More and more orcs jumped through the hole in the wall as it was widened, standing their shields upright in front of them to form their own wall behind which they could gather in preparation for the attack. They said nothing, but the sound of their breathing was deep and menacing, a sound that chilled Randall's spine and sapped the strength from his limbs. Someone behind him was whimpering. By the sound of it a boy only just into his teenage years. "Courage, lad," someone said to him. "Think about how Mindy'll thank ye when it's all over. Ye'll be a man then, an' she'll make sure ye know it." The boy replied with a young sounding desperate laugh.

The men on the raised walkway were prising up a couple of the walkways planks to create a hole down which to pour another bucket of oil. Orcs shot up through the gap, sending one of the defenders staggering back with the shaft of an arrow protruding from his chest. More defenders were shooting back down, but the flared rims of the orcs' steel helmets deflected most of their arrows.

The defenders poured the oil and the orcs leapt sideways out from under it, parting to form two smaller shield walls. A dropped torch then created a large puddle of fire between them into which orcs entering the city had to jump before running to the side. Morris shouted an order and one of the turret weapons was discharged, shooting dozens or arrows at the gap in the wall. Orcs crowding outside, waiting to get in, were hit and a great cheer went up from the defenders as several fell back with arrows in their faces and shoulders where they'd found gaps in their armour.

Some of the orcs already inside the wall were pointing crossbows above the shields held by their fellows and were shooting arrows at the men operating the turret weapons. "Protect them!" shouted Morris and men ran to cover them with their shields. The second turret weapon waited for more orcs to crowd outside the gap in the wall before it also discharged, but this time the orcs ducked back before they could be hit. Then they ran for the hole, though, pouring through before the huge weapons could be reloaded.

They wanted to assemble their entire force inside the wall, Randall realised. That was when they would charge and attack, hoping to overwhelm the defenders by sheer force of numbers. The defenders were arranging themselves in a semicircle around the orcs, he saw. Forming a barrier in an attempt to protect the rest of the town. The men carrying spears and shields formed the first row with the archers behind them, aiming their bows between them. Arrows flew back and forth whenever anyone on either side saw an opening in the other side's defences.

Randall found himself behind both rows, with the rat catcher, the wool merchant and his men. The townspeople had trained together, had practiced their battle tactics time and again and knew exactly what to do in response to any move made by the orcs. The outsiders would only get in the way. Their time would come when the general melee began and all these carefully orchestrated positions degenerated into chaos.

The last of the orcs were coming through the wall now, and Randall felt his heart race with mingled fear and hope when he saw that one of them was visibly bigger than the others. He paused in the opening for a moment, the flames of burning oil dancing around his steel shod feet, and his long, wolf-like jaws opened in a deafening roar of challenge that caused bladders to spill their contents throughout the town. "A chieftain," whispered Deeks in disbelief.

The chieftain was holding a long halberd, a length of solid oak tipped with a wickedly sharp spearhead and with a chopping axe head just behind, both stained with dried blood. He raised it over his head again and roared another challenge before stepping forward, out of the fire. Arrows flew at him, both from the defenders on the ground and the men on the raised walkway, but they simply rebounded from the sheets of steel covering his body. Then one of the turret weapons discharged again. The chieftain raised an arm to protect his face from the barrage of arrows, then roared again, this time with the entire orc army joining in, a sound so terrible that Randall staggered back several steps, tears of terror and shame flowing down his face despite the secret hope he possessed.

This was it, he knew. The entire army was now gathered inside the wall, the seemingly strong structure that had only delayed the enemy for a few minutes. They would attack at any moment. Randall began to give his head phone the command to take it out of flight mode, ready to transmit yama666, but then he hesitated. Even active just for a moment, was there any way the machines could become aware of it? The computer brains of the priests could only transmit and receive data over a couple of hundred metres, making it necessary for cities to have repeaters to pick up the signals and send them on to VIX in orbit. Were orc chieftains the same? Were there repeaters in the countryside as well? If there were, VIX would become aware of him, would know exactly where he was, the moment his head phone transmitted anything. The priests would send human soldiers to kill him, or perhaps VIX would just drop an asteroid on him. Either way, it would all be over.

They had been using their head phones quite openly during their walk from the hibernaculum to Tettlehall, though, and yet the first the machines had known of them was when they'd told the priest. There couldn't be repeaters in the countryside, then, which left two possibilities. Either the orc chieftains had transmitters in their heads powerful enough to reach all the way to VIX unassisted, in which case the machines would know the moment the chieftain's CRES code was erased...

