With a shudder, the encircling line around the human position took several staggering steps to the west, the movement enough to rupture it in several places.
"Hold your positions," van Joss barked. "We need to keep the enemy's focus Here so the captain and the rest of our company can break through to safety!"
The rest about preparing for the hopelessness of Their position as the rear guard he didn't have to say. It was the reason he had the captain send him volunteers. They already knew what fate awaited them. They would do their jobs and sell each pace the enemy gained for blood and pain.
Grimly the line dug in, preparing for the onslaught they knew was coming. But van Joss didn't want to take the chance that they could lose the enemy's attention. Normally he would've ordered his archers to randomly pepper the enemy lines on either side of their position to get their attention. But he had left the archers with the captain; that option wasn't available.
Instead he found some more throwing knives, apparently a favorite weapon of pike men.
"Mind if I use these?" he asked in a low voice as he pulled several free from the holster from the pike man in front of him was wearing.
"Not at all, sir," the man said through gritted teeth as he strained to hold his position. "Me hands are a bit busy at the moment anyway."
Van Joss gave him a quick slap on the back in thanks before twisting and throwing, a move he quickly repeated in the other direction. The knives darted through space to scythe down several Primiad that were crowding the shield wall's flanks. The result was a muted growl from the remaining enemy soldiers and reinforcements began to arrive in droves in an effort to fold the ends of the wall in on itself.
Seeing that, van Joss was grimly satisfied. They were managing to keep the horde's attention focused on them. Judging by how the encirclement was breaking down behind them, the captain would soon break through. He pulled more throwing knives free from a different pike man's holster and began picking his targets. Just a little longer, ...
"A shield wall?" Uthon said with a frown as a lull in the crush around their escort gave him a chance to look down and see how the surviving Gideonites were faring.
"I've seen Kanid legionnaires employ a similar tactic," Blacklock said, the big Lupus on the other side of their escort group, pacing Kata's personal guard. "We were able to defeat it with some effort, but those bloody monkeys don't seem to possess the skill or strength to do the same. It appears the humans are actually defending well."
Uthon frowned but said nothing. The Orders despised such defensive tactics despite their usefulness. They preferred to take the fight to the enemy before an attack pinned them down. It gave them more mobility on the battlefield.
That being said, whoever was in command down there seemed to know what they were doing. The Lupus hadn't seen it due to a lack of experience with such tactics but he had. The shield wall was allowing a rear guard action to take place. The Gideon commander obviously wanted the monkeys to focus their attention on the rear guard, throwing up the shield wall to dig in and present a target the monkey commanders were finding impossible to ignore.
The question was why? What did the commander want to draw the Primiad's attention from?
A quick scan along the Gideon position quickly yielded the answer: a pike and archer push against the encircling line in an effort to break through. Seeing that brought a small smile to the gruff master of the Order of Grim.
Not so defensive after all. Pinning the Primiad down at one end of the formation so they could more effectively push against the other? He wouldn't have thought any of Gideon's current crop of officers capable of such a move. Especially one that, an hour before, had sent their cavalry in on a blind charge, let them get cut to pieces then refuse to retreat once the attack had faltered, letting the company get surrounded and cut off. It was almost as if there were two separate officers in charge down there. The first failed in their ill-advised charge, losing a significant number of troops and trapping the rest. And so was replaced by a second that was decisively trying to free them. The question was who? Who amongst the Gideonites actually had the stones to pull an extraction like this off?
Ironically it was a Gideonite that provided the answer.
"C'mon, van Joss," Captain Longspear said in a low voice from where she was keeping the Kanid empress Kata company, her eyes on the struggling humans below. "Break through already and get out of there!"
Eyes wide in astonishment, Uthon looked back at the human position. Van Joss was down there?? Well, that certainly explained how the company seemed to be commanded by two officers with vastly different capabilities. Van Joss was a seasoned veteran of campaigns against both the Ryon and the Tigris before he became an operative. Then he fought in several more shadow campaigns after that. It was his skill and experience in battle that allowed Uthon to successfully sell the idea of using van Joss on this mission to the other masters.
The former operative must've taken command from the officer that had been leading before. Which was a good thing; if there was a man alive that could get the Gideonites out of their current dilemma, it was him.
Abruptly his reflexes made the big warrior drop into a crouch. Just in time to let a good sized boulder whistle by overhead, feeling the wind of its passage on his weathered face.
"The long tails have brought up more siege machines," Blacklock observed, his tone grim. Looking past the Lupus leader, Uthon watched a line of eight or nine long-range trebuchets, many sporting scorched timbers, reload. It wouldn't be long before they were ready to fire another salvo.
Which was bad news for the beleaguered defenders. The damn monkeys already owned most of the primary wall, thanks to their swarming tactics and almost inexhaustible numbers. Now they were going to batter holes big enough through both walls to let in the remainder of the still-massive force that had regrouped in front of the battered fortress. While a part of him despised hiding behind these stone barricades to begin with, and longed for open field combat, he knew that, while their garrison was significant, they'd be washed under by a flood of unwashed Primiad bodies that numbered hundreds to one of theirs in such a fight.
