Screams echoed across the battlefield as I and a thousand soldiers waited in grim anticipation for the signal.
Ahead of us, the first wave was pushing forward with steady speed as they attempted to close the distance to the fort. Fireballs, spears of ice, chunks of rock, and simple arrows peppered the charging Highserkers as the men pushed behind their large wooden shields.
I flinched as a fireball crashed into one of the wooden shields, engulfing the two soldiers behind it and lighting them on fire. They tumbled to the ground and desperately began rolling, but the magical heat continued to cook them alive. Their screams cut through the sounds of warfare, loud and desperate.
Responding with retaliation, a number of Highserk troops focused fire on where the mage had shot from, but it was too late and he'd already shifted position up on the towering walls.
Eventually, against all expectations, the first wave actually reached the base of the walls. The troops quickly began propping up ladders, and in their heated fervor, began climbing with desperate haste.
"Holy hell, they really did it," I muttered, my breath misting in the cold evening air. But then I realized what this meant.
My stomach dropped.
Only a minute later came what I expected, a runner on horseback charged down the line, his mount's hooves kicking up mud. The orders from Regimental Command were rather simple.
"CHARGE! CHARGE! CHARGE! SECOND WAVE! ADVANCE!"
I glanced over at Krantz and noticed the wild grin on his face. The speech from the commander had done wonders, and the squad leader's confidence was back in full force. He actually looked eager.
Licking my dried lips, I shifted my stance, adjusting my grip on my spear. My gloves felt slightly wet with sweat despite the cold. Around me, soldiers were doing the same, checking straps, testing shields, muttering prayers or curses.
And then all hell broke loose.
"CHARGE!" Squad leaders yelled in unison, their voices cracking with bloodlust, and instantly our thousand-man battalion surged forward like a breaking wave.
My legs carried me before my brain caught up.
The ground shook beneath the thunder of a thousand boots. Armor rattled. Weapons gleamed in the light of the setting sun.
Sprinting forward, I knew that I had to stay ahead of the rest of the company, at least for a little bit. If I fell behind, or gods forbid, fell, I would likely be trampled to death by my own comrades. And so I ran like my life depended on it.
With the first wave still drawing attention, there were a shockingly scarce number of projectiles flying our way.
But of course, nothing was easy.
Leaping over the corpse of a fallen soldier, his face still twisted in agony, my head shot up, and my eyes went wide as I saw a flaming spear heading straight for me.
Fuck!
Quickly grasping for the shield that had been jostling around on my back, I dashed one step, two, then leaped behind one of the barricades the first wave had left behind. Crashing down in a ball, I used my shield to cover my legs and grit my teeth as a wave of flames washed over me.
The heat seared the air around me, so intense I could feel it through my armor. My lungs burned with each breath. The wood of the barricade crackled and popped, catching fire.
Then it was over.
The flames dissipated, washed away by the chilling evening air. I gasped, patting myself down frantically. No fire on my cloak. No burns on exposed skin. The shield's steel boss was scorching hot, but I was fully intact.
Around me, soldiers thundered past, their boots pounding the earth inches from my head. I couldn't stay down.
Scrambling to my feet, my legs shaking from adrenaline, I rejoined the surge forward.
Explosions threw dirt into the sky where it rained down over our heads, small pebbles dinging against helmets. A couple of men yelled in anger when dirt got in their eyes. But nobody stopped.
Then the real killing began.
A spear of ice the size of a man punched through our formation like it was paper. Three soldiers directly in its path simply exploded, frozen chunks of meat and shattered bone scattering across the blood-soaked ground. The man running beside me took a fragment of frozen flesh to the face and went down screaming, clawing at the ice burning into his skin.
"MAGES! SUPPRESS THAT TOWER!" A company commander's voice cut through the chaos, and instantly our response came.
Fire erupted from behind our lines, three, four, five lances of flame arcing toward the fortress walls. One of the Libertoan mages who'd been preparing another ice spear took a fireball directly to the face. He tumbled backward off the rampart, his body a burning comet that crashed somewhere inside the fortress.
"INCOMING!" someone screamed, and I looked up just in time to see a boulder, conjured from earth magic, arc through the air. But before it could land, one of our earth mages slammed his hands into the ground. A wall of stone erupted from the earth, and the boulder shattered against it in an explosion of rock fragments.
