The general rode out the next morning, in the same direction from which the prince had come, even wearing the same riding cloak. The sun hadn’t made it over the mountains yet, but the camp was busy. Everything had to be in a state of readiness, not so much in case of attack as simply to avoid one. Taréz actually toyed with the idea of inviting an attack by having the camp appear to be unready, but decided that there was nothing to be gained by that.
Soon after the sun came over the mountains, shining pleasantly, the sentries sounded the signal of an attack approach. Immediately, all of them dropped down behind the crest a bit, but continued watching.
Messengers ran up, conferred, and came back to the prince with news. “They’re bringing a catapult this time,” the message commander reported, a bit of surprise on his face.
“A catapult? Is that new?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Well, they can only have built it right here.” He turned to his second-in-command. “Okay, split camp, and spread out as much as possible. Try to find holes where supplies can be kept safe. Commander, have your men go back up and tell the sentries to indicate where the load is flying. That should give us some time to move out of the way. But at no point should they stand up. Rolling from place to place might be a good idea. And let me know when the catapult is in range.”
“Yes, Sire.” The commander led his men back up to the crest.
Taréz followed everyone out, and turned immediately to the tent stakes. “We’re moving this about 50 yards north,” he told the surprised secretary.
“Of course, Sire.” The secretary motioned for others to help, and bent to remove a few stakes himself. “I’ll bring out the table so we can move the tent, Sire.”
“Negative. If we bring it out, their watchers will know which one is mine. It’s foldable, though, correct?”
“Yes, Sire,” was the reply, and he ducked inside for a moment.
The whole operation was nearly finished when the signal came from above. Everyone looked, and split just in time. The load, a boulder, crashed with a thud onto empty ground, rolling harmlessly down.
“Don’t watch it land! Keep watching the sentries!” Taréz commanded, and the work resumed. When the tent was in place, he called his second-in-command.
“We can stay reasonably safe like this, but it’s going to be a drain on resources if we have to keep watching the skies and be always ready to move. We can’t maintain our equipment. They might even keep launching through the night. Recommendations?”
“We have to take out the catapult.”
“They’ll be expecting that.”
“So we’ll have to be creative.”
Taréz considered that. Lips pursed, he headed up the slope. “Sire?” came the lieutenant’s voice behind him, “I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“I need to see the position of the catapult.” The climb wasn’t an easy one, especially in places where the prairie grass was gone. Near the top, he dropped to the ground to look over.
On the other side of a small vale, in a U-shaped mountain valley, the catapult sat in plain view. Sneaking up on the machine was not going to be easy, if it was even possible. “Can a flaming arrow go that far?” he asked the sentry near him.
“Only with a very large crossbow. There’d be no surprise, then. In any case, that’s probably made of mountain pine. And they have buckets of water ready.”
“The we’ll have to overwhelm them with arrows. We shoot two hundred arrows a minute until the thing is ash.”
“Do we have two hundred crossbow teams?”
“We’d better.” Taréz slid down from the crest and walked back to his tent, where the lieutenant waited.
“Do we have two hundred crossbow teams?”
“Close. One hundred fifty.”
“And I suppose only that many bows?”
“No, three hundred. What are you thinking?”
“They have their catapult pretty well protected, so we’ll have to overcome that protection with numbers. Get the teams ready, and train fifty more teams as soon as possible. Make sure as many preparations are made down here as possible. Have the teams line up just under the crest, and on my mark, they are to fire in sequence. Can a reload be accomplished in that short a time?”
“A reload can be done in one hundred shots.”
“Good! Once the shooting begins, archers may shoot again as soon as they’re ready.”
The lieutenant went off to give the orders. Taréz hoped the preparations wouldn’t look too suspicious, as the teams got together— often from opposite ends of the now diffuse camp. The crossbows were transported and stored disassembled, so a few Vle took wagonfuls or the pieces around to the teams. The teams then headed up the hill, and waited for the word.
“Now,” Taréz told the southernmost team. Immediately, they put their crossbow together, and the rest followed suit. A whistle told Taréz when the nothernmost team was ready.
Across the gully, Taréz could see the catapult team was watching carefully. They appeared to know something was up, but would have had to rely on their sentries high on the mountains to tell them exactly what. “Fire.”
With that one word began one hundred and fifty flames, applied to one hundred and fifty ball-tipped arrows, which sequentially headed toward the catapult. Even before the hundredth arrow flew, the crossbowmen nearest Taréz set another flying. Many didn’t hit their mark, but they had an equally desirable effect: It was too dangerous to try to protect the catapult. The light Vle scattered, either into the forest or behind the machine itself. From there, they tried to douse the flames with their water buckets, but the water couldn’t reach the front of the catapult. Soon it was engulfed in flames, and those that had been hiding had to run for the forest.
“Cease fire.” The prince’s first battle had been won.

The camp sat quiet, and Taréz was glad for the relaxation. It gave him the luxury to read the messages that had arrived. One related events on the southern peninsula. A force of humans hit the shore that day and were now fighting for control of Fort Kezna. They had not yet struck anything alight. However, they were not battling a full force. Most of the humans who landed moved on into the forest. It was felt that the peninsula would be lost, so the forest commander advised Gardric to concentrate forces at Hame. That way, the size of the front would be minimized.
Humans! Humans were involved in the battle! That explained a lot— why the A’peinans and Varmacians had attacked here, why the Kamileans had hit the southeast. It was to prepare the way for the Humans! As if they needed any help, with all their sophisticated weaponry.
He dropped off the chair to his knees and just leaned on the desk. Humans! What right had they to get involved? Never had a human brought weapons onto Larmanian soil, but their battle prowess was legendary, from the times when his ancestors had merely been tribal chiefs and the Humans were taking over the island they now occupied. Were they now intent on adding to their territory?
The other message added insult to injury. The Dwarves had attacked between Lake Kdeet and Belobon Bay. After great initial losses of lives and territory, the situation was stabilized, but even if the status quo could be maintained, the front would reach Dronac and the Royal Palace in five weeks.