The Deserter

The cool wind brought the scent of ash and fear, and I could feel it even through the plates of my helm. That smell mingled with the stench of sewage, sweat, and rotting flesh that hung over the siege camp. Dawn was about to break shortly.

I lay by the heavy, clay-coated wheel of the ram. Sleep had returned lightness to my body and the necessary clarity to my head. Over seven days of grueling drill in the Cesspool, the whip scars had scabbed over, and the ordinary camp slop brought from the rear supply train the previous evening had restored my strength. I was ready to haul this multi-ton brute toward the gates of the white castle.

Nearby in the dark, Ol was checking the tension of the ropes from which the assault battering log was suspended. We had greased the axles thickly, and the triple layer of raw hides beneath liquid clay on the roof guaranteed protection against any fire from the walls—my previous experience with mechanisms had helped bring the design to fruition.

“Our brute will run like clockwork, Mel,” Ol said, adjusting the heavy cleaver behind his belt. “The weight of this bitch will carry us forward on its own. The main thing is to hold our step at the first strike of the beam.”

Urg, who sat slightly behind and gripped the hilt of his trench knife with his right hand, grunted:

“Let them pray to their gods. Gaap forgives no mistakes. At dawn, a rift will tear open here so fiercely that this white marble will crack on its own.”

Over the breastwork, Sergeant Typh’s sharp roar cut through the air:

“Convicts, to the cables! Lord Gaap is emerging from the rift!”

The air in the rear of the camp snapped with a dry crack. The crimson umbilical cord of a gargantuan portal began to swell, tearing through the predawn mist with an oily glow. The earth beneath our boots trembled.

Lord-Demon Gaap—a name I did not dare utter aloud without a shiver—stepped from the portal. Why was he here? Why would a ruler participate in an assault? The human captives babbled about some relic, about a strategically vital pass. I believed otherwise: our master simply craved blood, and the castle stood in his path.

From the pale mist of the hollow, where the Fourth and Fifth cohorts of the line infantry were already closing their wall of shields, a dry clatter of bone echoed. The Archlich’s necromancers were finishing the deployment of level ranks of skeletons straight into the muddy mire. I stared into this scrambling army and rejoiced that the art of necromancy had been summoned to reinforce our legion, gathering entire hordes of skeletons from the surrounding graveyards; these silent warriors now stood in the vanguard, ready to be the first to take the defenders’ blow.

That meant we would be in the second wave, not the first. There was a chance to survive.

The portal spat Lord Gaap out along with a gale of suffocating, sulfurous heat that scattered the morning chill of Westerland for a second. His colossal silhouette seemed a dark rift in reality itself.

When the master’s figure froze at the crest of the hill, ten thousand throats of the Eighth Legion exhaled a single, deafening roar that made the castle walls shudder. This cohesive legionnaire shout, full of blind loyalty and fury, completely drowned out the mournful chanting of the human priests upon the walls. The infantry slammed their swords against their shields with a crash, hailing their ruler.

The Legion Commander, Nekaael, instantly flew up the hill and took his place to the right of Gaap, demonstrating absolute readiness to execute any command.

“Look at the dome, Mel,” Urg called out low, pointing his trench knife upward.

The azure shield of holy magic above the Bastion of Light reacted to Gaap’s appearance instantly. The light above the ditch turned denser; short, blinding sparks began to snap from within it, vanishing into the mud with a hiss. Along the castle’s march galleries, white gowns flickered—the paladins’ priests intensified their prayer.

“Too early to rejoice,” Ol threw out gloomily, leaning his shoulder against our ram’s frame and checking if the guide tracks had warped from the trembling of the earth. “Skeletons are just a living shield for arrows. They’ll take the first volley, but you won’t smash gates with them.”

A colossal horn roared over the legion, and that trumpeting sound shattered the predawn sky. The signal for the attack was caught across the entire perimeter of the camp.

“Assault!” the leaf-captains led out frantically. “Forward!”

