Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 383

Chapter 383: Start of an invasion(2) Chapter 383: Start of an invasion(2) Caius stepped onto the rocky shore of Harmway with the measured confidence of a commander who knew victory was inevitable.

The landing was calm and unchallenged, the imperial forces disembarking in orderly waves, unbothered by even the faintest resistance.

High above them, the garrison within Harmway’s stronghold watched in silence, their banners fluttering in the breeze.

Not a single soldier dared to make a sortie or harass the landing parties.

Caius’s sharp gaze flicked up to the battlements, where shadows moved behind crenelated walls, the thought that he would have to order his men to scale those walls made him sigh.  The scouts did not lie, Caius thought as he lazily moved his sight toward of the many abandoned field around the stronghold..

 Once-fertile fields were barren, stripped clean of crops and vegetation.

The labor had been thorough; not even a stray bundle of hay remained.

Livestock, too, had vanished, likely slaughtered or hidden deep in the fortress.

His men scoured the surrounding areas, but there wasn’t so much as a goat or stray chicken to be found.

The western part of the island was occupied by a forest , devoid of life larger than birds or insects.

No boars, no deer, not even a scrawny fox.

For as a matter of fact the city did not allow the sustenance of big animals, except for some goats and cows that were brought in by settles..

The reason was obvious.

The island lacked any substantial source of fresh water, save for a single spring beneath the fortress itself, that was later made to cut through the land through some hard-built canal starting from the mountains down to the various sections of the islands, canals that of course, were now filled with dirt.

Harmway’s defenders had destroyed every resource that was not within their walls, leaving nothing for an invading army to scavenge.

Sustaining a foreign army in Harmway was no small feat.

The island’s barren lands and lack of fresh water made it a logistical nightmare for any would-be conqueror.

Without a strong navy to support supply lines, even the mightiest force would falter.

The greatest challenge wasn’t in breaking the fortress walls but in keeping the soldiers fed and hydrated long enough to do so.

Fortunately for the Imperial armada, their ally Yarzat was well-positioned to solve this problem.

With enough grain to feed the fleet and the troops it carried .

Or so it seemed, until an unexpected roadblock emerged: Yarzat’s prince consort, Alpheo.

When the Empire’s envoys approached Alpheo to negotiate the purchase of grain, they were met with a baffling response: outright refusal.

Even when they sweetened the deal, offering to pay 1.5 times the usual price, Alpheo’s answer remained unchanged.

The rejection left the envoys stunned and infuriated.  Of course, the Empire’s fleet wasn’t entirely without provisions; they had packed enough grain and water to last for about six weeks.

But the ongoing civil war had drained resources across the Empire.

Much of the available grain was funneled to the Emperor’s land armies, leaving the navy to scrape by.

What they carried was enough for now, but it was a far cry from the amount needed for a prolonged siege.

And prolonged sieges were the norm.

The last major confrontation at Harmway, during the Battle of Rock Bottom, had required three grueling months of blockade before the Confederation forces surrendered.

With that in mind, the shortage of grain loomed large in the minds of the Imperial commander.  For Caius Veritia, Alpheo’s refusal was more than just an irritant.

It was a personal affront, a thorn in his plans.

Since when did grain become more valuable than gold?

Caius had fumed, when he heard from his envoy of the response.

The fact that Alphoe had also refused to provide ships to the fleet, only leaping his frustration at the friend of Romelia.

He’s no peasant, though he came from there.

He’s living in a palace now, with no fear of starvation-so why in the name of the gods is he hoarding grain like a miser with jewels?

The refusal fromt he prince consort had been a blow to his plans, an unforeseen obstacle that now demanded tedious workarounds.

Without the crown’s cooperation, the fleet had been forced to turn to the city’s trade guilds.

And the guilds, sensing the fleet’s desperation, had set the price at 2 times the usual rate-a figure that might as well have been extortion.

Price caused by the sheer amount of grain had thrown the merchants into a frenzy, scrambling to source enough supplies and hoarding it within the city .  It wasn’t the money that gnawed at him most.

His family could afford the expense, though it annoyed him to waste funds on what should have been a simple transaction.

What stung deeper was the humiliation of it all.

A general of the Imperial fleet, representing one of the mightiest powers of the known world, was now forced , or at least those that represented him , to haggle with merchants, men of no station, who lined their pockets at his expense.

The indignity of lowering himself to deal with such common rabble was a wound to his pride that no amount of gold could soothe.

Still the deal was at least made sweeter by the fact that the guild had promised to deal with the transportation which meant that the armada could spare more fleet to mantain the blockade and patrol the nearby sea, to make sure that no fleet from the Condederation took them by surprise.  The Romelian soldiers got to work as soon as Caius issued the order to establish a proper siege camp.

The air was filled with the sounds of shovels biting into the earth and hammers driving stakes into the ground.

Methodically and with precision born of experience, the troops dug trenches around their positions.

The displaced dirt was heaped to form defensive embankments, reinforced with wooden walls built from timber brought ashore.  This style of fortification was a hallmark of Romelian warfare, perfected over centuries.

Which was also used as the blueprint for other armies, including the infamous Black Stripes.

The Black Stripes had adopted and adapted the Romelian techniques.With the only difference being that the Yarzat standing army was much quicker and efficient in the work, an aspect that came naturally with it being a force that drilled all day every year  The Romelian army was not what it had been in its glory days.

The Veritia family, who now led this campaign, relied on levies to bolster their ranks-a mix of farmers, and recruits pressed into service around a core of professional soldiers.  Usually the core force would be made up of cavalry, and heavy one of that , in this case however horses had little use both for siege and sea-warfare, as such for these campaigns, they were supplanted by trained heavy infantry, which would have an actual use for the weeks to come, especially considering the castle-city they were to attack.

It was certainly a sturdy, imposing structure, its thick stone walls rising high to dominate the surrounding terrain.

Built with defense in mind, the city-fortress was walled on three sides, with the fourth side left open to the sea, as a matter of fact the whole town was built to accomodate trader in the short twenty years that the Empire had it under their control.

The fact that they were attached to the sea meant that unless a proper sea-blockade was made, the city would still receive supply through smugglers.

In front of the fortress, a series of ditches had been dug deep into the earth, each designed to slow and break the momentum of an advancing army.

These trenches would need to be filled before any assault on the walls could be made, a task that Caius planned to undertake as soon as the camp was properly built.  The same man was now standing on a small rise overlooking the scene, taking in the fortress and its formidable defenses.

Behind him, his forces were on and on following his orders -4,200 footmen and 800 archers, a respectable number but hardly sufficient to take the place by storm.

The general knew that even, in the impossible odd, that his troops actually breached the walls and captured the island, it would still mean little if they couldn’t defeat the Confederation on water.

Without naval supremacy, the island would remain vulnerable to counterattacks made easier by the fact that the Confederation had much easier access by the sea, than Veritia’s family did, who certianly could not afford to have a standing fleet to guard the place at all times, which was exactly what they needed unless they crippled the Confederation as Gratios had done two decades ago.

Caius let out a slow, measured breath, as the knowledge that it was effectively waiting for the enemy to come was weighting on him.

 Starving the garrison into submission seemed the far more practical option, on paper at least .

Because in truth with the sea at their backs, the defenders might hold out longer than he would like, as after all there were people whose job was exactly that, and he certainly could not hope for his ship, to stop any small vessel who only creation was made to evade pursue.

For now, his strategy was clear: wait, for the enemy to come.

If they could cripple the Confederation’s fleet , the fortress would fall without the need for a bloody storming of the walls, which was exactly what was counting on, as in the end it was the sea-battle that would decide the outcome of the campaign.