At the open gateway, Befaris gazed out northward...

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The land-based horde approaching Tremok was so massive and covered such an immense area, that it looked like a huge forest – albeit a forest advancing with a steady, relentless pace. A hundred and twenty thousand demon footmen formed the closest mass of the formation, and stretched right across the horizon in columns hundreds of fighters long. Behind these, the centaur-like Northerner cavalry paced evenly; there were at least another hundred thousand of these heartless fighters. To the rear of the riders were open wagons and artillery units, pulled by other demons. The wagons were clearly brought in anticipation of reaping the Human dead; the artillery units looked like simple catapults, but possessed scoop-headed launchers.

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In spite of the size of the ground force, the general found her attention rise quickly to the creatures floating high over the demon soldiers. Ten such things existed, their black body-sacs casting shadows hundreds of yards wide over the land. They squirmed slowly through the air, making grotesque worming convulsions. From each creature dangled eight feeding tubes which were in turn hung with writhing tentacles... Befaris remembered the mystics telling her earlier that the demon army were waiting for ‘something’ to join them at Deshnere – clearly these gargantuan reinforcements were the reason...

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An instinct for action prevented Befaris from being overcome by shock or horror. She ran to Lar’s collapsed form, even while her voice rang out in a throaty bellow:

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“Well, lads... The Queen’s done her part... Now it’s our turn...”

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Befaris knelt, grasped Lar and heaved her over one shoulder before running back for the gateway.

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“Tegnar! They’re in range... Now!”

 

*       *       *

 

The stout lieutenant was already by the rear of one of his cannon, a burning torch in his right hand. At the eleven other weapons, the leaders of each artillery team stood similarly poised – their eyesight fixed on Tegnar...

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A hiss of brutal delight left Tegnar’s lips and he lowered his blazing brand onto the black-powder cord of the cannon. He stepped back, watching the fuse burn – and staggered further away as the cannon’s deafening report boomed across the battlefield. Sound struck at the artillery engineers like a physical force. The twenty-foot metal cylinder shook and recoiled... And a two-foot wide explosive shell was blasted forth towards the demon army.

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Seemingly in slow motion, Tegnar traced the blurring metal ball through the air and saw it land fifty-demons-deep into a column of footmen. Demons were smashed to pulp by the terrible swiftness of the falling projectile: but their devastated remains never hit the ground, for a massive explosion erupted at the point of impact to engulf everything within a twenty yard radius. Fire, metal shrapnel, earth, torn flesh and shattered bone flew away from the blast-core, to transform a portion of the demon army into a wrecked chaos of dead and dying.

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At this sight, a great cheer roared from behind the northern battlements. Men had finally seen this supposedly unstoppable foe slaughtered...

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“All cannon!” Tegnar yelled, in sharp contrast to his normal mumbled tones. “Fire at will!”

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Eleven more cannon-fuses were ignited in the next second.

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Men scrambled around the first weapon. They pushed it back into position, cleaned it, loaded it with black powder and a ball, and rammed a fresh length of fuse into the lighting aperture...

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The earth seemed to quake when the other cannon fired together. It was a combined noise louder than any peal of thunder ever to fill the sky...

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Instead of lightning, destruction followed this manmade storm-rumble. Eleven great mushrooms of obliteration appeared inside the demon ranks. Six struck footmen, turning victims into liquid and flesh-fragments, then incinerating the closest; four more hit demon cavalry to inflict the same merciless mutilation; the eleventh impacted a group of wagons and Northern catapults. Watchers saw the latter explode into a haze of fiery splinters that were cast out from the blast like thousands of tiny spears; demons nearby had the flesh stripped off their bones by these fragments. Something within one of the catapults ignited a moment later and unleashed a brilliant green haze... All creatures inside the lit area crumpled, their bodies turning to cinders...

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Tegnar’s cannon was ready now. His men stepped away and their leader’s torch touched-off the fuse-line...

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By angling the cannon just a single degree, the cannon-team succeeded in targeting a new section of the demon legions. A hundred demons were engulfed and disintegrated by the blast; another two hundred, crippled or maimed.

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“Reload–” The lieutenant’s order was lost amidst the calamity of the next eruption of cannon-fire.

 

*       *       *

 

Befaris carried Lar’s body over the temporary wooden bridge which spanned the spike-pit beyond the North Gate. While she did, she snapped orders with the sharpness of sword-strikes.

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“I want four Royal Guardsmen to escort the Queen back to the Palace... Signal the East and West Walls: warn them to expect attack. The dogs will close their army upon Tremok like a pincer... Leave the portcullis and doors open... Keep this street clear. If the cannon make it inside, I don’t want obstacles...”

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Two heavily-built Guardsmen took Lar from Befaris and hastened towards the Palace, their actions covered by another pair. Once freed of her burden, Befaris unsheathed her sword and used it to gesture – as she paced swiftly for a turret entrance that led up to the gate battlements.

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“You!” she rasped at a group of archers entering the area. “Up to the second level now! And look lively!”

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The archers started to run, stopped and ducked when Tegnar’s cannon boomed again, then sped off...

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“Don’t be afraid of that sound – it’s the best friend you have this day!”

