by Bobby Adair
Fitz wondered if building them had been a mistake.
The time and materials invested in those catapults could have been put to use elsewhere, on something worthwhile.
And the war had just begun.
How many more mistakes would be exposed before the sun went down, before the final demon breathed its last breath?
Would the children huddling at the center of Brighton's defenses gurgle their last bloody breath as hungry demons tore at their living flesh?
Would Fitz's mistakes add up to that?
And here she was, a whore turned general, leading on the faith of women looking for someone to believe in. What did she know about running an army?
Would their mistake in choosing her be the end of humankind?
In front of her, Winthrop's men had unexpectedly started to sing a dark, soulful song in words she didn't understand, but in her heart she felt everything they felt, the power of comrades standing together to face the beast, because in the end, fighting for your loved ones is all that counts. Their dirge was one of acceptance, knowing death had come, but not giving in to it, deciding to fight it with every nit of courage and strength their souls could muster.
In its foreboding way, the song was love and tears, mixed into a stony resolve.
Fitz tears threatened to flow as the ragged remains of Blackthorn's great army, brave men and women, all turned to face the endless horde.
And she saw no fear in them.
Despite the sight of Winthrop, waving his arms and bellowing like a deranged clown at the army's center, the dirge filled Fitz with a bravery she didn't know was in her, and she asked herself, what would General Blackthorn do, sitting astride a monstrous black horse with a spirit for war, with two hundred women on horses willing to follow her anywhere?
Could they kill so many demons as this?
Was it possible?
Chapter 82: Fitz
"Whatever you're thinking," Ginger shouted, "put it out of your mind!"
Fitz shook her head. "I won't."
Ginger, suddenly beside Fitz, reached over and grabbed Fitz roughly by the arm. "We can't fight these demons out here."
"But Blackthorn, when he was a boy—"
"Stop!"
Fitz leaned away from Ginger, thinking the woman might slap her, such was the harshness in her voice.
Softening her tone, Ginger told her, "Blackthorn trained on that horse from the time he could walk. All the men with him that day spent their lives in the cavalry killing these monsters. They were experts in the saddle. They knew how to kill. You first got on a horse, what, a week ago? If it were just you alone, I'd say, go be a fool and turn yourself into a hero for the legends, if that's what you want, but you don't have that luxury. All of Brighton depends on you. Don't throw your life away when the cost is so high."
"The cost?"
Ginger cocked her head toward the city walls. "What do you think will happen when they see you fall on the battlefield? Do you think it will make them braver? Do you think they'll listen to Kreuz when he tries to take charge? It will be chaos in there with all these damn monsters climbing the walls. If you ride your horse out to fight them, we'll lose this war, and everyone in Brighton will die."
Another volley of massive stones smashed into the horde.
The fastest of the charging demons hit the wall of Winthrop's singing army.
Men cried out. Beasts shrieked as flesh ripped and blood spewed.
Death was in a reaping mood, and the harvest would be bountiful.
"Follow your head," said Ginger. "Not your heart. Don't kill me and everybody you ever knew."
Fitz scanned the expanse of the horde that would soon engulf Winthrop's mob.
She took a deep breath and cleared her head of stupid thoughts. She pointed west. "Take twenty riders and go that way. Ride in front of the horde. Make sure they see you." Fitz pointed east. "I'll take twenty this way. Send the rest of the riders back through the gate." Fitz caught Ginger in an intense stare. "I'll give your advice back to you. Don't be a hero. Don't get caught out here. Make them see you and then get inside. Let's lead the monsters into our trap."
"You shouldn't be out here at all," Ginger shot back. "I'll do it. I'll go to the west with twenty. I'll send another twenty east. You take the rest back inside. Stop thinking mythical, pig-shit hero thoughts. Be our leader. Do what only you can do." Ginger wheeled her horse around to face the rest of the mounted warriors. She barked her orders. Fitz realized Ginger was right.
Ginger's riders peeled off from the formation and galloped to the left. Twenty more galloped to the right.
Fitz pointed the remaining riders toward the gates. "Inside, now! The demons will come at the wall. We all have our places."
They rode hard for the gate, forming in a single-file line to pass through the gap left open for them and the coming horde as they went back into Brighton.
Chapter 83: Fitz
All of the cavalry had made it in through the gates as the battle outside the walls raged.
The monsters engulfed Winthrop's army and the bodies piled up on both sides.
The catapults continued to hurl huge stones.
Thousands of slingers hurled their rocks in a hale that pounded the mass assaulting the walls.
The mayhem everywhere around Fitz seemed to drag time to a slow plod. The sun seemed stuck in the sky far overhead, not going up, not descending, but the morning was gone and the noon hours were passing.
Good people fell.
Monsters died, but the horde seemed to get no smaller.
Fitz stood in the tower next to the main gate. It was her war room. It was at the center of the battle, just inside Brighton. She'd taken it despite Ginger's urging to find a place far from the fighting, back in the city, from which she could pass out orders and stay safe.
Fitz wouldn't leave her people.
If the main gate fell and demons stormed the towers on both sides, Brighton's problems would be greater than the death of one amateur general.
