Shooting into the sky above the fort, Mark scanned the forest for the glowing signal he had spotted when he had fought the priest previously.

Come on, where are you?

Swooping just above the trees, Mark sped past in search of the priest. But there was no sign of him. It was more than that. He was fairly certain the man was intentionally concealing himself.

I know you're here; just show yourself.

Roaring in frustration, unable to spot the figure who just blasted his wall, Mark swung the throne ship around and sped toward the shielded cultists moving toward the fort, skimming only a few meters above the ground he eyed one of them.

Want to play this game?

He pushed down on his controls, increasing the ship's speed. It shot across the snowy landscape in seconds and smashed straight through one of the timber shields. Debris and men alike flung across the ground, and the ship rocked violently, threatening to fall from the sky. Several lights flashed across the cockpit, but it seemed intact, and he swooped back around. Eyeing his attackers with a furious bend to his brow, Mark sent a burst of lightning thundering into a second rolling fortification. The explosion sent charred bodies flying and burning timbers shooting.

Mark panted. That was dumb, but he had worked too hard for some pest to hide in the forest and shoot at his walls.

I didn’t get him.

He was beyond frustrated, but he couldn't keep this up. The ship had little energy, and Mark didn’t want to exhaust it just in case he needed to use it again. His enemy had proven smarter than he gave them credit, and Mark was going to need to be better.

His attacks had sowed chaos in the enemy lines and killed a decent number, but they were reorganizing and continuing their march forward. For now, he was best served to return to the wall and to aid the breached section in its defense, so Mark turned back and brought the ship down in a hurry.

Running through Fort Winterclaw, he spotted Henric, who joined him with a couple of mercenaries.

“Where are you headed, Imperator?”

“Where do you think? We can’t allow them to take advantage of the breach.”

“What about the priest? Did you manage to get him?”

“Damn it, don't remind me,” Mark hissed. “He got away. But I will get him. We deal with this, and then I'll come up with a plan.”

Two response groups had already made it to the breach, setting up a wall of shields and spears as they waited for the inevitable.

"Do what you need to," Henric said. "Me and my men will support the front line."

"Thank you, Henric," Mark nodded.

Odds were against them, still, the enemy wasn’t focusing the entirety of its forces on the breach, likely to give them more to think about. However, Mark only saw that as a bonus. Between the fortified trench and flamethrowers, he wasn’t too worried about the minor distracting forces attacking elsewhere and left them for his people to deal with.

Reaching the wall, Mark climbed a nearby platform from which several archers fired, with a decent vantage over the breach.

The enemy’s rolling mantlets soaked up arrows but stopped once they reached the trenches, and their value was greatly diminished. Mark raised his hand to take one of the rolling fortifications out but held back. A handful of cultists fired arrows from behind the wooden shields, but the real risk was the men climbing through the trenches, so he decided to save his energy for them.

Their enemy had improved, but slaughter still awaited them as they tried to force their way through barbed wire while under fire. An arrow whizzed inches from his head, and Mark dove below the wall. A second later, he watched one of the enemy’s arrows slam into the neck of a man beside him, sending him toppling from the platform to his death.

Ignore it, he gritted his teeth. They were out killing their enemy fifty to one from here. The occasional loss wasn’t worth losing his cool over. He needed to save himself. The breach was what was important.

Craning around the wall’s edge, he spotted the dirty, bloodied faces of several cultists as they pushed toward the wall’s hole, where a line of shields and spears awaited them.

Mark picked his target, aiming for between a half dozen weary cultists, and fired. The effect was undeniable. Four men were blasted away in a second, and those that remained were shaken and slowed and picked apart by arrows in the following seconds.

More cultists pushed from behind, their shields held high above their heads and eating up most of the arrows that came their way. But all it took was a wounding arrow to take them out of the battle, and the force pushing forward slimmed in numbers with every step they took, littering the battlefield with the bodies of their wounded and dying comrades. And then the flames came—shooting out across their ranks and setting several alight within seconds, but Mark's eyes widened as he realized that the flamethrowers were out of range of the breach. It seemed that their enemy had picked their target wisely, and a narrow strip of land with bodies blanketing most of the wire now led straight into the fort.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The enemy regrouped, led by a dozen men and many stragglers. But Mark still had enough energy to ruin their day, and a thunderous roar cracked as lightning exploded against their shields. Instantly killing the leaders of the attack group and wounding several others, but it hardly mattered. The zealots defiantly pushed on.

“Arrows!” A man shouted at his side. Dozens of quivers atop the wall were empty.

Mark fired again, blasting several of the cultists away, and felt the dizzying heat of his suit sap at his energy. Panting, he rolled back against the cover of the wall. He needed to rest a moment before shooting again, or he’d risk knocking himself out.

Several more archers yelled for arrows, as their stocks ran dry. There were a dozen cultists stubbornly nearing the breach and their attacks had greatly reduced. Their casualties had been tremendous, but even so, they still had superior numbers and Henric and his men were within reach now.

Mark spotted Henric below, standing at the front of the line with his mercenaries surrounded by ferals.

Nearing the opening, screams echoed out from the cultists as boiling pots poured down on them, and several fell to the ground, grasping at their skin as they convulsed in agony.

