03 - Call to Arms

by Mitchel Scanlon - (ebook by Undead)

Turning with the others to find out the identity of the speaker, Dieter saw Gerhardt step through the doorway into the room with Sergeant Bohlen beside him. Gerhardt looked tired. There were fresh bloodstains on his sleeves and hands.

  “How did it go?” Hoist asked. “With Kuranski, I mean?”

  “As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Gerhardt shrugged in exhaustion. “I got the leg off. Hopefully, that will deal with the infection. Kuranski passed out. He’s sleeping now. We’ll just have to hope for the best. But I know one thing. There’s no way we can move Kuranski now—not without killing him.”

  “Again with this nonsense,” Krug scowled. “I can’t believe you’re saying you think we should all stay here just because Kuranski can’t be moved. It’s madness. I have nothing against Kuranski, but we can’t put all our lives at risk for one man. We should get out of here and leave Kuranski to look after himself. That’s what I say.”

  “Then it’s a good thing your vote doesn’t count for anything,” Sergeant Bohlen grumbled. He fixed his eyes on Krug for a moment, staring him down, before he turned to look at the faces of the other men around him.

  “The problem here is that you all seem to think this is a council chamber or some kind of debating society,” the sergeant continued. “Because it isn’t. It’s a regiment of soldiers and that means only one man is given the luxury of having an opinion—me. So, let me tell you what I’ve decided. We are staying here. If the goblins come, we will make our stand behind these walls—at least for tonight. In the morning, when there’s light, I’ll look at the situation again and decide whether there’s any chance of us making a withdrawal. But, until then, we stand and fight. From now on, this place isn’t a mill. It’s our fortress. Any questions?”

  He gazed at the men around him almost as though daring them to contradict him. No one spoke. After a few seconds, the sergeant nodded in satisfaction.

  “All right, then. We have a fight to win. Let’s get to work.”

  Another two hours passed by the time the goblins made their first attack. By then, it was midnight. The rain had stopped, leaving the ground outside the mill walls muddy and sodden. To Dieter’s mind, muddy conditions underfoot were something that could only work in the defenders’ favour.

  As he was learning, the time before a battle was the hardest part. It was the waiting that bothered him. He supposed he did not like being unable to know what the enemy were planning. Out in the darkness, away from the feeble light cast by the Scarlets’ lanterns, it felt like the goblins could be hatching all manner of diabolical plans. Whatever they were up to, it would only become clear once the battle began in earnest.

  In the meantime, the Scarlets tried to make the best of the waiting. Efforts were made to strengthen the mill’s defences. The long table of the mill house kitchen was cleared while the room was made ready to serve duty as a makeshift hospital. Stones were gathered from the courtyard and piled on the ramparts, ready to be sent crashing down on the heads of any besiegers. Swords were sharpened. The remaining butter and grease from the kitchen was applied to the iron spikes on top of the mill’s exterior wall to stop climbers from gripping them. Empty grain sacks were filled with soil and used to construct a small redoubt ten paces behind the main gates in order to give the defenders a strong point from which to resist the enemy advance if the gates were breached.

  The space for men on the wall ramparts was limited, but Sergeant Bohlen posted as many soldiers as possible to defend them, with his remaining forces stationed in the courtyard as a mobile reserve. In order to maximise the firepower of the soldiers guarding the wall, a handgunner was posted after every fifth man. The handgunners were low on lead shot and black powder, but they promised to do as much damage as possible to the enemy before their ammunition was exhausted.

  Markus Brucker took up a position alongside Dieter, Hoist, Rieger and Gerhardt. Having never seen a long rifle up close before, Dieter watched captivated as Brucker made a series of minute adjustments to the weapon. The man’s manner seemed strangely prayerful in the run-up to battle, as though he was communing with his rifle on an almost religious level.

  “How far would you say it is to that tree over there?” he asked Dieter, pointing his rifle toward a gnarled and ancient oak at edge of the forest’s tree line.

  “I don’t know… Perhaps a hundred paces.”

  “Hmm. We’ll call it ninety,” Brucker said, looking through the brass cylinder set on top of the barrel of his gun.

