Gallit paused as he and his company reached the outer gates. The enemy had been pushed back by the sudden emergence of the defenders, giving them a temporary breathing space, but he could see them gathering now in their tens of thousands, with more arriving from the other side of the city as it became clear that the defenders were only emerging from one of the city’s gates.

     “Over there!” he commanded, pointing to the north along the city’s wall, and he ran, followed by his men. Another company was already there, on a stretch of flat ground, arraying themselves in a defensive formation, and they parted ranks to allow the new arrivals to join them. Gallit looked up at the wall behind them. It didn’t look as though the enemy had occupied it. Why would they? The Sergeant nodded in satisfaction. They wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked from above. Not at first, anyway…

     Zombies in their thousands closed in on them, but against disciplined troops they were nothing more than sides of beef to be carved up, and as the dismembered remains piled up they gave the defenders cover to hide behind. The zombherds blew commands on their bone flutes, therefore, and the undead horrors withdrew, parting to left and right to clear a space in front of the defenders.

     The defenders tensed to fight off an attack by living swordsmen, but curses filled the air as they saw the nature of the troops assembling before them. “Archers!” roared Gallit. “Ready shields!”

     They stood their shields upright on the ground, overlapping them to form a solid wall and crouched down behind them, just in time as the sky was darkened by a cloud of arrows. Cheston felt them hammering into his shield and dodged his head to the side as a lucky strike punched all the way through the thick slennhide, its ironwood tip stopping just where his eye had been. “This is fun!” he muttered.

     “I think I’m going to throw up,” said Grey, looking green.

     “There’s a helmet over there. You can save it and eat it again later.”

     Grey gave him a dark look, then jumped in alarm as an arrow punched clean through his shield, the point stopping less than an inch from his face. “Join the army, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.”

     More flights of arrows followed and the defenders waited it out, but then the assault stopped and the soldiers looked cautiously out to see the archers withdrawing to be replaced by shologs, the first of which were already charging, too fired up with bloodlust to wait for their unit to be properly assembled. “Stand!” shouted Gallit, but his men were already doing so and were drawing their swords. “Form ranks! Stand your ground!” His men tensed up to receive the attack, and a moment later the first of the shologs hit them.

☆ ☆ ☆

     Resalintas dispatched the last of the ogres and then ran towards the nearest sound of battle, where a group of engineers were trapped in a ruined tannery by a large squad of human Shadowsoldiers. The priest ran to their aid, and human blood joined the ogre blood staining his robes and dripping from his sword. With his help the engineers fought their way clear and Resalintas led them towards the outer wall, joining up with other small groups of Ilandians as they went. By the time they reached the outer gate there were a hundred of them, and the priest directed them to a large force of defenders standing with their backs to the wall, in battle with a huge force of shologs.

     As the engineers threw themselves at the shaggy haired monsters Resalintas went back in through the gate and ran into the northern guard tower, then up the stone steps to the watchtower. As he looked around he saw several small clumps of defenders, both inside the wall and outside, under heavy attack from Shadowsoldiers, their numbers gradually diminishing as the invaders took their toll. Good men, being butchered like sheep in an abattoir.

     Further out, he saw a few riderless horses wandering the battlefield, all that was left of the city’s cavalry, and he felt a moment of envy for Vento, who even now was being greeted by his God. He turned, looking back to the inner wall, and saw that the crescent of pikemen was still somehow standing, despite being under merciless assault from a troop of ogres who were deliberately impaling themselves on the pikes, then tearing the defenders’ heads off with their huge, clawed hands. Behind them, defenders were still passing through the gate, where they aided the efforts to hold back the ogres while others slipped past them to escape Into the outer circle of the city.

     The old priest then lifted his eyes to the Tower itself and, beyond it, the Shadow, which had now reached the easternmost stretch of the outer wall and engulfed it like a wall of malignant darkness. He realised that he could actually see it growing, inching its way closer, slowly but relentlessly. Nothing could stop it, it seemed, and he imagined a time, not too distant, when what remained of civilization, mainly refugees with perhaps a few straggling soldiers accompanying them, had fled from it half way around the world, only to be met by the other edge of the Shadow which had spread around the world in the other direction. He imagined a tiny circle of light and life being slowly squeezed smaller and smaller, the refugees within crowded shoulder to shoulder, tearing each other to pieces in animal panic as the last shreds of hope were lost and all that remained was the terrible knowledge of their fate. Then the Shadow would close over them, and even the panic would be lost to sheer, mindless insanity...

     “No!” cried the old priest, his eyes blazing with defiance and fury. “It will not come to that! We must fall back here, it’s true, but we will find a way to stop you! I, Darian Resalintas, swear it!” He drew his sword and brandished it at the Shadow, challenging it to do its very worst, putting his enemies on notice that he would continue to fight so long as he had the strength to stand, so long as there was a spark of life left in his body.

