“Bloody gods.” Karus drew his sword and followed. Kol’Cara was at his side, as was Kelus’Su. They were amongst the orcs before the enemy could fully prepare themselves. Screaming, Karus drove his sword deep into the side of a startled orc. The chainmail armor posed almost no resistance whatsoever. He felt the blade scrape against the bone of the ribcage as it went in. The creature died instantly.
Ignoring the warmth from the sword hilt, he shoved the orc aside and attacked the next. Their swords met and Karus felt the pain of the blow communicated to his hand.
To his right, Ugin was a veritable demon, battling his opponent furiously, all the while growling and snarling. Kol’Cara and the other elf were a blur of motion. They were unbelievably quick.
Behind them, shouts from the other group told Karus they were on their way to join the fight. He fought harder and managed to sneak in a quick strike to the neck, which only grazed his opponent. Surprisingly, this did not immediately kill. Pain in its eyes, it stumbled backward.
He was about to push the attack home when he was tackled from behind. Karus went down, landing hard on his right arm. He lost his sword as his helmet connected with the stone paving. His attacker landed on top of him. It was almost impossibly heavy.
Without hesitation, though he was slightly dazed … it was probably instinct alone, Karus pulled his dagger out and plunged it into the arm of the orc. The creature screamed and scrambled off, tearing the dagger from his grip.
Groaning, Karus rolled onto all fours to see the orc he’d stabbed pull itself to its feet. His dagger was still lodged in its right bicep, but it too had lost its own weapon. Rarokan lay at its feet. Eyes on Karus, it bent down for the sword, baring its tusks at him.
“No!” Karus shouted and dragged himself to his feet, prepared to charge the creature.
As the orc’s hand closed on the grip of the weapon, there was a brilliant flash and a snapping sound that kicked the dust from the street up into the air around them. Encased in blue light, the orc opened its mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Distracted, the other orcs took a step back. Before they could recover, Ugin, Kol’Cara, and Kelus’Su pressed their attack, finishing off the last of the orcs.
The orc holding Rarokan collapsed to the ground and, with it, the light faded. Karus’s right arm throbbed and hurt terribly. He hastily went for his sword. The orc looked to have been burned all over its body. Its skin had turned black. The sickening stench of charred flesh was strong in his nose. Not only did he need a weapon, but he would not leave Rarokan to the enemy. He pried open the orc’s hand. The charred skin sloughed away from the bone as he retrieved his sword.
He heard pounding feet and turned. The orcs from farther down the street were almost upon them. Karus felt a sinking feeling deep in his gut. There were just too many to fight. He glanced back toward the defensive position a little less than a hundred yards distant. No help would be coming from that avenue. Not in time, anyway.
There was no longer the opportunity to run. He knew in his heart it was over. He thought of Amarra, wishing regretfully he’d had a chance to say goodbye. Karus recalled the man he’d killed in the tavern. Like him, Karus’s personal story would end in an abandoned city that soon no one would remember. The thought of such a useless death angered him mightily.
Karus sucked in a breath of the hot, humid air and decided he truly hated Carthum. He turned to face the enemy. If he was to die this day, he’d sell his life dearly. They would pay in blood before they took his own. He braced himself as they closed the last few yards.
“Let’s make them pay for our lives,” Karus said.
“We won’t need to.” Ugin’s tone was a quiet one. “They’re already dead. They just don’t know it yet.”
Karus blinked and took a startled step back. The air before him seemed to shimmer. Where a moment before there had been nothing but empty air now stood eight armored and hulking Vass with their great swords out. One of the Vass shouted something out in a guttural tongue and the others in unison answered with what sounded like a single word. The orcs stopped, some almost skidding to a halt. One tripped and fell, losing his stone-headed hammer.
The Vass did not give them time to think. They rushed forward, great swords carving through the enemy as if they were scything wheat. The orcs for their part seemed frightened almost beyond reasoning. Several squealed like pigs in their fright. They were barely able to mount a defense. Karus had never seen anything like it.
