“It started about four days ago,” Sergeant Holtz explained, wiping half dried blood from his face. “A horde of the blighted creatures came from the woods and surrounded the fort. A few hundred of them, at least, bones and wretches. Cut us off so we couldn’t push out. Not the first time we’ve been sieged but haven’t seen numbers like this in a long time. Captain ordered us to just hold and wait for reinforcements. With all the patrols, it shouldn’t have taken long for others to come, but none ever showed. By the second night, we knew we were in bigger trouble than we had thought. Still, we were prepared to hold out for weeks, months even with rationing if need be. We were ready to outlast the demons. Until this morning, when everything went to shit. That was when that great flaming wraith came down on us like a dragon from on high.”
Holtz sighed and wearily looked over what remained of his men gathered outside the fort. Only six soldiers, him included, were left of this border fort’s garrison. The Weircroft Mercenary Company had had fifty men stationed at the Rook, as they called it, with a regular rotating roster of another twenty patrolmen who travelled between the forts to the east and west. To have so many die was a catastrophic loss of both life and manpower on a practical side, and a devastating blow to the morale of the few who remained.
From Jadis’ perspective, it was an absolute slaughter. Even considering she and her group had by chance been able to get to the fort in time to save the few soldiers who had held out against the onslaught and killed what remained of the horde of demons, it was still a Pyrrhic victory at best. Even if the fort wasn’t burning down to ashes, there was no way these men could hold it alone now. This part of the defensive line would have to be abandoned. And if this fort was a lost cause, what about the other forts in the line?
“What about signal fires, or hawks?” Aila asked the sergeant. “Any kind of communication at all from the other forts or Felsen?”
“Yesterday we saw the smoke coming from the Roost,” Holtz answered, indicating the fort to the west. “Thought it might be a signal fire, but the color’s wrong and after that burning demon…”
“Right, not good odds,” Jay murmured, looking in that direction through the eyes of her other self.
Syd had scaled another one of the tall trees, pushing the limits of how far her bodies could separate from each other as her head throbbed, but from the tall vantage point she could see the smoke of another fort in the distance in the west. Turning her gaze the other way, she could see a dark cloud of smoke coming from the fort to the east as well. Seeing even more smoke columns rising in the further distance, Jadis suspected this attack by the demons wasn’t limited to just this small section of the outer line.
“Alright, we can’t stay here,” Jay said, shaking her head. “This place isn’t safe, and I doubt there will be any backup coming anytime soon. Can your men make it to Felsen?”
“We’re in as good a condition as we can be,” Holtz shrugged, getting to his feet from where he had sat in the muddy grass. “So we’ll forge on, as needed.”
“Or we could turn back into the woods,” Kerr spoke up from where she was sorting through quivers of arrows she had looted from somewhere, likely from the dead. “Slip away and wait all this shit out.”
“Back into the woods?” Aila looked over at Kerr, her tone sharp. “You mean run? Abandon our duties?”
“What duties?” Kerr said, her tone far more serious than her usual carefree cadence. “We’re independent mercs, not soldiers of the Empire. We don’t have a binding contract like these poor sods,” she motioned towards Holtz and his men with one hand. “No offense. Nothing says we have to throw our lives away in defense of the Empire’s interests. Not even Thea has to go, she has orders to follow Jadis to the ends of Oros. Pull the stick out of your ass so it isn’t poking your brain and you’ll remember that sometimes retreat is the wiser option, especially when the odds are as fucking terrible as they are right now.”
“What about our duty to our kinsmen?” Aila stared Kerr down, her tone controlled and tinged with frost. “What about our duty as imperial citizens, men and women with the means to fight back against Samleos’ dark forces? What about everyone we know back in Felsen? Are you prepared to turn your back on them, knowing you could have made a difference and chose to run instead?”
“Make a difference?” Kerr scoffed. “Look, you’re a strong mage, no argument. And if you live to get some real levels under your belt, you’ll be a powerhouse like few others. But you have to live to get to that level. There’s no way these demons are just sieging the forts around here. With the number of fucking demonic putas that were at this nowhere fort it means that they’ve got way, way more numbers elsewhere. These are full invasion tactics. Felsen probably has thousands of these shits surrounding it right now. Not even big stuff can fight that many.”
“We don’t know that’s the case,” Aila argued back, her voice still calm and level. “The siege could already be broken by now. Or their numbers could be less than you think, or they might be assaulting only the border forts. We can’t just assume the worst. We need to see how we can help before we run away like cravens.”
“No, we don’t have—"
“Yes, we do,” Jay cut in before Kerr could argue her point further. “We won’t know the situation until we see it for ourselves. I’m not saying we throw our lives away against an impossible to defeat force,” she held up a hand as Kerr opened her mouth. “Even I’m not crazy enough to charge a literal army of demons. But we should see if there’s anything we can do. Maybe detour along the border and check some of the other forts for more survivors? How much healing magic do you have left, anyway?”
