Queen Yavara Ch. 58

"Keep shooting! Don't stop until your quivers are empty!" I shouted, and a spirited cheer rose up from our ranks. A constant stream of arrows were shot from the cliffside, raining ceaselessly upon the breaching marines. When the Lowlanders began putting their shields up, the crossbows on the wall shot beneath them, sticking the poor bastards in a quagmire of death from every angle. Half of them were killed before they got off their boats, and of the half that did survive, only one in five made it across the docks. The long piers offered no cover at all, and so they died in rows, falling like crashing waves until only a trickle made it to the wall. There, they met their ends. The battered and vengeful troops atop the front wall poured hot tar onto the shiny bastards below, prompting pure shrieks of agony. All the while, the mages remained on the boats, watching their comrades die by the hundreds, hiding behind their arcane shields, not daring to get up. By the time the last boat emptied onto the docks, the piers were surfaced with more bodies than wood. The second invasion wave stalled in the surf, and then the boats turned around. The lone mages in their boats unlashed the ropes on the docks, and magically propelled their vessels back out to sea, leaving their dying and wounded to writhe upon the docks.

A cheer swelled from the ranks of beasts, and I cheered with them.

"Run, you fuckers!" I laughed, and shot a defiant arrow at the retreating boats. The mage didn't have his shield up. It struck him between the shoulders, and his arms flailed outward comically. We all laughed as he fell off the side of his boat, and we cheered when his unmanned vessel steered itself into another retreating boat, cause them to splinter like cordwood. The mage in the other boat leapt off the side, and began to frantically swim towards his navy. Everyone was laughing, except Faltia. Faltia was running down the ranks of soldiers, screaming and gesticulating like a madwoman. My laughter faltered. I looked from her, to what she was pointing at. It took me a moment to see it. There were rows upon rows of dead bodies on the docks, but one row was fading. Twenty corpses became as transparent as silk, then disappeared. I looked out at the mage swimming towards his navy, then back at the empty space where the bodies had been. But there had never been any bodies. There had never been any soldiers at all. There had only been empty boats piloted by mages. The only casualty the Lowlands had suffered was the poor fool who I'd shot in the back. Even as the realization dawned on me, all the other bodies began to disappear. One by one, the retreating mages disengaged their perception spells, and our great victory at the docks literally vanished into smoke, leaving only thousands of spent arrows and bolts.

I looked down at Faltia. Faltia looked up at me. We turned our gazes south toward the beach, where the fog had never cleared.

EVA

I'd chewed my nails down to the pink watching the assault on the docks. Salvo after salvo battered the walls with deadly accuracy, destroying most of our ballistae turrets in one fell swoop. I could hardly see anything through the fog that blanketed the beach, but half a mile across the peninsula, I could make out the shapes of hundreds of boats being rowed under the cover of the siege. It was then that I ordered my entire force into a flanking position. We ran out from cover, and charged across the beach toward the docks. Our journey was bogged down by the snow and sand, making every step excruciatingly long. There was no way we'd make it in time. Faltia's defense would shatter, the castle would be taken, and all would be lost. We were only halfway there when the boats arrived at the docks. A hundred steps later, and the assault was already over. It was a massacre. Despite having the full weight of the Lowland navy behind them, the marines decided to charge the wall without the cover of a salvo. I couldn't believe our luck. All the intellectual and magical might of the Lowland academy was here, and the invasion had been defeated by mistiming and stupidity.

As the boats retreated from the docks, a great cheer rose up from the battered defenders, and our voice joined them on the beach.

"Goodbye, you dumb fuckers!" I yelled gleefully, waving at the retreating boats, "It was a real fun time! Next time let's do this at your place, m'kay?"

"Commander!" one of my generals yelled.

I looked back at her with a smile on my face. "Wha... oh."

From across the expanse of water, the low groan of a hundred thousand tons of timber being moved reached my ears. The man-o-wars pivoted on their anchors, and turned ten degrees southward. I blinked. The full broadside of the Lowland navy was staring right at me, and I was in the middle of a fucking beach.

