Salvation

by James Wymore

  The goat drawn wagon brought the last of their Selenes from the lower valley back to the wall. They shooed the goats up the cliff. They climbed the steep slope miraculously. Then they filled the wagon with bottles and pushed it back to the wooden bridge now connecting the spring meadow to the narrow road from the north valley.

  "Coming fast!" the scout shouted. He blasted his small horn, but everybody was already in position.

  Elwood scanned up and down the length of the wall. The same archers from before now took up positions on the wall closest to the path. They were still a hundred paces from the bridge, but he'd tested these archers, and they were the best in Winigh.

  With grim faces, they held their nocked arrows near the small oil lamp, and waited. Elwood saw the Hyzoi running up the hill toward them when he called, "Now! Light them up!"

  The treated arrows blazed with pitch. The archers pulled their bows and aimed for the wagon.

  "Wait!" Elwood called. He knew he had only seconds before the arrows were consumed, but he wanted this timed perfectly. "Now!"

  A dozen trails of smoke arched through the sky and rained down on the bridge just as the first Hyzoi reached it. The wagon caught fire, then the bottles exploded shooting fire up and down the cliffs in every direction.

  Hyzoi flew away from the blast as it propelled shrapnel from the wagon in every direction. The bridge caught fire and burned hot. Soon, the wooden planks began to fall away. One Hyzoi tried to jump onto the framing, but the monster's weight broke the burning board and it fell, with the flaming pieces, to the carved out cliff below. Elwood kept count in his head. His best estimate had the enemy at two hundred and twenty. Their traps had taken out two or three dozen, depending on how many recovered from the rocks and poison.

  Water, shot up from below, quickly extinguished the rest of the burning wood and brought refreshing water up to the Hyzoi waiting beyond the broken path.

  Elwood, counting on the enemy being parched and dry from a long march along the path between meadows, saw just how much the water jets would help the Hyzoi here. They could fight indefinitely now. Under his breath he whispered, "That's not good."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It took a couple of hours for the Hyzoi to assemble a new bridge from logs they cut and boards they brought. The hoses below kept a constant shower of water over everything, so flaming arrows could not burn the new structure. Jewel kept food coming to the people on the wall. Some of them went back to their tents to take the first shift of rest, but everybody was too anxious to sleep. Vince kept the goats under control with a slow supply of food and the occasional raisins.

  Once the bridge was up, the Hyzoi rushed across, fanned out, and stopped. They turned their backs, squatted in the mud, and just waited. Water from the stream below shot up and rained down on them. The mist blew to the wall, making everybody cold and damp.

  "What are they doing?" people all along the wall wondered. "Why are they waiting?"

  "They are resting," Elwood called out. The people at the ends moved closer so they could hear.

  "Their hearts are only good for a few minutes. They are renewing their energy."

  A few archers tried to take a shot, but with their backs turned, no weak spot could be exploited.

  Elwood called, "Catapults!"

  The six machines in the back all cut the ropes and let loose heavy rocks. The massive stones whistled as they sailed over the wall and crashed down. Four of the shots fell short. Two landed, crushing several foes.

  The Hyzoi rapidly moved away, outside of catapult range, and resume their quiet wait.

  "Now is the moment," Elwood hollered, "when you must remember your promises. Think of your families and your homes. If it comes to a choice between their death or yours, which will you choose? You have seen the enemy now. You know if you run, they will destroy every one of us. Some of us will pay a higher price than others, but we will all win this war together."

  The people nodded, fingering bows and blades.

  "Now, Winigh will buy it's freedom," Elwood shouted. "We will not fall to these monsters. Winigh!"

  "Winigh!" they all shouted in unison.

  "Winigh!" he screamed at them.

  "Winigh!" they answered. The sound echoed twice and seemed to pull their enemies from their reverie.

  The Hyzoi turned and charged.

