Midrealm

  I nodded. “Just like the Battle of the Circle. We got this. Don’t worry, Greystone, this is gonna go our way.”

  Greystone shook his head, his eyes skyward. “I would say you walk a fine line between confidence and arrogance, but the truth is you long ago pitched over the other side of that fence, crashing headfirst into the ground below.”

  “Thanks,” I said, beaming. Greystone shook his head and turned to go. But I caught a look of worry in his eyes as he walked away. I watched him go uneasily.

  “Something troubles you?” asked Darren beside me.

  “Something’s bothering Greystone,” I said. “That troubles me.”

  “I suggest you clear your head. A distracted mind fares ill in battle.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered.

  The Shadows were approaching slowly, taking their time as if they had all of it in the world. The hellions lumbered among them like wooly mammoths, if wooly mammoths were huge, scaly and formed of what looked like black goo.

  “Hey, Calvin,” said Blade. “You know a little something about this kind of fighting, right? Medieval war and stuff?”

  I glanced at him and shrugged, turning my gaze back out over the wall. “Sure, I guess. I mean, mostly tabletop wargame stuff. But I read a lot about it. You know, in encyclopedias, the internet. Whatever.”

  “So do you have any idea why Terrence is sending so many of his Shadows to die, when he can’t even get through the gate?”

  I shrugged. “I mean, I can always guess. But you probably aren’t interested — I could be way off.”

  “I’m interested.”

  I shrugged. “Well, there’s a few ways to do a siege. First, if you’ve got enough men and strength to do it, you just punch through the defenses, overrun the walls, get inside the target and massacre everybody. But you need a lot of people, plus walls you can actually climb. The longer the walls the better, because the defenders have to stretch really thin to guard them.”

  “But that’s not the case here, because there’s just the gate, right?” said Blade uncertainly.

  I nodded. “That’s right. He can’t climb the barrier itself, he can only hope to knock down the gate. He could try climbing over the wall, but since there’s so many soldiers here, including us, that would be nearly impossible.

  “Another option is to just sit outside the walls and starve the enemy out. If you guard any method of escape, you can just let them sit in there until they rot. It’s also demoralizing for the people inside the target, especially if you arrange little things like eating a feast where they can clearly see you from the walls. But that won’t work here, either. Morrowdust is self-sufficient within the barrier. And guarding all avenues of escape would be next to impossible since we can open the barrier with our magic.”

  “So starving us isn’t an option,” he said. “What does that leave him with?”

  I sighed. “Well, the third option is to simply wear your enemy down. Give him so many bodies to kill that he can’t sleep, can hardly stop to get a decent meal. Keep it up for days, weeks even. Then, when his men are exhausted and practically dead on their feet and just sick to death of fighting, you hit them with your ace in the hole. Your shock troops, the biggest and baddest things you can possibly bring to bear. At that point, you’re hoping that your enemy is just so sick of fighting that they just lay down and die.”

  Blade looked like he’d be sick. “I don’t get it. Why not just hit them with your best troops up front?”

  “You know anything about the Spartans?”

  “The guys who fought the Persians in that movie, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Sure, although the movie wasn’t even close to what actually happened. But they got one thing right. The Persians sent in their best shock troops first. They were called the Immortals. They were supposed to clear the Spartans away in one fell swoop. But the Spartans were fresh. They’d just gotten there. And they absolutely creamed the Immortals.”

  “So…any chance that’s what’s happening here?” Blade asked doubtfully. “Terrence is wasting all his hellions right up front? That would be a good thing, right?”

  I gave an uneasy shrug. “Sure. That would be great. Because let’s face it — if it isn’t the hellions…”

  “Then what’s his ace in the hole?” Blade finished, looking at the Shadows as they crept ever closer.

  For a long moment, the top of the tower was quiet.

  Then I heard a murmur rise up from the men around me, the archers leaning forward to look. I’d been staring at my feet, thinking. Now I looked up, out and over the wall.

  The Shadows and hellions had halted their march. They were well out of bowshot. And there they stood. Watching us. Waiting.

