Lord of the City

By Bryan Lee Gregory

Scribe Kenton lives in the last human refuge, known to its inhabitants only as the City. All he has ever known is the omnipresent threat of the Bladesmen, the eternal foes who trapped the few remaining humans over a century ago.

Now the City is running out of the only resource that can keep its enemies at bay. Kenton is sent out into the world with the City's most valiant defenders on a revolutionary aircraft on a desperate mission to find a weakness in the Bladesmen's defenses. Soon he discovers that it is only a matter of time until the City falls forever. Only the human mission on board the zeppelin Lord of the City can hope to find a way to save the last remnants of humanity before their time runs out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryan Lee Gregory
• Release date: Oct 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310948664

Bryan Lee Gregory

About BryanBryan Lee Gregory is an author of fiction that blurs the lines between high fantasy and steampunk. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon with his wife and son. Bryan has been creating new ideas for stories from a young age and has been turning those ideas into novels since 2009.When not writing, Bryan works professionally in the software development industry. He graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 1999.Bryan has written the first two novels in his Bladesmen Lords series and is about to release the third. Lord of the City and City of the Lords are both available now as eBooks or trade paperbacks, while Worlds of the Lords will be available in October, 2014.Bryan can be contacted via email at [e-mail] out what he's up to at http://bryangregory.blogspot.com!

Book preview

Chapter 1 – Birth of a Plan

The day I first heard about the City’s coming problems started off like any other. As usual, I was in the Council room, recording their deliberations for posterity. Their chamber is always impressive to step into – a circular stone room with a ceiling about sixty feet high – but the most amazing part of it is the round table at which the Council sits. Constructed of solid oak fully twelve feet in diameter, these days it would take twenty years of family wood rations to build. It hadn’t been moved in more than a hundred years, ever since the City was founded as a refuge for those few of us who remained. As far as we know, we are the last human city in the world.

The meeting that day was scheduled to be another long litany of production numbers coming in from the farms and mines on the plateau. It started off as slowly as I feared until Masterminer Efrom had his turn to address the Council. Efrom was in charge of the Fuel mines near the City; without a doubt, he spoke for the most important natural resource we have left.

I could tell he had something dire to say from his expression as he moved to the head of the table. He’s normally a friendly man, stout and bespectacled, though I have had little occasion to speak to him. Today, he looked as though a family member had died before their time. He took a moment to compose himself before speaking, shuffling his notes aimlessly. Finally, he took a deep breath and began.

Councilors, today I bring word of what we’ve all feared since the City was established. There is no longer any doubt – the vein of Fuel which runs through this plateau is almost mined out. If we don’t find more –

He was cut off by a surge of voices. Nearly everyone around the table leapt to their feet, crying out in disbelief. I kept writing by habit, but my mind was reeling. Could this be true? What were the ramifications? I wasn’t the only one wondering what would happen. Abram, the head Councilor, smacked the table with a palsied hand and called out for order. It took a few moments for everyone to take their seats again.

Thank you, Councilor Abram. As I was saying, without sign of further Fuel, we’ll have nothing left to mine within four months.

How long will we last? cried one of the Councilors before anyone else could speak.

At current rates of use, we have about two years of Fuel stockpiled. If we cut rations immediately, we could stretch it to four – but no longer than that. The Masterminer shook his head, unable to meet the Council’s faces. We can try reprocessing early tailings from the mine, but that’s unlikely to get us much – we’ve improved our mining techniques over the last fifty years to the point where there’s almost no Fuel that we don’t extract from the ore on the first pass.

Archmage Wendel, is there any way we can reduce the amount of fuel needed for the Shield Wall? asked Abram.

Our primary Archmage, one of only two in the City, shook his head. That would not be possible, Councilor. I know that maintaining the Wall requires the majority of our fuel, but I tell you truthfully that its workings are as efficient as we can make them. We’ve had over a century to perfect its design, and I have little doubt that we have done so. The only way we could reduce the Fuel it uses would be to change its boundaries, which would mean leaving one end of the plateau undefended. We all know what that would bring.

I shivered a little when I heard him speak. Everyone in the City had gone to the Wall at some point and looked out, and many of us had seen a Bladesman scout in the distance through the shimmering blue aura. I remembered going with my father when I was a child and having him point them out to me. Kenton, he’d said to me, the Bladesmen are our eternal enemies. They’re still out there, watching us, even after so long. If we started pulling back the borders of the Wall, they’d scent our weakness and bring an army to wait until the Wall flickered out. Once that happened the City would cease to exist within days.

