by Rachel Aaron
"Okay, everyone," she said to them. "We've got the toughest spot: the north bridge. It's the widest, and it faces the plaza, which means we're the first troops they're going to see and we've got the most ground to cover. But it doesn't matter how many knights Malakai throws at us. We've already faced an army, and these guys today are nothing on Grel or the Once King. We're gonna own this."
The Roughnecks responded with cheers and high fives. Tina grinned back, hoping their bravado was more genuine than hers. It was easy to talk big, but while the knights weren't as geared as her people, they also weren't mindless like the undead, which meant they weren't predictable. They'd stomped them hard at the death camp by the castle, but there was no way Malakai would let that happen again. He'd be prepared this time. Tina just hoped they were too.
Keeping a determined expression on her face, Tina led her raid into position on the north bridge. As they arranged themselves on the Camp Comeback side of the river, she wished she'd thought to make herself a helmet while she was cranking out armor for everyone else. Something to cover her head would have been a relief as she took her position in the middle of the bridge's ten-foot-wide stone span. There was no cover between the squat stone railings, and it was only thirty feet to the other bank, well within bow shot, which meant she'd have to be fast with her shield. It would be just her luck if she took an arrow to the eye because she'd been too busy to make herself some head protection. But it was too late to fix now, so Tina twisted her copper dreadlocks into a bun on top of her head and looked around to see how the rest of her army was doing.
"Pretty good" seemed to be the answer. CraftyJohn had lived up to his name, lining their bank of the river in nine-foot-tall hunks of iron-banded stone he called "tank breakers." Due to time constraints, the massive X-shaped barricades only covered the banks along the shallow parts of the river. The deep sections by the bridges weren't protected, but the Herald's River ran so fast and swift there, Tina was counting on no knights being suicidal enough to try to swim across in their armor.
Even with the gaps, it was still a damn impressive sight, given how fast they'd had to throw it all together, and the tank breakers provided good cover for the non-guild combat raids, aka the people who needed it the most. They still looked uncomfortably like a mob, but at least they were all armed and facing the right direction. The Red Sands raid looked much more impressive holding the eastern bridge, and while she couldn't see the south bridge combat team from where she was standing, Tina trusted them to be in position after all of Cinco's drilling. Assets's people were definitely ready. They were all in neat formation at the top of the hill, ready to do whatever the combat raids needed. Assets himself was getting the low-level healing teams into final position, placing each one where their spells could reach the most people without forcing the vulnerable casters to leave cover.
"Defenses are looking good," she said, glancing back at Killbox. "How's our offense?"
"Ready to rock and roll," Killbox said, giving her two big thumbs up. "Fuckers won't know what hit them."
"We moved all the rocks into position behind the bridge before sunrise," Frank added, pushing up his visor to give her a grin. "Physics is going to be on our side this time!"
Tina flashed them a huge grin and turned back around. But when she looked down to see if SB was as ready for this as she was, he was staring at the ground.
"Hey," she said quietly. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," he said quietly, hunching his shoulders. "Just nervous."
"About what?" Because she couldn't believe he was afraid of the knights. He'd carved those bastards up like paper at the camp.
"Everything," he said, wrapping his long arms around his middle. "It's just... I just wish we didn't have to fight. We've done really well for what we had, but I don't think this battle is going to end well for anyone."
"Real battles never do," Tina said. "But Malakai and the king have made it clear what they think of us. Maybe they'll change their tune after we kill half their army, but until then, we have to fight. It's that or be exterminated."
SB nodded, but he still wasn't meeting her eyes. "I know we don't have a choice," he said. "But this isn't like fighting the undead. Those knights are people just like us. This isn't like the extermination camp. We saw those knights killing innocent players, but this army is coming to put down a rebellion. In their eyes, I'm sure they think they're saving their home. I don't mind killing murderers, but a lot of the people we'll be fighting today are probably just good men fighting for their king."