Her captains came and went, bringing her information, carrying her orders when they left to move their lines in some places and reinforce in others.
Ginger, who'd been out in the thick of the fight inside the wall, had been gone for a time long enough to worry Fitz but she was just now coming up the ladder to Fitz's command tower.
Outside the wall, a sea of pale-skinned demons stretched from the curving wall almost to the forest.
That was the first pinprick of hope in a day that was turning bleak. The horde was not limitless. They were all in the field. But they were spread so far, covering so much ground. And there were so many—as many or more than the army that Blackthorn had marched to the Ancient City.
Could there be thirty thousand demons?
Did it matter?
At the back of the horde, almost at the forest, the boulders flung by Kreuz's catapult teams laid waste to demons stupid enough to keep standing there.
Inside the circle wall, on the road toward the center of Brighton, Fitz saw the catapult teams sweating around their machines, working furiously to reload and crank the arms back against what Adam-John called the torsional power of the twisting ropes.
Big words, important to him and nobody else.
Another huge rock sailed through the sky.
In the field, halfway to the forest, Winthrop's mob still stood—despite all probability—fighting the ocean of demons that surrounded them. Out there in the thick of the battle, the dead already carpeted the ground. Man and monster alike stood on the corpses of their kin as they slashed with either sword or tooth.
Winthrop's soldiers were extracting a terrible toll on the demons, but they were paying for their success with many dead of their own. Fitz didn't believe any of them would survive the day.
Closer to the wall, stones rained down from her thousands of slingers.
The stones, though, weren't as effective as she'd hoped. A second mistake?
Probably.
Not
understanding how the demon horde was not being obliterated by rocks, she watched, focusing on a few demons close to one of the flag poles, hoping to see the rocks land.
With so many stones in the air, she didn't have long to wait.
One of the rocks landed right on top of a demon's warty head.
The blow knocked the monster's head back, and after the direct hit, Fitz expected to see the beast fall over, dead.
But the demon didn't fall. He shook off the impact, looked at the wall through the mass of his brothers, and screamed in anger at those inside.
That's when Fitz realized the bony warts on the demons' skulls were protecting them.
Of the thousands and thousands of demons she'd expected to be killed by the stones, the casualties hadn't yet reached a thousand.
Below her, at the main gate, twisted men crowded into the funnel and poured through the gap, streaming much, much faster than she'd have ever guessed possible.
Another mistake.
They were piling up.
Five hundred women stood together in a shoulder-to-shoulder semicircle inside the gate, doing a good job of killing the demons, so far.
A waterfall of demons spilled over each staircase they'd built outside the wall. But those beasts, too, were flowing faster than Fitz or Ginger had imagined.
The large stones they'd laid at the foot of each wall opposite the stairs were perfectly effective, at first.
But as the bodies of demons piled up, with new arrivals landing on their dead and injured brothers, a ramp of corpses formed. The tight semicircles of women that were killing demons with ease when the battle started had to retreat, and they merged to form lines that matched the arc of the wall. More and more of the slingers had to set their slings aside and take up their melee weapons to join the effort and keep the demons contained.
The good news was that the battle inside the wall seemed to be going well, in that the women greatly outnumbered the live demons. The demons who'd come over the wall helped the women's cause by attacking the arrayed women as individuals, rushing at them as soon as they made their way down the ramps of their dead.
But that was a deception.
It looked to Fitz like the women were killing the demons at the rate of three or four for every five or six that came over the ramps. The estimate was little more than a guess, but it looked to her like the number of demons on their feet was growing inside the wall despite how quickly the women killed them.
That meant the demons inside the wall would eventually outnumber the women. When that happened, Brighton's defenders would be overwhelmed.
The most disturbing thing Fitz saw were the women running away—very few compared to the count of those who stayed in the fight, but dozens fleeing was a problem that could turn from a trickle to a tidal wave, if not stopped.
Fitz looked back outside the wall, trying to guess how many demons were still out there, and how soon she'd have to retreat from the wall to reorganize her defenses in the streets.
A crack of thunder ripped the air, and everyone in the tower turned to look.
Fitz saw the throwing arm on one of the catapults coming apart as the wood gave way, then separating completely, spinning the remainder of the arm against the ropes and throwing two men into the air as the rest of the contraption fell to pieces.
"God almighty!" yelled Kreuz, as he watched from his spot beside Fitz.
Adam-John's shoulders sagged as he watched, too. Many of the people operating the catapults were Scholars. As prickly as Adam-John was, friends of his had just died.
People were dying in every direction Fitz looked. Only the grandeur of so many bodies moving together to such narrow purposes helped hide the death from her eyes. "Kreuz, how quickly can you move those catapults?"
"They're on wheels," he answered. "With horses—"
"No horses." Fitz glanced at Ginger who, as far as Fitz was concerned, was her general in charge of the mounted warriors. "Ginger needs the horses. Can you push the catapults?"
"The people can do it. slowly."
Fitz pointed to the spot where the catapulted stones were landing. "The demons are moving closer to the walls. Soon, your rocks will be hitting nothing."
Kreuz nodded. "Where do you want the rocks to land?"
