by Garry Ocean
When the flouds collected their bloody harvest and disappeared behind the opposite tower wall, Nick jumped to his feet and looked around. Less than a half of their squad survived. People who had never met these beasts before did not know what to do in this situation. This is why the losses were catastrophic. Nick was sure that the same thing was happening below on the fortress walls.
“You, thick-skinned stinkh!” Sith was standing on all four, spitting dust out of his mouth. “You almost squashed me to death, you empty steppe head!”
Nick tore the boy off the floor in one swift move and, ignoring his protesting screams, ran toward the wall behind which the flouds disappeared. “That’s what I thought!” Nick saw the monsters making the U-turn and coming back at them again.
“Flamethrowers!” a thought struck him, “Why are they not using the flamethrowers?”
“Sith, come with me!” Nick ordered.
This was a good idea, but when Nick ran up to the flamethrower, he realized why no one was using it. The Great City engineers, praise and honor to them for inventing such a useful device, especially in a situation like this, had not thought about a possible air attack. The flamethrower was clearly designed to eliminate the ground threat: Its carriage was dead-bolted to the stone foundation of the watchtower. But that wasn’t the main problem. The flamethrower’s gun was set to aim downward and had the range of movement of not more than forty-five degrees.
Nick was at first dumbfounded and than simply angry. He felt like he was again in the Arena during the Ritual. His blood received a powerful adrenalin rush, and he started to swing the heavy mechanism. The bolts slowly and gradually gave in. At first, one bolt came out with a loud unwilling clacking, then another one. The range of movement was slowly increasing, and after two strong dashes Nick was finally able to turn the flamethrower by ninety degrees.
The two flying monsters moved quickly, seemingly targeting Nick directly, and increased in size with every second. Nick noted that the pipe supplying the flammable mixture into the flamethrower bended but did not break. He had no time to check.
“Sith, pump it up!” Nick did not notice how he switched to Interling. “Pump this bitch up!” Nick gathered this power and, tearing off the blockers, yanked the heavy metal gun out of its base. “Must have been cast by the White Rock masters, very sturdy and heavy,” Nick thought, and said out loud, “Good, now the valve. Where is the freaking distribution valve? Ah, here it is, let’s see.”
The copper valve turned surprisingly easily, with a slight click. Nick heard a weak hissing. “Right, now we need to fire this thing up.”
Reaching it with great difficulty, Nick forcefully hit the flint with his foot. The mechanism did not fail him and worked as it was supposed to: the small copper pipe revealed a little flame. Right in time!
He must have done all this incredibly fast. For him, it seemed that the time stopped. Nick suddenly was able to see the entire picture, completely. He felt detached, as if he was looking on from the outside. Here was Sith, with a frozen grimace on his face, pushing the manual pump with all his weight. Here were several guards, with faces white from fear and arms thrown on the ground, hurdling to the fortress walls. And there was some daredevil, standing at full height and pulling the bow string all the way back, aiming at the monster from hell.
Nick turned the valve all the way. It was too late to adjust the flame volume. The gun in his arms shook and spat out a long tongue of flame high into the air with a forced hiss. Holding the gun under his arm, Nick turned it a little to the side, aiming for the very center of the floud. A disgusting crackling started almost immediately, as if a thousand bubbles were bursting at the same time. Letting out hot steam mixed with stinky smoke, the floud floated right above their heads and, already dissolving, collapsed behind the wall.
“Sith, don’t stop! Pump! Just a little bit more!” Nick quickly turned the valve back, to restore the necessary pressure in the reservoirs. One monster was still alive.
The beast seemed to have realized what happened to its sibling and swerved to the side. Despite its size and speed, it almost succeeded. Having stretched into a spindle, the floud swayed to the side and soared up. Nick, realizing that he may not have another chance, rushed to turn the valve and started to pour the fire at the floud.
