'Remember,' Vesna continued, dragging their attention back to him, 'all the enemy has is weight of numbers – you've all been in battle before; you know how bloody useless a crowd of untrained troops is. Few of them have weapons, and there's no one leading them, so they'll come straight at us and break themselves on the shield wall.'
He levelled his sword at the main line of defenders, where three ranks were already formed up and set at an angle to deflect the onrush of the enemy into a bottleneck studded with spears. 'Keep the line and trust the men beside you and behind you. The only thing that'll keep us alive tonight is discipline.'
The count forced a small laugh and gestured towards Isak. 'And if you don't believe in discipline, believe in the fact that Isak Stormcaller is standing here with you, and there's no daemon of the Dark Place that would dare cross him!'
There was no time for anything more. With a great roar, the mob broke from the darkness, spilling left and right around black empty buildings into the faint light cast by the torches of the barricades, a thousand screaming figures rushing towards them. Isak felt the soldiers near him waver, then, grimly determined, face forward. He filled himself with raw energy from the Skulls, then jumped down from Toramin to stand with the infantry, his teardrop shield snug on his arm and sparks crackling furiously over his silver-clad body. It re¬assured him as much as those around him.
The rush of power flowing through his body drove away the city's oppressive atmosphere. He stepped forward with a feeling of elation, his sword raised and ready, eager to disperse the ragged masses.
Archers went into action, picking off the quickest. Sir Kelet, taking his job as one of Isak's personal guard deeply seriously, claimed his first three kills before anyone else had fired their first shaft. But the mad-dened hordes appeared oblivious to the flailing bodies and crushed them underfoot.
There were not enough archers among Isak's troops to have any real effect, but the ranks were heartened to see the enemy take the first losses. The Devoted soldiers cheered and began to shout and bel¬low, working themselves up into a killing frenzy. Isak smiled inside his blank helm. That was what they would need, for this would be grim butchery soon enough. The screaming hordes were close now, barely thirty yards way, arms waving wildly, most clad in rags that could no longer be called clothes, charging on regardless of those who tripped and fell, to be stomped to death under their own comrades' feet.
The skirmishers were next to join the fray, sending a sky-full of javelins from the ranks. The onrushing crowd was too tightly bunched for any of them to miss.
The front ranks tensed and drew themselves up, bracing themselves for the impact. Buoyed by the wild, surging magic quivering inside his bones, Isak moved to the head of the bottleneck. Turn weakness to strength, he chanted to himself, the mantra of every successful general. His weakness was that he was a white-eye, vicious, and capable of brutality that would shock most normal men. Here it became a strength, a boost to the troops' morale. The enemy were unarmed and pitiful, but the beast inside him didn't care, it wanted only to kill. The chains of reason were gone.
With a crash, the mob drove into the phalanx. The frontrunners found themselves impaled on lowered spear points, while others re¬bounded and collided with their fellow citizens. More fell, tripping on corpses or unable to keep upright as the angled shields shifted their direction right, towards Isak.
The ranks of Devoted were backed onto a fat pillar three times the high of a man. It had a ledge running around it at shoulder height. As the mob hit the shields, Mariq, Isak's battle-mage, hopped up onto that ledge, a white ball of flame wrapped around his fist, screaming with furious delight.
Isak took his cue and slashed forward with Eolis, letting the energy contained in the Skull fused onto the guard burst out and lash forwards into the onrushing figure. The burst of white flames tore the first man in half and continued on into the woman behind. Flickering tongues flashed out to those around her, blackening their skin and throwing them underneath those pushing up behind. The woman managed to keep upright somehow, but she was shrieking with pain as she was pushed forwards into the bottleneck by the reaching hands behind her. A spear jabbed out and tore through her neck. As she fell, a fine mist of blood hung in the air above her for a fraction of a second then dissipated, spattering those around her.
With Vesna's words still ringing in his head, Isak kept himself in check, cutting down any within reach with brutal ease, but keeping his place in the line. Some wielded long knives or hatchets, but they couldn't get close enough to the line of soldiers to use them; swords or spears cut them down like wheal before a sickle.
The fighting raged on relentlessly. As Isak took down yet another – he'd lost count within minutes – he looked around to see the whole phalanx had each impaled an enemy citizen; there was a moment of strange impasse as neither side could get past the standing wall of dead between them.
Then that moment of hiatus fell apart as one soldier remembered his training and used his shield to bludgeon the dying man off his un-barbed spear. He ran through the next and battle was resumed.
Aside from Mariq, who screamed curses and spells as he threw down ruinous fire to slow the press of bodies, the defenders were near-silent. After the initial attack, the men worked almost as one, like a methodical killing unit, beating forward with their shields, lunging at the next target, disengaging, beating forward again… countless hours of training drills paid off as they stood elbow to elbow in tight formation, ranks closed. Very few were yet injured; those few caught with lucky blows were quickly passed to the back and men from the second rank moved forward into any breach, leaving no gaps for the gibbering wretches to exploit.
Again and again Isak felt sprays of blood patter over his armour, and the air was ripe with the stink of loosened bowels and exposed guts, but they couldn't stop to take stock for even a moment. It was just mindless, mechanical slaughter, but their lives depended on their ability to keep stabbing and slashing and smiting their attackers.
'Press forward on my command,' Vesna bellowed suddenly from somewhere nearby.
Isak felt the infantry tense once more. He felt a surge of pride in these men, strangers drawn from all over the Land to a place none of them cared about, yet they remained disciplined and focused, and when Vesna called 'forward!' they stepped out as one man.
The mob reeled a little, surprised at the sudden movement, but there were still too many of them pushing onto the troops and the only real effect it had was to crowd those at the front even further. Vesna called again, and once more the infantry shoved forward, using their tall iron-bound shields to bludgeon their way through, while the second and third ranks of the line dipped their shoulders and added their weight to the movement.
In the next few moments the front line of the mob, now too restricted by their fellows to do much beyond wail, shuddered as spears stabbed forward into their bellies, but as they crumpled, they were replaced by yet more keen fighters who were crushed against the shieldwall. Isak heard one soldier cry out as the pressure on him from front and back grew too much to bear, but as the man's voice broke the night air he seemed to find extra strength from somewhere and it became a roar of frustration, anger and pain. His comrades took up the call and a great howl ran down the line. In response Vesna demanded another foot of ground, then another, to drive the enemy to the ground where they could be slaughtered like the beasts they were.