Or they were out of contact with the machines in orbit, and each other, for most of the time and only checked in with VIX when they were able to go to a place where they had a repeater. Randall thought it likely that they were spaced every few dozen miles or so across the planet, each one with a range of a couple of hundred metres, but even if that were so there was no way of knowing how close the nearest one was and he didn't want to take that risk while there was still a chance that the town's defenders would win. The defenders seemed to think that victory was possible, unless they were only deluding themselves in an attempt to deny the inevitable. He would wait, therefore, he decided, and only use yama666 if it looked as though the town was going to lose. After all, if that happened he would die anyway so he had nothing to lose. He didn't spare a thought for Jane and Loach whom he would also be sacrificing if the machines became aware of him.

His thoughts were Interrupted as the chieftain gave another mighty roar, a challenge taken up by every other orc, and he raised his halberd in a signal to attack. He pointed it at the nearest human defender and then charged at him. The other orcs charged at the same time, dropping their shields and crossbows so they could fight with both hands. The two turret weapons beside the gate, which had been turned around to point into the town, discharged together, along with the second turret weapon inside the town, and the orcs were hit by a barrage of arrows from three directions. Several of them fell, arrows having found gaps in their armour, but then they were crashing against the human defenders in an attempt to break the defensive line with the sheer weight of their numbers.

The defenders with spears had braced them on the ground with their points angled forward, but most of the steel tips merely skidded against the steel armour and then the mens' throats were gripped by wolf jaws and torn open with sprays of blood. The archers behind them had more luck, with several arrows finding gaps in the orcs' armour, but then they were scattered by the onslaught with several of them being tossed high in the air or torn limb from limb. The defensive line had lasted for only moments, and then it was every man fighting for himself against the bestial horde.

There were two or three men to each orc on the ground, though, and there were more men up on the raised walkway, still shooting arrows down whenever they had a clear shot at one of the enemy. The defenders, following well practiced routines, fought to remain in a tight group with weapons facing outwards, but the orcs were in among them now, separating them and keeping them from forming any kind of defensive structure. It became a general melee in which the ground rapidly became littered with corpses, almost all human.

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Randall and his fellow visitors retreated to another part of the wall until they had its reassuring solidity at their backs. Some of the orce saw them, though, and came running to attack them. The wool merchant's men tried to form a line but it was crushed and scattered and within seconds the majority were lying dead on the ground while the rest ran, all thought of fighting driven from their minds by blind animal terror.

The battle was already all but over, and the moment the last defender fell the orcs would massacre everyone else in the town regardless of age or gender. Randall fought to keep a clear head, knowing that he had one, and only one, chance of escaping alive. The chieftain. He was in the middle of town surrounded by no fewer than six defenders. Even as Randall watched one of them was beheaded by a savage sweep of the chieftain's halbard, the head bouncing on the ground like some kind of obscene football.

There were three orcs closing in on Randall, their jaws wide and slavering with drool in anticipation. He stooped to pick up a sword dropped by one of the wool merchant's men and then ran for the nearest steps up to the railed walkway. The archers at the top turned to shoot arrows at the pursuing orcs, then dropped their bows and drew their swords, running forward to engage the orcs one on one. Randall didn't fancy their chances, but they'd bought him a few precious moments and he put them to use. He dropped the sword, snatched up one of the fallen bows and put an arrow to it, aiming it down at where the orcs were butchering the last few defenders on the ground.

With all his strength he was only able to pull the string half way back. He hoped it would be enough. He aimed it at the chieftain, let the arrow fly and at the same time took his head phone out of flight mode and transmitted yama666.

By some miracle the arrow flew true and glanced off the metal plate protecting the chieftain's shoulder. At the same moment his CRES code was deleted and all the other commands contained in yama666 were added to his programming. The chieftain froze for a moment and the humans surrounding him took the opportunity to deliver several wounds, taking the time to drive swords and knives into gaps in his armour. Randall used his head phone to transmit a message to any receiving device in the area while praying to all the gods he knew that the chieftain's computer brain was the only one. *Come attack me,* he told it. *I'm the one with his hands raised.*

The chieftain turned as if searching for the impudent individual who'd dared to shoot an arrow at it. He saw Randall on the raised walkway punching a fist in the air as if in triumph and charged for the nearest steps, bellowing with fury while the defenders who'd been fighting it stared in astonishment. As it came Randall sent it more instructions. *Let me win. Tell the other orcs to stop fighting and leave the town.*

That was dangerous, he knew. It would be difficult to come up with a plausible reason for the orcs to turn and flee when they had virtually won. He could only hope that the townsmen didn't ask too many questions and just accepted their good fortune. Maybe, in the heat of battle, each man would assume that the defenders had been winning somewhere else, just out of sight, and that the orcs had run to avoid being slaughtered. In the meantime this was his opportunity to make a name for himself. A stage managed fight in which he would achieve a legendary victory. Randall grinned to himself in anticipation.

