Chapter Thirty Four
“Reinforcements to the main gate...reinforcement…main gate…” Dahlia awoke to hear Belakris’s strangled voice over the announcement system followed by coughing. She threw herself out of bed and threw the sheath with her axes on over the tunic and shorts she’d worn to sleep. She jammed on boots and darted out into the open corridor outside her room. She grabbed the rope of a bell positioned there and rang it frantically.
“Sabir, with me! Arreal, get the barrack to the gate as fast as possible but keep them together. Lock on to my location when you arrive.”
Her first lieutenant joined her, his duel weapons strapped across his back. They ran for the gate, streaking along in silence as the scent of smoke and the sound of alarms filled the air.
“Barracks six through ten to the main gate,” another voice came over the announcement system. “All available barracks twelve to nineteen to the perimeter in Barrack Three. Infirmary deploy aid to the main gate and Barrack Three and standby to take casualties.”
Shit, Dahlia thought as they whipped through the night.
“There is an attack on the main gate, a poison and smoke combination has been released into the air on our side,” the voice continued. “A major force is attempting to breach the perimeter by coming under the wall fast in Barrack Three.”
“Barrack Twenty has cleared the air around the perimeter and has been dispatched to the main gate. Do not attempt to enter the area with smog until it has been removed.”
“How’s your resistance to poison?” Dahlia asked Sabir as they entered Barrack Three and closed in on the gate.
“Good as long as I don’t breathe it in,” he responded.
“Take a deep breath then go in and see if you can save anyone caught on the edge of the gas. Don’t get trapped trying to save someone out of reach. Drop your shield a moment and let me put a link to you and a compulsion so I can override any reaction to the gas if I sense you going down.”
“Yes, Captain.”
She felt his shield lower and she sent a thin link between the edges of their minds so she could feel what he was feeling like a soft buzz on the edge of her awareness. Then she readied the energy to force his survival response to override anything else and set it to wait for her trigger. She hoped it’d be enough to override even the body’s response to shut down into unconsciousness but she prayed she wouldn’t have to put it to the test.
Dahlia ground to a halt with the other soldiers standing on the edge as Sabir ran on. She saw a number of Kenny’s men. Where the gate normally was visible there was nothing but a thick brown smog that swallowed the light from fires she knew should be burning. She brought her link to Sabir to the front of her awareness and was relieved to find he was mildly itchy but otherwise unaffected. Around her reinforcements arrived but stopped short while men who had been able to get out of the smog lay coughing violently.
“Enemy structure approaching the main gate,” Kenny’s familiar rasp called out over the system. “Be ready to engage if they break through.”
Dahlia looked around but she was only able to find Captain Belakris who was on his hands and knees fighting the poison he’d inhaled. Kenny must have gone through into the smog for him to be able to see what was approaching the gate. She hoped his insides were as resistant to damage as his skin.
Sabir appeared from the smog, carrying two unconscious men. He dropped them safely outside the dangerous area and sucked in clean air.
As the only captain of the division present and fully able it fell to Dahlia to direct the men. “Prepare to brace the gate if the smog is cleared in time,” she yelled out. “Anyone with ranged weapons or abilities, take higher ground and be ready to move up the stairs. Everyone else in a semicircle facing the entrance. Be prepared to move forward as the smog lifts and flank anything that comes through.”
Soldiers began to move as they heard her. She saw Sabir reappear with more men and Symom and Jynsen joined her with their full barracks. “Anyone with barrier abilities behind the combat soldiers, form a barrier in front of them and prepare to move forward.”
She heard a thud as something hit the gate and a cloud of smoke and ashes came back towards her force. Where the hell was Horan with Barrack Twenty to get rid of this smog?
Screams came up from the other side of the gate.
“Captain!” She heard Arreal as he headed towards her with the rest of her barrack.
“Barrack Ten, hold center with me!” She called to him. “Symom, Jynsen, take each side of the pincer with your barrack.”
