56
The clamour from the goblins was near deafening as they approached the Cleft entrance, where Fletcher and his soldiers waited. They had crouched beside the pile of wood and bamboo, to protect them from the occasional projectile that the goblins hurled from behind the Phantaur. Luckily, the demon’s bulk was as good a barrier to the javelins as it was for the Foxes’ musket balls, and most went wide.
‘We should charge them at the Cleft, where the gap’s narrow,’ Rory whispered, hunkering down beside Fletcher. ‘Leap the trench, go for the Phantaur’s legs. Numbers won’t matter so much then.’
‘No, we wait,’ Fletcher said, watching as the great beast continued its ponderous journey. It was almost at the Cleft now, its enormous body shrouded by the mountain’s shadow.
‘Fletcher, if we don’t move now, it’ll be too late!’ Rory hissed.
‘I said no, Rory,’ Fletcher replied, willing the Phantaur on. It lifted an ear for a brief second, then let it drop as a shot glanced off a serrated tusk. Fletcher could see the pockmarks where the bullets had struck, gouging the skin, some even drawing blood. But none going deep enough to cause any real damage.
‘Come on,’ Fletcher whispered.
The Phantaur was through the Cleft now, and the ground shook with each stomp from its round-bottomed feet. The goblins crowded in behind it, gathering the nerve to charge.
One foot lifted, and thudded down on the other side of the trench. Damn. Then the next one began to swing … too far.
Fletcher drew and fired Gale in one fluid motion, emptying both barrels. One shot glanced off the Phantaur’s belly in a puff of dust – but the other struck its sensitive trunk-tip. It squealed in pain and stepped back. Right into the trench.
‘Now, Foxes!’ Fletcher yelled, charging towards the enemy.
The air was filled with their battle cries, but they were instantly drowned out by the scream of agony from the Phantaur as its sensitive footpad was impaled by the spear-tips. It wheeled its arms and fell, crushing a dozen goblins behind it in a crackle of breaking bones and squeals of terror.
There was a roar from Ignatius as he swooped from far above, called by Fletcher’s consciousness. And then they were in among the goblins, swinging their weapons. A scar-faced specimen stabbed at Fletcher’s belly, but he parried it with the crook of his blade and head-butted it with a satisfying crunch. Then it was on to the enemy behind as Rory skewered the reeling goblin with his rapier, and Fletcher slashed the next one’s shoulder to the bone. He kicked it off the blade and it collapsed to the ground, where Half-ear was waiting with his dagger.
‘Drive them back!’ Fletcher bellowed, ducking as the Phantaur’s trunk swung down, grasping for enemies. ‘Protect Ignatius!’
The rifles were firing in earnest now, and the bullets ricocheted dangerously from the giant demon’s unprotected face and into the milling goblins behind. The ears flapped back into place, and the rifles switched their aim to the goblins themselves, the shots whizzing uncomfortably close to Fletcher’s ears. Even a few muskets were firing, their shots aimed at the enemies who charged around the small band of Foxes’ flanks.
‘The rest of them are coming,’ Fletcher heard Rotherham holler, and his gaze flicked to his crystal eyeglass; the gathered crowds of the enemy army were rushing towards the Cleft, hundreds upon hundreds of screaming, mindless savages. He had less than a minute.
With a rush of wind, Ignatius landed on the Phantaur’s chest, digging his claws deep into the demon’s skin for purchase. The beast’s tusks swung left and right, but the canny Drake had his head between them, and his beak clamped on the demon’s trunk.
‘Hurry,’ Fletcher called, stabbing wildly at a snarling goblin. He pulsed urgency through his consciousness, even as the uproar from the charging army washed over them. Rory leaped past him, slashing madly to send the nearest goblins reeling, their faces cut to ribbons. On the other side of the Phantaur, Dalia sang an elven battle song, her pure, lilting voice carrying above the uproar of battle.
Fletcher turned to help Ignatius, but the Drake had already clamped his claws on either side of the Phantaur’s elephantine mouth, levering it open with brute force. Fletcher felt the mana roil in the demon’s consciousness, and then Ignatius’s beak released from the trunk and dipped into the cavernous opening. Flames burst out with explosive force, the heat palpable in the narrow Cleft as the Drake poured gouts of fire into the Phantaur’s throat.
The beast managed one last squeal, smoke erupting from the end of its flailing trunk. Then it was silenced, charred from within. Dead.
‘Back,’ Fletcher yelled, tugging Rory away from the goblins. The boy was staggering, but followed him out of the Cleft, the ground so thick with goblin corpses that they stumbled over splayed limbs and staring faces. None of the survivors of the Phantaur regiment pursued them, stunned by the ferocity of the counter-attack.
The rest of the men did not need telling twice, leaping the trench and sprinting back towards the wall. Fletcher stopped at the wood pile, even as Rory reeled past him. Ignatius had used almost all of their mana in that attack, but there was still a small amount of it left. Enough for one, last spell.
