-Alice P.O.V.-

I felt the concrete under my feet shake as the biotics continued their advance. We fought tooth and nail for every inch, but even so, there were far too many Centaur to halt. They’d begun to spread out, assaulting a third of the trenches and continued to spread.

The Knights expertly shifted their defensive positions, and only by virtue of having pulled our lines back did they manage to hold. This was, arguably, the closest defense that Argedwall had ever waged.

Luckily, the Lords and their Knights were well accustomed to fighting on the edge of disaster. They struck, wove between one another, and like a well oiled murder-machine, continued to tear through Centaurs when they overextended.

And yet, they pulled back, now only two trenches left, a scant thirty meters from the wall itself and the city within.

My focus was absolute now, hands a blur, arms burning with an as of yet dull ache from the constant combat.

Overhead, another round of whistling mortars sailed through the air, delivering deadly payload upon the horde. The precious moments of space granted by that maneuver were widened by myself and the Arbalests as we worked to keep biotics from filling that space as quickly.

We were at something of an advantage in ranged combat. Most of the Centaur hadn’t seemed to know exactly how to use their weapons, but that too was changing rapidly. At first none knew how to use them, but as they witnessed our own combat, it seemed that they were beginning to explore the full repertoire of their weapons.

Perhaps it was because of how many were falling, perhaps a survival instinct or something of the sort was steadily being triggered.

Regardless, it resulted in a steady uptick in damage among the Knights. The Centaur that had learned how to use the cannons took up positions further back as I watched.

I pelted one through the eye with an arrow, turning my attention to the next just as the ugly, organic cannon on its shoulder shook and fired a viscous projectile of acid at the targets ahead.

This one hit the edge of the trench, a Knight bellowing in rage immediately afterwards. Virtually no Knight had the coating to protect against caustic fluids any longer, and with every gout of acid that rained down on the defensive line at least one Knight would find themselves struggling to remove the acid before it ate into critical mechanisms on their mechs.

Gritting my teeth, I turned my bow towards a collection of three Centaur that were taking aim. I felled the first, but the other two managed to slip through the crowd of biotics.

A group of Centaur snarled loudly and charged forward, even going so far as to trample those in front of them. There were only ten in all, but I realized what they were intending to do as their tails began to pulsate violently.

“Kill the group!” I shouted out, switching to a fragmentation arrow rapidly, doling out two in the time that they were moving forward.

Lucy and Emily fired upon them, as did another group. My bolts tore through the front three, but the three were immediately scooped up by their charging companions, unceremoniously throwing them towards the trenches.

“Down!” I heard Emily shout, throwing herself at me and pulling me down just as the three pods exploded. As we crashed against the floor, Lucy beside us, I heard the crack of a shortened lance piercing into the roofed portion of the tower. Cries of pain rose sharply, but just as quickly was subsumed by the ongoing carnage.

I slipped out from beneath Emily, feeling an ache in my side from hitting the floor so hard. Even before I could stand, though, I heard seven more explosions in rapid succession.

Wails of pain and alarm rose along the trench, a dozen spikes dotting the outer surface of the tower, one of which seemed to have simply materialized halfway through the barrier in front of me.

I cringed at the sight, quickly leaning over with my bow and arrow at the ready, firing even before I could take in the damage.

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Catastrophic damage, as it turned out. A dozen knights were pinned to the walls of the trench in that spot, blood flowing freely from any of tens of wounds accrued instantly.

Snarling biotics dropped into the trenches, only for furious Knights to pour in from adjacent columns, and the path directly behind that.

The foothold the Centaur had created quickly withered from their wrath.

Even so, the losses were immediately felt. Morale didn’t plummet, so much as change, a boiling well of frustration that roiled ominously.

Harris' voice carried out from there, giving outlet to the rage. “Cavalry, charge!”

I blinked at that, looking down at the last trench before the gates as several mechs, far larger than the Knights by twice over, loomed from the deeper, reinforced layer.

Each one bore a pair of grinding, hot engines that seethed heat. Radiating in the air, each mech seemed to be clad in a wavering light.

Each one, also, appeared to be hunched forward from all of the weight they bore, weapons brimming from their bodies. I’d realized then that I had a misconception about the Knights. It wasn’t that they didn’t use ranged weaponry, or more advanced technologies. Instead, it was that they collected all of that technology on an ace in the hole, something to turn the tide.

And there were dozens of them.

Whistling first filled the air, and then rapidly morphed. Higher the crescendo pushed, the noise devouring all else. I looked to Lucy and Emily, seeing the looks of awe on their faces as they witnessed what was about to happen.

Lucy turned to me and said something.

It was a shame I wasn’t that adept at lip reading, because I couldn’t hear a damn thing she said. But, judging by the way the Knights in the Trenches fought just hard enough to close down the metal barriers over their heads, I knew that what I was about to witness would be something special.

Then the noise halted for the barest of moments, the eye of the storm.

With a unified howl the so-called Cavalry wailed forth, a swarm of spectres now literally looking like they were swimming in superheated air.

Their charge started off at a dead sprint and accelerated. Whirling blades and saws that glowed cherry red swept in front of them as they pushed. Caustic acid flew at them even before they hit the front line, but I watched in dismay as the material burned in midair, catching fire before it could touch them. Whether it did damage after connecting, I couldn’t be sure.

Silver gore combusted as the first wave of biotics nearly evaporated from the sheer weight and power of the impact. I realized then that these cavalry never needed to step on the metal plates that covered the trenches, and also realized that, probably, these were meant more for heat shielding than anything else. With a wide stride they passed over the second trench, tearing through the Centaur and making it look easy.

In another heartbeat, their speed picked up, the engines upon their backs revving up further, glowing red as the heat picked up even more. Now past the occupied lines, they let loose with other weapons as well, rapid firing machine guns, cannons, and explosives.

Another trench past, and they cut loose with flamethrowers that spat sticky gouts of bright flames. The biotics died in droves as they pushed forward.

“Holy shit.” I murmured as the noise carried farther away, only now just barely allowing local noise to exist once more.

“Pull back to the city!” Harris commanded, “we’ll take the rest of this fight from the walls.”

I blinked at that, turning my attention back out to the Cavalry with confusion.

Lucy saw the object of my attention and sighed sadly, “this kind of charge can’t be done frequently. Those mechs are going to need time to cool down after that.”

“Ah,” I nodded, begrudgingly accepting that there had to be some kind of downside, otherwise this should have been the opening gambit. As it was, there was a truly mind numbing amount of space being reclaimed by the charge. In more ordinary times, comparatively speaking, the Knights would probably push forward and reclaim trenches and force the biotics to start again.

Also, assumedly, they wouldn’t normally turn the entire trench area into an ocean of fire.

The massive gates opened up, admitting weary Knights who carried their fallen between them. Those that could be retrieved would be brought in, but seeing the numbers, I knew that many had fallen.

My eyes wandered back up to the flames that licked the terrain, the vague forms of the mechs charging back towards the city, engines near to melting from the strain of moving such hulking forms, purpose built and weaponized to perform this exact function.

Each of them rested back within the final trenches, heat rapidly dissipating from their forms. The biotics lingered at the edge of the flames, but already I could see them begin their approach from another direction. They split to either side, aware that we would be forced to split our defense in both directions.

That would buy us some time, at least. Though, I couldn’t help but to glance at the flames with trepidation. What else would these biotics have planned?