  There was a ripple of confusion as we watched them standing there. I looked at Blade and Raven, who looked back at me. Each of us seemed to expect the other to have some sort of explanation.

  And still the Shadows simply sat there, staring at us. Their black and bronze armor seemed to form an ocean of darkness with glints of light like sunlight reflecting off of rusty, filthy water. The hellions rested on their haunches, massive arms planted in the grass of the field.

  They were so silent. It was unnerving.

  After the first few minutes, I began pacing. A few minutes more, and I was cracking my knuckles nervously. By the time the first hour passed, I was tapping my foot on the floor relentlessly, and fear was slowly starting to build in my chest.

  “Come on, come on,” I muttered. “Get your ugly butts over here so we can kick them.”

  And still the horde sat there, utterly unmoving, utterly silent.

  “They’re trying to play on your nerves,” said Samuel. Unbelievably, he was sitting nonchalantly against the wall at the back of the tower. His sword was across his knees, and his shield was leaning against the wall beside him. The guy actually had his freaking eyes closed. “They’re trying to get us worked up.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s working,” I said testily.

  “They’ll come when they come,” said Samuel. “No use worrying about it until then.”

  Blade growled, a wordless noise of frustration. “Forget this,” he said angrily. “I’m going to go to the other side. See if maybe there’s something more we can do.”

  “Can I come?” I asked eagerly. He shrugged and turned away. I quickly padded after him, my soft leather boots slapping the stone. Raven watched us go, bored. Samuel grumbled as he rose to come with us, and Darren fell into step with him.

  Blade barged onto the top of the other tower, where Sarah and the others looked just as annoyed as I felt. “So what’s going on?” he asked.

  “We’re not sure,” Sarah said. “It looks like they’re waiting for something.”

  “Yeah, waiting for us to go nuts,” grumbled Miles. “Which is happening pretty quickly.”

  “So what should we do?” I asked. “Head out there and take them on?”

  “No.”

  So many voices said the word that I gave up trying to figure out which ones. I shrugged, smiling. I’d been joking, but only half. “Okay, then what?”

  “We wait,” said Sarah.

  “Until?”

  “Until they come for us. And I don’t care if it takes them all day to do it…” Her words trailed to nothing as recognition dawned in her eyes. She gave a nervous glance at the position of the sun in the sky.

  Blade nodded. “Exactly. Sooner or later, we have to sleep. Sooner or later, we have to go back to True Earth. For some of us — namely me — later is fine. For most of you, sooner is going to become necessary.”

  “For all we know, they’re going to stay there all night,” Miles said uneasily. “We could go sleep and they’d probably never even notice.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “That’s probably what they’re waiting for. They want us to try and leave so they can attack the gate then.”

  Sarah looked over at Greystone, who had been watching our debate with interest. Something passed in the
look between them, but I had no idea what it was.

  “So, again, what do we do?” I asked.

  Sarah looked back at me, looking like she was coming out of a fog. “I…I don’t know yet,” she said. “But we’ll figure something out. For now, why don’t you head on back to your post? I’ve got to try and figure something out here.”

  Blade shrugged and turned away. “Okay. Take your time, I guess. The Shadows certainly seem to want you to.”

  So we went back, and we sat. And we waited. Eventually all of the archers took seats on the cold, hard stone as well.

  The day wore on, and soon mid-afternoon grew hot. It grew more and more uncomfortable. The soldiers had it the worst — they had big, thick woolen clothing on under mail shirts. I noticed several of their faces growing red, and I hoped we wouldn’t have a problem with heat stroke. Struck by a thought, I stirred up a light breeze that drifted along the top of wall, cooling everyone off.

  “Blessed be Destiny,” breathed Barius, closing his eyes and languishing in the cool wind caressing his brow.

  “Good call, dude,” said Blade, reaching over to give me a friendly slap on the arm. I winced. “Sorry,” he said.

  “The sun is so warm,” Raven said peacefully, her eyes closed. “I could just nap in it.” Suddenly her eyes shot wide as she realized what she’d said.

