The line of soldiers that had attacked the western flank of the demons assaulting Felsen numbered somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand. Some had thought to bring the standards of their mercenary companies and had planted their flags at different points along the long rows of men. Among them were The Red Dawn, The Gilded Rose, Schwartz’s Brawlers, Bernd’s Blades, and The Flame Wolves. There were more mercenaries sporting surcoats and shields of colors that didn’t match the flags, indicating membership in other companies that had not fielded their flags for whatever reason.
All the colors Thea could be sure of were from mercenaries who had been stationed at forts on the western side of the Broken Hills or had no specific station at all like the Flame Wolves. There were even a few that Thea thought might have come from the town further along the western coast, but none of the mercenaries looked like they came from the eastern front.
It seemed likely that either the western forts had not been hit by the demons, or at least not as hard, or they had somehow been able to push out from their own sieges, unlike those at the Rook, and had come to Felsen to counterattack. It wasn’t a haphazard affair, either. Thea could see the military coordination and order on display. There were even rows of triage stations behind the front lines where wounded soldiers were being treated by either healers or alchemical means. Whoever was running the counteroffensive was skilled enough to know how to keep the lines running so that the attack didn’t devolve into a retreat or worse, a rout.
Now that they were closer to the fighting, Thea could see why the demon horde hadn’t fully turned on the soldiers outside of the city’s protective walls. The demons were many, but their numbers were stretched along the walls. The demons on the eastern side couldn’t even see the western, and thus were no doubt focused on the city and its defenders. Further, the attacking soldiers had formed a classic crescent maneuver, funneling the demons towards the middle while generally keeping them from moving around the edges to flank them.
“Alright,” Sergeant Holtz’s voice broke into Thea’s analysis of the battlefield situation. He was addressing his five remaining men with a grim look of determination. “Once we get in there, we report to any higher ranking officers from Weircroft that might be here. If there aren’t any from Weircroft, we report to whoever’s in charge overall and join the line where they need us. We’ve got our shields and swords, so we’ll put them to work.”
As his men nodded, Thea shook her head. The familiar fear gripped her chest, strangling her throat and stifling her words. It maddened her that she could fight demons and hydra and everything between without hesitation, but speaking up to voice her thoughts was a monumental struggle. One she had to push past every single time she opened her mouth.
“N—No,” Thea stuttered out, gulping to clear that oppressive tightness. “No, we need to, ah, c—cover Jadi—Jay, Dys, and Syd. They need our shields.”
Holtz frowned at Thea, his face partially obscured by the helmet, but the doubt in his expression evident enough.
“I’m not deaf, so I’ve heard that protecting those giants is your duty, guardswoman Thea,” he said, in that particular kind of respectful tone that came from someone who wasn’t sure if she outranked them. “But that’s not our duty. If any of our company are here, we need to join up with them, or we at least need to follow the orders of the commander in charge here.”
“No,” Thea shook her head. “You d—don’t understand. Ah, think about how strong they are. Th—think about how two carried us, um, this whole way. The Nephilim are so, so strong. They can k—kill many demons, many more than, um, we can. We just need to watch their b—backs. So they don’t get taken in a b—blind spot.”
“Thea is correct,” Eir, the beautiful priestess, added as she turned her dark purple eyes on her and the mercenaries. “The Nephilim are the Children of Lyssandria. Think of them as you would the Seraphim of Valtar and you would better understand their value to you in this time. Protect them and they in turn will win this battle for you.”
Thea thanked Eir wordlessly for her intervention. The elf had a far more eloquent tongue than her and she could see that her words had affected Holtz and his men. After only a few moments, he nodded in acknowledgement.
“Alright, we’ll stick with you, unless we get a direct order countermanding your request.”
That was fair. Thea knew very well how a military man or woman always had to temper their promises with the cold draft of duty. If his commander called, Holtz would be honor bound to obey. Just as she too would be bound to obey if her own commander sent her orders.
It was not the first time Thea had thought of how troubling following orders from a commanding officer could be, but as she stared at the back of Jay’s head as the giant woman carried the wagonload of them along, Thea was struck for the first time with the longing that she didn’t have to follow orders and could instead chose her own way, freely. Orders had brought her to Jadis’ side, but they could just as easily tear her away.
Soon after Holtz’s agreement to Thea’s request, they encountered the rear guard of the attacking forces. An officer flanked by two cavalrymen on horseback rode across their path, blocking them from going forward. Thea quickly recognized that the orc was a member of The Gilded Rose company by the sigil on his armor, though the other two were from a different company, the Badgers or some such name, she wasn’t sure. Jadis came to a halt, her one body carrying Aila to the fore.
“You! You’re the Nephilim, are you not?”
The orc spoke in a clear, ringing voice, deep in timbre but with the diction of the formally educated, like Eir. Clearly, he recognized Jadis. How could he not? In all honesty, it was more of a shock to Thea that Holtz and the others hadn’t known who Jadis was immediately. Though she allowed that the Rook was a far ways from Felsen and word didn’t always travel quickly to the border forts in Weigrun.
