Fortress Al-Mir

If there was one good thing about the purifier going rogue, it was that his actions gave Arkk an idea.

Inquisitrix Astra came forward and confirmed the death of Purifier Tybalt. It felt a little too easy to Arkk. An Avatar of the Jailor of the Void, felled by a lightning bolt. Then again, he was just a human, albeit with strange magic. Agnete was no different. Perhaps she could use some aspect of her flames to avoid a bolt of lightning, but Arkk couldn’t see how. If she got hit, especially with him giving it his all, he doubted she would be any better off.

Unfortunately, his death did not pop the wall back into existence. It was a large gap in Elmshadow’s defenses. Fifty armed and armored men standing shoulder-to-shoulder could walk into the city at once. It wouldn’t be easy. The ground curved downwards into a trough that was slowly filling with water from somewhere. Melted snow, perhaps. Even with that, it was still a worrisome opening that hindered White Company’s ability to defend the burg.

So far, despite it having been several hours, Evestani had only now started marching over to take advantage. Arkk was hoping that he had taken out their leadership. That way, at least he would have done something, even if that something only meant a delay.

The magical bombardment had started up again, covering the army’s advancement. Not boulders dropping from the skies this time. Thankfully, they weren’t using golden rays or golden arrows either. Instead, flaming balls of fire came down on the city far more frequently and were dangerous, especially if they made it through the barrier and started raining down on the wooden structures within, but they were also far less substantial than a solid mound of stone. Much easier for those manning the defensive rituals to weather. Arkk doubted they intended to shatter the defenses. They were just tying up spellcasters to minimize the few magical counterattacks that Hawkwood could mount against the approaching army.

He was trying. There was no large ritual in place to bombard them in turn—and not enough casters to reliably work the ritual array he had stolen from Evestani—but the army in motion was vulnerable to lesser spells and the mounted ballista. The spellcasters with the vanguard of the army didn’t quite manage to defend from everything.

Arkk, arms crossed as he stood on an intact segment of the wall, watched as winches and a claw ratcheted back two stone spheres connected by a heavy rope. The ballista could be a precision weapon at times but at the moment, hurling a ball and chain through as much of the army as possible would do the most damage, both in terms of physical damage as well as morale.

No one wanted to rush closer to their deaths.

With a heavy thwung, the strained arms of the ballista released their tension, rocketing the oversized bolas off into the distance. Arkk lost sight of the projectile against the gray skies, only to spot it once again as a barrier quite similar to that which Zullie had developed popped into place. Where Zullie’s projectile blocker spell grabbed hold of incoming projectiles, this one deflected the bolas up and over the top of the forward soldiers. It did come back down again but at a greatly reduced velocity and a far sharper angle. The dozen soldiers in the way had plenty of time to move, clearing the landing zone before it crashed down.

Not every group was as lucky. Spells or bolas occasionally struck true. It just wasn’t enough.

Arkk was not flinging his spells. Nor was he putting his meager archery skills to good use. He stood atop the wall, focusing not on the army itself but on the ground under their feet. He had to focus lest his mental map of the terrain shift askew.

Purifier Tybalt had given him the idea. Or perhaps reminded him that he had more at his disposal than just orcs and a former purifier.

He glanced over at Hawkwood and gave the man a firm nod of his head.

Hawkwood, held up a stalling hand, scowling as he looked out at the approaching army. “Where?”

“The forward group. I think I can time it so that we get the majority of the spellcasters.”

Watching the army move, both with scrying and a spyglass, it quickly became clear that they tried to keep their spellcasters as protected as possible within each battalion. The active spellcasters, the ones maintaining the defenses, would move to the front. When exhausted, they would retreat toward the middle of the group and recover.

“Hold,” Hawkwood said. “Let them pass.”

“What? But—”

“They are the vanguard. The forward soldiers the enemy is throwing away to fall upon our swords and clear the way for the rest of the army behind. The unit following is larger and better equipped.”

Arkk peered into his crystal ball, comparing a few soldiers from each of the advancing units. What Hawkwood was saying wasn’t wrong. Evestani’s army wasn’t wholly uniform across all units. They favored a black and gold theme, painting their armor and wearing regalia primarily colored along those lines. The golden sun against the black background did stand out and look striking.