Still, pieces of debris rained down on us. A chunk the size of my fist caught a soldier in the helmet, denting the metal and dropping him like a stone.
Our archers loosed volleys in coordinated waves, thousands of arrows darkening the sky. Defenders on the walls raised shields or ducked behind crenellations, but not all were fast enough. Bodies tumbled from the ramparts, bristling with shafts.
Fire bloomed to my right, a Libertoan fireball detonating in the middle of a squad. Six men were suddenly thrashing on the ground, their flesh melting. But our mages were already retaliating. A concentrated barrage of fire spells hammered the section of wall where the attack had come from. Stone cracked and glowed red-hot. Screams echoed from above.
Then came the rain.
Water bullets, compressed spheres of magically hardened water, tore through the air with whistling shrieks. They punched through armor like it was cloth. A soldier ahead took one through the chest, the entry wound the size of a fist, the exit wound taking half his back with it. He was dead before he hit the ground, his spine visible through the gaping hole.
Another volley. More water bullets. A man's head simply vanished from the shoulders up, his body taking two more steps before collapsing in a spray of blood.
"KEEP MOVING! DON'T STOP!" Squad leaders screamed, their voices hoarse.
A massive boulder crashed down directly on top of a barricade I'd been running toward just seconds ago. The wooden shield shattered like kindling, and the three soldiers behind it were crushed into paste. Blood sprayed out from under the stone in a spreading pool.
I jinked left, leaping over a crater still steaming from a fire spell.
The air was thick with smoke and the copper-sweet smell of blood. Ash fell like black snow. Screams came from every direction, some cut short, others drawn out in agonized wails that seemed to last forever.
The return fire from the walls was slackening now. Sections of the rampart were on fire. Bodies littered the battlements, and the first wave was still giving them hell. We were getting close, maybe two hundred yards from the wall.
Finally spotting a lull in the immediate chaos around me, I dove behind another barricade, this one pockmarked with arrow holes and scorched from fire. My chest heaved as I gulped down air.
Just for a moment. Just catch my breath. Just for a moment.
The sounds of battle didn't fade, explosions still rocked the ground, men still screamed, steel still rang against steel somewhere ahead. But behind this barricade, I had a few precious seconds.
That's when I noticed the soldier beside me.
He was propped against the barricade, his face pale and slick with sweat. His breathing came in short, panicked gasps. Blood pooled beneath his left leg.
I quickly assessed his wounds and found that he'd taken a chunk of ice shrapnel to the knee. The ice had burrowed into the wound and frozen the surrounding skin, slowing the blood flow temporarily.
Ice magic in combat was a rather insidious weapon. The ice at first would help keep you alive while still causing damage. But the very presence of the wound meant that you couldn't get aid until it was melted. Yet, when the magic was thawed, the blood from the partially clotted wound would finally accelerate the pace of death unless you had skilled healers on standby.
Unfortunately for this man, I was not a skilled healer.
"Please, help me," he mumbled quickly, his hand reaching out and gripping onto my plated glove. I could hear the panic in his voice, feel his fingers trembling against the metal.
I was still gasping for air, my own hands shaking from adrenaline. I quickly looked around, hoping that I could find somebody who could fix this, but Highserk never announced their medics with any denoting markers. Everybody looked similar with our mismatched armor and black underclothing.
An arrow thunked into the barricade above our heads, and I flinched. We couldn't stay here long.
"Shit, listen man, we're the second wave, you understand that!?" I pushed his hand off, my voice ragged from running, and shifted closer to him to get a better look at his wound. The ice was already starting to crack, tiny rivulets of blood seeping through. "You're not doing too bad, okay? You're gonna be fine." I tried to assure him, but again, I was no medic.
Making an executive decision, I wiped the sweat from my eyes and spotted a couple of soldiers beginning to rush past. Their faces were beyond pale, and the crude armor they wore designated them as rookies. No time to get good gear from their own kills, so they were left with the junk the enlisted were given.
"You two! Get your asses over here!" I shouted with as much authority as I could muster, though my voice cracked from the smoke I'd been breathing. The two soldiers flinched mid-run, but quickly changed their direction and crashed down beside me, heaving from exertion. Their eyes were wide with terror.
"Okay, new plan. You're not going up the wall with the wave. You're gonna take this man back. Understood?"
"Wait, what? Are you a squad leader—"
Another explosion rocked the ground nearby, showering us with dirt. I spat out grit and glared at them.
