Franness, still the “new provincial capital” of the Reedbottoms—and with Prelotta himself, according to all spy reports, still resident. Along with most of the ten thousand men he had brought north with him the year before.
Thousands of Reedbottom warriors, trained and equipped to fight with the new guns. Well-equipped, in fact. In the months since he had taken the city, according to the spies, Prelotta had built up a significant arms industry around his initial core of blacksmiths. Whatever the other Vanberts of Franness might think of their new barbarian overlord, the metalworkers and apothecaries were quite pleased with him. They were more prosperous than ever.
But now, the Reedbottoms would be fighting from behind the very solid inner walls of the city. Prelotta had been smart enough to understand that the laager tactic which had worked so well against Tomsien would be suicide against Demansk. The Reedbottom chief, both Adrian and Demansk were positive, had his own corps of spies. They would have described to him, by now, how murderous the field guns which Trae had built over the winter in Chalice were proving to be against anyone who came against the Paramount.
Demansk had already crushed the only significant noblemen’s revolt against him, just a few weeks earlier, using those guns. He would have crushed them anyway, using his three brigades of well-paid and disciplined Confederate regulars against the ragged “brigade” which the noblemen had manage to assemble in opposition. But he hadn’t bothered. He’d simply had Adrian fire several volleys from the field guns, before the rebels could come within three hundred yards. At that range, against massed infantry, the skittering iron balls had wreaked havoc. A final volley of canister had ended the affair entirely.
The Southron cavalrymen whom Demansk had been hammering since then were not as susceptible to the weapons, of course. But they could not stand against them, either. And so, week after week, Demansk had harried the barbarians and driven them steadily out of the Confederate lands they had been ravaging again this spring.
According to Demansk’s spies, the other tribal chiefs had pleaded—demanded, in the case of Esmond, who had been elected the new chief of the Grayhills—that Prelotta lead his men out of Franness and set up the laager again. But Prelotta, no fool, had understood perfectly well that the same wooden walls which had shrugged off javelins would be a death trap facing cannonballs. So, stubbornly, he had remained within the walls of his new capital—while inviting the other tribes to join him there in a certain-to-be-victorious defensive battle against the oncoming Vanberts.
Join him they had, even the Grayhills under Esmond. But Prelotta had never allowed them beyond the first wall. Claiming, according to the spies, that the city was too crowded and rife with disease already to accommodate ten thousand more warriors. So, for a week now, Esmond and his six thousand Grayhills and the thousands of men from the other tribes had been trapped within Franness’ “outer pocket.”
A large pocket, true. Prelotta had not stinted on the work, using his own warriors as well as dragooned civilian labor to build an outer wall which extended four hundred yards beyond the city itself and stretched for almost two miles, across its entire northern length and curving a good way down the western side.
It was a crude wall, of course, nothing else had been possible in the months available. But, to barbarians, it must have looked impressive.
Now . . .
A dozen volleys from Adrian’s four big siege guns had reduced a whole stretch of it to rubble. Rubble which would pose little difficulty to Demansk’s brigades of infantrymen, when they stormed across it, but would be a death trap for cavalry. On those broken mounds of stone—even in the cramped space of the outer pocket—Southron tactics would be useless. Not even arrogant and cocksure Grayhills were foolish enough to think they could stand against Vanbert regulars in a toe-to-toe slugging match in a box.
Once they realized that, the Grayhills and other tribesmen had begun shrieking for Prelotta to allow them behind the much more substantial walls of the inner city. He had ignored their pleas, and now—when the pleas had turned to demands and men began trying to scale the wall—was answering them with gunfire.