Chapter Fifty-Five: Moonfall

“Built into the side of a large hill, the City of Twilight is a natural fortress in itself. With three walls and a moat sourced from the Arrien River, it is perhaps the most well-fortified city-keep in all of Faengard. Attacking it unprepared would be the height of folly.”

—Dagus Adem, The Adventurer’s Guide to the Continent

Aldoran was in a state of chaos.

Tides of people swept through the streets, pushing and shoving their way to the second wall. The street thieves stuck to the backalleys, trickling through winding shortcuts with sure feet, climbing walls, racing across rooftops where the buildings were tightly packed enough to jump. The lower-classes stuck to the main roads, funneling inch by inch through the gateways. Families dragged small wagons behind them, mothers holding their children’s hands, fathers hugging sacks and crates of belongings to their chests. The middle classes walked next to their horses while the upper classes sat impatiently in their carriages, tempers shortening as the traffic refused to budge.

Then there were the late risers and the indecisive ones, men and women bumbling frantically through their shops and houses with no idea of what to bring and what to leave behind, turning their rooms upside down for the one trinket they couldn’t do without. Those who’d known what the bell implied were gone already, at the front of the pack filing into Wall Norn.

Gilfred Leonhart dismounted and waded his way through the crowds to Menkraft, the outermost wall of Aldoran. The guards were already taking post at the watchtowers, rolling ballistas into place. Knights and soldiers gathered by their meeting points, forming ranks and files, standing at attention as their commanders debriefed them. Sentries called out to each other from the parapets, voices laden with alarm. Gilfred couldn’t see the relicts from his position on the ground, but he didn’t need to. He already knew the sight he’d be faced with.

A seething mass of black creeping up the hill, devouring everything in its wake. That was what awaited them.

It was finally happening. Aldoran was coming under attack.

He stopped before the barred gates, watching the Captains and the Sergeants give orders to their men. Wall Menkraft, a stone barrier four paces wide and three stories tall, was the only thing that stood between the city and the servants of Al’Ashar.

Gilfred had seen the Slazaads. The walls would not stand a chance.

Silence settled upon the streets—the majority of people had fled to Wall Norn, where the safety perimeter had been set up. The relicts were not to make it past Menkraft, which held most of the tenements and was home to the lower classes of Aldoran. It would be hard if they lost it, especially when the people who lived within its boundaries were hard done by life in the first place.

A trumpet blew, followed by the deep pitch of a warhorn. Horses were riding down the main street, saddlebags laden with supplies, wagonfuls of weapons behind them. The spearmen marched in squads of thirty strong. The archers marched in front of them, bows strung and ready to be fired, and then the bannermen flying the spear and shield of the Uldan house. At the very front of the troops were the Kingsblades, and in their midst the High King.

Aedon halted before Gilfred and dismounted, his armour rattling as he hit the ground. His face was red and he was sweating, but the steadiness to which he held his lance spoke of countless years of experience. He wore a full plate of Rhinegold armour with golden gauntlets, greaves and boots, his plumed helm under the crook of his arm. A scarlet cape draped across his shoulders, flapping down by his feet. Amongst his saddlebags he carried a round Rhinegold shield emblazoned with the Uldan sigil.

“Kingsblade Gilfred,” the King greeted, as the footsoldiers took their posts. Gilfred saluted in response. Even though the King had had his Rhinegold armour reforged to accommodate his size, it seemed that he’d outgrown it yet again. Gilfred couldn’t imagine how much weight the King’s warhorse had to carry, armour and all.

“Your Majesty,” Gilfred said. “I didn’t think you’d be coming out here in person.”

Aedon raised an eyebrow. “And why might that be?”

“You’re too important to be out here,” the Kingsblade replied smoothly, keeping his eyes averted from the the other’s girth. “The men need someone to lead them.”

Aedon regarded Gilfred for a moment before breaking into a rough laugh, his chins jiggling. “You’re too kind, Gilfred. You don’t have to hide it from me; I know I’ve let myself loose these past few years.” He gave a spirited slap to Gilfred’s shoulder. “But you don’t understand. A King must ride in front of his people, show that he is willing to place himself before them. Only then will they follow him.” He fixed his helm to his mount and gestured to one of the doors at the watchtower. “Let us go to the battlements. I feel uneasy not having the demons within my sight.”

