Screams of terror rang from the wall, and the Tyriu soldiers were thrown off, burning as they plummeted to a certain death. Goslin turned to the nearest junior officer and grabbed the front of his armor. “Can the gate withstand fire attacks?”

“W-what?” the young man said, his eyes wide as he watched more men falling from the top of the wall.

Goslin shook him. “The gate, man, will it stand against pyromancers?”

“I don’t know! How would I know?”

“Goslin!” Tomford came running, his face flushed from either excitement or exertion. “It’s like Sarien said. They have pyromancers!”

Anger boiled up inside Goslin. How dare they? They were subjects of Eldsprak. Once, they had been ground under the kingdom’s heel for their part in its subjugation. From the look of things, they had not learned their lesson. He made a silent vow to teach them the cost of going back on their word. “It would seem he was right, dear friend. It’s up to us to make sure they rue the day they decided to embrace these otherworldly invaders.”

“Well said,” Tomford said with a grin. “Where do we start?”

A loud thud sounded from the gate, then another. Wood splintered as the entire gate buckled inward.

“Get ready!” Goslin yelled down to the troops. To Tomford, he spoke in a softer tone. “There are more archers on the roof now. You and I will buy them time to put these traitors in the ground.”

Another heavy blow struck and blew the enormous gate off its hinges. Large debris of wood and metal exploded with such incredible force that they crashed into the nearest building, reducing it to rubble and crushing everyone who stood nearby. The barricade was destroyed.

Goslin allowed himself one second to be taken aback by the carnage, before acting.

“To me! Defend Tyralien!” He pulled out his jet-black shield and charged ahead with Tomford by his side.

Harsh cries from wounded survivors along with boots stomping against the ground, the crash of the stone against the ground as the wall began to fall, and the elation of the rhinn soldiers as they swarmed into the city filled the air. The rhinn attacked relentlessly, heavily outnumbering the Tyriu soldiers, who fell back just from the sheer force of numbers piling through the opening where the gate once stood.

“To me!” Goslin bellowed again, trying to rally the troops. Most of the young defenders looked on, standing frozen to the ground in shock. Then one by one they came to their senses and joined in the fray. Before the invaders crossed the halfway point to where Goslin ran to meet them, arrows began to fly through the air. Goslin watched as the rhinn fell, dying in scores before even reaching striking range. He felt a sense of relief. The rhinn’s ineptitude may save them all yet. But, before he could finish the thought, fire erupted from behind the lines of attackers, striking two of the nearest houses and setting the roofs aflame.

The Tyriu soldiers met the attackers head on to first contain and then drive them back out of the city wall. Goslin thrust his sword into the first rhinn to reach him, and pulled it back to swing against another, lopping off an arm. Most of the invaders carried spears or swords and wore leather armor. A few wore only woolen tunics, and those were quickly dispatched.

From what Goslin could tell, these rhinn soldiers were conscripts. They’d probably never held a weapon before this siege. Still, they were many against the defenders’ few. Tomford wore his metal gauntlets and laid waste to every rhinn he could get his hands on, but he kept back too, carefully picking his targets as to not get overwhelmed.

The fallen rhinn were quickly replaced by more who spilled through the opening. Blood drenched the cobbled stones of the road from the thousands of wounds. There were shouts of fear and anger, swears and whimpers. More than once, Goslin heard someone cry for their mother.

A soldier snuck up beside him, and he raised his shield to defend against the rhinn’s clumsy sword thrust. He was jostled from behind by a defender, causing his boot to slip on the slick, bloody stone surface. Goslin fell forward and twisted, landing on his back in time to see the soldier who’d accidentally pushed him being run through by the rhinn’s blade.

Goslin spun and tried to get a foot under him, but slipped in blood and went down again. Just as he hit the ground, fire erupted. A wide jet of flames burned through many of the rhinn, then continued on through the layers of defenders, striking and obliterating everything in its path. The heat sucked the air from Goslin's lungs, and he choked and coughed, barely comprehending what just happened.

A pyromancer, or many pyromancers, had burned through most of their own men, sacrificing their own allies to kill the Tyriu defenders. The stink of burning flesh permeated the air, and Goslin was sickened by the sharp pangs of hunger he felt at the sizzling sound and smell of cooked flesh. He got to his feet, legs unsteady, trying not to look behind him at the burning wasteland. So many dead, and more rhinn were coming. Was there no end to them?

Tomford came to stand at his side, breathing hard from the smoke. “You injured?”

