Steady Does It

The knights all gathered around the siege weapon and got ready to push it.

"I don't like this idea," a knight commented. It was pretty obvious what the reason was. If things went wrong then the entire thing might fall on them and crush them.

"Shut up and get ready." They had no time to waste on complaining. It was either they could move it or they couldn't, and they wouldn't know until they tried.

"Yeah, I got it, I got it."

Rui pulled her sleeves up to her shoulders and got ready to start moving the machine. She grabbed one of the legs of the machine and looked at the other knights who were also ready to start. "Ready?"

A collective yes came from everyone. "Alright, on the count three everyone! One! Two! Threeeee!" Everyone pushed their bodies against the machine to try to straighten it against the wall. To no one's surprise, the machine didn't budge at all despite how hard they tried. After trying to push it for an entire minute, the knights stopped and gave up. There was no way they were going to get the weapon up with their physical strength alone.

"We need to think of something else," Rui pointed out the obvious.

"If pushing it doesn't work, why not try pulling it?" A knight suggested the opposite idea.

"Yeah, but how are we going to get up there to pull it?"

"We can tie a rope to the top and all pull."

"Oh, you're right!"

"Only problem is that I don't see a rope anywhere around here."

That idea was also going down the drain. They couldn't pull the siege weapon without a rope.

Rui looked up the broken house it was leaning against. If they can get up there then wouldn't it be easier to push from that angle than from the bottom? "Is there a way to get on the roof?"

"There's a ladder there," a knight pointed at a ladder lying in the middle of the street half-buried in the dirt.

Rui wasn't going to question why the ladder was there but went over and picked it up with both her hands. There were a few cracks in the wood here and there and one of the steps was missing but it should do the trick.

Rui carried the ladder over to the side of the house and leaned it against the wall. The height was perfect and she climbed up it with little problem. "Some is you guys come up here with me!" she shouted down at the knights. "We will push it from both the top and the bottom."

That idea just might work. The knights all thought that and half of them climbed up the ladder and joined Rui. "Let's try this once again. One. Two. Three!" The knights all pushed the machine with their bodies, from both the top and the bottom.

The siege weapon slowly began to go back to its original position. How it even got into this slanted position, none of them knew but what mattered was that it was working. After pushing for a couple more seconds, they managed to get the siege weapon back in its base.

Rui and the other knights on the roof carefully hopped back down and looked at it. "It's a lot taller than I got," she noted. The machine was bigger than it first looked when they found it leaning against the house.

"So how do we move this thing?" a knight asked.

"Not sure, does anyone have experience operating something like this?"

A collective "No" came from all of the knights.

"Well then..." Rui walked around the siege weapon until she found what looked like an entrance in the back. She opened the hatch and looked in. The inside was dark and it was hard to see what was in there but Rui didn't care and jumped right in.

"Uh commander, are you sure that it's a good idea to do that?"

"I'm fine." There weren't any traps or anything inside the machine. "One of you with light magic come here."

Light shined into the machine, allowing Rui to get a better look at what was around her. 'Is this it?' Rui pulled the biggest level she saw and the machine began to vibrate. The knights all backed off from the siege weapon with concerned expressions.

"Hey! Don't you go away, I need to see!" Rui shouted at the knights. Without a light source, she couldn't see anything at all. The knight that had been providing light with his magic before walked over and jumped into the machine with her. "Thank you."

Rui continued looking around until she found what looked like a steering device. "Found it."

"Commander? I don't think that's a good-"

Too late. Rui flipped the switch and the siege machine began to move forward. She quickly pulled a lever on the side to make it turn.

"So that's how it works." The mechanism was rather simple for such an intimidating-looking weapon. There was a level to turn on the engine, a switch to make it move, and lastly, another level to change its direction. The only real problem they had was that there was no way for them to see outside the machine.

She really didn't know who thought it was a good idea to design it that way. How are you supposed to navigate something like this when you couldn't see where you were going? We're they worried about arrows or fireballs getting in and destroying everything?

Rui flipped the switch back off to make the machine stop. "Alright, I got it. Let's bring this back. We will need someone to navigate for us." If they couldn't see where they were going, all they needed to do was have someone on the outside be their eyes for them. It wasn't a big problem.

What was a big problem however is whether or not they will make it back with the siege weapon in time.

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