The demon attack, when it finally came, caught everyone defending the city of Arishaig—and Keeton especially—by surprise.
All night he had waited for it, his soldiers stationed on the west wall, listening to the howling and shrieking of the creatures massed in the darkness just beyond the glow cast by the torches on the battlements. Midnight came and went. The night rolled on toward early morning and the approach of dawn.
But just before the first brightening of the sky east, while it was still too dark to make out anything clearly, the demon hordes attacked.
Not at the west wall, but at the south.
Somehow during the night, under cover of darkness, the attackers had managed to maneuver a second attack force into the lowland hills that rippled below the city. While the defenders’ attention was focused on the creatures massed at the west wall, thousands of their fellows had circled silently around from where they had been hiding earlier behind the ridgeline until they were in position.
When they attacked, no one inside the city was ready for it. There were soldiers on the south wall stationed at regular intervals with orders to keep watch and be ready, but larger numbers occupied the west battlements because all the enemy activity of the previous day had been centered there.
To Keeton’s credit, he did not panic. The fact that the initial attack had come from the south did not mean that those creatures gathered below the west wall were no longer a threat. The first attack could be a ruse to draw his soldiers away; the west wall could still be the main point of attack. So he took every third soldier out of the defensive line and sent them to reinforce the south wall and followed them over to see for himself how bad it was.
It was much worse than he had imagined. The army below the south wall mirrored the one threatening the west in size and ferocity. The attackers were already swarming the gates, surging up against them and hammering on the ironbound timbers with clubs. Dozens of creatures were climbing the walls, finding grips in the rough surface of the stone that would never have served ordinary men and women.
The defenders seemed stunned. A few were reacting to the assault, manning the fire launchers, training them on their attackers, but too many were just standing in place, waiting for the attack to come to them.
Keeton snatched the closest torch from its rack and dropped it into the oil trough, igniting the flammable liquid and instantly setting fire to dozens of attackers. Racing down the wall behind his soldiers, he slapped them on the shoulders and screamed at them to fight back, snapping them out of their shock, propelling them into action. New soldiers from the west wall appeared in droves and suddenly everyone was responding to the threat. Spears were used to dislodge the creatures climbing the walls when they got within range. Pitch was poured out of barrels onto the assailants massed at the gates and torches dropped to ignite it. Archers rushed to fire their arrows down into the hordes trying to scale the walls.
It was chaos, but the effort of defending against the surprise attack was working. The assault might have reached the south wall, but it had failed to force the gates, and fire launchers had cleared away most of those attempting to climb the walls.
Then the first of the warships was aloft, circling over the massed attackers through a wash of hazy light, everything misty and surreal but clear enough for rail slings and fire launchers to find targets. Keeton watched as the vessel roamed back and forth through the gloom, bursts of fire erupting from the launchers, the deep hum of the rail slings reverberating in the brume.
Then, abruptly, everything changed.
The dragon they had seen circling overhead the previous day materialized out of the concealment of the mist, swooping into view above the warship. The airmen were concentrating their efforts on the creatures on the ground and never looked up. Even the lookouts failed to spy the danger in time, caught up in the excitement of the moment, their eyes directed out and down rather than up. Although Keeton and dozens of others on the wall screamed in warning, their efforts were to no avail. The dragon attacked, its maw opening wide as it did so, raking the vessel end-to-end with fire, which burst in a steady stream from its great throat. In seconds ship and crew alike were aflame and falling earthward.