The last was addressed to Eir who knelt in prayer nearby, having used her divine magic to heal the mercenaries and Jadis’ wounds and sought to recover as much as she could while they weren’t moving. A single point of magic power could save a life. The elf did not open her eyes but replied to Jadis’ query a moment later.
“I have enough magic to heal roughly three thousand more health points.”
“Good,” Jay nodded more to herself than anyone else. “If there are survivors among the other forts, Eir could make a huge difference, if that’s the direction we want to go. Or should we make a run straight to Felsen first to assess the situation?”
The question was posed to everyone around her in general, but Jadis knew Aila’s opinion mattered the most to her at that moment. When she’d brought up the possibility of people they knew dying, Jadis had no doubt her girlfriend had been thinking about her two uncles, Gerwas and Ludwas, who could have either been inside the city or their mercenary company’s border fort when this demonic assault began. Their safety was bothering Jadis, and she barely knew the two kindhearted men. Aila had to be worried sick.
If she was worried, Aila didn’t show it on her face. She simply thought the situation over, calmly and rationally, no obvious signs of anger or resentment over her argument with Kerr.
“Tactically, it would be smarter to check on the city first.” Aila finally shared her opinion after a beat of silence. “Since it’s both the site where we are most likely to find help or find the worst trouble, it would be smart to establish the situation one way or the other first. Besides, we’re limited on the amount of time our ‘boosts’ have remaining, anyway. I don’t think we can afford to waste time checking a dozen forts from here onward, not if we want to get to Felsen by nightfall, which we still might not be able to do going at standard marching speeds.”
“No, I don’t think we can,” Holtz admitted. "The miles from here to the city are many.”
“I think we can manage something to get around that,” Jay murmured, eyeing an overturned wagon near the entrance of the fort that hadn’t yet been consumed by the flames. “Fine then, we have a plan and we’re moving out. Get your men ready to go because I’m leaving in five minutes.”
With that, Jay strode away from the gathering to head towards the wagon, Syd already done coming down the tree and heading to join her. Dys, however, stopped next to Kerr where she stood apart from the rest and spoke softly, so others wouldn’t necessarily overhear.
“If you don’t want to go, I get it. I’m not forcing you. If it’s too much, just slip off. If we both live through this, maybe we’ll meet up again somewhere else, D willing.”
Kerr snorted, her mouth in a grimace as she moved to put her snarling faceplate on.
“Fuck you,” she cursed. “I’m no coward, despite what tight-ass over there might be thinking right now. I’ve just been in battles before. Real battles. It’s a different dog from what you think it is. Just promise me you’ll listen if I tell you we’re walking into a death trap.”
“I’ll listen,” Dys nodded. “I can’t promise I’ll actually do what you say, but I’m not so stupid I’d ignore the advice of my elders.”
“Va te faire foutre!” Kerr slapped Dys’ thigh with the back of her hand. “Don’t make me put you over my knee.”
“Maybe later,” Dys laughed quietly, her grin only lasting a few seconds.
Jadis had more serious things to focus on than the idea of Kerr and spankings.
In just a few minutes, Jay and Syd had pulled the wagon out of the fort. Its front axle had been broken, but that didn’t matter for what Jadis had in mind. Quickly she ripped the wheels and axles from the wagon and broke off the poles on the top that would have let it be covered, then used rope to lash the poles to the underside on the rear. Asking, then ordering the six mercenaries to get on, along with Kerr, Thea, and Eir, she lifted the wagon from the front and back between her two selves, turning it into a giant makeshift palanquin. She couldn’t run full speed carrying so much weight, but she could still jog at a pace far faster than anything normal mercenaries could maintain, even taking into account elevated Oros standards.
As Jay and Syd started forward, the surprised mercenaries and her bemused companions bouncing around in the wagon carried between them, Dys took Aila up in her arms and ran ahead, acting as both a vanguard and giving herself a moment alone with her lover.
“Are you okay?” Dys asked, not pressing too hard but not willing to just let matters stand unsaid.
“Yes,” Aila said, after a long pause. “I’m fine. I mean, I’ll be fine. My uncles have been mercenaries for a long time. I’ve been prepared to hear the worst since I was a child. I can keep focused on the task at hand, trust me.”
“I do,” Dys replied without an iota of hesitation. A moment later, she added, “But I’ll turn straight toward Bernd’s border fort right now if you ask me to.”
“I’m certain you would,” Aila said with a small smile tugging at her lips. “Thank you, for the offer. But no, my earlier logic remains true. We’re working on a time crunch here at the least, and we need to use our strength where it makes the most sense to apply it.”
“Fair enough,” Dys agreed. “Damn,” she cursed under her breath a few seconds later, eyes looking to the horizon.
“What?”
“I guess I really should have fucked you silly last night, huh?”
“Quiet, you deviant,” Aila snorted.
Having successfully distracted her girlfriend from more morbid thoughts, Jadis sought to keep her mind elsewhere and asked the question that had been tugging at her since they’d first come across the burning fort.
“What’s a ‘greater demon’, anyway?”
“Well…” Aila trailed off, her eyebrows furrowing. “That’s a complicated question…”
460