Very heavy fighting exploded in the next block over, very close to the Haywards’ house. Dirk and David advanced on the front and the right flank with pikes and spears massed together.
They struck the enemy hard and drove a wedge of fighters deep into the enemy ranks. David wheeled the right wing of his forces to shatter the enemy’s exposed right flank. The central mass of militia spears and pikes retreated behind an advancing shield wall, and kept hammering the enemy from behind it, attacking repeatedly. David found another shield and joined the wall, his katana in his right hand.
Sporadic firebombs landed among the humans. It looked as if the enemy had started to run low on the devices, and were using them sparingly.
Word came from Fred.
“You’re overextended,” the messenger warned. “Pull back a little!”
“Like hell,” Dirk said. “Bring up more troops and follow us in. Let’s end this and kill these fuckers!”
Flames roared up behind them. A massive firebomb assault cut them off from the rear.
“Damn it! Now we’re surrounded,” Dirk said. “Everyone circle around and prepare for an enemy push. They think they can wipe us out now. Well, we have enough people for one good charge. Let’s ram everything we have right down their throats! The rest of our people will follow in behind. They won’t let us down once they see what we’re doing. Bring up that stuff we captured!”
The enemy struck everywhere around them, in vast numbers. It was hard to tell in the dark just how many there were.
Dirk and David and the other leaders led the charge with their best fighters out in front and protecting their flanks.
Two of the firebombs got passed to each trooper in the center with free hands. They sheathed their swords to light their bombs on the lawn torches and fling them into the faces of their foes as the monsters flooded at them.
Blasts of flame caught the enemy off guard and confused their packed ranks.
Then the Urth humans tore into them.
The militia charge only lasted a few moments, but it broke the entire right side of the enemy ranks. Dirk and David shouted and screamed like berserkers, fighting wildly. Battered and exhausted, they and their forces dropped back among the neighborhood houses to recover and defend themselves.
But the enemy wheeled on them with a vengeance and poured everything they had at the defenders in an attempt to crush them.
“Hey, look where we are,” Dirk said.
Behind them, only a block away, sporadic fighting had erupted around the Hayward’s house.
“Let’s head there,” David said. “If we’re going to make a stand, let’s make one there.”
#
They cut down any foes between them and the house and arranged their forces in the neighborhood in good order. They held their last firebombs at the ready.
Belinda and Rosalyn stood out in the backyard helping the remaining guards beside them. Both women had their bows out and arrows on the string, swords and knives at their sides. They had ladders set up nearby, incase they had to fight from the rooftops.
Three dozen dead foes littered the area, and about fifteen dead humans. Dirk yelled at his wife, “Belle, get back inside, woman!”
“Like hell. We’ve been out here fighting for over an hour. You need everyone you can get!”
David went to Fred’s wife, Rosalyn. “Rose, where’s Jerriel?”
“I don’t know, Dave.”
“You don’t know?”
“We tried to keep her inside with us. But things got dicey and we went out to shoot. She must have slipped away again.”
“She’s gone? You let her go?”
“We were too busy to watch her constantly,” Belle said. “She can handle herself, David. Don’t worry about her. We’re the ones in trouble here!”
More messengers poured in. Their situation worsened.
“Rose is right,” Dirk said. “This is the hot spot. The enemy knows they’re partially trapped now and that this area is the weakest point. They’re going to try to break out here and get away, where they know we’re already tired. But we can’t let that happen.”
David looked around. They had maybe three hundred people or so left who could still stand and fight. The enemy had maybe ten times that number or more.
Dirk pointed with his sword. “We’ll make a stand down Jefferson and on either side of Greenlawn. A gauntlet of death that they’ll have to pass through, with us plugging up the end.”
“They’re going to butcher us as they pass through us like crap through a goose!” David said. “But we’re still the goose; they’re still the crap.”
“We’ll be butchering them at the same time,” Dirk said. “We just have to spread them out and hem them in long enough for our friends to get here and fall upon them from every angle.”
“Dirk, we don’t have enough people to hold these positions. It’s a good plan. But we need five hundred more troops to make it all work.”
“Damn it, Dave! We don’t got no five hundred more people. We’ve got us! And that’s going to have to be enough. So everyone suck it up, tighten your belts, and get ready for the main event. Get our archers up on the rooftops with every shaft they have. We’re stuck here, and we’re going to give these bastards the fight of their lives!”
And that fight that wasn’t long in coming straight for them.
The first enemy wave hit them just before the intersection of Jefferson and Ironwood again, and slowly punched west.
David fought side by side with Dirk in the main shield wall, ten rows deep. Alternating rows of shields and swords and spears and pikes, bleeding the foe every step, every inch they fought.
The militia was slowly forced to give ground.
On the flanks blocked by a hasty wall of derelict cars, trucks, and SUVs lining the street, more human fighters hemmed the enemy in and fed them down Jefferson, forming the entire street into a corridor of death. Archers, crossbows, teens throwing bricks and stones, anything with weight that could be tossed: appliances, boom boxes, potted plants.
All types of debris rained down upon the enemy and smashed into them.
