by Duncan Pile
"Jaim!" Gaspi cried, drawing his dagger and leaping to his friend’s aid. Taurnil got there first, smashing the butt of his staff into the Imp’s temple, even as it locked its fingers around Jaim’s neck. With a vivid flare of blue light the demon was cast away, its limp form spinning out over the wall. Moments later it crunched into the midst of Ferast’s troops.
"Get up here!" Gaspi cried to a couple of stretcher-bearers, waiting at the base of the stairwell. They scurried up the stairs and along the wall, bending double to avoid drawing fire from enemy archers. Jaim’s stomach was lacerated, held together by long strands of flesh. His face was pale and his teeth were clenched. The stretcher-bearers picked him up as carefully as they could and rushed back down the stairwell.
A wave of Imps crested the wall and crashed, ripping and snarling, upon the defenders.
"Use your demon-bane weapons!" Trask roared.
Gaspi watched anxiously as a nearby guard plunged his blade into demon-flesh – the enchantment’s first true test. Hissing in pain, the demon fell back, black smoke pouring from the wound.
"Get them!" Trask bellowed, and all around him men leapt to obey, brandishing their weapons with renewed conviction. Some of the weapons carried a stronger enchantment than others, but all were powerful enough to dispatch the Imps, which fell like wheat before a scythe.
Just as the last of them was flung to its death, the wall shuddered. Gaspi rushed to the parapet and looked down. The mercenaries had regrouped and advanced; a great sea of bodies, surging against the wall. They’d clustered thickly around the gate, battering it with the metal-capped trunk of a once-mighty pine. Stripped of greenery, the men had it by the spars of broken branches. Even as Gaspi watched, they swung it back and rammed the gate once more.
"Oil!" Trask called, and guardsmen rushed to the parapet, splashing bucketfuls of the dark, viscous substance on the mercenaries below. Ferast’s men screamed, expecting it to scald them alive, but their cries fell away in confusion when they realised it was perfectly cool on their skin. That is, until the first torch fell spinning into their midst and they were transformed into living pillars of flame.
Others rushed to pick up the ram. "Shoot!" Trask bellowed, and the archers released volley after volley into the swelling mass of Ferast’s men.
So far they’d managed to hold off the attackers, but Gaspi knew it couldn’t last. Helioport wasn’t a castle, built to withstand a siege. It had no murder holes, no giant pots of boiling oil suspended over the gateway. There was no structural second line of defence behind the first and no killing ground between the two. The gateway would be breached sooner rather than later and then the battle would flow into the streets.
They had never planned to hold the gate indefinitely – merely to do so at the greatest cost to the enemy. Men were dying all over the plain, pierced by arrows and spears, or rendered unconscious by great volleys of concussive spells, cast from the wall. The College of Collective Magicks taught no killing spells, but an ordinary strike was enough to knock a man senseless and remove him from the battle.
Despite the defenders’ best efforts, they were running out of time. Ferast’s troops were pressing forward, harried by the bulk of Sestin’s demons, which prowled impatiently at the rear. Gaspi was grateful they hadn’t thrown themselves into the fray as yet – the Imps had caused more than enough damage on their own. He thought he understood why Sestin was holding them back. Ferast’s men were expendable, taking the brunt of the defenders’ first show of force while they breached the gate. If the demons attacked the wall, they’d be vulnerable to attack from above, but once the wall had been breached they could rush straight through to the city, where they would have to be engaged in close quarters.
Another shudder ran through the wall as the battering ram smashed into the gate once more. Trask’s men were running short of arrows and turned to piles of rock instead, readied for exactly this purpose. They snatched up the heaviest stones and pelted the men below. Mercenaries fell beneath the deadly rain and the battering ram was dropped once more. Blood flowed from many a scalp, and those who tried to crawl away were crushed by a second cascade.
“Hold!” Trask bellowed. “Wait till they pick up the ram.”
A grappling hook flew over the parapet and bit deep into the stone. Dozens more followed and the ropes snapped taut. There was no dislodging the hooks – not with the weight of the climbers holding them in place.
