"Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain."
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Drummond stood with his group, pressed against the wall at the repaired breach, listing to the hushed whispers of Belleville March giving last minute orders. The young infantryman reviewed in his mind what he would do once over the wall. A last minute change in plans had their numbers swell from ten to twenty. Fifteen of them would engage whatever witchers were in their way and the other five would enter the keep and find the lab. Drummond would be in the former group.
The plan was to attack from both sides of the main keep. Lieutenant Grigar led thirty men from the opposite wall of the upper courtyard. The situation was very bleak for the people inside the fortress considering how badly outnumbered they were. Drummond felt a deep sense of despair, but held his course. He would fight with the witchers and at least die with integrity.
They heard an explosion from the front of the castle and saw the sky light up to the west of their position, shortly afterward, they heard their signal - two short blasts of a horn. Siege ladders were put in place and they began to stream over the wall and toward Drummond's destiny.
Micah was reading the children a story. Greta liked the small woman because she reminded her of her mother. The little girl curled into the doctor's lap, popped her thumb in her mouth and twirled a chesnut curl around her fingers. Tolly rambled around the laboratory, kicking at table legs and sighing hugely. The boy was overtired and sulky.
"Tolly, love, sit down with me here and listen to the story. Let's find out what happens to Princess Ariana." coaxed Micah gently.
"I don't want to find out about any dumb princess. I want to go fight the bad men with my papa." The boy's look was mulish and Micah sighed. "They need another sword fighter! Why do I have to stay down here?" His face was creased in angry lines.
"Sweetheart," coaxed the geneticist, "you are doing very well in your sword lessons, but you aren't ready to face an angry mob just yet. It's best we three stay out of the way so your papa and the other witchers can protect us."
Tolly was mutinous, stomping over to the wall by the doorway and sitting with his arms crossed over his knees and his head down. Micah thought the children needed to go to sleep, it was well past their bedtime, but they were as on edge as she was, knowing what the men faced outside.
It took some time, but she managed to get both Greta and Tolly to curl up together and rest on a pallet in her lab. But there was no rest for the little geneticist. She was too worried about the outcome of this fight. Sighing, she tried to focus on work, compiling data from her latest round of assays. She had proven her theory that dwarves, elves and humans were, in truth, the same species. She couldn't wait to tell Avallac'h.
Micah decided she would have to get some samples of a different sort from the witchers to determine why they were sterile. There were so many things that could go wrong in the human reproductive system, from hormonal imbalance to physical damage within the plumbing, any of which could have been disrupted during the Trial of the Grasses. Witchers didn't seem to suffer from a lack of libido, at least Arek didn't, and Micah's face held a secret smile at the thought. The fault for their sterility lay elsewhere.
She had lost herself in work for several hours, blocking out the world, when she felt the ground shudder and heard a muted explosion. Micah knew the bridge had been blown and the witch hunters had arrived. The children woke up with cries of alarm. Greta flew into Micah's arms, quivering and crying in fear. Five minutes later, they heard the roar of two more explosions. Small pebbles and dust rained down on them from the ancient fortress and Micah choked back the thought they might be buried alive.
"They're going to get us, Micah! They're going to get in and kill us!" The little girl began to panic. Micah had her hands full, soothing the frantic child and didn't watch Tolly as closely as she should have been. When her head was turned away, the sturdy five year old silently scampered out the door and headed for the stairs.
Letho waited till there was a decent sized crowd on the bridge before he dropped a dancing star bomb right where he had planned it beforehand, where it would cause a cascading reaction with the large barrels strapped under the bridge and blow it and everyone on it sky high. Half the stables would come crashing down, too. The explosion was fearsome, throwing a fireball high above the battlements of the donjon and raining ash and fragmented stone in all directions. The Viper had taken cover behind an embrasure, ducking his head down as the shock wave passed over him. The screams of the witch hunters filled his twisted soul with satisfaction as flames reflected off his gruesome smile. Ten men were tossed and incinerated in the massive fireball.
Screaming a reverberating battle cry, he picked up a barrel of Mahakaman Fire and hurled it down onto the road where witch hunters milled about in panic. The flames licking along the sere grass of the road immediately ignited the contents of the shattered barrel and the roadway became an incinerating death trap. Letho bounded to the waiting scorpion, taking aim at the retreating combatants fleeing from the blazing roadway and letting loose one swift bolt equipped with a flaming cocktail strapped to it. Several more of the enemy were engulfed in fire as they retreated.
