Heir To The Nova (Book 3)

by T. Michael Ford

  They did a quick pass and circling above our heads, let out a roar which a few short weeks before would have dropped every human within a half mile to their knees. But this time, it served to rally the defenders. I saw silver dragon flags and banners being proudly run up numerous poles to sail defiantly over the fortress as Dawn easily ripped the first over-eager demon she encountered in half, the parts corkscrewing aimlessly to the ground in front of the walls.

  The ground forces below us were already grinding steadily toward the river, but it was the flying demons that would strike us first.

  “Siege teams, light them up!” Ebony shouted as she assumed her position on the walls near where we stood. Looking back at the curtain walls to our rear, I saw the emplacements swivel around and suddenly the sky was filled with blue projectiles of pure magic, streaming out in long twists of power. The first wall of demons hit and were absolutely shredded. I felt a brief moment of confidence, at least that part worked. Unfortunately, unlike undead, the demons were smart enough to change tactics and spread out, forcing our turrets to target them individually. We only have four emplacements, and there were thousands of fliers.

  I thought for sure they would attack the wall defenders first, but I was wrong. As I watched in horror, wave after wave peeled off and pursued our dragon girls. They were savaging them relentlessly, with fireballs and claws. I was ready to fly out to save them, but Alex’s strong hand fastened onto my shoulder.

  “Maya, the girls will be fine.”

  My eyes were already tearing up and the battle hadn’t really started yet. “But, Alex, they are being hit with fire! They hate fire!”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore, not in that armor. A silver dragon’s hide is the thickest and strongest of all the dragons, only fire can normally hurt them. That ice armor was designed for just that, nothing else. Now I think we have other matters to attend to.”

  ..................................................

  Alex

  Maya was concerned and scared about what might happen to our friends and family; well, so was I, with all my heart. But deep down I knew the time for brooding over what could have been or what should have been was over. I reached down, and for the first time felt a palatable connection to my Vakha spirit animal. I knew without a shadow of a doubt I would defend my mate, my friends, and this place to my last drop of blood.

  The heavy ballista eventually rose out of their shielded berths and locked on target, finally started to churn. Launching ten pound steel-tipped spears, the expert dwarven crews could manage a shot every thirty seconds. Most were the stocks that Elsa had purchased from the dwarf capital, but every crew had a few specials to use at their discretion.

  In my head, almost as an urgent background commentary, I could hear Winya barking out a string of orders and repositioning artillery.

  “Ballista teams, concentrate on the big demons. Once dealt with, or if unable to target effectively, refocus on the demon infantry. Catapults and trebuchets, areas five and eight, fire for effect!”

  The nearby ka-chuk of the firing ballista intensified as I watched them deliver direct hits to the fleshy sides of the siege ladder demons. But as accurate and powerful as the missiles were, they didn’t seem to faze the beasts in the slightest.

  “Winya, one ballista station per beast is too slow. You’ll need to concentrate multiples on a single target and start using the special-tipped ones,” I sent her over our link. She didn’t acknowledge me directly, but almost immediately her orders changed to reflect my instructions.

  “All ballista, retarget ladder beast in sector six!”

  The turrets swiveled as one and fired, a salvo of missiles striking the selected victim. Several of the heavy javelins pierced the armor where it was weakest–at the leg joints. This had the effect of disabling a number of legs on its right side. Apparently too stupid to compensate for the imbalance, the creature veered perilously off course and ended up crashing recklessly through the assembled undead that were milling about in front of the river.

  By now, the first waves of undead and demons lined the waterway. I even watched as several demons deliberately pushed a few zombies into the rushing water to see what would happen. They were swept away in a heartbeat, their bodies dissolving almost before they were cast off either side of the mountain’s lower waterfalls.

  “What the…?”

  Winya chuckled, pausing in her non-stop barking of orders. “The water that passes through the fortress comes in contact with enough of the crystal guy’s magic to give it a ‘positive charge of good’. It’s like acid to the low-level undead and poison to the higher-ups and demons. In fact, that’s probably what killed that vampire we found on our first day here.”