Gilfred opened the door for Aedon and then followed him inside. They climbed the stairs, keeping to one side as soldiers and guards scrambled everywhere in preparation for war. Tacticians held their last-minute meetings by candlelight, their faces lined with worry. They had the hardest job of all, Gilfred thought. Though they might not lose their lives if they failed, they would wear the burden of their soldiers’ lives until the end of their days.

He could never see himself doing that. He hated telling people what to do, hated the responsibility that came with being a leader.

The pair broke out into the cold wind, next to a group of crewmen working a ballista. The giant crossbows were spaced evenly along the wall, about five of them covering the south-western section. The relicts marched through the woods, keeping to the west of the Arrien, one indiscernible mass of tooth and claw in the night—yet there was some order to the anarchy, with Bloodmanes leading individual squadrons and Worgal Riders at the front line, interspersed with crews of ladder-bearers.

Aedon spat over the side of the wall for good luck, and Gilfred did the same.

“Demons,” the High King hissed. “To hear of them in stories and see them in person are two very different things.”

“What’s our plan?” Gilfred asked.

“It comes. Look.”

The door beside them opened and a group of guards spilled out, carrying a large chest between them. Illia was there also, flanked by guards and the balding minister, Dominus. He was twirling his moustache, eyes glinting with excitement.

“The Celesite bomb,” Gilfred muttered.

Aedon nodded. “I have faith in my Queen. Should this plan succeed, we will have wiped out humanity’s greatest threat in a single blow, securing our place in the annals of this Age.”

The ballista crewmen stepped aside, the siege weapon armed and ready. The front line of relicts had emerged from the trees now, fully exposed as they marched across the fields toward the bulwark. Illia came to Aedon’s side, her silken dress flapping about her heels. Her arms were folded, an expensive sheepskin jacket around her shoulders.

“They are all gathered in one place,” said Aedon, “ready for the pickings.”

“Indeed.” Illia did not look as certain as she had in the Halls of Judgement, Gilfred noticed. “There are a lot of them, aren’t there?”

“The bomb will work,” Dominus interrupted. “On my honour, Your Majesty. Take a good look at our enemy, for very shortly, they will go back to the history books where they belong, never to return again.”

“How many do we have?” Gilfred asked. “There will be more emerging from the portals, I think.” He couldn’t see the rifts from his vantage point, but they would be scattered all over the Blight, fuelling Al’Ashar’s armies.

“We have three,” Dominus said. “And enough materials to make more. We’ve barely exhausted half of the minerals from the skyrock in our mine, and just the other day we found another. There must have been a comet shower around that area, we believe. It appears that Celesite will be here to stay.”

One of the guards unlocked the chest, revealing three glowing crystals bound in soft leather. They were about the size of a human head each, glimmering with the light of a thousand stars upon each facet, leaking wisps of liquid silver into the air. The crystals had a glass-like quality to them, as if simply dropping them on the ground would cause them to shatter. Gilfred recalled what Dominus had explained in the Halls of Judgement, when he’d first described their properties.

“A crystal like the one you’ve just seen, when charged to full capacity inside a Spirit Font can be broken to destroy an area the size of this hall. Imagine how much damage we could do if we broke several of the things at once. We could wipe out the entire relict army.”

With a start, Gilfred realized what he was actually looking at. He wasn’t looking at three large crystals; he was looking at hundreds of the things smelted together, each small nodule containing enough power to destroy a large building.

“Be careful with that,” Dominus smirked. “If you drop it on the ground, you might just end up blowing up Aldoran.”

The guards who’d been handling the crystal paled. They loaded it tenderly onto the ballista, as if it were a glass of water filled to the brim and they weren’t to let a single drop hit the ground. Gilfred suddenly felt a sense of foreboding come over him. He’d never seen this ‘bomb’ work in person. All he had was the minister’s word for it. Who was to say it would do what he said it would do?

There was a click as the Celesite crystal settled into the back of the weapon, ready to be launched. The crewmen swivelled the ballista along its joints, aiming it dead centre at the relicts, winding it further and further back until the strings grew taut. The other guards were watching, poking their heads out from the parapets. On the ground behind them, the commanders of the footsoldiers had also fallen silent. If the bomb worked, it would save them struggle and pain, allow them to go home alive to their families.