Along the battlements between Letho and Vesemir the tops of four siege ladders appeared. Vesemir poured oil down on the marauders swarming up one ladder and shot a steady stream of igni to roast them alive. Letho kicked another ladder away from the wall and sent it reeling drunkenly with a powerful blast of aard. He skewered the top most witch hunter reaching for the edge of the parapet from a third ladder as he did so. Suddenly, he felt a crossbow bolt hit him in the left shoulder, then another sprouted from his left thigh, sending him reeling back toward the crumbled edge of the curtainwall. He saw vesemir double over with a bolt in his gut.
Both witchers jumped down into the lower practice yard, away from the archers. Vesemir was breathing heavy , trying to yank the crossbow bolt from his gut, when Letho came to assist him. They heard the sound of a horn twice as they came together, knowing the enemy was about to overrun their position.
"Ready, old man?" Growled the Viper.
"Just do it, already. They're swarming over the wall." Gasped Vesemir. He grunted when the big witcher yanked bolt out of his abdomen, then swigged a dose of swallow. Twirling his sword he turned to face the gathering crowd of witch hunters who lined the parapets of the curtain wall before them. Letho pulled the bolt out of his leg and then his arm and prepared another dancing star bomb and waited for a few more men to top the battlement. He wanted to take out as many as possible with one blow. The sound of another blast from the upper practice yard ricocheted off stone walls as the big man tossed his bomb and watched the western curtain wall disintegrate under the witch hunters standing there as ten casks of Mahakaman fire erupted.
"Hell and damnation!" Cursed Eskel as he and Arek fought back to back with the witch hunters and Redanian soldiers pouring over the wall. They had dropped their Mahakaman Fire and burned a good portion of the invaders to cinders, but more still came. The scarred witcher was using a lot of stamina to deflect crossbow bolts from himself and the Manticore he fought beside. Thrust, parry, slash, counter strike, parry! The witchers' blades thrummed in the cold night air like hummingbird wings, the song counterpointed every so often with the dying cries of foolish men. If the enemy had only come at them with swords, this would be a simple matter of clean up, but the ploughing bastards had ten crossbowmen stationing themselves on the walls now. Eskel knew his signs were strong and he could keep them up for a while, but he was starting to feel the drain.
The Manticore whirled his blade and feinted at one opponent when another stabbed him under the arm, scoring fire along his triceps. He roared in rage and slung aard at the infantryman who had struck him. The soldier was blown off his feet and struggled to regain them when a witcher sword plunged into his breast, ending his life. More men swarmed into the upper practice yard as Arek and Eskel were surrounded by fifteen hunters. Another eight men wielded cross bows on the north-western section of the lower curtain wall where it joined with the inner curtain wall. If they could ignite those barrels stacked on the parapets, the two desperate men just might have a chance. Arek yelled at Eskel to throw a dancing star as a horn sounded from somewhere in the distance.
Hoping his aim was true, the scarred witcher tossed his grenade then swiftly raised quen shield around himself and his companion again. The bomb detonated the barrels piled on the parapet and flames engulfed the archers stationed there. The playing field was leveled and the witchers now stood than a fighting chance of surviving.
The sound of two short blasts on a horn rattled in the air over the clanging steel of battle just after echos of the bridge demolition faded into the night air. Kozin prowled the battlements of the inner curtain wall. He was just about to leap down and help Eskel and Arek when his sensitive hearing picked out the two short blasts of a horn. A shout from behind him at Savola's Breach alerted him to the danger there. As he lept down from the parapet and ran toward the breach, he felt the concussion of the blast from the upper practice yard as it thumped against stone, followed shortly by another blast from the lower practice yard.
'DAMN witch hunters,' thought the big Bear as he tore toward the repaired hole in the upper wall, hauling his dark metal blade from his back and growling his predator's cry. They poured over the broken scree that had been piled up prior to the battle with the wild hunt, flowing into the side yard of the main keep. For a span of heartbeats, the witcher and the Redanian infantry soldiers stared at each other.
"Well what are ye waitin' for, boyos?" Roared the big Bear, "Let's dance! I'll whistle the tune and you can pay the piper with a witcher's mark!" Kozin's sneer was hideous.
His blade traced glittering trails as it arced in an intricate ballet around him. Fifteen men spread out to encircle the witcher, but five others split off from the crowd and headed to the keep.
