Chapter 23

"Here they are now!" Amber and Bee called when we appeared in the doorway of the banquet hall. It looked much as it had previously, but no one had on any of the fancy clothes of our previous dinners here.

"We were ready to send out a search party for you!" Meegan said with a smirk on her face. I noticed that all four of my female Cousins were seated at a table with my O'Neill Uncles, and looked ready to challenge anyone who disapproved of their choice.

The rest of the family was scattered around the room at various tables. There were still two tables for four open, and Pat and I took them with our women. Dinner was already being served.

Our Grandparents, of both families, were seated at the head table, and seemed to be enjoying themselves. The remainder of the family was in groups that now looked very familiar, as we had seen them repeatedly at other family functions. After several courses, Grandfather Mark rose to address us.

"We'll be starting at around 11:00 o'clock. It would be a good idea for all of us to get a little rest before then," he suggested.

"I will show you to our rooms," Gretchen told us after that. "But only after the meal is finished. I eat like a horse now to feed the two who are growing in my belly," she finished with a grin. It was maybe a half-hour later that the meal came to an end, and everyone started to disperse. I couldn't help but notice that my four female Cousins were the first to leave, and that they were dragging my O'Neill Uncles with them.

Gretchen and Petra led us to two adjoining apartments. Once inside ours, all three of us hugged and kissed Gretchen until she turned red in embarrassment.

"You're supposed to be resting," Gretchen told us breathlessly, as she recovered. "There will be time for more of this after you return."

"I don't think that your female Cousins are giving your Uncles any rest," Shannon observed with a large grin.

"Yes, they had sex with them while they were out inspecting their area," Clare assured us, confirming my earlier suspicions.

"Will they be able to function tonight?" Gretchen asked in a worried voice.

"Our Uncles?" I asked. "Maybe not, but our Cousins certainly will be able to function, and they are the ones with the Power Rings."

"They like sex a lot, and they think that they have found their husbands," Clare told her very perceptively.

"We should all rest," Gretchen reminded us again. I still think that she was the one that needed the rest, but didn't say anything then.

We all adjourned to the bedroom where there was a really large bed. We all crowded up onto it. I held Gretchen while Clare snuggled up against my back, and Shannon snuggled up to Gretchen's. We were all soon asleep.

We were awakened sometime later by the sound of my Mother's voice.

"Time to get up, young lovers," she said, and was smiling at the four of us all snuggled up together. Clare and Shannon sat up and stretched. I followed them, but Gretchen had trouble sitting up. We all moved to assist her.

"Pregnant ladies often have those kinds of problems, especially as their time of delivery nears. You will need to help her more often as that time approaches," my Mother advised us from her own experience.

"Yes, Ma'am. Thank you," Clare told her. We all had Gretchen on her feet by then.

"There is a meeting in the conference room in ten minutes or so," my Mom informed us before she vanished to find my Sisters.

"We need to wash up some," Shannon insisted, as she and Clare left for the adjacent bathing room.

"Will you be all right while we are away?" I asked Gretchen.

"Yes, Petra and I team up to help each other with things that we need to do," Gretchen told me.

When Clare and Shannon returned, I helped Gretchen to the bathing room so both of us could clean up also. Pat and his women appeared in our living room shortly after that. The six of us transferred to the conference room leaving Gretchen and Petra alone in the apartment.

Part of the family was already there when we arrived. The remainder soon showed up. Our four female Cousins and the O'Neill twins, Seamus and Sean, were the last to arrive. Our Uncles looked better than they had at dinner. Perhaps they, too, had gotten some sleep. Our female Cousins still had wet hair from taking a shower or a bath. Grandfather called all of us to attention to start the meeting and then turned it over to our Dads.

"How many here know the invisibility spell?" my Dad asked. Of course, Pat and I, our Moms, and our sisters all knew the spell. The rest of the family, and the O'Neills looked at him in confusion.

"We used the invisibility spell when we were investigating the FBPI Headquarters before we took it over some twenty years ago. Surely we gave the rest of you the spell then!" Uncle Sean said in agitation.

"No, Dear. You never gave us the spell," Grandmother Margie told her son.

"How could we not have?" my Mom, Annie, asked.

"I believe it's something that slipped through the cracks," Grandfather Mark told her.

"In any case, here is the spell. It isn't difficult, but someone needs to maintain it while the others are busy," my Dad told everyone, and then went over the spell and its glyph. Pat and I demonstrated it for them. We did the entire spell and the glyph, but didn't add the Magic to it until everyone had seen what we had done. Then we added the Magic that we had held in our left hands to the glyph in our right hands and vanished from sight.

We moved around the room and did things to get their attention, like kissing our female cousins on the neck. They couldn't see us and didn't know where to slap. We canceled the spell after a few minutes and reappeared. Our female Cousins were not happy with us.

"Oh yes, that will come in handy," some of our male cousins said when we reappeared.