Finally she saw the smog starting to move as little flickers of the fire lights tried to break through. She saw Horan had arrived with Barrack Twenty and had begun manipulating the air to carry the poison away. She saw a few more men darting in and out with Sabir as the lifting smog allowed them to reach men deeper towards the gate.
She heard another huge thud followed by cracking and the sound of the gate breaking. Chunks of splinters and charcoal appeared through the fog.
A few moments later Kenny dropped from the top of the wall, covered in blood, his clothes ripped and torn. He was holding another unconscious soldier.
“Captain Ravin!” she called to him. As the combat specialist and division leader she welcomed him taking over directing the defense.
He dropped the man he was carrying gently then moved quickly over to her. Nallia appeared with a team from the infirmary and headed towards the unconscious soldiers.
She filled him in, “Pincer formation with ranged weapons standing outside ready to move up the stairs. Men behind are constructing a barrier. Horan’s lifting the smog.”
“Move forward, keep at the edge of the smog!” Ravin roared out. “Push them back at all costs. They’ll be coming through a hole in the center of the gate.”
Dahlia saw the first wave of enemy soldiers then. Their images distorted by the thick smog gave them tortured appearances as though the gates of hell had opened to vomit out mutated warriors. As they drew closer she saw they wore strange masks that added to the unsettling impression. Her soldiers moved forward as the smog slowly receded. Dahlia waited for the next thud, the complete shattering of the wounded gate, and the flood of soldiers ready to swamp them.
“Adenji!” Ravin roared above the noise of battle as the first wave met their forces and cries filled the night air, “execute the pincer. Force them back to the gate and hold it. Soa! I need a barrier around me, big as you can make and hold against the smog. DeMorra and any soldier with accelerated strength with me, now. We need to take out that structure before they hit the gate again.”
Dahlia didn’t see how they could possibly make it in time but she and Fidelity joined Ravin and a group of fighters inside a barrier Soa created.
“Sabir,” she yelled as the man came out of the smog, “come here.”
Ahead of them the forces were evenly matched. The enemy was still restricted to the number that could come through the splintered hole in the gate but Dahlia’s forces were severely hampered by the fog. Soldiers who came too close to the edge fell down coughing and were quickly eliminated by enemy forces that seemed immune to the poison.
“Let’s go!” Ravin roared and Dahlia moved forward with his group into the smog and up the stairs to the wall. Soa’s barrier held the poison at bay.
“Grab the masks if you can!” she heard Symom yell. A number of his barrack members were able to pull them off fallen enemies, place them on, and proceed into the smog.
She reached the top of the gate with Kenny’s team.
“Outside our wall the smog’s very thin. We can’t all get over at once in Soa’s barrier so I suggest taking a deep breath and jumping. The structure is directly below. Dismantle it, kill anyone in the way, and hopefully we all come back up the wall alive before the enemy is able to work out what’s happening and mobilize to retaliate. It’s a hell of a drop so DeMorra, you’re with me. We’ll go first. Everyone else able to take the impact?”
“Sabir can carry me,” Fidelity piped up. Dahlia nodded, it was better Sabir take the impact than Fidelity eat up her reserves needlessly. Maybe the woman had learned something in the first battle at the gate.
Ravin nodded. “Arite,” he growled. “Soa, stay here in case the smog’s still here when we come back. Everyone else, follow me.”
He picked Dahlia up and covered her as much as possible as she took a deep breath and they charged out into the smog. She immediately understood why he’d tried to cover her. Anywhere the poison touched stung like hell. She shut her eyes tight. Blind, she felt him hurtle himself into space. Her body tensed. At least he’d been right about the smog, as they dropped the painful sensation on her skin reduced to a prickle.
