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The rock bounced once in the dead silence and, for a moment, it seemed that tranquillity would reign. A heartbeat later, the plaza exploded with a thunderous roar. The Fighters flinched, surprised by the coordination and half-frightened by the fact that the could not attach the noise to anything within range of their vision.
"Down!" Kendrick shouted, and three ranks of sword-wielding men bowed with one knee on the ground.
"Loose!" he called out.
A solid wall of female archers, packed in with just enough room for their notched bows between their chests and the spine of the archer in front, launched a blind volley into the darkness.
Those in the fifth rank hurled torches forward into the plaza. The Enraged hadn't closed yet to where those torches could find them, but the light would prove invaluable in short order.
The screaming mob howled, notes of pain mixing in with their fury, telling the archers at least some of them had struck gold.
"Loose!" Kendrick called again.
Zhair'lo stared intently into the darkness, willing himself to make out some visual sign of the enemy even as their hatred rolled over him. They didn't rush for Gillian and Kendrick's army. He felt that much. They rushed for Zhair'lo's very person, perhaps even for the magic he contained. Reaching him, they might not cleave for his head or heart, but somewhere lower, seeking to relieve him of the burden he'd carried so many kilometres.
The line they attacked, he suddenly realized, didn't have the strength to hold against their focus. The Fighters expected a certain kind of mindless attack, spread out and lacking cohesion. Zhair'lo knew, and Kendrick and Gillian had to know, the error of their calculation. They should have recognized it from the moment the Enraged had begun their attack in such perfect synchronization.
"Loose!" Kendrick called out a third time.
More words came from his mouth, commands Zhair'lo only understood by half. Soldiers moved, shifting around. Kendrick had noticed something, and he shuffled men from the flanks, attempting to send them past the archers. Zhair'lo turned and watched as Kendrick disappeared toward the back of the army, shouting out to all and sundry.
"Loose!" this time Chief Cameron's voice called out the order, but the archers obeyed it all the same.
The cries from the mob numbered fewer and all could hear the concentration of their howling anger.
Finally, they crossed the threshold of the farthest torches and the army got its first look at the frothing mass of inhumanity charging at it. No trace of intelligence showed in the rabid eyes of the front ranks as they hurled themselves through the fourth volley of arrows, many of them already stuck with arrows but apparently ignorant of the pain they endured.
No time remained for a fifth volley.
"Ho! Up!" Cameron cried out, and the forward ranks of men returned to their feet, bracing themselves for the melee.
Zhair'lo saw nothing from his vantage, but heard the crushing, the screaming and slicing of swords through the air. Booted feet struck bodies. Enraged men hurled themselves upon their much less suicidal enemies.
From behind, a new order came through and the army shifted bizarrely around Zhair'lo.
"Move left, now!" Gillian's terse voice cut through, clearly an order to himself and his squad.
They moved, along with the three Seconds and Gillian's personal squad, shifting as the army twisted. At first, Zhair'lo thought some kind of flanking manoeuvre had begun. It made a kind of sense, if the Enraged had concentrated themselves in a wide central file, to bring the flanks forward to surround them.
But Kendrick and Gillian had other plans. The left side of the army moved forward, Soldiers pouring through to strengthen that side, while the right withdrew. Zhair'lo imagined, seeing the action in his mind as a bat flying through the night might see it, an entire line of battle pivoting about its centre.
'This is how we reach the gate?' he wondered.
But the Fighters clearly knew their vocation, the bulging left side of the army billowing out like the curtains in his old bedroom window at Lyric's camp, maintaining its thickness as Gillian shepherded her flock through and toward the waiting gate, still hundreds of metres away across the plaza.
The mob of Enraged, writhing like a snake, twisted to direct its strength at the army's heart. The wall of Soldiers buckled, surprised by the sudden press of bodies, but their professionalism held them together, even when their comrades stumbled back wounded.
Zhair'lo felt the stymied frustration of the rear ranks of the Enraged, and then the first cobblestone fell from the sky, striking Bree in the shoulder. She shrieked in pain behind him as another rock cracked against the road at his feet. They'd never expected projectiles and no one carried a shield. An organized barbarian army might feature carry arrows and slings, but a mob of Enraged had never shown that kind of division of labour. Raising his arm to protect from the inevitable onslaught, he felt the army of Fighters surge forward, pressing to root out the bombardiers in the back.
