Chapter One Hundred and Six
The Knights of Fort Guardian
Oliver sprinted across the battlements, followed closely by a company of just over thirty Legacies. Jack had ordered him to secure the stretch of wall left of the main gate. It couldn’t come soon enough, for Nikereus’ army began to mobilize, flooding around Fort Guardian like a river around a rock.
Oliver snatched up a hand-crossbow as they made it to the centre of their defensive position, just in time for the sea of Obthraie to start their war-chant.
“Everyone nock arrows and load bolts! This is it!” Oliver shouted, awkwardly shifting his fingers around the hand-bow’s grip.
The frontline of Soiltorn then stopped their rhythmic chant. They bent low to the ground and without a semblance of warning, drove their hands into the soil.
Creations and Legacies weren’t polar opposites, but when it came to Blood Magic, they were water and oil. The power of creation was designed for them by their makers, unlike Legacies, who merely had it forced upon them. And so, without bursting veins, tensed stone muscles, or screams of agony, the endless row of Obthraie began pulling long, gnarled lengths of dark wood from the mulched soil at their feet, like a magician with coloured ribbon.
Oliver shouted, “Ladders!” and the call echoed down the lin.
Oliver and his soldiers went still with brittle fear as they watched at least a dozen ladders be pulled from the muck within a minute, and more to come, like some demonic plantation for war devices. Oliver felt his breaths sharpen and he glanced down the line of Legacies, almost hoping somehow he’d miscounted them. But no, thirty it was, and there would be no more.
“Orders, sir?” asked the young man beside him.
Oliver glanced at the boy. He was probably a cycle or so younger, but his face was round and his eyes were bright. The swordsman gritted his teeth and said, “Jem, go to the med-bay. See if Lillian has managed to heal Carter, James, Carlisla, and anyone else... and bring them back here.”
He looked back over the battlements as the young boy ran, to see the grotesque array turning to face the walls, passing back the ladders so they could begin raising them.
Twenty nine, he noted, as Jem ran.
“Everyone, eyes up! Keep their ladders off the walls by any means necessary! Spread out and stay sharp!”
The armoured soldiers took off down the wall, quickly showing there was too much room with too few warriors.
All along the battlements were spare bows, crossbows, as well as satchels of bolts and quivers of arrows.
Oliver slung a satchel of bolts over his shoulder and watched as the first ladder was fitted to long, soil-matted support beams and thrust into the air by two Obthraie, where it was slowly teetered forward toward the climax of its height.
Oliver gripped the weapon tight and sighted the Obthraie holding the beams, guiding the ladder up. He took a hard breath and sharply pulled the firing-lever.
The bolt ripped from his weapon and flung down into the crowd much too short of his target, striking the wrong Soiltorn. He cursed and swore until realising the impacted soldier went hurtling back in a vicious stumble, crashing into both of the enemies raising the ladder.
Oliver watched in disbelief as the ladder teetered backward again, now without any control whatsoever, to fall back into the crowd like a monolithic domino, crushing a dozen or more Soiltorn into the mud.
The defenders gave a victorious shout which was cut short when four more ladders were thrust into the air.
Oliver sighed deeply. “Of course.”
One ladder crashed onto the wall between several defenders, and a set of nasty wooden hooks swung down, biting into the stone ramparts like teeth.
Shade Hounds and Soiltorn immediately began clambering up toward the battlements, moving slowly at first, but before long they were careening up the great wooden rungs.
The two Legacies either side of the successful ladder ran in and began hacking at the hooks with axes and clubs.
A Shade Hound came bounding to the peak of the ladder with a dozen Obthraie close behind.
“Come on, your piece of shit!” one Legacy roared, and with a final almighty swing, both soldiers sent long cracks down poles of the ladder as the Shade Hound’s weight struck the beams, and the slim structure cracked and plummeted down the wall to the moat below.
Oliver threw down the hand-weapon and replaced it with a heavy crossbow. He loaded a bolt and fired at a Shade Hound, missing by a clear mark. He swore, cursing all ranged weaponry. He reloaded it and lined up the shot again when a hand grabbed Oliver’s shoulder. He twisted and relief flooded him.
“Give me that,” said Carter, much of his bruising reduced, though it did nothing for the dried blood on his face. He took the crossbow off him and smartly shot a ladder-bearer in the chest.
Before he could reload Oliver wrapped him in a tight hug. “Are you okay? Is James okay?”
