“Stop your gawping and reload,” Rotherham’s voice echoed above. “This is war, not target practice.”
The rattle of ramrods followed soon after, but the noise was drowned out by a sudden roar from the scores of remaining orcs, primal and deep with rage. A baying hyena took a retreating goblin by the neck in a sudden leap, shaking it back and forth like a rag doll. Whips cracked overhead, and the tide was turned more swiftly than it had begun, the goblins falling over themselves as they returned to their positions, some even stumbling beyond, over the corpses of their rider comrades.
“Like bleedin’ sheep herdin’,” Mason whispered.
“But those ain’t no sheepdogs,” Logan replied. “More like wolves.”
“Silence in the ranks,” Sir Caulder barked, quieting the pair.
But Fletcher’s attention was elsewhere, his eyes focused on a movement in his scrying crystal. A disturbance within the jungle, so great that the trees shook in a slow-moving beeline that headed straight for them. A thud, thud of steps that seemed to shake the very ground reverberated through the canyon, quelling the panicked screeches of the goblins.
Then a gray-skinned giant burst from the forest, scattering goblins left and right as it stampeded into the light. Its great ears flapped in the wind, the enormous bulk of its body clearly visible as it lumbered through the clearing.
“What the bleedin’ hell is that!” Logan moaned.
It was a Phantaur. The rarest of all orc demons, a bipedal elephant that towered above the orcs as a mother did a child. It had a leathery hide so thick that bullets couldn’t penetrate it, and its great fists were as formidable as the long, sweeping trunk and serrated tusks that swung back and forth above the ground.
The demon halted as its shaman emerged from the jungle edge. In his crystal, Fletcher saw it was a decrepit, hunched specimen with a toothless mouth and a tattered cloak of woven fibers. A gnarled staff was clutched in its hands, and the old orc leaned on it with every faltering step. For a moment Fletcher felt a flash of pity for it.
Then it raised a long, hoary finger, and even without Athena’s overlay, Fletcher could see the orange glow of a fireball at the jungle edge, larger than any he had seen before.
“Take cover,” Fletcher yelled.
He and the men hurled themselves to the ground, hugging the earth for dear life. Suddenly their stone wall felt as solid as a paper sheet.
In the scrying stone, Fletcher saw the fireball swell and swell again, so enormous that it blotted out the shaman behind it. Then it was aloft, blazing through the air in a great, curving arc, trailing smoke and shimmering air. No shield of Fletcher’s could hope to withstand such an attack—not with the scant mana left in his reserves. Still it rose, so bright and blinding that it was as if Athena were staring into the sun.
As the ball began its slow descent, the Phantaur unleashed a trumpeting squeal that put Fletcher’s teeth on edge. Two heartbeats of stunned silence passed.
And then, like an unstoppable wave, the goblins charged across the grass, screeching with bloodlust. The battle for Raleighshire had begun.
CHAPTER
53
“IGNATIUS, HURRY!” FLETCHER YELLED.
Far above, the Drake was already plummeting toward the fireball, his wings pinned back in a raptor’s dive. He tore through it like an arrow through an apple, the burst of light blinding in Athena’s vision.
Fletcher sensed no pain from Ignatius, the fire passing harmlessly over the demon’s skin as the fireball split into scores of smaller spells, spraying across the mountainside in a shower of glowing streaks.
Half a dozen made it through the Cleft, alighting in pools of fire on the wall and ground ahead of them. Rocks exploded from their makeshift barricade, sending soldiers tumbling. A single dwarf screamed frantically as his sleeve caught fire, beating at it with his jacket. It was extinguished by a gust of air as Ignatius swooped through the pass, returning to the heavens to battle the orcish demons above once again.
“Make ready,” Sir Caulder yelled, emptying his canteen over the smoldering clothing on the dwarf’s arm.
The rumble of hundreds of goblin feet could be heard as the Foxes scrambled up, leveling their muskets over the barricade. Pools of molten rock bubbled in front of the walls, already fusing into crystals as they cooled. Fletcher lifted Blaze, and thanked the heavens that the fire had missed the surprise his men had prepared.
Between the gap, he could see a shifting maelstrom of gray bodies charging toward them. Already the rifles were firing, orcs jerking and stumbling from the spiraling bullets, even as their berserk rage carried their injured bodies onward. The first goblins trampled through the second line of stakes.
“Fire!” Sir Caulder barked.
A single clap of noise and billowing smoke tore at Fletcher’s senses, then he pulled the trigger. Goblins were thrown back as a hail of musket balls tore through the first ranks, tripping those behind with their corpses. Forsyth muskets were snatched up and pointed with trembling hands.
“Fire!” Fletcher yelled.
A second volley whipped into the masses, more ragged than the first but no less deadly. Blood misted the air as more goblins fell, but still the baying crowd surged on, driven by the whips of their orc masters. Rifles cracked above, and another orc’s head snapped back. It was not enough. Only one thing could stop this now.
“Load,” Sir Caulder ordered, his voice loud but calm as he stomped behind the men. “Steady now, lads, easy does it.”
A Vesp thumped to the ground, near severed in two by Ignatius’s beak far above. Ramrods rattled in their barrels, and a man cursed as he dropped his to the ground. Fifty paces. Forty.
“Fire at will, boys!” Sir Caulder growled. “Give ’em hell.”
Musket balls whipped sporadically over the wall, the closer shots bowling goblins head over heels, their bodies disappearing into the masses as they were trampled underfoot.
“Take out their front-runners,” Fletcher yelled, tugging Gale from his holster and aiming it at the smattering of goblins that had outpaced the horde.
He fired and felt the kick up his arm as the ball took the closest goblin through the neck, plucking it from its feet a dozen yards from the gap. His second shot went wide, disappearing into the mob in a spurt of smoke and blood, but a slug from Mason left his target crumpled over the body of the first.
The space ahead of the wall was filled with smoke, a brimstone haze that blended with the gray of goblins as the first of them hurtled through the Cleft, spears raised, shields held aloft. A smattering of gunfire took these eager runners out. In Fletcher’s mind, he could feel Athena’s fear, and fragments of pain from Ignatius as he battled the dozens of lesser demons in the sky.
The main body was twenty paces from the Cleft. Just a little closer …
Ten paces. Now.
Fletcher leaped the wall.
“Hold your fire,” Sir Caulder bellowed. “Load your spares.”