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Befaris took the turret’s stairs three at a time. She felt the stone structure quake under the force of the cannon reporting together – and smiled. If those weapons were strong enough to quake Tremok, they were powerful indeed.

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A final leap brought the general onto the stone platform. The woman made it from there to the edge of the wall in two further strides...

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Vicious glee lit her face.

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The section of the demon-filled horizon opposite Tremok was broken by blazing craters, drifting smoke and writhing injured. Another pair of cannons fired together, to strike almost the same spot with their terrific rending force. Where creatures had paced just a heartbeat before, only a fiery gore-haze remained...

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Her attention shifted deliberately from the besieged enemies to those over a mile to the left and right. As expected, these sections of the army were beginning to close around Tremok like curving horns... To offer the city a most unlovely embrace.

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High over the devastation, the ten sky demons continued to drift forwards.

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Bruwl reached Befaris’ side: “Those flying beasts...”

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The general grasped his shoulder and turned the man to face the building-tops closest to their location. There stood weapons ordered by the Queen herself – massive crossbow-like machines, which would fire bolts nine feet long.

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“Our Queen predicted that the height of the fog-mass could mean some kind of airborne threat,” Befaris explained. “Her wisdom has proven infallible... Ensure the launchers have pitch and torches ready – I’ll want those bolts ablaze when we fire them.”

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Bruwl nodded heartily and left to carry out her command. “Aye, general.”

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Befaris approached Captain Ureem, who peered through the Long-Eye.

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“What do you see?”

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He shook his head. “They’re still just marching and they don’t react to our attacks unless they’re struck: they are either killed or injured or they just keep coming. Not one of them has stopped to help another. They trample their own dead and dying without compassion.”

​

“I’ve seen those centaur-creatures stampede over the smaller ones just to reach enemies to fight,” Befaris recalled. “Don’t expect humane reactions from them. They’re soulless killers, nothing more.”

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Standing up from the telescope, Ureem added: “And I don’t see any of them giving orders. How can they function without a command structure?”

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“They have one,” the general replied, “just one we can’t see.”

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Together they gauged the distance of their opponents to the City Walls.

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“Nine hundred yards,” the captain said. “Still out of our catapult-range... They’ll charge soon. They have too.”

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He turned to an archer beside him: “Juk, we’ll want your signal shortly.”

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The archer freed a blue-painted arrow from his quiver and made ready to light it at a nearby brazier. “At your command, sir.”

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“Incoming fire!” a voice bellowed from their left.

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Befaris and Ureem turned in time to see a shimmering black orb streak towards one of the turrets. The enemy fireball cut through the three-foot wall like a rock tearing paper, then exploded. Stone and Human fragments were blasted from the tower-section in a great, out-pouring cloud. A piece of wall twice the size of a man smashed into two swordsmen and pulverised them against the walkway; smaller shards tore the face off a third man and he dropped, screaming, to the street below... A wave of heat followed the blast – the tower filling with black flames. Anyone close enough to the fire ignited like a pitch-soaked torch. Those a little further away suffered a roasting and the loss of their hair...

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Befaris turned from the destruction to study their approaching enemy once more.

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The demon soldiers and cavalry still marched relentlessly, oblivious to the ruthless pounding of the Human cannon. They were about seven hundred yards away.

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Behind the fighters, more Northerner catapults were being put into position and set up for firing. The intention was to form an inverted ‘U’ of the weapons around Tremok’s East, North and West Walls. Befaris saw two demons pouring liquid onto the launching-scoop of one such war-machine. A third creature yanked at a lever and the device cast its death-black venom into the sky...

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“Look out!” she yelled instinctively.

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The projectile whistled overhead to come down inside the city. It missed the larger buildings and burst into the roof of a three-storey warehouse. For a second, the missile seemed to just vanish inside – until the building was torn apart by a magical explosion. The stone and tile outer shell of the warehouse was peeled away by raw erupting power, to reveal a ravaged interior of debris and coal-dark fire.

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A third and fourth missiles ripped through the air towards the battlements on the right. One skimmed the wall and blitzed through three guards before penetrating and exploding within another city building. The other struck below the walkway, punched through into the wall’s uppermost internal level and detonated. An unseen number of archers were annihilated inside the wall; a ten-foot length of the walkway itself disintegrated; two men on the platform were literally torn apart by the intensity of the explosion; another pair smashed right over the battlements to drop onto the wall-spikes. Flooding waves of black fire engulfed the impaled fighters and charred them to the bone in a split-second. A barrel of pitch, ready for pouring onto attacking demons, caught fire – to merge crimson and yellow flames amongst the dark enemy blaze. Animal grease, poured across the outer walls to slow enemy climbers, ignited in the same moment: waves of curling flames spread down and across the spiked surface at daunting speed.

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Dazzled by the tide of light and heat coursing in front of them, the fighters along the North Wall stepped back in shock. Lieutenants and sergeants started to bellow orders amidst the growing chaos – directing men to put out fires on the walkways; for others to move pitch barrels, help the injured or simply return to position...

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Ureem’s call resounded above all others – both in the loudness and urgency of his warning: “They charge!”

​