The pressure, Gilfred thought, looking at the King and Queen. A lot rides on this. He was glad he wasn’t in such a position of authority.

“Are we ready?” the crewman asked, eyes on Illia. Illia looked to Aedon with uncertainty.

“It’s your plan,” he said. “You give the command.”

Illia paused and then nodded. “Do it.”

The man drew a breath and then yanked on the firing trigger. There was a click and the string snapped forward, hurling the bomb into the distance.

The crystal sphere soared across the field, rising, rising, levelling. It hung for an instant like an artificial moon in the sky before curving towards the ground, a wicked glint along its length. Some of the relicts spotted it and stopped mid-track, barking to each other in confusion. Others trudged onwards, ignoring the missile that was fast approaching.

“It would be wise to take cover, Your Majesty,” Dominus said, calmly lowering himself prone on the ground. “You might still feel the shockwave from here.”

Gilfred threw himself against the stone, hearing Aedon and Illia do the same beside him. The crewmen took cover behind the battlements, calling across the walls to the other teams. Gilfred crawled over to a slot in the parapets that offered a view of the battlefield and watched.

The bomb fell like a silver meteorite, hurtling into the heart of the army. It struck the ground with an audible thud, scattering a group of close-riding Worgals. Nothing happened for a fraction of the second.

And then it detonated.

There was no sound—or maybe there was, but he didn’t hear it. All he saw was a silver ripple spreading across the ground, swallowing everything in its wake. It devoured the trees and grass, reducing them to a fine black dust, kicking the dirt into an angry cloud of grey, scorching the air into a wave of furnace heat. It was a star crashing into the earth, the birth of a sun.

The light swept across the sky, tinting it silver. It touched the city gently with a featherlight caress, and then the shockwave came.

Wall Menkraft rocked beneath them, bearing the full brunt of the explosion. Hot wind and dust howled over their heads. The air shimmered. Gilfred pressed himself as flat to the ground as he could, feeling his body grow uncomfortably warm inside his armour, his organs rock within his chest as the wave passed through him. He opened his mouth and clamped his hands over his ears as the pain mounted within them, like daggers sinking into his skull. He clenched his jaw tight, closing his eyes from the dust and dirt.

The ripple rolled through Menkraft and up the city, fading into obscurity. The after-echoes of the explosion continued, ebbing and flowing like the tide. At last, Gilfred dared to open his eyes.

Smoke clouded the air, black and billowing across the battlefield. His eyes stung with tears. He bumbled into Illia, who was holding onto Aedon as a support.

“Amazing,” the King said, waving the smoke from his face. The guards and crewmen emerged from cover, faces alight in wonder. “If that didn’t kill them, then nothing will.”

Gilfred shook his head. To think that a crystal of such size had done this. He shuddered to imagine how long they’d kept it for, waiting dormant inside the Keep. The slightest quiver could have set it off and blown the City of Twilight sky high.

Dominus suddenly let out a laugh. The minister had an odd glint to his eye, one that unnerved Gilfred.

“What’s so funny?” the Kingsblade asked, squinting through the dust.

The minister only smiled. Gilfred looked out towards the field and his heart sank.

Where there had been grass before, green and lucious, evergreen trees marking the start of the woods, there was now black. It wasn’t the rotting black of the Blight, where the trees sagged and the grass gathered in derelict clumps, but a black just as horrible. The black of soot, of crisp wood scorched so violently it was but dust given form. A crater surrounded the point of impact, a scar on the surface of the earth lined with burning rock. There was nothing here, not even death. Just a void, one that would never again be filled.

Dark shapes began to rise in the dust, moving violently, erratically. The wind picked up and swept away the last of the dirt clouds. The murk cleared, giving way to a velvet night.

The relicts were still there.

They were unscathed, eyes glowing red like rubies, continuing their staunch march. If anything, they were moving faster. Dominus let out a hysterical laugh, cackling like a man gone mad. As the guards broke into cries of panic, shouting at the commanders in the city below, Aedon grabbed the minister by the collar and slammed him into the ground.

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“What is the meaning of this?” he roared. He glanced at Illia, who had taken a step back and was holding to the parapet for support. Her face was ashen. “Illia! Explain yourself!”

