Chapter 4
Takar stood at the forward battlements of the fortress, unease creasing across his face and his hands in his pockets to hide their subtle shaking. The men around him were all seasoned fighters, having served in prior battles and seen friends and enemies die around them. They knew the smell and taste of blood and fear and they knew their leader was scared.
Ever since the scout had died in a green fire in the main hall and the soldiers had been called to battle stations and the main gate closed, a thick mist descended around the fortress like a drifting moat. Even the night's full moon could not penetrate it. The haze beyond the main gate's plateau played on everybody's imagination. As much as camaraderie helped settle the men into a shaky bravado, stories of what was thought to come seemed to negate it.
Takar pulled his hand out of his pocket and fiddled with the straps of his plated leather vest. He hated wearing bulky armour, but military doctrine dictated he wear something to protect against arrow fire, even if he doubted any was forthcoming.
The station commander meandered through a small sea of metal bodies, muttering curses as he pushed through to report in. The men moved out of the way as best they could. They respected him as much as they cared too, thankful that whilst he commanded from the safety of the rear, he worked the archers harder than the footmen, thus lessening the chance of troop loss. They thought him considerate and smart in the art of war. Those closer to him suspected it had more to do with a low opinion of the footmen.
Finally he finished threading through the crowd and bowed curtly before Takar who acknowledged him with a nod.
"Archers are ready, milord. Every man is at his post."
"Thank you. Dismissed." Takar grunted, still staring out into the fog.
It refused to shift, dancing around amongst itself so thickly that individual droplets of water could be seen glistening in the moonlight. The grounds surrounding the fortress were long ago thin forest and shrubbery, but they were routinely cut down and cleared to ensure visibility in all directions for hundred of metres. Sentries in the towers monitored the grounds night and day. But Takar stood quietly fuming as the line of sight was now reduced to a fraction of what it used to be. The pale light was swallowed by the fog barely 20 metres from the walls, almost uniformly in every direction. The exactness of the fog did not go unnoticed with Takar, heavily suspecting it was not natural. He tried to sense some sort of magical field manipulating the wind and humidity, but frustratingly he found none.
Although he was educated and trained as a priest and magician, he knew enough of war tactics to see the obvious disadvantage should an assault take place.
Takar could hear the nearer men around him talking to themselves, muttering small curses, doubts and prayers. He turned his thoughts behind, towards the civilians in the township and remembered that several of the men had brought their families with them whilst they fulfilled their detachment. He wasn't sure whether this would turn those men to jelly or strengthen their resolve.
Turning around, he stared out towards the mist again and the noiseless night. No birds, no calls of distant dogs, not even any wind. Deathly still.
Takar turned and looked over the small army around him and looked for someone. He had seen him before, a young boy recently drafted into service for petty theft who barely had enough meat on his bones to wear his armour and not fall to the floor under the weight. Let alone carry and wield a sword.
Quickly his eyes found him and he smirked to see the boy standing a foot shorter than the men next to him and leaning on his sword like a beggar's stick. Their eyes met, and the youth's eyes widened with fear beneath the fringe of his ginger hair.
"You. Boy." Takar pointed at him and all turned to stare at him. The boy wilted and seemed to withdraw into his armour like a turtle. "Grab a torch and march out into that fog."
The young boy, nervous as he was almost fainted and turned milk white. His hands shook and his sword fell with a clang onto the boards. The men around him continued to stare at him, with a mixture of pity in their eyes and thankfulness that it wasn't them.
Takar's finger hadn't moved and neither had the boy. "Move!" Takar shouted, causing the young man to jolt out of his stilted shock and back away towards the stairs.
No one moved other than to watch the youth stumble down and across the yard, grabbing a sconce towards the gate. There was no sound besides the uneven clomp of his boots on the packed ground. Even his laboured gasping breaths could be heard.
Takar felt like shouting at him again to hurry up, but doubted it would help, rather that it would scare the boy further and cause him to flee into town. Mutiny was the last thing Takar needed now, so he waited patiently even as his teeth grinded. Finally, the boy reached the main gate to find it had already been opened slightly for him. The boy stared at it like he was a mouse about to step into the jaws of a snake and his feet froze again, but a swat from the gate captain sent his through. The boy yelped and nearly dropped the sconce as the gate shut behind him, strangely giving off an echo in the empty night air.