Carter managed to nod with tiredness deeply set in his eyes. “He’s with Lil, still getting treated but he’ll make it. Whatever his Arcancy is, it seemed to stop him from bleeding out. But for here and now, where do you need us?”
Out from behind him stepped Carlisla, holding a new spiked-club in one hand, and a new shield bound to the other. Her arm was covered in dark scaring like it had been struck by lightning. “Anywhere I can work out some anger?”
Oliver clapped hands with her thankfully and took them both by the shoulders. “I need you two roaming. Fill gaps that need filling. Listen out for any squads getting overwhelmed.”
Carter set down the heavy crossbow, grabbed two handbows and nodded. “Yes, commander. Oh, and by the way...” he took a sharp breath, then leant down and kissed the head of Oliver’s crossbow, sending a gentle glimmer through the wooden grip.
Oliver frowned so deeply that Carter snorted. Oliver asked, utterly bewildered, “What did you just do?”
“I’m not sure if it worked but something's better than nothing!” he shouted, and took off down the wall, shooting two Obthraie off a ladder and sending them plummeting out of sight.
Carlisla grabbed a crossbow and stopped for a moment, half-turning to Oliver. “I’m sorry about Archie. He was a good kid.”
Oliver nodded firmly, knowing there was no time to feel everything he needed to feel, and cranked back the string on his own crossbow. “We’ll make ‘em pay.”
Six more ladders were hoisted into the air across Oliver’s segment, and before they could teeter over, a golden-lit javelin blew down from one of the ballistae atop the keep, smashing through half of them while the other three tumbled into place.
Oliver shielded his eyes from the glare of the golden cloud of smoke and looked up to the keep. He spotted Flinn loading another javelin and smiled ear-to-ear.
Oliver, Carlisla, and Carter began peppering the ladder-mounted enemies with crossbow fire, felling them as fast as more could arise, occasionally joined by the ballista-work of Flinn. They littered the endless stream of Obthraie in iron, filling the air with billowing messes of smoke and pluming shards of stone.
Despite their heavy resistance, the six-armed Soiltorn grew nearer and nearer with their hideous mass of numbers, seemingly unbothered by their allies dying in front of them. Many to the point that they were climbing ladders before they set on the wall. By the time they fell in place, some Soiltorn were already half-way toward the battlements.
After an hour of brutal, all-out warfare, a lucky Obthraie made it to the lip of the defences with a jagged, stone sword in their hand.
Oliver ducked their first tired swing, leapt up and cracked the enemy across their face with the butt of his crossbow, sending the Creation to the moat as three more leapt up behind them. Oliver threw down his crossbow and drew his sword, cursing as he panted.
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Further down the wall, Carter whipped his heavy crossbow at a foe’s head, knocking them backwards. While they stumbled, he swept up a fallen Obthraie’s sword and ran it through the assailant’s chest.
Carlisla, further down still, was busy shield-slamming Shade Hounds with one arm while using her off-hand to cast billows of white, Arcancy-thick smoke.
Upon hitting three different soldiers with the magic, their faces turned placid and calm, like they were looking out over a sunset as opposed to a war. By her magic, they’d attained something close to peace.
Carlisla then, one-by-one, threw them over the ramparts.
Despite Carter’s injuries, he ducked and weaved between the strikes of another six-armed attacker. With a shout, he spun and brought the slate-stone blade across the soldier’s throat with a crack, sending them to the ground.
Across the way, Oliver decapitated a Shade Hound and destroyed a ladder with a sharp swing from Iron Tooth. He then turned and noticed Carter’s slashed foe gluing itself back together. Oliver barrelled through the crowd, cutting down enemies and avoiding the weapons of both friends and foes. He shouldered through right as the Obthraie had regained its feet and ripped his sword down through them again, panting, “You can’t...use their...weapons. They aren’t Flamed.”
Carter, who’d only just turned around, nodded and threw the stone blade over the defences. “Apparently so- watch out!”
Another pair of monsters were poised to leap from the ladder when an expertly placed arrow struck one in the shoulder, sending it clattering into the other and off into the sludge below.
Carter spun around in confusion as Oliver hacked away at the ladder, sending it tumbling to the moat as another landed further down. The swordsman swore loudly and shouted above the rampant noise, “This is a short-term plan at best!”
Carter grabbed two hand-crossbows and fired both bolts at a pair of ladder-bearers. “You got a better one?”
