by Bobby Adair
“What?” Fitz asked.
“Before you abandon the slings, I have an idea.”
“Spit it out,” Fitz told him.
“We instructed the slingers to throw for distance. If we quickly pass the instruction to instead throw the stones as high as they can, they may be more deadly, as long as they go over the wall.”
“Why?”
“The stones will fall harder from a greater height,” said Adam-John. “It might make the difference.”
“Kreuz,” said Fitz, getting his attention as he mounted the ladder to descend the tower. “Can you spare Adam-John?”
Kreuz nodded.
“Go, then,” Fitz told Kreuz. “Adam-John is mine.” Turning quickly to Adam-John, and pointing at her two captains, she said, “Take these two, spread the word to all the slingers as fast as you can, and get others to help. Tell them to change how they throw. Come to me as soon as you’re done.”
Adam-John agreed and the two captains hurried off.
Ginger pointed west urgently and said, “Demons are running the wall!”
Fitz looked down the arc of the wall, seeing a mass of demons trying to get over. “There, you mean?”
Ginger pointed, “No, far around, where you can’t see. One of the messengers just told me while you were telling Kreuz to move the catapults. The demons are going in both directions.”
Fitz had expected it, but hoped it wouldn’t happen. “How many?”
“Dozens, or hundreds,” answered Ginger, “The messenger didn’t seem to know. But they could come over anywhere.”
Fitz scanned down the length of the wall, but something in the way Ginger was looking at her caught her eye. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Ginger pointed at the third tower down along the wall, three or four hundred yards distant. “The women in that tower have spotted a mass of demons splitting off from the main horde.”
“How many?” Fitz asked.
“Hard to tell,” answered Ginger. “The demons aren’t disciplined like Blackthorn’s army. Some split off, others followed, more went after. It might be five hundred. It might be five thousand by now. I don’t know.”
Fitz pointed to the center of town. “Take the cavalry to the square. Send riders to the edge of town, where they can see the wall.”
“If we go there, we’ll be far from the wall,” said Ginger, “We won’t—”
“From the square, you’ll be closer to the whole wall,” Fitz told her, “You’ll be able to ride to anywhere on the wall faster than from any other place.”
“I could use two cohorts of fighters,” Ginger told her. “If five thousand demons come over the wall—”
“A thousand fighters?” Fitz asked in surprise.
Ginger nodded.
“I can’t spare them,” said Fitz. “It may not look like it, but the battle here is not going well for us. Soon we’ll have to retreat into the city. Too many demons are coming over the wall.”
Ginger grabbed Fitz’s arm and looked sharply into her eyes. “Retreat won’t work. I’ve been down there in the fight with them. They’re on the edge of running already. If we pull back, it’ll be a rout. We’ll get slaughtered.”
Fitz felt like she was being weighed down with mistakes and bad choices. “You’ll have to do it with your riders and the reserves at the other gates. I can’t give you any people. I wish I could. You’ll have to take care of the demons coming over the wall, wherever they come.”
“I won’t fail.” Ginger spun and headed for the ladder.
Fitz scanned the immensity of the battle again, as she turned to give instructions to another of her captains.
Thunder rumbled, weird and brief. Fitz looked to the sky, wondering whether rain would help or hurt Brighton’s chances, but she saw only thin, white clouds streaking the blue sky high overhead, not the kind of clouds that made rain. The thunder cracked again. What was it?
Chapter 84: Jingo
Jingo felt his shoulder ache as he threw the second grenade through the trees and out into the clearing. The pain reminded him that he was no longer a young man. He watched the grenade explode about forty yards away.
“Why are you throwing them with no demons close by?” Beck asked, again.
Jingo didn’t answer.
With Melora leading, they’d ended up on a side trail, not one going to the east gate, but one that brought them to the edge of the forest, looking out at pastures that sloped down toward the circle wall. Far off to their right were the towers that stood over the east gate. To their left, they saw the flank of the horde assaulting the main gate on the south side of town.
All along the wall, demons streamed and sprinted, looking for a way to get around the wall or a good place to climb it.
Reaching for a third hand grenade, Jingo focused on the horde in the distance down by the main gate. He was hoping some had turned their attention to the source of the noise. A few turned their heads, but not many.
Jingo knew plenty of them had memories that stretched back three hundred years, to a time when men with rifles and hand grenades, tanks, bombs, and planes slaughtered them by the billions. From that war, the demons had a hatred buried in their hearts for the ancient weapons and the men who used them.
That hatred was drawing a few runners away from Brighton’s walls, but not enough of them.
Jingo pulled the pin on the grenade and pitched with all his might.
“There are no demons where you’re throwing!” Beck shouted again. The others looked on, wide-eyed, as though Jingo had lost his senses.
Jingo crouched and turned his face away. Beck stepped behind the trunk of a thick tree. The others were still a dozen paces back in the forest, safe enough.
The grenade exploded.