  “Yeah, let’s not do that,” I said. “We don’t want to have to drag your sleeping body back to the Runehold while you try and figure out a way to knock yourself out back on True Earth so you can come back and join us.”

  Raven stood and began pacing back and forth along the tower. “Yeah, maybe not such a good idea.”

  We sat in the sun for hours like that, waiting for Chaos to take us all.

  BLADE

  THE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO get dangerously far in its descent toward the distant horizon. I eyed it nervously, painfully aware of how close we were getting toward the time we usually went home. It wouldn’t be too much of a problem for me. Even if I was home, which I wasn’t because I was still staying on Calvin’s floor, my dad wouldn’t even notice or care.

  Finally Sarah appeared. She had brought the others with her, and all six of our Runegard struggled to make room for their bulky armored forms in between us and the archers that still crowded the tower’s top.

  “It doesn’t look like the Shadows are going to get up to anything today,” Sarah said with finality. “So I’m thinking we should start getting out of here. With any luck, they’ll still be sitting out there on the field when we come — ”

  Bwooooo

  The thin peal of a war horn cut her off. As one, we spun toward the noise.

  The Shadows were on the march.

  “Crud!” cried Miles. “Sarah, it’s too late in the day!”

  “I know,” Sarah said grimly. “But we don’t really have a choice. We can’t leave now.”

  “What about school?” said Raven, worried.

  “Looks like bedtime’s going to be a little bit later than normal today,” I joked. “Some Shadows just couldn’t wait until dawn to have the stuffing beaten out of them.”

  “Okay, same plan as before!” cried Sarah. “Blade, Raven, Calvin, you’re here. We’re taking the other side. Hold them off as far from the wall as you can, and let the bolt throwers do their thing!” She spun and ran toward the other tower, Tess and Miles dashing off to catch up to her.

  “Okay, guys,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Nothing to it. They can’t touch us up here, what with the fancy new armor plates we’ve got, and we’re their worst nightmare. Get yourselves ready.”

  “About bloody time, too,” muttered Barius.

  The Shadows and the hellions reached bolt thrower range. More ammunition had been brought from Morrowdust as we’d waited, more than the machines could fire in a full day of non-stop action. They launched their rounds with a rough, abrasive hiss, the spears lancing through the air. Of the four, I only saw one strike home. It stuck hard in the shoulder of a hellion, making it roar in displeasure. The other bolts wrought their own destruction, impaling several Shadows who dissipated into nothingness, their empty armor falling uselessly to the ground.

  “Nice one!” I shouted. “Hit’em again!” The ballista crews reloaded silently, plainly not needing my encouragement.

  Another minute, and the creatures were within bowshot. Like the angriest, deadliest bees I’d ever seen, more than a hundred arrows sped through the air to fall amongst the horde. I saw creatures struck in the head vanish without a trace, while others that were struck through a limb or torso fell to the ground, writhing. It was just a tiny dent in their numbers, but it was something.

  “Okay, guys,” I said, looking at Calvin and Raven, unable to keep at least a twinge of excitement from my voice. “It’s almost go time. Remember: first priority is holding them back for the ballistas.”

  “Got it,” said Raven. Calvin nodded silently, his eyes wide.

  With the sound of grinding gears and snapping cords, the ballistas launched again. Two bolts fell among the crowd. A third went into a hellion’s thigh. Then, to my great delight, I saw one bolt pass clean through the head of a hellion. It stopped dead in its tracks like a puppet with its strings cut, then fell heavily to the ground with a resounding thoomp.

  “Haha!” I shouted. “Nice! Do that again!”

  “That was probably more of a lucky accident,” Calvin said quietly. “They’re not really that accurate.”

  I clapped him hard on the back. “Whatever, bro. Now there’s only five of them.”

