He recovered just in time to parry a strong slash from one of the cambisi, backing up a step to give his larger weapon enough room to bring it to bear. One Wikuni was down and still, the other was kneeling on the ground with a hand to his chest, bleeding from a wide gash in his chest, and the Knight was defending his fallen companions from the other cambisi as it pressed him with light, precise thrusts and flicks of his serrated-edged longsword. The cambisi before him wielded his weapon lightly and surely, like a fencer, so Tarrin decided on using raw, elemental brutality. Quickly and without much finesse, he brought his sword down on the cambisi with vast power, staggering it back as it blocked a blow that would have split its head in half had it connected. The red-glowing eyes of the halfbreed flickered with shock and surprise as Tarrin swung again, then again, hitting it with such power that it could not recover in time to strike back before Tarrin was screaming that black blade right back at the Demon's face. With great, sweeping blows, Tarrin backed the Demon back almost into its companion, then quickly and deftly pinioned his weapon and slapped wide a desperate attempt to stab the length of its sword into his belly before he could rain down another punishing blow. Caught off guard by a quick and convincing display of finesse and fencing ability, the Demon did not recover in time to avoid Tarrin's club-like fist when it smashed into the Demon's helmet. He had learned long ago that he may not be able to do Demons any harm with such attacks, but the raw power behind the blow was something not even against which a Demon's invulnerability could protect. Tarrin had learned, the hard way, the magic went only so far when it defended one against the immense power of physics.
Stunned by the devastating blow, the side of its helmet caving in and skewing aside so it covered the Demon's eyes, and spinning in a full circle, the cambisi staggered back from the massive power behind that attack, staggering right into its companion, knocking its sword inward at a critically bad moment. The Knight pounced on his foe's momentary incapacity, crunching his glowing broadsword into the Demon's breastplate with a powerful thrust. Tarrin raised his weapon and drove it into the Demon's head, before it could right its helmet, and both foes dropped nervelessly to the ground.
"Sarraya, see to the wounded," he ordered of the invisible, lingering Faerie as the Knight gave him a wolfish grin. He raised his visor, and Tarrin realized that it was Ulger.
"You're as good as they say you are," he complemented. "Come on, boy, let's go get some more of them!"
"I'll do what I can for these two," Sarraya called from somewhere beside him. "I'll catch up in a bit."
"Be careful," he ordered.
"Always," she replied before he heard her wings buzzing, lowering her to the Wikuni laying on the ground.
The Were-cat and the Knight sallied forth from that battleground and became a mobile terror for the Demons, attacking those already scrambling in frenzied desperation to protect themselves from a pack of incensed Knights, Marines, and Legionaires that had revenge burning in their expressions and fury seething in their eyes. They gathered up more and more stragglers as they finished off Demons already engaged by other defenders, stragglers that were quickly forming up with other Demons to seek safety in numbers. The defenders had trouble attacking these large groups of Demons, so they too began to gather, and the most dangerous of these groups was Tarrin's. The stray Knights, Marines, and Legionaires that he and Ulger had picked up had formed something of a loose mobile wedge formation with Tarrin at its point and the Legionaires and their large shields and spears directly behind him to engage Demons not totally focused on the lethal Were-cat. The heavily armored Knights protected the flanks of the Legionaires, also protecting the Wikuni Marines that prowled the edges of the formation seeking to flank and envelop enemies struck by the wedge by giving them a secure base within the wedge to which they could retreat when necessary. They moved about the battlefield to engage any Demon that had been trapped by pockets of defenders from joining the main host. Tarrin would slam into the Demons with the Legionaires' spears jabbing at them from behind him, their shields interlocked to keep the Demons off the rest of the wedge as the Knights anchored the Legionaires' flanks and the Wikuni Marines flowed out quickly to surround the engaged foe. Though nobody had called out that they use that tactic, it proved to be devastating. All of them were seasoned, veteran fighters, and they had instinctively gathered into the most efficient and effective formation they could have used. The wedge grew wider and wider as more men joined it, each man going immediately to where his comrades were stationed within the formation, and the large moving formation quickly became a rallying point for all the other groups of defenders that had been doing their best to prevent the Demons from regrouping.
