Kyros wrenches Butcher onto his back. The man is speaking gibberish but he is speaking, which means he isn’t dead. Mung is yelling something but Kyros can’t hear him over the pounding in his ears.
“Can you hear me, Butcher? Answer dammit!”
A burst of wind grazes over Kyros's head. Whoever or whatever is throwing them is severely accurate. Kyros shoves at the massive lump of flesh, trying to get Butcher to move but he may as well be trying to push a boulder up a hill.
“Gocchaa,” Butcher moans, his gaze unfixed as his eyes dart around listlessly. “Gochaa.”
Kyros switches to Butcher's head. He grabs the man by the armpits and starts hauling. Another rock zips past, so close this time Kyros can hear the hum as it grazes past his ear. More shouting. Mung has come back with people. They’re all yelling at the same time. Some take up positions at the crenels, pulling back bows and aiming in the direction of the projectiles. They fire blindly, their arrows screaming into the darkness.
“I can’t see anything!” one man shouts just as a rock shoots through the gap between the wall, smearing him against the ground.
“Keep firing!” Mung commands his screaming men. “Help Sir Knight get Butcher!”
One of the more collected men rushes to Kyros's side. Together, they haul Butcher by the arms across the wall, towards the eastern mountain. It’s a long way. Rocks continue to zip past them, crashing perfectly into their targets almost like magnets attracting to each other. One of the projectiles splinters near Kyros's head, slashing his forehead. Kyros blinks back blood. He keeps dragging.
“We’re nearly there,” the man next to Kyros grunts. "By Sharn, this bastard is heavy." Grimacing, the man lifts his head an inch, to wipe the sweat off his brows or stretch Kyros doesn't know, because in an instant a rock has replaced the man's head.
Kyros dives to the ground as a volley of sharp explosions thunder around him. He can feel the wall shake as rocky shells disintegrate against the hard obsidian, raining pebbled debris on top of him.
When he finally looks up again, no one is standing. Those that have not taken cover behind the merlons have been reduced to splatters of gore.
He hears Mung’s shout echo down the battlement,
“Get to the mountain! Now!”
Kyros rises carefully into a crouch. Faint moonlight dribbles through holes in the storm clouds, illuminating Butcher's delirious eyes. The big man is mumbling something but Kyros cannot make out what it is. Blood continues to stream from the cut in his forehead and he wipes it roughly with the back of his sleeve. He starts to drag Butcher again, averting his eyes from the headless mess that was a human just moments ago.
Inch by inch, Kyros moves closer to the steel doors. He watches as they slide open and men pour out with bows and lit torches. The night is soon filled with the cacophony of twanging bows.
But the rocks come just as quickly. Kyros makes it three feet before a man with half a face collapses in his path. He can feel warm air rushing through the steel doors now. Focus on that. A hundred feet more. The rocks seem to be everywhere. All around him, men are launched off their feet in explosions of rock and blood, some dying the instant they step out from the mountain. Kyros yells for them to get back but his voice is lost in the noise of battle.
An older man drops down near Kyros. He thinks it's another dead person before the man crawls under Butcher's body and slings a thick arm over his shoulders. Kyros shouts to get the man's attention.
“They’re long-range barrages! We’re sitting targets on the wall!”
“Then keep down!” the man shouts back. “We’ll wait them out inside the-”
A skull-shaking crack resounds from the top of the mountain. Kyros looks up just in time to see the remains of a massive boulder breaking apart against the snow.
“Get back!”
He shouts to the people around him but the roar of the avalanche engulfs all. Snow and ice crash down from the mountainside, smothering the wall in white. Kyros hauls Butcher back with all his strength, barely clearing the monstrous waves of snow. It sweeps along the wall and down on either side, carrying screaming men with it to the depths below.
Then it is quiet.
Kyros can't hear anything but feels his ears ringing. He looks around without lifting his head higher than the wall’s barriers. Grey-cloaks litter the battlement, the furs on their hoods fluttering timidly in the wind.
Then, movement. Faintly at first, those who have survived begin to pick themselves back up. Some immediately rush to cower against the walls, while others lay dying in the snow. The rocks have stopped coming but the damage they have done is boundless. In the dim light of lanterns and the crescent moon, the obsidian wall glistens red.
Kyros crawls over to the nearest crenel and peeks out between the shooting hole. It’s too dark. The lanterns hanging on the outside of the wall have all been smashed. Snow is falling rapidly now. Even with Mung’s telescope, Kyros doubts he can see through the grey-white screen. But the thought of the towering crab monsters lurking somewhere out there makes his blood run cold.
“I’m done with this!”
