Rain poured from a bruised iron sky, turning the lower valley into a churning sea of gray mud.
For three continuous days, the heavens had unleashed an unrelenting autumn storm. Thunder rumbled across the jagged peaks of White-Lotus Mountain, washing soot and dried blood from the cracked ramparts.
Down in the ducal siege lines, the weather had achieved what fifty thousand arrows could not.
General Vorn’s heavy iron siege engines were completely paralyzed. Counterweight catapults had sunk up to their axles in the sucking clay, and supply wagons lay half-submerged in overflowing drainage ditches. Ducal infantrymen huddled under sodden canvas tents, shivering in the freezing downpour while their leather armor rotted in the damp.
Their cooking fires had sputtered out two days ago, leaving four thousand soldiers to gnaw on moldy hardtack while their boots filled with icy water. Sickness spread through their ranks like wildfire, coughs racking the wet tents as soldiers shivered under drenched canvas.
Up on White-Lotus Mountain, the contrast was almost absurd.
Barnaby Holt had spent weeks supervising the construction of stone drainage culverts lined with porous Star-Iron slag. The torrential rainwater was channeled cleanly into underground cisterns, leaving the defensive terraces firm and dry underfoot. Smoke from well-ventilated barracks flues rose steadily into the gray mist, carrying the scent of dry firewood and boiling broth.