Tarrin felt the individual Circles suddenly break up, and then reform into a huge one, one that had to number at least a hundred Sorcerers, a circle of immense power. It touched High Sorcery, and then he felt it get to work. He felt them reach into the power the Goddess had gathered for them, and then the entire Tower grounds seemed to shimmer visibly. Light bloomed at its edges as Tarrin felt them build the barrier of stolen magic, building a sectioned shell of Sorcery some twenty spans high and then filling its hollow center with the alien magic the Goddess had pooled for their use. The result of their work was not a solid barrier, but a highly volatile, explosive field divided into thousands of small cell structures that, the first Demons to touch it learned, quite literally exploded outward in a fiery blast whenever it was disturbed. Whoever had been leading that Circle had been clever in anchoring it into that pool of alien magic, so that every time a section of it was drained off by destroying a Demon, the individual shell weaving that had exploded mended itself using flows from its partner cells, and energy to replace what was expended in the explosion filled the hole. And since only one cell of the aggragate would explode when it was disturbed, not exploding those to either side, it kept the Demons from making the whole barrier detonate and then rush in before the Circle could rebuild it without needing thousands of Demons to all attack the barrier at the same time. And Tarrin rather doubted that they had that many to waste. The barrier was a self-repleneshing defensive ring of highly reactive, unstable energy that destroyed any Demon that touched it, and it stopped the invasion of new Demons onto the grounds instantly.
Sorcery that clever had to be Ianelle's handiwork.
In moments, the steady stream of Demons rushing onto the grounds stopped. Dramatically. Those trapped on the grounds were very quick to gather into one large mass, and then they turned and started moving quickly towards the defenders, seeking to swarm them over in a single hideous charge. The defenders too had quickly regrouped, forming a single body a thousand men strong that stood right in the path of the Demons, and the Lord General of the Knights himself arrived quickly to take command of it. He arrived on a black charger, heavily armored with barding, the warhorse's protective armor showing signs that Demons had tried to claw through it. Darvon's sword was pitted and burned from Demon blood, and he had some blood seeping from the shoulder of his armor, staining his side, but he moved in the saddle with sureness and his booming voice was sharp and decisive. "Alright, men, form up in the wedge our clever Tarrin has been leading around the grounds!" he called in a commanding tone. "Legionaries in the center, Knights on the flanks, and Marines behind and ready to envelop when we hit!" Darvon himself moved quickly to the center of the hastily forming formation, fully intending to serve as its spearpoint alongside Tarrin. The Legionaries gathered behind them into three rows, and two rows of Knights extended out to each side of them as the Marines set themselves in the center of the wedge, ready to sweep out when it broke through.
Tarrin flashed the Lord General a quick smile, one that was returned enthusiastically. Darvon was old, almost elderly, but he was still one of the toughest fighters the Knights had. His aged arm had swung a sword longer than most of the Knights under his command had been alive, and he was regarded with a towering respect by professional soldiers all over the world. That respect gave the m
en behind him tremendous confidence facing the unworldly enemy, confident in the fact that the legendary Darvon would lead them to victory.
Darvon clapped down his visor and raised his sword. "Stand ready!" he boomed, and the humans and Wikuni behind him suddenly roared in reply, as swords, spears, and shields were raised and readied.
"We won't stand in defense!" he shouted defiantly as his night-coated warhorse pranced a little under him. "We won't huddle here like cowering babes and wait for them to come to us! We'll ram into those stinking Demons while they're still confused and send them back to the Hells they crawled out of!"
The echoing cry of furious assent from the defenders was almost deafening, swords and spears bouncing in the air over their owners' heads as they screamed their enthusiastic acceptance of Darvon's commands. Tarrin could clearly hear the shrieks in reply coming from the Demons; despite being at a disadvantage, they still wanted to fight, still wanted to kill.
"Alright then, men! They're waiting for us! Let's not disappoint them!" He turned his horse and pointed forward with his sword. "At a walk, forward!"
They started out at a slow walk, as the Demons some distance ahead quickly tried to line up even as they moved towards the defenders.
"At a trot, forward!" Darvon boomed, picking up the pace. Tarrin didn't have to run, he simply stretched out his pace to keep up with the Lord General beside him as the armor of the men behind started jangling as it bounced with their trotting steps. The Demons began to scream and brandish their claws or weapons, and they too picked up their pace.
"At a run, forward!" Darvon commanded as he spurred his horse to a canter, and the entire host suddenly broke into a sharp, fast, yet still tightly organized run. They kept their lines, kept from spreading out, keeping a pace that Darvon set that any professional soldier could hold for a short amount of time. It wasn't a dead sprint, which would let the men behind set the wedge, but it was fast enough that them crashing into the Demons was going to split their enemies into two groups. The Demons, not nearly as disciplined as the soldiers they faced, charged at the host, breaking up as the faster ones outpaced the slower ones. Every eye was locked on that unworldly horde of nearly two hundred Demons, big ones, small ones, thin ones and heavy ones, but all universally ugly. But not a single man faltered in his charge, despite charging into battle against the spawn of the Hells themselves. As one, they were confident in Darvon, and they would not break under his command.
"Set--shields!" Darvon barked, raising his own sheild to his side, tucking it in. In a singular rattling sound, the Legionaires all raised their curved, rectangular shields to form the shield wall that would split the Demons' line apart. The Demons only screamed in fury and ran at them even faster, some of them frothing at the mouth with a horrible grayish foam.
