A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)

Now, as I looked at the wall being unveiled in the early morning light I could not stop the sense of awe that overcame me at the sight of it. The wall and its towers appeared to be one massive block of golden mountain granite that reflected the early morning light back at us. The wall ran out into the valley in a soft bell curve that faced down the pass at us. There were towers going up the sides of the pass for a distance away from the wall towards us and the wall itself was studded with towers and defensive battlements. Most interestingly though was that I didn't see any gateway through the massive wall. After a few moments of searching I saw the gates. There were two of them, but they weren't in the wall itself. They were located in the walls of the pass to either side of the wall.

There must be tunnels behind the gates that led through the mountains to either side of the wall in order to access the city beyond. It was a smart way of resolving the inherent tactical weakness of a gateway. Gates are typically the weakest points in a fortification; get enough ramming, bombardment, and a heavy enough massing of troops and any gate can fall, except maybe these gates. The angle they were at put them out of range of being fired upon directly by projectiles. The massing of troops in the narrow tunnels would create a bottleneck that could prove catastrophic, if they had death holes through which boiling oil could be poured down onto the attacking troops and the tunnels themselves could likely be caved in, if need be to stop an invasion. If there was any weakness to be found in the defenses before me it was probably the overconfidence of the soldiers defending it, thinking that the wall could never fail, which is a very dangerous weakness to have, as overconfidence breeds laziness and inattention to detail.

As we drew near to the leeward gate I could see sentries ringed along the top of the wall above us watching us intently. It was hard to believe upon seeing this place that my father had been in charge of all this at one point in time.

Silent well hidden warriors rose up from the ground all around us, with arrows at the ready placed in their bow strings. Flin not liking it shied back ready to make a bolt for freedom. Holding the reins firmly I held our position in the line, as I frankly admired the skill of the outer guardsmen at remaining unseen.