And at that very second, the boundless sea of skeletons standing in the vanguard moved. Hordes of silent dead poured forward in an unceasing, eerie torrent. The paladins from the walls unleashed an avalanche of arrows and stones upon them, but this bony cloud could not be stopped. The first ranks of the dead fell by the hundreds into the deep forward ditches, but the next marched straight over them. Within minutes, the ditches were packed to the brim with corpses and bone, turning into level, trampled bridges.

Following the vanguard, under the cover of the line infantry’s tower shields, thousands of convicts rushed toward the walls. The air filled with a clatter, screams, and the ring of iron. Along the entire perimeter of the Bastion of Light, hundreds of heavy assault ladders pressed against the white marble with a thud. Demons climbed upward in an endless flow, tore downward from strikes of holy flame, and died, but new ones took their place. The castle defenders scrambled desperately across the parapets, binding themselves in close quarters combat and losing control over the base of the fortress.

“Company, march! Drive the wheels into the mud!” Sergeant Typh’s straining roar cut through the infernal din. “Go!”

Our ram rolled forward as part of an entire battery of wagons, forcing its way through the smoke and the splashes of the azure dome. The triple layer of raw hides on the roof hissed from droplets of boiling oil flying from above, but the oak frame held the blow. We moved dead in the center of this madness, shoving the heavy frames straight over the skeletal flooring of the packed ditches. Around us, the infantry was already hacking away at the top of the ladders, drawing all the forces of the garrison onto themselves.

“Faster!” Typh yelled, goading us with his whip.

An onslaught of human magic crashed onto our ram from above.

Liquid flame poured from the gatehouse parapet in a blindingly white river, punching through the ram’s protective dome dead in the center. The clay and hides could not withstand such concentrated pressure. Heated to a ring, the upper oak timber snapped in the middle with a dry crack, and a jet of incandescent holy fire sprayed inside the ram’s compartment, straight onto the central guide ropes.

Ol, standing closest to the breach, reacted instantly. Instead of flinching away, he stepped forward, attempting to shield the tarred rigging that held the battering log from the fire with his own body.

“Mel, hold the cable!” he managed to wheeze.

In the next second, the jet of white flame struck him straight in the chest. The convict’s protective leather jack charred instantly and came off in flakes. Ol didn’t even scream—he only growled hollowly, his fingers charred to the bone gripping the guide frame with a death grip, holding its weight with his bull strength before the cable burned through completely. The holy magic burned him from the inside with terrifying speed: the demon’s eyes burst, turning into white drops, and the horns on his head began to crumble from the monstrous heat.

He stood like a charred basalt pillar for another three seconds, keeping the log from tearing free of its rigging and crushing our entire crew. Then his knees buckled, and Ol’s heavy, smoking body crashed face-first, straight under the heavy iron-rimmed wheels of the moving ram. The wagon jolted violently, the axles roaring for a second from the additional weight, but the momentum of the accelerated monster dragged us further over his remains.

“Ol!” I lunged forward, but Urg’s heavy hand slammed flat into my shoulder, wrenching me back.

“Catch the cable, fool! There is no road back!” the veteran roared, catching the tongue with his left hand.

Sergeant Typh, forcing his way through a gap in the side boarding, didn’t even glance at the spot where our comrade had just stood. His bloodied whip wrapped around the surviving right suspension with a crack.

“Don’t sleep, dead men!” the sergeant barked as he frantically kicked the frame. “The gates are right in front of your nose! For Ol, for the Legion—swing it!”

Right before us, barely three meters away, the gargantuan, steel-bound panels of the gates loomed out of the shroud of violet smoke. The defenders above were completely tied up in hand-to-hand combat with the infantry climbing the ladders, and we were in an absolute blind spot. I gripped the hot cable that reeked of scorched leather, planted my boots into the shattered bones beneath my feet, and pulled the log back along with Urg and the remnants of the crew to prepare for the first strike.

Unexpectedly, the front right wheel dropped down with a dry, thunderous snap. The castle defenders had calculated this move in advance: they had dug a hidden trap exactly in the blind spot where our assault vector pressed. The heavy multi-ton wagon didn’t flip, but it tilted sideways sharply with a grind, wedging fast half a meter from the iron-bound panels of the gates.