“I… I…” she stared at the crater, the bewilderment written all over her face. The Worgals barked and howled and and began to lope across the remains of the field on all fours, voices warped with bloodlust, running alongside the Celadons and their riders.

“She was a fool,” Dominus hissed, as his face began to rot. His ears fell off first, and then his eyes rolled out of his sockets, withering on their stalks, followed by his nose and mouth. “A trusting fool, blind to her own desires. You never even thought about it, did you? That this ‘Celesite’ of yours might not be everything you thought it be?”

Illia shook her head in denial, staring back and forth between the craterful of swarming relicts and the demonic figure in front of her. Gilfred didn’t need to be told what had happened. Dominus was a Faceless, a human fallen to Al’Ashar’s temptation, who’d given away his flesh for the body of a relict. He must have planned it all along, guiding Illia along her self-centred path, taking advantage of her desire to bury Alend.

The Celesite bomb had been a ploy. There was no alternate way to stop the relicts. There was no replacement for the Ward Tree.

Alend’s blood had been the only thing saving him from execution, and Illia had tried to make it redundant, even going as far as to turn the King against him—but why? There were a multitude of plausible reasons, but one stood out among the others.

He knew something he wasn’t supposed to.

Had Alend been telling the truth, then? That Illia had been conspiring against the King? That his father had been part of those plans? That she’d tried to silence him and failed, and that was the reason why he ‘deserted?’

“Your Majesty,” Gilfred cried, whipping his sword out. He would think about that later, if he got the chance. “Stand back—”

“You will explain yourself,” Aedon said harshly, beginning to sink his weight into the Faceless. The city was strewn with discord. The crewmen were loading the ballistas with ordinary bolts now, the runner boys bringing torches and kegs of oil. Archers climbed to their positions along the ramparts while spearmen gathered by the gates in formation.

The Worgal riders howled, picking up speed as they crested the hill. The Slazaads scuttled at full speed across the burning earth, forked tongues tasting the air.

“All she cared about was her little feud with Thoren,” Dominus continued. His skin smoked, withering into a shade of dull black, his nails extending to brittle claws of yellow. “Who was I to stop her? She made our job infinitely easier. To dismiss the wisdom of ancient prophets is the height of idiocy. The damn Tree, that is the only thing we fear! The only thing that can stop us! Not your worthless technology, your weak formations, your frail heroes. Our Lord knew of Celesite long before you did, and of our immunity to it.” He smiled wickedly at the Queen. “You have doomed your race, Your Majesty.”

“I didn’t know…” Illia was on her knees, wavering. Her eyes remained clear, but she suddenly looked as fragile as a cut flower. “Aedon… I’m so sorry…”

“Damnit,” the King roared, slamming Dominus against the ground. “Why? Why not just set the bomb off inside the city? Why go to all this trouble?”

The Faceless smiled. “The Tree, my King. It protects your city from more than just the relicts. When it is withered and gone, we will finish that which we started so long ago. We will take back the land that is rightfully ours and exact vengeance in the name of our Lord!”

Aedon cried out in rage and slammed the creature’s head against the stone. There was a bone-crunching crack as it lolled to one side and fell still.

Someone screamed. The sounds of battle and confusion broke out from the streets below them. Gilfred rushed to the edge and looked down.

The Faceless had revealed themselves as one, suddenly turning to strike their comrades amidst the tumult. Guards and soldiers, citizens, crewmen, runner boys. They attacked their companions in a frenzy, using everything they had at their disposal from tools and weapons to their own teeth and claws. The soldiers fought back, dogpiling the offenders, stabbing them several times over as their faces dissolved to reveal their true nature. They fell with twisted shrieks and spouts of blood, but the damage was done. People were fighting amongst themselves, wild paranoia in their eyes. Trust was dead. There was no trusting the man you fought beside, not when he could be a servant of Al’Ashar.

“They’re everywhere,” Gilfred whispered. It was falling apart; everything was falling apart. “They’ve infiltrated our every post!”

“You,” Aedon said, pointing at a stricken crewman by the ballista. “Find the Captain and tell him to get the archers up here. And make sure you take those bombs with you!”

“Yes, sir!” The man grabbed the chest with shaking hands and hurried into the watchtower. Aedon moved to Illia’s side, lifting her gently to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m sorry…” Her eyes were vacant, staring at a place far away. Aedon studied her face for a moment and then waved to another crewman. “Take the Queen downstairs and arrange for her to be escorted back to the Keep.”