She felt him land on the structure and release her. She opened her eyes and fell to her feet in a crouch. Soldiers around her that had been attempting to operate the structure were illuminated by strange, flameless lanterns. They stood frozen for a moment, surprised by the two soldiers who had dropped out of the darkness. They recovered quickly and lunged at the captains. Ravin blurred and reappeared in front of the largest group of them and Dahlia saw blood spray as he lashed out with his sword. Six puppets appeared between Dahlia and some of the other men as the soldiers approached her. The women’s axes passed through the enemies’ throats as Dahlia drew her own weapons. Behind her she heard thunks as more of her team dropped off the wall.
In the back of her mind she noticed that corpses were strewn about the structure. Men who had been killed before her team landed. Some had necks and spines bent at odd angles but most had giant gashes through them. In the odd light it felt more and more like she’d descended into the threshold of hell.
Dahlia saw Fidelity hurdle by Ravin, bouncing up the structure’s braces to smash her hammer into the connections above them. Dahlia took a moment to take in what she had landed on. The entire thing was supported on two rolling platforms. Two immense springs sat on either one connected to a huge beam that was tipped with an immense spiked ball. There were handles lining the sides connected to the springs that wound them, pulling the ball back so it could be released to smash into the gate. It was currently partially pulled back. Corpses littered the area in a similar condition to the ones Dahlia had already encountered. So at least she now knew why they’d had time to make it to the structure before it was deployed again. It seemed most of the soldiers originally operating it were dead. The men they were now encountering must be a larger wave of soldiers sent to start it again and defend it.
Fidelity had launched herself out of the range of the men in the structure and was smashing her hammer into the connection between the springs and the beam. Enemy troops were attempting to follow her but they didn’t seem to have anyone as nimble.
One large man suddenly flew up over the heads of the other soldiers, knocking some back down, and landed on the brace Fidelity had raced up. Dahlia shot a psychic blast at him but someone deflected it and she was forced to turn her attention to searching for the new soldier with psychic abilities. The soldier on the brace raced towards Fidelity who gave the connection another whack before dropping down off the brace just in time to dodge the man’s sword strike. She swung and threw herself back up behind him but the man seemed to be as agile as she was. He turned in time to meet her as she landed and she was forced to back peddle and parry his strike with the shaft of her hammer. She got enough force behind it to catch the man off guard and send him off balance. As he caught himself she had time to regain her footing.
Dahlia turned as the two clashed again, deflecting a psychic shot intended for her into another soldier. In the direction the shot had come from she saw a man focusing intently on her. The energy around him was unusually neutral so he must have been skilled at shielding. The shot he’d lobbed at her had been nothing to sneeze at. He wasn’t on Mayuera’s level but he wasn’t going to roll over for her either. She grinned at him, stepped her weight back, then shot herself forward directly towards him.
His eyes widened as he hesitated for a crucial second, deciding whether to ready his weapon or throw another strike at her. Four soldiers around him moved to engage her. One of the puppets close by caught one of the men off guard and her ax swept through his throat. Dahlia dodged the next and heard a grunt as her puppet moved to engage him. She used her momentum to spin into a low kick that connected to one man’s ankle with a satisfying crunch while she caught the other man’s sword with the head of an ax. The man she’d kicked flailed his sword down at her and she twisted so he was between her and the other man. Then she swept an ax down through his wrist. He screamed and she planted a foot into his wounded stomach, knocking him into the other man.
The psychic soldier had dodged backwards, trying to put distance between them as the other men had defended him. She laughed as she knocked aside another hastily thrown psychic shot and charged him head on.
“Guess you forgot, I don’t need to play mind games to kill you,” she taunted him as she brought one ax towards his face. She saw fear flash in his eyes.
He tried to parry her with his short, broad blade but she just brought her second ax through and it sliced deep into his side. She shoved hard with the ax he’d parried and he stumbled back, off balance. She finished him with a sweep through his throat. His blood covered her arm and she felt a dark thrill run through her body.
She grinned at the dead man, “Should have practiced more with that sword.”