Jingo took another probing look at the demon horde at the front gate.
They were coming—not all of them, but enough.
His plan, the one he’d had little time to explain, and certainly no time to debate, was working. He spun, and in curt orders told them, “Ivory, you, Melora, and I will kneel here.” He pointed at a downed log at the edge of the trees. “Fire at the demons as they close in. Don’t waste your bullets by shooting wildly, but don’t waste too much time aiming your shots. If we kill a few thousand of them, we might have a chance to save Brighton.”
“A few thousand?” Ivory’s eyes went wide. “That’s not possible.”
“With these rifles, it is,” Jingo assured him. “Now, kneel. Aim. Shoot.”
Ivory rushed up to the log and dropped to a knee.
“Use the wood to steady your aim,” Jingo told him. “Just as you used the window sill in the tower when you were learning from Kirby.” Jingo turned his eyes to Melora. “You go, too. You and Ivory are the best shots.”
Ivory’s rifle popped off a round, then two, then more in rapid succession.
“What about us?” Beck pointed at Oliver. “Where do you want us?”
Jingo hurried over to the cart. With a knife, he cut the ropes holding the crates in place and pried open a box, while Oliver and Beck came over to help. “What you’ll need to do,” Jingo yelled over the gunshots, “is reload the empty magazines.” He opened the first case.
“Reload?” Beck asked.
Jingo rammed a finger into the case of loose bullets. “Thirty rounds per magazine. Once we fire all the magazines we have loaded, the rifles will be useless. If we don’t refill as we go along—”
“—We’ll all die,” Oliver finished for him, understanding the situation immediately.
Jingo nodded, with a grim look on his face. “That’s right.”
“Okay,” Beck agreed, as he got behind the cart to start pushing. “It’ll be faster if we stand right by the three that are shooting.”
�
�You’re right,” Jingo agreed. “But as you load, watch the forest behind us and around us. We need to keep an eye out for demons coming through the trees.”
“I should shoot.” Oliver looked up at Jingo as he said it. “Kirby said I had better aim than you.”
“I think—” Jingo caught himself. “You’re right. Get over there. When you get tired, we’ll trade jobs. If your rifle gets too hot, let me know, and we’ll trade those too.”
Oliver ran to the log behind which Ivory and Melora were already shooting.
Looking across the field, Jingo saw twisted men falling. Perhaps more importantly, all the demons who had been running along the wall, looking for an undefended way into the city, were now coming at them.
Pushing the cart, Beck told Jingo, “Go get the empty magazines. Ivory and Melora have already emptied one each. I’ll get this over there.”
Jingo rushed over and collected the empties, then rushed them back and tossed them into the open box of bullets. He grabbed a handful of bullets and started stuffing. “You and I need to be mindful of everything,” Jingo told Beck. “We need to load with our hands and watch elsewhere with our eyes.”
“You told us that already,” said Beck.
“Yes, but don’t just watch the trees. Watch the demons coming across the grass in front of us. If a lot of them get close, toss a hand grenade or several. The others need to keep shooting.”
“Will they get that close?” asked Beck, casting a worried look in the direction of the many hundreds, who were even now running up the sloping ground.
Jingo glanced again at the demons as he finished with one magazine and started on another. “You see how many are coming into our trap? It is not a matter of if they get close, but when.”
Chapter 85: Fitz
Still looking east, the direction from which the strange thunder was coming, Fitz startled when a hand grasped her shoulder. She spun to see the anxious face of one of her captains.
“Look!” the woman said, pointing west along the curve of the wall.
Far past the stair steps built to funnel the monsters to their deaths inside the wall, far past the ends of the lines of slingers and fighters, at their backs, even, demons were coming over the wall, dozens and dozens. That meant there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, outside the wall in that direction.
Fitz turned toward town to see Ginger’s cavalry just disappearing into the distance.
A rider from a tower along the western edge of the wall was heading in the opposite direction—not toward Ginger’s squadrons, but toward Fitz’s command tower.
Damn that rider! Had she not seen Ginger’s squadrons going into the city?
Fitz needed to divert Ginger’s riders out of the city and to the southwest wall.
To the captain, Fitz, ordered, “I need you to get down there, gather two cohorts of slingers from the rear, and run to face those demons. When that rider passes you on the way here, tell her to race to Ginger in the square, as fast as she can, and tell her and her riders to get back here. Go, now! You need to run!”
The captain’s wide eyes confirmed to Fitz that she understood just how urgent the situation was. She bounded across the tower’s floor and flew down the ladder.
A few seconds later, Fitz saw the captain running to get around the large semicircle of women fighting the horde that poured through the spigot of the main gate. Fitz turned her attention back to the southwest part of the wall. Even as Fitz watched, the trickle of dozens of demons coming over turned to a flow of hundreds.
She glanced toward the rolling thunder to the east, wondering what terror the demons were bringing through the forest over there. Could it be any worse than what was already here?