“Cut the ropes!” Trask barked. Gaspi resisted the urge to draw on his power, knowing he had to save his strength. He looked towards the gathering of demons, writhing, mewling, barking and hissing with anticipation, and to the bone golem, stalking among the enemy troops. They were his foes today, and fighting them would take everything he had, but there were other ways he could help in the meantime. Drawing his dagger, he ran to the nearest hook and took hold of the rope. It was lively in his hand, sawing back and forth on the parapet as men hauled themselves up from below. He pinned it down and tried to sever it, but found to his dismay that it was interwoven with strong wire and wouldn’t part beneath his blade. A nearby guard had discovered the same thing and was swinging at his rope with an axe, calling out that others should do the same. The heavy blade severed the cord, sending a half-dozen mercenaries tumbling to the ground with an almighty crash, but others had already reached the parapet. Gaspi gave up on his rope and fell back.
“Short swords and shields,” Trask cried. “Don’t let them top the wall!” Hundreds of blades cleared their scabbards with a loud slither of metal on metal.
The first of the attackers reached the parapet, protected by a volley of arrows from below, but Trask’s men were ready, leading with their shields. Only yards away, a mercenary tried to rush over the parapet but one of the guards stepped forward, ramming his shield into the attacker’s face and smashing his nose. The man clung on, but another bash from the shield sent him tumbling from the wall. A second man took his place, and within moments the defenders were embattled all along the parapet.
Another shudder ran through the wall, followed by a loud, splintering crack. The gates! Gaspi rushed to the parapet and summoned power. He raised a glowering fist, ready to clear the gateway of enemies. Perhaps the defenders could repair the breach if given time.
“Don’t,” Taurnil said. “The wall is lost.”
Gaspi took a good look at the massing army below. The demons were in motion, pressing forward from the rear, and up on the parapet the guardsmen were in danger of being overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Taurnil was right.
Trask seemed to have reached the same conclusion. “Retreat!” he cried. “To the barricades!” All along the wall, defenders sought to extricate themselves from the enemy and rush down to street level. Gaspi ran in their midst, trying not to slip on the slick cobblestones. The wall was lost, but they had made the enemy pay a considerable price in the taking of it. With Taurnil at his side, Gaspi hurried to his assigned barricade – a towering construction of loose stone and broken furniture, blocking both sides of the street and leaving only a narrow channel in the middle. The enemy would be funnelled through the opening one by one, only to find a company of defenders waiting for them on the other side.
Gaspi and Taurnil rushed through the gap and joined the gathering knot of guardsmen. He summoned power – now that the gate was down, the rest of the demons would join the attack, and he had to be ready for them.
Thirty-two
Taurnil thrust the butt of his staff into the face of an Imp as it topped the barricade. Blue light flared and its body was blasted, lifeless, into the mass of its fellows. The Imps were proving to be a problem. The defenders had hoped to force the enemy through the gap between the barricades, but the nimble, simian-like demons were scaling the towering blockade as if it were a grassy knoll and leaping onto the guardsmen on the other side. Two of the defenders had fallen, lacerated by jagged teeth and ripping claws, and others were busy fending the rest of the demons off, leaving a smaller coterie of warriors to
hold the gap. They were staving off the attackers but only by the barest of margins. One slip and the enemy would be on them.
Seeing how close they were to being overwhelmed, Gaspi abandoned restraint and threw himself into the fight, beating back enemies with sharp slaps of power. One of the guards cried out. Gaspi spun around in time to see a vaerg’s jaws close on the man’s throat and tear it out in a spray of blood. Other vaergs came slithering through the gap behind it and launched themselves at the guardsmen, breaking the line and pushing them back. A knot of Imps crested the barricade and threw themselves on the nearest defenders. Gaspi flung out a strike, catching one of the demons square in the face, but it shrugged it off and tightened its hold. Gaspi cursed himself, remembering that they were resistant to ordinary strikes. Even as he drew his demon-bane dagger, the Imp jerked the guard’s head back and thrust clawed fingers into his eyes. A jelly-like substance dribbled down the guard’s cheeks and he fell, jerking and twitching, to the ground.