  “Boy, did Lifebane pick the wrong fortress to pick on!”

  “I would agree. Now, let’s prove it to him!”

  The undead bunched up at the river’s edge, and being reasonably close to our walls, made a perfect target for our magic users. Mingt and his students cast fireball after fireball into their tightly-packed midst. He had conscripted Nia into their group as well, and I saw my friend flitting around the ramparts, unleashing pixie fire as only she could. They appeared to be doing a lot of damage, and corpses were clearly on fire as the flames spread from zombie to zombie. The demons actually seemed to be enjoying the heat though. The first three ladder demons reached the river, rearing back at the banks and flinging their front claws toward the far bank. The first two managed to span the river correctly; and even though I could see their legs and soft undersides boiling away in the holy water, their stone and steel backs held up, locking together and creating a perfect arched bridge. The third demon was not so lucky. It caught a ballista bolt just as it flung its length across the tumultuous water. It contracted in pain just enough to miss the far bank and collapse fully into the frothing torrent. The chunks that were left by the time it washed over the side falls weren’t big enough to put in a bread basket.

  The two functional bridges now had undead and demon troops swarming across as Winya bellowed coordinates for the siege engines to take them out. One more centipede bridge attached itself to the far bank despite heavy fire from our catapults and ballista, and the last three crossed over the existing bridges and were now angling for our foundation walls. The remaining bridge demon, which had encountered navigation problems earlier, seemed to have repaired itself. It was now attempting to limp slowly over one of its brethren spanning the water. Winya shouted out instructions to one of the dwarven spotters, and a few seconds later, I heard an enormous crash as one of the trebuchets let loose from within the main courtyard. A stone as big as a beer barrel lofted far over our heads, reached its arc, and descended sharply down. It caught the demon while it was at the midpoint of traversing the bridge, and the heavy projectile holed both the centipede and the demon bridge under it, splashing into the river below. With a loud crack I could clearly hear from the top of the walls, the bridge fractured and broke apart, collapsing both creatures into the steaming waters. A spirited cheer went up from the dwarven engineers manning the emplacements.

  Too close for either bombardment or direct fire ballista, the bridge demons at the base of our walls were able to work practically unmolested, save for arrow fire which was ineffectual. They stretched up to their full height and one by one, essentially fell over onto our walls. The charms on the walls worked to kill them the same as the holy water, but by this time the damage was done. Even dead, they bridged our walls, and the rapidly moving demons and ghouls scrambled up the makeshift siege towers to battle our defenders.

  “Pull the wizards back to the curtain walls,” Winya commanded. “Iron Maidens, shields up. Guard your charges!”

  By now, the swifter ghouls were attaining the top of our main walls. Most were being cut in half by Elsa’s warriors or skewered by the Maidens. I noted uneasily that the top of the walls must not have been spelled against undead, as it didn’t seem to be working up here. Maya and I killed several that veered
our way.

  More of the more mobile undead came up onto the walls, slowly driving the defenders back as more undead and demons poured over the ramparts.

  “We need to get rid of those siege ladders, like right now!” I shouted.

  “Agreed,” Maya said shortly. She ran to the back railing that overlooked the courtyard. “Hons! I need your earth wizards to try and break those things off my wall!”

  “Yes, Ma am!” saluted the young Primus.

  “Come on,” Maya winked. She sprouted her wings and diving off the wall, lifted above the battle effortlessly. We had attracted the attention of a couple of bat demons, but they fell easily to our weapons. Darting back, we hovered over one of the siege ladders leaned up against our fortification. Dropping softly onto the front parapet, I brought my hammer down two-handed on the spot where the ladder leaned, pausing first to kick a weird horned demon that looked like a legless moth off the battlements. Apparently very light, the impact sent it howling out away from the wall and all the way into the shallow edge of the river. But for every one I knocked off, there were five more charging up the ramp; strange malformed creatures, which had no rhyme or reason for looking like they did. Wow, the Lifebane must really be scraping the bottom of hell’s barrel for these winners.