Fletcher closed his eyes and drew the mana from his reserves, allowing the last dribble of energy to surge through his veins. There was a thud as Ignatius landed in front of him, and a flash of pain as a javelin took the Drake in his haunches. The demon was shielding him with his body.
With a primal yell of fury, Fletcher hurled a wave of flame into the wood, flaring it into a bonfire that crackled with intense heat.
‘They’re almost at the Cleft!’ Genevieve screamed from behind the walls. Ignatius’s tail encircled Fletcher’s waist and hurled him back, even as more javelins buried themselves in the ground around them. Fletcher caught a spinning glimpse of a pyre of smoke, billowing into the sky.
And then Ignatius flared his wings and began to beat them in a long, slow pulse that gusted the black smog into the bottleneck between the mountains. That was when the screaming began.
Fletcher staggered to his feet and held his khopesh aloft.
‘Charge,’ he yelled breathlessly, running towards the Cleft once again. The Foxes roared as they followed their leader into battle, a few dozen brave souls against an endless legion of savages.
They took positions on either side of the trench, their muskets raised at the deep cloud of smoke, hair fluttering with each flap of Ignatius’s wings. Fletcher could make out the vague shape of the Phantaur, blocking the cleft with its bulk. Still the woodpile crackled, and Fletcher could see the smoke staining the walls of the Cleft with a tar-like substance, so thick and cloying was the ash within.
Then the first score of goblins staggered forth from the haze, clutching at their eyes and coughing, spears and shields forgotten. The toxic smoke from the manchineel tree blinded and choked them, as Fletcher had known it would.
‘Fire!’ Sir Caulder barked, and gunfire rippled down the line, plucking goblins from their feet. The gremlins handed up their spare muskets, and the order was barked again.
‘Fire!’
Death whipped over the ground, thinning rows of goblins as they screeched and clutched at their throats. A pair tumbled into the trench, their hoarse cries of pain snuffed out as they were impaled on the spear tips below. Then the gremlins vaulted the ditch and were in among the rest, slicing at ankle and knee tendons with sickening abandon, tumbling more into the pit behind them. The men loaded frantically, while above, Fletcher heard Rotherham shout.
‘That’s the last of it. Switch to musket ammunition, lads.’
It hardly mattered: at this distance Rotherham’s riflemen couldn’t miss. Seven more shots buzzed into the blinded ranks.
The smoke was thinning now, and Fletcher could see masses of goblins clawing at their faces, choking the entrance to the Cleft in their confusion. A few tried to clamber over the Phantaur corpse, but they were plucked away by Rotherham’s sharpshooters, leaving two thin channels on either side where the goblins could pass. That was where Fletcher’s Foxes concentrated their fire.
Volley after volley tore through the enemy. Even when the Foxes paused to load and a few goblins escaped through the Cleft, the gremlins cut them down, their short stature protecting them from the gunfire that whipped overhead. It was a grisly slaughter. Far from triumphant, Fletcher felt sickened at the sight of the blood-soaked ground, and the piles of the blank-eyed dead.
‘Sir, we’re almost out of ammunition,’ called Gallo. The dwarf’s moustache was blackened from biting the cartridges open. Even as he spoke, Fletcher noticed a few Foxes slinging their muskets, while others rummaged desperately through their cartridge bags. A last ragged volley fired through fouled barrels. Then silence.
The white smoke of their final shots blended with the black of the manchineel’s, even as it smouldered down to a pile of glowing embers. In his scrying crystal, Fletcher saw the smog drifting through the canyon, as far back as the jungle’s edge. There, the goblins hawked phlegm and covered their eyes, cowering beneath their rawhide shields as if they could somehow protect them from the oppressive smoke. The effects were not so strong that far back, but still enough to itch and blur their vision, as well as turn their throats raw with the toxins.
Already many were turning to flee, but a dozen orcs had spread themselves out along the jungle’s edge, their whips ready for any that came within reach. It was a milling mass of grey as the goblins teetered on the edge of full retreat. But the muskets were empty, and the smoke had cleared from the Cleft.
‘One last push,’ Fletcher yelled. ‘For Raleighshire. For Hominum!’
They charged, as one.
The battle became a massacre. The goblins could not see, nor could they even hear them over the cracked screams of agony from their compatriots. Poleaxes rose and fell, then rose again, hammering and chopping with both sides of their weapons. The enemy fell like wheat before the reaper.
Goblins clawed their way past each other, those at the front retreating, those at the back pushed on by fear of their masters. Then the first goblins fought back; fresh troops from the valley. They squinted through red-rimmed, streaming eyes and their breathing was choked, but the first of Fletcher’s men began to cry out – a spear through an elf’s shoulder, a boy’s elbow shattered by a club.
Still they fought, the battle becoming a bitter crush of bodies in the narrow confines between the Phantaur’s shoulders and the steep walls of the Cleft’s bottleneck.
Then, Ignatius landed on the Phantaur, his tail whipping down to impale goblins from above. He opened his mouth and roared, the earth-shattering noise blasting through the Cleft and into the canyon.
And, with that, the goblins turned and ran.