It occupied the whole width of the valley, everywhere he looked Eric saw an ankylosaurus Dread Rider trampling a sapling, or a burly brutish man wrestling dogs on ropes, or another type of herbivorous dinosaur pulling a catapult. And that was just the front line. Behind them, rank-by-rank, advanced a legion clad in black.
“The Black Legions of Arztilla,” Wotoc said. At either side of the formation, men held up black banners bearing the words LEGIO II NOCTIS “Each man earns his cloak by the slaughter of two men, four women, or eight children.”
Leading the Legion, and the army, was a man in red robes on a triceratops, equipped with bronze plates over its frill and flanks, and iron spikes atop its two upper horns.
“How many men?” Temerin asked Selva.
“About two thousand total.”
“Quite large, then, for Meridian’s low population.”
Eric gulped. “Who’s the guy in the middle, there?”
“General Fuhran, Siege Master to Dulane himself,” Wotoc answered. “Doubtless charged by his master to conquer all of Far Shore.” The Dread Riders formed up, advancing before him. Off in the distance, partially obscured by the smoke, Eric caught sight of a curious thing, like a black-and-glass teardrop floating over the mountains.
He zoomed in with the binoculars. “An airship!” A vacuum-lift craft, he gathered, the teardrop shape being its diamondoid hull coated with solar collectors on top, while below was a cabin and propellorless engines.
“Aye, Arztilla has multiple sky-craft,” Wotoc continued.
“Likely it’s an observation post,” Selva added. “With no way of building replacements, they’d not risk it unless they had to. What are they doing there?” She pointed near to Fuhran, where his minions had set up two wooden supports with a red flag suspended horizontally between them, and a few clay jars with rags sticking out the top like Molotovs.
“That,” Lord Leon said, grimly, “is their warning sign. If we use fire on them, Fuhran will send his gryphons to loft those fire-pots in the air and carry them to our city.”
Eric shuddered. A primitive form of mutually assured destruction? In thirty-four percent oxygen, even with fireproofing, the city would burn. Too terrible to contemplate, and it ruled out using their lasers.
The army held back, a decent distance from the start of the incline up to the wall. Three riders departed it on ordinary horses, two holding banners while the third bore a large scroll with tassels. They approached the gate.
“What have you to say?” Lord Leon called down.
From his horse, the messenger shouted up, “Your countrymen’s feeble efforts fell before us without the loss of so much as a single drop of Arztillan blood! They would not listen, and so they had to die. But Caesar Dulane is merciful, and entreats you at once to surrender!”
Leon replied, “We are Lords Leon and Granat, and as long as there is life within us we will speak for our landsmen when we say: never!”
The messenger closed the scroll. “So be it.” They turned tail and began trotting back. Horns and a great multitude of shouts and jeers came up from the army below.
“No point in waiting around.” Leon turned to his field marshal. “Ready the archers.”
The marshal began shouting to the crossbowmen assembled on the walls, ground, and wooden platforms.
“You know,” Temerin said, “Back in the time of the Great Schism, there was a Pope who forbade the use of crossbows on Christians. I wonder if that was ever abrogated...”
Eric supposed it a moot point. Unlike killer dinosaurs and cholera, Christianity was one thing the Keepers did not bring with them. On their platforms, the ranks of crossbowmen raised their weapons, aimed, and upon the marshal’s shout, let loose a volley which shot up and arced out across the air like so many locusts. His inventions worked! They had a chance! Still, he wished it had not come to this. He looked away right before impact.
Legionnaires fell here and there, comrades shouting in alarm and anger at the range and number of the strange projectiles.
“Fall back, reload!” the field marshal barked. “Second line, advance! Aim, shoot!”
Lord Granat declared, “Trebuchets, now!”
Four of them stood evenly spaced on the fortress grounds behind the walls, each with a team of men for loading and firing. Counterweight models assembled from a simplified medieval design, their arms were hauled back and slings loaded with rocks. Wooden components groaning and creaking, they swung through their arcs and loosed their projectiles. The rocks curved down like cluster munitions, striking in the great body of the Arztillan army with a din that sent spears, shields, and helmets flying.
A horn blew amidst the Arztillan forces. Wotoc said, “They release their beasts.”
Beasts they were, hordes of creatures like oversized, muscular dogs with thick limbs and dexterous paws.
“Bloodbulls,” Ralbor said.
“Footmen, to the walls!” Lord Leon shouted.