“How could they do this?” Goslin asked, bewildered.

“We’ll have to ask them once we beat the fire out of them,” Tomford replied. “More are coming. Are you ready?”

What was impossible before with the legion of rhinn soldiers was now more so with pyromancers added to their ranks. They could not win. Not like this.

He searched around them. Some defenders remained, and more were coming from the further down the street. He saw stark fear in their eyes, and he didn’t blame them. They were up against monsters.

He had no choice but to fight. Perhaps he and Tomford could buy a little time for the defenders to gather up whatever scraps of courage they could find.

Goslin tightened his fist around the leather strap of his shield and raised his sword. “Ready.”

Tomford bellowed a war cry and the approaching rhinn faltered in their steps. Goslin could see their apprehension despite facing only two men.

He joined in with Tomford’s scream and charged, swinging his sword in wide arcs in hopes of frightening the rhinn.

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Goslin cut deep into a rhinn soldier’s arm, making the soldier drop the sword he carried, then danced back to avoid counter attacks. A quick duck to the side and a slash struck deep into the rhinn’s face.

They groaned and cried out as Goslin killed with an icy calm he’d never felt before. The enemy was disorganized and came at him with only a few at a time, instead of surrounding him as they ought.

Tomford struck again and again while dodging their clumsy attacks. He broke bones and sent rhinn into unconsciousness with swift punches, cracking jaws and destroying noses. Goslin left dead bodies as he slowly retreated. Tomford left screaming men in urgent need of care.

Tyriu soldiers were quick to join in after the initial shock from the pyromancer’s attack. A trickle of men appeared at first, then a river of them. The cramped area between the destroyed gate and houses soon grew difficult to navigate. Bodies pressed together and Goslin retreated to direct the fighting instead. The rhinn were still far more numerous, but the lines had formed up again, and for the moment, they held.

Then Goslin saw them.

Two men came up behind the rhinn. They both wore the telltale deep red robes of pyromancers. Their hands lifted and fire bloomed.

“Emeryn!” he screamed, turning. “Where are you?”

His breathing came in ragged breaths. There, on top of the pile of stone and plaster that was all that remained of the crushed house, stood Emeryn. She was covered in dirt and drying blood, but she smiled triumphantly. A grinding noise sounded from above, then a thunderous rumble. Goslin looked up to see the part of the wall directly above the gate come crumbling down in massive chunks of stone.

The two pyromancers aborted their attack and threw themselves to the ground, narrowly avoiding the crush of stone. Many rhinn were not as quick to react, and when the dust settled, the invaders’ found their path of entry closed. The attackers still inside the wall needed to be dealt with, and that included the pyromancers.

Goslin charged through the dust, coughing as he went. “Attack!”

With almost zero visibility in the rising dust, and everyone stumbling about, it was difficult to tell friend from foe. Goslin focused on the eye. There was no mistaking a human from a rhinn as soon as you looked them in the eyes.

He cut through the neck of one of the invaders. Goslin continued, dodging a blow from one rhinn and diverting a strike from another, impaling the second deep in the belly.

Goslin knew that he needed to get to the pyromancers before they gathered themselves for another blast. They’d proved a ruthless indifference to their own allies. That meant they would strike blind.

Goslin suddenly found himself surrounded by the rhinn. He pushed through, hacking wildly to keep them too preoccupied to strike. At first, his plan worked. Then it didn’t. Their confusion at seeing someone right in the midst vanished when Goslin started killing indiscriminately to cut a path through them. He saw anger in their faces, along with the fear, and strikes came for him with increasing accuracy and force. Goslin’s sword got stuck in a rhinn’s chest, and he had put his foot against the corpse to pull it out. He couldn’t go on without his weapon.

He screamed as pain seared across his back. Goslin spun, cutting down the rhinn who’d struck him. He diverted another blow with his sword and thrust forward into a rhinn soldier’s knee. The attack left him open, and a spear dug into his sword arm above the elbow.

Goslin screamed as the tip emerged on the other side of his arm, covered in his own blood. His arm went limp, and his sword clattered to the ground. A wave of nausea struck and his vision swam. Despite this, Goslin rolled away, pulling the spear from his body.

He couldn’t stand still. He would be dead if he didn’t move. With his uninjured arm, he swung his shield into the spearman’s face, obliterating it. When he spun to defend against the next attacker, Goslin caught the incoming sword strike on his shield and the enemy gaped as his sword flew through the air until it disappeared. Goslin spun and struck with the shield. A loud crunch was followed by the soldier being thrown to the ground as nothing more than a mess of blood and broken bones.

