Army of the Dead (2)
The snow began to fall harder. As if that were the signal, the undead host—which until then had been taking a one-sided pounding from Afterglow Fortress—launched its counterattack.
"What the hell! The undead are throwing undead!"
An archer shouted as he intercepted a flying ghoul mid-air.
Exactly as he said: undead trolls, ogres, giants, mammoths—any large undead that could still grip something—began scooping up nearby skeletons, zombies, and ghouls by the handful and hurling them.
Half of them hit the ground before they ever reached the wall. A quarter of those simply shattered on impact. A few more were flung so hard they sailed clean past the fortress. The losses were plain to the naked eye. Everything that remained, however, landed successfully on the battlements.
The fortress defenders did not simply stand and watch.
Kishaahhhhh-!!!
"Heads up! Whoa!"
"Undead falling from the sky!"
"Stay sharp! One slip and you're meat!"
The sudden aerial assault startled them, but these were only low-grade undead, and not many of them. The moment they touched down they were smashed beyond any hope of rising again and heaved back over the wall.
Creak—
"How dare you!"
Before a few zombies and skeletons could even close on the still-concentrating Catherine, Mary drove power into her legs, thrust out her palm, and unleashed an invisible shockwave that pulverized them where they stood.
Karem was not idle either. He caught a draugr's blow on a rusted heater shield scavenged from a smashed corpse, then cracked the creature's skull with the shinbone in his other hand. A zombie crawling up his left side got its back stomped flat and its head driven into the stone.
Crunch—
"Ohh—"
"What kind of reaction is that supposed to be?"
"Nothing. It's just… this is clearly your first real fight, yet you're doing better than I expected."
Mary, skirt still swirling from the kick that had sent a wight flying, turned to Karem with genuine surprise. She had been too busy reacting to the sudden rain of corpses to spare him a thought, yet here he was: still rough around the edges, but for a complete novice he was holding his own.
No panic. Calm assessment. Minimal force to drop each undead, then immediate silence. Next target acquired. No enemies left? Fall back and wait. Only one action at a time—yet half the world couldn't manage even that. He ought to have been winded, but the brutal kitchen labor that had forged him kept his breathing even.
"Well, I did panic for a second," Karem admitted, resettling his grip on the shinbone. "But compared to Gordon putting me through the wringer?"
"Ah. Fair point."
"No, seriously. What kind of Sword Master grinds a kid like that—"
Gordon's forced training had been ruthlessly practical. Adult versus child in size and stamina; Sword Master versus a civilian with decent fitness. Even if Gordon had held nothing but a spoon, only counterattacked, and used less than one percent of his true skill, Karem never once touched the hem of his coat. Karem had tried everything to land even a single hit; he was tripped, thrown, stomped, and rolled across the dirt until even Mary, watching in silence, had wondered whether the cruelty was necessary.
Apparently that merciless drilling had paid off. Gordon's claim that Karem had a talent for fighting seemed true as well.
"They're throwing rocks!!!"
The large undead that had been lobbing lesser corpses now snatched up boulders and slabs of ice and began hurling them at the fortress. Heavy whooshes filled the air as stone and ice smashed into the outer walls, the battlements, and even over the top into the streets of Present.
Bang!
Crack—!
"Ballista five is down! The joint snapped!!"
"Get the repair crew up here! You—fetch spare parts!"
"Hand out the good harpoons to the other ballistas!"
The fortress answered with every trick it had, yet some of the projectiles still struck home. Real damage was beginning to accumulate.
"…It's coming this way! Move!"
Gordon barreled between Karem and Mary, snatched a spear from the stones, and hurled it with everything he had.
Whoooosh—Boom!
The ice chunk exploded in mid-air.
"Sir Stark, that just now—"
"It was headed straight for the Mage."
"You mean they aimed?"
"Not a chance." Gordon caught the rebounding shaft and shook his head. The wood was intact; the tip had simply vanished as if it had detonated. "If they knew where she was, every shot would already be concentrating on us. Pure luck."
"Still—you intercepted that bare-handed?"
"I put aura into the throw, but yeah."
"You don't seem entirely human."
"What? Hey—how many people are doing the exact same thing right now?"
Karem followed Gordon's pointing finger. A warrior knocking boulders out of the sky with harpoons. A soldier exploding mid-sized undead mid-flight with javelins. Snow-elf archers shattering ice chunks with arrows… Gordon jabbed a finger especially at the elven bowmen.
"I can't even do that archery nonsense."
"Then I guess they aren't human either."
"Oh, for—" Gordon shook his head in exasperation, then flung the headless spear-shaft and intercepted a rock that had slipped past everyone else and was about to smash a ballista.
Bang—
"This is downright hurtful. A disciple who doesn't even know how to respect his master."
"I don't know about respect when my attacks never land in the first place."