The rest of Dahlia’s puppets had made their way towards her and had engaged any soldier trying to get to the captain so the area around her was clear for the moment. She looked back to Fidelity and sensed the woman’s irritation. Her attacker was keeping her occupied long enough for his fellow soldiers to edge across the braces. Dahlia hit him with a blast of psychic energy hard enough to disorient him and Fidelity brought her hammer down on his skull. This was nothing like the love taps she’d given her fellow barrack members during training. The man’s skull split and his body fell as blood splashed across Fidelity’s front.
Fidelity turned back to the connection and continued slamming her hammer into it as the soldiers hesitated. Without the first man it was obvious that Fidelity’s comfort fighting on the thin braces would see that the next man to reach her died quickly.
An arrow whistled towards her neck and buried itself in her arm as she brought her hammer up again. She screamed in rage at the new distraction and threw herself back across the braces towards the archer.
“Destroy the structure, Fidelity. I’ve got him,” Dahlia yelled to her and shot a blast towards the man. With the one soldier with psychic abilities out of the way the rest of the men were extremely vulnerable to her.
Her blast caught him hard and he screamed and dropped to his hands and knees. Dahlia grinned. His shield must have been especially weak.
The braces suddenly shook as Sabir and one of the other men began tearing into it. Sabir was using his ability to pull out chunks of the metal. The other man had pulled out a monstrous machete that seemed to be able to handle hacking into the solid metal brace. The metal rung loudly under the blows. Ravin was holding the area as more soldiers rushed towards their group. The other members leapt to the second platform to meet more enemy soldiers there.
Fidelity leapt to another brace as the few men who hadn’t fallen off during the first blows of the assault on the braces crouched down and held on for dear life. She vaulted up above the connector and Dahlia felt an immense surge of energy as Fidelity pulled every ounce of strength she could concentrate into the blow. Then she dropped and swung her hammer, making contact with the metal piece. The connector bent in half, unable to withstand the continued beating, and jolted out of it’s socket. The beam careened drunkenly to one side but caught on a brace and stayed connected to the spring on the other platform.
“Damn!” Fidelity howled.
Sabir and the soldier that had been hacking at the brace jumped to the other side as Fidelity climbed to the second connection. Dahlia stayed where she was as the noise from the breaking structure brought more enemy soldiers pouring in. Her group would have to hold the other side by themselves. Ravin was holding their current side for the moment but one man, no matter how strong, couldn’t stop a tide alone. She focused for a moment, manipulating the energy she pulled to her, and six more puppets appeared. They quickly joined the puppets remaining from the first six she’d manifested. They focused on holding back the soldiers attempting to circumvent the entrance Ravin was guarding by climbing up the side and into the structure.
She heard Fidelity roar again in rage as soldiers broke past her allies and started climbing the braces to reach her. Dahlia fired a quick shot at the soldier getting closest to her officer. She saw Sabir, covered in blood now, start to climb the braces, pulling the enemy soldiers off. Each time he reached a soldier he took hits that slowly started to decorate his tough skin but every time the soldier was quickly thrown screaming into the darkness below. Behind him Sabir’s fellow soldiers held off their attackers and ripped into the more vulnerable joints that held the braces to the structure.
Dahlia saw her group start to get in over their heads. As the numbers were threatening to overwhelm Ravin, the barrack members blocking the enemy on the other platform started to drown in the influx of enemy soldiers. Two members went down and their bodies were pulled back and defended by the men who had been damaging the structure. Those men were immediately set upon as well and were unable to concentrate on the structure any further. Only Fidelity was left hammering at the metal structure and the soldiers on the braces were getting closer to her. If they managed to stop her from knocking out the second connector it would be all over. Her group would be stuck fighting increasingly overwhelming odds with no chance of success disabling the structure.
“Damn,” Ravin growled. “DeMorra, buy me thirty seconds.”
