74

They all moved quickly up the stairs above the gate. As Michael crested the top of the steps, Marcus loosed a black feathered arrow, and it flew in a perfect arc into the face of the incoming patrol. The rest of the patrol reacted in shock aside from one of them that charged forward toward them. Michael loosed the shield from his back and smacked the man’s spear away before driving his sword into his gut. Davi tackled another that had regained the initiative, throwing him off the side of the wall. Bayle handled the other two, his sword whipping out with such speed that their throats were cut and they were falling before they could even ready their weapons properly.

From there, they moved quickly along the wall, with Marcus occasionally loosing a perfectly shot arrow to drop someone approaching them or even on a man who was starting to yell out a warning from a high tower at the wall’s corner. It was already clear that something was wrong, but so far the reaction had been slow. As they neared the main gate, they saw that the fighting was intense. Black-robed soldiers of Stent had nearly made their way to the main gatehouse, but a number of men on the top of the wall were throwing rocks down at them or loosing arrows.

“Ollie!” yelled Bayle as they ran toward that part of the wall.

Ollie understood the order—subtlety would be pointless if they didn’t get the gate open. He began muttering under his breath as they ran, holding up a hand above his head in which an orb of glowing flame started to coalesce. He finished his incantation and used the momentum of his run to throw the ball of fire at the top of the gate. It smashed into the gate’s defenders on the wall, blasting them back with force as they were lit aflame. Just as the remainder of them were turning their attention to the mage, he threw yet another Fireball at them, fully breaking the group as they were engulfed in flames. He’d been practicing his multi-casting, and it was clearly starting to pay off. The rest of them reached the stragglers, cutting them down easily as they were unable to rally after the destruction Ollie had wrought.

Once they took that part of the wall, they started defending it, even as the gate started to be raised. Bayle took a small paper tube that smelled of gunpowder and yanked a small cord at the bottom of it, causing a flare to blast out from it into the sky. The soldiers that had been lying in wait answered the flare with a roar and ran toward the gate from across the no-man’s land. At the same time, the castle itself was waking, and Michael saw hundreds of men swarming across the castle courtyard toward the gate and onto the walls.

Ollie and Marcus started firing spells and arrows into the oncoming groups as the remaining black-cloaked Penitents started to ready themselves to defend the gate until the rest of the Stent soldiers arrived.

Bayle was clutching his hand, which seemed to be covered in burns from an issue with the firework.

“Michael,” he said, holding out his hand as he watched the approach of the enemy.

Michael complied, healing Bayle’s hand.

Bayle nodded and drew his second shortsword, starting to move to one side. “I’ll cover this side. You, Pyotr, and Davi cover the other one.” They complied, moving to the other side. Michael was the only one that had brought a shield, so he moved to the center while Pyotr and Davi stood at either side of him. Michael felt naked without his armor. He’d been travelling, fighting, and even eating in it for what must’ve been a third of his new life so far. Still, while he felt vulnerable without it, he also felt light. He took a moment to kiss the pendant around his neck and say a small prayer as he squared up and readied for the enemy.

The first of the defenders came at them from the steps rather than the wall, climbing up to try and kill them so that they could strike down on the invaders from below.

One of them charged Michael with a spear and shield. He didn’t wait for the man to reach him, instead running toward him, batting his spear aside, and cutting across his face with his sword, slicing halfway into his helmet and kicking the body off his sword as Davi moved to cut down another with his bastard sword that was trying to strike at Michael.

The three of them fell easily into a groove. Enemies would swarm up at them from the stairs or across from further on the wall. Michael would take point, blocking blows with his shield and cutting them down where he could. Davi would follow that up with a brutal charge, cutting soldiers down left and right with his sword, and Pyotr would keep anyone from slipping around them or counterattacking by dancing between them, sending his sword out like a whip, his speed even more enhanced than usual thanks to his lack of armor. Any sergeants and mages that appeared would be immediately targeted by Marcus and Ollie, and if not outright killed, at least softened up for them.

Even with their teamwork, it didn’t take long for them to start to get overwhelmed. Davi was the first to take a blow, a spear piercing into his side while he was trying to kick a man down the steps onto another. Pyotr took an arrow to the hip not long after, from a bowman that was subsequently brought down by one of Marcus’s arrows. Michael himself managed to keep from taking any serious injuries, but it didn’t take long for him to end up covered in smaller wounds that left him leaking blood all over his tan uniform. Michael kept healing them all as they were attacked, but it would only take a single good stroke of a sword to end any of them, and the enemy just kept coming. If it wasn’t for Ollie’s magic and his healing, they would’ve folded in moments.

Eventually they found themselves losing ground, their ferocity and speed unable to compensate for the numbers being brought against them. An enemy sergeant in full-plate in particular managed to push them back several yards before Pyotr was able to bring him down with a masterful sword stroke to the neck.

Marcus and Ollie were forced to adjust their attacks from being on the incoming enemies attacking the gates to those on the wall as they were pushed back toward them. Ollie’s blasts of flame and lightning bought them time at first, but eventually enemy mages started to appear, forcing him to focus on arcane duels with them rather than helping to clear out infantry. On the other side, Bayle was cutting down soldiers left and right, his two short swords a blur of constant motion. While everyone else was fighting with professional, simple movements they’d learned at the academy, with maybe just a few personal flourishes, Bayle fought like a character from a John Woo movie. Two swords were impractical for the average person, but his cut through everyone that came into his path as he moved acrobatically from person to person, dodging blows by centimeters before sending out attacks of his own. Still, even he was being pressed back by the enemy soldiers. Forced closer and closer to the rest of them.

All in all, their defense probably lasted less than six minutes. All of their attacking, defending, wounds, and healing that felt like an eternity of battle were really mere moments. The tide turned rapidly as the Stent soldiers started to breach the gates in full. These were not lightly armed and armored Penitents but fully armored soldiers with a core of knights that immediately pushed their way into the defenders and started cutting them down, quickly taking the momentum and pushing forward into the castle courtyard, where the Tusynian soldiers had to defend a much wider area than just the narrow gate and started to quickly lose ground. At the same time, soldiers started filtering in through the side gate they’d left open and swarming onto the wall.

With the extra breathing room the fresh troops granted, Michael and the others got a second wind, with Ollie briefly creating a forcefield around them all and giving them a moment to recuperate while reinforcements started to take the wall. The effort clearly strained him, but he held strong long enough for Michael to heal everyone again, ripping a spearhead from his own shoulder as he did so. Ollie, instead of lowering the shield, created a wall on one side, allowing Bayle and the rest of them to focus on defending the other. Between them and the reinforcements that were swarming onto the wall, they were able to crush the remaining Tusynians before shifting their focus to the other side and pushing them off in that direction as well. Once they were done, Bayle yelled orders at a number of troops below before looking at them.

“Michael, I want you with me. We need to move to the inner gate and see if we can convince the count to surrender peacefully.”

“Why just me?” asked Michael.

Bayle pointed behind him, where everyone else was leaning against the wall, panting heavily from the nonstop fighting, covered in blood that was a near-even mix of theirs and the enemies’.

“Ah.”