by Bobby Adair
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.
Winthrop pointed and yelled at his priestesses and close priests, the ones who'd been with him from that first night in the woods, the ones who'd surrounded him and protected him from any monster who fought his way through the line of his soldiers.
But…
What's that?
At the head of the new line of demons, Winthrop saw something strange.
The boy!
It was the kid, Rowan, fleeing from the demons. Maybe his god brothers had sent the boy back to him. Maybe the boy was a sign.
"The boy!" Winthrop shouted. "They're after the boy! Let him through the lines. Save the boy!" Winthrop was relieved. The demons weren't coming for him, after all.
One of the priests stared at the coming line of demons. "I see him, my Father."
"Run, you fool!" shouted Winthrop. "Save the boy!"
The priest shouted at two other men to follow him to the line of fighting men. They pushed through the battling army and found a clear path for Rowan.
Winthrop was pleased. The gods were giving him a gift by returning the boy.
Rowan passed between two soldiers, and the pursuing demons piled up as they skidded to a stop, staying out of range of the priest's swinging swords.
Winthrop raised his face to the sky, uttering the god-speak phrases his tongue had found on its own. That was the only way to praise the other gods and himself for being the source of such a wondrous little miracle. The boy should have been dead, after disappearing on the night of the demon attack. Now he was a gift—no, more than that, an omen, a resurrection. Victory would come. There was no more need to fret, no need to quake. Only killing and burning remained, chores for his chosen before filling their bellies on a feast of demon carcasses.
Praise to me!
Winthrop opened his eyes to look down at the boy, expecting Rowan to bow at the feet of his horse.
But the boy wasn't there, offering his thanks.
With anxious eyes, Winthrop looked up and saw the men who'd gotten the boy through the line. They were on their backs with demons on top of them, fighting against shredding teeth while more demons flowed through the gap in the line.
And that damn boy!
He was running along behind the line, stabbing a knife into the hamstrings of Winthrop's defenders.
Winthrop's priests fell and the demons charged over them.
No!
Oh, no!
The boy was some kind of evil fiend, an impish spawn of hell, a terror.
Winthrop wailed as the formation of his chosen disintegrated around him.
Chapter 89: Fitz
Fitz watched from her tower as the circular formation that Winthrop's army had been holding disintegrated.
"Oh, no!" She had no mercy in her heart for Winthrop, but she fretted for the men and women who fought for him. They'd held out through so much of the battle, killing untold numbers of demons with heavy losses of their own, and just when it looked like some of them were going to survive, they failed.
They were all going to die.
With the weight of that on her heart, and the fear that the demons would soon have only Brighton to fight, Fitz turned back to the battle inside the wall. She looked toward the city, hoping to see Ginger's mounted warriors coming, but she saw none of them.
Where were they?
Looking across a mile of potato and corn fields to where the west gate's towers stood, Fitz saw most of the cohort that had been guarding that gate running toward the demons that were pouring over the wall south of them.
The main body of her army was fully engaged in the fight at the south gate and the nearby walls. The women, boys, and old men on the west end of the line must have realized the demons were coming over behind them, and they were starting to run.
It was the moment Fitz feared most: her soldiers, armed with spears and bladed weapons, turning their backs on the demons and getting tackled from behind. Dying because of their fear.
As Fitz watched, the western flank of the line frayed and she saw the disintegration as though it was a living thing coming toward her, destroying her army as it went.
"You haven't lost!" Fitz yelled futilely. Even if there had been no battle under way, the fleeing soldiers were too far away to hear.
Fitz glanced back toward town. Still, Ginger's mounted warriors were not coming.
Fitz
scanned quickly across the rest of the battle. On the east side of the main gate, her women were still holding the line, killing the demons flowing over the wall. They were backing up, and their line was expanding with women setting aside their slings and joining the fight in front of them with spears and whatever other weapons they had. At the main gate, it was the same story. They were holding their own. Fitz had no orders to give, nothing to do but wait and hope the numbers worked out in Brighton's favor when all the killing was done.
It was the fraying line at the west end that was their doom. If the retreating cohorts' fear caught on, the whole defense would collapse, and it would be a very dark day in Brighton.
Fitz turned to one of the last of the captains in the tower with her. Getting the attention of that one, she said, "I'm going to rally the fleeing women. I need to stop this. Come find me if something more urgent arises."
"You can count on us," the woman confirmed as she glanced at the fraying line. "Go." The anxiety in her voice told Fitz the woman understood.
Fitz crossed over to the ladder and all but fell to the ground with hands and feet pausing on wooden rungs just enough to slow her descent and keep her from breaking her ankles at the bottom.
Once her feet were on the ground, she ran to her horse and mounted it with ease. Her six personal guards were there, in their saddles and waiting. That was a blessing that could make all the difference. Seven women swinging swords from the backs of horses would do so much more to bolster the spines of her panicked soldiers than one woman riding solo.
Fitz drew her sword as she spurred her horse. "Follow me!" she called to her guards as she sped off on her giant, black beast.
Chapter 90: Melora
"I'm out!" Melora shouted, as she ejected her magazine and tossed it back to Jingo and Beck, who were feeding her, Ivory, and Oliver with ammunition.
To her right, Oliver and Ivory still fired.
"Here," said Beck, breathing heavily from effort or panic, as he put two magazines into Melora's hand.