The forward group, however, looked more like how Arkk pictured a well-funded militia to look. Or perhaps a mercenary company along the lines of First Legion or the Society of the Burning Shadow. A group of people who all worked together but were left to their own devices on how to equip themselves. They followed the theme of black and gold but depictions of Evestani’s golden sun were few and far between.

“Conscripts,” Hawkwood said, answering the question on Arkk’s mind. “Perhaps taken from mercenary companies. Perhaps taken from the streets.”

“Fake soldiers or not, they’re still carrying real weapons.”

“They will be poorly trained and thus easier for us to deal with. Easier to rout as well. Even easier still should their backup fail to arrive.”

Arkk glanced around. White Company numbered roughly four thousand strong. Not all of them were present at the wall. Elsewhere around Elmshadow, other parts of the Evestani army were approaching, likely to put strain here, allowing their men to break through. White Company had to spread themselves out along the entirety of the west-facing wall or risk being overrun from behind.

The gap in the wall was still the weakest point and thus warranted Hawkwood’s personal attention. And Arkk’s as well.

Arkk licked his lips, stomach aching from the sight of ten thousand marching forward across the vacant fields. It wasn’t even mildly comparable to facing down a few hundred goblins. Especially not when he had a horror from the Stars at his back and new magic making him feel invulnerable.

He was no stronger than Purifier Tybalt or Agnete. A stray arrow or an oblique spell and he would be gone.

“I hope your men are ready,” Arkk said, resisting the urge to step back. “They’re almost here.”

“Just hold steady until that second unit advances a little more.”

“Right. Steady.” Arkk took a deep breath, regretting sticking around. Fresh idea thanks to Tybalt or not, this felt like suicide. “Not going to give a big rallying speech? Get everyone’s spirits up?”

“The general riding up and down the lines, belting out a morale-boosting speech, is entirely the fiction of bards and poets. I could turn and shout as loud as I could and only a dozen would be able to hear me,” Hawkwood said, offering Arkk a grim smile. “Every squad has battle-hardened hype men. Those who have been with White Company for a time, seen and fought in plenty of fights. They will rally those around them. Not often through the use of flowery words and purple speech. Listen,” he said, cupping a hand to his ear. “Even now, you can hear them psyching themselves up.”

Arkk turned slightly, not quite sure what Hawkwood was referring to. A thunderous sound had risen along the wall in the last few minutes. Clanging of metal against metal and shouts of discordant hype. Arkk had thought it was from the sound of the approaching army but, now that Hawkwood had pointed it out, he realized that at least some of it was coming from the soldiers stationed on the wall and behind the large divots.

They stomped their boots. They struck their own shields with the pommels of their swords. The pikemen raised their spears into the air, cheering.

They readied themselves for war.

Arkk often felt out of his depth. Never more so than now. Despite all the cacophony and the vibration of war in the air, a rather silly thought flittered through his mind. It was a good thing he had relieved himself just an hour ago.

“Ignore it. Their job is to fight with sword and shield. The archers are to rain down death upon the enemy. The casters are to protect from the same happening to us. I am to be seen leading the fray. You focus on your job. The second unit. Wait until the perfect moment. No one will know when that is except you.”

Arkk swallowed a dry lump, nodding his head absently.

Focus.

On the rolling waves of armored figures marching across the plains, set to crash into Elmshadow Burg and sweep it away like a flooded river through a small hamlet.

“The hardest part of leading men to war is getting the men to cross the final few paces that will bring them within reach of the enemy’s weapons. Hours of ‘battles’ have been ‘fought’ without a single blade crossing that threshold as soldiers shout and jeer, wearing each other out until some poor fool crosses that threshold.

“They are usually the first to die.”

Thousands of soldiers marched forward, their hype building as the distance between the two forces narrowed. Orders went out. Arrows flew through the air. Shouts merged with taunts, stomping with marching, and the hammering of metal drowned out everything but Hawkwood’s voice.

“That is not a situation we will face today. The enemy vanguard will march straight and true, without falter. For to falter means to flee. These conscripts have nowhere to flee but into the swords of their own countrymen. The rear groups are the lynchpins of this operation. Take them out and not only will the vanguard be without reinforcements, they will also be without that sword pressed to their spine.”