"Anyway, Karem. Get inside."
"Hmm? …Hmm."
Karem glanced around, then nodded. When low-grade undead had been raining down like hail and even a non-combatant had to grab a weapon, maybe. Not now. Now the lesser undead were little more than garnish. The real threat was the siege fire that had replaced them. Escorting Catherine no longer required him either: Mary handled anything that crawled close; Gordon personally swatted the blind rocks and ice.
"Yeah. No reason for me to stay."
"Non-combatants belong inside once the fighting starts. That's the rule."
"Looks like my job's decided, then."
Karem spared one last look at Catherine—sweat beading on her brow, utterly absorbed—then tossed the round shield and the shinbone over the wall.
"They say undead that died after a good meal look nicer. If there's anything you want for dinner—"
"Steak!"
"Egg tarts and crepe cake, please."
The orders arrived before he finished speaking. Karem waved a hand.
"I'll pass it along. Pass it along."
He made no promises.
The siege barrage had been a signal. As damage mounted and the fortress forces busied themselves intercepting projectiles, the undead army began its advance. That meant the pressure only grew fiercer. The closer they came, the more savage the counter-fire, yet the undead paid it no mind and pushed, quite literally, to the fortress's very nose.
Even creatures without pain or fear, even corpses of giant monsters, could not simply smash a fortress by raw force. Why pile up meaningless losses?
Richard learned the answer soon enough.
"Damn it all! I never thought they'd try this!"
Skeletons clawed uselessly at the base of the wall while, behind them, a seething mass of zombies surged forward and stretched their arms upward. Pushed and trampled, ghouls began climbing the living mound of corpses. A deer with a broken neck followed. A pale orc with its chest cavity torn open followed after that. What had begun as a mere heap of the dead steadily bulked and rose higher.
The undead were building a tower of themselves against the wall.
"Boss!"
"Are your eyes just decoration?! Drop the flame barrels!"
"Holy oil at ballista seven is gone!"
"Then dump holy water! Is magic just decoration?!"
Baston, commander of the personal guard, did not wait for Richard's reply. Kilt flaring, he bellowed the orders himself. The coordinated assault was new enough to rattle them, but the commands still cascaded down the chain of command like a waterfall.
A soldier lit a flame barrel on a catapult, glanced once over the parapet, and heaved it straight down.
Whoooooosh—thud—
The barrel landed on the undead tower that had already climbed halfway up the wall and was immediately buried by more corpses scrambling over it. No matter. Inside the pile the fuse still burned. Flame met the mixture of oil and accelerants.
KABOOOOOM—!
Detonation. Black smoke roared skyward as the corpse tower climbing the outer wall simply ceased to exist. The same scene erupted all along the fortress.
"Fighting spirit! Survival of the fittest! The heat of life! The sun! The force of the storm!"
"As marital quarrels are like cutting water with a knife, O Mistress of Winter—grant us here the frost-wind that makes every husband tremble!"
"Five years aged in the corner of the warehouse temple! You've never tasted holy water like this!"
Fireballs detonated and corpse towers burned. Frost winds howled and rising towers toppled. Barrels of holy water shattered and the undead melted from the top down.
Yet the undead do not fear death. The dead simply obeyed. Even as they dissolved they never stopped climbing—until the last of them crumbled—solely by the will of the master who had raised them.
Faster response than I expected.
Almost everything was proceeding according to plan. Still the giant muttered with open dissatisfaction. His authority was incomplete; the power he could wield was pitiful. Influence reached only as far as the corpses at the mountain's foot, and even then the number he could command at once was limited.
He glanced behind him. The emaciated Grizzly Beaver chieftain thrashed and chittered, locked in a contest of initiative with the same archmage. Not a serious problem. If the numbers he could control were few, he would simply raise more as they fell. How many lives, after all, had died at the foot of that mountain? His influence already stretched across the entire snowbound region. Incomplete immortality was still immortality—lesser than the immortality his father had achieved before the traitors brought him down, yet enough. The archmage was busy wrestling the chieftain for dominance and could cast nothing. Other mortal mages were irrelevant. Two Sword Masters? Also irrelevant. He had never intended a frontal assault in the first place.
How long the humiliation lasted. There is no need for haste.
The detestable mortals of Tombstone Fortress would not even know that parasites already nested in their own house. The signal had been given; the parasites would begin to move. Elite as the fortress garrison was, the giant chose patience. After so long asleep, the present wait was shorter than an eye-blink. His collaborators would be watching for their moment as well.
In the meantime… shall I enjoy myself a little?
He spread his influence farther. Fresh undead joined those already shattering against the walls of Present and the outer defenses of Afterglow Fortress. High-grade undead redoubled the siege fire. The host itself swelled. Corpse towers several times larger than before began once more to climb the outer walls of Afterglow Fortress.