Gaspi averted his gaze, fighting the urge to retch, and saw to his horror that the vaergs had broken through. “Taurn!” he yelled, just as the beast his friend was fighting gave a final whimper and fell at his feet. “We’ve got to retake the line.” Taurnil turned on his heel and leapt into the midst of the vaergs. Gaspi followed, shielding him from attack and enhancing the enchantment on Taurnil’s staff. Blow by shuddering blow, Taurnil forced the vaergs to retreat and soon the guards had rallied around him, driving the beasts back through the barricade. Just as they had once fought at the Measure, Gaspi made Taurnil the focus of his spell-work to devastating effect. Taurnil was like a force of nature, crushing skulls and breaking bones with every blow, and his enemies fell back before him. Whether vaerg or demon, many of Sestin’s creatures were resistant to magic, but most were vulnerable to physical attack, and all to the demon-bane enchantment on Taurnil’s staff.
The air was split by a dreadful keening that assaulted Gaspi’s ears. He jumped, shaken to the core, but managed to hold onto his power. All around him, guards released their weapons and covered their ears. Frantically, Gaspi looked around for the source of the sound, dreading what he would see. Something monstrous rose above the barricade. No, the head of something monstrous – the giant, segmented demon they had seen from the wall. Up close it was terrifying, its gargantuan head split by a wide gash of a mouth, saliva dripping from dozens of fangs, each of which was as long as Gaspi’s forearm. Its eyes were small and black, seething with mindless hate. Seeing them, it keened once more, rearing high above the barricade.
Taurnil was exposed, out in front of the group. His heart in his mouth, Gaspi drew deep and channelled a riot of power into his friend’s shield. The demon struck, fast as lightning, and Taurnil was knocked from his feet, but the shield held.
“Someone help him!” he cried, pouring everything he had into maintaining the shield. Several of the guards ran forward but the demon struck at Taurnil a second time before they could reach him; a thunderous blow that the shield only just turned away. It was too powerful, its blows too strong to fend off. The other guards laid into it, slicing deeply with their enchanted swords, but though its flesh hissed and sizzled, the demon wasn’t seriously injured. With a sideways snap of its head it seized one of the guards, snatching him up by the torso and biting down. The guard’s cries died into sudden silence as viscera rained down on the defenders; blood, gore and worse. The demon took another bite and the body was severed at the waist. The guard’s legs fell to the ground with a wet thud. The other defenders withdrew, fearing for their lives, and Taurnil scrambled to his feet too, trying to retreat, but there was no running from such a creature. It struck at him once more and though the blow was turned away, the shield had taken all it could and shattered on impact. The creature’s head reared, its eyes fixed on its prey. Taurnil had been knocked from his feet again and was scrambling backwards, his eyes wide with fear. His staff had been knocked from his hands during the battle and rolled off into the darkness.
Desperate, Gaspi reached within, searching for some untapped reservoir of power. Please! he implored, casting his plea into the ether. In his mind’s eye he saw the demon’s flesh sizzling as the guards cut at it with their enchanted weapons. Demon-bane! That had to be the answer. There was only one thing for it; Gaspi had to forge a demon-bane strike. He’d never heard of anyone doing such a thing and didn’t even know if it were possible, but where had the enchantment on Taurnil’s staff come from if not from him? Casting the enchantment had left him dangerously depleted, but he didn’t have a choice. Knowing that failure might be the death of him, Gaspi closed his mind to doubt and envisaged the strike. He saw it leap from his hands and collide with the demon, burning and searing its flesh. Magic of frightening intensity surged up from within. The power in his hands intensified, flickering from white to blue, blazing as brightly as Taurnil’s staff had ever done.