“How could you tell?” Dys answered, a slight play to her lips that Thea recognized as the woman being a sass.
The orc stared at her, then swept his gaze over the rest of them, either not getting the joke or ignoring it.
“It’s good that you made it back, the Magistrate has put out a sizeable bounty for your safe return, or even information as to your whereabouts. However,” he looked over his shoulder, “You’ve come at the absolute worst time.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Dys replied in that odd accent of hers. “So we’re here to help. Make way and we’ll join the fight, okay?”
“Ordinarily, I would tell you absolutely not under any circumstances. Not without bringing you to the Magistrate first, since her orders were to bring you back to her straight away and without delay if the three of you were ever found again. But considering the circumstances…” he trailed off as he looked over his shoulder briefly.
“Nuts to that,” he exclaimed. “If you would allow, I will simply check you all with a detect stone to be sure we aren’t allowing demonic infiltration and then your arms would be most welcome in this fight.”
Without any objections, the orc mercenary quickly scanned them all with his detect stone, noting that each person was as they said they were and were not possessed.
Security check made and passed, Jay and Syd set down the wagon Thea and the others were riding in. They all disembarked, only for Jay to sweep Eir up into her free arm while Syd picked the unloaded wagon back up, carrying it like a mere crate in one hand. Jadis was moving before she even began to talk, forcing the others to keep up, including the Gilded Rose officer and his subordinates.
“Where’s the fighting the worst? Middle or the edges?”
“The middle is where the heaviest fighting is, though it varies every time one of the larger specimens reaches the line and we are forced to adapt,” the officer answered as his horse kept pace with the Nephilim. “Thank the gods the Flame Wolves are with us. Their elites have been instrumental in keeping the grundwyrms from breaking our shield formation.”
“Alright, then we’re taking the middle,” Jay announced firmly, ignoring the protestations of the officer in a way that Thea admired, but knew she could never do.
“Stick with Eir,” Thea overheard Dys say to Aila. “Keep behind the wagon and do whatever you think is best to support us and give us a place to fall back to when we need healing.”
Jadis’ confident commands brooked no argument. Thea could tell by the way she spoke that she had no military training. She lacked the vocabulary, and further, she didn’t have the true tactical grasp of the full battlefield and how her actions were going to change the flow of the fighting for the rest of the soldiers. Thea felt the urge to correct Jadis, tell her the ways her plan could be improved. But by then they had already reached the wall of men and shields that were staving off the demons with every ounce of effort they possessed. So, rather than argue and trip over her own useless tongue, Thea resolved to use her skills and strengths to the best of her ability to support Jadis and make sure she lived through the maelstrom.
Syd set the wagon down on its side, placing it firmly in the blood-stained mud. Aila and Eir took up position behind it while Kerr leapt on top of the wagon’s side, her bow already firing shots off into the horde, no doubt piercing a demon with every shot. How could the therion miss, with so many enemies arrayed before her? Even as Kerr’s bow thrummed with use, Eir was stopping the mercenaries that were streaming back from the triple-layered shield wall to heal the ones who were most direly injured, putting some back into the fight or at least stabilizing those who were too far gone to continue.
Jadis didn’t join the line or push through. Instead, all three of her bodies simply leaped over the line, landing amidst the raging storm of bones and claws on the other side.
Seeing the giants in battle was a glory that found Thea awestruck every time she saw it. The women, or woman, clearly did not have formal training that came from a school of martial combat. Her stance was weak, her form imperfect. She left herself open on most of her swings that any soldier would have been able to take advantage of. But the raw speed and power with which she moved was devastatingly effective against the mindless demons surrounding her. With each swing of her oversized weapons, demons fell like wheat before a scythe. Thea could see why the Nephilim were the children of the goddess Lyssandria.
Even when killing, they were beautiful.
“M—move in,” Thea said in as loud a voice as she could muster, fighting to be heard over the din of combat. “We have to k—keep up with them!”
Thea and the Weircroft men pushed forward, shoving the mercenaries between them and Jadis aside as they moved to protect her back. With the three giants knocking aside wretches and bone thieves with almost contemptuous ease, they cleared a section of the field before them where the demons that were funneled down the sides of the crescent met them and were tossed back again. They were like a spike, jutting into the flank of the great beast, bleeding it dry.
Her shield blocked another bramble fiend as it tried to fling its way past the trio and get onto their flank. Forming a looser wall with Holtz and his five men, Thea protected Jadis from the demons that tried to sneak around her edges, finishing off the crippled where they fell as well. It was an entirely untenable strategy for most, but with Jadis leading forward, it worked. The sheer height and mass of her bodies made her a match for the normally overpowering weight of demonic creatures that crashed around Thea and the other soldiers. By will and might, Jadis was pushing back the demons.
Then, a boulder slammed into the ground, missing Dys by inches as it crushed both several demons and one of the mercenaries that had been blocking a bone thief from attacking her on the right flank. A grundwyrm emerged from the horde, its bulk barreling towards Jadis. All Thea could do was pray to the gods the Nephilim could handle the stony demon fast enough that they weren’t overwhelmed by the horde surrounding them on three sides.
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