Arztillan archers returned fire, covering their beasts’ charge. The Highwater Mountain crossbowmen ducked behind their fixed wooden shields, some took wounds. Eric heard an arrow bounce off the battlement he sheltered behind. He stood up when the sounds of archery fire diminished. His heart thumped, his hands tingled so much he could hardly feel his fingers. Not that long ago he’d been a sleepy student in early-morning lectures.
Below, the bloodbulls weaved between the spiked barricades along the slope, reaching the wall’s base. Their paws scrambled for purchase against weathered grey stone, several footmen risked arrow-hits to lean over and cast down stones or caltrops. The dogs of death broke left and right, heading for where the curving wall met the mountain rock.
“They’re coming over!” Ralbor shouted, fear in his voice.
Sir Wotoc drew his katana, a grin on his face as he ran for the stairs. “Now this is what I live for!”
The bloodbulls crested the rock from two fronts, in waves of grey fur, spiked collars, and slobbering jaws.
“Form a line!” Wotoc yelled down a rank of men with spears and shields. “Show these beasts what men can do!”
Ralbor blew a melody of notes on his flute and, from back up near the fortress citadel, packs of raptors came running. Eric found himself catching a crossbow Selva tossed into his hands, already loaded. He aimed past the line of men, at the mass of war-dogs, and fired with a clunk and kick of recoil. His bolt wounded a bloodbull in the side, if only because there were so many of them.
The beasts struck the twin flanks of shields like water against a break. Some men went down amid shouts and screams, others held fast and butted their spears in the ground to form skewers for their bloodthirsty foes. The raptors charged in, one leaping over to seize a bloodbull by the head. Both combatants tumbled away in a mass of fur and feathers.
“Protect the crossbowmen!” Temerin shouted, casting a glance back to the advancing bulk of Arztillan forces. “They must keep up their fire!”
The bloodbulls had overcome one trebuchet crew, the others had no chance to fire as they fought against the monsters with spears and swords. Eric, looking out across the battle that now raged behind the fortress walls, locked eyes with a bloodbull.
It opened its jaws, bellowed a howl, and charged for the stairs. Eric swore, and was pretty sure he’d shit his trousers. Propped against a battlement was a spear, he seized it and held it with point angled towards the attack. Temerin ran up behind him, grabbed the other half, and pushed him into a charge. They met the beast with their spear as it crested the stairs, spiking it through below the head and sending it tumbling from the wall.
Mammal against dinosaur, the raptors and bloodbulls fought. Wotoc had rallied his men into a coordinated fighting force, which cornered the vicious dogs and ran them down. Knowing no fear and obeying no command to retreat, the beasts fought to the bitter end, at terrible cost to the Freehold defenders. The crossbowmen were in disarray, the trebuchets abandoned, and still the army of Dulane’s empire advanced.
“You must send me out, into the field!” Sir Wotoc said. “We will draw out the Dread Riders, and crush them!”
“Our horsemen against seven-ton ankylosaurs?” Temerin protested. “That’s crazy!”
“Not if we keep up the crossbow fire, hold the Legion back!”
“They’re advancing with ladders, towards the barricades,” Ralbor said.
Lord Leon barked: “Every man not tending a weapon, take a crossbow! Resume fire!”
Eric shot bolt after bolt over the wall at an enemy he could barely see. The sun crept towards noon, wagons and carts continued arriving from Highwater Mountain with bolts, crossbows, and men to shoot them. The relic Keeper airship moved out over the still-burning valley, supervising the battle. Once, he saw the top of a ladder swing up to the battlements and a black-cloaked hand rise up holding a curved sword, it was pushed away with long poles. He began to think they might actually win this.
A thunderous crash came from the gates, then another, and a third. Cobb ran down from the walls. “It’s the Dread Riders! They’re using ankylosaurs to batter the doors!”
“Lord Leon, get your men in there!” Temerin said. “Find boards, rocks, anything! Shore it up!”
Overhead, a single Freeholds gryphon-scout risked a flight above the fortress. He cut to his right, then began to tilt his steed from side to side as it screeched.
“I think they see something!” Eric shouted. People were running past him with wooden boards and barrels, towards the double-doored gate. Up in the mountain rocks, across the road running beside the citadel, he saw a group of black-cloaked figures emerge, scimitar-esque swords glinting in the sunlight. “Wotoc!” He found the knight and pointed.
“We’ve been flanked!” Wotoc shouted. Even his voice sounded afraid.