With a mighty cry he launched the strike. It roared through the air and struck the demon in the neck as it reared to deliver the killing blow. The demon was flung aside, its jaws missing Taurnil by inches. Blue flames crackled on the ruined flesh of its neck. It swung around with a furious hiss and rushed at Gaspi, crushing bodies and wreckage beneath it. Gaspi struck again, a gigantic blue fireball that exploded on the right side of its face. Rearing, it shrieked in pain. Half its face was blackened and one of its eyes had melted, leaving a dark, glistening trail down its face. Gaspi struck again, the flames consuming its other eye and driving it backwards. Gaspi’s knees almost buckled. He didn’t know if he had the strength for another spell. And then Taurnil was there, his staff aflame. The beast was writhing and hissing, snapping at empty air with its fearsome teeth. Taurnil rushed forward and thrust the butt of his staff into its open maw. The creature bellowed as blue fire coursed down its gullet.
“Get out of there Taurn,” Gaspi cried. The demon was writhing, its colossal, armoured form destroying everything around it. Taurnil ignored him, levelling an almighty blow at the beast’s head, which went up like a bonfire. The demon bucked and heaved, its head weaving erratically before giving one last convulsion and collapsing to the ground.
There was no time to celebrate; the barricade had been smashed to pieces by the demon’s death throes. Vaergs were already slinking through the opening, followed by one of the giant slugs, the ground sizzling in its wake. Imps scaled the wreckage, their gaze fixed on their prey.
Gaspi caught Taurnil’s eye. “RUN!”
Thirty-three
Antoine led the charge through the ruined gateway, hundreds of men spilling into the streets behind him. He gave chase to a group of retreating defenders, rallying his men with a battle cry. The mercenary force splintered, rushing headlong down a dozen different streets. Battle would run freely through the city, chaotic and without form. Antoine’s orders were to get behind the defenders and drive them back towards the gate. Hidden away in the city, the defenders could strike at them from dark corners and barricade themselves behind walls. The battle could last for days if allowed to unfold that way, but not if they were herded into a single place and forced to fight the bulk of Sestin’s army. They would be crushed by sheer weight of numbers, and the battle would be over in a single day.
Antoine rushed down the alleyway and rounded a corner. An arrow knocked a chunk of masonry from the wall by his head and he threw himself back out of harm’s way.
“Hold!” he said, bringing his men to a stop. A good two dozen had followed him down the alley. They were all from the Black Guard with the exception of a brute called Smithson, whose double-headed axe was already dripping with gore.
Ever so carefully, Antoine leant out around the corner. Another arrow struck the wall, inches from his head, and he pulled back as quickly as possible. “They’ve built a barricade,” he said, admiring the strategy. The defenders had known all along that they couldn’t hold the wall, and had prepared a second line of defence in the very streets. Antoine was forced to reassess his enemy. They weren’t routed at all. In
fact, things were going very much to plan, from their point of view. Still, they had no chance of holding in the long run.
“Shields!” he called, and five of his men came forward, four of them bearing bucklers and one a tower shield. “Out in front. Stay low and move fast.” It was risky, but they had to press on. He was about to give the order when a cacophony of baying and snarling sounded from behind them as a vaergs flooded the alley. “Hold!” Antoine cried to his men as the vaergs teemed past, the ground rumbling beneath their heavy paws. They rounded the corner and flew at the defenders, loud growls issuing from their throats.
Antoine was a hard man. He’d seen death more times than he could count, often dealing it himself, but seeing the vaergs up close left him shaken. They were massive, unnatural beasts, bred solely for violence. Something about them made his spine itch. He was starting to wonder what he’d got his men into.
The battle at the barricade was in full flow. The cries of wounded defenders mingled with the yelps of injured vaergs. Antoine glanced at his men, some eagerly clutching their weapons and others looking less sure of themselves. Antoine pushed his concerns about the vaergs aside. His men needed leadership, and besides, there was no going back. “Follow me,” he said. There was no need for a shield wall now – not with the defenders fighting for their lives.
He rounded the corner and sped towards the barricade. The defenders had piled up furniture and great lumps of masonry on either side of the alley, leaving only a narrow gap in the middle of the street. Presumably, they intended to force the attackers through in single file but the vaergs had other ideas, scrambling up the steep slope of the barricade. One of them slipped and fell to the ground with a sharp crack, leaving it whimpering and broken, but others reached the top, bounding over the crest and launching themselves on the defenders below.