A battle cry sounded out, and the remaining cultists charged the last few yards toward the wall's breach, head-long into the spears; several of them skewered before they even reached their enemy, but as their shields clashed against one another and the cultists followed up with short swords and hatchets, several ferals fell.

They had been training relentlessly, but they weren’t ready for seasoned warriors. If not for Henric and his mercenaries cutting through cultist after cultist within seconds, their line likely would have collapsed.

He saw firsthand why Henric had the position he did, parrying strikes and making his foes look like amateurs as he struck them down.

Mark's gaze then drifted back to the trenches where cultists continued to funnel along the path they had created. They were pressed tightly together and would be restricted from using their numbers, but Henric didn’t have enough competent men to hold the line alongside. It was clear they would break through if allowed to continue to stream forward, and even if he fired at them again, Mark knew the one or two blasts he was capable of wouldn’t save them.

Forcing himself to his feet, he eyed the flamethrower platform a few yards away and the barrels of his imitation Greek fire beside it.

It’s our only hope.

Sliding down the ladder, he reached the ground in seconds and bounded for the platform, yelling at the mercenaries manning the flamethrower as he neared.

“Barrel, we need the barrel!”

The men raised eyebrows with confused expressions, the chaoticness of battle messing with them.

“The barrels. Fire!”

One man nodded a second later and grabbed the barrel, and the other followed his lead.

“Help me get it down here, but be careful.”

Precariously, with the heat of battle raging around them, the three carefully pulled the barrel down the ladder, one of the mercenaries slipping a foot in the process but managing to catch themselves before falling.

“Careful, damn it!” Mark hissed, taking hold of the barrel as they reached the snowy floor.

“Come with me. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

“But what about our station?”

“Forget it. They won’t attack there now that they’re so close to breaking through. This is our last chance. Now hurry.”

Another response group had reached the weakened defenders, and bodies were lying all across the breach. The wall of shields was slowly being pushed back, inch by inch, as the attackers ignored their fallen and pushed on.

“We have to hurry,” Mark jumped up the ladder and signaled for the mercenaries to help him haul the barrel up the ladder.

His eyes diverted as another of his followers fell to the cultists, but he had to remain focused.

Panting and wiping sweat from their brows, they pulled the barrel up onto the platform. Mark could feel the heat getting to him; even if the suit itself had cooled substantially from the previous blasts, the effort of lugging the barrel around had well and truly made up for it.

“We need to get it over there,” Mark pointed toward the breach. He didn’t want to drop it right beside the wall; the risk of burning down the entire palisade was too great, but if they could hurl it some distance, they could potentially block their enemy’s path with flames.

Back pressed against the palisade, Mark caught his breath. The task ahead of them was impossible, and he could barely stand from exhaustion when he spotted a familiar face rushing toward the wall with another response group.

“Trayox, up here!” He shouted as loudly as he could, stopping the large man in his tracks. “I need your help.

Trayox nodded and bent his Neanderthal brow, the muscles in his neck and shoulder rippling as he flung himself up the ladder.

“We got this, Imperator. You rest,” one of the mercenaries said as Trayox joined them.

Mark nodded. There wasn’t room for more than three men to throw the barrel anyway.

“On my count. You must throw it far enough not to endanger the wall, understood?”

“Just count, little man,” Trayox growled.

“3…”

“2…”

“1…”

“Throw!”

The men rocked the barrel back and forth with Mark’s count and threw it beyond their attackers. Slamming into the head of a cultist, the barrel burst open, covering the man and the ground around him in several yards of black tar. The viscous substance covered the ground and the approach to the wall, and hopefully, it was far enough away.

“Anyone have an arrow and fire?” Mark yelled.

Behind him, a man raised his hand. “N-no, not an arrow, but we’ve got fire.”

Mark eyed the little fire pit they had been using to light smaller fires across the attacker’s path and dove his gloved hand into it. He grabbed a burning piece of charred wood and swung around to lob it straight into the tar. He wasn’t the best throw, but America's favorite pastime had more than prepared him for a throw of this distance, and it landed in the middle of the tar, sending flames shooting out in all directions, and the land was set ablaze.

Several attackers turned to the flames at their backs, realizing that their escape had now been blocked, while a dozen others screamed in agony as the fires wrapped around them.

“Let’s finish this,” Mark shouted, drawing the sword from his sheath. He had yet to use the weapon but wanted to send a message.

Leaping down from the platform, Mark landed behind the remaining cultists locked in combat with Henric and the other defenders and was joined by Trayox and several others a second later.

Drawing steel, they pushed forward, stabbing at the backs of their enemies, and the cultists realized they were surrounded. But they had no time to react. Within seconds, the sandwiching forces had slaughtered their way through the remaining cultists.

Falling to his knees, Mark panted.

“We actually did it,” Henric grunted. "And we're both alive."

“Unless I'm dreaming."

"This is one shit dream," Henric chuckled.

Within seconds, cheers started to cascade across the fort. The other attacks had no doubt failed long ago.

Flames guarding their backs and their countless enemy bodies dotting the ground, they had beaten them off again.

"So, we've earned another day," Mark sighed.