Efrom pulled off his spectacles and rubbed them clean, taking the moment to compose himself. We must find another source, Councilors, and no other exists within the perimeter of the Wall. An expedition must be mounted beyond the plateau.

Impossible, said Tynut, the Councilman who represented our soldiers. Nobody has left the Wall for decades. We know the Bladesmen are still watching us – it would be a suicide mission. We’re better off waiting for the Wall to go down and fortifying the top of the plateau – we’ll fight them from the top of the bluffs for as long as it takes.

Arguing immediately broke out, with some Councilors – none of whom had any military experience, I thought wryly – shouting that if the soldiers couldn’t defend an expedition outside the city, they were worthless and should be put to use elsewhere. The talk became chaotic within moments and I wrote furiously, trying to get as much of it down as possible. Even if my old master had still been alive the two of us would have missed some of it.

What about the Engineering Guild’s proposal of twelve years ago? said Councilwoman Jerana quietly. My ears perked up at this and I strained to hear Abram’s response. He thought for a moment, then shouted for order as loudly as his ancient voice could handle and waited until the others around the table regained their composure.

Councilwoman Jerana has brought up an interesting suggestion. As many of us will remember, a dozen years ago the Engineering Guild came to us with schematics for a machine that would be lighter than air, able to fly out of the Bladesmen’s range to scout the surrounding areas. The proposal was denied due to the extreme quantity of lumber necessary, but as things are now, it may be worth reviewing. Regat?

Regat was a tall, lanky councilor with a short beard who represented several of the craft Guilds. He stroked his chin in thought for a few seconds, then nodded and stood up to better address the Council. I recall the proposal, and right away I can say that it would need to be expanded significantly. The original plan would have built a craft approximately twenty feet long, but this would not be enough for any sort of extended scouting mission to find a new, defensible source of Fuel. Still, I cannot think of a better way to search than from high above, beyond the reach of our enemies.

How much wood would we need? asked Jerana.

Hmm… for a craft which would support perhaps a hundred people and the necessary supplies – I would venture to guess that we would need a ship at least a hundred fifty feet long. You understand that I do not recall the proposal precisely, nor can I properly state what would be required to scale it up – but my guess would be that, to create a craft of appropriate size, we would require early cutting of virtually all of our timber of useful size.

Once again voices rose up around the table, until Abram quieted them down again. You’re saying that it might take all of the wood that we currently have growing to build this craft? That would mean that the City would have none to use for at least twenty years until the next seedlings mature. I don’t know that we could support such an expenditure.

Councilman Tynut spoke up. I would propose sending a large force of soldiers out to guard an expedition of craftsmen, to harvest as much wood as possible from below the plateau before the Bladesmen can gather a sufficient force to challenge us. This, I would imagine, would help significantly – but is something we could only risk doing once, for obvious reasons.

Abram nodded to Tynut. Regat, begin drawing up the plans. Councilors, I challenge you to come up with other ideas for solving this crisis. Unless we hear a more compelling alternative, however, I believe that we should start training a force to build and fly this expedition to its conclusion. The City cannot survive without Fuel. We now put it to a vote. All in favor? All against? Then let it be so. He turned to me and addressed me directly, a rarity in the time I’d been recording the deeds of the Council. Scribe Kenton, record the vote, please.

The official tally put the Councilors at about two-thirds in favor. My skin prickled with excitement as I carefully took down the results – the stage was set for our first serious look outside the City in a hundred years, and I was in a perfect position to watch as history was made.

Chapter 2 – Acquisition

Word spread throughout the City in a day.

The huge open pit where we had excavated Fuel for decades was selected as the building location for the new machine. The idea was to keep the Bladesmen from discovering what we were doing until the day it lifted into the sky. First, though, the old engineering plans had to be pulled out and dusted off as well as tested and scaled up. The engineer who had thought up the original plans, one Gregor Ubani, suddenly found himself thrust into a position of great responsibility as he was commanded to build a scale model and prove his concept. He was in his late thirties, starting to get grey in the hair, but recognized that he suddenly had a chance to emerge from anonymity and make a name for himself.

Meanwhile, the military prepared for what they came to call the Lumber Raid. It would be a massive push using nearly half of our soldiers, something which had not been done in living memory. As Raid Day dawned, more than a thousand archers and spearmen assembled on the northern edge of the Plateau where its descent to the forest below was the least precipitous. Behind them were two thousand craftsmen and laborers, fully equipped with tools and supplies for several days.