A few yards down the wall, a man springs to his feet and starts to run. He's heading for one of the lifts along the south side of the wall, screaming, “I’m getting off this damn place!”
“No!” Kyros yells. “Get down!”
The man isn’t listening. He lurches for the lift, making it three steps away from the hidden lever before a rock takes him in the back. The man flies through the railing, tumbling down the other side.
Mung’s voice rings across the snow,
“Stop moving unless you want to end up pancaked! We can’t see them but they can see us, aye?”
No one moves. The living crawl into whatever hiding places they can find, clutching their weapons like lifelines. Silence hangs across the Battlefront. There isn't even any moaning from the dying.
Because the yaojins always aim to kill quickly.
From the safety of his spot, Kyros tries to find Butcher. He spots him not far away and is amazed to see the man still breathing. The good feeling is short-lived though. He notices Butcher's eyes are now closed and the man isn’t speaking anymore.
He's going to die.
Kyros tries hard to accept reality. The big man is missing a fist-sized chunk from the right side of his head, and even now Kyros thinks he can see bits of pink brain matter leaking from the hole.
All for naught, he thinks bitterly. All we do is for naught.
And then Butcher’s eyes open, and finds his.
“They got me good,” the man wheezes through thin lips. “Sharn be fucked they got me, Sir Kyros.”
Kyros is just about to offer his automatic, You’ll be alright, but stops himself. What is the point of hiding the truth from a dying man?
“Yea, they did,” he says instead. “They really fucking took you back there.”
A sluggish smile stretches across Butcher’s face. “10 silvers says you’re next, Sir Kyros.”
Kyros smiles back. “I’ll take it, Butcher.”
Butcher laughs, but the sound is lost amidst a strange new noise, like wood being scraped against stone. Kyros peeks back out at the snow. The darkness is too thick to make out anything.
But then someone screams,
“Striders!”
And seconds later, massive creatures loom out of the dark, lumbering across the fields of ice on multiple towering legs. The creatures are what Kyros spotted before. But up close, they are even bigger, almost three-quarters the height of the entire wall. But that’s impossible, Kyros tells himself. The wall is over three hundred feet high.
With each step the striders take, the world seems to shake. Clouds of snow are shaken loose from the ground, dusting over the monsters’ fur-covered bodies. As they get closer, Kyros spots something more alarming. Riding on top of each strider are groups of yaojin, their weapons held high and cloaks whipping in the storm.
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“What the hell are those things?” Kyros asks though he can’t hear his own voice. Shouts are coming from the direction of the mountain’s peak. He looks towards the noise. Along the side of the mountain, a series of metal latches begin bursting open. Men lean out of them, holding flaming bottles aloft. They’re too high up to see their faces clearly, but the fire in their hands cast enough light to show the determined spark in their eyes.
“Aim!”
About ten latches have opened. A glance at the other end of the wall shows ten more, all with Battlefront men holding bottles of fire.
“Throw!”
Trails of red and orange stream down the mountain towards the approaching army. Kyros follows the bottles as they sail into the storm, some disappearing for good but others ending in incredible bursts of fire, like a flower blooming out of the night.
“Aim!” Almost as soon as the first bottles are thrown, more follow. “Throw!”
It’s like a meteor shower raining down on the yaojins. The sounds of shattering glass, followed by the empty whoosh of flames, play accompaniment to the agonizing screams of the beast-folk. One of the monstrous striders lets out a rattling, guttural cry as it topples over in a plume of black smoke, spilling its passengers down into the dark.
Cheers erupt from the wall. “Formations!” shouts Mung. “Let’s show those furry bastards the color of their own blood!”
With restored vigor, the Battlefront soldiers take up arms again. Bows are drawn, loosened. Arrows streams, finding their marks in yaojins as they try desperately to defend against the onslaught on the back of their living siege weapons.
“Aim! Throw!”
Kyros grabs a nearby bow and loaded quiver and joins in the fight. The most he’s used of a stringed weapon was during his training as a Kesrockian Knight, and it quickly becomes clear that he’s gotten rusty. His first arrow barely reaches the leg of the closest strider. He pulls too hard on the second and the arrow sails out of sight. But he keeps firing, loosening more and more arrows onto the enemy. By the time he's emptied his first quiver, he's beginning to puncture flesh.
“Aim!”
From the top of the mountain, the men continue to grab bottles, light them, and throw. But the attack is less effective now. The striders have paused their advances and are retreating out of the range. A single step of their great legs covers a thousand of any mortal horse's, and soon they are out of reach of human projectiles altogether.
The bottles stop falling.