  "Catapults!" Elwood cried. Five more rocks arced across the sky and smashed into the crowd of advancing Hyzoi. One of the machines failed and flipped the rock sideways near the goat pen. While five of the teams hurried to reload, Bowen climbed down the wall to go see if the fouled machine could be repaired.

  "Remember your training," Elwood called, as the reptiles shot across the space in front of the wall. "Wait for them to jump." He gauged the eyes of the men and women along the wall. Some were shaking. Others were gritting their teeth. Most had drawn their bows. A few arrows launched prematurely. One flew wide. The other hit one of the Hyzoi straight in the eye, bouncing off the nictitating membrane protecting it.

  When the Hyzoi reached the wall, the first few jumped. Six arrows hit each one as the anxious rookies on the wall followed their training. Those Hyzoi fell. While the archers reloaded, the next wave of Hyzoi jumped. Having prepared the height of the wall, there was nothing to grab except sharp spikes of wood on the top of every beam. Several Hyzoi damaged their hands as the webbing cut on the sharp spikes. A couple managed to get between the spikes and hold on. Once they took hold, the arrows could not penetrate their eyes.

  Elwood hacked into one of their crusty arms with his sword and used the knife to slice the muscles below. The monster's grip failed and the beast crashed back to the ground. Massive frog-legs sprung as creatures leaped for the wall. Now the people had spread out and weren't wasting arrows. Drake switched to his weapons and began hacking at the hands grabbing the rail.

  Elwood called, "Release the first goats!" Vince drove four goats up the steep rock, positive they would not go if they knew what waited on the other side of the wall. He prodded them until they cleared the wood and jumped into the vale on the far side. The cliff, carved with an overhang so the goats had nowhere to go but down once they cleared the wall, directed the horned animals to their doom.

  "Track the goats!" Elwood shouted at the east end, where he stationed his best archers.

  Once the goats registered the horrific predators in the vale beyond the wall, they panicked and scattered in every direction. One goat rushed back up the cliff side, evading the whole mess. The other three began darting back and forth in great leaps to avoid the nightmares there. As expected, the Hyzoi near the goats began leaping at them, unable to suppress the urge to pounce on nearby victims. Another four enemies fell, pierced through the eye, betrayed by their killer instincts.

  The working catapults sent another blind volley over the wall. One of the boulders rolled, crashing through and knocking over six foes.

  "Keep the goats coming!" Elwood yelled. The din of battle grew so loud he knew Vince could not hear him. Fortunately, Vince looked back and Elwood could signal for him to send more. Vince pushed another goat and began sending them in intervals. Each time, he tried to concentrate to aid their courage, but none of them charged. They just darted away, sometimes coming back into the corral.

  Seeing their tactics fail, the Hyzoi readjusted their strategy. Using the exoskeletal bodies beginning to accumulate under foot, they started to build a mound of biological stairs near the east, at the point closest to the bridge through which more of their ranks entered the meadow. It was near the jets of water keeping them all refreshed.

  "Drake!" Elwood called. Drake finished cutting into one of the clawed hands grasping the top of the wall. Having found they could easily slice the hands to get the same result, he dragged his sword and dagger through the webbing until the monster released and fell. Then he rushed to Elwood.

  "What do you need?" he yelled to be heard above the roaring Hyzoi and the yelling Selenes.

  "I need some bomb
s to tear apart this pile before they make a big enough hill."

  Drake looked over the side, eyes wide, then turned and climbed down the ladder.

  "Macey!" Elwood called. She was struggling with a bow, having accidentally launched an arrow up over the whole battle and into the far trees. "Macey!" he called again. She looked up, and happily dropped the wooden weapon to move toward him.

  "Sorry," she said. "Bowen always did the hunting for us."

  "I have a much bigger job for you," Elwood said. He cupped his hands around his mouth to help her hear him. "I need you to tell me how everybody is using their magic."

  She glanced along the wall and over the side at the goats and catapult fire. When she looked back, she said. "Everybody is using their magic to help whatever they are doing. Archers hold the arrows straight and the like."

  "Is it working?" he asked.

