To the dock
Two guards stood at the city's gates. They were under orders that no one was allowed in to the city by orders of Empress Mnemon. It seemed there were rebels who didn't like that she had become the new empress. It seemed natural to the soldiers, Mnemon was the eldest child of the previous empress so she should become the next empress.
Of course, standing here guarding the gate was dull, their shift was from lunch until the sun set which left them a lot of time. They were both too professional to make small talk so they were even more bored.
As they waited they saw a small group walking towards the gate. They held out their spears at the one who looked like the group leader, the woman who walked in front.
"What business do you have?" One guard asked politely.
The woman smiled "We just need to get into the city. May you let us in and not tell anyone?"
The guards looked at each other before the same one as before spoke "I'm sorry but the city is currently under lockdown."
The women pouted "Oh, that is not pleasing at all."
The guards again looked at each other, it was clearly wrong not to please this woman but...
They put their spears away and the guard that hadn't yet spoken nodded "Right away."
They opened the gate, those guarding the other side of the gate looked around in surprise before the woman stepped up "Don't mind us, in fact... please don't tell others we were here, we are only passing through."
The soldiers on the other side nodded and the woman's group quickly made their way into the city.
When out of earshot, Cloaked Blessing hissed to Soaring star "That was reckless. What if they had more competent soldiers on watch?"
Soaring star grinned and whispered back "Are you sure you want to get into an argument while the charm is still active, it might give us away?"
Cloaked Blessing was about to reply "You are right. My apologies." but she shut herself up. They told the others it was a dragon-blood charm but in truth Soaring Star was using a charm that controlled people, making them agree.
The small group made their way to the docks and got a view of the weapons lined up to stop incoming ships. This time the actual dragon-blood stepped up.
He snuck towards the first weapon, a catapult. His steps were silent and each time someone would have seen him they always turned away as if distracted. At the catapult, the man took out a dagger and made a few cuts in the mechanism. Even if new ropes were set the weapon would still fail to wind up.
He moved on to the first of a few ballistae, to the first he made his actions silent and cut at the bow of the weapon. Once the weapon was put under strain it would snap. Still silent he turned the next one around and cut off it's wheels. for the last of them he planted a bag of fire dust primed to light itself in about a quater of an hour. Now the last three remained. Another catapult, an onager and a sailcutter.
The sailcutter got another bag of flame dust while the last catapult and onager each got various cables cut in such a way to snap when put under stress.
One last risk is quick repairs. He met up with the others and through the other Dragon-blood they managed to ask a soldier where the supplies to fix the weapons were kept. They found the warehouse and slipped inside. When the found the supplies, the last bag of fire dust was used and a shorter than normal timer was set.
The first one would now go up in only a few minutes so they got away while they could.
Next was on to the tower. Hopefully they could get there before the attack started.
End of chapter
Yes it's short, I had trouble thinking of things to put in this chapter so I got lazy. I actually considered writing nothing or just giving you someone's character sheet this week so I managed to do more than that at least.
Next chapter, hopefully, will be longer