Hand Over Fist

Hammer and Wedge

Kelly swept aside three Primiad with a single swing of his blade. The return swing dropped two more. But the big elf didn't have long with space around him to move. As soon as the second Primiad was crushed aside by his heavy blade, he was once again mobbed by the enemy. Desperately Kelly pulled free his dagger and managed to deflect a number of attacks with a flurry of both weapons.
The defense, while successful, used up even more of the elf's dwindling strength. A fact not lost on him, or any of his elven comrades.
"Sir!" his sergeant cried as he pushed back the cordon of enemy soldiers thronging all around him with brute force. "We are trapped and we don't have the resources to cut our way to the inner gate. There's just too many of them."
Kelly jerked a nod in agreement.
"We need to find a defensible position then where we can dig in, ..." he began before:
- Captain Kelly, can you hear me? - a quiet voice asked inside his head. Quickly realizing the voice was in his mind, Kelly shouldered aside his astonishment.
- Van Joss, - he named the voice's owner as he spoke silently into the spaces in his mind. - You never cease to amaze. -
- What will be truly amazing, captain, is somehow getting out of this situation alive, - was van Joss' dry answer. - However, I might have a plan to do that. How many alliance troops still stand between the walls and in range of the primary gates? -
- Some two hundred. But they are scattered and that number is dropping by the second.-
- Understood. I need you to gather as many as you can, go to the primary gate and clear the space around the sally port and hold it. I am moving assets into place to come through that sally port and help you retake the courtyard.-
- To what end, van Joss? - Kelly wanted to know. - The primary wall has fallen and we struggle to hold the inner wall. Retaking the courtyard will only delay the inevitable: the Primiad flooding through and taking the fort. -
- True, if the Primiad were still poised to enter the fortress, - van Joss pointed out.
- What do you mean? -
- Another ally that we made in the effort to gather the alliance has arrived on the battlefield. Combined with counterattacks by the Gideonites and a group of Primiad rebels, the Ursa assault has destabilized the Primiad's position. If we can sortie against them from the fortress Now, we might drive them from the field before they can complete their conquest of the fortress. -
- Sortie without securing the fortress? - Kelly frowned even as he put his dagger into a Primiad face. - That's ill advised. That would put enemies both back and front.-
- I won't deny the risk in this plan is significant, - van Joss quickly conceded. - However, if we want to defeat this enemy we Must take risks. Gather what soldiers you can and secure the sally port. My assets will identify themselves by three sharp knocks on the door in ten to fifteen minutes. Let them in; they'll help secure the courtyard. Then we'll open the inner gates, free our forces and march two companies out to strike at the Primiad front rank. Any questions, captain?-
When Kelly didn't immediately answer, van Joss was quick to press his point.
- We attack, or we all die, captain. - Van Joss' mental voice was hard and grim. - You need to get behind this, and do so Now. Will you comply? -
Kelly felt a muscle in his jaw twitch at the hard question.
- Will. You. Comply?-
His sword whistled horizontally to cut down a pair of soldiers. Then Kelly was speaking into his mind.
- Gathering all available assets now, van Joss, - he tersely reported. - We will hold the sally port in ten minutes or less.-
- Very good. My assets will be in position shortly. - Then the presence that was van Joss in his mind was gone, leaving Kelly to grimly call over to his sergeant.
"Change of plans, sarge," he shouted. "Make for the sally port on the main gate. We're regrouping for a counterattack." Then, in a voice loud enough to echo in the courtyard and in the trade language van Joss had taught him: "All soldiers, regroup at the primary wall sally port. Regroup at the sally port!"
Uthon frowned as he heard that even as he hacked his way through a knot of Primiad. Ahead of him Blacklock had just cleared enough space around the inner wall's sally port and was turning to help Kata's guardsmen hold it so the Kanid empress could escape through the heavy wooden portal.
The alliance had blunted the Primiad assault on the main wall by nullifying the siege beasts but failed to hold the wall top against the Primiad's swarming attack. That was followed by the trebuchet attack that drove the remaining defenders from the wall and down into the courtyard between the walls. There they struggled against the ever growing numbers of Primiad coming over the walls and through what gaps in the walls the trebuchets had knocked through them, trying to keep the monkeys from attacking the inner wall and hacking their way in. Once inside, they would sweep through the camps and courtyards, laying seige to the inner keep, signaling the beginning of the end for the final barrier stopping the Primiad from attacking Gideon itself.
With Gideon gone, the Primiad could then turn on their nearest neighbors, the Ryon and the Tigris. Once the Golden Kingdom and the lands of the Black Princes were gone, the Primiad would hold Noranda in their fists. With Suudama already theirs, the rest of the world would follow, with Europas next, and Affrik, Shua and the mystical island nation of Austral soon after, especially if those places didn't have Fisted races to stop their conquest. The so-called New Men would become Masters of the world, as broken and empty as it had become.
Yet here was an elf, Kelly to be exact, Uthon recognizing the elf officer's voice, ordering a regroup. For what purpose? As skilled as the elves were, they would need a couple thousand to successfully secure the courtyard and retake the wall. Not the couple dozen that were fighting in the morass the courtyard had become.
He punched the crown of his axe into the face of the primiad in front of him, caving in his face and knocking him back. Then he was snapping the axe first to the right, then back to the left to once again clear himself some space. In doing so, he was able to see Kata slip to safety through the secondary wall's sally port, a cluster of her guardsmen around her. Then Blacklock and Longspear were working their way back to him, making room with sword and dagger.