"Oh my god," Tina said, running her hands over her face. "James was talking to you, wasn't he?"
SB's silence was answer enough, and Tina turned to face him. "Listen," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. "We're the good guys, not them. Maybe not every single one of the people we'll be fighting today has personally killed a player, but they're all still soldiers who hate our guts and work for a king who's a genocidal maniac. I don't know what my idiot brother told you, but I guarantee you it's one hundred percent wrong. He's got it stuck in his head that we can reason with the NPCs, but if that were true, then this wouldn't be happening. Never forget: they're the ones coming for us. We weren't doing shit down here except trying to survive while the king sent Malakai and his army to crush us. I refuse to feel guilty for defending ourselves and the people who rely on us, and neither should you."
"I know that," he said quietly. "But--"
"No," she said forcefully. "There is no 'but.' These are the same bastards who massacred Founder's Square and every player they've met since. They don't deserve your mercy. I'm not asking you to be happy about killing--none of us are--but I need you here with us, Blayde." She smiled at him. "You're my second-in-command. I can't do this without you."
He nodded and straightened up, hands falling to his swords at last. "I won't let you down," he promised.
"You never do," she said, leaning down to give him one last wink before turning her attention back to the opposite shore.
Just in time. She hadn't heard them over the gurgle of the swiftly running river, but riders were starting to enter the wide stone plaza at the end of their bridge. It wasn't a few men on armored horses, either. Rows and rows of cavaliers in the royal red and gold were pouring into the square from every street, their raised lances creating a forest of spikes over their heads. Alarms rang out behind her as the rest of Camp Comeback spotted the enemy, but when Zen and her archers nocked their arrows, Tina held up her fist.
The riders weren't alone. Once the cavaliers had secured the square, foot soldiers started marching in. Soon, the entire plaza and all the streets leading into it were packed with spearmen wearing the red surcoat of Bastion's army over their chain mail. Even the city guards had been drafted. The poor low-level bastards were mixed in with the rest, easily identifiable by their yellow tabards and expressions of pure terror.
Tina wasn't worried about the city guards, but the force in front of her was still terrifyingly huge. There were so many enemies packed into the square, she couldn't begin to count them, and this was just what was in front of the Roughnecks. From the clatter of armor and the curses coming from the raids behind her, she knew the other bridges were equally bad. But as many of them as there were, none of the soldiers looked particularly dangerous, and Tina was starting to think this might not be as bad as it looked when the Royal Knights appeared.
They came in like a crimson wave, forcing the other soldiers out of the way as they marched to the front in units of no fewer than a hundred each. Mobs of archers came in behind them, followed by wooden catapults. There were so many, even the flagstone plaza built to hold Bastion's epic festivals couldn't contain them all. By the time they were all arranged, the lesser soldiers had been forced out onto the docks that bordered the river.
It was a horrifying sight, but of everything pointed at them, Tina was most concerned about the siege weapons. Arrows, she could handle, but if one of the storage buildings housing the refugees took a boulder, the wh
ole thing could collapse. She was kicking herself for not asking Richard for a ward against flying rocks when the wall of troops across the river shifted, and Malakai himself came into view.
The absurdly tall captain was standing on the seat of a huge wagon drawn by two sturdy draft horses. The bed of the wagon was filled with what appeared to be damp wood arranged in a pile around a central pole with a crying ichthyian wearing the mismatched cloth robes of a low-level caster tied to its base.
The fish-man was sobbing so loudly, Tina could hear him clear across the water, and he wasn't alone. Behind Malakai, more carts were coming in, each with a player prisoner. Some of the posts had multiple people tied to them. Every race was represented, and they were all low-level. Squinting across the river, Tina didn't see a single piece of gear above level fifteen. She also saw that the wood at their feet wasn't just wet. The way the air shimmered above the piled logs told her they were soaked in oil, which meant the carts weren't just for drama. They were rolling pyres, a whole line of them pulling right up to the edge of the river.
