by Ben Hale
Kell flashed the thief a wry smile. “Every rock troll carries a weapon that is specially forged, and then imbued with the magic of our race, but some are more powerful than others.”
“Sand or wind?” Mae asked.
“Sand,” he replied, “usually. It is unlike the earth magic of the human race, and is made with the purest of raw material. Extremely rare but very powerful, the sharpening augmentation is the most powerful enchantment of our race.”
Taryn started, recalling something his sister had said about his father’s sword. “And tricky, isn’t it? Siarra once told me that a sharpening augmentation is difficult to perform.”
Kell bobbed his head. “Of all the weapons in our clan, only my fathers and mine carry it.” He touched the bracer on his forearm. “I also carry a hidden battle shield. It is imbued with wind magic and can deflect a dragon’s breath, but only for a short time.”
“Then I might have an idea how to find Siarra and escape,” Mae said, her voice soft.
Taryn leaned close as she detailed her plan, wondering more than once how they could perform what she was suggesting.
Day 3
Chapter 10: The Sweeper
Keri turned away when her husband’s commanding officer, Dumont, rode into view. Without preamble, he bellowed, “I know your captain has fallen, so you now report to your sergeant. We move to take the front line in just a moment. Prepare yourselves.”
With his orders given, he wheeled his horse and rode to the next group in line. Keri's husband had mentioned once that his colonel had been the captain of the guard at Keese, and that he was very perceptive. Lucky for her, he had been placed in charge of several captains, and rarely came to check on Jason’s command.
“He’s gone, cap’n,” a voice rumbled from behind her. Even before she looked, she knew it to be Aron. She could hear the smile in his voice.
“Thank you, Aron,” she replied, not bothering to deepen her tone. Aron had known the moment she’d walked into her husband's place that she wasn’t Jason, but then again, he was his second in command and knew him best. Aron had even given her the thin sword at her waist, so of course he would recognize it. Perhaps that is why he had not reported her to Dumont.
What he had done was spread the word through Jason’s men that she was taking his position. After that, she had caught several encouraging smiles and curt nods of respect in her direction. The men knew she could fight, and under such circumstances, not a single one protested her ‘volunteering’. It warmed her to feel close to Jason’s men, but didn't dispel the lump in her throat.
All around her, Keri watched the men, dirty and unshaven, ready their weapons. Most wore stony expressions, and didn't seem to be aware of the conspicuous gaps between them. Few demonstrated the fear that she felt. She found herself wondering if she would feel the same after two days and two shifts, resigned to her fate. Then she wondered if she would survive that long.
A sudden blast of magical light exploded and streaked into the sky, slowing until it hung suspended several hundred feet off the ground. The glowing orb illuminated the entire cliff-top better than its predecessor, already darkening and sinking towards the ground. It also marked the shift of lines.
Armor clanked against wooden shields as thousands of soldiers from the southern kingdom stood and began to march towards the cliff. Keri, her heart gripped by fear and anticipation, prepared herself for the sights at the front line.
In moments the dull background of battle and pain increased—and then it came into view. Topping a small rise, the Eastern Falls night command advanced towards the war being waged at the cliff’s edge. From their right, the roar of the eastern waterfall of Azertorn mingled with the cries of wounded soldiers and the shrieks of pain from dark bodied fiends.
—A blast exploded out from the cliff, only seen by the fireball rising above the ramparts and felt by the tremor underfoot. Keri’s heart fluttered but she held her ground, keeping her stride even with Aron's.
“You’ll be alright ma’am,” he said, nudging her. “It’s just dwarven stonesap. Their traps keep us from being overrun.”
“Am I crazy to be here Aron?” she murmured, worry breaking through her confident façade.
“No more than the rest of us,” he replied with a lopsided grin.
“Are we going to survive?” she asked, noticing several other men tuning into their quiet conversation.
“You will, if that’s what you are asking.” Aron’s lips twitched but he held them in check with visible effort.
