It was shocking that Bertrand had actually required the lineman's shout to notice them, given the fact that they were rushing down the hills and running across the plains like some tsunami of bloodlust and madness.

Seer, there had to be tens of thousands of them, all rushing at the wall.

Even from miles away Bertrand could hear the stampede, he just hadn’t noticed in the beginning because he was zoned up.

The worse thing about all of this though, wasn’t that they were hopelessly outnumbered, or lacked any artillery support, it was the fact that the zombies were too far away to actually shoot at.

And even though they were rapidly closing the distance it would still take them at least twenty minutes to get within range of the defender's guns.

It gave them the chance to frantically send out a messenger to gather reinforcements, but it also meant that they had enough time to contemplate their imminent demise.

For the first few minutes, Bertrand didn’t think of anything, he was just in so much shock that he couldn't tear his eyes away from the approaching swarm.

When he recovered from his shock though, he found there wasn’t really a lot for him to think about, he had family but he held none of them close to his heart.

He had a hometown, but it wasn’t very homey.

He had a past but it wasn’t worth reminiscing over.

And all that his bland future would amount to was him fighting in a few campaigns and then retiring.

Perhaps earn some medals and maybe even a bone button if he was lucky.

Though that was unlikely, he hadn’t graduated near the top of his class and those were the sorts of people who got bone buttons.

Ironically enough he had pitied most of them, he figured anyone who got in the top twenty percent was bound to die. As they were almost certainly going to be sent into the most rough and volatile warzones of the upcoming conflict with the Coalition.

Instead, it would be him who died first and it wasn’t even going to be a worthy death fighting against the brainwashed fanatics of the manipulative and tyrannical Coalition.

Instead he was going to die an unworthy death, killing the reanimated civilians he had sworn an oath to protect.

So in the last few minutes he had left, Bertrand made peace with his life. He may not have done much nor would he really have amounted to much in the grand scheme of things were he to survive.

But he had done enough, he was a proper duty bound soldier of the Francia Conglomerate.

The lives of the soldierity class were like money, but on a national level.

Each nation spent them in order to acquire new land or to secure borders, some spent them just to acquire fancy titles and because they simply had what they felt was an excess amount.

Francia at least spent them for a cause, and so long as his life brought solace to the peoples suffering, then he considered his death at least honourable.

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It was strange, as the colossal horde grew ever closer his heart grew ever colder.

And then like a tipping point in his sanity had been reached, he went back to thinking of the swarm as zombies instead of the deceased civilians he should have been able to protect.

He didn’t notice when the messenger got back but he did notice the full four companies they brought with them.

The average company was meant to consist roughly of eighty men. With the ratio of troops being sixty linemen, two officers, ten grenadiers, two banner men, five skirmishers, ten light infantry, and finally, one runner.

That was all paper strength though, in reality most companies only had sixty or so soldiers, and as far as Bertrand knew there had never been a company with the exact specification of troops as was advised by the war manuals.

The four companies that had come to their aid for instance were all linemen and infantrymen, with a few hulking grenadiers as backup for when the wall inevitably got overrun.

Bertrand spared a few moments to ponder their strange and rather late reinforcements, instead of trickling in over time they had all arrived together.

They weren’t stationed together though, so why had they come together?

Perhaps thanks to all the adrenaline flowing through his body he had temporarily got smarter, for he figured out what the answer was almost immediately after he got confused.

The response companies must have been contacted first but rather than rush to reinforce them, they had instead started to set up a fallback line, while the messengers continued back to the command section to gather reinforcements directly from there instead.

These few moments were all he could spare though as soon the sound of the zombie horde become so excessively overbearing he couldn’t even hear himself think.

It was ironic how the zombies used to be the quiet and relentless ones, while the soldiers had been loud and unsturdy for lack of a better word.

Now each and every last lineman and infantryman that lined the walls were a stalwart defender of Francia, no expressions of fear adorned their faces, only grimaces and sneers. Not a single word was uttered either.

Well, at least none that Bertrand could hear.

The thudding of the zombies grew louder and louder as they gained more and more ground.

It was an actual stampede at this point.

And soon enough the first of the zombies had reached the carrion wall, and even though no order was spoken, mostly because there were no officers around to speak any, the defenders fired as one.

Pure bolts of force streaked across the battlefield, striking and obliterating the front rows of the zombie charge. Piercing through multiple zombies before dissipating.

Dark red blood shot out into the air, not propelled forth by rapid heartbeats forcing blood through ruined arteries but rather by the intense pressure caused by the force bolts impacting and reducing entire organs to mush.

Decaying arms and scraps of filthy fabric also arced through the air, alongside the occasional leg.

There was also no doubt an immense amount of liquid organs that were being splattered everywhere alongside splinters of bone and disgusting hair.

But Bertrand was thankfully to far away to see any of that, he had only noticed the shirts and hoods that were fluttering up into the air now that their wearers had been disposed of because they tended to be brightly coloured.

Despite the devastating attack though, it did little overall to halt their advance, within less than twenty seconds the zombies were once again pushing forwards and getting closer rapidly.

Their numbers easily rivalled every other attack combined, the only reason they even got slowed down was thanks to their poor coordination which meant they tripped over what remained of the zombies who led their charge.

It would take most of the linemen another two minutes to be ready to fire again, it was an unsustainable rate of fire.

A musket volley every few minutes wasn’t going to save them, not when all it did was inconvenience the horde slightly.

Soon they would be scaling the wall, zombies clambering over each other and tramping the ones at the bottom in order to haul themselves over it.