Dan the Adventurer, page 25
part #2 of Gold Girls and Glory Series
If Ula had her way, they would have pulled down the entire palisade. But without the time to mend or destroy the fence, she suggested they pull down the most visible section, inviting Roderick’s Raiders to attack the front gate, which could be reinforced by the toppled logs.
The enemy would pour through this gap, straight into the Fist of Fury’s kill zone.
Dan had agreed at once, and they set immediately to dismantling the outer fence.
An incredible transformation had come over the elves in the hours since his speech. Throughout the night, they worked feverishly, without rest or complaint, as if possessed. And when the light of day had broken across the meadow, Dan noticed something strange about the elves working around him.
“What’s on your faces?” he had asked.
Grinning, a nearby elf had touched the dark smudge along his jawline and said, “Ashes, Master. We don’t have time for tattooing, but if we’re going to die fighting, we’re going to die with the black fires of our ancestors burning on our faces!”
Dan had roared approval. That’s when he knew that this was more than just stubbornness and suicide. With the warrior spirit returning to his forces, they actually had a chance.
“That’s it,” he called to the top of the wall, where elves were lashing this last log into place beside the others. Now a solid wall of thick timber stood before the flimsy gate between the guard houses. “That will do it. Excellent work! Lash it tight.” Turning to the elves around him, he said, “All right, let’s fill in the ditch.”
As one, they cheered and started shoveling dirt into the ditch and tamping it down around the logs.
Shouts rose along the wall. Dan straightened and stared out across the meadow, where a dark figure appeared, sprinting out of the woods on all fours.
“Your wife returns, Master!” a sentry called down from the tower.
Dan dropped his shovel and strode into the meadow to meet her. Still in full-wolf form, Nadia raced across the cleared meadow with incredible speed, streaking along close to the ground in a chestnut-brown blur.
Nadia lurched to stop before him and transformed. Since the wedding, she had cast off any hesitation about shifting in front of him, and now she shifted in front of everyone. Seconds later, she stood, naked and panting and beautiful in her human form.
A wave of unexpected emotion struck Dan as he beheld her shapely naked body, her perfect breasts rising and falling as she struggled to catch her breath. He felt jealousy at the thought of his wife standing lovely and naked before so many eyes, but even more, he felt a surge of pride, affection, and hot desire.
He wanted to pull her to the ground and make love to her. In the middle of the night, Nadia had separated him from the others and proposed just that, begging him to make love to her in the shadows, just a quickie, standing up in a narrow alley between two buildings. But he had refused her. They needed every second to work.
Now, watching the rise and fall of her perfect breasts, he regretted his decision.
Nadia’s green eyes glowed with intensity. “They’re coming,” she panted. “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes, maybe ten.”
He nodded, heart pounding. This was it. “Thank you, my love.”
He kissed Nadia and gave her a hug. Then he removed his cloak and wrapped her in it.
Turning to the elves, he shouted, “To arms! They are almost upon us! This is the hour of your glory!”
42
The Battle of Fire Ridge
Standing inside the guard tower, Dan heard Roderick’s Raiders before he saw them.
The army was making no effort to disguise its approach.
Bah-roo!
A war horn sounded in the woods, followed closely by the clamor of shouted curses, marching boots, and the clanging of sword against shield.
“Warriors of Fire Ridge!” Dan called to the archers crouching behind the battlements. “The enemy is upon us. Stay hidden. Let them get close. When you hear the Fist, fire at will. Today, we destroy Roderick’s Raiders!”
A muffled cheer wrapped around the wall and across the courtyard, where a formation of Ula’s troops stood, ready to fire their bows into the meadow and then rush to whatever sections of wall needed reinforcement.
Catching the hobgoblin’s attention, Dan nodded.
Ula nodded back and thumped her chest.
“Just how close are we going to let them get?” Nadia asked.
“All the way into our jaws,” he said. “The closer they get, the harder it will be for them to run for cover.”
She nodded without meeting his eyes. “And the shorter distance they’ll have to charge the wall.”
“You’re turning into a real goblet-half-empty kind of person.”
“Waiting for two giants and a thousand of their bloodthirsty pals can do that to a girl.”
Roderick’s Raiders emerged from the forest with a tremendous roar.
These weren’t knights in armor, marching in neat ranks.
These were savages. They boiled out of the forest, bellowing and slamming weapons against shields.
Nadia kissed Dan, shifted into her half-wolf form, and descended into the courtyard, where she would rush any raider who made it over the wall.
