The fall of imbuthara

2. the fall of Imbuthara (pelude) part II

He ran to join the ranks of his comrades that were now starting to line the wall. "What could be the purpose of them just running for the wall like this?" he heard somebody ask. He was inclined to agree. They'll just break their skulls on the wall, like a wave on the rocks. He came to a halt between two crenellations, and realized that this was the spot where he could very possibly die this evening. The thought gave a new, strange meaning to the details on the stone surrounding him. A hundred and fifty more feet and the first Dorzar would have reached the wall. Around him, he heard the stumbling of soldiers taking position and officers screaming just to be doing something. Most men were quietly steeling themselves, but a few were giving nervous commentary. "How many of those things are there?" "Those dogs must fuck like rabbits." "Thousands of them...and god knows how many lizards."

Nobody responded to any of the comments. The smell of fear that mixed with the rotten wafts that scaled the wall ahead of the creatures was response enough. It wasn't that the arrows from the towers weren't taking their toll among them. Tens, maybe hundreds of Dorzar and over a dozen lizards lay sprawled on the field already, and the arrows kept whittling away more amongst their ranks. The advance seemed like a senseless act of desperation. There was a complete disregard for the losses they took. As soon as one of the Dorzar fell, he was dodged by the others, and trampled by the lizards. The lizards that had fallen themselves became as boulders in a stream of bodies.

A gush of heat whizzing past his head reminded him that arrows were also being shot at the city, and he ducked behind the portcullis. Be- side him a man clutched his chest and toppled right over the wall. The bow he had been shooting with bounced off the tiles. Inra picked up the bow himself and knocked an arrow from the buckler lying on the stones.

He forced himself to take a slow, deep breath. "Desperate times, call for desperate measures." He had never been good at convincing himself.
Once again he searched his body. He increased his heartbeat, made a few minor adjustments in the blood flow and almost vomited from the instant nausea that overwhelmed him. It was very dangerous to tinker with one's body if one did not fully understand it. But the adjustments had served their purpose. With eyes as sharp as they had ever been, even sharper, he could now clearly discern all the separate Dorzar. He could even discern the red gleaming of their eyes. The clouds of their foul breath streaming behind them. As he pointed the arrow, he felt his arms were steady, and his aim was true.

By the time his first arrow pinned an opponent to the ground, the Dorzar were upon the wall. "No, no, it can't be". The moment his second arrow found its mark Inra looked to his right at the man speaking. A young man, half a boy really. Perhaps only twenty years old. He wondered if his son would look like that if, -when!- he grew up. Tall and wide, brown hair just like that. Only his eyes would be brown, not blue. The eyes of his mother he had. Knowing pools of pure kindness. Shifting his focus again he saw the reason for the boy's astonishment. On the protruding walls of the towers, that bulged out like horseshoes, he could clearly discern the lizards crawling up the wall with Dorzar on their backs. So much for breaking their skulls on the base of the wall.

It seemed impossible, yet he felt the slight tremors the lizards were sending through the walls under their ascend upwards. How on earth can those beasts find a hold? The walls are neigh on seamless. All the while the towers kept sending hails of arrows at the approaching beasts. Inra didn't waste his arrows on the ones climbing the walls. There were other means to deal with them. Kettles of oil were being emptied. Thank Lo they have bothered to boil the oil this night. Howls of agony and snakelike hisses mingled with the roaring of battle, and Inra couldn't help but shiver. He couldn't see what happened at the bottom of the wall, but knew that lizards and Dorzar met a terrible end in pools of boiling oil. He heard the young man next to him vomit.

The sounds were stronger in his ears now. A mingling mass of pure horror. Bow strings twanged, oil gushed and hissed, and Dorzar, lizards and men were felled. For every lizard dropping from the walls, two more crawled up. Through his feet, he felt the tremors of the wall steadily increasing. A steady booming started to emanate from in front of the gate. He hadn't even noticed they had brought in storm rams. Wait, that wasn't logical. Dorzar didn't use things like storm rams. Well, whatever it was, hopefully the gates held. As Inra watched one of his arrows bury itself in the eye of a lizard, he started to cough. He felt some of the spittle settle on his chin. He ignored it for the moment and watched in grim sat- isfaction as the lizard deviated from its course and plowed sideways into the ranks of his comrades.

Another lizard grabbed it by the nape of its neck and violently shook its head to the side, snapping the neck. The lizard went limp and dropped to ground, where its tail made some final spasms. He wiped the spittle away with his hand, but was alarmed when he saw blood on the back of his hand. He had made a mess of his body. Wion'dair would have given him a good chewing out if he had known. Have I gone too far? It doesn't matter. If we fail now, everything is lost anyway.

The lizards and Dorzar were at this point forming a seething mass in front of the wall, seemingly undiminished by the arrows landing amongst their ranks. Too few arrows, to Inra's liking. Cursed retrenchments. One lizard, not one Dorzar left on his back managed to top the tower on the left despite the many arrows in its body, and a terrible screaming emerged from behind its crenelations. Soon, no more arrows descended from up there, and Inra saw a captain hastily leading a squad inside to retake the tower. But already another lizard topped it. They were down to their last line of defense before the wall itself would de- volve into a hell of pitted battles. He looked up at the tower to his right and saw the blue light building. Any moment now. A pulsating orb was steadily growing in size. Will it be enough? The orb started to produce a crackling sound, like the burning of a fire. The city's defenders only had one chance to do this right.

The sound changed to a high-pitched whistle, and suddenly the orb exploded in a wall of blue fire that arched downward like a wave. Inra ducked behind his portcullis. A sizzling, and crackling erupted behind his back, drowning out the agonized yelping and hissing of the monsters that were still able to make sound, and Inra could feel cracks occur in the very wall. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the fire vanished. As he knocked his last arrow he wheeled back from behind the portcullis, and got a look at the devastation wrought by the fire. He saw in dismay how the first fifteen feet in front of the wall, were now a black mass of mingled corpses. The wails and hisses of the wounded outside of this annihilation zone brought tears to his eyes.

It was hard to believe that any creature could deserve such a faith, but he didn't feel sorry for them. The real reason he felt tears building, was that he knew this wasn't enough. The fire should have cleared the walls for a good fifty feet, and left the survivors crawling back to the holes from whence they came. The defense had somehow been terribly weakened. After the initial shock, the remaining creatures attacked with increased vigor. Vile curses in a language he did not understand rang in his ears. He shot his last arrow into a terribly burned Dorzar that was trying to crawl away right before he was trampled by his comrades.

He unsheathed his sword, and waited. In the calm before the inevitable storm he felt new tremors building and rippling through the wall. The damage done to the wall allowed the lizards to climb faster than before. In mere moments, some twenty feet to his left the first lizard climbed over the crenellations. The men beside him yelled as much courage into their bodies as they could and attacked the creature. Swords flashed and long spears stabbed. The lizard caught one sword arm in its mouth, and hurled the man over the wall. Inra got one look at the face of the man, contorted in horror as it was. The next moment, the man was gone and all that could be heard was a fading, high-pitched scream.