Sadly Sings Destiny

20

Verona sighed as she held the report in her hands. It had been months since the Refugee invaders had broken through her lines, and they were covering ground at a rate of knots. Almost as soon as the unexpected wave of soldiers had come from the south and broken her lines from behind, the lot of the rebellious soldiers had begun to storm the land. Heather and Abigail had become an unstoppable force, and it seemed that with every mile they claimed another division of soldiers defected and joined their ranks. From what Verona had read, she expected them to reach Rachedale within a week. She could already hear the rasping and whirring of the Sabbistahni airplanes flying over her city, and it was not much of a secret that the Sabbistahni airships were circling the town doing their best to stay out of cannon range.

She sighed. More than half of the country was out of her reach, and the other half was running low on resources. Abigail had been insidious in her work as she recruited as many able-bodied Lotheranians as she could. Heather, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be good at anything when it came to leading soldiers on the battlefield. When she had stopped working on diplomatic projects within Elsideria or extending her bureaucratic olive branch, word of success from the opposing forces seemed only to bear the names of the Elsiderian Beasts or Valerian the Fourth.

Verona threw the report on her desk and forced herself to stand up. There was something she could use to her advantage. She left her office and found Martha waiting dutifully for her outside. Verona started to go over her new plan with Martha as the two of them walked to the cabinet room to go about trying to prepare for the defense of the city. Martha joined Verona in the cabinet meeting, taking the seat that had been occupied by the Sabbistahni advisor until rather recently. Once again, the meeting lasted hours, and no real ideas were had, and no practical solutions were given to the problems that were staring them down. The invaders had the Lotheranian patriots wholly outnumbered, and the Sabbistahni arms were more than enough to leave the Rachedale defenders outgunned.

When the meeting was finished, the only thing that was decided was that the invaders could have the city, but as long as the Swallow’s Nest held, Verona would maintain control over her country. It was undoubtedly to her benefit that the Swallow’s Nest had only ever fallen to one army, and it was the one that she had led out of the sky on her rented airship. Other than that time, no enemy had entered the gates of the traditional hold of Lotherania. But that was about to change. Verona was ready to willingly admit Heather into the Swallow’s Nest to discuss the ongoing situation, and perhaps even go farther. Verona was quick to dispatch a messenger as she worked her way back to her office.

It was afternoon the next day when the reply came from the enemy camp somewhere to the north. Verona smiled despite the circumstances. The word was spread throughout the city guard and the guards of the Swallow’s Nest to allow Heather and her guard to enter the city and the castle to make the meeting that Verona had offered. The next day there were reports from the guard of a single airplane approaching the city, and when Verona was informed that Heather had landed with Valerian as her escort, she swore to herself. Verona had planned on using the opportunity to kill her rival, but with the Grandmaster by her side, it would be beyond unwise to attempt any backhanded actions. With the new information quickly changing her treacherous plans, she dispatched Martha to gather her cabinet.

When the necessary people were gathered, Verona was not surprised when Heather demanded a full, unconditional surrender. Verona looked at her advisors and couldn’t help but laugh. She had to admire the gall of the other girl, it took a certain amount of guts to walk into a fire ant hill and demand that none of the insects bite you as they hand over their queen. Verona, of course, refused to surrender and demanded to know why she should surrender when Heather had once been so eager to work out their issues diplomatically. Verona was shocked when Heather, who looked more like a scared girl than a leader, composed herself and straightened her posture before launching herself on a convincing speech about Verona wasting the time that was given for diplomacy, and that her lack of action at the proper time had lead to her being unfit to lead any of the Lotheranians.

“And what makes you think you’re any more fit to lead the country?” Verona said, leaning back in her seat and playing with her hair, wondering how many other people, possibly in the room, agreed with the usurper. There was a moment of silence as Heather thought over her answer to the question. The only sound was the distant ticking of Valerian’s pocket watch muffled in his coat from where he was standing off to the side of the room.

“I don’t know. I don’t have any reason on why I should sit on the throne over another woman.” she said shocking even Valerian who was in the middle of lighting one of his cigars, “What I do know is that I was there when the people needed help, and I have spent all of my adult life tirelessly serving the people, and when your people asked, begged for your help, you remained silent, and you let them go to war. A great woman once said that no woman or man in Tylmath or even the world of Yaz has the authority to start a war. And this is your war.”