The Vass were incredibly efficient in their killing, their movements graceful and yet at the same time ferocious, brutal, and without mercy. Watching them tear the orcs apart, Karus suddenly understood why the Vass were so feared. What would an army of these creatures be capable of? Who could stop them?
A few moments later, it was all over. Blood, body parts, and the dead lay strewn across the street. The last orcs threw down their weapons, turned, and fled before the Vass could reach them. One of the Vass took two steps forward and held forth a hand, palm out, toward one of the running orcs. A blue dart of light flashed out. It smacked into the orc’s back with a crack. The creature went crashing down to the street. It did not get up.
There was a long moment of silence where no one said anything.
“I guess,” Kol’Cara said, breathing heavily as he looked over at Ugin, “we found your protectors.”
Ugin bared his teeth at the elf. “They were never lost.”
Exhausted and arm hurting something fierce, sucking at the air, Karus let his sword tip rest on the stone paving of the street. He stared for a long moment at the newcomers, Ugin’s Vass protectors, and shook his head in disbelief. Incredibly, they would live. That was a sweet thought. He suddenly realized he was terribly thirsty. He checked his canteen, which was secured to his harness. It was empty. Karus glanced up at the darkening sky. He sucked in a deep breath of the humid air and turned toward the defensive position. He started moving, then paused and looked back at Ugin and the two elves. Beyond them were Ugin’s protectors, who were poking amongst the enemy, making sure they were dead.
“Are you coming?” Karus asked. “We’re not done yet. There’s work still to be done and a city’s defense to be managed.”
Chapter Twenty
The sound of the fighting as it echoed off the walls of the buildings along the street was near deafening. It battered painfully at the ears. The enemy was doing their level best to assault one of the legion’s main defensive positions.
Both suns had long since set and night had come full on. The moon was hidden behind a layer of clouds. For the most part, though, it was bright enough that it shone through a bit, giving the defenders some light to work with.
Karus was standing back and away from the struggle, watching as Fourth Cohort worked to keep the enemy from gaining purchase on the wall they were holding.
The legion’s position cut clear across the street, a main avenue that led directly to the palace district. The wall the legionaries were defending was constructed of dirt, piled to a height of seven feet. It had a wooden-planked barricade for protection that added another three feet. A wide area behind the barricade had been packed down and made smooth for the defenders to stand upon and fight.
From his position a few yards behind the wall, Karus could not see the trench he knew had been dug ten feet down to its front. The trench had steep, angled walls that were designed to be difficult to climb. At the bottom, sharpened stakes waited for the enemy.
The defensive position was formidable. Yet, despite the depth of the trench and height of the wall, the enemy doggedly fought the legionaries at the barricade. Before working to scale the wall itself, they had thrown stools, furniture, garbage, doors that had been ripped off their hinges … whatever they could easily lay their hands upon and move … it all went into the trench. In a surprisingly short time, the trench had been mostly filled in, so that the enemy could better get at the defenders. It had been a crude tactic, but it worked.
The assault had been underway for a
little over a half hour. A good number of the enemy had been injured or killed in that time. Karus understood those orcs now assaulting the barricade stood upon the bodies of those who had preceded them, whether they still drew breath or not. The enemy seemed to care little for their combat casualties. Karus found their single-minded focus somewhat disturbing.
The defenders used their shields to push back against the enemy, blocking attacks while stabbing with their short swords. Men behind the front line that manned the wall reached over their heads and jabbed out at the enemy with javelins.
It was ugly and brutal fighting. Both sides were highly motivated, well-trained, and disciplined. Both sides also wanted the wall. It was an epic fight over who would be king of the hill. Unlike a child’s game, there was no mercy, no thought of quarter. It boiled down to kill … or be killed.