The rotten boards and thin layer of sand that shielded the pit flew into splinters beneath the colossal weight of the ram. A thick, suffocating stench of naphtha instantly wafted from the breach. A second of contact with the holy flame smoldering on the roof was enough to turn the trap into a literal hell.

It flared so intensely that the air around us turned crimson in a single moment. Black, boiling naphtha poured from the pit, flooding the lower carriages and wheels. The fire crawled upward along the timber beams of the frame instantly. Inside the turtle shell of the ram’s shroud, a wild, uncontrollable panic broke out. The surviving convicts of the penal company, cut off by a wall of fire, screamed frantically. Demons burned alive: the flame devoured their gray smocks, ate into their skin, and melted their harnesses. Maddened by pain, the expendables dropped the cables and plunged one by one straight into the blazing mire beneath their feet, turning into living torches.

“Back! Roll out of the compartment!” Urg roared, drowning out the general din and the crackling of the burning oak.

He yanked me by the collar with his lone healthy hand and dragged me outward with force, through the warped left board that the burning naphtha had not yet managed to lick. We crashed into the muddy gate mire, breathing heavily and coughing from the acrid black smoke. Our ram, without managing to deliver a single strike, crackled and collapsed onto its right side, directly in the paladins’ fire trap.

A whistle echoed overhead, and a bolt drove into the earth before me, sinking deep into the mud. I clenched my teeth, feeling the heat even through my helm. I swerved left sharply, toward where the assault ladders already stood braced against the wall. Demons scrambled up them like ants, and they were immediately hurled downward, hacked with swords, or speared.

“The ladder! Get on this one!” Typh roared, cracking his whip toward an open stretch of the wall.

I rushed there, shoving a hesitating imp aside. I gripped the wooden rung, feeling it tremble from the strain and the jolts, and climbed up. Raising my gaze, I saw the face of a human—young, pale from fear, but gripping a spear with both hands. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second. The human swung. By reflex, I raised my shield, but the blow did not come from above. The human rammed the shaft of his spear straight into my chest.

The blow was heavy, unexpected. I lost my balance. My hands slipped from the rungs. I launched downward, tumbling through the air, and landed painfully on something soft and crunchy. Looking closer, I realized I had been saved from injury by the bodies of the demons from the vanguard company, lying in heaps against the walls. I was suffocating. My helm had flown from my head, and I saw a gray sky, and then—Urg’s figure plunging from the ladder.

“Urg!” was all I managed to breathe.

Urg crashed beside me, hitting the earth heavily. Arrows continued to whistle above us.

“How are you, kid?” Urg rasped, attempting to rise.

“Seen better days,” I squeezed out, swallowing the bitter saliva with difficulty and rising to my knees.

My head was buzzing, but my bones were intact. We were lucky—the “soft” flooring of dead bodies had saved us from fractures. Ten meters away from us, our ram was blazing, spreading a suffocating stench of naphtha. The fiery breach had completely blocked the passage to the northern gates, and the entire battery of wagons had ground to a halt.

Sergeant Typh’s bloodied whip launched above us again. He had survived this mess by a miracle; his gray smock was smoking, and his face was covered in someone else’s soot.

“On your feet, carrion!” he howled frantically, forcing his way toward us through the arrows falling from above. “There is no road back! That ladder, move! Back to the ladders!”

Urg leaned heavily on my arm. We didn’t argue and surged toward the same span of the wall where the heavy assault ladders still held. Hell bustled around us: the paladins poured boiling oil from above and threw down stones, but the avalanche of convicts did not diminish.

I climbed upward again, through the slick patches of blood on the wooden rungs. My helm remained below, and the cool wind of Westerland now bit straight into my face, mingling with the scent of ash.

Only three meters remained to the edge of the parapet when the azure dome of the castle’s holy magic snapped overhead with a terrifying crash. Lord Gaap on the hill had finally delivered his strike. The paladins on the walls swayed for a second from that flash; their priests broke off their prayer, choking on blood.

“Come on, Mel! Faster, before they recover!” Urg barked from below.

