Princess Alexis nodded politely at Dominic, but he could see the hidden shock in her expression. Getting a sniper that close was no small feat.
"Shall we continue?" She asked, with an exaggerated look of disgust at the deceased sniper.
They walked away just as the Dagos Artillery began to hammer into the wall around them.
Dominic kept the barrier active, just large enough to protect their group from artillery, but none of the shots were close enough to threaten them directly, and the Princess walked calmly through the attack as the Natural Sons and city guard archers took cover.
Beside her, Marquis Burton was doing a much worse job of pretending not to be terrified.
"Are you sure that this is a good idea? We should take cover during an assault." The Marquis muttered.
"No, we should be clearly visible leading our troops during an assault. Relax, we’re safer than you think. From that range, the cannons will be off by up to twenty metres of their target. See how half of the shots are hitting the ground before even reaching the wall?
If something actually comes for us, it will be pure luck, and we have a barrier for that." Princess Alexis informed him.
When they reached the centre of the wall, horns sounded in the distance, and the Dagos Army rose up out of the trenches to charge across no-man’s land toward the city walls.
"There we go. We’ve got them out in the open before their reinforcements arrived. Now, it’s up to the riflemen." The Princess declared, looking vaguely relieved, but still incredibly nervous.
They reached the central tower on the north wall, and Dominic motioned for them to wait.
"I have an orb to create powder and solid shot. Give me a moment and I will make a stockpile here in the tower for distribution, in case the mages get tired during the assault." He explained.
"How much can you make?" Marquis Burton asked.
"A few kegs of powder and a few hundred rounds of shot shouldn’t be too hard. I will do the same at the other towers if we walk that far."
That was unlikely to happen in one day. The full walk around the city was close to ten kilometres.
Once they stepped inside, Dominic got to work. First a keg of powder, which was no struggle. Then a hundred steel cannonballs, at three kilograms each. That was significantly more challenging, but the weight was more than twice that of the powder.
Dominic thought it was an odd choice, as anyone would struggle to make a hundred at a time.
But it matched the amount of powder that the orb made.
Until he had time to examine the blueprint, he wouldn’t be able to tell if there was a good reason for things being the way that they were designed.
But while it took a few seconds to make the balls, It wasn’t too much for him to handle. So, Dominic made five more kegs of powder, then started to create the corresponding pallets of shot.
"That should keep the north wall for an hour or two if the mages are down. Set someone on watch in the tower, so nothing happens to it." Dominic announced, addressing the last bit to the soldier outside the door.
"I will distribute them now." the soldier offered.
The Princess nodded. "Call a team, I want them all to go out at once."
There were only twelve cannons on the entire north wall, and it was ten paces between riflemen. But putting the ammunition halfway between cannons for now would make it accessible when the teams were preparing to use it.
The soldiers were quickly crossing the fields, but they had started much too far away. In armour, it would take them close to ten minutes to run the entire distance uphill to the walls.
In Dominic’s mind, it would have made more sense to spend another week or two digging the trenches closer. But they were coming in force today, and from what Dominic could see, it looked like they had nearly emptied the trenches.
The Cannons adjusted their aim, firing low to detonate rounds in the front ranks of the charging soldiers. Then the volleys of arrows began, and the infantry raised their shields.
But the rifles didn’t care about shields, and the front rank began to collapse under the hail of fire from the riflemen.
"No movement from the Southern front. Only East, West and North. It looks like they really are in dire straits." Colonel Wilkes reported, relaying the flag messages from the other sides of town.
Then a few seconds later. "Under two thousand troops on the east and west flanks. Five thousand on the North."
Dominic watched as the riflemen cut down the front ranks of the charge, and the shield wall faltered as an increasing number of arrows made it through the gaps in their tortoise shell.
Then, the cannons got another volley in, and the rate of collapse increased.
Dominic cleared his throat to get the Princess’ attention.
"Should I join in the fight? The other mages are busy with the cannons, but we should show them a little bit about why Cygnia isn’t a force to be trifled with." He asked.
The charge was under a hundred metres from the wall now, and Princess Alexis nodded.
"If you think that you can make a difference, go ahead."
With all his spells in the spell book, Dominic had some faith in his ability to make a proper fireball. At level 1 it was big enough to create a three-metre ball of fire, and kill Goblins. At level seven, it was surely better, but he hadn’t ever used the spell himself.
Dominic channelled mana for the spell, and hurled the fireball into the infantry.
When it left his hand, it was just a baseball sized ball of fire, but when it hit the infantry, it made a five-metre ball of fire, hot enough that it melted armour. That seemed a bit excessive. They didn’t get more dead after the liquid steel dripped on their corpse.