Arkk’s eyes darted back and forth over the army. The landmarks he had been using, odd slopes or tall stones, fence posts, and even the divots created when Tybalt had erased the golden soldiers, all had vanished beneath the tides of the opposing armies. He tried to keep track of where everything was just through feel but that didn’t work quite as well. He wasn’t at Fortress Al-Mir with its perfect map of its interior constantly nestled in the back of his mind. Out here, he had to rely on guesswork.

“Are you trying to say that we can win this, but it all relies on me?”

“No. I don’t believe we can. Not now that they’ve smelled weakness. There are too many of them.”

“What?” Arkk took his eyes off the soldier-covered plains outside Elmshadow. “Then what—”

“We are buying time.”

“For the Duke’s men?”

“Evestani is aware of their imminent arrival tomorrow. They won’t let up because of that. If they take the burg, they will have the advantage in facing the approaching armies. Failing to take it will mean either a retreat or more of that esoteric magic. I can’t speak on the possibility of the latter but the former doesn’t sound like an option if they wish to continue their advance.

“No. We are evacuating. Buying time for the citizens of the city to escape. You will buy us a reprieve to evacuate ourselves.”

“Evacuate?”

“Wasn’t that your plan before that inquisitor blew up the wall?” Hawkwood asked, raising an eyebrow. “I gave the order to my adjutants early in the morning after reports came in of the damage to the food stores. We’ll carry what we can and torch the remainder. Burn the whole burg to the ground. Give them their victory but hollow it out as much as possible.

“Elmshadow lies in a strategic position, it is true,” Hawkwood continued, perhaps seeing the questioning on Arkk’s face. “But it isn’t worth dying over. It isn’t the only chokepoint in the Duchy. We need to retreat, analyze this esoteric magic, find a defense, and then put up a fight when we are more prepared. And have the Duke’s men joined with ours from the beginning.”

“That… I don’t know if that adds pressure or takes some away.”

Hawkwood laughed. It was his usual boisterous laugh but it had a shallower feeling to it. “Just know that it is our lives on the line. Not everyone who lives in the burg. And, if you feel the need to destroy the entire burg, go for it.”

Arkk turned his eyes back to the armies. “I think you overestimate my abilities. All I’m doing is digging a little hole.”

A dozen lesser servants darted around underneath the ground, hollowing out large pitfalls directly in the path of the army. Tybalt’s destruction of the wall and the ground it had been built upon reminded Arkk of his very first tactic employed against the orcs while they were still working for their former chieftain. The same tactic that Vezta had wanted to use on the inquisitors during their invasion of the false Fortress Al-Mir.

He had conjured them up and sent them out to take out the vanguard. Now, the vanguard…

“They’re here,” Arkk said, the tension in his stomach threatening to double over. He took his eyes off the horizon for one second and spotted the vanguard. They were at the wall. At the divot. Though shallow, it would be an uphill climb—White Company stood on the other side, ready to stab down with their spears as Evestani tried to scale it into the city.

Evestani clearly knew it too. Their advance had stalled. It wouldn’t last long, however. The rows of men were pushing forward from behind, crowding those in the front toward the waiting defenders. Behind them, as Hawkwood so eloquently put it, the blade of their own countrymen advanced. There was a gap, a wide swath of still empty farmland, but it wouldn’t last.

Not unless Arkk had something to say about it.

“Focus,” Hawkwood said, clamping a hand on Arkk’s shoulder. “And good luck. I need to be seen.”

Arkk hesitated, considered objecting to being left alone, then clamped his jaw shut. As Hawkwood had said earlier, he had his role just as Arkk had one of his own. Hawkwood had already spent plenty of time getting some country bumpkin who had stumbled into a bit of power and prestige up to speed. Keeping him from his actual duties as commander of White Company wasn’t something Arkk could do.

Though, he did wish that he had pulled Vezta back.

Arrows were flying through the air from both sides now. The casters kept up their barriers the whole time, catching even the occasional golden arrow. From his point of observation, he could see that Evestani’s barriers didn’t quite catch every arrow. Some made it through, either from good luck at striking the exact right spot or from the short swap between one exhausted caster to the next. If arrows were getting through Evestani’s barriers, they were surely getting through those of White Company, just not where he had noticed.

Shouts, cries, and the clashing of metal against metal erupted down below the wall. Hawkwood’s voice belted out indistinct shouts, voice discernable only because of how familiar Arkk was with the man.