I made a furious lunge, straightened up on the last rung, and tumbled over the stone battlement of the parapet on the fly, smashing my shoulder into the knee of that very same young spearman who had thrown me down the first time. This time I had no shield, but I simply knocked him off his feet with my weight. We rolled across the white marble of the gallery.

“The gates!” Urg’s eyes widened. “They’re gone!”

In place of the gates, a solid hole yawned, filled with clouds of suffocating violet smoke. Gaap’s strike had not simply shattered the holy ones’ dome—it had literally vaporized the massive, iron-bound panels along with the gate archway. The basalt pillars that held the gates had turned into molten, smoking slag, lazily running down into the muddy gate mire.

This was the signal for the final assault. Lord Gaap’s main forces poured inside.

The human defenders standing on the parapets lost their primary anchor in a single moment. Stunned, half-blinded by the flash, the paladins abandoned their heavy fortress crossbows and looked back in panic at the smoking breach, into which the black ranks of the Eighth Legion’s infantry were already flowing in an unstoppable avalanche.

The young spearman I had knocked down a second earlier didn’t even attempt to rise. His weapon had flown aside, and he himself, pressing his back against a battlement turned white from the heat, watched with horror as Nekaael and his berserkers flooded the inner courtyard of the Bastion of Light with a victorious roar. The assault on the gates was finished in a single strike of the Master, and now the Legion only had to methodically purge the citadel.

The battle shifted from the impregnable walls onto the narrow streets of the castle. Our labor, in essence, was finished—the “meat” had distracted the defenders.

In the sky above us, through the veil of smoke, they appeared. Liches. Four hovering figures in decayed gowns, surrounded by an aura of frost light. These were not just rank-and-file sorcerers, but the high necromancers from the Lord’s personal entourage.

Icy fire poured onto the castle walls where humans still held out. The liches began their labor. They raised their hands, and bolts of necrotic energy and concentrated cold flame launched from their skeletal fingers, crashing down upon the knights holed up in the passageways. It was the perfect cover for our troops. Under this magical bombardment, the demons rushed into the breach of the gates.

“We need to go there!” Urg attempted to lean on his leg, which was injured after the fall from the wall, but immediately collapsed back into the mud. “There is glory there! Or at least an opportunity to survive in the crowd while they’re grinding the knights out!”

“Let’s go,” I said, extracting myself from a heap of mangled bodies and skeletons and helping Urg out into the light. “Can’t fall behind. There will be fewer arrows inside, but more close quarters combat. And plunder.”

Urg followed, limping. Along with a crowd of legionnaires, we crossed the plaza before the castle, which was littered with the bodies of the fallen, and squeezed through the yawning opening of the gates. The timber of the gates had vanished; twisted metal bands hung down like butcher’s hooks. The demons ahead were hacking away at the remnants of the defenders in the inner courtyard.

Chaos reigned inside the castle. Humans, caught flat-footed, attempted to form a defense or simply fled. The stables, where we headed, turned out to be empty. Only the scent of hay and manure, mixed with the acrid stench of battle, hit the nose.

“Empty! Not a single trinket!” Urg kicked a broken trough in frustration.

We were already preparing to leave when Typh’s massive figure emerged in the doorway. The commander was furious. His whip, woven from vertebrae, trailed against the stones.

“You slackers! What the hell are you holed up here for?!” he roared, his horns nearly touching the ceiling.

“I damaged my leg, Sergeant Typh!” Urg rasped hastily.

Typh swept his gaze over us, full of contempt. The primary battle was thundering somewhere in the center of the castle; judging by the sounds, the Lord was already attacking the keep where the knights had holed up with their vaunted relic. We, however, were on the back fringes.

“The Lord ordered: the prison by the southeastern wall,” Typh growled. “Our captives are there. Secure them before the humans slaughter them all out of spite. Everyone who survived from the convicts—thirty throats!—follow me! Move!”

He turned and limped away. An order is an order, even if given by an enraged, horned idiot.

“The prison, then,” I muttered, helping Urg rise. “Excellent. That’s even further from the relic and less glory. And I was calculating that after the victory, the lord would spare the convicts who distinguished themselves.”