Fitz pointed to the mass of demons shoving to get through the gate.
"It's too risky," said Kreuz. "The catapults aren't that accurate. We might end up destroying the gates if we land our stones too close."
"Move them back a hundred yards, then," Fitz told him. "Or two hundred. Send your boulders into the demons between the gate and the remains of the army. Can you do that?"
Kreuz looked worried, but said, "We can try."
Speaking to two of her captains in the tower, Fitz said, "The slings aren't as effective as we'd hoped. Spread the word—"
"Wait!" Adam-John interrupted.
"What? Fitz asked.
"Before you abandon the slings, I have an idea."
"Spit it out," Fitz told him.
"We instructed the slingers to throw for distance. If we quickly pass the instruction to instead throw the stones as high as they can, they may be more deadly, as long as they go over the wall."
"Why?"
"The stones will fall harder from a greater height," said Adam-John. "It might make the difference."
"Kreuz," said Fitz, getting his attention as he mounted the ladder to descend the tower. "Can you spare Adam-John?"
Kreuz nodded.
"Go, then," Fitz told Kreuz. "Adam-John is mine." Turning quickly to Adam-John, and pointing at her two captains, she said, "Take these two, spread the word to all the slingers as fast as you can, and get others to help. Tell them to change how they throw. Come to me as soon as you're done."
Adam-John agreed and the two captains hurried off.
Ginger pointed west urgently and said, "Demons are running the wall!"
Fitz looked down the arc of the wall, seeing a mass of demons trying to get over. "There, you mean?"
Ginger pointed, "No, far around, where you can't see. One of the messengers just told me while you were telling Kreuz to move the catapults. The demons are going in both directions."
Fitz had expected it, but hoped it wouldn't happen. "How many?"
"Dozens, or hundreds," answered Ginger, "The messenger didn't seem to know. But they could come over anywhere."
Fitz scanned down the length of the wall, but something in the way Ginger was looking at her caught her eye. "What aren't you telling me?"
Ginger pointed at the third tower down along the wall, three or four hundred yards distant. "The women in that tower have spotted a mass of demons splitting off from the main horde."
"How many?" Fitz asked.
"Hard to tell," answered Ginger. "The demons aren't disciplined like Blackthorn's army. Some split off, others followed, more went after. It might be five hundred. It might be five thousand by now. I don't know."
Fitz pointed to the center of town. "Take the cavalry to the square. Send riders to the edge of town, where they can see the wall."
"If we go there, we'll be far from the wall," said Ginger, "We won't—"
"From the square, you'll be closer to the whole wall," Fitz told her, "You'll be able to ride to anywhere on the wall faster than from any other place."
"I could use two cohorts of fighters," Ginger told her. "If five thousand demons come over the wall—"
"A thousand fighters?" Fitz asked in surprise.
Ginger nodded.
"I can't spare them," said Fitz. "It may not look like it, but the battle here is not going well for us. Soon we'll have to retreat into the city. Too many demons are coming over the wall."
Ginger grabbed Fitz's arm and looked sharply into her eyes. "Retreat won't work. I've been down there in the fight with them. They're on the edge of running already. If we pull back, it'll be a rout. We'll get slaughtered."
Fitz felt like she was being weighed down with mistakes and bad choices. "Y
ou'll have to do it with your riders and the reserves at the other gates. I can't give you any people. I wish I could. You'll have to take care of the demons coming over the wall, wherever they come."
"I won't fail." Ginger spun and headed for the ladder.
Fitz scanned the immensity of the battle again, as she turned to give instructions to another of her captains.
Thunder rumbled, weird and brief. Fitz looked to the sky, wondering whether rain would help or hurt Brighton's chances, but she saw only thin, white clouds streaking the blue sky high overhead, not the kind of clouds that made rain. The thunder cracked again. What was it?
Chapter 84: Jingo
Jingo felt his shoulder ache as he threw the second grenade through the trees and out into the clearing. The pain reminded him that he was no longer a young man. He watched the grenade explode about forty yards away.
"Why are you throwing them with no demons close by?" Beck asked, again.
Jingo didn't answer.
With Melora leading, they'd ended up on a side trail, not one going to the east gate, but one that brought them to the edge of the forest, looking out at pastures that sloped down toward the circle wall. Far off to their right were the towers that stood over the east gate. To their left, they saw the flank of the horde assaulting the main gate on the south side of town.
All along the wall, demons streamed and sprinted, looking for a way to get around the wall or a good place to climb it.
Reaching for a third hand grenade, Jingo focused on the horde in the distance down by the main gate. He was hoping some had turned their attention to the source of the noise. A few turned their heads, but not many.
Jingo knew plenty of them had memories that stretched back three hundred years, to a time when men with rifles and hand grenades, tanks, bombs, and planes slaughtered them by the billions. From that war, the demons had a hatred buried in their hearts for the ancient weapons and the men who used them.
That hatred was drawing a few runners away from Brighton's walls, but not enough of them.
Jingo pulled the pin on the grenade and pitched with all his might.
"There are no demons where you're throwing!" Beck shouted again. The others looked on, wide-eyed, as though Jingo had lost his senses.