Praise the Departed, and, of course, thanks to Sith’s effort, there was enough pressure in the reservoirs to reach the elusive beast. Nick continued to send the fire to it, not paying attention to the pain caused by the burning gun under his arm, until all the flammable mixture was finished. The floud contracted but continued to fly up by inertia. Then it started to sway from side to side and began pointing straight at the lighthouse standing next to the pier. Slapping right into it, the floud enveloped it on all sides with its dark-green slimy mass, and, like jell-o, started to slide down along its stone walls.
Nick dropped down the heavy burning gun and dashed to the loophole. Down there, he heard screams and curses. Bending and looking down, he felt the cold sweat breaking out on his back. Right underneath him, the dome of another floud was hovering over the fortress courtyard. It was not difficult to imagine what was going on there.
There was no time to think. In three jumps, Nick returned to the flamethrower carriage he had managed to detach earlier. He grounded his feet, spreading them, and in one dash lifted the carriage with his knees, putting it on his shoulder. Nick heard his tendons crack under the weight, and his veins swelled into knots. The carriage was cast from a whole piece of metal and must have weighed at least fifty stones. The fact that it was broad made it worse as Nick had trouble finding its center of gravity. But when he did, he ran to the wall, bending under the weight, and threw the carriage down without looking, hoping that the floud was still hovering there.
The monster did not even think of flying away. It was searching the ground with its twister-like trunks, trying to get to the people hiding in various places. The heavy carriage made a large hole in the floud, cutting it through like soft butter, and landed with a heavy loud clank. For some time, nothing happened, and then the beast started to pulsate, contracting and expanding in turns. The impression was that it was trying to patch up the huge gap from the carriage. And then its revving started to stall. Then it suddenly became quiet and the floud collapsed, dropping on the ground.
“Don’t let it take root!” Nick was happy to hear Whisperer’s voice. He had lost the old man out of his sight a long time ago. Praise to the Departed, he was alive. “Pour the tar on the beast! Quick!”
Nick leaned against the wall heavily. His head was spinning, his hands still shaking from the weight of the carriage.
“Seems we’ve managed to hold,” Sith sat next to him. The boy had his share as well. His hair was burned; his whole face and clothes were covered with stinky soot. Nick realized that he did not look his best either and tried to smile at the boy as encouragingly as possible.
The guards started to come up to them. Someone gave Nick a wineskin with water, someone patted him approvingly on the shoulder. Nick drank water to satisfy his burning thirst and forced himself to get up and look around. There were no heavily wounded. The bruises, small cuts and scratches did not count as serious. He counted those who were still standing. Eight guards were standing in the middle of the watchtower landing, downcast. Nick whistled in surprise: before the attack, there were at least thirty of them. The warriors seemed to be lost after the shock and awe that they had just survived. Sullen and defeated, they tried not to look at each other and kept silent.
Nick understood them very well. After that very first encounter with the floud monster he did not feel his best either. He wanted to cheer up the guards, but only sighed heavily. There was nothing to say, any words now would be unnecessary and meaningless. “The losses on the fortress walls must be even heavier,” Nick thought.
At that moment, the horns started to howl again. Nick cursed loudly in Interling. In the heat of the battle, he completely forgot about the approaching gro
und threat. However, the long horn alerting of the new danger brought the guards back into movement. They picked up their arms from the ground and, without talking about it, ran to the loopholes.
It was even worse than Nick thought. The beasts were already near the Tower. They were racing steadfastly in the thick wall of dust they raised that stretched all the way to the horizon, as far as one could see. “This is a true Armageddon!” Nick thought unexpectedly. What he saw reminded him of a surreal painting by a crazy artist.
“To the walls! Everyone, to the walls!” Gorr’s voice gave Nick some hope. The commandant was briskly giving the orders for the survivors to regroup. “Move it! Faster, you pregnant yellowbellies! Archers, come to me!”
