With nowhere to retreat, they fought viciously, but within seconds the soldiers of Kaspar’s command had killed half a dozen and had the rest retreating through the water to the scant protection offered by beached boats. Jommy faced a more determined defence, as soldiers from the Kingdom, Roldem and Kesh joined him in attacking the middle, mere yards away from the creature.
The raiders fought like men possessed, as if they were more afraid to retreat back to where the smouldering creature waited than die facing mortal men. Then the creature strode forward, and the man next to Jommy howled in agony as the diabolical being snatched him up by the neck. The sound of searing meat replaced the choked-off cry and the apparition tossed the soldier aside like a broken toy. Jommy saw flame coming from the creature’s hands and could feel heat waves emanating from it as its appearance continued to evolve. The grey-blue skin was now crisscrossed with glowing red cracks, looking like nothing so much as molten metal under a rock crust, and where rain struck it sizzled and gave off tiny explosions of steam.
Jommy leaped backward, almost falling as he crashed into a soldier coming up behind him. ‘Sir!’ the man shouted in his ear. ‘Another two boats have put in to the north and more of the bastards are coming down on our right flank.’
Jommy hesitated, then realized the soldier must be waiting, and that he was a senior officer, or at least as far as the men near him were concerned. Something had to be done to avoid a total rout. ‘On me!’ he shouted. ‘Rally to me!’
Men hurried to him while the now-flaming monster snagged another screaming man and ripped his arm off while his torso was engulfed in fire.
‘Form circle!’ shouted Jommy, and the men nearby gathered in a tight knot around him. To the soldier who had warned him of the move on their flank, he shouted, ‘Find the General, and tell the others to fall back to wherever he is. We’ll hold them here! Go!’
The messenger ran off.
‘Shield wall!’ was Jommy’s next command, and the trained soldiers linked shields and suddenly he and two others, both irregulars from Krondor, stood in a tiny fortress of shields.
He had no faith in his order. Jommy knew that should the advancing monster strike the front of the shield wall, several of them would be instantly incinerated and the defensive position would collapse. But it was the only thing he could think of doing to buy a few minutes for the rest of the men to fall back to wherever Kaspar waited.
The creature stood motionless for a moment, and the magic-user pointed at the men clustered around Jommy with his staff and shouted something in the alien tongue. The creature took a great stride towards them and Jommy shouted, ‘Steady!’
The creature halted for a moment, and raised his fist up high above them. Jommy shouted, ‘Turtle!’ He dropped his sword and sat down hard, yanking the two men next to him down to keep them from injury.
The men raised their shields overhead, and braced themselves as they would for a barrage of falling arrows. The flaming monster’s fist, now the size of an anvil, crashed down on a pair of shields, causing one man to go to his knees and the other to collapse completely.
‘Bloody hell!’ said one of the irregulars, his eyes wide in terror.
‘Scatter!’ shouted Jommy: confusion was the only way to save as many men as possible. The two irregulars crawled away, while the soldiers did as they had been trained, each man running off directly away from the centre of the turtle, putting as much space as possible between themselves and their comrades. Those in the front fell straight back, then turned and fled.
Kaspar’s own archers had attempted to hurt the creature, but their arrows were having no effect, the iron heads bouncing off the thing’s hide while the shafts burst into flame. Waves of heat rolled over Jommy, as if he were standing before an open oven.
With a sweep of arms now as long as a spear, the creature knocked men aside as if he were playing with children. Whatever he touched burst into flames: men lay screaming and dying.