“Maybe… Will Raeken respond to your call?” Oliver asked, dragging Carter below the barricade-cover as a dozen or more spears flew overhead.
Carter teetered his head uncertainly,
“No, but he’ll respond to mine!”
They young men turned to see Sarah slide into their cover, letting out her ear-bleeding whistle. Sarah’s smile then vanished and she raised her crossbow, firing a bolt passed Carter’s ear into a Shade Hound, knocking it off the battlements.
Carter barked, “Sweet Rii! Shoot that close to me again, Robinson, and I’ll shoot back!”
Oliver looked at her, covered in battle-grime and sweat, as stone spears exploded overhead and war-cries filled the air.
Sarah nocked another arrow and glanced back at him.
The swordsman was clearly worn through, both in body and heart. His hair was matted to his head and his bruised fingers loosely wrapped around Iron Tooth.
“Glad you could join us,” he said, altogether too softly.
“I did have to move my lunch with the emperor, but it’s alright…” Sarah grinned and they both fell into light laughter as Raeken came slamming to the battlement stones, scaring the daylight from Sarah’s brother.
Carter clutched his heart as the dragon plodded over to them and bowed with a deep nod of his head. “How may I assist you, Baroness?”
Oliver smothered his grin and Sarah rolled her eyes, he shuffled over to the beast and tried his best not to let the creature’s toxic gaze unnerve him. “We need you to take out as many of those ladders as you can. Whether it's acid or claws, I don’t care, just anything you can think off.”
Raeken stared at Oliver rather blankly and then turned pointedly to Sarah, and asked in the ancient tongue of Garganii, “Why is the idiot speaking to me?”
Sarah wheezed with laughter, placing a sorry hand on Oliver’s arm, much to the boy’s confusion. “Just- what he said.”
“As you wish,” spoke the Drakonian, back in Common Tongue. He leapt onto the walls and his enormous reptilian wings swept out and pushed him up into the sky.
Carter leant over and yelled, “He needs to give better warnings, Sarah, that scaly bastard is taking cycles off my life!”
A ladder slammed down right by the trio’s heads and they sprung up to see a dozen Shade Hounds clambering its broad rungs. As they all leapt to begin battering the poles of the ladder, several more stone spears whistled toward them, forcing all three Legacies back beneath cover.
Carter cursed, shouting above the racket. “We’re about to have company!”
Sarah yelled back, “We can’t let them make it past the battlements! If they get by us they’ll catch the other Legacies from behind!” Sarah inched her head up again but another stone shard exploded next to her and she ducked back down.
Oliver stuck his head out for half a moment and saw the pack of wolves galloping up the ladder. He then looked over his small forces and saw how narrowly they were keeping enemies from planting their feet behind the defensive lines. All the while there was more screaming than he’d thought thirty voices were capable of. All around him, panicked shouts and raging cries filled the air. He saw a young woman struck by a thin spear of stone, sending her cold to the floor of the battlements. Someone ducked to her side, but she wasn’t moving.
On either side of Oliver, both Carter and Sarah sprung up and fired their weapons before another cloud of rock projectiles drove them back down. Oliver saw the panic writhing on their faces as they worked to unhook the ladder-holds, and he glanced across the way to see Carlisla’s shield lying on the ground.
She was busy throwing a damaged ladder off the battlements when she caught his eye and Oliver gestured to the shield. Without hesitation, she read his mind and kicked it across the platform toward him.
Oliver snatched the shield and stood up, holding it high as shards of rock smashed against the steel brackets. Covering his head, the warrior raised his sword and slashed across the nearest ladder-pole, splintering off a chunk of timber as the snarls grew closer. Oliver glanced around the edge of the shield to catch the nearest of the wolves closing in fast. He slammed his sword into the pole again, but the bombardment of spears forced him to stay tightly bound behind the shield.
Sarah leapt up, firing a bolt at the first in line and turned it dust. As she grabbed another bolt, a fragment of jagged rock tore across her shoulder, sending her to the ground, swearing and clutching the wound.
Carter scrambled beneath the cover of Oliver’s shield and shouted, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!” she bit back, cranking back the crossbow-string.
A mad chorus of snarls and barks filled the air as Oliver turned to see a Shade Hound leaping to the last rung of the ladder.
The swordsman leapt up onto the ladder to meet it, and drove his sword into its breast and threw the beast down into the moat. His sword was slick with dark essence and before he knew it, another came barrelling forward. Oliver leapt further down the ladder, feeling it groan dangerously beneath him and slashed the monster across its face.