Everyone looked uneasily at the Shield Wall. It stood before us, only a few feet from the precipice, as it had since our grandparents’ time. The Wall is beautiful in some ways. It can be seen as a light azure shimmering in the air, extending upwards about eighty feet or so. On some days, when it’s clear enough and the air is just the right color, you can’t quite tell where it ends and where the sky begins. When you look through the Wall you can see the forests and mountains on the outside, though blurred and tinted blue.

Archmage Wendel stood before all of us, with only his apprentice, Viala, within speaking distance. He raised his arms high in front of him, placing his palms near the Wall, and let out a ringing shout that echoed for miles. A great breach appeared in the Wall with a terrible ripping sound and the soldiers hesitated a moment before charging through. They slid down the steep drop to establish a safe spot at the bottom, disappearing over the edge of the bluff as though gone forever. A cloud of dust rose, blocking our view, and everyone still up top went quiet, holding their breaths in concern.

Only a few minutes later, though the tension made it feel like it was hours, a shout came up from below to begin the ramp. The forwardmost craftsmen rushed up and began digging furiously, while others went over the edge around them, sliding down the steep, sandy hillside as carefully as they could. As I watched and took note of the events, I felt great pride in our men and women. They showed impressive courage by leaping down into the thick dust cloud, leaving the safety of the Wall and risking their lives for the greater good of the City.

A man in uniform climbed back up over the edge and I came closer to hear what he had to say. He approached the Archmage and, while trying to catch his breath, said that only two Bladesmen scouts had been encountered and that both had been slain before they could get away. The Archmage nodded, his ice-blue eyes looking cold and cruel, and replied that things were proceeding well so far. With a few quick motions I tried to sketch him as he was at that moment, preserving his imperious pose in the City’s records for all time.

Within three hours all the pieces were in place. Hundreds of masons worked furiously to extend a usable ramp down to the bottom of the plateau, embedding a line of Fuel partway down so that it could be demolished quickly if a large enemy force appeared. The soldiers had extended a perimeter several hundred yards into the forest while behind them an army of laborers and farmers chopped and hewed at every tree they could reach with whatever tools had been assembled. Many were using hatchets or small family saws, no more than a foot long, to work on a tree three feet in diameter. So few trees were harvested each year on the Plateau that only a dozen large saws were available, but it was heartening to see how well people made do with what they had.

Things stayed quiet for almost a full day. The ramp was completed late that night, and logs began coming up immediately, pulled one at a time by a dozen strong men in rope harnesses. Shifts switched out every twelve hours, with anyone in the City who could be spared lending a hand. I saw men and women who had never touched a tool sweat buckets to get one more tree to the top. The display of effort was amazing, and I spent every second I could writing down details. I doubted I’d ever see its like within my lifetime, even if the City did survive. As Scribe, I was privy to all of the conversations and discussions of the Council – but I’d never imagined being part of something like this.

Reports came in early the next morning that a Bladesmen scout had escaped. The news made the soldiers tighten their perimeter, and a line of men and women were established at the top of the Plateau, scanning the horizons ceaselessly with spyglasses for any sign of an approaching army. More and more trees came up every hour, the only pauses coming when a new shift went down the ramp and an exhausted group came back up.

The enemy force was sighted two days later. By this time a huge stockpile of trees had been assembled near the top of the ramp. Never had I – or anyone else in the City – seen so much cut wood at once. It seemed like an unimaginable treasure trove to a city which had used stone as its primary building material for a century. Down below, a wide swath of forest had been cut to the ground, with only saplings and underbrush remaining upright.

The Bladesmen had assembled a small force of about two hundred scouts, and those of us on top of the plateau held our breath as we saw them charge into the far side of the forest below. Faint yells and the clang of bone against steel filtered up from below, but we couldn’t tell what was happening since all of the fighting happened below the forest canopy. The laborers stepped up their work, trying to fell as many trees as they could in the limited time they had remaining. Within half an hour the fight was over and our soldiers had proved their worth in an overwhelming victory, reported by a sweat-stained but unwounded sergeant.

I pulled her aside to get some details of the fight as the order went down the ramp to continue working. The longer reach of our weapons – pike, long sword, and bow – had brought down a dozen Bladesmen for every one of our soldiers that fell; clearly, the tactics we had drilled for years had proven effective. From what the sergeant reported, the enemy’s own natural weapons made them unable to wield our style of equipment. In addition, the iron scale armor worn by our soldiers ensured that the attacks which did get through inflicted little harm.

