The great barrier had been erected in a massive circle around the city of Tarendamar, over a hundred miles radius. Other defences had been placed around the planet, huge traps designed to obliterate demons by the hundreds, death towers that spewed evil mystic fire at any moving body within a hundred yards, a network of tunnels under the mountains to the north of the city, and all had proven useless.
The demons had scourged the planet, leaving nothing living in their wake. Within a year of finding the portal to Andcardia, they had driven the widely scattered population of the world to Tarendamar, forcing the total abandonment of over four hundred other cities around the planet, and countless towns and farming villages. Entire forests had been defoliated and lakes and seas now churned on silent shores, devoid of life. The demons left nothing alive behind them, feasting on any creature they found, no matter how small. Scouts had reported not even insects abided after the demons departed.
The only advantage the taredhel possessed over the demons besides their superior arts, was the demons’ single-mindedness. They had elected to attack the barrier in one location, a canyon that funnelled them into the defenders’ strongest position, merely it was assumed because it was the shortest route from the portal to the city. Certainly, early in the war, they had attacked on many fronts. Now they came in a straight line from the gate to the city.
Laromendis glanced upwards, out of habit. Had any flyers been overhead, warning would have been passed. He once again marvelled at this powerful magic, a huge invisible wall of energy, only hinted at when struck by a demon’s magic or falling body. The Spellweavers had originally erected a dome, but at huge cost, until it was discovered there was a height above which the demons apparently could not fly. The spell was adjusted and lowered, gaining the defenders weeks, even months, before the magic that fuelled the barrier was exhausted. Laromendis caught his breath and kept his thoughts to himself. Around him grim-faced soldiers, magicians, and priests awaited the next assault, despite to a man sharing the same thought: this was pointless; eventually the city would fall. But the Conjurer wouldn’t be the first to speak aloud those words, lest someone turn his ire upon Laromendis. Besides, while the city might fall, each hour here on the wall gave more of the taredhel the opportunity to file through the portal to Midkemia. Thinking of Home, Laromendis wished fervently he were there now, with his brother.
Then a voice shouted, ‘Here they come!’
Three times since before sunrise the demons had been beaten back, leaving thousands of rotting corpses littering the plains outside the wall. So high were the dead piled, that the last assault ran up the bodies of their fallen brethren as if they were an earthen ramp, gaining them an additional twenty feet on the wall from which to launch their assault.
Laromendis held a dagger in his left hand, against magic not proving effective, and watched for a moment, catching his breath, as another wave of flyers approached, coming low and fast. These were the most dangerous and unpredictable of the Demon Legion, for it was unclear where they would strike next. Something had changed in the last two days, as the flyers - some of them at least - were now able to pierce the barrier.
Hand-to-hand fighting was now the order of the day, and again the taredhel had the upper hand. Despite each demon being physically the match of any two elven warriors, the elves employed magic arts unparalleled. Not only were magic users able to cast spells that would wither demons in their tracks, or stun and confuse them, many of the weapons used had been enchanted to cause far more damage than would be expected. Swords would cause flaming wounds or festering agony, arrows would stun with mystic shock, and high above, green flames of death rained down on the attackers from death towers constructed over the last month. The demons would eventually take this position, but they paid an unimaginable price for doing so.
The flyers dove. In the previous onslaughts they had struck the top of the wall, trying to create a breach in the defences so that the crawlers - as Laromendis had named the scampering demons that climbed the stone wall like spiders - could reach the top of the defences, make their way to the gates and open them. Once the flyers overshot the wall and landed in the open bailey between the defences and the outer city, presumably to mount an assault on the gate’s defenders. The few demons that survived the transit through the barrier had been quickly dispatched by ‘flying’ companies, squads of the best soldiers who stood ready to reinforce any position.
The death towers began to spit at the approaching flyers, and Laromendis watched in fascination. Necromancy was an art so dark that no respectable magic user admitted to having an interest in it, yet this device was so anti-life that only necromancy could have conjured it into existence. The forbidden volumes and tomes must have been taken from the vaults of the Regent’s library. No sane being could imagine these hideous engines of death, let alone design one.