“Yes, sir!”

The air filled with the sound of footsteps as archers charged up the stairs and broke out of the watchtowers, streaming along the perimeter, taking their places by the arrowslots. The Worgals were almost upon them.

It would not be long now. Gilfred spotted teams of the creatures carrying crude ladders between them, ranged units, mounted ones, all frothing at the eyes and lips. The Celesite bomb had sent them into a berserk rage.

“What are we going to do?” Gilfred asked. “We’ve lost our only weapon.”

“We’ll fight them just like we would any other enemy,” Aedon growled. “But with fire. And lots of it.”

Despite everything that had gone wrong, Gilfred was relieved to see some trace of the old Aedon beneath those folds of skin. Strength and resilience was important in a leader, but the most important things he was glad Aedon had not lost were his mind and spirit.

The Sergeants called across the ramparts, readying the archers. Soldiers dipped arrows in oil and set them alight, passing them forwards before picking up their shields. The squadrons were still shaken from the sudden in-fighting that had occurred, but they’d left those thoughts behind in the face of the oncoming threat. Aedon rested his hands atop the parapets, staring into the wind.

“So this is what the face of death looks like,” he muttered.

“It won’t end here,” Gilfred said. “We have the high ground and the city on our side.”

“But they have the numbers,” the King said grimly.

The Worgal riders arrived first, a howling shadow of death along the dirt. They brought back their bows and fired, disarrayed, their arrows falling like the rain. The shield-bearers raised their barriers along the parapets, protecting the archers. Gilfred and Aedon ducked behind cover as arrows thudded into wood. Around them people cried out in pain, shafts sticking out of their limbs where the projectiles had slid through.

“Return fire!” the Captain called. “Like we practised! Draw… and release!”

The air cracked in a chorus of vibrant thrums. Gilfred watched as the flaming volley soared through the air, past the front line and into the centre of mass. Worgals screeched as they were hit, fire spreading across their bodies, catching onto the relicts beside them.

“Again! Before they can return our fire!”

They loosed another volley, further back this time, covering the sky with a wave of fire. The Worgals and Celadons howled in pain, falling down in tangles of fur and limb.

They’d felled several hundred in the last attack, but already there were more relicts coming to take their place. The army stretched all the way to the horizon where the Blight lay beside the Arrien, a horde of snapping, barking wolfmen. One of the ladder teams had reached the walls and set it in place. Worgals and Bloodmanes streamed up it, blades in hands, fangs bared.

“Hold them!” Aedon cried, rushing to where the ladder was. “They do not pass!” He met the first Worgal up the ladder and swung his lance in a wide arc, sending it flying back. Chaos erupted along the wall as more ladders attached themselves, streams of Worgals already racing upwards.

Gilfred drew his sword and rushed to Aedon’s side. They’d broken the ladder, but not before a Bloodmane had made its way onto the rampart, mane glistening with fresh blood, punching a hole in their front line. The archers continued to fire, the shield-bearers covering, the lesser Sergeants desperately fighting to maintain some semblance of order, but their defence was crumbling. The volleys came out thinner and thinner each time, sometimes staggered, and the Worgals continued to come. The night was aglow with fire and the smell of burning hair.

Gilfred reached the Bloodmane just as the King took a blow to his armour. The blade struck so hard that it left a dent in the Rhinegold. Aedon roared and lashed out with his lance, but he was slow and the Bloodmane ducked it easily.

“Your Majesty!” the Kingsblade cried. “Leave this one to me!” He darted in front of Aedon and caught the blade on his guard, coming face to face with the relict. Its brows raised, and a smile spread across its lips.

“Ah… a challenge.”

“Kalador give me strength!” Gilfred cried, twisting the blade to one side, creating an opening. The Bloodmane matched his move, and they danced across the rampart as arrows and soldiers fell around them. It was skilled, Gilfred thought, almost as skilled as himself. Were it not for the additional strength and speed granted to him by the Vow, he would have been outmatched.

Their exchange took them to one of the ballistas, and the crewmen scattered to make way. Gilfred cursed himself for not wearing his helm; though it restricted his vision, it provided much-needed protection. The Bloodmane, in the meantime, was almost completely naked save a cloth around its waist.

