The Everburning City

Act 1, Part 5, Chapter 14

Spitfire reached the trench first, and didn't slow as she descended. Cadmus and Valen followed and up the other side, turned, and started hacking at the Gloamtaken following them up the trench.

Valen's first kill went tumbling back, knocking others down as it fell. He managed the same with the second and third, but the fourth landed with its chest over the trench. He had to lunge to reach the fifth, scraping the top of the ravine with his foot.

He could see them climbing up the bank further to the left and right, beyond where he and Cadmus could hold. Spitfire had already shifted to watch their backs, sword in her free hand.

Valen could feel the fear beginning to pull at his thoughts. His legs felt light, eager to run, and his thoughts narrowed as he pulled his years of discipline into the moments. Eyes sweeping from one side to another, picking the next creature to strike, planning how one sword strike would connect to the next, and keep his sword moving.

They kept falling, even as they climbed up the bank so thickly they pressed against each other. Every stroke brought one down, every fallen foe blocked the ones behind, and everywhere his sword could reach became a wall.

Cadmus was giving ground on his left, pressing towards Valen. So Valen shifted to the right, expanding where his sword would reach, and stepped back to let the Gloamtaken take the bank. But they only took the bank so they could die on it, making it harder for the ones behind to climb. The bodies in front began to pile up, most too desiccated to smell or leak; a limp and leathery bulwark to hold the front while Valen turned to cut down the ones at his right.

"Valen!" someone shouted, but Valen could barely hear it. He threw himself into the group at the edge of the trench, creatures so slow they might as well be stalks of wheat to his sword as he dropped them and sent them tumbling down. Their numbers didn't matter, not to him, not now. As long as he could keep them boxed in, keep them from getting behind, he could keep killing them.

Hopefully, for as long as they needed.

"Valen!"

He might have heard it, but it was like hearing a word he didn't know shouted from a mile away. The fear was gripping his arms now, helping him forget the dull ache beginning to burn through his hands and up to his elbows. A quick glance told him Cadmus had taken some shelter behind the pile of dead at the edge of the trench, and he didn't need to look back to know Spitfire was still close. He could focus on the next creature, the next corpse.

The bodies were piled knee-high at the edge of the trench. The creatures climbing from below pulled corpses off the top and sent them rolling into the mob behind, so slow that it was barely any effort for Valen to add those that surmounted his macabre wall to it. He found his sword in his left when he struck down the climbers; the habits of a lifetime of schooling warring now against the fear, trying to conserve his strength even as his blood pounded in his ears and the fear kept his sword in motion.

"Valen!"

The voice didn't belong to Cadmus, or Spitfire. But it was a mystery Valen couldn't address. There was hardly a heartbeat between one swing and the next, they seemed to pour out from the Gloam like a broken tap; far more than you would think it could hold, until it started seeming endless. Valen was already starting to tire; his thrusts weren't punching as deeply, his guard was lower, he wasn't even bothering with ready stances as he drew his sword back.

A hand gripped his shoulder and pulled him backwards. He turned, the panic looking to see how one of those monsters had slipped around him, and froze. A faded grey hat, eyes half-hidden by the brim, and the hand on his shoulder ingrained with dirt.

"Gwen?" Valen asked.

"We're not here to die, Redgrave," Gwendolyn said, and she pulled him forward a step. "Come on!"