I thanked the sergeant and promised that I would add her name to my records, and she headed back down the ramp proud of her part in the day’s events. The craftsmen were able to get about three more hours of work in before a much larger Bladesmen army was sighted by our observers near the cliff edge. This time, the order was given immediately to pull back to the ramp – the enemy forces looked like an angry, boiling anthill as they approached from a line of hills several miles to the north. I listened in on reports given to the Archmage, which estimated the Bladesmen to have between eight and ten thousand soldiers. Our tiny army couldn’t hope to stand up to them once they arrived in force.

Laborers began arriving at the top of the ramp, pulling in the last few logs that had been felled. Everyone carried a load – a large limb or even a collection of sticks and smaller branches. Each scrap could be used by our crafters, who had been forced to learn incredible efficiency during the years we’d been shut away. A strong limb the diameter of a man’s arm could be used, with care, to make a dozen arrow shafts. Behind them the soldiers tightened their perimeter, guarding against random Bladesmen incursions as the main force came closer.

The first elements of the enemy army emerged into the wasteland created by our loggers and immediately engaged our soldiers, trying to delay their retreat until more of their people could arrive. Our men and women responded well, keeping their lines strong and steadily retracting to the foot of the ramp. Once there, however, the pullback stalled as a large group of Bladesmen charged from the edge of the forest. Our lines bowed for a moment and I feared that they would break – but the endless drills and practice had left their mark, and the retreat started up the ramp again. Casualties began arriving up the hill in a steady stream, though most appeared to have only light injuries. The ramp limited how many could fight at once while the soldiers higher up continued to rain arrows down on the approaching Bladesmen.

One craftsman carrying a blazing torch waited about halfway up the ramp for the soldiers to approach. He kept an eye on an observer at the top of the ramp, who held a bright red flag. Once the soldiers had crossed a predetermined point, the flag swept down and the craftsman held his torch down to a fuse sticking out of the ground until it lit. The soldiers had about two minutes to get beyond that point before the fuse hit the buried line of Fuel and blew the ramp apart.

Their pace increased and now I saw a few soldiers go down and get left behind. There was no more time to pull injured comrades out of the fight. The line wavered, then at some hidden signal our men disengaged and raced up the ramp, with a large force of Bladesmen in close pursuit. One or two of our soldiers stumbled and went down, to be swallowed up in the following mass.

Once our men had made it about fifty feet above the fuse, they turned and planted their pikes in the ground. The resulting slaughter was terrible – dozens of Bladesmen threw themselves onto the weapons and more were pushed into our lines by those following. The enemy was now in range of bows to either side of the ramp on top of the plateau, and hundreds of bowstrings sang out simultaneously. A shadow flitted over our men just before the arrows curved down.

It was just as the first flight struck that the burning fuse hit the Fuel.

Fuel has several properties that make it so vital to the City. If a chunk of Fuel is hit with enough force, it will react explosively. When this happens, an invisible gas is produced that rises rapidly into the air. This will also happen if a large amount of Fuel is heated sufficiently. In smaller amounts, the Fuel will catch on fire and burn for a much longer period of time than a similar amount of wood, producing prodigious amounts of heat. We use it to heat our homes, forge the metal that we mine from the plateau we live on, and power machines that enable us to produce significantly more than our small numbers would otherwise allow. Most importantly, Fuel is used to keep the Shield Wall up through some strange thaumaturgic means that only the Archmages really understand.

We also use it as a weapon of war.

To those of us on the hill, it looked like the whole ramp disappeared in a flash of light. The shock wave knocked our soldiers down and one unlucky woman near the side of the ramp tumbled over the edge. The sound hit us like a physical blow, causing most of us to fall to our knees or stagger backwards from the impact. The Archmage was the only one I saw who remained standing, warded by some unknown magical force; even his protégé had to take two steps to steady herself.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I went down hard enough to knock the wind out of my lungs. By the time I got back up and looked over the edge, the whole scene was covered in a huge dust cloud. The previously steady wind from the east seemed to have stopped for the moment, making it impossible to tell just what had happened below. Our greatest fear was that the blast had been too strong, taking out the section of the ramp where our soldiers stood. The next worst possibility was that the ramp had been left intact enough for our enemies to use – though after that blast, I didn’t imagine that that was much of a threat.

A few seconds later, the distinctive clang of metal against bone started up again from below. The wind began to blow and within a minute or so we could start to make out what was happening. Virtually all of the ramp below where our soldiers had made their line had disappeared, and our forces were finishing off the few Bladesmen who had survived above the gap. Down below, at the foot of the cliff, hundreds of dead and wounded Bladesmen could be seen – and there was no way to know how many had been buried under the small hill of earth and stones that was all that remained of the footings of the ramp.

