On the ninety third day of the siege, the Yuu camps around the city suddenly boiled into life. The soldiers on the wall dully raised the alarm without being particularly alarmed. The Yuu launched attacks seemingly at random, not looking to actually take the walls but to tire the defenders, deplete their morale and exhaust their supplies. They sometimes mixed in more human wave attacks, driving captured villagers towards the walls with ladders. Those were bad days. The soldiers had stopped taking prisoners. Better to die on the battlefield than to linger in a cell before being executed.
Still, the Yuu persisted in the human wave attacks, for the simple reason that the city had been adding rough caltrops and pyramidal stones to the catapult loads. Not dense enough to form an impenetrable barrier, but there was a certain understanding that walking anywhere within ninety yards of the city walls risked a ruined foot or hoof. The Yuu weren’t particularly eager to risk themselves or their horses, but felt no burden sending prisoners.
The few times the Yuu tried long distance archery in the daytime saw them take significant losses. Not from the catapults, but from the balistae mounted on the walls. The largest, the triple bed balistae, were simply nightmares of long-range combat. Those had a range not in the tens of yards, but hundreds. One old soldier claimed he had seen a bolt fly a thousand yards once, but admitted there was a strong wind behind it. Anything carried by hand simply couldn’t compare.
Worse than the triple bed balistae, for the massed attackers anyway, was the rapid dragon carts. These were essentially oversized crossbows mounted in a relay, where a single trigger could be pressed and seven bolts would be launched at once. They were chained together, flying in a V formation, and scythed through practically anything within two hundred yards. So the soldiers had decent reasons for growing indifferent to the rush of the enemy army.
They got a lot less indifferent when blazing horses started galloping across the sky, as wheeling birds made of green fog rose up, screaming and hunting across the sky. Wolves and steppe foxes skulked between clouds, sniffing the air.
“Summon the Immortals! Summon the Immortals!”
Daoist Ma, sallow faced and quiet, soon appeared on the wall, looked up, and shook his head. “I must report this to those Great Ones in the Courtyard.”
“No need.” Liren’s voice drifted through the empty air. “We have been watching. Should they come, we will make a move.”
The soldiers trembled, hearing the soft voice coming from every direction. Then they turned back to the parapet, eyes rising to watch the spirits crossing the sky. If they survived the siege, they knew they would have stories to tell that their grandkids would never believe.
“‘If the sky falls, the tall ones will hold it up.’” Tian murmured. “I think it was Auntie Wu who explained that one to me, back at Depot Four. I always had faith that one day, I would be the tall one, and look, that day has come.”
“Mmm. Unrelated, but should I get a little step ladder? In case there are things on high shelves you can’t reach?” Liren asked, all innocence.
“You will pay for that.”
“Nah, I’ll stand on a box, you’ll never reach me.”
They bickered briefly, before turning to serious business. “What is the talisman supply like?” Tian asked.
“I wouldn’t say we have an overabundance of Heavenly realm talismans, but the ones we do have are… nasty. If I am correct about what they do, we have some really unpleasant single target attack talismans, some wide-area destructive talismans, a few defensive and trap talismans, and more than a dozen for restraining humans, demons and spirits alike.” Liren looked a little sick about that. Tian had to think for a moment before he remembered they found most of the talismans in a slave fort.
“However, what we have the most of is escape talismans. Blood escape, thunder escape, wind escape, earth escape, all kinds of divination protection talismans, odor, sound, qi, even shen concealing talismans. Some were obviously for Deadheart’s personal use, but there are so many, he must have been selling them to heretical cultivators. There are also a bunch of things I can only call ‘tools’ because they aren’t talismans, but work like talismans. And are also both nasty and useful.”
Tian nodded. “Heretics are good at keeping themselves alive. After all, they are constantly surrounded by heretics. Being able to run away is an obvious necessity for them.”
Liren grinned at that, then looked towards the city wall. “Seems like the Heavenly Shamans are looking for something, and hard.”
“Someone.” Tian shook his head. “If it was just “something,” they would only send out eagles. Wolves, foxes, and even horses? They are trying to track someone they can’t see, and want to cover as much ground as possible to try and force whoever is hiding out of cover.”
“Who? Who could they even be looking for? Nobody is trying to rally the sects in the kingdom to resist invaders, so far as I am aware.” Liren asked.
“Me either, but then, who would we ask? Right now, the country lacks a kingdom dominating sect. With everything so uncertain, fighting a foreign enemy for no profit is…”
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“Unappealing.” Liren nodded. “Yeah, those shamans aren’t carrying anything I care about.”
“The spirits themselves are fascinating, though.” Tian murmured, watching the horses and eagles race across the sky, and smiling as foxes peeked out from behind clouds. “I’m trying to study too many things already, but it is quite interesting to think that the Kingdom has its own shamans. In a manner of speaking. We have our own spirits we cultivate.”
Liren’s eyes slightly narrowed. “What’s got your attention so hooked? Usually you are looking straight at the five elements or yin and yang. Ghostly things outside of Daoism don't seem-” Her voice cut off. She tilted her head to the side and started giving Tian an odd look. “You have never been afraid of ghosts, have you?”