"Spears--ready!" the Lord General boomed, and the forest of raised spearpoints suddenly lowered in a single motion, putting glowing steel spearpoints to either side of Darvon's charger and the loping Were-cat. The Demons did not falter in their mad charge, closing the distance in a shocking amount of time. But still the men behind did not waver. Tarrin raised his black-bladed sword grimly, ready to do his job and punch through the lines, break a hole in them the host would use to separate them, surround them, then grind them to dogmeat within a ring of unyielding steel teeth.
"No mercy!" Darvon boomed furiously as he raised his sword to ready to do battle with a vulture Demon not ten spans away. The defenders screamed in an intimidating war cry and followed as Darvon deflected aside the cruel point of the vulture-Demon's wicked hooked polearm with his shield, then sent its head flying with a powerful stroke from the saddle of his warhorse. Tarrin didn't bother with fancy fencing, he simply chopped his sword over his head at a heavily armored cambisi, shearing through the sword raised in defense and cleaving a horrid wound in its face and shoulder. The power of the blow sent it flying to the side, only to be trampled into the ground by the warhorse's grinding steel-shod hooves.
The impact of the defenders and the Demons was loud, ringing across the grounds and well into the city. The larger Demons stopped the forward movement of the wedge, but only momentarily, for their lines were very loose and disorganized. The Demons did not fight as a group, they fought as a collection of individuals, and that prevented them from reacting to the tactics the defenders used against them. Instead of regrouping in the hole that Darvon and Tarrin opened in their middle, they instead each fought its own private battle. But the spears of the Legionaires kept them from closing in and using their size to break up the defenders' lines, and those trying to get at the Knights found that their heavy armor and powerful broadswords made them impossible to split up. The wedge began moving forward as the first Demons to reach them were cut down, and those Demons reaching them after the initial rush came with a wider and wider gap in the center as Tarrin and Darvon, still side by side and moving ahead of the formation, split the charging Demons into two groups, leaving the rapidly dissolving bodies of their victims behind them as they advanced. When they ran out of Demons in front of them, they split up, Tarrin going one way and Darvon the other to engage those on the flanks, and the Legionaires, now with Ulger serving as the head of the wedge, advanced into the hole they created behind them. Amid the din of shouts, ringing steel, and the shouts and cries of the wounded, and the howling and screaming of the Demons, the wedge passed between the lines of the Demons and began to widen as the Marines rushed out from the core to either side and enveloped their foes, surrounding them.
The formation worked perfectly. The two pockets of Demons, realizing to their chagrin how they had been trapped, fought with zealous ferocity, assaulting the Legionaires and Knights that now stood between them, but the spears of the Legionaires on the front rank had been discarded and now they wielded glowing shortswords. They let the Demons crash into their shields, and then expertly shifted the large shields and stabbed out from behind them with their short-bladed weapons. Demons screamed in pain and fury, clawing at the shields, the stronger ones ripping them away, but the Legionaires simply closed ranks around any man who fell, men who lost their shields stepping back into the formation against the shields of the second rank and letting the men on each side in the first rank close the hole with their shields, denying the Demons a chance to get between them. The Legionaires in the second and third ranks still wielded their spears, jabbing and thrusting them at the Demons, pushing them back and preventing them from getting inside the front rank, aiming for the face and chest and shoulders, trying to maim or incapacitate if they couldn't kill. Marines that had swiftly gotten behind them and began assaulting them from behind now proved to be a deadly distraction to those trying to get past the Legionaires and Knights, allowing those in front to get in a killing blow as the Marines behind harried and harassed them.
Without their magic, without their invulnerability, and without any kind of coherent battle strategy, the Demons fell quickly to their highly organized and cooperating adversaries. Darvon and Tarrin continued to cut wide swaths through the Demons, breaking them up into smaller and smaller pockets, and the wedge finally broke up as the Legionaires and Knights helped the Marines surround those dwindling pockets of resistance and chop them down. In mere moments of furious, intense fighting, a force of two hundred Demons had been destroyed by a thousand mere mortals, and there was an eerie silence after the squeals of the last Demon faded away.
Then one man, an Arakite Legionaire with blood flowing from a nasty claw gash over his left eye, raised his spear and shouted in triumph. Another man joined him, then another, and then more, until the survivors cried out, flushed with victory over their unnatural enemies.
Tarrin didn't feel like joining them, and neither did Darvon, it seemed. He raised his sword quickly and got their attention. "It's not over yet, men!" he shouted. "Fan out in groups of fifteen and make sure there aren't any loners out there! Five of each, and watch each other's backs!"
Tarrin Kael Firestaff Collection Book 5 - Weavespinner by Fel © Page 61