“Why?” she asked, raising her voice over the increasing din of battle.
He snorted. “If anything happens to you, Jason will kill me.”
Several men around her hid smiles as they overheard his comment, and she got the impression they were thinking the same thing.
She smiled wryly at the grey-haired sergeant. “You don’t expect me to just hang back, do you?”
He snorted. “I know you better than that. Just stick by me until we reach the edge. Then I will show you where you need to stand and fight.”
Further conversation proved impossible as someone in their own group bellowed a battle cry. In seconds their entire command roared their fury, fighting their fear by their very voices. Then they began to speed up.
The walk became a trot, then a run, and then a sprint. Keri joined in the scream and drew her sword, sprinting towards the edge of the plateau. Every solder still on the cliff’s edge melted sideways, like water being split by a rock. Finally all that remained was the last thin line of human men between Keri and the mass of fiends flooding over the edge. Even as the line began to crumble, a barked order issued their retreat, allowing the roiling mass of quare to pour over the top—but Keri's line was too close for them to get far.
Like a pounding battering ram, the entire line smashed into the wave of quare before they had gotten twenty feet from the edge. Keri watched the man in front of her trip and go down, and she just managed to leap over him and take his place. An instant later a snarling fiend burst into view. Driven by desperation and training, she leaned into her shield and plowed right into him. For a split second, she slowed, and then someone slammed into her from behind. Together they drove the fiend off the cliff, stopping short before they followed him over.
Left and right, thousands of fiends screamed in hate and anger as they were thrust off the plateau, left to hurtle a thousand feet to their deaths. Keri froze, her chest heaving as she looked out over the rumbling mass of fiends at the bottom of the cliff, spread out as far as she could see in any direction, illuminated by a haze of fires and magical light. Skorpian spears were slivers of dark, slamming into the cliff with such force that they penetrated the solid rock, providing a makeshift ladder for the nimble quare, who had almost reached the top again.
Gasping for breath, she felt Aron snatch her arm and pull her towards a massive machine leaning out over the cliff. Black bodied fiends reached the top and bounded into the waiting throng of soldiers in front and behind her. Men cried out as they died. Then fiends shrieked, sharing the same fate. Archers leaned over the low wall, launching arrows at the creatures climbing towards them. Her blood thundering in her head, Keri watched one archer lean out and take aim, only to see him get yanked from view before he could fire. A spearman took his place and impaled the attacking creature, only to be also pulled over by the fiend’s death throes.
Finally they reached the sweeper machine. Aron spun her to face him, his gray hair wild and his eyes fierce, “Watch this side of the machine. Don’t let anything get close. We have lost too many of the sweepers already. John will watch the other side. Whatever you do, don’t let them get behind it to the supports, or they will pull them loose. Don’t—”
Keri saw a quare climb up behind Aron and instinct took over. Brushing past him, she darted in, leading with her thin sword. The fiend tried to dodge out of the way, but became trapped by the thick wooden beams of the machine. Furiously, it charged towards her. Keri braced herself an
d felt her arm jar as the point of her sword sank into its chest. Even in death, the creature clawed her shoulder, drawing blood.
Aron strode to her side and dispassionately sunk his own sword into its neck, and then tipped him over the wall. Looking at her, he added, “Don’t underestimate them. I have seen too many men get killed by one they thought was dead.”
He nodded in encouragement and whirled, stepping into the housing of the sweeper. A moment later, a haggard man stepped out and headed towards the rear of their line, his shift completed. Keri, her nerves raw from slaying the fiend and the chaos around her, took her position.
Before anything came close enough to strike, she felt the ground underneath shake and a massive ‘whump’ echo as the sweeper launched its huge spiked ball. Flying sideways, it knocked several fiends off before it began to plunge downward, casting black bodies aside like twigs as it snapped Skorpian spears. In moments, the war machine swept the cliff clean of nearby attackers, leaving fiends plunging to their deaths.
