Born a Monster

Chapter 46

Trenches

The town of Montu’s Glory, which many still just called Crimson Hand Town, was completely encircled by trenches. The trenches, in turn, were protected by earthen ramparts topped with slanted stone structures. These defenses faced both inward and outward.

If I have painted the Uruk as primitive savages, then I have done them a great disservice. Although they lacked siege engines, they seemed to know what they were about.

A second trench, less ornate, surrounded the farmlands. Within the zone between trenches, farmers and ranchers seemed to be going about their lives unmolested.

“I see.” Gemina said. “Are we manning the inner trenches so that you may place more warriors on the outer?”

.....

“No, that would be humans fighting humans. Very funny to watch, but that is not for this war.” He pointed at the nearby woods. “We need things to throw big items over the wall.”

“Siege engines.”

“Yes. You will meet our young workers. Teach them to make the engines. Then we will use them to hurl large blocks of rock at the walls.”

Looking closer, I could see that a small portion of the wood was already cut down.

“Oh my.” I said, “Is that how they’re preparing and stacking the wood?”

“If you know a better way,” Gemina said, “then I leave the lumberjacking to your care.”

Yeah, not all truths need to be told.

So how was I going to get a bunch of Uruk to listen to me?

There was one big Uruk there, so I walked up to him.

“Have you ever run a wood lot before?” I asked.

“Have you?”

“I have the Lumberjack class, and I’d like to make a few suggestions.”

“Would you, now? I suppose you’d like to be in charge of the whole thing?”

“I think that will speed up production of the wood we need, yes.”

He smiled or sneered at me, depending on which muscle groups one was tracking. “Listen up, you oafs! We got us a professional lumberjack in charge! Obey the kobold as though he was me.”

And then – he left.

“All right, everyone gather around. Yes, bring the tools if you want, but gather here.”

I looked around.

“Where is the water point?” I asked someone’s daughter.

“The what?”

“The water point, where water for the workers is kept.”

“An Uruk provides for their own water.” One of the males mocked me. “I think we shouldn’t listen to you – shrimpy.”

“First, in your villages, do not-”

He took a swing at me, which I blocked. What? That was easy... He kicked at me, and I tried to catch his leg, failed.

[You have taken four points of Blunt damage. After armor, you have taken no damage.]

I’m sorry, WHAT?

I reached out, tried lifting his kneecap. He went sprawling.

This was... this was the exact opposite of how combat went when I had been Might 2 and brawling with those of Might 3. If I had Might 3...

These weren’t just youths; in spite of their size, these were Uruk children.

I proceeded to get a good lock on that leg, twisting it to block his punches and kicks. It wasn’t long before he was on his chest, with both ankles firmly in my grasp.

“Are we done with the part where you bully the small one?” I asked.

He made a rude reply, so I took a step closer to his shoulder blades.

“We’re done!” he yelled. “We’re done!”

#

“Okay, first off. You’re no good as a worker if you exhaust your fatigue. Has anyone been worked until they can’t stand?”

Nobody admitted it. Good. Or maybe bad.

“Next, I see more than a few combat axes among our tools. I’ll be teaching you why there are different holds and stances between a war axe and a lumber axe.”

“And you’ll teach us the combat, as well?”

“Only on days where we make quota. How much lumber are your parents asking of you?”

One of the daughters spoke up.

“We can double that.” I said.

There were complaints. “I am a Speaker of Truth. If you are willing to work smart, as well as hard, we can produce double that amount of lumber, and still have time and energy to train with war axes.”

“But the whole reason we’re here and not down there is that we can’t do these things.” One of the smaller ones protested.

“Let me see if I can phrase this so that we both understand. They have called you weak, or clumsy, or stupid, and therefore you are here rather than there?”

General agreement came from the workers.

“Does anyone here NOT want to prove them wrong?”

“When I was as weak, and as clumsy, and as stupid as the worst of you, I was helping to chop lumber for a longhouse, and removing the stumps of trees afterward.”

“How are we to make more lumber AND remove the stumps?”

I flung a thumb over my shoulder. “See that city? The dumb inhabitants of that city are why you’re all here, chopping wood. I say let them deal with the stumps. We need to focus on one thing; providing usable wood. Now – let’s start at the beginning, show me your tools.”

Their tools were TERRIBLE; the blades had been well kept, but the handles... well, I needed to make handles, and teach them how to properly fit and place handles into axe heads. Anything I needed to do, I did in shifts; eventually everyone got the same information.

And I won’t claim that I made lumberjacks out of any of them. But as they learned how to split wood, how to carve wheels and boards and straight axles, it became apparent who was good at what tasks. And as promised, when their output first matched what was expected, I had Gemina assign an axeman to train them.