  Even my most energetic attempts at loosening the ladder’s grip on my wall were in vain. I could blow chips off it all day, but I needed to find a weaker spot. Maya came up behind me and touched me on the shoulder. “Alex, you need to take this thing out already. I’ll deal with the undead.” She did some impressive aerial flips with the aid of her wings, landing mere feet in front of me with her sword pulverizing the undead that were there.

  Out of good ideas, I elected to go with the fallback, bad idea option. I fluttered up and over my dark elf holding the line against the invaders, and then came down in front of her on the down slope, cancelling the weight offsets on my armor. Immediately gravity seized me and, more importantly, my six thousand pounds of armor. With my wings still extended, I did a barely-controlled slide down the ramp, knocking off every demon, ghoul, zombie, and skeleton racing up the ladder. About halfway down, I slowed somewhat knowing that I certainly didn’t want to land in the mob at the base. Flipping my hammer over, I slammed the spike into the stone back of the now-deceased demon and watched with satisfaction as cracks spider-webbed throughout and, more importantly, across the ramp. I felt a deep rumble like stone grating on stone, and suddenly I was in free fall as the structure quickly collapsed, snapping neatly in half below me. A few decent wing beats and I was back up near my mate. We both watched the carnage below, as hundreds of attackers were crushed by the falling ladder bridge.

  I hovered there for a few seconds while Maya dispatched the group that had clung to the rampart when the bridge dropped. I took a few moments to take stock. The air battle was going reasonably well, largely due to the bolt shooters and Dusk and Dawn’s efforts. But on the walls, it was another story. We had already lost high numbers of our dark elves and dwarf fighters. The Iron Maidens were taking up the slack, but just barely; and Higs was rushing our human contingents up the stairways to plug the gaps. Looking out, there seemed to be no end to the sea of bodies rushing to overwhelm our walls. Suddenly, four more of the infernal portals opened up beyond the river, and another phalanx of the centipede-like bridge demons crawled out, brushing the undead aside in their haste to cross the barriers.

  “Four more are coming,” I shouted to Maya.

  “Where the hell do they keep coming from?”

  “You know you answered your own question, right?” I growled.

  ..................................................

  Maya

  The battle was not going well for us at all. Without the advantage of our massive walls for protection, we cannot hope to match the Lifebane’s nearly unlimited resources man-to-man. The tops of our walls were three and four bodies deep, be they demons, undead or our own defenders. It’s probably been no more than an hour since the first of the ladder demons tilted against our walls. But since then, it has been nothing but heavy fighting. Our people have fought gamely, but they were exhausted. Most were wounded in some form or another, and that’s when you made mistakes and when you die. Alera’s healers were diving in and out of close hand-to-hand to patch people up, but they were starting to falter and become glazed with fatigue. Even the Helios could no longer contain the demons to just the great wall. Small groups of attackers were starting to trickle down to the streets and alleys off the main courtyard, engaging our thin line of human reserves.

  Alex and I tried desperately to get the dead ladder demons off the walls to give our people a break, but every bridge we destroyed was soon replaced by another. If this battle wasn’t ended soon, I didn’t think we would last much longer.

  “Maya, Alex, we’re needed at the front gate right away!” Winya shouted in our minds.

  Alex bashed a few last undead in our area and nodded to me that he was ready. Diving off the side of the walls, we quickly landed in the main courtyard with ease. I have to admit that wings have actually been very useful in these battles. They allowed Alex and me to quickly get to where we were needed in almost no time at all. However, that didn’t seem to matter much, we were still losing.

  Sprinting to the front gate, we immediately found what the problem was. Something was bashing on the front gates…hard!

  “Winya, I want everyone pulled off the main walls and out of the courtyards. Get them behind the secondary curtain walls. Now!”