But the tide filled the empty space, racing upward during the time the sweeper pulled its chain in. Then she had to fight. In a flurry of desperate attacks and thrusts, she battled numerous fiends that tried to get to the machine, only to die by her hand. It quickly became clear that her position, dangerous as it was, still carried relative safety, for the simple reason that few fiends made it past the machine. It was up to the soldiers that manned the wall outside of its reach who suffered—and died—as the climbing mass of attackers sought to flank the sweeper.
Man-sized, but with manes of red fur shimmering in rage, the quare clawed their way to the top, tearing men from the battlements even as they were slain. Sometimes a thick knot would press forward enough to gain a foothold, but the cavalry, led by Dumont, were quick to ride them down and force them back over the edge.
Keri fought until her arm ached, and then kept going. Time after time, the black creatures would dart behind the sweeping chain and make it to her position before it swung back. Each one, although stronger and more agile than her, died before they could reach the top, struck down as they sought for her throat. She gritted her teeth against the creeping exhaustion.
Two hours into the haze of fatigue and adrenaline, a kraka reached the top.
Hidden behind a pack of quare, it climbed slowly behind its quicker companions, who died just shy of the top—but the kraka was too strong to be taken down by an arrow or spear. At the last moment, Aron sent the sweeper ball streaking towards it, but the beast had chosen its ascent well, and the ball could not reach it before its enormous hand grasped the wall at the top. With a heave it pulled itself over. Ignoring the hundreds of desperate pricks from blades and spears, it spread its arms wide and thundered a roaring challenge. Then it charged.
White bone armor protected it as it picked up speed, crashing through crowds of shouting men, knocking them aside like they were sticks in the path of a falling boulder. Men tumbled away or flew over the wall, screaming as they fell. A moment later it changed direction, headed towards the sweeper. It roared again, freezing Keri’s blood like ice.
“Get out of here Keri!” Aron bellowed, climbing from the sweeper, trying to escape before the hulking beast smashed into the supports.
As Keri watched the armored kraka thunder towards her, she felt only fury. Aron would never it make it out in time and she knew it. The older man had been like a father to both her and Jason, despite his lower rank, and images of his presence in their home flashed before her eyes. Aron, teaching her to hold a sword, Aron, scratching his gray hair as he laughed, Aron, holding her baby girl . . .
She screamed as black rage coursed through her, destroying her fear by its very intensity. Darting forward she grasped a massive, ironbound halberd leaning against a rack. With a strength fueled by wrath, she plunged the shaft into the ground behind one of the log struts of the sweeper—then tilted it towards the kraka as she leapt sideways to avoid its charging path.
Unable to avoid the weapon, the behemoth ran into the halberd, which had fallen until it angled into his knee. The double snap of the weapons shaft and a broken bone caused everyone within earshot to flinch. Roaring in agony, the kraka’s leg buckled, sending him tumbling forward—but he couldn’t stop himself. Tripping over the beam, the hulk stumbled and bounced over the wall, catching itself at the last second.
But Keri hadn’t stopped. She rolled to her feet and grasped a heavy warhammer. Dragging it behind her, she raced to the edge and swung it in a full circle, bringing it down onto the krakas fingers with a scream of triumph. Another bone snapped, followed by a bellow of pain even as the fingers involuntarily let go of the wall, leaving the fiend in the hands of nature’s inexorable pull.
The wrath left as quickly as it had come, dropping Keri to her knees as fatigue took its place. A moment later a hand settled onto her shoulder.
“I’m supposed to save you, not the other way around.” Aron’s voice was sad, devoid of his characteristic humor.
Suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, she stood and looked at him, fighting the tears. “I couldn’t lose you too.”
He smiled crookedly, too choked to speak, and embraced her. An eternity of emotion somehow compressed into a few seconds, but all too soon the call to battle came again.
Both of them answered.
Chapter 11: The Deep
Braon watched the map, feeling his eyes going blurry from straining so hard. He’d managed to catch a few hours of sleep at the start of the midnight shift, but it hadn’t been enough. From where he could see, day three had begun in a fury, with multiple small leaks threatening to break through their lines.