"Take this guy now, while the first wave is still active, and you won't have to die. GO!"
The two soldiers glanced at each other, their relief almost palpable, but finally took what I was offering and began to pick up the wounded soldier. He groaned as they hoisted him between them.
Dismissing the three from my mind, I took one more deep breath, and glanced around the barricade. The wall was closer now. I could see individual defenders on the ramparts.
My legs protested as I forced myself up, but the wave was still pushing forward, and I couldn't afford to fall behind.
Gulping down one more lungful of smoke-filled air, I dashed back into the flow of soldiers pushing up to the wall.
It was hell. Soldiers were climbing the ladders, getting shot down and falling to their deaths with bone-crushing thuds.
A group of army engineers were being covered with shields as they used earth magic to quickly form a ramp that led into a gap in the wall formed by the earlier magical barrages. The stone flowed like water under their hands, solidifying into rough steps.
I lifted my shield and joined a group of soldiers who stood undecided, their eyes darting between the ladders and the relative safety of the barricades. But I didn't have a choice to remain dormant once I heard my squad leader's voice call out.
"Krantz squad! Advance up the wall! Up the wall!" He shouted, and I finally spotted his feathered helmet bobbing through the chaos, the symbol of a squad leader.
Running past soldiers and joining the familiar faces of my squad, I watched the ladder we were meant to climb suddenly get lit on fire from a deluge of flames that poured down the wall, scorching the rock black and sending the men who'd been climbing careening down in fiery heaps of flailing limbs.
"BACK! BACK!" someone yelled.
Falling back, we dodged our dead comrades who'd become projectiles and quickly began to lift one of the spare ladders that engineers were constantly carrying forward. It was heavier than I expected, and it took four of us to wrestle it into position.
With a new ladder docked against the wall with a heavy thunk, our mages and archers quickly began bombarding the point on the wall to give us time to climb. Fire bloomed along the ramparts. Screams echoed from above.
Our squad leader, brave as he was, decided to climb first. With a round shield in his left hand and his twin swords sheathed on his back, he swiftly climbed. In only twenty seconds he was halfway up the wall, moving with surprising speed.
Seeing the squad leader push so confidently, more of our squad clambered after him. I heard Milo curse as he grabbed a rung. Saw Rolf cross himself before starting up.
And I too found myself being pushed forward by the press of bodies. Someone shoved me from behind—"Move, damn you!"—and suddenly I was at the base of the ladder.
But climbing efficiently with a spear was impossible. With that in mind, I grounded the butt of my weapon into the dirt near the wall, leaving it behind. My trusty spear from enlistment, abandoned in the mud. I'd make do with my sword.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the first rung and started climbing.
The screams continued on the wall above me. I'd lost sight of Krantz as he leaped off the ladder and onto the rampart.
One rung. Another. Don't look down.
A couple of men ahead of me had been shot by arrows and fell, their bodies brushing past me as they plummeted. One grabbed at my leg as he fell, a desperate, instinctive grab, and nearly pulled me off. I kicked free and heard him hit the ground below.
My round shield was putting in work, collecting arrows and a crossbow bolt that had attempted to bless me with sweet oblivion. Instead, I clung to life desperately.
Don't look down. Don't think. Just climb.
Halfway up. Three-quarters. The rampart was so close now.
An arrow skipped off my helmet with a ping that made my ears ring. Too close. Too fucking close.
Finally reaching the top, I took one last ragged breath, lungs burning from the exertion of climbing and running, and vaulted over the parapet onto the rampart.
I landed hard, my boots skidding.
Piles of corpses littered the stone walkway. The floor was slick with blood, so much blood that my boots immediately lost traction. I caught myself against the parapet, my hand coming away sticky and red. The stone was warm to the touch. Bodies were stacked two and three deep in places.
And unfortunately, it seemed most of the dead were Highserk soldiers. Our first wave had paid in blood for every foot of this wall.
But still, with Krantz fighting fiercely, his sword a blur as he hacked at a defender's shield, and another squad leader I didn't know holding the left flank, we were beginning to form a beachhead.
Maybe a dozen of us held a small section of wall, shields locked in a crude formation, pressing against twice as many defenders who were desperately trying to throw us back off.
The defenders' faces were twisted with fear and determination. They knew what losing this section meant.