A sickening crack came from his left forearm and Zhair'lo stumbled to the ground as more rocks cracked off the shoulders of his armour. Dropping his bow, he used both of his hands to shield his head. If one of those rocks got through ...
Around him, his squad mates fell away, each battered by the onslaught. A disconnected part of his brain wondered why no one had thought to bring even a single shield.
He sensed a body move over top of him and the cracks of projectiles suddenly ceased. Not only had they stopped striking him, they weren't even striking the road around him. Silence reigned supreme and the grunting, screaming and clashing of battle vanished into the night. For a moment, Zhair'lo considered the possibility that he had died or at perhaps a rock had struck him deaf by a blow to the head, but his ears adjusted and he heard the panting breaths of several people around him.
He opened his eyes and found himself face to face with a woman in ill-fitting armour. Pain carved out Areese's features in sharp relief. The kind, patient woman he had met only the night before had disappeared, replaced by this strange apparition, framed with an eerie bluish glow that seemed to come from the sky itself.
Zhair'lo blinked as he sat up, facing Areese. The strange azure aura couldn't come from the smoky and befouled sky. He realized it surrounded himself and Areese, as well as Kit and Renzi, lying on the ground next to him. Both of his fellow Soldiers bled from cuts on their heads, the blood visible in the visors of their helms, but each regained his feet slowly.
Areese jerked as if slapped, drawing Zhair'lo's attention back as her body convulsed once before her back arched and she fell backward. Zhair'lo reached for her, keeping her head from striking the cobblestones. A rock cracked off the road a few paces away, forcing his gaze away from the Second's tortured face and toward the sky. The rocks, he realized, still fell. But, about a man's height away from the ground, they simply stopped in mid air and slid gently toward the ground a few paces away, as if an invisible roof protected them.
Looking back at the woman whose head he cradled in his arms, he realized what she'd done as he saw the tears flow from her eyes.
"It was," she croaked, "... it was well done, then."
Even amid the blood, sweat and ash, Zhair'lo picked up the faint scent of lilac and satsuma, vivid reminders of Areese's last night.
"Go well," she breathed.
Suddenly, the blue glow vanished and Areese collapsed, the last of her life flowing out of her.
The rocks, he realized, had stopped. Somehow, the Fighters had penetrated deeply enough to at least distract the bombardiers from their attack.
"Move!" Gillian shouted, the noise of battle shattering the silence Areese's temporary shield had provided.
"But ..." Zhair'lo indicated Areese's body.
"Dead," Gillian's voice delivered no mercy, "Sacrificed for you. Now, move!"
Zhair'lo recovered his bow and, with Kit and Renzi, stood up and started to move toward the Temple, warily scanning the sky for any sign of further projectile attacks.
"You have Command," Gillian said.
Zhair'lo looked around, trying to figure out to whom she spoke. Master Kendrick had gone behind to sort out the rear ranks to create this bulging attack. Chief Cameron, if one could judge by the battle axe swinging in the air on their right flank, had elected to dig into the battle. Who else ...
"Me?"
"You're the man in the middle," Gillian said. "Just shout out my orders."
"Yes, Mistress."
His squad, he counted all seven rock battered bodies, closed in about him. Bree and Del had both switched to short swords - Del holding hers in her left hand. Renzi and Kit still bled under their helms. Z'rus seemed okay, if a bit pale, while Tara limped along. Zia, of all of them, had managed to survive this far without any obvious damage.
"They're literally blocking the Sweetness gate," Gillian muttered. "Our only hope is to clear them off."
"With what?" he asked.
"An attack from both sides."
"How in the nine hells do you plan to surround them?" Zhair'lo stopped and stared at her.
He had no real experience in the battlefield, but he couldn't imagine working any kind of a flanking manoeuvre, in the dark, against the raging mob in their path. Did Gillian have another army hiding somewhere in the night?
"With those on the other side of the wall," she deadpanned.
Zhair'lo looked up at the darkened wall.
"You sure there are people over there?"
Gillian, in clear violation of every Temple edict and guideline for women, shrugged, "Probably. Call them forward."
"What?"
"Call them forward," she repeated.
"Oh."