Anywhere the monsters turned or tried to break out, a wave of flanking defenders dogged their steps and met them with steel and threw them back.
The enemy had no choice but to fight their way forward down that corridor of death.
David laughed a grim bitter laugh. They became a meat grinder, with them as the blades.
And the enemy became the meat fed into them.
They cycled their troops in a flow pattern of lines, fighting for a few fierce minutes and then back out to retreat and rest for their next turn to come. He spotted their friend Pete Steiner nearby, from Mace’s Civil War reenactor’s unit. Pete was tall, strong, and wearing an old Army helmet, makeshift armor, and his tall horse boots. He sliced deftly at the enemy with his long cavalry saber up close, a big bowie knife in his other hand.
He chopped, sliced and, stabbed at rushing torgs and ka-torgs.
There wasn’t time for Dave to do anything but give his buddy a quick nod and a salute with his katana.
If the militia didn’t spell each other, all of them would have been worn out and simply beaten down, little by little.
As it was, even short bursts of intense fighting were incredibly exhausting.
David lost track of the blows he struck and the foes he cut down when his turns in the rotation came.
He tried to use every trick–spins, parries, thrusts, snap cuts, push cuts, draw cuts, back cuts. He went after openings and weaknesses one after another in blinding fury, efficient without thought. Just keep blocking, ducking, thrusting, and cutting.
The street ran black and red, slippery with the blood of both sides running down the gutters.
Many defenders fell or were struck down, falling beneath the trampling feet of the horde or pulled back by the militia if they could be grabbed.
The mass of fierce creatures seemed virtually endless in the dark.
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“Hold on. Hold on!” Dirk cried. “At Greenlawn, the last of our reserves will hit them hard. We’re almost there. We’re almost–”
An armored mor-kahl suddenly powered its way to the fore. It raked Dirk across the legs with its hand claws, and flattened him to the ground with one massive blow of its war club.
General Dirk Blackwood went down, and the enemy horde rushed forward to sweep over him.
22
Who were these warriors and where did they come from? Mason merely guessed that they had to be from the other side. They certainly weren’t from Urth.
The mounted troops broke into several groups with trained precision, and brought out weighted nets. They unfurled them, expertly deploying each of them between two riders.
So, they meant to capture the warrior woman. They didn’t just want to kill her. That would help their cause out a lot.
Mason was now close enough to the forested crown of the hill, already in the trees. He dismounted, and quickly secured and hid Winger as best he could in a brake of small fir trees. He covered the horse’s eyes to keep her calmer and quieter.
Then he bounded up the slope.
The riders with the nets surged up the hill at several strategic points, looking as if they had done this all before.
“I’m a friend,” Mason called out to the Amazon with his empty hand extended. “I’ve come to help you!”
The woman whirled his way, a throwing dagger poised in one hand. Mason prepared to duck or dodge.
He held up his open palms again. “I’m not one of them. I want to help you. My name is Mason Tyler.”
She cocked her head at him as if he were nuts. “I am called Thulkara, little man. You want to help? Then get ready to fight.”
Thulkara had an odd accent, but at least they could understand each other. That was amazing in itself.
She lifted her shield at that moment, and several blunted crossbow bolts, meant to stun her, pattered against her shield and deflected off with smacking sounds.
Mason turned and drew his Spillers. He snapped off accurate shots that blasted the nets out of the foremost riders’ wringing hands, and then the scarlet-feathered plumes off the tops of their helmets.
Monsters were one thing; killing other humans was another, even if they were from the other world or dimension.
He didn’t know anything about any of these people, or the causes for their apparent quarrel. He would kill if he had to, in self-defense, but he hoped that he could scare them off, or at least get them to break off their attack and talk.
Perhaps these humans from the other side could become their allies against the monsters. Simply mowing them all down wasn’t going to be the answer.
The lesser blasts from his guns certainly gave the mounted men some pause. They immediately broke off their attack to what they apparently thought was a safe distance.
Did they have some knowledge of his guns and their effectiveness? How could that be?
They also broke out all of their horse bows and arrows.
A leader or officer rode forward slightly and rose up in the saddle to address them.
“Surrender, wizard. You and the barbarian woman are trapped. There is no escape. You are surrounded. Come down and give yourselves up. You will not be harmed. You have the word of Captain Areglio Lokadoglio of the Scarlet Vipers, Swordmaster of the Crimson Swords of Morrad.”
Thulkara came a bit closer and laughed under her breath. “Well done, wizard. Your mighty spells have given them pause and caused them to banter with us instead of attack.”
Mason held up his pistols to show them to her. “I’m not a wizard. I’m a shootist. They call me the–”
She clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder with what felt like the strength of a gorilla. “Oh, so you are a sorcerer, then. Your words are strange. No matter. I’m not judging you. At least you’re not a filthy necromancer. Keep those funny metal wands of yours handy. We could have great need of your powers very shortly.”
“Uh…okay.”
Thulkara looked around her and took in a deep breath, gripping her weapons. “Ahhh…the sun is up, the cold wind is sharp, and a hawk soars high in the sky. All good omens. It is indeed a good day to die!”
“I’d really prefer to leave out the dying part,” Mason said. “Say, for–sixty or seventy odd years?”