"The spell is easy to cancel if someone knows it, so it isn't the cure all that you may think it is," Pat told them. "Especially now that your PARENTS know it too." He was grinning as he finished.

"If everyone is ready, we'll get on with tonight's business," Grandfather Mark told us, which canceled the laughing and giggling that was going on.

"Group leaders, gather your people and transfer to the walls in your area. We'll start in five minutes. Be careful, watch your people, and work as quickly as possible. We'll all meet back here when you are finished," Grandfather Mark instructed us. The family quickly converged into their groups, and then winked out of existence in the conference room.

Pat and I with our women appeared in the dark on the battlements of the Eschenheimer Tower scaring the guards there nearly to death when we suddenly appeared.

"It's Pat and Mike O'Connell," I assured them quickly.

"Yes, Masters. We were told to expect you, but didn't know it would be like that!" the shocked Sergeant in charge told us upon recovering.

"We won't be here long," I told him, turning back to Pat and the women. From here we could see the campfires and watch fires of the enemy plainly. They dotted the area in front of the walls like so many fireflies.

"Nice of them to illuminate everything like that, isn't it?" Pat asked on observing the fires.

"Yes, very considerate, but I don't believe that they did it for our convenience," I told him. It was a dark night. The moon was midway between full moon and last quarter. It had risen about mid-afternoon, but there were plenty of clouds tonight to hide its light. They had blown in around sunset, and hid what little light the moon and the stars were providing. During brief breaks in the clouds we could see that the moon was close to setting.

"Right! Let's get this show on the road," Pat said, and gathered his women around him ready to depart.

"Be careful. Don't take any unnecessary chances," I reminded him.

"Yes, Mother!" he replied just before he and his women vanished. I turned to my own women.

"Are you ready?" I asked them.

"Yes," they replied. We joined hands and vanished from the battlements to reappear in the dark between two of the watch fires in the trench on the closest line of siege engines.

"Clare, keep watch for the guards while Shannon and I destroy the equipment," I told her, then turned to Shannon, "Ready?"

"Yes. Do you just want to cut up the equipment?" she asked.

"Yes. We'll see about setting fire to things after we are finished destroying the equipment. If we fired it now, it would draw too much attention.," I told her.

Shannon and I started down the trench line and cut up each piece of equipment with our Power Rings, as we came to it. The equipment consisted mainly of various types of catapults and balista with a few other types of equipment. We leapfrogged each other so that there was only one person working on any piece of equipment at any one time. We even found a few arbalet-a-tours, (large crew served crossbows) on the flanks of this line of equipment along with many positions for archers.

After finishing the first trench line, we quickly transferred to the second line behind it, and repeated what we had done on the first. I found it strange that we had encountered no guards so far.

"Why have we seen no guards?" I quietly asked Shannon and Clare.

"I have put them all to sleep," Clare told me, just as quietly. "The spell is similar to the one used to calm horses and cattle."

There were large quantities of supplies staged on this line of trenches. There were stockpiles of rocks for ammunition as well as quantities of large spears or arrows for the balista, and the crossbows. There were also large stores of regular arrows in wicker baskets for the archers. Finally there were large stockpiles of timber for bridging the moats, building mobile towers to assault the walls, for building covers for rams to breach the gates with, and also to repair the other equipment which was mainly constructed of wood. There were also large stockpiles of flammables: tar, pitch, and oils.

"We'll set fire to all of these stores after we finish the last line of siege engines," I told the girls before we went on to finish the second line and then went on to the third, and last line of trenches.

This third line consisted of the largest catapults, and the trebuchets. They were less numerous than the smaller ones in the first line and the medium size ones in the second line. Still we were able to cut them all up fairly quickly.

"We need to finish quickly. We've been out here a long time, and I'm beginning to hear alarms from other sections of the siege line," I told the girls.

"Let's transfer back to the flammable stores and set the fires," Shannon suggested.

"All right," I agreed, and we transferred back to the second line of trenches.

"We should fire the lumber first," I told the girls. "It will take the longest to get a hot enough fire going that they won't be able to put out easily."

"NO!" Clare said defiantly. "Set the flammables on fire first."

"Why?" I asked. "They will give us away."

"Please, just do it, Michael. You will see why later. I will handle things with them while you and Shannon fire the timber and the machines here," Clare told me.

"Okay!" I agreed, not knowing what she had in mind. I turned toward the first flammable storage area. The earthen wall surrounding it was warded, but they were paltry wards, and I had no trouble breaking them. I then cast a fire spell on the contents. They took off with a vengeance immediately, casting a bright light all around the area as the flames leaped and danced.

Shannon was working on the stores of arrows and spears during this. She had also broken the weak spells around them. I quickly turned toward the area where the timber was located. Just as I broke the wards there, flaming balls of tar and pitch landed among the piles of timber. I quickly looked up to see where they were coming from.