{"id":427,"date":"2011-02-03T08:51:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T13:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=427"},"modified":"2011-02-03T08:51:50","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T13:51:50","slug":"siege-and-stone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=427","title":{"rendered":"Siege and Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"

This piece is set in the near future of The Four Part Land, shortly after the events in Chloddio.<\/em><\/p>\n

\tAn arrow flew past his face, leaving him staggered. He drew and fired, a distant scream confirming his aim. He was safe here, mostly, standing atop the battlements while his foes sought to climb them with ladders and break them down with rams.<\/p>\n

\tHe shook his head and chuckled. A month ago, his army had attacked theirs, out in the badlands east of the city. And now here they were, sitting outside the walls of his city. That had sure been a turn in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

\tHe stood, aimed, and fired, cursing as his arrow skipped off the armour of his foe. Damn stuff was good. Not as good as what he wore, but good enough. More importantly, there were a lot more people in their armour than there were in his. If it wasn’t for the wall spanning the mouth of the valley, then this would have been over a long time ago. Even now, it looked like it would be over soon enough.<\/p>\n

\tA woosh flew overhead, and he stumbled to the ground, face red. Fireballs. Earth-damned fireballs. Another and another, splashing across the buildings inside the city wall. The structures steamed for a minute, then went out. Firemages would have had more luck if everything here wasn’t made of bare earth and stone. Might be the only city in the world where there was no wood used in the construction of anything.<\/p>\n

\tThe pop of rocks against armour. <\/p>\n

\tOh good, our mages aren’t cowards after all. There just aren’t enough of them, like everything else when you compare us to them. <\/p>\n

\tStill dazed from the near miss, he leant over the parapet and fired straight down. Then again. A shattering sound made him drop back down behind the wall. Two dead. He’d need to do better than that. They all did.<\/p>\n

\tA crunch, and then shouts.<\/p>\n

\tShit.<\/p>\n

\tHe dashed along the wall to the main gate, one panel hanging open, hinges broken. Armoured footsoldiers were swarming through the gap, held for the moment by the reserve troops. He fired wildly, arrow after arrow plunging down.<\/p>\n

\tSlowly the mass was forced back. He grinned. Best heavy infantry in the world, right there. Armour a foot thick, and the skulls to match.<\/p>\n

\tTo replace the broken gate, stones were brought up, and piled higher and higher, sealing it with rubble. He turned and surveyed the plains beyond the wall, the seething mass of soldiers who wanted to kill him, destroy his city. He chuckled.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cWell isn’t this the life?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece is set in the near future of The Four Part Land, shortly after the events in Chloddio. An arrow flew past his face, leaving him staggered. He drew and fired, a distant scream confirming his aim. He was safe here, mostly, standing atop the battlements while his foes sought to climb them with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[34,7],"tags":[21],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-6T","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":383,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=383","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":0},"title":"The Taking of Baeran","date":"November 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A quite long excerpt from my NaNo novel, as the humans and their allies look to turn the tide of the war. The humans had been charged with slipping through B\u00e6ran and striking straight for the buildings that were thought to hold the officers of the \u00deracian army. They were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tarranau"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":448,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=448","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":1},"title":"Breaking an Empire #20","date":"February 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The twentieth installment of a 30k word short story set in The Four Part Land. It takes place 400 years in the past from the time of Tarranau and Chloddio, and details the collapse of Hymerodraeth Heula, the Empire of the Sun. Glanhaol Fflamboethi made its way southward in three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Four Part Land"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":452,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=452","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":2},"title":"Breaking an Empire #21","date":"March 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Later that evening, Rhocas returned to their camp for the first time in several days, nodding at all of those around him. He still wore his battered and dirty armour, and on the outside had not changed at all, but Rhy wondered if the nascent firemage stood with a straighter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Four Part Land"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":493,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=493","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":3},"title":"Our Land","date":"May 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Armies clashed that day on the field, as magic tore into mundane. Bow and arrow met flintlock, and fire from the mages was countered by the roar of cannons. Elves there were, and trolls too, and for once they fought on the same side of battle, the sylvan creatures using\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":650,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=650","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":4},"title":"Rescuing Friends","date":"March 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The fifth installment in a new short story, one of three from the upcoming Splintered Lands: Volume One. Fryca slipped past the inn, stepping around peasants forced to sleep outside as she made her way to the stable. There, she looked for a Knight's warhorse, for she would rather steal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":621,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=621","url_meta":{"origin":427,"position":5},"title":"Chloddio is Done!","date":"April 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I've finished the rewrite. The story now clocks in just a shade under 104,000 words. And it's a hell of a lot better than it was before this whole process started. For the first time in a while, I'm looking forward to editing it and getting it out the door,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chloddio"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}