“Good work! Keep at it!” Siegfried called.
The adventurer had noticed the enemy formation wavering and sensed that their window of opportunity had arrived. Their steady strategy had forced the enemy to falter. In that moment, they had cut down a generous fraction of the enemy, and the rest fought to keep up their positions as they were pushed back. If they didn’t take this chance, it wouldn’t come again—unless they acted now, they would be slowly but surely whittled down to their deaths.
Siegfried gave one final push with his shortspear, leaving it stuck in the enemy, unclipped his shield, and drew his sword. Its keen gray fang manifested his urge to fight as it glinted in the light of the flares. Taking the two Fellows at his sides in tow, he crashed into the enemy line. Siegfried dodged the spear coming his way and grabbed it under his left armpit before severing the offending arm. He was like a wild beast as he sliced at the zombies surrounding him, denying the enemy a chance to attack as he pushed onward.
We can do this, Siegfried thought. It was quite the desperate situation, but no one had retreated; everyone had borne up under their fear and stayed fighting. The remaining enemy forces were starting to fall apart! If things kept going apace, then some parts of their own formation might start to outnumber the enemy. Then, they could just drive them back...
All of a sudden, the familiar sound of a bugle cut through the air and derailed his train of thought.
“What?!”
Everyone forgot about their weapons for a moment and looked up. From the edges of the forest, just out of sight of Kaya’s illuminating flares, he saw a row of ten or so mounted soldiers and five rows of ten infantry apiece following close behind!
“You gotta be kiddin’ me! They still have more?!”
The enemy had been hiding their trump card. In order to bring down Mottenheim without fail, they had sent off the smallest possible unit of disposable soldiers to exhaust their enemy so that their main force could come and strike them while they were weakened.
The defending side was a motley crew of nineteen: fifteen members of the Watch and Fellows on the vanguard and four archers split between the two watchtowers. If the enemy marched into Mottenheim with their heads on pikes, it would be a silent proclamation of their utter dominance.
“Then it’s our turn too!” Siegfried shouted. “Hey, Kaya!”
“Okay!” she replied.
Kaya drew a single tube from her pouch and pulled out the string from its end. Suddenly, a red flare shot up into the night sky—not a light to fight by this time, but a signal. It was meant to flag to Dietrich, who was positively itching for battle, that she was needed, along with the Fellowship’s own cavalry unit of ten. It would be a matter of minutes until they arrived from central Mottenheim. They weren’t too far at all.
Siegfried used his beloved heavy spear to crush the remaining zombies as he steeled his resolve to stand ready in the face of the fifty soldiers coming his way. You ain’t the only ones with surprise reinforcements on your side, he thought. He spat out the foul blood that had painted his face and held up his spear as he turned to his unit. Everyone was exhausted, bearing wounds and burning muscles. But they had to fight on. Any amount of agony was preferable to defeat.
“Get back into formation, people! Believe in our cavalry!” Siegfried commanded.
“But...there’s too many!”
“Quit it! You can complain when you’re dead!”
With the enemy at this distance, the unit had more than enough time to reorganize themselves as they waited for backup to come, but they weren’t nearly as sturdy as they were before. Could they really survive an assault of fifty?
“Gagh!”
A cry came from Siegfried’s right just as the replenished zombie army made their first strike. It was a young mensch whose eye had been pierced by a spear.
“Lembeck!” Siegfried shouted.
Lembeck was a Fellow from Marsheim. He had a sickly mother whose medication couldn’t be covered by his older brother’s loans alone, so he had decided to become an adventurer to help with the costs. Lembeck had decided he would fill the hole that his deceased father had left to help his brother and welcome his brother’s wife into the family.
“Ngh... Graaaagh...!”
Fortunately for Lembeck, the spearhead hadn’t pierced through bone. His own spear had broken during the earlier clash, so he had switched to the sword. He gave a roar to steel his resolve as he sliced through the handle.
“I ain’t DONE!”
With the spearhead still lodged in his eye, Lembeck desperately swung his sword and beat back death.
Similar cries came from elsewhere in the formation. An old-timer in the Watch had his shoulder pierced by a spear that had crashed through his shield. He forced out his daughter’s name through gritted teeth and a throat full of blood.
“I’m...going home! To my...family!”
The old-timer forced his last dregs of energy out as he stopped his foe in its path and lopped its arm clean off. Despite knowing that it would worsen the blood flow, he yanked the spear from his shoulder and roared: “Get the HELL out of my home!”
There was another who had sustained an injury. It was unlikely that the enemy had planned this, but the broken head of a spear had stabbed right into his foot.
“Urgh!”
“Gerrit!” Siegfried cried.
Gerrit was a young man who had first joined the Fellowship as a spy but now had truly committed to the group.
“This isn’t enough to stop me!” Gerrit said.
Despite the terrible pain, the young adventurer wielded his spear as if it had all been to his advantage—in a certain light, having his foot pinned down meant that he would never be forced back. He forced out a laugh. The enemy hadn’t “attacked” him insomuch as demarcated the spot from which he would never fall back.
As Siegfried analyzed the situation, he could tell that they were all doing a great job at resisting. But they were like the old and brittle teeth of a comb, ready to snap as more and more sustained injuries. If they didn’t push the enemy back soon, they would start to topple all at once. Just as this thought ran through his head, the enemy’s pressure let up—and not thanks to another recovery potion from Kaya.
“Ngh... Dammit... Dammit!”
The enemy had abandoned their front line, and the remaining soldiers had retreated, ready to return with a full-on charge. The uninjured soldiers in the back lines fell back to prepare while the remnants of the first and second lines did their best to obstruct the defenders. This was an utterly heartless battle tactic that could only be employed with lifeless soldiers. It caused the first cracks to appear in the defenders’ morale.
“Get back here, ya bastards! Crap, crap, get off of me! Urgh!”
Siegfried tried his best to try and find a way out of the chaos, but he sustained an injury from the heartless zombies that blocked his way. A zombie had dropped its spear and sliced at the gap in his helmet to cut his left eyelid. Blood blurred his vision. Even his right eye, safe but in pain, seemed hazy.
Thank heaven, then, that there was another world-shifting change in store, and that such things had a way of announcing themselves with unparalleled spectacle.
“Aaaall right! Kept ya waiting, huh?!”
Pounding hooves and an unyielding war cry! Siegfried tried to get a fix on the source of the sound, and through the blur he made out a cavalry unit, their angle suggesting that they had come the long way around from the northern bound of the canton.
“Dietrich!” he called out.
In order to increase the force of their charge, the cavalry unit was packed into two tight lines of six horses each. Dietrich led the charge and immediately went after the foot soldiers positioned a safe distance from the defending side.
“Huh? Why are they going back?” Dietrich said.
“They’re probably regrouping!” Martyn called back.
Dietrich didn’t really understand the complexities of the situation, but her instincts told her this was the perfect time to get at them. There wasn’t a more delicious sight for a mounted fighter than being able to strike at the enemy’s belly without harming your allies.
“I dunno what’s goin’ on, but let’s do this! CHAAARGE!”
✦ ✦ ✦