Tina's stomach clenched with rage. She'd known Malakai would have hostages, but she'd thought they'd be in cages like before. The pyres were an unexpected twist, one Malakai intended to use quickly, given the burning torches the knights escorting the wagons held perilously close to the oil-soaked wood. She was still working out how they were going to handle it when the elven captain hopped off his wagon and walked to the mouth of her bridge, sneering down the stone span straight at her.
"I am Captain Malakai of the Royal Knights!" he cried, his booming voice echoing off the buildings behind her. "In the name of King Gregory Heraldsford, I command you to cease your treasonous acts and surrender. Anything less, and we will bring the justice of our swords down upon you!"
Tina answered that by spitting on the stone at her feet. "Yeah, well, I'm Roxxy, leader of the Roughnecks Guild!" she yelled back. "I speak for everyone on this island, and we're not surrendering shit. We've seen what you do to players. You're murderous thugs who kidnap and kill anyone too weak to fight back, and we're having none of it. You think we're scared of you? My raid has already defeated the Once King's entire army! Attack us, and we will stomp you into the ground!"
Even from thirty feet away, Tina saw Malakai's eye twitch at her defiance. "So be it!" he roared back. "Let none say that you were not warned! If you will not yield, then I have no choice but to show you what happens to those who rebel against the Holy King!"
With that, the tall elf turned on his heel and marched back to his wagon, grabbing a torch from his knights as he went. He didn't even pause to threaten Tina again. He just plunged the fire into the oil-soaked wood, grinning in delight as the whole wagon went up in a blaze.
Tina jumped back as the fire flared. She hadn't expected the killing to start so quickly. The entire point of hostages was to threaten your enemy into doing what you said, but Malakai hadn't even done that much. He'd just started burning them like that was what he'd wanted to do all along.
"Roxxy, what do we do?" shouted NekoBaby behind her as Malakai started toward the next cart. "He's going to barbecue all of them!"
Tina had no idea. The whole point of fighting at the bridge was to limit the enemy's numbers. If they charged across to rescue the burning player, the Roughnecks would be alone and surrounded in the middle of the enemy army. They'd also open a hole in Camp Comeback's defensive line, allowing Malakai to send his cavalry behind them for a perfect flanking attack on the other raids. Any way she looked at it, going in was the worst decision possible, but she couldn't just stand there and watch someone burn to death.
"Zen!" she shouted, never taking her eyes off the panicking ichthyian. "Can you hit from him here?"
"I can shoot Malakai, sure," the Ranger said, running up beside her. "But it won't do any good. I don't do enough damage to take down a--"
"Not Malakai," Tina said. "Him." She pointed at the player, whose robes were now starting to smoke, and Zen's dark face grew ashen.
"You want me to shoot the lowbie?" she cried, horrified. "But that will kill him!"
"Can't be worse than burning to death," Tina said grimly. "But I'm not talking about a mercy kill. We can't charge across to save him without risking everything, but we can sure as shit plant a Grapple Arrow in his chest and yank him over. It'll suck, but we can rez him once he gets here, and it beats letting Malakai roast him."
The player's screams of pain were getting quite horrible now, but Zen still shook her head. "I'm not shooting a hostage in the chest."
"But--"
"I'll shoot the pole he's tied to instead," Zen finished, nocking an arrow with a rope tied to the end into her bow. "Honestly, Roxxy, do you even know how to Ranger?"
Before Tina could reply to that, Zen aimed, pulled, and loosed her shot in one liquid motion. The Grapple Arrow flew down the bridge, streaking over the surprised Malakai's head to sink deep into wooden pole the player was tied to. Zen gave the rope a quick test tug to make sure it was stuck, then she tossed it at Tina. "Pull!"