“I suggest you leave,” Verona said sharply, feeling the cutting edge of the words that both women knew came from Andretti the Silver. Heather nodded and gave a swift bow before turning and walking out of the room. Valerian lingered behind for a moment. All eyes were on him as the cabinet expected some speech from him, or even a threat. Instead, he puffed his cigar once and slowly and silently turned and walked out of the room. The room was left in silence after he had left, and all of the attention drifted to Verona as her advisors waited for what was to come.

“Prepare the city for a battle, and be ready to crush her and her army,” Verona said, simply standing up and walking out of the room. The coming days were used by the remaining soldiers and by the city guard preparing the city for siege and preparing to hold the Swallow’s Nest at all costs. The preparations went into effect with surprising speed, as the broader streets of the city were blocked off, forcing the future invaders to file down the narrower back streets, and some of those were blocked as well, creating a maze of narrow alleyways that the invaders would be forced to navigate. On what few streets remained, traps were set in the form of landmines and pots of pitch waiting to be set to a boil.

True to estimates, the invading soldiers arrived on the outskirts of the city seven days after Heather and Valerian had come. The army was much larger than estimated, nearly twenty thousand soldiers on the ground, along with the original accompaniment of aircraft. Verona and her advisors expected the first attack to come in the form of charging soldiers, but instead, three airships flew high over the city, too high for cannon fire or ballista darts. Soldiers and citizens alike watched as they flew over the city and began to drop bombs on the people below. Roads leading out of the town were destroyed, and bombs were dropped on the harbors along the Rass River sinking the ships therein.

As the airships began to retreat to the spot where they had been landing behind the invading army, the Sabbistahni artillery began to open fire, dropping explosive and incendiary shells at random in the city. Verona watched from her balcony as fires began to burn in the city, and as airplanes flew over the buildings and dropped explosives on military targets, including the keeps of the city guard and supply houses for the army and one drop was even on the town home of the Defense Minister.

For weeks the harassment of the invading forces continued nonstop, and their army never set foot in the city. Verona was forced to order what soldiers she had to attack in the hopes that she could put an end to the endless rain of shells. Her soldiers were quickly defeated, and nothing changed for the better. Once the smoke had settled, the steam and clockwork powered armored war wagons were tearing down the main street from the north to the Swallow’s Nest. The vehicles were on steel tracks powered by four steel sprockets and flattening everything with ten smaller wheels guiding the treads. The armored sides prevented much of the ticking from the power unit being heard, but two smokestacks from the back poured black coal smoke and a fine dusting of fly ash. What really made the machinery threatening was the cannon mounted on a swiveling housing that had one hundred eighty degrees of rotation and a five-inch bore allowing it to fire solid cannonballs or the explosive shells favored by the Sabbistahni army.

The tanks cleared the way and smashed through every one of the barriers that were built by the Rachedale defenders. Behind the line of unstoppable machines marched the entirety of the invading army. The soldiers were well trained and did not turn their guns on the citizens of the city, who watched awestruck as the machinery and soldiers marched. In the middle of the soldiers came an armored automobile on four heavy axles with eight large wheels and a steam boiler to push it along. Valerian operated the controls, along with a guard with the three lightning bolts that denoted them as a STALKER, one of his elite soldiers.

Verona watched the column stop and begin to fill the commons across the Rass River from the Swallow’s Nest. The cannons on the panzer wagons turned on the castle and fired with precision, striking the ballista and the cannon nests with explosive shells, rendering the ancient keep defenseless from the north. Verona was thrown to the floor by the force of the attack, and she shook as she picked herself up. The end was near, and she knew it. The following siege of the castle lasted for three weeks before the final blow came. With the citizens of the city, along with the army of invaders demanding her surrender, there was little left to do. Verona forced herself to wait it out, though, even with dwindling support inside and outside of her walls. Despite the lack of support, she held her keep with bravery and with her few supporters, many of which had helped her take the keep years before. The final blow was when the artillery shelled her keep with shells full of a foul-smelling blue fog that melted skin away from those it touched. Even facing what she could only assume was black magic, she rallied the last surviving soldiers and led a counter charge