The hound roared out in pain and it leapt at the boy again with gnashing teeth, knocking his shield aside and landing squarely on the point of his blade.
Oliver let out a screech of pain as the monster crushed him to the ladder, fully pierced by his sword as it started to slip off of him. He let out a relieved breath only to realise the creature was impaled too deeply to slip from the blade. It began to roll, utterly lodged onto his sword.
Sarah glanced back over at the same moment and screamed, “Oliver!”
The beast rolled off Oliver, not wounded enough to turn to dust, and fell toward the moat but not off of the blade, ripping the swordsman down against the rungs. The beast hung dangling below, its weight tearing the muscles in his shoulder as he refused to relinquish the sword.
Carter tried to jump onto the battlements when another wave of spears came hurtling toward them and Sarah ripped him back behind cover, shouting, “Oli! Shield!”
Oliver let out a scream of agony as he pulled the dangling shield up and slammed it across his head and back, narrowly deflecting half a dozen stone projectiles as he was showered with fragments of slate. He looked down through the rungs as sweat dripped from his nose, gritting his teeth in tortured agony as the Shade Hound dangled limply, his sword buried all the way up to the hilt in its body. He tried to shake the creature loose, but even the act of trying to jiggle the sword sent searing pain through his shoulder and back.
Oliver felt heavy steps clattering on the rungs further down and tilted his head to see more Shade Hounds tearing up the ladder, with twenty Soiltorn moving at pace behind them. He looked up at saw Carlisla battling three different ladders’ worth of enemies by herself, ducking swords, evading spears, and smashing stone warriors across their heads with her spiked club. She roared like an animal as she threw a Soiltorn over the battlements.
Sarah and Carter kept trying to rise, but before they had another chance, more Shade Hounds breached the wall by another ladder.
Oliver caught Sarah’s eye as he gripped the shield hard in his hand and winced under the pain of his mangled shoulder.
She seemed to read his face as he rolled onto his back, tears leaking from his eyes as his shoulder twisted, ripping more muscles in his arm with every sway of the dangling beast below.
Oliver looked down at the nearest Shade Hound, now only six or so rungs away, and he raised the shield as Sarah’s voice screamed out, “Let go of the sword!”
Oliver slammed the shield on the opposite rail of the ladder, chipping off a large chunk of timber. He struck it again, and again and again, driving the gouge as deep as he could. The entire ladder creaked and groaned and began to bow in on itself as another flurry of Soiltorn spears showered over them. His arm was so dead and numb he could scarcely lift it in his own defence. Oliver screamed as he got shield over top of him again, stopping a long sliver of stone from hitting his chest, but another ripped into his leg, scraping the bone of his shin. He let the roar of pain out and used it to drive the shield into the pole again, causing the entire structure to tremble and creak.
The nearest Shade Hound’s snarl turned to an unnerved yelped as it tried to turn, blocked by its allies behind it.
Oliver wheezed as tears fell from his eyes and he readied the shield again. He couldn’t feel his right arm anymore, but he knew Iron Tooth was still in his grip.
“Oli, please! It’s just a sword!” Sarah yelled, pulling Carter out of the way and driving her sword through an Obthraie’s chest.
Oliver couldn’t see her from the way he was lying and shook his head weakly. “It’s not.” His fingers went so numb that his grip began to falter. “It’s all I’ve ever had.”
Oliver raised the shield with a crying shout and slammed it into the ladder as thunder rolled across the clear, blue sky. The beam cracked and folded in on itself, and for a moment, the pain in his shoulder vanished as all became weightless. And before he knew it, the moment had passed and he was falling through the wind as the walls of Fort Guardian raced up behind him.
The Shade Hounds and the entire platoon of Soiltorn let out screeches of panic as the ladder fell out from beneath them too, and together they plummeted toward the moat. Some shattered against the grass that overhung the trench and the rest sunk deep into the sludge itself.
Oliver hit the toxic mess so hard that he was three feet deep in an instant. It filled his lungs slowly and his body seized and tried to expel it, to no effect. A shadow began to wrap around his mind. Ever since Amekot, he knew an enchantment when it was laid upon him. And the moment the moat-water touched his tongue, he could feel it lulling him to sleep. He was drowning. It was easier than he thought it would be. The shapes of the Obthraie and Shade Hounds slowly went still beside him. The last thing he felt before the darkness entrenched him, were long, smooth talons sinking into the meat of his shoulder.