"Master! Master!"
Lorian shook his head and snapped back to his senses. Jax leaned in, whispering in a tense voice, "Master, you were not here!"
Lorian felt a jolt of shock. Did he physically vanish from this reality? His ears were still ringing with the distant, haunting toll of the bell. Before he could scramble for a reply or make an excuse for his 'vanishing,' Lucien spoke up, "So, I hope you understood what I am trying to convey!"
Lucien's tone confirmed that, to everyone else, Lorian had been present the entire time, just as the Demon had assured him. Jax's reaction was strange, but this wasn't the time for that discussion. The first thing Lorian had to do was shatter this image of the "over-compassionate" ruler. If they wanted a hardcore leader, they were going to get one. He decided to fake it until he made it.
"Don't forget, even before becoming a ruler, we Thrones were merchants. We were merchants long before we started ruling the city. And Veridia still is a republic, even if by name. And a merchant's blood still runs through my veins. You could say I am a Ruler by heart, but a merchant by brain."
Lorian quickly scanned everyone's face with his cold and calculating eyes, "What I meant by avoiding needless bloodshed was just deciding risk-versus-reward, which my merchant sense tells me is heavily skewed toward risk, and very little reward. Understand this- if we send one thousand of our men in this night raid, and half of them die before retreating, while killing even one thousand of them, we have lost one-tenth of our already small force, while they just lost one-twentieth of theirs. Also, don't forget, it is not about just finishing the pirates. Even if we kill all the pirates, and in that process lose most of our troops, we will soon be besieged by new enemies. We can, in no way, settle for a pyrrhic victory- we need an absolute victory. And that means we need to preserve as much of our force as possible while defeating them. Am I clear?" Lorian roared.
Everyone around was struck by his logic and practicality. They were convinced.
"Call me weak, incompetent, coward whatever you wish, I do not give a damn," Lorian continued with an angry determined face, "But I will never lead my men to a senseless death. I want to lead you all to a blazing warpath of glory. If you fall, you will fall like lions, leaving a trail of legend in your wake! Because you aren't just fodder- you are the gallant sons and daughters of Veridia. You are the Lions of Veridia!" His speech was so profound and intense it echoed through the walls, and all the troops were overcome with emotion, exploding with cheers! "Lions of Veridia! Lions of Veridia!" they roared, the heart of the city beating as one.
Lucien's heart was filled with pride. The dream he had shared as a kid with his best friend had not died with him, but was inherited by a more capable hand. For the first time, For the first time, the old commander snapped into a salute spontaneously- not out of duty, but out of genuine, unyielding devotion.
Alright, crisis averted for now! Lorian thought to himself and decided to move on to his next phase.
"So, we are sticking to our original plan from this afternoon. These pirates' midnight arrival does not change the original plan, alright? Grand Commander Lucien Lehance, have you posted the people in the positions we discussed earlier?"
"Yes, milord," Lucien replied, "the arrangement is done as you had instructed and every post is manned, milord!"
"Jax," Lorian issued his command, "you know the cityscape by now like the back of your hand, and you are practically impossible to detect in this midnight dark. Take advantage of this, and gather as much information as you can. Also…" a sly smile played on Lorian's lips, "I won't mind if you kill a few silently in the process. But remember, if you are caught or die in their hands…. I will kill you myself!"
A genuine smile played on Jax's lips, "I will not let your hands get dirty with my blood, Master, I promise you!" Jax jumped straight from the high wall, landed silently on the ground, and vanished into the darkness.
Lorian ordered everyone to take rest. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, the start of a siege battle of a scale the city of Veridia had not witnessed for ages. Lorian himself went to his bedchamber for the last peaceful sleep he was going to have for the foreseeable future.
Late that night, Jax returned, tired, his dark smooth fur covered in dried blood and gore. He did not seem hurt, however. One Throne Guard was going to wake Lorian up to inform him of Jax's arrival, as he was instructed to do;- but Jax insisted on letting the Master sleep. He just cleaned himself and went to Lorian's room, deciding to sleep the last few hours before daybreak at the foot of his master's bed.
The sun rose in the east like every other day. But today was not like every other day in Veridia. The Veridians were huddled in a cramped place, hidden behind the Gold Wall. The Heart of Veridia- where every Veridian dreamt of living for at least one day before they died- was where they were going to spend the next few days. However, irony was that they were no longer excited about it, but rather terrified, and were praying to the Gods to be able to return to their homes as soon as possible.
The morning sun was not much gentler to the pirates, either. They woke up to find all the men they had sent at the dead of the night to scout and secure the perimeter had not returned. Upon further investigation in the morning light, they discovered their brutally mutilated corpses. The claw and teeth marks showed they were the work of rabid beasts. It was not for hunger for flesh, but a hunger for cruelty and savagery. The littered, mutilated corpses of their comrades, scattered unceremoniously in the street, shook their morale. They felt their opponents were not civil humans at all.
Before their shaken mentality could spread through the whole party like a contagious plague, the leadership ordered an attack to secure the city before launching their decisive assault on the Gold Wall.
Now, to defend against the incoming pirate invasion, the Veridians had transformed the whole city into a deadly maze, turning every street from the dockyard to the Gold Wall into a kill zone. The highly skilled Veridian archers stationed themselves in buildings with high vantage points, which gave them as much area as possible to target the enemies on the road. They avoided the front-facing buildings, leaving decoys behind to draw the pirates into traps. They had installed 'booby traps' in almost all the buildings- construction idea of most of which came from Lorian (which, in turn, came from the social media activities and movies from his past life). When the invaders would storm these booby-trapped structures, they would be caught off guard, while the real archers remained safely positioned in the high vantage points behind them.
To stay mobile and elusive, the Veridian archers used a network of detachable platforms to move between buildings. Once they abandoned a position, they simply detached the platform, leaving the encroaching pirates stranded and unable to reach them without leaving the building and heading out onto the road- thereby coming into the target range of the Veridian Archers, only to then storm another booby-trapped house where the archers were now positioned. By constantly shifting their location, the archers would keep the pirates under a relentless, unpredictable rain of arrows, ensuring the enemy could never secure a foothold in the city and their numbers would keep decreasing gradually. Their lack of armor was going to make the archers' job much easier anyway.