The men that smiled previously now couldn't help but feel sorry for the young one as they watched the small glow of the scone flicker back and forth in his shaking hands. Step by slow step he walked out towards the fog.
"I don not see nuthin. Can I come back now?" his small voice squeaked.
"Into the fog!" Takar shouted back.
But the boy wouldn't move.
"Move that little arse before I flay it off in the gallows!" the station commander shouted, causing the boy to flinch and stumble forward. The commander smiled to himself as he watch his young ward continue ever closer, bathing in the private accomplishment that the boy feared him more than Takar, but forgot it as the boy finally approached the edge of fog. "Like the end of the world." He thought to himself.
The boy lingered, unable to penetrate the wall. No one spoke or yelled at him, hanging on the silence and willing him to reach in. He turned, looking back at the fortress and seeing not people, but only helmets shining over the wall. No eyes.
No one to save him.
And so they all watched as the dejected lad, seemingly accepting whatever fate was to come his way, turn back to the mist and take a deliberate step into it. Expecting to see him slowly melt into the haze, instead they glimpsed a dark hand dart out, grab him by the neck and yank him inside into the darkness like a doll. The men gasped as they heard the youth's terrified screams reach into the night and die in a gurgling choke.
"Hold fast!" Takar shouted.
Then the fog lifted as though a great wind blew it away and he saw an army of ragged humanoid bodies standing in formation around the fortress where the fog had been. Broken, twisted and gnarled, they look up at him and those around him with dull eyes, shining white like the moon.
Rank on rank they stood, tens deep and perfectly still.
There were thousands of them.
Then they moved, pressing forward like a sea of insects, crashing into the castle walls and the gates before anyone had a mind to react, paralysed by shock and fear.
Takar pulled himself out the stunned trance and began shouting for the archers to rain arrows down on the throng. But even as he began calling everyone to arms, he could hear his men dying and the scream of bending steel as the main portcullis already began to buckle.
Arrows dived into the mass and were swallowed up without any noticeable effect. No one could see any bodies drop to the ground in death. The men at the main gate grappled frantically with the group that rushed the gate and stabbed through the portcullis openings, unsure what they were attacking.
The enemy attacked ferociously, pushing with such force and fury that individual enemies were soon pushed aside and replaced by others, disorientating the defenders.
"Oil!"
Takar shouted and the oil crews quickly cut the ropes to the pots that hung suspended at the edge of the walls. One by one they rained down burning hot liquid onto the sea of monsters, but there were none of the screams they were accustomed to hearing and none of the horde backed away in fear or agony.
Takar grunted with frustration and stepped forward to the edge of the wall. He looked down into the scrum and saw an endless swirling mix of bodies, all pushing towards the main gate and paying no heed to the archers above. They were mindless, determined.
He turned his eyes to the fighting at the gate and watched as a man stabbed through the portcullis, but his arm was latched onto and torn clean from his shoulder. The nearest of the monsters clamoured for the grisly prize and they fought amongst each other for it, snapping at it like dogs. The others attacked with renewed vigour.
Takar saw then the enemy. He knew what they were dealing with.
The undead.
Perpetually hungry for living flesh, they were once living men, women and even children that were reanimated back to non-life.
They had only ever been the subject of fanciful and horrible stories amongst warriors and children. Sightings of or contact with the undead had only been sporadically recorded back in the Great Library. The last account was a nearly illegible scribble hundreds of years old that was thought no more than a campfire tale.
But here they were now, by the thousands and threatening to overrun the fortress. Men, women and children would die horribly if he didn't act.
And then he saw the glisten of the oil still sizzling from below and closed his eyes.
He thought of Ser Dolton who had succumbed to a plague on the last trip from the Old World and his body burning away in the funeral pyre upon his eventual death. He chanted the necessary words and felt the tightening in his right arm coursing down to his fingertips, cracking and contorting through the bone. It always hurt so. The life of a magician was one of pain during the magic's gathering and bliss upon it's release which he felt now as he thrust his hand forward.
A shower of magical fire lit the night and fell upon the undead army. Quickly the flame met the oiled bodies and came alive as it raced from one to the next like a writhing snake. In only the shortest of moments, the flame turned into a pyre and then a firestorm, consuming the undead by the tens and then hundreds as the soldiers were forced back from the heat.