That lasted all of two days, before the loud one returned. “WRONG! WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Gather them around, I’ll teach them to use an axe the right way!”

His name was Gurmolok, and he was an Axeman class. He also had the stamina to teach different classes all day, and enough attention to detail to remember what he had shown each class.

#

It was the day when I didn’t need to tell them whether to use an axe or a saw that he came to me at the water point.

“What you have done here, it is impressive.” He said.

“Thank you, but they are doing most of the work.”

“Don’t think I haven’t seen you checking that work, talking to each of them. If you only had a warrior class, you would make a fine Uruk.”

“I have a level of Pankratios.” I said.

He turned and spat. “Pankratios! Come talk to me when you have a REAL warrior class.”

Someday, I needed to figure out exactly what a Pankratios was.

By the third day, I had identified those who were best at a given task, and gave them the instruction they needed to teach that task to others. THAT was a lot of trial and error, I blame my low Charisma score.

On day five, we cleared half a quota more than had been originally asked of them. We also began losing workers to man the trenches. We also got our first batch of discipline rejects from the trenches.

“Let me tell you how I fit in here. You don’t give me orders-”

Oh, this was going to be one of THOSE conversations. He was already waving a finger in my face.

Well, if he was going to make it EASY on me. One finger hold, coming up.

He shot to his knees. “Yeraaah!”

“Anyone else? I have a free hand.” I backed up, let him lay down on his belly as I calmly walked his hand behind his back.

“Let me explain something about kobolds. Kobolds have level two muscles, and thus are surprisingly strong for their size. I don’t care what you got away with in the trenches. This isn’t the trenches. While here, you will WORK. And you will work under those appointed to run work crews. Anything that makes me look bad to THAT guy-”

I let them take a look at Gurmolok.

“So you have three options. Option one, you work, correct whatever attitudes got you here, and you get to go back to war. Two, you decide you want to chop trees instead of be warriors; also fine. Option three, you do something that makes me WANT to punish you. Shovel for digging your grave is in the tool shed.”

I released finger-waving guy.

.....

“So who thinks they have relevant experience with the tasks of this detail?”

“That,” Gurmolok told me over dinner, “was a pleasure to watch. I almost wish you had time to straighten those warriors out.”

“I had no clue how that worked. My System tells me I only had a 34 percent chance of getting that hold to work.”

“Piss on the System.” He said. “You do things yourself, and you do them better. System.” He turned his head and spat.

“Wait... why won’t I have time to straighten those warriors out?”

#

“Promise me you won’t tell your human friends.”

“I promise not to tell my human friends, nor any other human who is in this vicinity with me, until this battle or siege or whatever you want to call that is over.”

“Define the vicinity.”

“This battlefield, the lands of God Hand, and the lands of Black Fist.”

He punched the bottom of his chin. “I can accept that. Okay, in two days? That city there is just going to fall.”

I blinked. “How are the Uruk going to manage that?”

“Us? We don’t want that city. Honestly, we don’t want the farms around it. Look at those fields. Wheat, wheat, corn, wheat, rye. Yuck.”

I nibbled on a bit of squirrel, tried to look at the town in the manner an Uruk would. “Hrm. Go on.”

“You’ve heard of Rakkal?”

“Red Tide? I’ve had an annoying dream about them.”

“Good. Well, Rakkal has decided to make an example of that city. He’s coming north, and he wants your human friends here to see what happens.”

“He wants them to carry word back to Narrow Valley about what happens to humans who defy him?”

Gurmolok tapped the tip of his nose. “Montu’s Glory, Narrow Valley, Whitehill. Once he has those three, he has ten days of travel north and south that he controls. Then, he expands west until he hits the ocean. After that – what in this world can stop him?”

“I’ll guess not the Legendary Heroes.”

Gurmolok chuckled. “No, he is certain none of the Legendary Heroes are going to be summoned to stop him. The civilizations of the past lack the magical proficiency, the power they held in the past. Even if they existed, the Legendary Weapons are spread to the twelve corners of the world.”

“How does he plan to deal with rebellions?”

“I don’t know. I’ve met diplomats of the Red Tide, and Rakkal must be a mighty warrior. But one being against the walls of a city?”

This led to a discussion of fortifications, the technology and magic that went into making them impregnable. Legends about the defenses available to an elvish caer, dwarven citadel, or dragon lair, that sort of thing. We came up with some pretty robust ways to defend a stone wall.

“Well, Rakkal had better be pretty impressive, to get through those walls.”

“Oh, I hear he’s impressive, but THAT impressive? Some kind of sentient siege weapon level of power? I will see such a thing, and still not believe it.”

“I wonder what he has planned.”

We spent two days coming up with the most bizarre things we could imagine.

It was nowhere near the truth.

On the seventh day from when we joined the siege efforts, Rakkal and his family arrived from the south.

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