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.
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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 his 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. He 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, he attempted to steel his 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 he had intended to fire, his shaking became uncontrollable. Giving up, demoralized and badly frightened, he rose from his post, unable to operate the fickle machine. But he had taken only a few steps when he began to hear a new sound -- cheers! His friends behind the wall were shouting their encouragement. It was enough to make him stop in his tracks. He 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 he could smell the ancient, sulfurous malice; the time for precise aim had passed. All he could do now was release the huge, lethal-looking bolt and hope for the best. With one desperate leap, he threw himself bodily on the catch. Twisting in midair for a close-range glimpse of the beast through the stone slit, he seemed to see two great, insubstantial eyes take shape in the cloud -- and he landed hard on the catch, causing the ponderous bolt to leap from its repose and shoot through the opening with a deafening report, which he described later to his friends as the sound of a dead tree being dropped on a donkey cart.
Painfully, bruised and winded, Iteb picked himself up and peered through the opening. A few fading wisps of steam were all he could see of his first live opponent.
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, he 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. His long training in geometry and ballistic trajectories allowed him to quickly estimate where the projectile would have been if he had fired the same shot when he had first intended to, with the monster much farther away. He concluded that, with very little doubt, he would have missed the monster entirely had he not left and come back.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6190711 times)