"RUN!" I screamed, and the thousands of ballistae loosed at once. For a moment, a line of iron was drawn horizontally across the world. Then it arrived. Fffft! That was the sound it made when a missile shot past me. Fffft! The woman next to me was blown in half. Fffft! The ogre beside me had his front blown out of his back. Fffft! The dawn-elf to my right was kabobbed to three orcs behind her. Fffft! My general was split cleanly in two. Fffft! An orc's head was shot right off. Fffft! A teenage girl exploded into mist. Fffft! I blasted backward.

The air was ripped from my chest, I was sent spinning into the air, and I crashed into the wet snow. A moment later, someone's severed left arm landed next to my face. My severed left arm. The bone below the shoulder was blown to splinters, the bicep and triceps had been ruptured, and the sinew hung in strings. Strangely, I didn't feel the pain; only a dull ache, and a numbness where there should've been feeling. I was succumbing to shock. Realizing that, I dumbly picked up my arm, and began crawling up the beach. I had to keep moving. Lying still meant death.

I stumbled over bodies and body parts, crawling through fields of shrieking wounded clutching at their opened flesh. They called for me like I could save them, reaching out with blood-stained hands, begging me with bulging eyes. A foot struck me in the back, and I was flattened. Another foot struck my wounded shoulder, and a spear of pain twisted into me. I screamed into the snow as foot after foot came down atop me and around me, the stampede of my own soldiers trying to escape the onslaught. The wounded around me were trampled, crushed into the sand and snow, their mangled bodies compacted. An iron sole smashed the bones of my severed hand. A hoof crushed my right heel. A foot landed squarely in my back, snapping two of my ribs. I coughed blood into the snow. The feet pounded around me, thundering dully, crunching through ice and bones. It was endless. It was a river of panic, and I was trapped in the undercurrent. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. The freezing ground pressed into my face, enveloping me in darkness, filling my mouth and nostrils with freezing sand and ice. The sounds were duller. The world was muted. There was only the impacts on my back that drove me further into the frozen earth beneath me, down, down, down, down... Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! Bodies dropped all around me. Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! Arms and legs were sent flailing to the air. Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! A hole opened in the stampede. The second salvo cut the herd down by the hundreds, giving me a path, but I couldn't move. I stared helplessly at the city wall above me. It was only fifty yards away, but it might as well have been a million miles. I couldn't even lift myself out of the imprint my body made in the snow.

Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! The bolts struck the ground around me, spearing through the wounded that littered the beach. A woman's belly burst, and her awful sprayed my face. She screeched, clutching the wrought-iron haft that pinned her to the earth. With a bellow of immense agony, she ripped the haft from her exploded midsection, and threw it into the snow. She collected her intestines as best she could, and began to kick her way up the beach. Her ripped abdominal muscles flexed under the strain she put them under, and though she wailed with distress, she continued her plodding course up the beach, leaving a red trail in her wake.

I am such a fucking pussy. I thought grimly to myself, and with a grunt, I got onto my knees, and began to crawl. Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! The herd had thinned quite a bit by the third salvo, but those ballistae commanders were deadly accurate. A man was split cleanly in half as he ran off the beach. A woman was pierced in the middle of the back, and taken for a ride until she was impaled against the wall. A centaur was shot right through the rear end, and his back half ripped away like a piñata to reveal the wobbling innards within. He roared, and began to drag himself up by his front legs, spilling out his horse organs behind him. I crawled past them all, keeping myself as low as I could, gritting my teeth against the growing pain in my back. God, my fucking ribs! My arm was chopped clean off, my heel was crushed, but my goddamn ribs were giving me such hell! I buried my numb hand into the cold snow, vaguely aware of the dull ache of frostbite, and I dragged my body inch-by-inch up the gore-festooned beach.

Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! The missiles came down around me, killing less people this time. There weren't many left to kill. The mortally wounded around me were gored, and their screams were much more dispirited this time. The dying could only suffer so much horror before it became boring, I imagined grimly, but I wasn't there yet, and the closer I got to the wall, the keener the terror was. I was only ten feet away! Now nine, now eight, now seven, six, five—Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! The missiles punched into the wall before me, the black-iron haft singing with energy. Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! They came down all around me, pounding the earth, thudding dully into the frozen sands, blasting debris onto me. I was only four feet away. Three feet. Two feet. One! Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! The missiles pounded into the stones above my head; one, two three in a diagonal line up the side of the wall. A ladder. Serendipity. I put my severed arm into my teeth, reached up, and grabbed one of the hafts. I screamed as I pulled myself up, every torn ligament stretching with me, the sinew tugging on the rent muscles, the tendons peeling from the bones! I pulled myself up the first bar, planted my knee into the ground, and reached for the second bar. I grabbed it, bit into my arm until I drew dead blood, and hauled myself to my feet. It was then that the pain in my ribs was overtaken by the searing agony in my crushed heel. I sobbed against the excruciating pulses that wracked my leg, and reached upward. The third bar was just a few inches past my fingertips. I would have to jump. With a mouth full of blood, and eyes full of tears, I pivoted my weight on my heels, crouched, and shot upward. Fffft! Fffft! Fffft! I grabbed the bar, and let out a long breath. I let go of the bar, but I did not fall. There was a dull ache in my right thigh, my lower back, and my chest. I rested my burning head against the cold stone wall, and looked down.

I was pinned. Three rifled bars had pierced me, shot through my flesh and bones, and punctured the wall.

"Well... darn." I whispered hoarsely to myself. Somehow, swearing didn't seem right anymore. Fouling these last moments I had with profanity would be a shame. I tried to look up, but I no longer had the strength to lift my neck. I could only stare down. Half my vision was filled with the wall, and the other half was filled with the snow beneath me. It made an interesting symmetry of grey and white before the red blots tarnished it. My blood slowly pooled from the holes in my body, ran along the hafts that pinned me, and dripped down to the snow below. Drip, drip, drip; it was strangely fascinating to watch. That was me down there in the snow. Soon, there would be more of me in the snow than in this body.

Drip, drip, drip. I thought of my mom and dad. By now, they likely knew that I hadn't died with the rest of the rangers; that I was in fact, one of Alkandra's infamous hybrids. I wonder if they were surprised? I'd only joined the rangers because my parents had kicked me out for being such a slut. I smiled at the thought of them reading the newspaper one day and seeing my name in the headline. Eva Alecia: Former Ranger, Now the Sadistic Outreach Director of Alkandra! I hoped the neighbors gave them dirty looks for months. I hoped they would forgive me.

Drip, drip, drip. My mind wandered inevitably to the ones I loved. To my unborn child, who had given me hope, and to Alexa, for showing me how people could change. I would see them both very soon. Drip, drip, drip. To Faltia, for showing me how to lead. Drip, drip, drip. To Brianna, for giving me laughter. To Kiera, for giving me friendship. Drip, drip, drip. To Furia, for showing me humility when I needed it so greatly. Drip, drip, drip. To Adrianna... for... for... forgiveness... Drip... Drip... Drip... To... to Soraya, for... for... for being... the missing half of me... my love... my...

Drip, drip, drip.

SORAYA

"Run! Run! Run!" I screamed, urging my troops forward. The teenage orcs of Alkandra charged out from the streets, and flooded the boulevard. The remnants of Eva's battlegroup trickled over the wall from the beach. There were so few.

"Get out of the way! Get the fuck out of the way!" I shrieked, and sprinted for the wall. Someone objected and tried to grab me, but I was already scaling the stones and throwing myself over the top.

The pieces of thousands of orcs were about the strewn beach, hundreds of them still groaning with the remnants of life. No one was standing. Three-hundred yards away, the Lowland marines were marshalling on the cleared beachhead from hundreds of watercrafts, and were beginning their slow ascent toward the city. Out in the bay, the man-o-wars were lighting pitch to boulders, and loading their catapults.

"Eva!" I screamed, "Eva?! EVA?!" I twirled this way and that, heedless of the coming army, uncaring for the thousands of ballistae that might've been trained on me. I raced down the beach, turned over corpse after corpse, assuring myself each time that she would be beneath one of them, whole and hale. "Eva?!" I screamed. Fffft! A missile pierced the ground five feet from me, spraying blood and snow into the air. I could hear the marching footsteps of the Lowlanders; I could feel the eyes of their mages following me. "Eva?!" I stumbled over a body, and nearly fell onto a sword. I righted myself against the wall, and smacked by head against the rifled haft of a missile. Growling, I clutched my bleeding forehead and—no. No. No, no, no, no...

A woman in black armor was splayed out against the wall. Her arm was missing below the shoulder. Her platinum hair was stained red.