  “Let’s work on reducing that some more,” said Raven, her brow furrowing as she brought her hands forward. With a deafening clap of thunder, electricity sprang from her fingertips to lance out among the Shadow horde, now within a stone’s throw of the walls. Bolts of electricity leapt from Shadow to Shadow. Some of them vanished with puffs of smoke, but a far greater number fell to the ground twitching. Their prone bodies provided a momentary distraction to the hellions, whose feet were suddenly bogged down in a tangled mass of Shadows.

  “Hey Calvin, remember that wall of fire thing you told me about?” I asked smugly. “Well, don’t tell Greystone, but I’ve sort of been practicing it when no one was looking.”

  “Oh, Destiny watch over us,” muttered Samuel. He donned his helmet and took a wary step backward.

  I cleared my mind and saw the vision of a line of flame stretching across the ground in front of the hellions. As quickly as the thought formed, the wall erupted. It shot skyward a good fifteen feet — not quite enough to hit the hellion’s faces, but enough to make them balk and take a couple of cautious steps back. One of them squished a small group of Shadows who were following a little too closely.

  “Yeah, that’s right, uglies,” I said, gritting my teeth as I fought to hold the image of the wall in my mind. “You don’t like that, do you?”

  The earth rumbled, and I saw a small section of turf uproot itself and tip the Shadows on top of it backward. Hissing and screaming, they were flung into my wall of fire. They vanished as their now-empty armor tumbled into the fire, sizzling.

  I looked over to see Sarah with her arms outstretched, wearing the same look of concentration I must have been sporting. She risked a quick glance over to meet my eyes, and she smiled briefly. I laughed.

  “Incoming!”

  Darren’s yell snapped my attention to the fore, and I saw a cloud of arrows come flying up at us from the archers within the Shadow army. Calvin closed his eyes and gestured. The arrows rebounded as though they’d struck an invisible wall — which, of course, they had. Calvin gritted his teeth as more and more of the projectiles ricocheted away from his invisible plate of air.

  “Whole lot of them,” he complained. “A little hard to — ”

  Suddenly he fell to a knee, and the last of the volley passed through the space where all the rest of the arrows had bounced away. With cries of alarm, Barius, Darren and Samuel stepped forward, placing their bodies and their sh
ields before us. I heard cries of pain and fear as men were struck down, but our Runegard were an impenetrable wall between us and the arrows.

  The shields went down, and I saw half a dozen men lying on the ground, clutching the black arrows embedded in their limbs. Two men were lying facedown and still, not even a twitch betraying any signs of life.

  Worse, in the tumult I realized I’d lost control of my wall. Without the flames to deter them, the hellions were marching forward once again.

  “Not so fast, you Godzilla rejects,” I growled. I closed my eyes, and once again a wall of flame made the creatures reel back, screeching.

  “Calvin!” I shouted, never taking my eyes from the wall. “You okay?”

  He nodded, climbing back to his feet. “Yeah.”

  “Grab an archer. Send him to the other side with a message. We need the bolt throwers to focus on one hellion at a time.”

  Calvin nodded and snatched an archer away from the battlement. After hasty instructions, the man ran along to the other side of the wall to relay the orders.

  With a massive twang, four more bolts flew from the walls, all of them arcing toward the hellion on the far right. All but one of the bolts pierced the creature, two in its chest and one clear through the leg. Its roar of anger at the flames turned into one of pain.

  Without warning, the earth below the thing erupted. A solid shaft of rock, six feet long with a pointed end, pierced the hellion’s brain. Its cries died abruptly as it fell heavily to the ground.

  “Nice!” cried Raven.

  “Sarah’s really getting the hang of this,” I said.

  But with the death of the one hellion, the four that were left screamed out in renewed fury. As I watched, helpless, they pressed forward, pounding through my wall of fire. They screeched in pain as the fire scorched their skin, but I saw their blackened scales start to reform immediately.

  “Crud,” I thought. “Well, it was nice while it lasted.”

  “What’s that?” asked Calvin.

  I looked toward the other tower where Calvin was pointing. Miles stood there with a look of intense concentration, and in the air in front of him I saw a ball of water slowly starting to form. It shivered and shook as it hovered there, threatening to break, but he held it.