“Hold your stations!” comes the shout from somewhere Kyros cannot see. “Keep the torches lit!”
Then, before anyone can think of another way to attack, the atmosphere changes. It starts as a whisper, an absorbing feeling in the wind like air is being sucked through the canyon. Kyros looks around to see if he isn't the only one feeling it. The confusion on the others' faces tells him he isn't.
The whisper turns into a whistle, which builds into a low moan then a loud groan. Kyros is sure that he isn’t dreaming it now, because men around him have put down their bows and are shouting to confirm it with each other.
“Oh…”
A hand latches onto his boot and Kyros nearly jumps back. It’s Butcher, trying to get his attention.
"What is it?" Kyros crouches down. "Are you... do you want Mung here?"
But Butcher isn’t looking at him. The man’s eyes have turned glassy and Kyros isn't even sure he sees him. The big man opens his mouth then snaps it shut, his teeth clicking.
"That... smells nice," he says finally, only to start fumbling at his throat like he’s trying to get an invisible collar off. He’s choking on his own blood. As soon as Kyros realizes this he drops his bow to help the man, and is thrown to the floor as a pillar of light smashes into the mountaintop, burrowing through to the other side in an earth-shattering explosion of color.
Kyros screams in pain. In horror. Light streams into his eyes, fills him with burning heat. He thrashes around and finds snow. He buries his face into it, letting the scalding winds lash across his back. A heartbeat later, the wall trembles as another boom resounds through the canyon. Light is everywhere. So is noise. A hundred men screaming at once. Kyros wants to dig into the belly of the realm, wants to put distance between him and the chaos, even if it’s just an inch.
Eventually, it stops. The heat dies down. Darkness follows.
Kyros pulls out of the snow. The entire mountaintop is gone. Flames lick along the blackened snow where he's just watched his comrades throw their bottles of hope. Now, nothing remains of that part of the mountain but a smoldering hole, like a giant had taken a bite out of it. Kyros turns towards the other mountain. It has suffered the same attack. Smoke billows from out the crater. Through it, Kyros can see the Battlefront’s metallic foundations, glowing red hot in the raging fire.
“Goddesses,” he breathes. “Nranhana and Sharn protect us.”
The ringing in his ears has lessened enough for Kyros to hear moaning. He sees the men stuck on the wall with him start to get up as well. None of them look hurt, only dazed. One after another, they lift their gazes up at the missing mountaintops, and Kyros sees his own horror reflected on their faces. He knows their pain but doesn’t feel it as strongly. They have called this place home much longer than he has, after all. In fact, he would’ve made it down the mountains by now if it wasn’t for the yaojin attack.
You should never have gone back up, a small and despicable voice says inside him. You should’ve left while you had the chance.
No, Kyros argues back firmly. I can’t leave men to die. Even without my armor and sigil, I am a knight still.
With his courage renewed by a sense of duty, Kyros turns to the remaining men on the wall. “Gather all the pickaxes!” he shouts. “We need to make a way through the snow!”
Thirteen angry faces turn towards him.
“I’m not gonna take no orders from a newbie!” one of them shouts, but then a rock pulverizes him and everyone starts to scramble for their tools.
As the Battlefront men dash past him, Kyros crouches back down to check on Butcher. The big man is dead. His eyes stare hollowly out from a pale face, a thin line of bloody mucus hanging from one corner of his mouth. Kyros curses. He looks for Mung but can't find the man anywhere. The others are at the mound of collapsed snow now, hacking at it with pickaxes and spears. They’re making way, until a massive shudder runs through the wall, causing another bout of ice and rocks to fall down.
Perhaps it is instinct. Perhaps it is primal fear. But before the wall can shake a second time, Kyros knows exactly what’s causing it. He races over to the nearest crenel, not caring that the top half of his body is exposed to the terrifying projectile attacks, and looks down.
The striders have made it to the base of the wall. One by one, they raise their front legs and thrusts them hard into the wall, shaking the mountains with the power of their massive muscles. Most of the monster’s legs simply glance off the obsidian but a few manage to lodge into the cracks, and it’s on these legs that the yaojin use as footholds as they begin to scale the wall.
“All hands on deck!” Kyros shouts. “Leave the pickaxes!” He races for his dropped bow and starts firing down at the yaojin. His hands are shaking badly and his shots miss wildly. The yaojin still on the backs of the striders spot him and start firing their own arrows. Kyros barely ducks out of the way in time.
“They’re climbing the walls!” he shouts. “We need to drive them back!”
Everyone is too focused on digging into the mountain to even look his way. But even as they hack away at the blockade, more are being added from up top. The beam had loosened everything it did not destroy, and with each shake of the wall, a fresh layer of snow slides down the mountainside to pile against the lift.