Zhair'lo looked toward Sweetness gate, silhouetted by the distant fire burning at the centre of the Temple. Over a hundred metres of pure ebony still separated the front of the army from that gate. In that space, he sensed hundreds, if not thousands, of waiting Enraged.
They waited, fortunately, in silence, and that gave Zhair'lo all the chance he needed. He summoned all of the energy he had and took a deep breath.
"Fighters!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "To the Fore!"
>> I already wrote this
They waited, marching forward slowly with the bulging left flank of the army. They waited, begging the gods that a response would come back on the wind.
Then it came: a keening, grating howl. It was female - of that there was no doubt - but it carried it in a depth of pain and heartache that put gravel to vocal chords and made what should have been a song in to a choked out shriek.
"Fighters!", that strangled voiced continued, full of death and horror, and distinctly feminine all the same as it echoed back across the plaza. "To! The! Wall!"
Suddenly, the Temple wall lit up with torches and flaming arrows launched into the night sky. The Enraged howled, not because they'd suffered damage, Zhair'lo saw, but because the arrows had found dry piles of hay scattered throughout the plaza. Blazing fires began to light the path from the advancing army to the walls of the Temple.
-===================-
Standing on the ramparts atop the wall, over thirty women of Form notched their bows. Alongside them, twice that number of men, mostly Hunters drafted into battle, prepared their own arrows. Looking down into the plaza, watching the oily flames from the carefully placed and treated haystacks rising into the night, they took in with trepidation the angry hordes beneath them.
"They've been waiting, Mistress," a man in a third ranking Soldier's armour spoke to a woman at the rearmost part of the rampart, guarded by younger women with large shields. "Waiting in silence for us to open the gate."
"Indeed, Ragnar," the woman replied, her eyes giving the man a start.
Ragnar, a veteran of many battles, didn't trust what he saw through the visor of her helm. Anger, fear, betrayal and far too many emotional battles lurked under that mask. Add to that the ill fit of her armour, and Ragnar had no desire to give such a person a weapon, or to trust her at his back in battle.
But he noticed, as everyone else had, the traces of colour that peaked out from around her armour, and so he checked his tongue, knowing a man with three chevrons on his chest had no right to overrule any decision she made.
Besides which, he reminded himself, she carried no weapon but the authority of her rank. She couldn't actually stab him in the back.
Still, the look in her eyes troubled him. People like that didn't survive battles ... not in his experience.
"We will need to clear a path in front of the gates," she instructed him. "Concentrate our bows there."
She looked behind her, over the interior side of the rampart.
"We will hold open the gates and do our best to pull them closed once the Conduit's army is through," she continued. "May the gods preserve us."
"May the gods preserve us," Ragnar tried his best to keep the doubt from his voice.
He saw little point in reminding her of their shortage of arrows. Despite having pilfered as many as they could from the forces guarding the other gates, it still amounted to a paltry sum. Viewed against the size of their enemies, their ammunition vanished into insignificance.
"Make every shot count," he muttered to his fellows.
"When will we begin firing?" the woman asked.
"Upon your order, Mistress," Ragnar tried not to show his dismay. "Given our low supply, I recommend waiting until the Conduit's army reaches fifty metres or so."
He wondered why she had come here, automatically bringing Authority with her, when she carried neither weapons nor knowledge of battle. On top of that, she required four women to protect her with wooden shields, four Soldiers who could hoist weapons. Admittedly, they would run out of arrows anyway, but the principle of the thing bothered Ragnar.
"I will trust you to give the order at the appropriate time," she watched guardedly over the edge of the ramparts.
"Aye, Mistress," Ragnar quirked an eyebrow before turning his back on the woman.
Though she'd called the Fighters 'to the wall', all of them had wisely climbed the ramparts and remained well back from the battlements with their narrow gaps for archers. One section of wall, damaged during some previous battle, hosted a much wider, uneven gap that extended down to the floor of the rampart. Ragnar's colleagues carefully avoided that area, sticking instead to the square, hip-high openings meant for their trade.
"Alright, girls and boys," he called out. "Get into position."
Silently they moved forward, listening as the crashing and screaming of battle neared them. The Enraged at the feet of their wall remained eerily silent, patiently waiting their turn at the slaughter.
Ragnar pitched his voice to carry across the parapets, "Aim for those closest to the advancing army. But don't hit any of our friends. Just make their job easier. When I give the order, loose as you see fit. There will be no volleys."