*Pretend you've been injured worse than you have been,* Randall sent to the chieftain as he dropped the bow and picked up the sword again. *Make your movements slow and clumsy and allow me to hit you, but make it look as if you're trying your very best to kill me. Make it look good.*

The commands he'd added to yama666 compelled the chieftain to obey him and every remaining defender watched in awe as Randall and the chieftain enacted their play battle. The chieftain thrust with the halberd several times, each time wincing as if it had suffered an injury in a vital spot, and every time Randall ducked close and thrust with the sword, slicing open the flesh covering the robot body beneath. When he thought it had gone on long enough to make a convincing battle he thrust straight for where the heart would be if the chieftain had been a real, living animal. *Now pretend you've taken a fatal wound and run away,* he told it. *Take any orcs still in town with you and hide in the trees. Don't go far, though. I'll have more instructions for you later.*

The chieftain obeyed, dropping the halberd and staggering back, one hand clutching at the wound in its chest. It turned and ran back down the steps, bellowing orderss to the other orcs in their own barking, howling language. The other orcs stared in confusion, but they had been conditioned to obedience and they followed after it, all of them running back to the hole in the palisade wall while the defenders watched in total disbelief. Then every human defender left in the small town was cheering in jubilation, a sound of joy and triumph that brought the children and the elderly out of the barn to see what was happening.

"I don't believe it!" said one of the archers still on the railed walkway, walking forward to stare at Randall as if he'd grown horns. "You beat him! You beat a chieftain!"

"He was already badly hurt," Randall replied modestly. "Those guys on the ground did the real work. It was already half dead when it got to me."

"He's right," another man said. "It was fighting like it wasn't even trying to win. It must have been almost dead already."

"Maybe," agreed the first man, "but it still took a barrel of guts to stand up to it. I've seen veterans of a dozen battles run in fear from a chieftain. This man's a hero no matter what the circumstances. What's your name, Sir?"

"Fletcher," replied Randall, trying to keep his grin from growing too wide. Apparent meekness and humility would serve him best now, he decided. His fame would grow best if it was spread by other people. "Watt Fletcher."

The archer took Randall's hand and raised it high in the air. "Watt Fletcher!" he cried. "The Hero of Duffield!"

"Fletcher!" cried the townspeople jubilantly, punching their own hands into the air. "Fletcher! Fletcher! Flet! Cher! Flet! Cher!"

The archers led Randall back down to the ground where he was surrounded by laughing and cheering defenders shaking his hand and slapping him on the back. Elsewhere, the woman and children moved among the injured, giving first aid to those who could still be saved.

☆☆☆

The terrible death toll meant that the celebrations were short lived as the townspeople learned which of their friends and relatives had been lost in the slaughter. Jubilation quickly gave way to sorrow and grief but Randall remained the centre of attention and he was required to tell the tale of how he'd beaten the chieftain over and over again, each time emphasising that he couldn't have done it if the other defenders hadn't already taken their toll of the giant monster. That made sure that the events weren't too unbelievable, leading them to become suspicious, while at the same time pleasing the men who'd been fighting the chieftain. They were happy to spread the tale of Randall's heroism because it reflected well on them, their own prowess as warriors.

As soon as he was able, he sent another message to the chieftain. *Are you still there?*

*Affirmative.*

*Are there any other devices in the area capable of receiving my transmissions, other than yourself?*

*Negative.*

Randall breathed a sigh of relief. All he had to do now was make sure that the priests never found out what had really happened here. The instructions contained in yama666 would make sure that the chieftain covered for him with the other machines but there were the other orcs to consider. If they told the orcs of other bands about their chieftain's strange behaviour, word might get to the machines that way. *Take your orcs to Elmton," Randall told the chieftain, therefore. "Keep attacking the city until all your orcs are dead.*

*Acnowledged.*

*When you've done that, is there any way you can remain in the vicinity of Elmton without arousing suspicion? I may have further need of you.*

The chieftain thought for a few moments. *A chieftain and a small troop of orcs is stationed in the vicinity of every large human community,* it said at last. *I can volunteer for this duty.*

*Good, do that. I'll send you a message if I need you. In the meantime, go back to your normal business.*

* Achnowledged.*

The chieftain signed off and Randall turned his attention back to the victory celebrations.