“Less glory means a whole hide, Mel,” Urg grumbled, leaning on my shoulder. “Let’s go.”

We hurried after Typh along the narrow, twisting corridors of the castle. The citadel inside turned out to be a labyrinth of stone and gloomy tapestries. The sounds of the main battle quieted down as we distanced ourselves from the central courtyard. It was quieter here, but no more peaceful. In every dark corner, enemies seemed to loom.

Typh led us quickly despite his limp, orienting himself in the passages by memory. Behind him trailed our detachment—three dozen mismatched demons, including Urg and myself.

“And why free them?” I whispered to Urg.

Urg shrugged his shoulders:

“Captives are a bargaining chip. Or food. Or slaves. The Lord doesn’t like throwing away resources.”

Typh kicked open a heavy oak door reinforced with iron bars, and we burst into the dark, damp corridor of the prison block. The air here was thick with the stench of old blood, mold, and terminal despair. From the depths of the stone cells, pale, emaciated faces of captured lesser demons and imps looked out at us through the grates. Some of them were too weak to even raise their heads, but those who could still move began to rattle their chains, sensing a chance for salvation.

“Break the locks!” Typh barked, gesturing with his sword toward the cell doors. “Move it, convicts! We don’t have all day!”

Urg and I rushed to the nearest cage. With a heavy blow of my infantry blade, I sheared the rusted padlock from its mountings, and the heavy door creaked open. The captives poured out into the corridor, falling to their knees and kissing the muddy basalt of our boots, whispering words of frantic gratitude to the Legion.

Suddenly, a heavy, rhythmic thud echoed from the upper stairs, followed by the clanking of plate armor. A squad of human heavy infantry—the remnant of the castle’s inner guard—was rushing down into the dungeons to execute the captives before the citadel completely collapsed. There were about ten of them, led by a knight in scratched white plate, his greatsword already drawn and gleaming in the torchlight.

“Form up!” I roared, instinctively stepping into the front rank and raising my notched sword. “Urg, watch the flank! Don’t let them bottle us in the corridor!”

The human knight did not waste a single breath on commands. He lunged forward with explosive speed, bringing his two-handed blade down in a brutal, sweeping arc meant to cleave me from shoulder to waist. I didn’t try to parry the massive steel with my worn blade—instead, I pivoted on my heel, letting the greatsword crash harmlessly into the stone floor, striking a shower of sparks, and drove my boot straight into the joint of his knee.

The knight groaned as his leg buckled, and before he could recover his balance, Urg’s trench knife slipped cleanly beneath the rim of his gorget, piercing his throat. The heavy armored body crashed to the ground with a hollow clatter.

Behind us, the thirty throats of our penal company let out a savage roar and slammed into the remaining human guards like a wave of grey rags. In the narrow, suffocating space of the prison corridor, numbers and raw, desperate malice decided everything. Within two minutes, the human squad was completely butchered, their white armor crimson with their own blood.

Typh spat onto the corpse of the guard captain, wiped his bloody blade on a discarded tapestry, and turned his heavy, cynical eyes back to us.

“Not bad, engineers,” the sergeant grunted low, his whip, woven from vertebrae, trailed against the stones. “You still remember how to handle steel. Get the rest of the scum out of the cells and line them up in the courtyard. The Lord will want to see his new stock before the sun sets.”

We marched out of the dark dungeons back into the blinding glare of the ruined white castle, leading a column of hundreds of freed captives behind our backs. Above the central keep, the azure dome of holy magic was entirely gone, replaced by a thick, rolling pillar of black smoke. The Bastion of Light had fallen, its white marble permanently stained with basalt soot and demon blood.

I stood by the shattered remains of the northern gates, leaning on my notched sword and watching the heavy line infantry of the Eighth Legion systematically sack the inner plazas. My back was screaming with pain from the dried whip wounds, my hands were raw, and my armor was ruined, but as I looked at the foreign, jagged mountains looming on the horizon, I knew one thing for certain.

I had survived the first wave. The calculation had proven correct. For today, that was more than enough.