  Even as people started pulling off of the walls, the bashing on the gate intensified. But I noticed that the remaining Helios weren’t leaving like the rest were.

  “Winya, why aren’t they pulling back?”

  “The dwarves won’t abandon their siege engines, and the Iron Maidens won’t abandon them, or you!”

  Damn it all! “Form up around the ballista then and abandon the rest of the wall. You’ll spread yourselves too thin otherwise.”

  “Understood. You heard her, protect your ballista teams! Tempests, I want this courtyard cleared and locked down!” Winya commanded.

  Calimus appeared in front of us, seemingly right out of thin air. The cloaked man bowed formally. “It would be our pleasure, my Queen. It is our sworn duty to guard you; we will defend you to the last.”

  Just as silently as he came, he departed in a cloud of darkness. I quickly risked a glance down the city streets to see what they were doing, and I was surprised to see several demons vanish in a haze of fluid movements and speed. Tempests were the true masters of the deadly dance; but still, there were only ten of them.

  “Get ready,” Alex said, patting me gently on the back. I reluctantly pulled my gaze away from the Tempests and back to whatever was pounding on the front gates. The slams paused for a few extra moments as whatever it was wound up for one final strike. The walls and earth shook at the impact. The blow had enough force to crack and splinter the wood and steel supports and gear system that held the stone doors shut. One more smash was all it took for the massive beast to bash in the doors completely.

  “So much for our impenetrable doors,” I quipped.

  “Actually, I think the doors themselves are just fine; but we’ll definitely need to work on those hinges tomorrow,” Alex said seriously.

  “You really think there’s going to be a tomorrow?” I asked. Of course, I couldn’t see his face behind his helm to tell if he was joking or not. Before he could answer, hell’s own honey badger smashed through the entrance.

  It was easily thirty feet high at the shoulders with a hide made up of imbedded rock and gemstones woven into steel wool fur. Massive jaws and rows of triangular teeth in layers grinned at us mockingly. The beast had short stubby legs with steel claws that would make the twins envious and a short muscular tail. Just judging from the rippling musculature beneath its hide, this was one nasty creature.

  Our portcullises might as well have been paper to this thing because I don’t think it
even noticed the heavy iron bars. All it seemed to care about was finding us. The only advantage that I could see for us was that its small piggy eyes didn’t look that effective; it was probably more of a scenting beast.

  Alex and I both easily avoided its first few attacks; simply back-stepping was all it really took. But the thing apparently had brains to go with its brawn, and it seemed to have our scent now. I fired crossbow bolt after bolt into its eyes and nose, but none of them seemed to affect it in the least. Even Alex’s hammer was only irritating it, and Winya’s sharpest enchantment just scored its hide; so we danced with the creature for a few minutes, dodging and lunging in to strike as best we could.

  But I was tired and distracted and that made me careless. I had forgotten how close I was to the wall and when I tried to dodge again, there was no room to move. The beast’s tree trunk of a tail swung around with a vicious snap, propelling me across the courtyard and slamming me into something hard and unyielding. Even with my advanced armor, that hurt like hell; and I’m pretty sure I broke something, most likely a few ribs.

  “By the stars, that hurt!”

  “You’re not the one with the broken bones.”

  “True, but you would be dead if I hadn’t locked up the armor like that; and in case you have forgotten, I feel it too when our armor is hit.”

  The clouds in my vision cleared, and I could finally start to get my bearings again. I had been slammed into the curtain wall, and a good portion of the first layer of rough hewn stone had fallen on top of me. Both my legs and my right arm were pinned under the rocks. Even with all my enhanced strength, I wasn’t nearly as strong as Alex and couldn’t lift these rocks with just one hand. My only option was to watch and hope my lover could survive without my help.

  Alex had taken several hits by now; that armor of his is larger than mine and a lot more restricting. Used on a normal opponent, loss of speed from the armor would still allow him to run circles around them. But with this thing, speed doesn’t seem to matter; it’s sheer power.