Dahlia pulled her puppets back towards her. Seven of the twelve remained. “Ok, do it,” she called back to him.
Ravin moved faster than her eyes could follow. He vanished from in front of the entrance and slammed into the brace close to Fidelity, hauling himself towards her.
Dahlia took a gamble and dropped enough of her shield to let her amplify and project the bloodlust she’d felt coursing through her body from the fight with the other psychic. Then she pushed a compulsion out from her for the men to back away. It wasn’t strong, with her spreading it so wide and thin. Combined with the amplification though she felt as it caused the soldiers around her to hesitate just enough. Rather than charging, they waited for a few braver souls to attack her first.
The ten that moved first she let close in then hit them with a shot through her scattering band. They looked disoriented long enough for all of them to be struck down by her and her puppets without offering much resistance.
She leaned her ax, dripping with one man’s blood, onto her shoulder and placed one foot on his chest, giving the soldiers around her a mad grin. The waves of fear intensified as the soldiers forced themselves forward. A handful of men on the outskirts actually took steps back. Dahlia knew she couldn’t play mind games with them for much longer, but she could hold them back long enough.
She felt a small spear of energy smash into her loosened shield and her concentration wavered. She felt herself lose her hold on the men. They shook off the compulsion and lost their hesitation, quickly closing in on her. Fuck, she hadn’t even sensed the soldier that had thrown that at her. She raised her shield again and held it firmly. If she couldn’t see him then she would just have to take whatever he threw, she didn’t have time to hunt for him.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Ravin had reached Fidelity and had placed a hand on her hammer. “Let me borrow that,” she heard above the sounds of the battle.
Another bolt crashed into her out of nowhere. She shrugged it off as distracting but not deadly. Then she felt it starting to crawl over her, looking for a hold. It felt like mold spreading far too quickly. Disgust washed over her and she instinctively stopped and vaporized it. A sword strike came in while she was distracted and she narrowly dodged, taking a nasty slash in her arm before she countered and slashed through the soldier’s midsection.
Two more puppets had fallen and she was very close to being drowned in the tide of soldiers. With the skilled psychic attacker distracting her she couldn’t hope to hold much longer.
A deafening gong rang out as she and everyone around her flinched at the noise. The beam of the structure crashed through the wood of the platform so close she could have jumped through the hole it left. One unlucky soldier didn’t get out of the way in time and was dragged through under the weight. She heard cracks as the spiked ball scraped through the other platform. The whole thing shook as the sudden removal of the platform’s integrity threatened it with collapse.
Recovering from the shock, Dahlia swept her ax through her nearest attacker who didn’t move quite fast enough to block her. The remaining five puppets, not wholly physical and thus less affected by the piercing noise, had taken out the soldiers nearest them and bought her a little more breathing room.
“Go now,” she heard Ravin roar at his team and he landed behind her. He grabbed her by the waist as two soldiers rushed in at them and launched himself towards the top of the structure. Her remaining puppets vanished behind them. Dahlia saw the rest of their soldiers copying Ravin’s exit, pursued by the fastest and strongest of the enemy soldiers. Some of her team carried their injured comrades.
Ravin threw himself to the top where Fidelity landed near to him. “Give me a boost,” she yelled over the sounds of battle and the collapse of the structure.
Ravin let Dahlia drop to her feet, crouched down, and held his hands together. Fidelity took a few running steps, hopped onto his hands, and then catapulted herself up as he heaved. She made it to the top of the wall, grabbing on with both hands and vaulting over.
A few other soldiers followed. Sabir slammed into the wall and dug his weapons--transformed into spiked hooks--into it so he could haul himself up.
Dahlia swung onto Ravin’s back as a few enemy soldiers made it to the ledge they were on. He leapt towards the wall and grabbed a rope Soa must have dropped over for their return. He swarmed up it as more of their soldiers grabbed on below. Now that she could focus her attention, Dahlia sensed another of the psychic bolts when it was just far enough to still counter. She deflected in up, not having time to return it to the source or aim it towards an enemy soldier.