Tina didn't wait to be asked twice. She grabbed the rope and pulled as hard as she could, using her stonekin's weight and enormous strength to rip the pole straight out of the burning cart. The fire had already weakened the wagon's bed, so it wasn't even that hard. One yank was all it took to send the player flying past the captain to land at their feet. Green-glowing magic started falling even before he landed, bathing the still-screaming player in magical healing as Tina reeled him the last few feet to the Roughnecks' line. SB cut him free of the pole the moment he was in reach and handed the dazed and gasping ichthyian back through the raid toward the support area. Tina watched until she was sure he was safe, then she turned back to Malakai with a smug grin on her face.
"You were saying, asshole?"
The elf captain's face was a mask of rage. "Move the carts back!" he bellowed, never taking his eyes off Tina. "I swear, I will make you listen to each and every one of their screams before this is over. And when I crush this rebellion, the rest of you shall share the same fate. You will all burn for what you have done to us!"
Tina just shrugged and waved her hand forward. At the command, a volley of arrows erupted from the Roughneck ranks, cutting down the knights who were trying to move the hostage wagons farther back into the plaza. As the shots rained down, three Rangers in Dead Mountain Fortress gear pushed past Tina to plunk oversized arrows with huge, barbed heads and ropes tied their ends into the remaining hostage poles. They fired one after the other, tossing each rope to the front line of Knights and Berserkers the moment it was locked down. Once they got the ropes, the melee classes used their monstrous strength to follow Tina's example and yanked the poles free.
Malakai's face turned an even deeper shade of reddish-purple as his hostages went flying past one by one. He was drawing his blade to cut the ropes and stop them when Zen hopped up on the bridge's stone railing and started firing at the captain like an elven machine gun.
For a second, Tina hoped it would be that easy. Malakai was out in front and alone, a painfully easy target as Zen's arrows began to fill him like a pincushion. She managed to put two in his legs, one in his arm, and three in his chest before the four-skull captain leaped backward like a rocket, spoiling the next two shots while cutting the third out of the air with his sword. Zen kept firing, but he'd already scrambled back behind the cover of the knights, who sheltered him behind their enormous shields. From so great a distance, even Zen's deadly arrows bounced off the metal, and she lowered her bow with a scowl.
"He's too far," she said, hopping down off the railing. "I'm just wasting ammo."
"You did good enough for me," Tina said joyfully, grinning down at the hostages the Roughnecks were hauling in and cutting free as fast as they could.
As a final insult, some devilish Ranger had the great idea of sending fire arrows into the empty wagons, burning them anyway in a giant blast of fire that sent the knights scattering.
It was a gorgeous sight, and Tina
took a moment to breathe in the smoky air before turning to grin at her raid. "Good job, guys! That was perfect."
Zen saluted her back, and Tina turned around again, cupping her hands over her mouth to yell more insults at Malakai. Before she could think of something suitably scathing, though, the catapults in the back of the plaza bucked. Then the air was filled with the whistle of flying rocks as a volley of boulders launched into the air.
"Shit." Tina dropped her hands to yank her shield up over her head. "Incoming!" she shouted, lifting her already booming voice to a roar as the rocks soared over them toward the other raids. "Naturalists! Externals!"
"Circle of Thorns!" rose the call-out from Naturalists all over the island. Staffs of every level flared with green light, and massive ironwood vines erupted from the ground around each raid and grew rapidly into a dome-shaped hedge of impenetrable wood.
They'd barely finished before the deadly rocks flung by the catapults crashed into the densely packed thickets, shattering the foot-thick vines. Hiding in the darkness of the hedge, Tina flinched as she was peppered with splinters, but despite the cracks, nothing got through. But while the Roughnecks were safe, the same couldn't be said for everyone else.
All around the island, screams of pain erupted from the non-guild raids where inexperienced players hadn't been in position to get under the Circles of Thorns in time. As the shroud of thorns over her vanished, Tina saw the massive craters in the dirt where rocks had plowed into her players, crushing people under their weight. A few more Circles of Thorns sprang up as she watched, way too late to block anything but wasting precious defensive cooldowns nonetheless.