“Gilfred!” The Bloodmane whirled around, just as another Kingsblade landed and struck it a glancing blow off the chin. Gilfred launched himself forward and severed the relict’s head from its neck, sending its body toppling off the wall.

“Thanks,” he shouted. Before him was Vanin, one of the older Kingsblades from the time of Alend and Edric. Vanin nodded an acknowledgement before dashing off to the next breach.

The assault was well underway now, the Worgals having loosed all their arrows, focusing entirely on their ladders. The ballistas cracked every few minutes, sending fireballs into the heart of the army. The last of the archers were firing off their rounds before turning to melee combat, meeting those who had successfully scaled the walls.

Gilfred took a moment to take in the enemy’s formation. The Worgals were gathered in a teeming mass, working together to set up ladders where the breaches were biggest. There were a handful of Bloodmanes left, waiting beside the Celadons. Just as well, he thought. Without fire, each Bloodmane was the equal to a Kingsblade. They were squadrons in themselves.

“The oil!” someone cried out. “Pour the oil!”

It was Aedon, surrounded by two Kingsblades and a band of guards. They took down another Bloodmane, the King’s lance impaling its throat, but not before it knocked three guards and a the Kingsblade off the wall. Gilfred rushed to the edge in horror as they landed on the sea of relicts, drawing feverish howls and barks from their lips. The Celadons jumped them, gnashing and tearing, making short work even through steel armour. The Kingsblade tried to jump, to climb back up, but they were so packed he could barely swing his sword. He grappled with one of the Celadons before a pack of Worgals piled atop him, a wriggling mass of black in the night. Gilfred was glad there was no moon. He didn’t want to see his comrade ripped to pieces, screaming for his mother. He could think of no worse way to die.

Someone finally tipped the first vat of oil over, and it went splashing across the base of the walls in a slick sheen. The smell of rank animal fat filled the air as more vats followed it. They had run out of arrows, so there was no more point to keeping the oil.

They covered the base of the walls with, and then someone set it alight with a torch. The night burned with a hellish glow as Worgal screams filled the air. Fire rushed down the walls and across the battlefield, scorching everything in sight.

“The Songweavers!” a Captain called out, holding back three Worgals. “Clear the watchtower doors so they can get out!”

Up until now, they’d only managed to hold their ground by pushing the relicts off the walls and destroying their ladders. Ordinary metal was ineffective against a relict; they would continue to fight when an ordinary man would have bled out long ago.

But now there was fire, fire everywhere, searing hot, raging and smoking across the front lines. Gilfred raced to the nearest watchtower door, the ballistas still going off around him. Several of them had been destroyed by now, not that they’d been of much use. There were simply too many of the demons.

He reached the watchtower, regrouping with Aedon. They were the heroes, the generals who dictated the flow of battle. Only the Kingsblades and the King held weapons capable of hurting the Worgals. Rhinegold could shear through the relicts like a hot knife through butter.

Aedon impaled two of the wolfmen into the ground, letting out a fierce battlecry. Though the King was big and unwieldy, he packed the strength of several hundred pounds behind his lance.

“Clear!” he roared. The door shattered, and the robed Songweavers of the Legion spilled onto the rampart. The flame-wielders set to work at once, banding together in choirs of two and three, reining the fire in to their command. They steered the flames away from allies and back into the relicts, where the wind-wielders took over and gusted them far and wide. There were other Songweavers as well, those who could heal others, disorient the enemy, strengthen their allies’ blows, many more. Gilfred joined in where he could, backing the singers with the shieldbearers, taking his Rhinegold blade wherever it was needed. They could hold Menkraft. With fire on their side and the Soulsong, they could hold it. They would hold it, or the relicts would break through, and then they’d ravage Norn as well, and Adem after that, and then, finally, Uldan Keep.

Celianna, Gilfred thought. I can’t let them reach her.

The night echoed with the scream of fire and death. The Legion had rebuffed countless attacks, stopping the assault teams short, and finally, there looked to be an end in sight. Gilfred saw empty land behind the army for the first time, stirring only with the movement of the odd straggler or two.