"You heard the elf call for a regroup?" the power lupus said, not waiting for an answer before he was swinging his massive two-hander as they rushed. On Uthon's other side Longspear moved smoothly, her rapier a flickering silver tongue of death as she efficiently dispatched the soldiers making the mistake of thinking her weak and incapable. After learning the captain had been dispatched to covertly shadow van Joss, Uthon had made some discreet inquiries about her skills. She was good enough to join Gideon's covert organization, which demanded a fairly high level of skill.
The skill he was seeing on display Now, however, bordered on the astounding. 'It would appear you've benefited greatly from your time in van Joss's company, captain,' he mused.
Feeling his eyes on her, Longspear glanced over at the massive Master of the Order of Grim.
"Kala Uthon," she said, her tone carefully neutral. She then parried a thrust at her midsection before her riposte stabbed her opponent through the heart. Pulling her blade free to let the primiad's body drop to the churned up ground, she turned enough to look directly at him.
"Do you intend on joining Captain Kelly at the sally port?"
It was Blacklock that answered.
"Of course we are," the big lupus said as he cut his way back to their position, his massive blade glistening with fresh blood and bodily fluids. Coming to a halt beside Uthon, he favored the Master of the Order of Grim with a penetrating look before shifting his gaze to Longspear.
"The elves favor offense in place of defense, if my scouting reports on their battle field tactics were correct." He paused so all three of them could fight furiously for a moment to once again gain a little breathing room. Then: "If Kelly is calling for a stand at the outer wall, then he's got a plan for a counterattack. And if there's a counterattack against these filthy monkeys, the Lupus are going to be a part of it." Then he was throwing his head back to throw an ear-shredding howl into the air.
"Regroup, children of the forest, at the outer wall sally port! Regroup, Now!"
By the time three sharp knocks came through the thick wood of the rough hewn door, Kelly had gathered not only the other elven squads fighting in the courtyard but nearly a hundred other fighters, including Uthon, Longspear, Blacklock and the remaining Lupus still standing.
Kelly was standing ready, chest heaving and sword held in both hands, staring at the mass of Primiad his thin line of warriors was keeping at bay when the knocks came. His reaction was immediate.
"Get that damn door open, sergeant!" he barked and his sergeant scrambled to undo the door's simple but effective lock and jerk the door open.
Instantly cloaked figures were sprinting through, bloodied weapons held ready. Instead of engaging the thronging primiad on the perimeter, they turned and ran to the main gate where they began pulling aside the timbers that both braced and kept the gates shut.
Seeing that, Kelly's eyes flew wide.
"Wait!" he cried. "Don't do that! We're not ready ..."
But it was already done. Quickly the cloaked figures stepped back as the gates began to swing open, pushed from outside. Instinctively the elf braced for the wave of primiad he expected to come flooding through.
However, instead of the wiry forms of their now familiar enemy, there came the massive, furred giants that, by van Joss's own description, could only be Ursa.
Singing battle hymns of some sort in their complex, alien language with voices that sounded like runaway avalanches, the giant Fisted swung swords as long as an elf was tall, clearing vast swaths through the clustered primiad soldiers with each pass. Virtually helpless against that kind of power, the primiad troops quickly fell back or were cut down where they stood.
Until, in the space of a few moments, the handful of giants that had come through had cleared a broad corridor connecting the two main gates, which were staggered in position to maximize their defendability. They then turned their attention to the remaining enemy troops, half going in one direction and half the other.
"Move in behind the ursa soldiers," Kelly tautly directed. "Make sure no primiad gets through."
"Copy that, captain," his sergeant said before turning to the rest of the elvish company. "You heard the cap. Half of you go That way and make sure those blasted snake tails don't get by our heavies. The rest, you're with me!"
Uthon watched first the giant Fisted secure the gate then the elves split up to consolidate what the giants were retaking. A quick glance out the now open front gates showed another line of giants holding the front ranks of the horde back, the fur-covered titans joined by significantly shorter but still monumentally powerful Fisted with horns on their rectangular heads and wicked double bladed axes in their gauntleted hands.
"It would appear the courtyard is once again ours," Blacklock pointed out in a wry voice.
"So it would seem," Uthon agreed. "The question is: what do we do now?"
"I believe I can answer that for you, Master Uthon," a quiet voice said and the three of them turned towards it's cloaked and carefully limping source.
"Van Joss!" Longspear gasped, her voice heavy with incredulity. "You're still alive!"
"Appearances are deceiving, captain," van Joss dryly retorted. Then he was stepping past them to the secondary gate where he lifted a hand to deliver three sharp knocks.
Immediately the gates opened to show two full companies of heavily armed alliance troops, including lupus, tigris, pantor and ryon warriors. Each was grimly ready, already looking beyond van Joss's lean form to the front gate.
"Warriors of the alliance, are you ready to strike a blow that will change the course of this battle?" van Joss asked in a voice barely over a whisper. Somehow it managed to carry to the back of the column as every head swung towards him.
"We are ready!" the assembled companies roared in the trade language with one voice.
"Then to battle. Leave No monkey soldier alive!"
Like a damn breaking, the companies surged around van Joss at a full run, weapons at the ready. Then they were barreling past an astonished Uthon, Longspear and Blacklock before heading straight out the open gate. A few heart beats later, the air began to shudder from the furious sounds of renewed combat.
With the companies still streaming past him, van Joss let a slight smile touch his lips when the sound of fighting reached his ears.
"Now things should get interesting!" he said.