The Everburning City

Interlude 10, The Vanguard

Anwen

They marched in a long line, stretched from causeway to causeway. Spaced apart like the pilot lights at the base of the wall, each Ranger was nearly twenty feet apart from the others soldiers in their own battle group.

Anwen's lieutenant was three Rangers down the line. She herself was about the midpoint of the right wing, with her sergeant Cadmus Porter holding the furthest point. A thin line of white scarves, barely long enough to meet the horde of dead monsters coming towards them.

A whistle sounded on her left. Harsh, shrill, and so out of place compared to the cracks, grunts, and screams of a fight that a soldier could hear it in anything less than a berserk rage. The single note was joined by two others, as her platoon's lieutenant took up the call with his own. Anwen stopped, knowing exactly what the signal meant. At the end of the line, Sergeanr Porter answered, and the marching line of Rangers became a wall.

A long, thin line. Spaced only slightly denser than the pilot lights that held back the Gloam. Anwen nearly laughed at that. Captain Dremora was taking the army's words rather literally.

We are the walls. And the Gloam, or at least a bit of it, was held in the lungs of each and every one of the creatures now just outside of Salamander range.

Anwen took a moment to check over her equipment. Salamander in her right hand, finger resting on the trigger guard. Her left hand tapped the sword at her belt, the knife strapped to her chest, the ammo pouches at her belt, her water bottle. Her fingers felt inside each pouch, not quite counting her shots, but making sure they each felt full.

More than one soldier has lost a foot by stepping on dropped ammo. A salamander shell was hard to break with a foot, but not impossible.

"Remember," Captain Dremora bellowed. "Don't waste ammo on singles or pairs. Unless you can drop them both with a single shot."

The reminder took Anwen's thoughts right back to the captain's explanation of their plan. When he explained how exactly he expected a single platoon, stretched out over more than a third of a mile, to bring a mob of the berserking dead as large as Barleybarrel to a halt.

"First, we make contact," the captain had said. His open hand was set against the wall, with only the tips of his fingers touching, like he was testing if a door was hot.

"We'll be spread thin, which is both good and bad for you. Twenty feet apart, possibly more, it depends on how wide we need to be to make contact with the front of that mob," the captain explained, and he tapped the wall with his fingertips for emphasis. "Good news, you'll have plenty of room to swing a sword or fire a Salamander without risking another Ranger. Bad news, you're basically alone at your contact point. So no heroics."

"Didn't you just tell us we're digging latrines until we retire, if we don't get over Redgrave's count?" Someone asked. Someone from Third Platoon. Anwen wasn't great with names, suspected it came from hating hers so much.

"Relax. There's plenty of Gloamtaken out there," the captain replied. "Now, once we make contact, we want to do three things. We want to bunch them up, draw them close, and put them in front of an obstacle. So once the Gloamtaken get thick enough that they become unmanageable, we withdraw."

And without pulling his arm back at all, Captain Dremora took his fingers off the wall he was touching, and squeezed his hand into a fist.

"You need to pack me more ammo next time, sir," Anwen bellowed.

"I suppose your next request will be a Salamander-sized Valkyrie and a company to pack the ammunition for you," the captain answered. "Now remember, once you start hearing whistles, make sure the Ranger on your wing has made it past you, then you follow him like there's a mob of ash-bitten monsters coming after you."