“No, never.”
“And you have a spirit suppressing body. You can literally crush and eat spirits and ghosts.”
“I do. And can.” Tian nodded.
“Served tea to a skeleton-”
“Two skeletons, including Suneater,” Tian nodded some more.
“And a ghost. Who you turned into a local god. Before creating a local god here.”
“More like assisting others in the creation, but basically.” Tian smiled.
“You are a doctor, make medicine, deal with spirits, and for lack of a better term, deal with weird magic crap.” She buried her face in her hands. “If you get a magic rock to control the weather, damn the consequences, I’m hauling you out of here for remedial lessons in daoism.”
“You are really doing the shamans a disservice, focusing on the dead. The spirits are absolutely alive to them. The whole world thrums with life and meaning. A shamans’ day is spent being a bridge between their people and a far, far greater world. It’s rather beautiful.” Tian spread his hands helplessly. “It’s quite a contrast compared to us reclusive ‘mountain ascetics.’”
There was a rumble of distant thunder, then the howling of wolves. Tian and Liren cast their awareness out over the city walls, towards the Yuu. The wolves were chasing something that was moving fast and low across the grasslands. The circling eagles, both flesh and spirit, were wheeling and setting up to dive. The yipping spirit foxes couldn’t keep up, but the horse spirits were coming on terribly fast, and in a great sweeping line.
“If there is something out there that they want, I don’t want them to have it.” Liren stood. Tian had to blink. For a moment, it looked like she stood with her spear in her hand. She hadn’t. There was just an inescapable spear-presence on her.
“I think your spear dao progressed.”
“A little. Meet me at the wall.” Liren vanished from the courtyard in a line of blazing light that lingered in the air for a moment before it, too, vanished.
“Her movement art got better too. She’s too yang to be this sneaky.”
Tian grumbled, but he, too, moved like a ghost or god through the waving grassland of perception that filled the city. Like the shadow of a passing cloud crossing the steppe, never pressing on a single blade. He reached the wall within two seconds of Liren. It wasn’t that he had gotten much faster. It’s just that the city was that small, when viewed from the Heavens.
“Your eyes are better than mine. Can you see what they are after?” Tian asked.
Liren gave him an unhealthy dose of side eye, then said, “There are two things moving under a camouflage spell of some kind. I’m going to guess it’s a pair of Heavenly cultivators, since they are flying and moving so fast. There.” She jutted with her chin.
Tian squinted, then nodded. A string of explosions popped out behind a blurred patch of air, driving back squawking eagles and skulking wolves. The sudden bursts of air were powerful enough to raise the dust a hundred feet below, and had the soldiers on the wall wincing, covering their ears.
Tian drew his staff out, just in case. Liren already had her spear in hand. “Fellow Daoists, if you don’t reveal yourself right now, don’t blame me for being rude!” Liren’s voice echoed across the walls and downwards, rolling towards the fleeing pair.
Tian transferred his staff to his left hand, and filled his right with a stone. He had mixed feelings about throwing stones, but his darts were just massively more useful when they were truly hidden weapons. He spotted an incoming eagle spirit that looked a bit familiar. No, not the eagle, it’s qi. Tian leaned back, and threw the rock upwards hard enough to make a ripping noise as it tore through the air.
“You never sent me that package, Uudam.” Tian’s qi carried his words to the spirit. “What ever happened to setting your enemies against each other?”
The eagle screeched and flapped away from the stone, even as the blurry shapes got closer to the wall. Liren raised her spear, ready to throw it when the concealment spell dropped.
“Wait, fellow daoist, wait! We are Redspear and Stonecutter, Guest Elders of the Blazing Sect. We spoke before!” An older man with white hair and a once-heroic disposition waved frantically at Liren. He was covered in blood, much of it, perhaps all of it, clearly his. Stonecutter was in even worse shape, with three arrows sticking from his back and leaking green and black smoke. His qi flow was chaotic. His life as a cultivator was over, even if his life could be saved.
“I recognize the voice.” Tian said.
“Me too.”
“Daoist Tian, I beseech you! Please, save Brother Stonecutter!” The two made it to the wall a few yards ahead of the spirits. They stopped at the foot of the wall, not willing to cross over. Even the eagles, which looked like they were going to soar over the city, turned away at the last minute.
“Get him down! On his belly. Good, step away, I’ll take it from here!” Tian rushed forward, his senses pouring over Redspear.
“The arrows-” Stonecutter hovered behind Tian.”
“I said scram to one side!”
“Yes, yes, sorry!” Stonecutter babbled, looking back towards the rampart. His hand filled with a saber, and chopped down on Tian’s neck. The arrows in Redspear exploded, flooding the wall with corrosive gas. Tian’s palms smashed them apart, and Redspear too, but the body disintegrated into wood pulp and animal skins under his hand. Even as he destroyed the body, he was shifting out of the way of the cut.
There was a shout from Liren. “Hiding under another talisman in front of this Lady? Courting death!” Tian kicked away from the saber blow, trusting his soft armor to protect him from what he couldn’t dodge.
“I’m still profiting from setting my enemies against each other,” Uudam’s voice echoed from on high. “Don’t you like the package?”