53
‘Ignatius, hurry!’ Fletcher yelled.
Far above, the Drake was already plummeting towards the fireball, his wings pinned back in a raptor’s dive. He tore through it like an arrow through an apple, the burst of light blinding in Athena’s vision.
Fletcher sensed no pain from Ignatius, the fire passing harmlessly over the demon’s skin as the fireball split into scores of smaller spells, spraying across the mountainside in a shower of glowing streaks.
Half a dozen made it through the Cleft, alighting in pools of fire on the wall and ground ahead of them. Rocks exploded from their makeshift barricade, sending soldiers tumbling. A single dwarf screamed frantically as his sleeve caught fire, beating at it with his jacket. It was extinguished by a gust of air as Ignatius swooped through the pass, returning to the heavens to battle the orcish demons above once again.
‘Make ready,’ Sir Caulder yelled, emptying his canteen over the smouldering clothing on the dwarf’s arm.
The rumble of hundreds of goblin feet could be heard as the Foxes scrambled up, levelling their muskets over the barricade. Pools of molten rock bubbled in front of the walls, already fusing into crystals as they cooled. Fletcher lifted Blaze, and thanked the heavens that the fire had missed the surprise his men had prepared.
Between the gap, he could see a shifting maelstrom of grey bodies charging towards them. Already the rifles were firing, orcs jerking and stumbling from the spiralling bullets, even as their berserk rage carried their injured bodies onwards. The first goblins trampled through the second line of stakes.
‘Fire!’ Sir Caulder barked.
A single clap of noise and billowing smoke tore at Fletcher’s senses, then he pulled the trigger. Goblins were thrown back as a hail of musket balls tore through the first ranks, tripping those behind with their corpses. Forsyth muskets were snatched up and pointed with trembling hands.
‘Fire!’ Fletcher yelled.
A second volley whipped into the masses, more ragged than the first but no less deadly. Blood misted the air as more goblins fell, but still the baying crowd surged on, driven by the whips of their orc masters. Rifles cracked above, and another orc’s head snapped back. But it was not enough. Only one thing could stop this now.
‘Load,’ Sir Caulder ordered, his voice loud but calm as he stomped behind the men. ‘Steady now, lads, easy does it.’
A Vesp thumped to the ground, near severed in two by Ignatius’s beak, far above. Ramrods rattled in their barrels, and a man cursed as he dropped his to the ground. Fifty paces. Forty.
‘Fire at will, boys!’ Sir Caulder growled. ‘Give ’em hell.’
Musket balls whipped sporadically over the wall, the closer shots bowling goblins head over heels, their bodies disappearing into the masses as they were trampled underfoot.
‘Take out their frontrunners,’ Fletcher yelled, tugging Gale from his holster and aiming it at the smattering of goblins that had outpaced the horde.
He fired, and felt the kick up his arm as the ball took the closest goblin through the neck, plucking it from its feet a dozen yards from the gap. His second shot went wide, disappearing into the mob in a spurt of smoke and blood, but a slug from Mason left his target crumpled over the body of the first.
The space ahead of the wall was filled with smoke, a brimstone haze that blended with the grey of goblins as the first of them hurtled through the Cleft, spears raised, shields held aloft. A smattering of gunfire took these eager runners out. In Fletcher’s mind, he could feel Athena’s fear, and fragments of pain from Ignatius as he battled the dozens of lesser demons in the sky.
The main body was twenty paces from the Cleft. Just a little closer …
Ten paces. Now.
Fletcher leaped the wall.
‘Hold your fire,’ Sir Caulder bellowed. ‘Load your spares.’
‘Rifles, cover him,’ Rotherham shouted.
And then Fletcher was running, a twist of flame flaring on the end of his finger. Still the goblins came, a dozen of them breaching the gap in a mad dash towards him. He could smell the unwashed stench of their bodies as he sprinted forward, his blood pounding in his ears, feet drumming on the ground. Rifle shots snatched the closest goblins away, and a javelin fluttered past, splintering on the wall behind him.
A hundred of the enemy were through the Cleft now, slowing as they saw the lone man running towards them, but pushed inexorably on by the momentum of the screaming masses behind.
Fletcher skidded in a slide-tackle along the ground, a stone’s throw away from them. The fire spun from his finger in a strand of orange, heading for Fletcher’s target. Their surprise.
It was a row of a hundred, half-buried bamboo segments, each with a rudimentary fuse of gunpowder-coated cordage shoved in its back end. And in the centre of them all, sat the squat, rust-covered hulk of the Thorsager cannon, propped up by a hillock of shovelled earth. All were filled to the brim with gunpowder and a charge of pebbles.
A spear buried itself beside him, slicing the edge of his jacket. The fuses sparked, Fletcher’s spell threading along the line. They burned down to their explosive charges with sizzling speed. Too fast.
‘Run!’ Rory yelled, seeing what was about to happen.
Fletcher ran.
It was a mad dash, and Fletcher beamed a shield over his shoulder in the nick of time, feeling the crackle of impacts as javelins and spears whistled overhead. A rattle of rifle-fire echoed above, and then Genevieve screamed: ‘Get down!’
Fletcher dived – and the world flipped sideways.
Dust and smoke howled over him as the explosion roared through the ravine. In his crystal, Fletcher saw blood mist the air as a thousand projectiles ripped through the mass of goblins, hurling them back as if a giant invisible fist had punched through their ranks. The centre received the brunt of the damage, the cannon concentrating the blast in a tight cone of spraying death that extended beyond the Cleft and into the crowds that still pressed in behind. For a moment, all that could be heard was the whistling of the wind, and the groans of the dying.
‘Fire!’ Fletcher yelled.
A pause, and then a flurry of musket balls whipped through the gap and into the stunned survivors.
‘Again,’ Sir Caulder barked, snatching a proffered musket from Blue’s hands.
The second volley smacked into the ranks, downing goblins left and right. The rifles fired a moment later, and this time the closest of the few dozen orcs that remained were killed – unmissable at such close range.
Far above, Ignatius roared in triumph, and an Ahool plummeted out of the sky, its leathery-winged body thudding among the goblin corpses.
And then, as one, the goblins turned and fled.