Drawing my longsword, I charged into the fray. There was no hesitation now. No time for doubt. Death had to be dealt upon the enemy, or I would join my brothers in arms in the afterlife.
Roughly slamming my round shield into the head of a Libertoan soldier who'd extended too far into our makeshift line, I felt the impact reverberate up my arm. He staggered to the side, his helmet dented.
Without thinking, I plunged my sword through his armpit and into his heart. The blade scraped against bone before finding soft tissue. He gasped, eyes going wide with shock and pain, and I yanked the weapon free as he collapsed.
Another soldier was already filling his place, screaming about how he'd gut me.
Dodging his crude spear thrust, I shifted my boots on the blood-slick stone, nearly losing my footing, before using a two-handed vertical swing to slice through the weak point near the tip of his spearhead.
The wooden shaft split with a crack. The man blinked in surprise, already beginning to shift on his back foot, dropping the useless wood in favor of reaching for his short sword.
I wouldn't give him the chance. Rushing into his guard before he could draw, I slashed horizontally and ripped his throat open. Two down, countless more to go.
"HOLD THE LINE!" Someone screamed, Krantz, maybe.
Parrying aside the wild swipe of a sword, the impact jarring my wrist, I lifted my shield and felt the thud of a spearhead scraping against the iron rim.
Dodging low on instinct, I felt the searing heat from a fireball miss my head by a couple of feet, allied fire almost doing me in. The smell of my own singed hair hit my nostrils.
Using my low stance to my advantage, I lashed out. My ninety-centimeter sword caught the unprotected shins of one Libertoan. He screamed and went down clutching his leg. But the blade only roughly nicked the steel greaves of a more well-protected man beside him.
Slamming upwards with my shield, I forcefully pushed the swordsman back, using my weight and momentum. But I had to give ground immediately as two more spearmen coordinated an attack, their points stabbing toward my face in quick succession.
Holy hell, this is impossible! Where are the reinforcements!?
I internally screamed as I desperately parried a sword strike that would have cleaved my wrist off, my blade catching it at an awkward angle. The defenders kept pressing, and I was forced even further back, my boots sliding on the gore-slicked stone.
More Highserkers finally jumped onto the wall, their boots hitting stone with heavy thuds. Halberds, swords, and maces began lashing out against the Libertoans, but it was clear we were still at a disadvantage. They had the numbers here, and we were fighting uphill.
Joining a new squad leader, a burly man with a warhammer, I used my shield to block the thrust of a spear that was meant for the his leg. The wood cracked as the spearhead tore through, punching halfway into my shield. Thinking fast, I pushed forward, driving the spear deeper into the weakening wood, locking the enemy's weapon in place.
The Libertoan soldier's eyes widened as he tried to yank his weapon free, but it was stuck fast.
The squad leader I'd aided saw my predicament. Dodging the wild slash of a swordsman with a practiced sidestep, he used the reach of his warhammer to slam the spiked head into my foe's skull with a wet crunch. The man's helmet caved in, and he dropped like a puppet with cut strings, his grip on the spear going slack.
Letting go of my now-useless shield, still impaled with the spear, I gave a quick nod to the squad leader. He returned it with a grunt before more allied soldiers joined him, their shields locking together as they helped push the enemy back even further, step by bloody step.
We were finally making ground.
Spinning around, breathing hard, I spotted Krantz through the swarm of allied and enemy soldiers. He was pushing back the opposite side of our foothold on the wall, his movements aggressive and precise. With this front now secured behind me, I could finally join my squad.
Or more like, what was left of the squad.
Krantz was bloodied, his armor dented and splattered with gore, but still very much alive. With twin blades, a longsword in one hand, a short sword in the other, he danced forward and shredded through enemy troops left and right. His face was twisted in a rictus of fury and joy, like he was exactly where he wanted to be.
Rolf was the only other member I saw still standing. My fellow cloak-wearing soldier was currently making use of his mace to beat a Libertoan over the head, each impact accompanied by sickening crunches. The defender's helmet had already been knocked askew, and Rolf wasn't stopping until the man stopped moving.
Taking a couple more deep breaths, each one burning in my lungs, I flicked the blood off my longsword and moved forward to aid them.
As much as I wanted to collapse here and now, my legs trembling with exhaustion, this was the critical moment. With our second wave pouring onto the ramparts like a flood, we now needed to capture the gatehouse and let our third wave, the elite troops, flood in.
The battle was far from over.