Arkk took a breath and shut it out, focused on directing the lesser servants. The rear unit had strayed somewhat off the path that the vanguard had followed. It was hard to tell where the lesser servants were in relation to the rest of the army, but if he cast a wide enough net—or rather, dug a wide enough pit—he should catch enough to make a difference.

He just had to wait for the opportune—

A blinding light filled the periphery of Arkk’s vision. He turned, fully expecting the beautiful golden ray to be the last thing he ever saw. No warning from Fortress Al-Mir could get him out of the way this time. There was nowhere to dodge and no flame witch to divert the beam.

But it wasn’t aimed at him. The golden ray tore through the city at an angle, coming from further south. It faded behind several of the buildings, snuffing out entirely without striking Arkk nor any of the defending White Company in the area.

Shuddering, Arkk swallowed a hard lump of air. There was something about that light… Unpleasant yet so very enticing all the same. He wasn’t the only one to feel it either. The soldiers on both sides had stopped for a few seconds, just staring with bated breath as the remnants of the light faded.

A cry from someone down below and a sick squelch of torn flesh started the battle anew.

Arkk shook himself, focusing once again. The lesser servants hadn’t been idle, able to operate independently. He left them to their continued expansion of the pits as he tried to figure out what had just happened. Adjusting the crystal ball’s point of view quickly filled him in on the answer.

Another section of the western wall was simply gone. Along with it, a fair portion of White Company who had been defending the southern segment.

Arkk looked up, quickly finding Hawkwood at one of the turrets. He was about to call out and warn him but it didn’t seem necessary. Hawkwood shouted an order to one of the men. A moment later and the repeated hammering of a brass gong echoed out, louder than the sounds of battle down below. All up and down the wall, as much of it as was still standing, more gongs started echoing out, joining the first.

The men on the wall started moving, retreating. They fired their last arrows, threw their last stones, upended a pot of boiling pitch, and then made way for the ladders and staircases.

They had to retreat now. Lest they wind up surrounded by the other detachments of Evestani’s army.

Arkk, glaring out, over the battlefield, pursed his lips.

It was too soon. The rear unit was still advancing over the pitfalls his lesser servants had dug.

Yet, he couldn’t stay here either. Not unless he wanted to surrender to that golden-eyed boy.

With a snap of his fingers, the lesser servants heard his command. They ceased expanding and began digging upwards, eating through the earth directly underneath the army’s feet.

Watching the enemy army, it was easy to tell the moment the soldiers noticed something wrong. The entire unit slowed to a stop.

Then, the first of them fell. A gap opened up in the lines of soldiers, first only a pair of soldiers wide. As the ground beneath their feet weakened from his servant’s efforts, a ripple effect spread out. The ground collapsed in on itself, naturally falling into the pit and taking along with them large, circular chunks of the wave of soldiers. Panic sprung up as the troops fought each other to escape, trampling atop their fellows and knocking others into the pits with their actions.

A full quarter of the rear unit fell into the sinkholes. A good half short of his goal.

There were still so many soldiers. He had barely made a dent in the army.

He couldn’t stay longer. Turning, Arkk sprinted to the nearest ladder and practically jumped from the top straight to the bottom. He set the remainder of the lesser servants to opening up all the pitfalls. Afterward, they were to dig and dig and dig until they died. He hadn’t gotten as much of the army as he wanted but the terrain—and the fear of more pitfalls opening—would at least slow them, keeping this section of the retreat from being instantly overrun.

Arkk didn’t know where Hawkwood had gone. He could hear the man’s voice somewhere. The sound of battle, screams of dying men, metal clanging against metal, and the continued ringing of the gongs on the wall made Hawkwood’s exact position into a mystery.

But there was nothing more that he could do. He flung a few lightning bolts and helped White Company make their retreat even as he fell back in a slightly different direction…

It all felt so… blank. A numb sensation filled his mind as he stalked across the channels of blood flowing through the streets.

He could only hope that Hawkwood would make it out. And as much of White Company as possible. That golden beam would have decimated them. A few hundred dead in an instant.

Hawkwood would surely retreat to the eastern side of the city, likely setting it aflame as he went as per his plan. Arkk retreated toward the keep. It wasn’t long before he found himself walking alone on empty roads.

He descended the stairs beneath the keep to the teleportation circle in the cellar and, with a taste of regret in the back of his mouth, left Elmshadow to fall.