Then they were up over the wall. The smog had mostly cleared and there were a few men covering their retreat, firing arrows at enemy targets. As a precaution, Dahlia held her breath until they were inside Soa’s barrier and she dropped from Ravin’s back. She didn’t need to risk poisoning on top of the other damage she’d taken. Then she gathered her focus and started creating a shield around the edge of the wall to protect the archers from one of the enemy’s psychic hits.
Fidelity was crouched down, catching her breath. She didn’t look tired so she must still have been running off her abilities. She tore a strip from her shirt and held it out to her captain. Dahlia realized how much blood she must have been losing. She held the shield as she attempted to staunch the bleeding. With Fidelity’s help she wrapped the strip down her arm then tore some of her own tunic and layered the makeshift bandage.
Ravin went back out to the wall and reached down to pulled Sabir over. Then he dropped down over the edge. A few other men who had managed to climb the wall began to pull themselves over then turned to join Sabir who had begun hauling up the rope. The men who had carried injured soldiers and clung to the rope were helped over the wall as they were pulled up to the edge.
The last over was the man with the machete who was bleeding profusely from a strike that had taken off his ear. Ravin reappeared over the wall a second after and joined the group around Soa.
“We’ll head back down to the gate. If you’re injured go to the infirmary, otherwise help push the enemy back so we can reinforce the broken area,” he told them.
“There was a soldier with higher level psychic abilities back there. He was able to mask his attacks until they were almost too close to counter,” Dahlia said “I need to stay here until someone else can hold a barrier around the archers.”
“Damn. Ok. Sabir, Soa, and Fidelity can stay with you and I’ll send someone to relieve you as soon as I can. Everyone else, try not to inhale too deeply ‘til we’re out of the area,” Ravin instructed.
He took off with the group, leaving Dahlia with her barrack members and his lieutenant.
“Let me see if I can stop your arm from bleeding,” Sabir said gently and Dahlia held out her arm as he pulled off his own tunic and started ripping it into strips. He bound it tighter and the spreading red stain slowed down. Dahlia felt weariness start to creep through her, cutting through the pounding adrenaline. She isolated the feeling and suppressed it. Until she had the opportunity to rest it was not serving her.
“Let’s move over to the archers so we can shield them from any damage the smog is causing,” she suggested.
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Soa said, a little flustered he hadn’t thought of it himself.
She winked at him, “Thinking under pressure, that’s why they made me a captain.”
He laughed as they moved over towards the edge, “And here I thought it was because they were worried you’d beat them up.”
Dahlia gave him a smile then resumed her focus on rooting the shield in place so she could free herself up in case something happened.
Minutes went by and she felt herself growing anxious as nothing hit the shield. Had the soldier gone through the gate? She hadn’t sensed any psychic energy from that direction but there was so much going on down there that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d missed it. She told herself that other members of her force could handle it but it didn’t ease the feeling she had.
Finally the smog lifted completely and Soa could comfortably drop his barrier. A group of soldiers appeared coming up the stairs.
“Captain DeMorra,” the front one said, inclining his head to her. “Captain Ravin sent us to relieve you. Apologies for the delay, we had to wait for the poison to lift completely as no one was available to escort us.”
“All calm up here. The man I encountered outside the gate is able to mask his attacks exceptionally well. Even watching for them I wasn’t able to sense them until they were almost too close to counter. I suggest keeping a shield up or establishing a barrier as a precaution. Has there been any report of psychic attacks at the bottom of the gate?”
“Nothing unusual, Captain. We sensed some minor strikes but nothing exceptional. We’ll remain here until a relief is sent. Captain Ravin said he would arrange for it once the gate had been secured.”
“Excellent. Lieutenants, Fidelity, let’s go,” and she began to descend into the fight below.