Downtown Druid

Darien had gotten used to the cannon fire. The sound of the blast followed by the shattering of the cannonball against the wall making blue sparks splash across it. It had become almost routine over the week’s assault. A few volleys had gotten through of course, but Darien’s portion of the wall hadn’t had any pierce the magical forcefield. Their mage was older, a retiree from the Academy rather than one of the young novices that were posted at the other sections of the wall. He’d been chosen because their area of the wall was one of the few that had a gate to defend, making it much more vulnerable if the mages’ field were to collapse. Darien had been grateful for that, until the old timer had fallen suddenly, clutching his chest as his heart gave out.

The enemy had seen the weakness his death had created, and immediately capitalized on it. With the magical barrier sealed, the cannon’s all fired at the gate. It didn’t fail immediately, it was a thick chunk of wood wider than he was, but he could feel the ground shake with every impact.

One of the shots fired went high and obliterated a dwarf that was firing his rifle from the top of the wall, his blood and viscera scattered everywhere and Darien howled as a piece of bone lodged itself in his cheek. He fought back tears as he pulled the long shard out and dropped it to the ground. He didn’t want to be there. He thought he’d be walking streets protecting poor defenseless mage girls going to light lamps in Uptown. He should be in bed with one of them, not waiting to be blown apart by a cannonball, or melted down by magefire, or run through with a spear.

He clutched his own spear tightly. He hadn’t even completed his sword training yet. He looked around at the other guards. There were only four or five of the twenty or so he could see that were wielding swords. He wasn’t sure if he felt comforted that he wasn’t the only one without one, or disheartened that most of them were greenbloods like him.

He jumped a bit as another cannonball hit the gate, this time it seemed to hit much more powerfully.

“They’re focusing the main cannons they’d been holding back on the gate,” yelled down another dwarf from the wall.

Darien’s sergeant nodded grimly at that information.

There were a dozen more volleys. Pieces of wood splintered, masonry from the walls began to tumble down, dust and smoke filled the air. Waiting was agony, but he was grateful the walls seemed to be holding.

“Go get me the merc and adventurer auxiliaries!” yelled the sergeant. “The first breach is going to be here.”

Darien’s heart dropped and his knuckles whitened from the tightness of this grip on his spear. Anywhere else. Why couldn’t it have been anywhere else?

The cannon fire stopped, and for a moment he felt relieved. The quiet after the constant hammering blasts lasted long enough that he started to hear the sounds of his own breathing.

“They’re starting to move toward us! Large column, several hundred men!” yelled the dwarf from above. He was reloading his rifle as he spoke, blood running down across his left eye from a wide cut that was muddied with dust.

“Alright, take position around the barricades!” yelled the sergeant.

Darien looked around. He could make a run for the interior of the city. This was his chance to get away from it. He had time to ditch his uniform, if he moved quickly he could make it to Needle Street and steal an outfit from one of the tailor’s shops. Once he had the outfit, he could hide in some abandoned house or something. They wouldn’t find him, the city was huge, there was no way they’d be able to figure out where he was.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

By the time he’d broken out of his train of thought, Darien was already standing at his point in the barricade. His fear had been overridden by the yelling of the sergeant and the instincts to listen to them that had been drilled into him in his last few months of training. He cursed under his breath, but raised his spear.

The area around the gate had a wide road with buildings on either side. It had been anticipated that the gate would be the first part to fall, and so the areas between the buildings had been sealed, and the road blocked off with a barricade of wood and metal. Men were climbing onto the roofs where guns, bows, arrows, and rocks had already been assembled to throw down on the invaders as they came through the gate. Darien envied them. His place was on the barricade in the middle of the road. He was on the front line, meant to stop anyone trying to climb it with his spear. Gods what he would give to be holding a rock on a roof instead of a spear on the street.

He couldn’t see the enemy’s approach, there was too much dust and debris to see much aside from the ruined gate, but he could hear the shouts down by the men at the gate, and eventually he could hear other voices breaking through the other noise. The voices spoke his language with an odd accent and affection. Even the screams of their dying sounded as if they were dying in a different place than Rendhold.

A few men on the wall were blasted back by an explosion of flame, and then the first shape cloaked in gray charged through the blown gate. He screamed with the righteous fury of a man who believed he would be a hero. That scream was cut off abruptly as a bullet blew out the back of his skull.

More gray clad men pushed through, and those fell as well. It would’ve been funny, watching them fall, if Darien didn’t know how many more were coming after them.

The first man to make it all the way to the barricade was on the far side, a great distance from Darien. He watched as the sergeant took his sword, and drove it through the man’s chest quickly, before pulling it back and readying for the next one. He’d served in midtown, so Darien wasn’t surprised at his ruthlessness. Hells, he must’ve been used to a war every day.

A few more Frasheid Grays made it to the barricade, and were quickly dispatched. Then one made his way to Darien. The man in gray was lean, and quick. He held a spear of his own, and wore an ill fitting chestplate that shook violently as he ran.

Darien waited until the man started to climb the barricade, lowering his spear to do so. He popped up from behind it, and jammed his spear down toward the man. It slipped awkwardly between the man’s chestplate and slid through him longways downward. The man looked up at him. He was fully human and young. Even younger than Darien. Darien yanked back his spear, hard, and the man fell back, clutching his chest and gurgling in front of the barricade. Even after he stopped moving Darien could swear he could still hear him gurgling.

After that everything became a blur of smoke and blood. The number of the Frasheid grayclads never seemed to diminish, even as their bodies littered the ground. They climbed over their fellows, pushing for the barricade as bullets, rocks, and arrows rained down on them.

“Where are the auxiliaries!?” yelled the sergeant at one point as he yanked a spear back from where it had embedded in a man’s skull.

“They aren’t coming. There were two other breaches.”

Darien didn’t have time to agonize over hearing that. His arms were growing heavy, and his spear had dulled. He threw it into the incoming force, and took up another one that was handed to him by a young boy. He could hear a kind of roaring in his ears as everything seemed to fade away. How long had it been? An hour? A day? All he could focus on was driving his spear into the never ending gray tide that was seeking to overtake him.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

A grayclad managed to get over the barricade and Darien had to spin around to drive his spear into his back. When he turned around another was coming up over the barricade to follow his comrade. An arrow sunk into that one’s back and he fell forward.

Darien tried to take his spot back, but now there were two men. The guard next to him drew his sword and cut them both out at the ankles.

“You’re not getting into the city. You’re not getting to my kids,” the man muttered as he cut them down where they fell.

Darien fell in next to the man as they were pushed back from the barricade. The man repeated his mantra over and over again as he swung his blade, and Darien supported him with spear strikes. He risked a look up, and saw grayclads starting to scale the sides of the buildings with the archers and stone throwers, they’d be overtaken soon.

Two men in extravagant coats landed in front of him, each of them crushing a man beneath their feet as they did so. One of them slit another man’s throat with what looked like claws and the other raised his hand, and a wall of force pushed a half dozen men back into the barricade.

“Time to save the city,” said the shorter of the two.