A ragged cheer came up from our observers once the last Bladesmen forces remaining near our soldiers had been slain or pushed off the edge of the cliff. The majority of their army remained below, milling around uncertainly. A few tried to scale the hill but our archers easily picked them off one by one. Within a few moments the order was given to pull back behind the Wall. The Archmage stepped up to the gap and, with a single word of power, rebuilt the Shield Wall so that the glowing blue wall of force once again extended unbroken as far as the eye could see to the east and west.

I stepped up to the wall, feeling the crackling energy pulling at me from only a few feet away, and looked down at the enemy army. Through the blue haze I saw a mounted Bladesmen, wearing an ornate helm and black robes, ride forward through the ranks of infantry to look up at the Wall. It was too far for me to make out any expression – or even the type of animal it was mounted on – but I could sense the anger and disappointment from where I stood. I noticed that the Archmage stayed alert, watching the figure as well, as though he expected some sort of attack – but after a short time the fearsome figure merely turned away, leaving behind perhaps two thousand soldiers to keep watch.

Wendel stepped back, taking a deep breath. He noticed me standing nearby and said, Scribe, make sure to note that you have had the fortune of seeing one of the fabled Lords of the Bladesmen. I didn’t recall him ever addressing me directly before, and it took me a moment to get over my surprise to realize what he had said.

I felt a chill grip in my stomach. That was a Lord?

He nodded. I could feel its power from here. If the Wall were down, I don’t know that I could have stopped it. I have – fortunately – never had to face one before, and do not look forward to having to do so. I hope this plan works. If we do not find more Fuel, we will not survive long once the Wall fails.

Chapter 3 – Testing the Design

This isn’t working! shouted the engineer, slamming his hand down on the drawings in front of him.

I was standing down in the mining pit near the cradle where about two dozen workers were starting the frame of Gregor’s zeppelin design. So far only the first layer of the hull had been built, about thirty feet long by fifteen wide. It consisted of a layer of planks – nearly four inches thick – which curved gently upwards at either end.

The current argument was about the design of the engines. Gregor had come up with a unique design for his flying ship. Engines would fire off of small slivers of Fuel, and a cylinder would then vent the resulting gas either forwards into a balloon which provided lift or backwards to provide propulsion for the craft. Several other engineers were arguing with him over the feasibility of his steerage design. Gregor had initially planned to have the propulsion nozzles rotate left and right, but the other engineers were having none of that – the design was overcomplicated and prone to breakage, they claimed. In response, Gregor had tried making a tiny, six-inch tall version of his engine to prove it would work.

The result was a wreck. The internal piston didn’t slide properly when it struck a few grains of Fuel, and the nozzles kept getting stuck left or right. Gregor, who had been under far more pressure than he was accustomed to, was shouting at the other engineers and nothing productive was getting done.

Why not use a rudder, like a sailboat does? asked one engineer softly from the edge of the table. I’d seen her speak up a few times before, but only to offer changes to other peoples’ designs, never to offer her own original ideas. She looked to be a few years younger than Gregor, attractive in a stout, dusky way. The woman had to repeat herself several times before the others calmed down enough to listen.

Sailboats? Like the ones that run around on Lake Gal? Maybe… yes, that could work, mused Gregor, once he’d been persuaded to listen. I’ve never actually seen one. Have you, Nina?

The engineer who had suggested the rudders nodded. Yes, I have. My parents are fishermen on the lake – there’s not many of them left, but at least three boats still work well. I know that you’ve referenced a number of books describing sailing ships for your designs; perhaps we can use some of the knowledge of the fisherfolk here.

I’d almost forgotten that anyone actually sailed on the lake anymore, Gregor admitted. Rudders, you say? He grabbed a piece of chalk and sketched on the designs. Like this? Just behind the exhaust nozzles?

Nina nodded, then leaned over and added a few lines of her own. You can run the steerage shafts here and here, and link them with a rod on the sixth deck like this.

It should be simple to do on the model, as well. Yes, that should work! The other engineers nodded in agreement, some of them making notes on their own drawings, while one went over to talk to the lead woodcrafter about what would be needed for the model.

Then Nina took a deep breath and spoke up again. I have another suggestion, but … She hesitated.

Gregor looked up, waiting, then prompted, Yes? What is it?

We should consider putting sails on the zeppelin.

He looked shocked. "What do