"Eva?" I whispered. She didn't answer. "Eva?" I whispered again, touching her shoulder. Her flesh was so cold. The snow below her was melted and stained red. I took her gingerly by the waist, and tried to pull her backwards.

"We need to get you to Zander quickly." I whispered, "He'll have you patched up in no time at all. Your tattoos will be ruined, but you said you regretted some of them." I planted my hand on her chest, and delicately slid her down the bar that pierced her lung and heart. "Hell, I might want to start mine over too; we can get them together!" Blood poured freely from the holes inside her, gushing onto the snow. "Or-or-or-or you can give me the tattoos instead! Just like you said you wanted to, right?! I'll be your canvas!" The sound of marching became louder in my ears. "You can draw whatever you want on me!" I squeaked as I pulled back with all my might, "You can even put it on my face; I won't mind!" I could hear the Lowlanders yelling. "Just hold on a little bit longer!" I lurched backward, and fell into the snow with Eva atop me. She was so light. Scrambling upright, I shouldered her, and scaled the bars up the wall. I slipped on her blood, and pitched forward. She fell off my shoulders, and wilted into the snow below. I saw her face. Her mouth was agape and smeared with blood, and her eyes were rolled back and vacant. I was a rational woman. I knew what I was looking at. I knew it the moment I saw her, but all the truth in the world wasn't worth a fucking thing compared to the tiny glimmer of fool's hope I still had in me.

"Get up, Eva." I whispered, and reached down for her, "Please get up."

She just lay there, blood trickling from her lips. The footsteps became louder.

"Eva, please."

She stared into the sky, unblinking in the glaring sunlight. The soldiers were only fifty feet away.

"Eva..."

A strong hand gripped me by the hair, and pulled me over the wall.

"Soraya, we can't defend this wall!" Yavara yelled at me, "Move your troops back; I'll buy you time!"

I just blinked at her.

"Soraya?"

"Eva!" I screamed, my hope surging to the forefront, "Eva!" I could only point at the wall, "EVA!"

She grabbed my arm. "Soraya, you need to—"

I ripped my arm away. "Eva! Eva! Eva! Eva!"

A flaming boulder crashed into our ranks, obliterated twenty souls, and blasted great chunks of molten rock in all directions. The shrapnel tore through flesh and bone like butter, sending dozens more to their ends, but I didn't care. I just needed to communicate to this damnable woman that Eva was there, that there was still a tiny chance, and that chance was all I needed! "Eva!" I screamed, and jabbed my finger frantically over the wall. "Eva, EVA, EVA!"

Realization dawned on Yavara's face, and she leapt over the wall. Men shouted alarms, and the footsteps suddenly ceased. A second later, she leapt back over with Eva's limp body dangled in her arms. She was now paler than the high-elf who held her. Yavara rested Eva on the ground, and held her thumb against Eva's throat. She closed her eyes, and let out a long slow breath. Some of the color returned to Eva's body. A flush came across her pallid cheeks. One of her feet twitched. Sweat formed on Yavara's brow, and she trembled until her entire body was palsying. Then she stopped, and dropped her head. The color left my beloved's body, and the flush faded from her cheeks.

"I'm sorry, Soraya," Yavara muttered.

"Don't tell me you're fucking sorry! Try!"

"Trying will kill me, and it won't save her."

"Please!" I blubbered.

Yavara shook her head, stood up, and laid Eva in my arms.

"Take her back!" I screamed.

"She is dead!" She yelled, "If you don't order your troops to retreat, they will all die with her!" She turned toward the breach in the wall, "Fall back to the arena. I will hold them off for as long as I can!"

YAVARA

The flaming boulders arced overhead and cascaded into the city behind me. Each deafening impact was accompanied by the crash of a leveled building, and a terrible chorus of screams. I tried to block the sound out. I'd been in numerous battles now, but I'd never felt them like this one before. Every shock resounded in my chest, every shriek cut through my mind, and every clash of steel rang in my skull. It was sensory overload, and I was nearly paralyzed by it. Still, I stepped in front of the breach in the wall, and stared out at the vast beachhead.

Twenty-thousand Lowland marines were crunching through the snow, each company led by a robed figure. Behind them, the man-o-wars launched volley after volley of catapults, each timed perfectly so that the air was never empty of flaming boulders.