The First Battle for Musqata: Day 12

  Documented and translated from Hanaqi by Bookmaster Obi Bondo

  from 3:778:UFB-2

  Collection Date and Location: 1 Roo'Asha, i1198. Eternal Library - Araja-Musu Branch

  LIBRARY CLASSIFICATION CODE: Restricted - Level 2 of 3.

  14 Hunquye, p0921

  The sun breaks the horizon, marking the twelfth day in a row that Hanaqi warriors, stalwart defenders of their home, have stood atop the great wall of the city. They look now across a sea of torches at another attempt to take Musqata and break the back of the Hanaqi resistance. Each day of the siege, this has occurred. Each day the Eríans think the walls will fall, and the city will succumb to their overwhelming numbers. Each day, the would-be conquerors are repelled, and Musqata, the City of Hope, continues to earn its name.

  The colonizing forces surround the city with their three strongest legions. The Duggaumr League of Barbed Spears, led by Adobhin Anordo, takes the eastern front; Farra's Favored Sons from southern Ería take the west; and the bulk of the forces, Arthal Slavri’s feared Company of Adventurers, stare up walls of thick clay and stone on the south while their fleet blocks the small Hanaqi harbor north of the city.

  For more than a month, no ship has broken through the blockade. The Hanaqi citizens are starving, but none will flee. Every man, woman, and child within Musqata knows what fate awaits them should the walls fail. After all, many are refugees from the holy city of Qarapara, home of the turtle spirit whose shell protects all Hanaqi people. The once-great city within the land of Qara is now little more than a stop on The Road of Chains, which ends at the newly created colony of Cathar Cosga, the capital city of the Erían conquest.

  These Erían raiders are not soldiers. This is no military force trained in the rules of war. These are adventurers. Men who understand violence as means to make themselves wealthy. They know how to stab a man in the stomach and throw a woman in chains. They have no engineers who can solve the riddle of breaking the near-invincible shells of the turtles of antiquity to topple the powerful wall surrounding Musqata.

  To this day, no force, neither Hanaq nor invaders, has ever taken the city. The defenders within the walls remind themselves of this when they see Arthal Slavri—covered in summer sweat and bug bites, tired of this siege, and wanting to sack the city once and for all—order the Company of Adventurers to storm the front gate.

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  They have managed to turn a large tree into a great battering ram. It is carved with the searing, skeletal face of Coga, the Erían dwarf god of raiders and sailing, and tied to its sides are the bodies of dead Hanaqi warriors. They call it or “Coga's Gift,” and it is a frightening sight intended to wear down the resolve of the city's defenders. But the Eríans will always misjudge the Hanaqi people. And on this day, they greatly misjudge the wisdom of the Elders of the Qarapara, who escaped the city's destruction and are now leading the defense of Musqata.

  As is tradition in Hanaq, they are not individually identified or recorded in history. They are known only as the Elders, for their wisdom and ingenuity is that of the community, shared by all who came before and with all who will come after they return to the Sun Palace. And on this Fourteenth of Hunqye, their wisdom was shared by all who defended the city.

  nears the gate, and a canopy of Hanaqi arrows erupts from behind the great wall in response, pelting the Erían raiders and the great wooden ram. The invaders must find them curious, for at this time, before the creation of the deadly Anca arrows, the Hanaqi missiles are simple projectiles, little more than sharpened sticks with small arrowheads made of bone that barely do more than pierce the skin or stick into the battering ram. But those whose sense of smell is keen can detect a faint, sweet aroma, and those that touch the arrows find them strangely tacky.

  And soon after the third volley, the city of Musqata greets the Eríans with another strange sight. The defenders use slings to hurl clay spheres filled with a bright purple liquid over the walls. They explode on impact, and when the liquid inside contacts the arrows, they erupt into bright blue flames that burn hot and slow, seemingly never-ending. Arthal Slavri's forces try to extinguish them but only manage to spread the fires faster, and soon they are burning alive in front of the gate known as the , “the Great Maw,” after the large jawbones of the unknown primordial creature used to make it.

  incinerates, reduced to a cindering log, better fit to keep a campfire burning through the night.

  The Erían raiders retreat. Slavri is furious, vowing revenge and to level the city. It is an empty promise never fulfilled. The news of the crushing defeat spreads through the forces and there are no other attempts to take the city that day. There are no attempts the day after as well. There are no cheers of victory, no taunts from within the walls. That is not the Hanaqi way. There is simply an acknowledgment that the city was defended, an evaluation of the strategy, and the setting of plans for what might come next.

  What substances were on the arrows or within the clay missiles remains a closely guarded mystery. But whatever they were, they saved Musqata and helped to grow the legend of the city that will never be captured. The City of Hope. The city that to this day is the last stand of a people in bondage. A people who look to it and find the will to survive despite daily humiliations from their captors and who will one day repel them from their homeland.

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