Thulkara laughed again and shouted at the warriors below. “You filthy sellswords can sit upon you bloody blades and spin on them. My sorcerer and I will take you at all hazards. Come against us then, and let us show you the paths to hell itself. We dare you to try!”
“That is ill-advised, Thul,” Captain Areglio said. “From this distance, we can easily feather every inch of that hilltop with arrows, and both of you right along with it. We wish only to question you. Who are you? Where did you come from? Who sent you into the Wildlands and why?”
Mason opened his mouth to speak again, but Thulkara beat him to it once more. So, if these troops were mercs, who was paying them and why were they here?
“We don’t answer to bloody mercenaries in the wild, scum. You have no authority over us. Our business is our own. Go you way and stop pursuing us. Or come ahead and taste steel and magic.”
“Very well, Thul. Cohort, fire a volley. Ring the ground right before them. Show them how easily they can both die.”
Almost every one of the mercs fired their bows, including the captain.
A cloud of arrows soared up into the sky and came down, with deadly precision, in wide arc not a yard from where the two defenders stood.
Areglio wasn’t bluffing.
But again, what was so important about capturing or silencing two travelers? What were these mercs doing out here, if these were the Wildlands for them also, as they said?
Captain Areglio and his horse archers prepared to fire another volley.
“Hold it,” Mason called out.
“You are the sorcerer?” Areglio asked. “You and the Thul should prepare to meet your makers, if you have them.”
In answer, Mason drew two different pistols and blasted the terrain to either side of the mercs with full devastator loads.
The blast on the left gouged a wide fan of dirt up, stripping back everything in its path. The blast on the right did about the same, mowing down a few saplings dotting the hillside.
Either blast would have taken out most of the mercenaries with one shot.
Captain Areglio quickly pulled his forces back once more.
“We’re just travelers passing through,” Mason said. “There’s no reason for any of us to die today. Let us be on our way, and you be on yours.”
“Very generous, sorcerer. Your destructive powers are indeed very impressive. I did not catch thy name?”
“I did not give it. Do you know either me or my companion?”
“Not in the least. We are under orders for this entire region. Our patrols stop and question all who travel this way. But we have seen none such as you two, thus far.”
Thulkara roared back. “Whose orders do you follow, Captain? Under whose authority do you do these things? There is no law in the wilds.”
“There is now. Our law. And you and all are subject to it.”
The big Thul raised both her weapons. “Then I say lay on and be damned! Come ahead then and see what happens when you attempt to enforce thy will.”
Areglio paused, and remained where he was. “Let us not be too reckless and hasty,” he said. “We are paid troops, and paid very well, mind you. You two travelers obviously have valuable skills that would earn high pay as well. Would you by chance consider joining us?”
Mason shook his head. “Not without further knowledge of who you are working for–and who would hire us unseen.”
“A pity, then. I am not at liberty to provide any information. We shall meet again, mage and Thul. And soon, I would say. You can only travel so far in one day. Until our next meeting, then.”
With that, the mercenaries wheeled about and rode off quickly
, just in case they were attacked again.
Thulkara laughed and clapped Mason on the back so hard that he pitched forward on his face, the air slapped out of him.
The Amazon merely lifted him up bodily like one might pick up a small dog or cat, and jammed him back up on his feet.
Thulkara bowed to him. “I’m sorry, my little man. Did I hurt you? I can never judge my own strength enough. My deepest apologies, great sorcerer. Your amazing powers surely saved our lives and drove those scum away by the fear of thy great might!”
For the first time, he got a good look at her up close. Thulkara was athletic, even very attractive with her high, noble face and fierce blue-gray eyes. Her long dark hair was braided and pleated with precious metals and gems. Her gigantic shape was still perfectly proportional, all woman, and all solid muscle.
Everything about Thulkara was huge, like that of a giantess fashioned for the express purpose of doing battle and making war. The armor and many weapons that she wore only added to her stunning overall look and effect.
Thulkara held out her huge right hand in its steel gauntlet and armored forearm. “Well met, Mason Tyler.”
“My friends call me Mace.”
She bowed to him once more. “Thulkara Rajan, at your service, Mace. I am glad to know you and count you among my boon friends and valiant companions.”
He shook her hand and arm as best he could, but his hand wouldn’t even fit around hers. She pretty much shook and jostled all of him until his teeth rattled.
He rubbed his arm and shoulder when she released him. At least she hadn’t yanked it out its socket.
“Thulkara, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? If these are the indeed wilds–”
“They most certainly are.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m looking for someone–a good friend of my people. He is one of my kind, who came this way to scout the area and investigate what was going on in these parts.”
“Why would either of you do that? And for that matter, who are you, where did you come from? If there are more of your people, then where are they?”
“I could ask you the same questions, sorcerer. I never expected to find one of your kind wandering out here, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. Last fall, a very large host of mercenaries disembarked their troop ships on the eastern coast of the New World. Then they formed up their companies and marched into the interior of the wilderness, and toward the wilds. No one heard anything from them again until now. My people, the Thulls, including myself and my missing countryman, have been trying to pick up their trail ever since.”
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