He sighed, sliding the map sideways to check on Eastern Falls command. With the exception of the waterfall, the view was almost identical to the rest of the cliff top. Quare bounded up the spears until they reached the top, only to be forcefully repelled. Whether they were dead or wounded it didn’t matter. Either way they fell.
It is barely day three! he thought, feeling a rush of anger. How can we survive until daybreak, let alone the end of the week?
If it were only the quare, they might have had a chance. Although strong and fast, they just weren’t big enough to break through the defenses at the cliff-top unless they crowded together. Massed tightly, a group would push back the defenders. Then they were destroyed by magic or cavalry, the second line of defense.
But they weren’t the only ones to climb the cliff.
Since yesterday the kraka had begun the ascent. Huge and armored, more fell than reached the top, but the few that succeeded wrecked havoc on his army. Even as he watched, a giant kraka reached the battlements. Plowing through the defenders like or horse through a field of grass, it trampled many, tossed others back over the cliff, and then killed more with its bare hands. Turning, it headed towards one of the few sweepers remaining. Arrows flew towards its back, but were no match for the bone armor. Braon shook his head, knowing the sweeper didn’t stand a chance.
Then a small soldier did the unthinkable. Without thought for himself, he jumped in front of the charging beast and buried a halberd into the ground. Tilting it towards the kraka, he dived out of the way. Unable to stop, the huge fiend impaled its leg on the long weapon.
Braon flinched as he saw the weapon and leg shatter from the impact. Tumbling to the edge, it managed to catch itself—but the brave soldier wasn’t finished. Appearing with a large war hammer, he crushed the fiend's fingers, leaving it to fall.
Transfixed throughout the incident, Braon blinked, coming back to reality. He had rarely witnessed such bravery, and this time he felt it pull on his heart, augmenting his own courage. The surge of hope felt unfamiliar, but its warmth suffused his frame like a crackling fire in the depth of winter. Then he realized he had allowed despair to overcome him. The soldier's desperate effort reminded him that thousands of nameless men and women were fighting for their lives—and that heroism was not exclusive to heroes.
Clenching his jaw, he straightened his shoulders
and took a deep breath.
I will last another day.
His strength and faith renewed, Braon allowed his mind to take over and his fingers flew to take in every section of the enormous battle. A moment later he began issuing orders to Thacker.
“The line in The Gray is weakening. Talfar must get the gnomes to reinforce the western wall of their division. Also the orcs on his right flank appear to be losing heart.
“Tell Graden to detonate trap number 178, there are two kraka’s almost to the top.
“Send some of Golic’s men that aren’t working on the road defenses to Adaeze at The Ridge. Their night shift has lost too many men.
Another move in the map and he saw there was trouble in the black elf division, The Deep, causing him to pause and consider his options. Marked by the lowest point in the cliff besides the city, the dip in the cliff top had been filled with a two hundred foot wall to bring it to the same height as the rest of the plateau. Since the battle had begun, the fiends had torn at the stones in an effort to demolish the barrier.
Now half the wall was gone. Quare and kraka had been concentrating on the wall even more since yesterday afternoon, tearing it down stone by stone. At this rate it would be gone by midday today. He would have to keep an eye on it.
He had prepared something special for them when they got past it.
***
Wallen heaved a spear into a knot of quare climbing over the wall, growling in satisfaction as he saw it impale one. Reaching for another spear, his hand brushed against the arm of a dark elf reaching for a weapon. He hardly noticed. By now, halfway through day three, skin color just didn’t matter.
The need to survive has a way of doing that, he thought, palming another shaft.
Flexing his arm and looking for a target, he saw Derek’s large form thirty paces in front of him. His bulk made him easy to locate, even among the other humans clustered around him. Not as good with a spear or an arrow, the black elf general, Val’Trisian, had placed him closer to the wall after he’d almost struck one of her own soldiers.