They need more time, Kyros realizes. I can give them more.
He hears a whoosh behind him. A rusty iron hook has grabbed onto the wall’s ledge. Another joins it a few feet away, then more. Kyros sprints towards them without a second to think. Pulling out his dagger he attacks the rope attached to the hook, sawing through it with all his strength. The rope starts to fray. Kyros doubles his efforts, but by then the first of the climbers have reached the top of the other end of the wall. With a final hard tug, Kyros severs the rope from the hook, sending the yaojins hanging on to the other end plummeting to their deaths.
With a vicious war cry, he snatches up his bow and sprints towards the east section of the wall, leaping over dead bodies and piles of snow.
But he’s too late. Cloaked yaojins are streaming into the mountain already. Kyros fires an arrow but it’s lost in the wave of enemies as they pour into the small steel lift. Kyros reaches again into his quiver but it’s empty. He looks around the ground for another.
A hand lashes out, snagging onto the end of his cloak. Kyros loses his footing and is pulled towards the edge of the wall. He spins around, ready to face his assailant, only to see it is Mung.
The thin man is bleeding from a cut over his right eye. But the other latches onto Kyros with fury.
“Take the lift down the wall,” he says. “There’s a horse waiting. Go now. You are the only one who can.”
“I’m not abandoning,” Kyros says. He tries to twist out of Mung’s grasp but the man yanks him back, shouting,
“There isn’t time to argue, Kyros Argonston! You can leave because you never intended to stay!” He sneers at the surprise on Kyros’s face. “You didn’t think that was hidden, Sir Knight, did you? I know where you were the night of the attack!”
The wall shakes as more striders latch onto its side. Hands are starting to emerge over the barriers, their dark claws scratching the obsidian.
Kyros shoves Mung aside. He pulls out Frostbane and slashes down on the nearest hand, severing fingers clean from their joints. The owner of that hand screams and falls back. Kyros moves onto the next hand. A face emerges, teeth bared. He aims for the eyes but the yaojin is fast, ducking out of the way and leaping over Kyros with a single bound, right into the path of Mung’s sword. The man cleaves through the beast’s chest with a practiced swing, then turns to Kyros again.
"This place isn't fit for a knight."
Kyros shrugs, hefting Frostbane over his shoulder. "But there's still honor to be had in the coldest of places."
Together, they advance down the wall together, cutting down any yaojin in their path. But there are too many. The beast-folk vault over the sides of the walls in droves, and soon Kyros is forced to stand back-to-back with Mung as they fend off blows from every direction.
“Looks like you missed your chance, Sir Knight.” Mung grunts as he parries an overhead swipe. “Now you’re going to die here like the rest of us, aye?”
Kyros stabs with Frostbane, pushing back a snarling yaojin. He almost doesn’t believe these are the same kin as the girl with the lizard tail back in the city. Kyros has seen her in the market square on some days, always dressed in a heavy cloak that almost-but-not-quite covers her horns and scaly tail. Sir Jernal always called her by the demeaning name of ‘beast-folk,’ but Kyros can’t imagine a more fitting name for these creatures.
With an ear-piercing scream, a bat-like yaojin leaps over Kyros’s head and drops down on Mung. Kyros whirls around, Frostbane singing in an arc, and slices the bat while it’s still airborne. The beast spirals to the ground in front of Mung, who kicks it away.
The yaojins begin to hiss and shriek. Waving their weapons, they charge.
“Think I pissed them off aye?” Mung laughs as he holds up his sword. “Ready to die for King and Country, Sir Knight?”
“No,” answers Kyros, raising Frostbane to the sky. “Not yet.”
He starts chanting in the same way he’s heard Cathra do it before.
“Forefathers of old, lend me thy strength…”
As fangs and claws close in, Kyros feels fire bursting along the edge of Frostbane. He chants faster, louder. With each word Cathra’s sword glows brighter until it is a beacon in the darkness. Then, when he feels he can no longer hold in the heat, Kyros swings down with all his might, watching in silent awe as tongues of red fire leap across the dark stone. His yaojin foes scramble out of the way, the unlucky ones burning the instant flames lick across their twisted bodies.
Moving as if he's in a dream, Kyros starts to bring Frostbane up for another strike, but the sword is gone, replaced by a writhing serpent of fire. And it hungers for flesh. Pain stabs suddenly into Kyros’s fingers and he tries to drop the serpent. He can't. He can only watch as fire consumes his hand, running up his wrist and arm until it reaches his face.
And then he is lost.