     As he held the weapon above his head its blade caught the yellow sun, flashing with fire. Every Shadowsoldier who saw it hesitated in momentary doubt and uncertainty, the exultation of battle and the fiery delight of an approaching victory suddenly eclipsed by a sick feeling of cold fear, made all the worse for being so unexpected. The moment passed before the city’s valiant defenders could take advantage of it, but Resalintas had seen it, and he recognised it for what it was. A sign from Samnos. A promise that He would never abandon those who stayed faithful to Him. New strength filled his old bones. New energy and grim purpose, and singing a prayer to the God of War he leapt down from the roof into the very thick of the battle, his sword swinging and bodies gushing blood as they collapsed at his feet. “Sinners!” he screamed, and hundreds cried in panic and fled before him. “Sinnnerrrs! Come to me and receive absolution!”

☆ ☆ ☆

     The line of defenders was staring to break up now, and Gallit knew that any kind of organised resistance was almost at an end. Those who had somehow managed to survive this long faced their end in a disorganised melee. Separated from their colleagues and surrounded, the last thing they knew before dying being faces of maniac hatred and bestiality. He couldn’t stand the thought of that. He wanted to have his brothers in arms beside him when he fell. Loyal friends and colleagues, and he knew they would want the same thing.

     “To me!” he cried therefore. “Reform around me!”

     Those of the surviving defenders who could fought their way towards him, forming a new line that would stand a little longer, and on either side of him he saw other small clumps of defenders doing the same thing. He saw a Shadow officer pointing at him, shouting orders, and he grinned with pride and amusement as the enemy pushed towards him with redoubled fury. Yeah, that’s right! he thought as he was forced to a new effort to defend himself. I’m the bastard you need to get! I’m the biggest, baddest of them all!

     Then he heard new sounds off to the right. An animal cry, bestial and furious, and big. Very big. What in the name of… He thought, and then he saw it. A troll. Twenty feet tall and made even more terrifying by the comically large nose and ears which were suddenly not funny in the least. Too stupid to know who the enemy was, it was prodded towards a neighbouring group of defenders by laughing humans with spears, and it swung at the Ilandians with a wooden club carved into the shape of an insanely grinning head. The Ilandians were crushed and scattered, and those who managed to get away from it were surrounded by the shologs and cut to pieces.

     The humans directing the troll then aimed it towards Gallit’s group. “Heads up, you apes!” he cried, turning to face it. “Troll incoming!”

     “Oh good,” said Cheston, swinging his sword to deflect a sholog scimitar and following through with a sweep that opened its belly. “That should end the boredom.”

     Grey tried to find a witty reply but was too busy trying to stay alive. He had three of the great, shaggy humanoids ahead of him, and as if that wasn’t enough a bunch of goblins had appeared, threading their way between the legs of the taller humanoids to thrust their tiny but wickedly sharp knives into hamstrings and achilles tendons. That gave him an idea, though, and as the Troll lumbered towards them he pulled away from Cheston, opening a gap between them. The shologs pulled back to let it past, and the vast, drooling creature entered the gap deliberately left for it by the defenders. The grinning club head swung down, hitting the ground with a thump Grey could feel under his feet, but he’d dodged it and rolled on the ground to come to rest behind the creature, where he slashed at the muscles and tendons in the back of its leg. Now I’m the goblin, he thought as the creature bellowed in pain and collapsed onto one knee, dropping the club which hit the ground like a felled tree. The defenders fell upon it, and the Shadowsoldiers wailed in dismay as it was dispatched by half a dozen simultaneous sword thrusts.

     The shologs flooded back towards them, determined to avenge the creature’s death. The defenders fell one by one, but Cheston was astonished to find that he wasn’t at all tired. Despite the amount of furious fighting he’d done he felt as fresh as if he’d only entered combat a moment ago. He felt another defender bumping shoulders with him and looked around to see that it was the Sergeant. On his other side Grey was forced back towards him by a press of enemies. The three of them were alone now, everyone else in their little group having fallen, and they fell back until they felt the cold stone of the wall at their backs. No words were said any more. They needed every breath just to fight, and Cheston knew that the end was now just moments away. At least I’m in good company, he thought. This is right. This is how it’s supposed to end.

     By some supreme effort they managed to stand a few moments longer, drenched with blood from head to foot, both their own and that of their enemies. Gallit laughed as another sholog fell in front of him, but then Grey, forced to sidestep to avoid a spear thrust, tripped over the body of a former comrade and fell. He had no chance to stand again as the shologs leapt forward, and a massive axe almost severed his left arm. Cursing while the blood fountained, he drew a dagger with his other hand, but the sholog stood on his arm and gutted him. A moment later Cheston followed him as a spear pierced straight through his breastplate, the solid steel unable to stop the momentum given by furious sholog muscles.

     Last man standing, Gallit had time to think as every weapon was aimed at him. Looks like I’m buying the drinks…