Iron and Magic

Dugas nodded.

Hugh walked past him to the ladder on the side of the firehouse, pulled off his helmet, and climbed the metal ladder up to the roof, where Stoyan crouched by a short bell tower next to Nick Bishop. Bishop, an athletic black man in his forties, adjusted his glasses. He was the town’s chief of police, National Guard Sergeant, and Wildlife Response Officer, all of which put him in charge of the same six people. He was quiet and held himself like he knew what he was doing, which was more than Hugh had been hoping for.

From here Hugh could see the western gate and the fields. He’d bet on the western gate. Its eastern twin faced the mountain and was better defended and fortified. It was the approach he would have chosen if he came for Aberdine.

In the field, a group of Bale’s berserkers, dressed in civilian clothes, enthusiastically poked the ground with farm tools.

“How’s the bell?” Hugh asked.

Stoyan grinned at him. The bell hanging in the faux tower on the roof looked as decorative as the tower itself. “It works,” Stoyan said. “I rang it.”

Bale sank his hoe into the dirt. It must’ve gotten stuck, because he wrenched at it. The hoe came loose, snapping up, and flung a chunk of dirt into the air. Bale ducked.

“Has your man even held a hoe before?” Bishop asked.

Stoyan grimaced. “Not that kind.”

An eerie glow appeared in the middle of the field, barely noticeable, a shimmer more than light. Here we go.

“Dugas,” Hugh called down. “Now.”

The druid raised his head to the sky. His good eye rolled back in his head, matching the dead milky one. Fog shot from the cauldron in spiraling geysers, expanding, flooding the streets, and turning around the corners to collide.

The glow snapped into a line of bright golden light.

Bale and his berserkers backed away, toward the gates.

The light flared, forming an arched gate, as if a small second sun was rising out of the dirt.

The inside of the wall was milk now, the thick fog hiding the contours of the buildings seven feet up. Across from them, on the roof of the Dollar General, archers took positions behind a wooden barricade nailed together from packing crates and plywood. By the west gate, the roof of a Wells Fargo bank had gained three feet of height from a makeshift wall built with chunks of concrete and rocks. A dark head popped up above the wall for a moment and ducked back down.

The glow snapped clear. Hugh saw sunshine through the hole in the fabric of existence, and then mrogs flooded out of the portal in a ragged horde.

Behind them a row of warriors stepped out in unison, twenty men to a line. The shoulder of the first man in the line shone with gold.

“One,” Stoyan counted.

A second line followed the first. Another leader with a gold shoulder. Officers.

“Two.”

With that many, there should be a commander.

“Three. Four.”

The berserkers turned and ran for the gate. The mrogs gave chase, dashing across the field on two legs.

Bale hesitated.

“What is he doing?” Bishop muttered.

“Trying to get a better look at where they came from,” Hugh told him.

Behind the fourth line a man rode out atop a white horse, his armor heavy and ornate, the shoulders gleaming with gold.

There you are, asshole.

The glow vanished.

Bale turned and sprinted like a bullet aiming for the gate. The mrogs were barely a hundred yards behind.

Seventy-six warriors, four officers, one commander, and at least three hundred mrogs. The armored ranks waited, unmoving, in a precise formation. Each armed with a sword and shield. A long rectangular shield.

Fifty yards between the mrogs and Bale.

Thirty.

Twenty.

Bale shot through the gate and spun to his right, vanishing into the fog.

The mrogs poured into the main street. The fog churned as the beasts searched it.

“Not enough people,” Bishop said.

“Eight berserkers is plenty,” Stoyan said. “Bale knows what he’s doing.”

Metal clanged, and the heavy gate dropped in place. The wall on top of Wells Fargo quaked like a rotten tooth about to come out and collapsed. Boulders and chunks of old concrete, some with rebar still sticking out, tumbled into the street onto the shifting fog and the crowds of mrogs beneath. Yowls and shrieks cut the silence.

The trails in the fog split, running from the falling rocks. The main mass sprinted deeper into the town, along the main street. Arrows whistled through the air as the archers on the rooftops fired blindly into the fog. The mass of mrogs broke and split as individual beasts took to the side streets trying to escape the barrage.

The remaining mrogs turned back to the western gate. They hadn’t gone far before a bright red glow burst through the fog, blocking their escape. The fog parted, blown away in a circle, revealing Bale and a mass of snarling mrogs in front of him. The berserker stood with his feet planted, a mace in one hand, a red aura sheathing him. He stood with his back to the gate, and the street narrowed here, funneling the mrogs at him four or five at a time.

The red aura sheathing Bale flared brighter. Muscles rose on his frame, monstrous, swelling, growing larger. His arms thickened, muscles building, turning him into a hulking human monstrosity.

The beasts hesitated. They were closer to animals than to humans, and their instincts told them here was a primal force not to be fucked with. They knew a better beast when they saw him.

“What the hell is that?” Bishop whispered.

“Battle warp,” Hugh told him.

The berserker’s eyes bulged, his face contorted by rage in a grotesque mask. Bale roared.

The first mrog lunged at the berserker. Bale brained it with one swing. Blood and brains sprayed. The second mrog charged in. The first swing broke its shoulder; the second crushed its skull like an eggshell. Blood sprayed.

Bale bellowed something that didn’t belong to any language a human used.

The mrogs charged. The furry dark mass smashed into Bale and broke on his mace like a storm tide upon a wave breaker. The berserker howled, snarling like a rabid animal, and pounded them with his mace, cracking bones, crushing skulls, smashing flesh. Bodies flew and smashed against the buildings.

The fog flooded in, but Bale’s red glow fought through it like a beacon of rage. The street in front of it churned with bodies. Shrieks and yowls rose in a din. Along the periphery, flashes of weapons cut at the fog – Bale’s berserkers carving at the edges of the horde while they focused on Bale.

In the east two mrogs jumped out of the fog and climbed up Dollar General’s wall. The archers peppered them with arrows, but the mrogs kept climbing. They reached the roof. Four Iron Dogs stepped forward and drove their blades into the mrogs. Two furry bodies fell to the street. Three more jumped out of the fog, climbing up, then another two. Bishop raised his crossbow, sighted, and fired. A sorcerous bolt whined, slicing through the air, and bit into the back of the center mrog. The bolt flashed green and exploded, taking three other mrogs with it. The building quaked but stood.

Stoyan slid off the roof and down the ladder. The fog gulped him, and he vanished.

Fighting broke out here and there as individual teams saw their chance and stabbed at the passing mrogs in the fog. A human shriek sliced the fog from the left, then another, followed by eerie howling and yelps of pain. Another ragged scream, from the north this time, followed by more cries.

The four lines of fighters remained where they were.

“What are they waiting for?” Bishop asked.

“They’re used to relying on mrogs to do most of the fighting,” Hugh said. “We cut them off from their hounds, so they are waiting for them to bleed us. Once we’re injured enough, they will move in for the kill.”

The slaughter raged. Bishop kept firing, choosing his targets carefully, sometimes with sorcerous bolts, sometimes plain. Hugh smelled blood now, rising from the streets. It lashed at him, pushing him to fight, to act, to do something. Instead he waited.

Elara hugged her shoulders. She stood on the balcony in her quarters. In front of her the land stretched, the forest rolling into the distance, the isolated knobs silhouetted against the evening sky. By now the enemy would have attacked Aberdine.

By now Hugh would be fighting.

The worry gnawed on her. A part of her hated him for it. She wanted him back, alive, in one piece.