. Cheers rippled outward.

"Dramatic," Lyan quipped over the din.

She wiped flecks of blood from her cheek. "Just tidying the skyline."

Shadows flickered overhead—Belle’s illusions. Phantom ladders, ghostly ropes, men made of mist hauling themselves up ramparts. Varzadian bowmen loosed volley after volley at the apparitions, arrows slicing harmlessly through air. Belle herself sprinted along a side street, real cloak blending into its enchanted twin. A defender lunged at her with a partisan; she pivoted, letting the spearhead cut only fabric, then stabbed him under the arm with a wrist-knife never meant for front lines. Her breath came ragged. Still, she managed a wink at Lyan as she darted into a doorway.

Ravia dropped into view next, sliding down a tattered banner sheet like a thief in a fable. She landed on a sentry’s back, blade flashing in a brutal back-stab. Xena, above, laid arrowheads on every Varzadian foolish enough to peer over the wall’s edge. One arrow pierced a commander’s open mouth mid-shout; another clipped the rope to a defensive cauldron, sending the pot of hot sand tumbling onto allies below.

A tremor shuddered through the flagstones. Alicia, pale but resolved, knelt beside a waist-high pillar carved with sigils—one of the central ley-stones powering the Serpent Keep’s arcane wards. Her fingers traced the carved grooves, light flaring along each channel until the stone hummed. Sweat dripped off her chin. With a pained cry she slammed her palm flat. Lightning-bright fissures spider-webbed out; the stone exploded into shards of dead basalt. The protective hum enveloping the entire inner wall died as though a bell had been cracked. The attacking archers felt it—arrows flew truer, illusions held firmer.

Josephine was everywhere at once, or seemed to be. One moment she galloped through a grain yard, torch in hand; the next she ducked under a low arch near the stables, tossing clay pots of oil onto stacked fodder. Flames blossomed, horses screamed, and smoke bled into the wintry sky in great coughing pillars. Each new blaze sent civilian defenders scurrying to form bucket lines—draining manpower from the real fight.

"Stable’s gone, north silo’s gone... what’s left to light?" Josephine wheeled her mount, grinning as two terrified hostlers sprinted in opposite directions. Her adjutant pointed toward a row of rope-winched cargo cranes over the river. "Ah, the docks," she purred. "Let’s scare their supply ships next."

Back at the first breach, Lyan’s line hit heavier resistance: elite household guard in black-lacquer armour, shields carved like serpent scales overlapping. Their captain planted his spear butt with a thud. "Hold, dogs!" he cried.

Surena answered by hurling a javelin one-handed. It punched through the captain’s pauldron and pinned him to the gate jamb. The man dropped, choking. His squad wavered; Lyan and Wilhelmina drove forward, shields slamming. Spears thrust, rapiers darted. Noise rose to a fevered howl—iron shrieking, men choking, berserkers howling mountain hymns.

"Gate two secure!" Wilhelmina shouted, voice hoarse. She pressed a bloody hand to her side—only a bruise, judging by her unbroken stride.

Beyond the breach a narrow boulevard led straight toward the mid-ring gate. Statues of snake-headed heroes lined it, each pedestal draped in funereal black silk. Emilia strode up, yanking her greatsword from a corpse. She flicked gore away, then pointed with the blade. "That arch!" she barked. "Clear ten paces either side—we ride through!"

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