Keira Metz held her spells until she knew they would do the most good. Standing on the upper battlements of the main keep, she could see the entire fight, and the sight of dozens of men pouring over the walls made her mouth go dry in fear. Vesemir and Letho were hard pressed, but holding their own, as were Eskel and Arek.
A series of explosions rocked the upper courtyard as the barrels of Mahakaman Fire were ignited from a witcher bomb tossed by Eskel. Keira dispassionately observed all but one of the crossbowmen screaming as they were engulfed in flames.
"I'll take care of you, witch hunter." she said aloud to herself as a single lightning bolt arced from her slender fingers to explode on contact with the man's head.
Another blast reverberated around the fortress, crumbling the curtain wall around the lower courtyard and burying the witch hunters who had stood upon it. The witchers were a sight to behold as they pushed themselves past their own physical limits to repel the invaders. Keira shivered in the night air as she watched. A horn sounded twice and she turned her head just in time to see a dark wave of men come over the wall at Savola's breach. There were about twenty of them who spread out in a circle around the enraged Bear who's massive Zweihänder cut deadly arcs before them.
Drawing off the power that hummed strongly from the land, the blond woman lifted her hands, creating a whirlwind around Kozin, shielding him from enemy swords while it lasted. She hoped it was enough. Jad Karadin was struggling with the large numbers of attackers streaming over the wall to the south.
They just kept coming! The Cat whirled and twisted as he dispatched man after man. Seeing on each countenance the face of Belleville March, Jad was pushed into an all consuming battle frenzy, desiring only to destroy his most hated enemy. He fought florentine, with two blades whirling in song about him in a beautiful and deadly choreography of death. Each stroke of his blade spoke to him of retribution for his Letty, each drop of blood he spilled was payment for a life stolen from her unjustly.
So intent was he on his foes, the Cat didn't spare attention for the blasts rocking the lower or upper practice yard, nor did he pay heed to the sounding of a horn near him. For all his prowess and primal rage, Karadin was overrun by the enemy and found himself pressed against the inner curtain wall desperately fighting for his life. For every one man he dispatched, two more took their place. Suddenly, half the hunters surrounding him were flung vertically into the air, then driven back to the ground with such force Karadin could hear their bones splinter. Jad saluted Keira Metz and then whirled to parry an incoming hit and ignite his foes with a sustained stream of igni.
Lambert prowled in the great hall, frustrated that he couldn't be with his fellow witchers. He heard the bridge go up in a great blast as old plaster and pebbles rained down from the shaken keep. A few minutes later, two more blasts rocked the old, crumbling structure. For all Lambert complained about Kaer Morhen, he didn't fancy it all coming down on top of him.
He heard the front door creak open and saw five men stride into the hall, led by a tall witch hunter with a fresh scar on his face.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" Sneered the scarred witch hunter, a malevolent gleam in his eye as he surveyed the lone, injured witcher standing between him and his prize. "This will be easier than I thought it would be. Soon, all of you will be dead, you know. Might as well lay down that sword and accept your fate, you mutant freak."
Lambert snorted in derision. "Fuck you, too." He mocked as he drew his sword and twirled it in anticipation. He kept his stance low and balanced, compensating for his injured left side as he contemplated his strategy. He had limited use of his left hand, but he should be able to at least cast a respectable quen shield on himself. He drew arcs in the air with his blade, knowing the darkness of the keep was a liability to his enemy while he could see them clearly.
They flew at him as a group, four surrounding him at the command of the scarred man, and the young witcher lept to the brawl with a scream of challenge. Lambert parried the first of the four as their blade crashed down in a sweeping slice, then pirouetted away and thrust at the second, relishing the man's gurgled cry as his witcher's steel bit into the soft throat of his opponent. Twirling, he parried the thrust of a third man as he felt the blow of the fourth land across his shoulders. The young witcher cried in rage and pain as he flipped his blade in his hand, sank onto his back leg and thrust the wicked point through the man to his rear.
"Who's next? Come on you fucking bastards! Show me what you got. I don't have all day!"
Lambert moved in a lightning burst of speed and dispatched the third witch hunter, then turned to face the fourth as he heard the booted feet of several more race into the hall.
Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has been reading The Last Manticore. Currently, the early chapters are getting some much needed editing to improve their flow, grammar, spelling and readability. As for the story thus far … I'm glad you are enjoying the it! Sorry this chapter took longer to post than the previous ones have. This battle is very complex and I've a lot of points of view to consider. Please leave reviews and let me know how you like it :)