Chapter 15

We used up most of the bronze we had making all of the cuirasses that we needed. We wound up making 97 of the things. I didn't get one because I still had the armor that the Alabama National Guard had issued to me. I figured that if it could stop machine gun bullets, it could stop anything this era had to offer.

Homer took out one more trading caravan before the weather got too bad. This time, he went east instead of south, and made another profitable run. However, he had some disturbing news to go along with the several items of good news that he brought. The good news was that he had found a place that could supply us with steel sabers, and he had brought back a sample. The saber was good, though not as sharp as the bronze sabers that we had. I was not worried about that, as that was a problem that could be easily fixed. A big advantage of the steel saber was that it was not as expensive as one made of bronze, even though the steel saber was hand forged of carbon steel.

Another item of good news was that several of the cities to the east were begging for wine from Oricantha, so the wineries around here needed to gear up for higher production. That was good news for the whole neighborhood, and it put a spring in the step of the Oricantha town fathers.

The disturbing news was that a warlord to the east named Hostphaler was eying our territory and would probably make at least one foray into our neighborhood to test our strength. If he did, we could probably count on at least one attempt at besieging our castle. However, by being forewarned, I had several ideas to make him very uncomfortable.

Over the next few months, I worked to improve the accuracy and range of my trebuchet design. Once I had what I thought was adequate, I had eight constructed and placed around the "mountain" that the castle rested on. The trebuchets were set into niches in the mountain side spaced 45° from each other and about 20 m above the plain. This meant that they easily ranged beyond the protective wall around the mountain and could overlap the adjacent trebuchets' field of fire.

The ammunition for the trebuchet were rocks of several uniform weights so that shots could be easily duplicated. The different weights of the rocks let me keep the counterbalance unchanged, yet get different ranges. It was somewhat complicated, but it worked.

We also made up bombs similar to the hand grenades and weighted to be the same as the rocks we had previously calibrated the system for, so that we could have solid shot or exploding shot as the situation demanded. I was quite confident that the trebuchets were going to be a monumental surprise to anyone who laid siege to my castle. Even if some local loudmouth talked too much, he would not be believed until we actually used the things. Frankly, I hoped that we never would have to do that, but I did want to be prepared.

One big problem was that there were just not enough male Olgars to do all of the things that needed doing. The men went riding as guards for the trading caravans, but the women were left at home. The women quickly got bored with the same old same old, so I recruited some of them to be the trebuchet crews. Talk about a brew-ha-ha!

The men were insulted because women were being recruited to do their job of fighting. My answer to that was, "Fine, tell me how you can be in two places at once. How can you be out riding with the trading caravan and back at Johnshome protecting your family, all at the same time?" Well, that cut out the loud remarks made where I could hear them, but I knew that it did not stop the grousing once the knotheads were out of my hearing range.

Fortunately, there were some boys who were getting old enough to be useful around the trebuchets, and the addition of that male contingent did quiet some of the grumbling. I was pretty sure that we were going to have to use the trebuchets in a real fight before the last of the grumbling would quiet down.

I asked Homer to pick four of his security crew to be trained as caravan masters. I was beginning to miss Homer's presence. Also, I needed to begin serious training for him to take over for me when I died—something that could happen at any time in this era.

My idea was to split up Homer's job with the caravan into two parts. One part would be that of caravan master, who would also be in charge of security. The other part would be that of trading master, who would do the actual buying and selling of goods. The second person could be someone we hired, such as a merchant from Oricantha, but the first person had to be related to the Olgars so that they would trust him implicitly. Once our operation got big enough so that we had to bring in soldiers from outside the Olgar tribe, we might be able to get by with a "foreign" caravan master. However, until then, there was no choice in the matter.

The biggest problem was finding people that we could trust with the hand grenades. I wasn't worried about any of them being manufactured outside of Johnshome, simply because there was no where else to get the primers needed to set the things off. Nevertheless, I was afraid of somebody selling the hand grenades and having them used against us. OK, so I'm paranoid about some things, but I think that it pays to be that way.