Above, on the rooftops, going down the street past the defensive position, dozens of auxiliaries shot arrows or threw javelins down upon the enemy in the street below, which had become an avenue of death. Blood slicked the paving stones and ran down the gutters in small rivers.
The enemy had yet to find a way up to the rooftops to try to dislodge them. But there was no doubt in Karus’s mind they were working on doing just that. When he had gone up to the wall to look over a short while before, he had seen orcs thick on the street beyond the trench, holding their shields up over their heads as protection against the deadly rain. Others, armed with bows, shot back up at their tormentors. The legion had created the perfect killing ground and it showed. Still, the enemy came on, weathering the storm and desiring greatly to become crowned king of the hill.
Sword and shield out, Felix moved on the wall behind his men, pacing slowly from one side of the wall to the other and then back again. He was clearly shouting encouragements and orders. Over the cacophonous wash of sound, Karus could not hear what he said. But Karus had walked in Felix’s sandals more than once and well knew what the centurion was doing. Occasionally, Felix would stop and stab at an enemy, dealing with an issue one of his men could not or had missed. He was the consummate professional centurion, leading by example and lending his strength of will for his men to lean upon.
Along the narrow and twisting confines of the side streets and alleys that branched off from this main avenue, Karus understood that the fighting was more intense, personal even. The nearest of those streets had been thoroughly blocked, but beyond them, there were few defenses other than a handful of centuries that had been posted and spread out in an effort to slow the enemy.
When encountering an enemy in those tight quarters, it frequently came down to a legionary’s shield and sword and the comrade standing next to him, sometimes even daggers and fists. From the reports he had received, as the enemy sought and pushed to get around the main defensive positions, the fighting was also house to house, building to building.
The legion’s manpower was not as great as the enemy’s. This meant the centurions leading their men out on the city’s backstreets had to fight smart. They used the narrow confines of the side streets or alleys to their advantage and whenever possible ambushed the enemy.
Ugin and his protectors had gone off on the right side to help keep the enemy from flanking the current position. As the fighting raged from backstreet to backstreet, and house to house, he suspected they were proving to be pure terrors for the enemy, especially with the Vass’s ability to briefly turn invisible and mask themselves from eyesight.
The enemy had already flanked two of the defensive lines. This had compelled Karus to, twice now, order a city-wide pullback to the next set of defensive lines. Both instances had come surprisingly quick and in rapid succession.
Once the main city walls had been given up, it was clear the enemy general had poured the majority of his army into the city. The enemy had vast reserves and they were now using them to their advantage. The Horde was steadily overrunning the city and outflanking his defenses, much faster than he had expected. That seriously worried him.
Karus’s arm throbbed from when the orc had tackled him. He flexed his fingers and had no problem doing that, so he figured it wasn’t broken. But the pain radiating from his right shoulder to his forearm was no less intense. He had clearly damaged it.
“Are you all right?” Kol’Cara asked, stepping nearer so that he could be heard over the noise of the fight. “Your arm …”
Karus glanced over at the elf and nodded. “It just hurts is all. Bloody orc tackling me … I never saw him coming. It was a stupid thing to happen. Don’t worry about it. Given time, I’ll be fine.”
“If you say so,” Kol’Cara said, sounding far from convinced. Six Anagradoom stood a few feet back, watchful. Each had a bow at the ready, an arrow loosely in hand. They had appeared shortly after Karus, Kol’Cara, and Kelus’Su had arrived at the defensive position. Karus had no idea how they had known to find them there, but they had.
Though his field headquarters was a couple hundred yards back in a small tavern, four messengers waited a few feet away. Karus had taken them from the Fourth. They were his runners that kept him connected with headquarters and, by extension, with the entire fight for the city.
“What do you think?” Karus asked, pointing to the fighting with his good hand.
“I think they are determined,” Kol’Cara said, “to overcome your wall.”
Karus shot the elf a look that said, Oh really … In response to that, Kol’Cara’s gaze shifted to the wall and back again. He eyed Karus for a long moment before speaking.