More rhinn descended on him and he still needed to find the pyromancers. He hobbled forward, his legs barely strong enough to hold him up.

Goslin realized he’d forgotten his sword. It had been a gift from someone, possibly the king himself. He couldn’t quite remember. His mind was a haze. Not that it mattered much. He couldn’t carry it with a useless arm.

Distance was difficult to grasp in the still swirling cloud of dust, but he had to be getting closer to the pyromancers. They couldn’t be much farther. Three rhinn appeared in front of him. Goslin gritted his teeth and raised his shield. Perhaps he could use it to get past these three. If only he could raise his shield arm. He could not. All his energy had bled away.

Goslin took a deep breath and straightened. He saw red and yellow fire bloom behind the rhinn soldiers in the cloud of dust as one of them raised his spear. Then, out of nowhere, Tomford was there. His knuckles connected with the rhinn spearman’s neck, snapping it at a strange angle. A conflagration roared through the dust. At the last moment, Goslin gathered enough awareness to huddle on the ground behind his shield. He felt it heat up as the fire roared all around him, continuing on into the mass of rhinn soldiers and defenders behind him.

Tomford screamed in agony, a bone-chilling wail somewhere just beyond the shield’s protection. The metal was hot enough to burn his arm, but Goslin struggled forward, pushing against the never-ending inferno while keeping close to the ground.

“For fire’s sake, I’m thirsty,” he muttered. The front of the shield struck something. A corpse. One of the rhinn. Had to be. Tomford was alive, Goslin could hear his screams. How he kept that much air in his lungs in the middle of a firestorm, Goslin didn’t know. Hard to think straight. Had to keep going. There! A hunched form on the ground. It still moved. Barely.

Goslin moved around the hunk of Tomford’s burned flesh and positioned himself in front of it. The screaming didn’t stop. Neither did the fire. An eternity elapsed. Finally, the screaming stopped. Goslin didn’t have the strength to look behind him. Darkness was creeping in at the corners of his eyes, the roar of the fire dulling. Even the stink of burned flesh had lessened. Goslin blinked, fighting the wave of exhaustion before drifting toward unconsciousness. Before the world around him turned black, a cold jolt shot through his entire body.

Goslin screamed as he felt his body knit itself together and the burns melt away. He’d never received healing of that magnitude before. Without it, he would surely have been dead.

“Can you go on?”

Goslin peered over his shoulder to see Tomford huddled behind him, protected by the shield. The last remnants of his burns disappeared as Goslin looked on in awe.

“Can you?” Goslin asked in return. Moments before, Tomford was burned so severely that Goslin had seen his skin melt into a congealed mass. Now, Tomford laid there naked, his skin pink and smooth like a newborn babe’s.

“A little chilly. Very tired. Thank you for saving me,” Tomford answered.

“The same goes for you, my friend,” Goslin said, grinning. He was exhausted, but at least he was still alive. “Can you still fight?”

Tomford nodded. “My gauntlets are gone, but I don’t need them to deal with mages.”

“On my mark then,” Goslin said, readying himself. They waited with nervous patience until the fire died away. Goslin took a deep breath.

“Now!”

They both screamed and charged ahead through a wasteland of burned corpses and scalding hot metal. Goslin was deeply satisfied by the look of disbelief and fear on the two pyromancers’ faces. Some of it might have to do with the very tall and very naked screaming redhead running beside Goslin.

The pyromancers appeared almost as tired as Goslin felt, but they found enough strength to throw out another stream of fire.

Goslin’s raised shield dealt with the attack, and the shock on the mages’ faces became all the more delicious.

When little more than a third of the distance remained, a hole opened up in the air right beside them, and both of them leapt through and the gate shut closed behind them.

“No!” Goslin screamed, but it was too late. All that effort for nothing. So many dead.

Goslin cried out again in frustration, a cry that reverberated inside him until the air in his lungs was spent.

That’s when he heard them. The screams.

Goslin faced the city. Fire burned uncontrollably, consuming all that was before it. Houses crumbled. People screamed and cried.

Among all that chaos, multiple tears opened in the air. Hundreds of rhinn soldiers poured out of the gates. In the distance, multiple horns blared, signaling the urgent need for reinforcements.

In the distance, he heard Emeryn screaming for help.