  Earlier, he had explained the brass tube was like a telescope. It enabled him to see targets in more detail and improved his aim accordingly. As he stared at the tree through the brass tube, Brucker used his fingers to make a tiny adjustment to a small metal wheel at the side of his gun.

  “Yes, that’s right, ninety,” Brucker spoke softly, though whether to himself or his gun Dieter could not be sure. “The wind is blowing south-westerly. The light could be better, but it will have to do. We’ll kill some greenskins, Hilde, won’t we? We’ll shoot for the big nobs first, the shaman—if they have one—and any chieftains. Then, we’ll take our targets where we can find them. We’ll kill some greenskins, though. That is certain.”

  As time went on, the night grew brighter. The clouds obscuring the moon moved aside, revealing a gibbous sphere. The full moon that Dieter had seen a few days ago had passed, but there was still radiance enough in the moon that was left to light the night brightly. He took it for another good omen—like the muddy ground underfoot, a bright night would favour the defenders.

  From time to time, as the men on the ramparts waited for the enemy to appear, they heard movement out among the trees. Hidden in the depths of the forest, some force was massing, but at first the Scarlets could only guess at its nature. Dieter found he was eager to ask Brucker more about his experiences fighting night goblins, but the marksman had fallen quiet.

  The entire mill was silent. Even in the forest the sounds of movement had stopped. It was as if the night held its breath.

  Then, Dieter saw them. He heard an inhuman battle cry and an army of stunted black-robed figures appeared on every side of the mill simultaneously.

  It was clear the time for waiting was past.

  Dashing from the cover of the tree line, the front rank of night goblins charged toward the mill walls carrying roughly-made scaling ladders. The handgunners responded with an opening salvo of shots—all except for Brucker. Looking through the brass tube atop his rifle, he scanned back and forth among the trees.

  “Patience, Hilde, patience,” Brucker whispered. “There’s plenty of targets, but we’ll save the first shot for one that’s worth it.”

  Somewhere, from among the trees, a ghastly green bolt of magical fire appeared. Shooting through the air, it hit an upper section of the wall about twenty paces to Dieter’s right. Dieter heard men screaming, their flesh shrivelled by the unearthly fire.

  “And there he is,” Brucker said, his voice low and calm among the noise around them. “A shaman. You shouldn’t have used such a spectacular spell, my green friend. You think you are too far away for us to hurt you, but you just gave away your position. Now, it’s mine and Hilde’s turn.”

  The rifle barked once, the sound almost lost among the reports of gunshots fired from elsewhere along the ramparts.

  Satisfied, Brucker began reloading his rifle.

  “Did you get him?” Dieter asked as the marksman opened the powder horn he carried at his side and began to carefully tip out a precise measure of powder into the barrel of his gun.

  “Of course, I got him,” Brucker replied, his expression suggesting he could hardly believe Dieter had asked him the question. “Head shot. A quick, clean death.”

  Outside the walls, the goblins with scaling ladders had reached their objective. As the enemy began to raise their ladders into position, Dieter joined his comrades in trying to drive them away. Grabbing stones from one of the piles nearby, he dropped as many as he could on the goblins’ heads. Then, helped by Hoist and G
erhardt, he pushed at the top of one of the ladders where it had been propped up to rest against the wall. Dislodging it, he heard a satisfying chorus of screams as the ladder fell and the goblins climbing it were sent smashing into the ground.

  “Watch out!” Rieger yelled. “Some of them are on the ramparts!”

  Hearing his comrade’s warning, Dieter turned to see a group of goblins had managed to get their scaling ladder into position in the gap in the wall’s defences created by the shaman’s magical missile. Leaving Brucker to continue sniping at the enemy on the other side of the wall, Dieter hurried to help his fellow Scarlets repel the goblin assault before the enemy turned their breach into a bridgehead.

