A rumble shook the wall, causing her to reach out to hold onto the parapet wall to steady herself.
Okay, whatever the hell that was, this isn’t a false alarm.
She stopped, turning around. “Caleb, Elan, you need to go.”
“What? Why? We can help!” Caleb objected instantly, and predictably, but she cut him off with a chop of her hand.
“Be silent, young pup,” she snapped. “This is no game. If it comes to fighting up here, you’ll either kill or be killed by our own people. You’ve no experience in groups like this, and that’s a death sentence. Go back, grab all the people you can who can’t fight, and get them to the temple. You can defend that if some of them get past us.”
“Some of who?” Elan asked, her voice steady but strung high with tension just below the surface.
“That, I don’t know,” Simone confessed. “Demons, like as not, but don’t worry about that. We’ve held this wall before, we can hold it again. Now go!”
Caleb still wanted to fight, Simone saw, but Elan pulled him away and the pair struggled and pushed their way down the steps to the ground against the flow of people rushing up. Simone watched them go for a moment, then put them as far from her mind as she could. She pulled her blade from her belt and jumped up onto the parapet so she could run above the confused crowds toward the source of the screaming.
*****
The crowds were milling around as Elan and Caleb pushed through them, trying to get any of them to listen as they moved, but no one was interested in the thoughts of a pair of panicked children and they found themselves ignored from every quarter.
“What do we do?” Caleb asked as he was brushed off yet again. “Simone said to get these people to the temple!”
Elan didn’t know. She could feel her breath coming in shorter gasps as the crowd seemed to press closer in on her with every passing moment as she spun around with wild eyes.
“Elan!”
Her heart was in her head, thudding against her ears with a tangible pressure as she spun around and tried to put some distance between her and the press of humanity.
“Elan!” Caleb reached out and grabbed her back, both physically and mentally, spinning her around so he could face her. “Are you okay?”
She took two deep breaths and nodded. “Sorry. I…I’m not used to so many people.”
Caleb looked her in the eyes for a moment, wanting to saying something to make it better, but nothing like that came out.
“Deal with it,” he said instead. “We have too many problems now to add one more.”
Elan nodded. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, just help me figure out what we’re going to do. No one is listening to us!”
Elan considered for a moment, then said, “We can gather the children. They’re going to be scared. Everyone is running around screaming. We can get them to the temple.”
Caleb considered, looking around. It was obvious that she was right. Children were visible everywhere as they looked to see what was going on, attracted by all the commotion. Some were out in the open, in very real threat of being trampled, likely having ignored orders to stay at home, much as he would have.
“Alright, we’ll do that. Come on!”
*****
Lightning blew apart the wall where it was thickest, sending defenders flying to the ground fifty feet below amid strewn rubble and shrapnel from the blast. The shamans barely bothered to examine their success before they began chanting and again summoning the eldritch energy that was theirs to control.
The demon general grunted in approval, the positive sound lost to the screaming of souls and clashing of steel and iron.
The eldritch powers wielded by his forces would more than counter the defensive advantages the humans had built for themselves, but it was clear that the defenders had been preparing for this day, despite the confused way in which they had responded to the attack. Iron and steel weapons were plentiful among the humans, and they were neither unfamiliar with their use nor unwilling to take the chances needed to make best use of them.
It was a courageous last stand, though futile.
“Send more of the Ninth Circle fodder to the front,” the general ordered. “Let them brunt the enemy’s blades.”
Horns called out his orders, and demons scrambled forward in sloppy formations to rush into the battle with no regard for life on either side.
More disciplined groups waited in the rear, waiting for the general’s final order to break the human resistance for the final time.
*****
Simone leapt from parapet to parapet as she sprinted along the walls, coming to a stop only when she saw the destruction of the front wall. Fighting erupted around it as demonic forces pushed through the hole and into the first defensive line.
My soul, it’s a full assault. I had hoped that I’d not live to see this day, she thought as she hopped down to the walkway and elbowed a stunned guard who was in her path.
“Wake up, fool!” she snarled. “The enemy is at our gates! Your shock and disbelief serves only them. Move!”
She didn’t wait to see if he’d snapped out of it, but shoved him along ahead of her anyway. There were scaly, misshapen things crawling up the rubble where whatever had destroyed the wall had left its mark, which meant that the wall’s defenders had a job to do.
“Draw your blade,” she snarled, cuffing the guard behind the head, “or die a coward and a failure. Either way, it is time to do our work.”
With these words, she pushed past him and put her body into the breach just as the first of the scrambling creatures tried to push through. Her blade sang as it sliced through the demonic flesh, sending a spatter of ichor across the shattered stone as she lashed out with her boot and sent the dead body falling back into its fellows.
“Hold the line!” she roared above the cacophony. “We alone stand between these beasts and our families! Fall here and you will only be the first to die!”
With that, she no longer had time to speak, as the press of demons once more filled the breach and the killing began in earnest.
*****
The orange glow of fires where none should be burning lit up the distant night, and Kaern cursed his prescience and the damnable voice in his head that had caused him to turn back. The forces the local lord had marshaled were impressive, but mostly consisted of nigh-crippled Eighth and Ninth Circle demons.
Those weak wretches were only a threat by their numbers, the ailments of the Change all but rendering them harmless by most standards. In numbers, though, even ants could prove lethal, and by any standard, those demon wretches were more than mere ants. He could see where they would overwhelm the shattered defenses, given time and continued to confusion on the humans’ part.
They could be held back for a time, however, and it was the far more dangerous groups that caught his eye as he crept closer to the demonic lines.
A coven of shamans, three squads of Soul Eaters chafing at the bit, and several brigades worth of demons more disciplined than I have seen in recent times, Kaern noted with trepidation, knowing that he was looking at a force that was more than a match for the human defenses.
It wasn’t enough to ensure victory, but frankly that was almost a moot point. For the humans here, even in victory it would be their end. A follow-up attack would face little, if any, opposition from the tired and broken forces within the walls unless something was done in short order.
In the many years of fighting Kaern had endured, rarely had he voluntarily faced odds quite so stacked against him…but, of course, rarely had he volunteered at all. War was something to be faced, not to be embraced. Only fools ran in where the Angels had long since refused to march.