  She wagged her head. "It's working some, but their thoughts are so scattered. Nobody's helping each other, so it's not making much of a difference."

  "Can you do something to organize it? Is there a way to collect the magic and put it to good use?"

  Macey pondered for a time, turning to watch the chaos rattle around them. "I can do it, but I can't do it and fight."

  "This is more important," he said. "We need those goats to charge. They need to get farther across the field before the Hyzoi kill them. And if there's anything left, try to get the catapult shots to roll."

  Macey nodded, a sour expression on her face. Elwood realized the task he'd given her could be much harder than he first thought. She moved toward the east of the wall, touching people on the shoulder and explaining how she needed their magic.

  When Elwood turned to the west, he saw there were only a few dedicated fighters still holding the wall on that side. The bursts of drenching mist from the stream below made it too cold, and too hard to see. Elwood checked Drake, returning from the munitions shed and worked toward the soaking few.

  "Pull back!" he shouted. "To me!" He felt his voice crack. He couldn't go on shouting like this for very long. Hopefully, when he had people on track, he wouldn't need to yell as often.

  The five men rushed over from the west side, taking a moment to wipe the freezing water from their faces. "We have to take out those water jets," Elwood said. "I need two men to come with me and climb down there." He pointed to the cliffs. "The other three will stay here and hold the west end until we stop the water." It was a gamble. Most of the Hyzoi were collecting near the water, where the townspeople hated going.

  Two men stepped forward. They almost looked like they might be enjoying themselves. The other three rushed back and cut more fingers loose from the slippery wall.

  "We need to climb down separately," Elwood said as he started going down the ladder. When they joined him at the bottom, he led them to the opening between the hills. "I'll go down here. You each flank one side. There are just three creatures running that infernal hose now. If they divert it on one of us, the other two finish the job. It looks like a knife could easily cut that hose. If you can get away with it, I want to see what's at the end in the water."

  They nodded and spread out. On his right, Elwood saw the large man tuck into the trees before heading over the side. The other went over the hill before moving farther south.

  Elwood quickly appraised the cliff he was facing. If he went slowly, he would be an easy target. This stream bed was dry now, but the rocks were smooth. Elwood watched the hose diverted to his right, when the Hyzoi saw one of the men coming from the trees. He jumped over the first rocks, landing hard on a parapet about twenty feet above the water gun's crew. Then, as fast as he could recover, he leaped out into the air.

  His stomach rose as he went into free fall. He swung his sword so, as his boots landed on the middle monster's rocky shoulders, he chopped into the side of its neck. The humanoid crumpled under his weight, cushioning the fall. Elwood slid over the side, back handing his knife into his surprised foe's neck. Yanking his weapons free, he rolled into the icy stream.

  The other two turned to face him, giving his companions time to advance safely. Elwood scrambled up and out of the water, holding up his weapons to create a defensive area around him. The two monsters coiled to spring. Before the first one pounced, a heavy axe bit into its ribs.

  When it turned, the Hyzoi dropped the hose and the nozzle began flipping everywhere. Before Elwood's companion could finish the attack, the long tentacle shape lashed out and knocked him down with unbridled shaking.

  The other one didn't stop and it sprang toward Elwood, claws forward. Caught by the distraction, Elwood turned to dodge too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As razor sharp claws launched toward his face, Elwood fell, knowing he would not manage to escape the oncoming Hyzoi. Just then, an arrow whistled past his shoulder and thunked into the monster's eye. The momentum carried the beast into him and knocked him down. Fortunately, Elwood's eyes and face were spared from the talons. It was a strange moment. Despite everything, when the fear of dying hit him, he thought of Jewel.

  The last Hyzoi, with an axe still stuck in his back, turned on the man who used to wield it. Knocked into the stream, the man could not recover before the beast leaped on him and tore his neck apart. Blood filled the stream and soon started shooting in every direction by the still flailing hose. The last man of the group still standing quickly kicked the dead man's axe and shoved a kitchen knife under it between the ribs. A moment after he nicked the heart, the Hyzoi dropped into the water on top of its last victim.