“The enemy is doing an excellent job of moving through the city and getting behind your defensive positions. I think if it continues at this pace, we will be back at the palace before sunrise. I also think you already know this to be true. So, why bother asking?”
Karus eyed the elf for several heartbeats and gave a nod. Kol’Cara’s assessment matched his own. He was feeling intense frustration and it had come out in asking a question, the answer to which he already knew. Karus needed to hold out for as long as possible before giving up each defensive line … to delay and make any gains in the city exceedingly costly for the enemy, all the while keeping his own losses to a minimum. The defenses the legion had built should have seen to that. The more of the enemy he killed now, the less he would face later. That’s what he had planned to do. Unfortunately, it wasn’t playing out that way.
The problem was the choke points, his defensive positions. They were being turned all too quickly and in great force too. It meant his killing grounds were not being given time to adequately develop to the point where they could murder the enemy in large numbers. Karus rubbed at his jaw, feeling the stubble, and grimaced at the pain in his shoulder, which stabbed intensely. He had inadvertently used his right hand.
“Gods,” Karus breathed as the pain subsided.
Two camp followers, both women, were bringing a man lying on a stretcher back toward the aid station. They were heading in the direction of the palace district, where the surgeons and medics had set up shop.
Many of the camp followers had volunteered to help with the injured. All of them had loved ones in the ranks, and when asked to help, many had jumped at the opportunity. It meant the chance of wounded being left on the battlefield was greatly reduced. There were times when a cohort was forced to leave the wounded behind. It did not occur often, but it did happen, especially in a fight like this one … a delaying action.
The injured man being carried off had taken a vicious wound to the calf. A bloodied tourniquet had been tied around his left thigh and he held his leg with a hand that shook, moaning loudly with each step of the stretcher-bearers. His young face was pale as a sheet of fresh snow. He had clearly lost a lot of blood. Karus wondered if he would survive the trip. He hoped he would.
Karus turned his attention back to the fight, just as an auxiliary on one of the rooftops was hit by an arrow in the chest. He stiffened, dropped his bow, and fell down upon the enemy on the street below. A heartbeat later, another fell. Watching h
is men die and become injured was always painful. Karus hated it, hated having to order his men into battle. But this was necessary. A good commander did what was required.
Felix turned and called out an order. A heartbeat later, a wave of javelins arced up over the struggle at the wall. The wave plunged down out of sight and into the enemy massed on the other side. A clatter mixed with a multitude of screams followed. The fighting on the wall did not slacken. The intensity of the struggle continued unabated, as if the toss had never happened.
“Excuse me, sir.”
Karus turned to find a messenger from headquarters. The man saluted and handed over a dispatch. He opened it and scanned the contents, nodded his thanks.
“Dismissed,” Karus said.
The messenger saluted smartly and returned the way he had come. Turning his attention back to the fight, Karus crumpled the dispatch and dropped it.
“Anything interesting?” Kol’Cara asked.
“One of the defensive positions on the west side of the city was flanked. The defenders fell back to the next line,” Karus said. “They are under a great deal of pressure over there … possibly more than we are here.”
“There are some advantages,” Kol’Cara said, “to the enemy making a rapid conquest of the city.”
“Oh?” Karus looked over, curious to get the elf’s thinking. “Such as?”
“They will not have time to properly search the city,” Kol’Cara replied. “Won’t that help move your overall plan forward a little?”
“Possibly,” Karus conceded, considering the elf’s words. “It might … just … do that.”
His head snapped around as the fighting to his front seemed to surge in its intensity. The enemy was making a titanic effort at overcoming the wall, a real concerted push. Several men were knocked violently back from the line. They did not immediately return to their positions. Whether they were injured or not, in the darkness, Karus could not tell. He suspected they had been.
The First Compact: The Karus Saga (The Karus Saga: Book Book 3) Page 32