The soldiers’ cries became brighter, more hopeful. Order took hold as they forced back the Worgals, slowly and systematically, the shieldbearers protecting the Songweavers, the Songweavers splashing the relicts with fire, the spearmen finishing the job. They began to fix the breaches along the wall, covering the angles, the gaps, destroying the scaling ladders. With their ladders gone, the Worgals could do nothing but bark as soldiers hurled flaming rocks and debris from above, and the Songweavers drove fire through their ranks.

It was then, nearly an hour into the battle, that the wall gave a great shudder.

Gilfred stumbled and righted himself, looking around for what had caused it. Sweat dripped into his eyes, the stench of blood and smoke thick in his nostrils, his body battered bruised where he’d been hit beneath his armour, but otherwise uncut.

The wall shook again. It was the gate, that was where it was coming from. He raced along the edge, jumping over the bodies of Worgals, the occasional Bloodmane, the wounded soldiers who awaited the cold embrace of death. He bolted across the gate, meeting up with the High King once more.

Directly below them, standing in a pool of fire, was a Slazaad.

Worgals waited on either side of it, growling and snapping their jaws. A Bloodmane gave directions in a series of barks and snarls, urging the lizard-like beast forward. The Slazaad screeched in pain as the fire burned across its scales, but it obeyed. It took a few steps back from the gate and then lowered its head.

Ker-THUD.

Gilfred stumbled again. He realized with a growing sense of despair what was happening.

They all have their own roles, he thought. The Bloodmanes as commanders, the Worgals as infantry, the Celadons as mounts. Just like we do.

And the Slazaads were the battering rams. The siege weapons.

The gate cracked below them. Somewhere to the right, along the western side was another Slazaad. Wreathed in hellfire under the moonless night, they were like wingless dragons. The Worgals had stopped trying to scale the walls and were waiting. They would get their chance soon enough. Atop the ramparts, the fighting had died down. The soldiers were watching with increasing dread.

Then, one of the Captains shouted out.

“Retreat!” he cried. “Retreat! Off the wall, everyone! To Norn!”

Ker-THUD.

At once everyone began to move, filing into the watchtowers. Gilfred waited outside with Vanin and another Kingsblade, his heart in his mouth.

“We can’t hold them,” Vanin whispered.

Oh gods… Wyd, Cenedria, Kalador…

Ker-THUD.

The Slazaad’s head broke through the gate, sending splinters out the other side. The Captains and Sergeants were calling frantically now, sounding the horns for withdrawal. Without height or the walls to aid them, they would be demolished. Menkraft was lost.

As the last of the soldiers filed into the watchtower, the Kingsblades followed them. Very soon, the first of Aldoran’s three walls would be lost. Very soon, the first and largest of Aldoran’s three districts would fall.

They emerged onto the ground, the individual squadrons already falling back at a quick march. There was a gaping scar in the gate, offering a view of what awaited outside. Worgals, Celadons, a handful of Bloodmanes. A berzerk Slazaad, covered in fire.

They weren’t going to make it in time. They were too clustered, too disorderly. Someone would have to take the rear guard, and the commanders had realized that.

Two squads of men waited by the gates, their faces surprisingly calm given the non-stop confusion that had swept through the night. It was the calmness of men who had resigned themselves to their fate.

King Aedon stood in front of them, mounted atop his warhorse beside his Kingsblade escorts. Gilfred untied his own horse from the lamppost where he’d left it and mounted it.

Ker-THUD.

“Your sacrifices will not be forgotten, my men,” Aedon said, and at that moment, even though sixteen years had passed, he was the noble King who’d sat atop the throne when Gilfred had first joined the Kingsblades. “Hold them here, and hold them proudly knowing that you will be dining with the finest heroes of Faengard come sunrise.”

The two squad Sergeants saluted. “We will hold them, my King. For Aldoran, and the glory of Faengard.”

“Wyd watch over you. Kalador give you strength.”

Aedon lowered his gauntlet and the Sergeants did the same. The men resumed their conversations, speaking of the weather and their wives’ cooking, the most mundane things Gilfred could think of. They were the conversations of proud, brave men, those who looked at death as but another adventure. But he heard also the underlying fear in their voices, and that was what made him angry the most.

Ker-THUD.

“To Norn,” Aedon said, and his escorts obeyed. Gilfred was last to ride, as the gates behind him shattered and the relicts came pouring out in a hellish blaze.