  Suddenly, the back end of the hose came out of the water and the long, pink tube emptied, dropping into the water.

  Elwood wiggled out from under the dead croc on top of him and rushed to the device, while the other man checked if their companion might still be alive. Pulling the body up out of the water, no question remained.

  Elwood grabbed the large mess of slippery flesh out of the water one moment after it plunged back in and began filling the hose again. When he lifted it up, he saw a strange eye on the side of a fish, the size of a boy's chest. Fins and soft protrusions on every side made the silvery creature look like a machine from a distance. Large eyes bulged as the aquatic animal sucked in huge mouthfuls of air and ejected the same out its posterior. Without gills or a flexible spine, these fish obviously used water as their means of propulsion. However, the Hyzoi had turned them into living pumps. Far more effective than anything Bowen had made, the back end of the fish attached to the tube by some kind of seaweed, sewn through fins on the back and wrapped to keep it tight.

  The tube itself looked like a tentacle, stripped of suckers and hollowed out somehow.

  "Let's get this up the cliff," Elwood said to his bereft soldier.

  "What about Dalyn's body?" the soldier asked. He had a high voice, clearly choked.

  "We tend to the living first," Elwood said.

  "Watery graves lead straight to hell," the man protested.

  Elwood nodded. They heaved the Hyzoi off the man's legs and pulled the corpse up on the side of the stream. Then the soldier helped Elwood collect the long tube, which was being carried downhill by the stream now that the fish was out of the water. It rolled uselessly on the side until Elwood picked it up. Soaked and exhausted, they climbed back up the side of the rocks, towing the fish and long tentacle behind.

  At the top, Elwood told his companion to get the whole contraption to Bowen, who was probably at the broken catapult. An icy wind blew through his waterlogged clothes and leeched the heat from his body. Now the adrenaline was gone, he felt the bitter cold. Ignoring it, he headed for the ladder.

  "It's no good," Drake yelled above the clatter. "I dropped the bomb before the water stopped and it put the fuse out." He pointed down to the growing pile of dead Hyzoi bodies at the base of the wall.

  Elwood looked over the side and saw the small clay bauble lodged between two sand-textured mounds. "Do we have any of the flaming arrows left?"

  "One," the man s
aid. He held it up.

  "Get a sharpshooter from the east end. And get Macey," Elwood said. Then he rushed over to help fill in the gaps on the west side of the wall.

  With the mound high enough, Hyzoi began running at it and jumping from it. Several landed on top of the wall with heavy thuds, which threatened to break through the platform because of the extreme weight. One flew all the way over and crashed down on the far side. One man leaped from the wall to attack it before it could stand up properly. The ones on the platform began crashing into unprepared fighters. Several had limbs severed in the powerful long jaws. Two were pushed off, landing ungracefully in the mud.

  As screams went up along the wall, those fighting to keep the other Hyzoi off lost ground, and one managed to scramble up on the east side as well.

  Elwood cut ferociously into the first Hyzoi, hacking deep with his sword and twisting the tip so it split through. The graceful S-curve gutted the huge reptile and sent it, growling, to the ground below. Several of the men nearby tried to copy him, but their less elegant axes could only lodge between plates of rockfish armor.

  A few seconds later, a single fiery arrow zipped by and landed into the wet mound below. All of Winigh held their breath, hoping. Yet the bomb did not explode. Two more Hyzoi hurdled the spiked wall and landed on the platform. Then the fire from the arrow's pitch caught the bomb and rocked the world with huge blast. Tossing the already dead bodies of Hyzoi all over the north end of the meadow, the bomb only undid the stacking. None of the enemy died from it.

  Another half dozen soldiers fell before the rest could rid the platform of the vicious attackers.

  Elwood reassessed the situation. "Drake!" Drake waved from a short distance. "Get more bombs ready. And get somebody to prepare more flaming arrows." Drake saluted.