Obviously, for various reasons, and my paranoia was one of them, we were still sending out scouting patrols to keep an eye on the neighborhood. Actually, the people living under our "protection" expected that, and would have started to worry if we had slacked off. Anyway, the last of the winter rains had come and gone, so the plains were drying up and it was now possible to move troops cross country.

One day, a patrol came dashing in to report that a sizable army was approaching, and it didn't look like a friendly visit was their intention. Two men had been left to keep an eye on the approaching invaders, but Wolgar and I were pretty damned sure already what their intentions were. They were coming from the east, so they had to be sent by Hostphaler, though we were not yet sure that he was with the army at this stage.

Anyway, Homer's caravan was expected tomorrow or the next day, so there was a problem that they would run into the invaders and be captured. Wolgar sent a rider to warn Homer and Isgor, the captain of the flanking guard, that they should halt and wait for later word. His men might actually be of some value as raiders on the back side of the invading army if we got involved in a siege. They were now using lances, and we did not know of anyone else having such advanced weaponry.

We sent out an envoy to the invaders asking their intentions, but we got the expected answer without a single word being exchanged! Our envoy was driven off with a flight of arrows as soon as he got close enough to be recognized, so, as instructed, he headed for home without taking any silly risks. Well, our expectations were verified, and we did our final preparations for a siege.

Homer and I had spent a lot of time during the winter manufacturing as many hand grenades and bombs as we could, and these were distributed among the trebuchet positions. The solid shot (rocks) were already there, and a few ranging shots were taken to make sure that nothing radical had gone wrong with our artillery. That was in good shape, so we just settled back to await developments.

Once they arrived, it still took the invaders almost a week to get fully set up and ready to start the military assault. On the first day, there had been a parade of very fancy dressed riders who showed up at our gate in the outside wall. They demanded our surrender in a most annoying show of contempt for us, but, as was his orders, the captain of the guard refused to allow them to enter our gates.

We all knew that this was as much a spy mission as a diplomatic one, so we did not allow any of the enemy to see any more than we wanted them to see. Our trebuchet positions were concealed, so the enemy could not know of their existence. However, they could see the high walls around the castle and the twisting, turning road that led up to the main entrance.

Furthermore, we had every person within the castle walls arrayed as a soldier and standing where he or she could be easily seen. Some of my younger wives that I had inherited from the previous two warlords that I had displaced especially enjoyed the opportunity to strut around in public and show off. They were not going to take part in any actual fighting, but they were serving a useful purpose at the moment. We had a total of 137 fighters at the castle, but it looked on this day like we had at least 150 more.

On the other hand, we were facing around 1,500 to 2,000 enemy soldiers, and we would certainly be defeated if they could get to us for personal combat. However, we were sure that we could hold them off with our explosives so that situation should never arise.

We had plenty of supplies, enough for a year if we were pressed, but the invaders would have to live off the land, and the locals had had the good sense to hide whatever they could. The locals had been told to cooperate with the invaders as much as they had to in order to survive, but not to go out of their way to be helpful, since we did not plan to lose, and we would know who our real friends were when this mess was over with.

The people of Oricantha were the ones in real danger, but they did have their substantial wall, so we didn't think that they were going to have a survival problem. We had offered to take them all into the castle for safety, but very few had taken us up on that offer. Their previous experience with invaders had shown them that they could do pretty well under siege, especially when they were only a secondary concern to the enemy.

The battle finally started with a shower of arrows from the enemy. These arrows had no chance of reaching the castle, so they were directed at the soldiers on the outer wall. These defenders were well protected by a roof of wood and sod that I had ordered put in place a month or so before the enemy showed up. These arrows could not penetrate the roof, so the soldiers were well protected behind the crenelations along the outer wall. All-in-all, it was a very frustrating exercise for the attackers.