Blacklock must've been thinking the same thing.
"Come, Empress Kata," the big Lupus rumbled. "Let us get you off this wall and to your sanctuary in the inner courtyards. The outer wall has fallen. The inner won't be far behind. We need to prepare to make our final stand."
Kelly threw the body off his blade and braced for the next wave. When it didn't immediately come, he paused to suck in a quick lungful of smoky air, willing the burn of fatigue out of his muscles. It was in that quieter moment that he heard the siege engines release and their munitions come whistling through the air towards them.
"We have incoming," he barked and, as one, the battered elvish squad hunkered down and shielded their heads.
Just in time: with a 'crunch' a large stone struck nearby, taking a gouge out of the wall as deep as the walkway. It simultaneously sent deadly shards hissing through the air like shrapnel. Kelly grimaced when he heard a couple of his soldiers grunt from shard impacts.
"Sir!" his sergeant shouted as large stones continued falling out of the early evening sky around them. "We're exposed in this position. We need to take cover!"
"What we need to do is get our asses off this wall, sergeant," Kelly immediately retorted. "Form up. We are leaving Dodge."
"Copy that." The sergeant quickly turned to the rest of the squad. "You heard the cap; we are Leaving! Double time to the nearest ladder! Move it, move it, move it!"
Kelly stepped to the side once they had reached the closest ladder to wave his squad through while he stood guard, bloodied sword in hand. Despite the fact they were taking fire from their own siege engines, the Primiad that had successfully swarmed the primary wall continued to fight, crushing whatever pockets of resistance they could find. That meant the elves were forced to fight their way through the thronging enemy while continuing to duck the massive stones whistling by just overhead..
So Kelly's squad, already battered and exhausted by their efforts to defend the wall, were even more tired and injured by the time they managed to reach a ladder into the space between the walls. A space that was already filled with defenders and attackers surging back and forth in frantic battle.
A quick look over the wall yielded it devoid of any significant defending force. Kelly grimaced. That meant the alliance had already conceded the primary wall to the Primiad. He then glanced at the knot of humans still struggling to escape their situation out in front of the walls. With the alliance yielding the outer wall to the Primiad, the humans had no place to go even if they managed to break free. Nor was there anybody left that could tell them.
"Good luck, van Joss" he murmured. Then he was knocking a charging Primiad soldier aside to follow the last of his squad down the ladder.
Hearing the catapults firing, van Joss frowned. That could only mean the outer wall was close to falling and now the long tails were trying to soften up the inner wall to continue their effort to take the fort.
For a brief moment he considered calling in the small company of rebels to once again put the catapults to the torch. But a quick search with the Cetaceans' mind gift yielded they had withdrawn several kilometers to the south to lick their wounds. While they hadn't quit the battle, they were too removed to effectively destroy the Primiad artillery before the second wall was breached. Once that happened, it didn't matter if the catapults were there or not. The fortress would belong to the Primiad and their greater numbers.
Unfortunately it also meant that their window of opportunity to escape was rapidly closing. With the monkeys commanding the top of the wall, it wouldn't be long after that they'd have all the entrances as well. Then the Gideonites might as well begin running north as the fortress would no longer be a refuge.
'Push, captain, push!' he silently urged, looking at the front of their elongated formation. 'You need to break through Now, or all is lost!'
Abruptly the Primiad line on either side of the rear guard lurched before dissolving into chaos. Then an avalanche of Primiad came surging against the shield wall, the monkeys shrieking in outrage. Van Joss found himself smiling in grim satisfaction even as he went back to work with his daggers against the surge now thronging all around them.
The berserker assault against the rear guard meant only one thing: the captain had broken through and the bulk of the company was now making best speed for the walls. Enraged that their trap had failed, the Primiad were turning their frustration against the remaining humans in the rear guard.
All he had to do was keep their attention a little longer. Crying in dismay as they were swarmed under, the north end of the wall finally crumpled under the pressure. A crumpling that continued down the line despite everything van Joss could do. 'This was it!' he grimly thought as two more shield bearers went down, the pike men they were protecting, quickly after. Silently he prepared for his own death even as he lost count of the number of monkeys he had killed.
Then a blow to his side spun the lean operative around and he felt his tunic grow wet and warm from his own blood pouring out. Still he fought on, his hatred giving him strength and purpose. Then another dropped him to his knees and, before he could struggle back to his feet, a glancing blow made his head swim. Unable to retain control over his body, he fell limply into the ground to stare up at the darkening sky.
Whether it was darkening because of the time of day, or because at long last Death was finally strong enough to claim him, he wasn't certain. All van Joss knew was that an end was coming.
It was as shadowy figures rushed all around, their cries of pain and anger seeming to be coming over a great distance, that the stricken agent heard another sound. At first he dismissed it as a dying man's fading imagination. But, as it grew louder and louder and the movement around him abruptly became frantic, he knew it was real.
It was singing. Low and powerful, with voices that were not human but familiar nevertheless. Voices that belonged to bears that had become Fisted.
The Ursa had arrived.