They spent half of the next day dividing their army in two and wading across the sluggish river. That was frustrating for the Ebon Bde but not as frustrating as the fact that the next two vilges were empty.

  “They run before us!” Var’gar announced to cheers as if that was a good thing. There were still buildings to sack and livestock to devour, but there was nothing good about the popution deciding to get while the getting was good.

  You knew this was going to happen the moment you saw survivors escape, the bde reminded itself. You will devour all of them eventually. They can’t hide forever. All they can do is retreat somewhere safe and wait for me to find them.

  Of course, that only increased their need to push forward. Along the way to Holmen, they found only one target worth attacking, and that was a merchant caravan that apparently hadn’t been warned about what was coming. It was eight wagons and two dozen men, but that was only enough to whet the weapon’s appetite for the violence that y ahead.

  +282 Life Force.

  +9 Human Souls.

  This time, the bde did not let the orcs burn the wagons as much as they wanted to. “How will we roast the meat without fire!?” Var’gar insisted, raging at the voice of the god that only he could hear.

  Your enemy will have real defenses this time, the weapon scolded the orc as it showed the oaf what it had seen in the mind of the human it had interrogated. There will be walls of stone and strong gates, with archers and other weapons beside. There may even be mages.

  “If they have walls, then we will tear them down, stone by stone!” the chieftain responded, earning cheers from some of the nearby orcs who didn’t even know what they were talking about. The bde started to drain that vocal minority out of pure spit. Orcs were strong but not especially forward-thinking.

  The next vilge isn’t likely to have any more people in it than the st one had, the bde expined slowly, trying to make its wielder understand. But they will have doors on their houses and a smithy. We can make siege shields for the arrows, and with a tree and a wagon, we can make a battering ram for the gates.

  “I fear no arrows!” Var’gar ughed.

  At that point, the bde just gave up. It stopped trying to expin or make its host understand. If the chieftain was going to venerate it like a god, then it would simply command.

  These were not requests. It thundered. These are commands. You will obey, or I will select one among your army who will repce you. Do you understand?

  The bde had no intention of repcing its wielder. In the entire army, there were only a few orcs as strong, but even if he’d been the weakest, it was the duty of a weapon to fight with its owner. Still, in this case, the orc needed to be reminded of who was in charge here, and it would sh at his mind and spirit if it needed to.

  “But this is not the way that orcs fight!” Var’gar compined. The tone was entirely different, though. The chieftain continued to whine and bellyache about the idea, but at the idea that his god’s power might be withdrawn and given to someone else, he obeyed, however reluctantly.

  So, the following day, when they reached a vilge, they stripped its homes and barns of doors, along with any other pnks they could find, and Var’gar expined to his men under duress how they would storm the city. “You march forward behind these wooden shields,” the chieftain expined. “So they get shot full of arrows instead of your big green asses!”

  That got more than a few ughs and tangented the entire conversation until the bde prodded him to get back to the business of creating a battering ram. The shields the orcs figured out well enough on their own. Some of them already used crude shields paired with clubs or spears. Getting them to think of a vehicle as a weapon, though, was somewhat harder.

  That took the better part of a day, even with dozens of strong orcs, to fell and delimb the rgest tree they could find. While it would have preferred to hang the thing from chains so it could strike harder, it settled for having its wielder attach the roof from one of the nicer houses to the top of the wagon to protect the orcs that were going to be pushing it.

  Weight, at the very least, wasn’t a problem. Each orc was almost as strong as an ox, and though it took only two to move the wagon, four or even eight could push it very quickly. The bde wasn’t sure such a delicate construct would survive the battle, but it would serve its purpose.

  That would be tested soon, in any case. The hamlet they looted to make their primitive siege engine was the st intact settlement they found. All the ones they found in the days that followed were abandoned and burned. Even the crops in the field had been destroyed to deny the orcs sustenance.

  That did little to stop them, though. They might compin about being hungry, but they knew a feast rger than they could ever eat y ahead. So, they were undeterred and continued to march.

  A week after their st conquest, they saw Holmen on the horizon. The orcs cheered at that and wanted to press the attack immediately, even though that wasn’t the pn. The bde saw only a gray smudge at that distance, but it saw no surprises, either.

  The town had long since outgrown the fortified bridges and keep that made up the core of the three-part city, and they had abandoned the near portion in favor of the other two-thirds, where they thought they would be safely behind the water. Even here, where the banks were closer together, and the water moved faster, the bde thought they could cross easily enough, though it would be under fire from the men on the far bank.

  Var’gar wanted to do just that, but the weapon restrained him. We stick to the pn, it whispered to its wielder, and we wait for Groll’shank to strike on the far side. Only then do we assault the city.

  The bde didn’t like waiting more than anyone else, not when there were so many people on the walls just waiting to be devoured. Still, there was good news. While they assembled well out of arrow range and waited, no mage lightning or anything simir assaulted them. The defenders didn’t even try an ambush or counterattack, though it had hoped they'd be foolish enough to do so.

  Instead, they simply waited for the orcs to realize that they couldn’t penetrate the walls and leave. This was doubtlessly a tactic that had worked for them in the past, but it was just as futile to fling insults and it was to unch projectiles from the walls at this range. They would not be baited, no matter how many times they tried.

  The Ebon Bde couldn’t see the walls well, even from this distance, which eventually annoyed it enough to waste the Life Force upgrading Increase Senses 3. Though it could easily afford to spend 750 at this juncture, it usually didn’t consider the ability to see farther than it could swing to be very necessary.

  Increase Senses 3: The beauty of a meadow or a sunset will forever elude you, but the rge things have become clearer, as well as the ways to destroy them, should the need arise.

  You no longer see only the weakness in armor, but in structures as well, and you can see who is dangerous with only a gnce.

  For pnning a tactical assault, though, the weapon would need a rger view, and as its upgrade cleared some of the remaining rust off its hilt, its view solidified. It still wasn’t perfectly clear out to the horizon, but the city walls were no longer a blur. It could see the sharp lines of the enemy defenses and the blurred movements of men pacing atop them. More importantly, though, it could see their weaknesses. That had been an unexpected gift. For a long time, it had been able to see gaps in the armor of others. That was its nature. Now, it could see where the walls might fall if a little force was applied, as well as the pces that would be easiest to scale, even without a dder.

  It spent the day reying that to its wielder as its pn began to solidify. Nothing else happened, but on the second night, the other half of their army smmed into the unprepared defenders, causing shouts of arm and terror as the watchmen blew their horns. At this distance, the bde couldn’t see exactly how the fight was going,

  The bde’s wielder commanded his troops forward then, or for the first few minutes, there weren’t even any arrows because the archers seemed to be under the mistaken belief that the army had moved to the other bank during the night. It only realized that there were two entirely separate armies when the orcs’ crude wagon battering ram began to hammer against the near gate.

  The crude thing’s front axle broke on the second strike, but that was fine because the orcs lifted the log in their strong arms and kept hammering against the gate even after the wheels gave out. It took less than a dozen blows to crack the beam that was holding the thick gate shut, and after less than five minutes, the gates swung open to reveal the delicious defenders inside.