  The night goblins were armed with a bewildering variety of weapons, including curved swords, clubs, picks, nets, knives, spears—one was even armed with something that looked not unlike a cross between a cattle prod and a boat hook. They swarmed onto the ramparts, exploiting the breach. Dieter saw one of his fellow soldiers die, an unknown Scarlet whose attempts to hold back the green tide had ended in heroic failure. Refusing to let the unknown man’s sacrifice go in vain, Dieter pushed forward and launched himself into the enemy with the regimental battle cry on his lips.

  “Forward the 3rd! Forward for Hochland! Forward the Scarlets!”

  With Gerhardt, Hoist and Rieger beside him, Dieter swept into the goblins. Battering into them with his shield, swinging his sword in arcs of destruction, he sent goblins squealing to their deaths as they fell back over the wall or tumbled from the rampart into the courtyard below.

  Without thought for his own safety, Dieter pushed on into the enemy, relying on his comrades to cover his flanks. Leaping over the wall, a goblin tried to hit him with its club, only for Dieter to smash the creature’s head to pulp with his shield. Another goblin followed it. Dieter killed it swiftly, and moved on to the next. Instinctively, he realised this was a key moment in the battle. If the goblins managed to push the Scarlets back from the walls so early in the siege, the battle would be all but over.

  Cutting a bloody swathe through the goblins swarming over the wall, he managed to reach the scaling ladder that was the source of the breach. Unlike the other ladders the goblins used, this one had a metal hook at the end that had bitten into the substance of the wall and held it fast.

  “Cover my back,” Gerhardt said from beside him. Without Dieter realising it, the older man had kept pace with him as he cut his way through the goblin ranks. “I’ll unhook the ladder, but I need you to cover me.”

  Nodding his agreement, he took up a position directly in front of the ladder while Gerhardt hacked at it with his sword and tried to dislodge it. Wary of blunting his blade on the metal hook, Gerhardt struck at the hook’s wooden housing instead. Suddenly, a goblin appeared at the top of ladder and tried to strike at him.

  Slashing the creature from its perch before it could achieve its aim, Dieter realised the flow of goblins up the ladder had slowed to zero. Such was the creatures’ cowardice, they stopped ascending the ladder the moment the two men had appeared at its top. Presumably, the goblins below had assumed the humans would destroy the ladder and, except for one foolhardy soul, had decided not to risk climbing it while there was the danger of the ladder being dislodged.

  The situation made his and Gerhardt’s task easier. Guarding the ladder as Gerhardt hacked at it, Dieter saw his comrade’s sword finally smash through the housing, sending the broken ladder falling to the ground.

  Looking right and left along the ramparts, Dieter saw the goblin attack was faltering. The enemy had managed to gain access to the wall in a couple of places, only to be pushed back by the defenders. Gazing down from his vantage at the goblins below him, Dieter saw that the greenskins had already started turning to run back to the safety of the woods.

  As the last of the goblin attackers retreated, Dieter heard a cheer along the ramparts as the Scarlets celebrated their victory. Around him, men started to move the wounded and the dying off the ramparts, while throwing the bodies of dead goblins over the wall. Joining in to help them, Dieter was pleased to notice Gerhardt, Hoist and Rieger, as well as the marksman Brucker, had all escaped the fight relatively unscathed.

  Looking further up the wall, he saw that Krug had also survived—a fact he felt less inclined to celebrate. It was clear the feeling was mutual. Seeing Dieter glance his way while he talked to his crony Febel, Krug responded with a sneering smile.

  Ignoring him, Dieter turned to help Hoist lift a wounded handgunner down from the rampart to the courtyard. Once the last of the wounded and the dead had been cleared away, he returned to take up his place on the wall once more with Gerhardt and the others. Even as he resumed his position, however, he saw a new horde of night goblins had begun to emerge from the cover of the tree line.

  At the centre of the enemy mass was a group of goblins carrying a huge battering ram. They were flanked on either side by archers. Behind them, Dieter could see other goblins, some of which herded monstrous, muscular, round-bodied animals that bobbed up and down impatiently and strained to go forward. Each animal had a mouth that extended across the full width of its body, filled with rows of sharp teeth. They were so unlike any other animal Dieter had ever seen that he could not help but find them disturbing. Looking more closely, he realised they could only be the creatures called squigs that Brucker had talked about.