Chapter 86: William
William watched the battle from the trees, his personal band of demons gathered behind him, all eager to enter the fray, salivating for a mouthful of warm flesh. He’d told them to stay in the forest, rather than run out into the fields around Brighton and join the others.
They’d followed his orders and waited.
William was their brother and their leader. He didn’t want any more of them to die. He wanted to run away from the battle and find a place far away from Winthrop’s lunatics, where he’d not have to watch another of his brothers getting hacked to death and eaten, or watch another of his friends burned for the sin of not groveling to Winthrop’s cruelty.
Still, William couldn’t turn away.
He wanted vengeance.
Winthrop’s soldiers were arrayed in a circle, fighting outward at the demon horde that surrounded them. Most of the demons, realizing there wouldn’t be enough meat for all of them, seemed to be flowing around Winthrop’s army, trying to get over the walls and partake in what would surely be a massive feast inside.
With that happening, the pressure on Winthrop’s men was easing, so much that it was starting to look to William like they might survive, and Winthrop might live. And if Winthrop didn’t die, William and his brothers would never be safe, whether they went back to the Ancient City or ran away into the forest.
Winthrop had come to find them once. Nothing would stop him from coming again.
Winthrop had to die.
Unfortunately, the longer William watched, the more it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.
That made William angry.
He had to do something to change it.
Winthrop had to pay a price for what he’d done to Phillip and Jasmine.
For what he’d done to Brighton.
Turning to his demons, projecting all of his hatred of the burnings, and Winthrop’s killings, William yelled, “Kill Winthrop! And kill all the priests and priestesses who stand by him!”
Chapter 87: Bray
Bray and Kirby hid in the trees on their horses, watching thousands of dirty, naked demons crash into Winthrop’s blood-printed men, fighting. Demon shrieks and men’s cries merged into what sounded like a single noise. Men and women fought, fell, or fled. The battle, which had started near the gates of Brighton, had quickly extended past where he and Kirby were hiding. The fighting mass had a life of its own, moving in all directions, like some giant animal with a thousand appendages. Winthrop’s army had lost their order. A dozen or so men on horseback rode through the crowd, trampling demons and sometimes their own brothers and sisters to stay alive.
There was too much to look at.
But Bray needed to find William.
He looked through the people on horseback, finding a stark white figure that looked like Winthrop, trying to stay balanced as he rode among the fray. The rest of the horses in the middle of the field seemed to hold men, but no one small enough to be William.
Had he fallen already? Bray didn’t see any unmanned horses.
Maybe William hadn’t made it this far.
Bray shook his head, not ready to accept that fact. He was still looking from horse to horse when thunder cracked the air. Bray looked around and up, but the noise wasn’t coming from overhead in the clouds.
It was coming from the forest, to their right.
“Guns!” he hissed.
“I thought it was a troll fart.”
“What?” Bray looked back at Kirby like she might not be that smart.
“Like I wouldn’t know it was a gun.” Kirby backed away from the tree line on her horse. “We need to move. We might not get another chance.”
“Wait,” Bray said. “I see something!”
From somewhere in the trees to their left, a pack of demons spilled from the forest, snarling and yowling as they ran diagonally across the field and toward the riders on horseback.
William was among them.
“William!” Bray said, louder than he would’ve dared, if he hadn’t been so startled.
He watched as William ran next
to the demons, quickly engulfed by moving bodies and disappearing. What was William doing? Had he lost his mind? Or was he back with his demons? Bray raised his sword. Whatever William was up to, Bray couldn’t let him die, now that he had finally found him.
“What are you doing?” Kirby asked from behind him.
Bray didn’t answer. With an enraged battle cry, he rode out into the field to get William.
Chapter 88: Winthrop
Winthrop couldn’t believe his eyes. The stones from the heavens were laying the demons low. The slaughter of the earth-shaking stones had come to a stop, but only after dead demons beyond number lay between his disciples and the forest.
Now his god brother, the daylight moon, was weeping tears, smaller stones, in a pounding rain that filled the sky, wreaking havoc on the beasts between his army and the wall. Demons were falling, dead or wounded, and getting trampled by their greedy brothers.
He looked to the sky and thanked his divine siblings.
Now, his thunder brother was coming out of the forest somewhere in the east.
All around him, fighting in an unbroken circle of brawn, his blood soldiers hacked and stabbed, killing and dying, while the horde of demons ran out of bodies to throw at them. It reminded him of those dreadful nights on the hill near the Ancient City when the hordes came in numbers Winthrop couldn’t imagine existed in the world. But they all fell beneath the blades of his chosen.
Just as they were doing now.
Right as Winthrop’s fear started to turn to hope, a line of demons sprinted out of the forest.
More?
Winthrop’s fear redoubled.
How could there be?
The demons raced across the acres of bodies, oblivious to the carnage all around them, focused on him, and only him.
Winthrop understood immediately. They were coming to murder him. There was no doubt.