With their current supply of arrows, it didn't make sense to force anyone to shoot who didn't have a target. Huge volleys made sense in some situations, but they couldn't hope to swamp their enemies today.
"The best we can do is clear a path for them," he added.
He took a deep breath and turned to look at the woman behind the wooden shields, but she remained ignorant of her responsibilities. With a shrug, he turned to face the battle.
"Ready!" he shouted, choosing his target through the smoky haze. "Loose!"
With a proper volley of arrows, Ragnar had always felt a surge of pride, a feeling of camaraderie and confidence. But this initiation of force brought no such spirit. The twangs of the bows were independent and almost individually identifiable. Each archer carried, if she were fortunate, a dozen arrows. If they could help it, they would not waste one projectile on a miss, or by striking an enemy already struck by another.
They loosed their arrows sparingly, and yet Ragnar could see the success they brought, forcing the Enraged to twist around as their companions fell to the ground, crippled and shrieking in pain. And in the moment of distraction, the oncoming wave of Fighters struck, plunging inward and onward. From his vantage, with the scene lit by the flaming hay stacks, Ragnar could not see the rear guard of their advancing saviours, but he could make out how heavily the horde outnumbered them and from this he assumed the Fighters fought on all sides.
Arrows plunged into backs and necks. Enraged men fell to the ground or howled in pain. The Fighters pushed on. Rocks flew up at them, most missing or striking the battlements. The archers could only ignore them and hope luck stayed on their side. Ragnar began to see, through the hovering black soot, where he judged the Conduit to be, somewhere inside a dense pack of Soldiers some five or six ranks back from the front.
The advancing army, pushing into the gap created by the distraction of several hundred backstabbed enemies, necessarily narrowed itself, pushing toward the gate. The Enraged, belying an intelligence they weren't supposed to have, piled up between the Fighters and the gate. As much as the archers on the wall could dump arrows into the mess, they created little space between the crammed bodies. The Fighters would have to literally step over the dead bodies of those they killed if they wished to reach the gate.
"Three arrows left," Ragnar called out.
Up and down the line, others shouted back to him. Some had already run out. Only a few had more arrows left than he did.
"Spend your last arrows," a female voice behind him uttered. "Order the others to do the same."
"Mistress?" Ragnar turned and nearly fell over at what he saw.
The stupid woman had shed her armour - all of her armour - and now wore only the green skirt and minimalist top of a Sorceress. She'd left her sash, normally worn crossing the breasts from shoulder to belt, behind with her leathers. On her face, the frightening look had vanished, replaced by resignation.
'Abundance,' he thought, seeing the size of her breasts, 'which explains the ignorance and the ill fitting armour.'
None of that explained her presence, which seemed to Ragnar utterly pointless. She'd brought neither bow nor sword. Why, in the nine hells, had she come?
"Do as I say," she whispered, her voice barely audible as she drifted forward, her four escorts moving with her to provide protection.
"Don't go there -" he started, but the Sorceress waved him off as she moved to the broken piece of the battlement, forcing her guardians to make up for her foolishness by making a wall of their shields.
With a reluctant shake of his head, he took a breath and raised his voice again, "Loose your arrows! Loose your arrows!"
The archers launched their last projectiles, killing and maiming as best they could, though their foes, so densely packed, never truly fell to the ground.
"What now, Mistress?" Ragnar tried to keep the impudence out of his voice.
"Get your swords and get below with the rest."
He shrugged. What in the hells else could he do?
"Fall back!" he commanded.
Professionally as possible, the Soldiers and Hunters under Ragnar's command filed past him to the stairs leading below. A few of them sported scratches and other damage to their armour, recent gifts from their enemies below, a foretaste of the flavours of grittier battle yet to come. When the last of them hit the top step, he turned back to the Sorceress and her guards. That meant that he saw the whole thing happen.
-===================-
Hustled and shoved by the press of the army moving towards the gates, one gruesome slice after another, Talla jostled with others for space. She had no business anywhere near the front lines and given her height, she had no reason to draw her bow. The plaza they crossed offered no nearby buildings which might house Enraged. Theoretically, if her enemies could somehow reach the walls of the Temple, she could aim an arrow at them. But only the direct intervention of the gods themselves could allow her to overcome the constant jostling and guide that arrow to a target.