  It looked as though the battle was far from over.

  The next attack took the form of an assault on the main gates.

  Showing more tactical organisation than Dieter would have credited them with, the second wave of night goblins attacked with a definite battle plan. While the goblins carrying the battering ram advanced on the gates, their archers unleashed a rain of arrows obviously intended to force the defenders into keeping their heads down.

  Sadly, from the goblin perspective, neither tactic proved particularly successful. The effectiveness of the goblin archers was blunted by the fact they refused to advance from the shadow of the forest. Given the lack of power and relative lack of range of their short bows, the archers’ refusal to advance meant the majority of their arrows fell pitifully short, while the few that made it to the ramparts or the courtyard were easily deflected by the Scarlets’ shields.

  In the meantime, having suffered several casualties from the sporadic gunshots of the handgunners, the archers abruptly withdrew, leaving the goblins manning the battering ram without any missile support.

  The result, predictably, was that the assault failed. The men guarding the gates rained down stones and gunfire on the goblin besiegers. Within a short space of time, the goblins fled, leaving the battering ram abandoned behind them.

  “So much for that,” Brucker said, watching the goblin retreat. He glanced up at the moon overhead. “But there’s at least another four hours before sunrise. They’ll attack again, and again, trying to wear us down.”

  “Is the sunrise that important?” Dieter asked him. “You think they won’t attack in the daytime?”

  “I can’t say it for definite, but usually they don’t like attacking by day,” Brucker told him. “They know they have the advantage when it’s dark. Deep down, all goblins are cowards. If we can hold ’em off until sunrise, there’s every chance they’ll give up—at least until tomorrow. Even then, there’s a chance they might give it up for good. Goblins don’t do sieges well, not unless there’s an orc about to keep them at it.”

  “Get ready,” Gerhardt called out, having spotted movement in the forest. “Here they come again.”

  All at once, dozens of small glowing lights appeared amid the darkness of the trees. At first, Dieter wondered if the goblins had lit candles for some unfathomable reason. Then, the true source of the lights was revealed as the enemy archers emerged from the forest once more.

  Each goblin archer had a burning fire arrow strung in its bowstring. Raising their bows, they sent them arcing towards the mill. Evidently, having failed twice to take the mill by frontal assault, they had
decided to burn them out.

  “Pathetic,” Hoist grunted as they watched from the rampart as the fire arrows streaked through the night sky. “I know they’re goblins, but you think they’d realise this is no different from the last time they used arrows.”

  His words were quickly proven right. The majority of the fire arrows fell short and petered out in the mud below the exterior walls. The few arrows that hit the mark were swiftly extinguished by the mill’s defenders.

  “Incredible,” Hoist shook his head in weary amazement. “I know greenskins are supposed to be stupid, but you’d think they’d notice there’s a stream running through the mill. Even if they had managed to set the building alight, we’ve got a ready supply of water to douse the flames.”

  “I think they did notice,” Rieger said, drawing his comrades’ attention to a commotion further along the wall. “In fact, I’d say they are trying to make use of it.”

  Turning to look in the direction Rieger had indicated, Dieter saw the activity was among the men guarding the section where the mill stream went under the wall. The source of their concern seemed to be something that was happening at the foot of the wall.

  At first, Dieter was at a loss to understand what was going on. Then, he saw goblins moving by the entrance to the mill stream tunnel and realised what had happened. Unaware of the presence of the iron grille that barred entrance to the mill via the tunnel, the goblins had apparently sent a raiding party to enter it under cover of the fire arrow attack.

  Predictably, the attempted assault had ended disastrously. Dieter saw a few wet and wounded goblins stumbling away from the tunnel as the Scarlets made mocking catcalls and threw rocks and stones after them.

  “So much for greenskin subtlety,” Rieger said. “They’ve tried three different ways into the mill in the last half hour, and so far all they’ve managed to do is give most of us a breather. I can’t imagine they’ll leave things that way for long, though. We’d better get ready. It’s only a matter of time before they revert to the standard greenskin way of solving every problem—outright physical force.”