The Fallen World

Fort Battleaxe - Part 4

     No-one else spoke after that, there was nothing to say. The final few minutes counted down until there was only one minute left. Colonel Vento gave an order, and the ten inch thick oaken beams that locked the city gates were drawn back, sliding easily and silently on the layers of thick grease that had been smeared on them. If they were lucky, they would be taking the enemy by surprise and they’d be able to get everyone out before they were able to react.

     He tensed up. The day before, while they’d been planning this operation, some members of his command staff had suggested that the enemy would be expecting them to make a break for it and would be ready for them, but Vento had argued otherwise. The enemy knew that they had a teleportation cubicle, and the means to use it despite the magical interference. They would believe that the Beltharan command staff would be able to flee to safety at any time. Also, agents within the enemy army, agents belonging to the tactician Adamaster Hurgis, had been spreading whispers that the city’s defenders believed that the Orb of Proofing could keep out the Shadow. The defenders will try to hold the city even after it’s been swallowed by the Shadow, the agents whispered, and the enemy’s high command gave every indication of believing them. Now, though, now that the moment had finally arrived, Vento felt a moment of doubt. The gates would open a crack, and then be pushed open by enemies pouring in…

     The enemy didn’t come pouring in. The gates opened silently until they stood widely apart and there was no reaction from the Shadowarmies, their view being obscured by the massed ranks of zombies marching restlessly around and around the inner wall. Vento looked up at the town hall clock, and saw that the minute hand was within a hair of pointing directly upwards. Drass it, he thought. What’s a few seconds? He sat up straight in his saddle, therefore, and drew his sword, raising it high over his head. That was the signal, and the cavalrymen drew their swords as well. “Cavalry!” he cried in a voice that carried across the entire army, as well as to the Shadowsoldiers outside, “Charge!”

     The nearest Shadowsoldiers looked up, noticing for the first time that the gate was open, but before they could react the cavalry was pouring out, swords slashing at the zombies and anything else that came within reach. They headed straight down the long radial street towards the outer gate three hundred yards away, clearing the way for the infantry who followed as soon as the last horse was out of the way. Two companies pushed the startled Shadowsoldiers back from the gate, clearing a space in front of it, and then the Breachguard took their places. Pikemen backed by swordsmen, forming a semicircle fifty yards across forming a bridgehead that would allow the rest of the defenders to emerge. No commands were given throughout the entire process. Everyone knew what to do.

     By this time, though, the enemy had woken up to what was happening, and the harsh, blaring sound of trumpets was echoing among the blackened skeletons of ruined buildings. Zombherds whistled new orders to their undead flocks on their bone flutes and the marching corpses halted in their tracks. Then they turned and began marching towards the gate, the closest hurling themselves upon the lines of kneeling pikemen. Most of the defenders, sheltered from the enemy up until now by strong stone walls, were only now coming face to face with the full horror of decomposing, maggot ridden but still somehow animate flesh, and many of them froze in terror. Combined with the proximity of the Shadow, it was too much for some of them and they shrieked in terror, fleeing into the rubble choked streets where, away from the shelter of their comrades, they fell easily to dull, rusty swords wielded by cold, soulless hands.

     Most of the pikemen were experienced and battle hardened enough to endure the horror, however, and held their place, holding their pikes firmly outward at an angle, moving only their steel pointed heads to find the cold, still hearts of the onrushing horrors. Hundreds of zombies were dispatched in this manner, transfixed on steel and ashwood and held in place while a second rank of swordsmen chopped them to pieces until the reek of rotting tissues and fluids made the very air their enemy. Their controllers didn’t care how many of their undead slaves they lost, though. The defenders of the city, once they were dead, would be reanimated to replace those lost now. All they cared about was to crush the defence as quickly as possible, and so more and more zombies began to press in, to crush the pikemen by sheer weight of dead meat. More swordsmen pushed their way between the pike men, though, pushing the undead horrors back and clearing the way for the bulk of the defenders to break out. Once they were clear of the gate they followed the path that had been cleared by the cavalry through the devastated remains of the city.