They stood within the safety of the castle defences and watched them burn, writhing in pain. The respite was sorely welcome, but no man could turn his eyes away. No man could block his ears from the horrible screams of the dead dying. It soured any chance of hearing a rallying cry in celebration of their enemy's destruction.
The fire continued to spread and roared like a wild beast. Takar couldn't see the army below through the flames, but heard an alarming cry from the soldiers next to him who recoiled as the flames shot up and took hold of the wooden boards by the battlements. The soldiers scattered and panicked as one soldier was consumed by the flames and roasted alive in his metal armour. His flesh dripped of his bones like caramel.
Takar pushed through the crowd, hearing the station commander yelling at the troops to hold their formation. Concentrating and withdrawing inside himself again, he uttered the necessary words silently, focusing his mind and felt the pain of another spell clutch at his heart. Fighting through the pain, he channelled it down through his shoulder, down his arm to his fist and let the bolt of energy release upon the dancing flames. A sharp gust of wind battered the boards, instantly killing the fire and shoving much of the weakened floor down to the ground below.
Even as the bliss of the magic receded and the men gathered their wits, other flames sprouted up in similar fashion, spilling over the battlements and into the castle. Already, the flames had wafted over in six separate places, engulfing his troops.
"This isn't right." He muttered and felt the pulse of another's magic buffeting against his being. Another magician was out there turning his spell against him. He should have known this would happen. Whoever had created the fog was doing this, he reasoned. Angry at himself, he sought to push the flames back again and challenge this unseen power, but the flames were too widespread and racing towards him.
The ranks broke as the men saw they were undone and pushed and shoved to retreat within the city. Takar was knocked down by the stampede, but quickly gathered himself and looked for the commander, but he was nowhere to be seen either. The castle walls were aflame and undefended. He looked for the portcullis and found it broken open with flames spilling through into the square below.
Gulping down the hot air, fearful he might faint, he joined the disorganised retreat.
The castle was lost.
But I am not, he reasoned and sought to cast another spell. He knew he was overexerting himself, but he had no choice. He would have liked time to rest and calm his mind better, but forced his will onto the new spell and worked through the pain as it grew exponentially in his chest.
It was difficult, both to ignore the pain and the danger of the racing fire behind him, but he revelled in it knowing his life was depending on this spell more than any other. All too quickly, the spell was formed and waiting in his hand and he flicked his fingers with deliberate delicacy.
With a sudden flash of blue light, Takar disappeared from the burning wall and reappeared at the castle docks. Teleportation only worked properly when a specific place had been marked out previously in his mind, and he marked the docks as soon as he arrived at the Old World two weeks ago in case escape was needed. Lurching about on the jetty, he steadied himself against a wooden pylon and waited for the nausea to ride itself out.
Finally it dissipated and found himself alone and the city behind him bathed in an orange from the coming fire at the walls. The screams of the fear crazed town civilians and soldiers meandered down through the salty sea air with a profound sadness that Takar did not feel.
Instead he was angry.
He had come here seeking riches, favour and glory. Instead it had been a disastrous failure. All was lost, even the fortress that had stood proud and strong for nearly a hundred years. A symbol of man's spirit of adventure and yearning to conquer and explore and he was responsible for its destruction.
Despondent, he went about untying the moorings and stepped up the plank to the deck of his ship.
"Milord! What is happening?" One of the deckhands asked, panic in his eyes and those of the rest of the crew behind him. They were mercenaries, one and all, loyalty purchased with the king's gold. Nevertheless, they were the most experienced at traversing the North Sea to the Old World and had a canny knack for survival.
Hence I find them here, already on board. Takar couldn't help but smile at the dumbfounded crew. "Push off and make for home at once, Lorader."
"But the townsfolk, the soldiers-."
"Are lost." Takar cut him off and swept his eyes over the stunned crew with fury in his eyes. "Get to it, or I'll boil the brains right out of your thick heads right now!"
As street smart and experienced as the men were, magicians were never ones to be trifled with as far as they were concerned, and despite their own misgivings, they set about setting sail and disembarking.
Quickly the ship drifted out towards the mouth of the bay and the castle pulled away. However, they were all close enough to see the crowd of people that were gathered too late at the docks and their desperate cries as they were left to die, whether by fire or otherwise.
The crew couldn't help but look back at them with honest sadness and low hearts. Takar kept his eyes south towards Duht's Castle, already thinking of how he was going to explain himself to the king.
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