[Cross-posted from the
What's going on in your fort? topic]
My second fortress usually limps away from attacks, but occasionally great victories do happen even to the inexperienced. My first attempt at siege weapon use went better than expected.
--
The dwarves built the ballista above and behind the front door, aimed through a fortification and down the length of a narrow, raised approach. The fort's only ballista, it had lain in wait for years, bolt at the ready, for its baptismal first firing. With no-one yet sufficiently skilled in its use, invasions had always been handled by the fort's ragtag army. In hopes of a better solution, practice catapults had been built and used within the fort for some time, however, which is how Iteb the Dwarf finally achieved the status of a legendary siege operator. When, in the fourth year of surviving, the lookout spied the third titan to attack the fort, the army, weary of broken bones and infected sutures, decided it was time to test the weapon's effectiveness. They sent Iteb up to her post, but remained ready behind the door in case anything should go wrong.
As the horrible humanoid coalescence of steam rounded the corner and began to charge down the length of the approach, Iteb's hand on the ballista release began to tremble. She could fire stones at an inert wall ten feet away without thinking, but aiming a temperamental ballista at a moving, menacing, charging titan was another thing entirely. As the ravening monster neared, its murderous intent evident in every sinister curl of vapor, she attempted to steel her jangling nerves. In the tense silence, a hiss and flutter of scalding steam coming from straight ahead became audible.
Just a little closer, Iteb. Keep it together just one more moment...
Just before she had intended to fire, her shaking became uncontrollable. Giving up, demoralized and badly frightened, she rose from her post, unable to operate the fickle machine. But she had taken only a few steps when she began to hear a new sound -- cheers! Her friends behind the wall were shouting their encouragement. It was enough to make her stop in her tracks. She could do this!
Buoyed by the shouts below, Iteb turned and made a mad dash for the giant weapon's release. The monster was so close now that its ancient, acrid malice stung her slightly-upturned nostrils; the time for precise aim had passed. All she could do now was release the huge, lethal-looking bolt and hope for the best. With one desperate leap, she threw herself bodily on the catch. Twisting in midair for a close-range glimpse of the beast through the stone slit, she seemed to see two great, insubstantial eyes take shape in the cloud -- and then she landed hard on the catch, causing the ponderous bolt to leap from its repose and shoot through the opening with a tremendous report, which she described later to her friends as the sound of a dead tree being dropped on a donkey cart.
Painfully, bruised and winded, Iteb picked herself up and peered through the opening. A few fading wisps of steam were all she could see of her first live target.
One shot. One kill. Legendary, indeed.
--
With a grunt, Iteb lifted the heavy bolt from the ground where it had fallen at the base of the retaining fence. Looking back, she noted with interest how far to the right the mammoth arrow had drifted from its center line along the raised catwalk leading to the fort's entrance. Her long training in geometry and ballistic trajectories allowed her to quickly estimate where the projectile would have been if she had fired the same shot when she had first intended to, with the monster much farther away. She concluded that, with very little doubt, she would have missed the monster entirely had she not left and come back.
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Topic: [Brief story] I think I am going to like ballistae (Read 1350 times)