Almost immediately, a large group of archers surrounded him. Every one of them was holding a large bow, almost of a human height in size. Only when they set on fire the rags tied to the tips of long five-foot arrows, Nick realized what they were about to do. However, it turned out that everything went wrong, not according to the earlier plan.
Gorr was going to set on fire from the distance the first moat filled with the flammable tar, right in front of the beasts. About three dozens flame arrows pierced the sky. The arrows made a long trajectory and plunged, hissing, into the tightly packed corpses of dead gobblers that covered the moat in a thick film. A disappointed sigh ran through the fortress walls. The flame didn’t want to take.
Meanwhile, the dust wall was approaching inexorably. The people now could hear the roar, screech, stomping, hauling and other sounds that would make anyone’s blood run cold. The sounds were coming together, forming a hellish cacophony. Nick suddenly felt the vibration in the stone floor under his feet. Acutely aware of the inexorable danger and power, Nick felt cold sweat breaking out on his back again. He gathered all his powers and contracted and relaxed his numb and tired muscles several times. It seemed to have helped. He carefully looked around. The guards were looking out of the loopholes, watching what was happening at the frontal fortress wall.
The bowstrings continued to slap. The archers did not stop sending the arrows one after another into the moat, hoping that at least one would pierce through the dead beasts. But the arrows only hissed and went out in a minute.
“Halt!” Gorr raised his hand, ordering to stop the chaotic shooting. “Shoot on my command only! Squad, number!”
Despite the critical situation, the archers executed their commander’s order immediately, numbering themselves out loud.
“Odd numbers, ten paces forward, march!”
From the height of the western tower, Nick saw perfectly well, that the beasts only had about three hundred steps to the moat. He realized that if they were not stopped by a wall of fire now, nothing would save the people, even these fortress walls that seemed impenetrable just the day before. Two hundred steps….
“R-e-a-d-y!” Gorr’s voice rocked like a thunder in silence.
One hundred steps…..Someone dropped a bow.
“F-i-r-e up!”
Fifty steps. Nick held his breath. He finally realized what Gorr’s plan was.
“Sh-o-o-o-t!”
The arrows screeched leaving the strings. The beasts reached the moats. Their front rows began to sink in the moat, followed by others near. Their heavy mighty bodies immediately dropped to the bottom, raising fountains of thick tar. The first burning arrow set the tar on fire. The fortress wall echoed a sigh of relief. The fire started to spread to the entire moat, crackling and roaring.
Nick whistled. The wide moat, as it turned out, had a U-shape. It hugged the Tower and its sleeves went all the way to the Rapid Waters. Now he could see everything. The flames in the moats went up at least thirty, if not forty feet. It seemed that no living creature could have passed through such a wide wall of all-consuming fire.
Shortly after, a thick black smoke appeared over the raging fire, accompanied by hissing. Soot and greasy ashes started to fly in all directions. People on the walls were alarmed as the fire started to subside. At first it went out in one place, then in another. And then the first attackers appeared.
Nick leaned forward with his entire body, risking falling down. It seemed impossible, inconceivable even. But the beasts were walking, all burning in fire, as if they were zombies from a cheap sci-fi horror movie. They were dying, but at the same time they were stomping the fire into the ground. Nick closed his eyes tightly. After what he saw, he doubted these were living animals. At least not in the same meaning he had about the Earth’s fauna representatives.
The archers, after just a short while gawking, now were frantically setting the arrows on fire and pulling the strings, rushing to fire up the second protective moat. But that was not necessary. A huge monster, all engulfed in fire, broke through the firewall with a wild howl. Not stopping to roar, it reached in several huge jumps the second moat and plunged into it at full speed. This was enough for the second moat to be set on a raging fire.
This time, the people did not relax. All guards pulled their arms closer. The archers started to charge the crossbows that were on ready under the loopholes. Everyone understood that this was just a short break, a breather.
Nick noticed Whisperer. The old man was standing next to Gorr, emotionally arguing with him about something. This rarely happened, and Nick was surprised. He could not tell what they were talking about, but it was obvious that Whisperer failed to convince the commandant.
“By the way, Sith,” Nick decided to fill in the pause to cheer up the boy, “Did you notice where the remaining flouds went? Did they cross the Rapid Waters?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Sith was sitting, indifferently leaning back against the rough fortress wall. It seemed he could not be bothered with anything that was happening down there. Or perhaps he was just trying to keep his cool, but he added, “You do understand, we were busy with other things. But I think they most probably sank here.”
“Where, here?” Nick didn’t understand.
“Along the Rapid Waters,” he yawned nervously. “It’s the best environment for them.”
“But the banks are crawling with the gobblers. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. Why would they sink there?”
“So what?” Now it was Sith’s turn to look at Nick in confusion. “I’m telling you, there’s water there, a lot of water. Flouds love water.”
“But they will gobble them all up!”
“Whom, Nick?”
“The flouds!” Nick felt that he was again facing another wall of misunderstanding. Sometimes it annoyed him to no limits. You speak their language with them and talk about the obvious things, but still do not understand the essence. At first he even thought that the boy was simply making fun of him, but then Nick realized that the boy never joked when he was talking about the Forest. This, by the way, was a shared trait of all residents of Near Forest, both the hunters and the gatherers.
“Forget about the flouds,” Sith looked as though he was listening to something intently. “I’ve told you already, they sank. What don’t you understand?”
“Again the same thing, as always!” Nick thought to himself, annoyed. “We finished exactly where we started, going in circles.”
“Nick!” Sith suddenly exclaimed, “Whisperer wants to see you. Seems about something very important.”
The boy started to drag Nick down the spiral staircase, adding, “I will go with you, otherwise you will get into trouble without me.”
Down in the square, to Nick’s great surprise, Whisperer was already waiting. Nick looked at Sith, confused, because earlier he had decided that Sith was just fed up with a useless conversation but he had tricked Nick, just to change the topic.
“Nick, I have a favor to ask of you,” the old man started out immediately. “I tried to explain this to Gorr, but he won’t agree. He is a military man to the bone. He won’t do anything without an order from above.”
Whisperer took Nick by the hand and led him to the side, whispering, “There are too many of these beasts. The
guards will not be able to hold them back by themselves, no matter how brave or good they are.” Here Whisperer started to speak in such a quiet whisper that Nick had to listen very hard, “We need to get our people to help. Obviously, not everyone, just men.”
“That is a great idea, Whisperer! I am sure that no hunter would refuse and the gatherers will not stand by just watching!” Even earlier, Nick could not understand why they didn’t think of this before. The residents of Near Forest knew the beasts, their weaknesses and habits from the very early childhood. They should have been involved in the tower defense from the very beginning, especially because they would be defending their own wives and children. But instead, several thousands of good hunters are hidden in the underground, with no personal weapons. This is a paradoxical planet, no matter what anyone thinks about it.
“Quiet, Nick!” Whisperer hissed at him. “Don’t yell! We cannot do it just like that.”
“Why?” Nick asked, surprised, but lowered his voice.
“It’s the law,” Whisperer mumbled. “Listen to me. As soon as the beasts start crawling up the walls, we’ll wait a little bit and then run to the weapons room. I’ll need your help in breaking the locks. Then we will go to open the doors to the undergrounds. I have already connected with the village whisperers. They know everything and will be ready. Understood?”
“Understood,” Nick decided to agree with Whisperer.
He still couldn’t understand why everything was so complicated. Perhaps, they should make another attempt to persuade Gorr to make this obvious decision? Well, no, Whisperer must be right, he knows better. But to be honest, he still didn’t understand anything on this planet!
Right at that moment, they heard the loud howl of the horns. The guards on the fortress walls started to move. They could hear the commands on all sides, “Take up your arms! Ready your weapons!”