These foot soldiers were dressed in patchwork furs and armor. Most carried shields. Some wore breast plates, some helmets, some only greaves or gorgets, as if in their eagerness to destroy Fire Ridge, they had forgotten to don the rest of their armor.
Others, stripped to the waist, wore only scars. Dan saw painted faces, long hair, and wild beards. From this distance, it was hard to say for sure, but by their bulky muscles and blunt heads, he guessed they were half-orcs.
The irony didn’t escape him. In his first battle, he wasn’t facing an organized army as had his barbaric ancestors; he was defending a fortress against what looked very much like a barbarian horde.
Each pack of savages carried a ladder or two. They would have ropes, too, Dan knew, and axes. Anything to breach the defenses.
Here and there, muscular dogs with boxy heads strained against leashes, pulling toward Fire Ridge and the promise of fresh meat.
No, Dan corrected himself. These creatures weren’t dogs. He loved dogs. But these animals weren’t dogs any longer. Roderick’s Raiders had turned them into monsters.
One more reason to kill every last one of these assholes.
Mounted soldiers rode onto the field. The riders wore more armor than the ground troops and rode in three loose ranks with perhaps forty riders in all. Each man carried a lance. They would be murder in the open.
Behind the cavalry trundled a line of wagons. Naked green elves were strapped to the front of each wagon like figureheads decorating the prows of sailing ships. Even at this distance, Dan could hear their cries and see the lash marks crisscrossing their naked bodies.
Monsters, he thought. Roderick and his Raiders are monsters.
He wouldn’t think about the screams of the green elves or their terrible wounds. That was exactly what Roderick wanted, precisely why he’d put them on display. He expected the terrible sounds and images to crush the spirit of any unlikely opposition.
Next came the giants, two of them, fifteen feet tall.
“Hold,” Dan called down the line.
One giant carried a club the size of a tree trunk. The other shook a gigantic axe overhead and launched a tremendous bellow across the field.
Dan glanced out at the soldiers along the wall and was glad to see them holding position.
Around the giants swarmed another wave of barbaric foot soldiers. Behind them marched what looked like a hundred archers with long bows.
Finally, a huge wagon emerged from the forest, drawn into view by a team of giant horses armored in shining plate mail. Atop this wagon sat what looked like a squat black building topped with a curved metal roof like a turtle shell. Dan could make out arrow slits staring from the face of the short structure.
Roderick’s command center, he guessed. So the king of the assholes could hide in safety and still enjoy the show as his savages wiped out another village of innocents.
Only this village had a surprise for Roderick.
“Hold,” Dan called again, and he watched the command pass along the walls. Crouching elves clutching bows nodded before passing on the word.
Dan took up his position behind the Fist.
The fire team had already loaded the hopper. Both ammo bins were heaped with shining spheres of death.
“Steam,” Dan said.
“Steam,” Teeka, the red elf fire team captain, said and cranked open the pipe valve.
“Going hot,” Dan said.
Steam inflated the dragon-skin hose and hissed into the gun. The Fist of Fury shuddered in his hands, ready to kill.
The army was moving faster now.
Halfway across the field, the savages at the front gave a loud roar and broke into a trot. Behind them, the war horn, which Dan now spotted riding behind one of the naked green elves, gave a blast. Baaah-roooo!
The army broke apart.
Taking long strides, the giants marched to the front of the ranks and headed straight for the main gate with four hundred savage foot soldiers jogging along behind them. The cavalry slowed, trotting along the road behind them, followed by the wagons, save for Roderick’s armored command center, which remained at the edge of the woods across the meadow.
The archers split into two groups, one going left, the other going right. The second group of barbarian foot soldiers, four or five hundred strong, likewise split into two groups and streamed into opposite sides of the surrounding forest.
Dan tensed, watching the raiders adjust their formation. He ached to blast away with the Fist and thereby unleash three hundred arrows at his enemies. But he had to wait. Had to let them get closer. Couldn’t let them run for cover.
Once he fired, he and the elves would pound away, killing as many raiders as quickly as they could. Once they had lost the element of surprise, the battle would shift. If they killed enough raiders in those opening moments, perhaps Roderick would withdraw. Otherwise, the slaver would throw everything he had at Fire Ridge.
Closer and closer the raiders came.
Glancing to the walls, Dan saw his soldiers fidgeting but staying in position.
Closer…
The giants were fifty feet away now.
He put the crosshairs on the chest of the smaller giant.
Forty feet.
The giant’s face was ugly. Huge and misshapen with a dead eye, a thick black beard, and an ugly blue scar splitting a crumpled nose. The giant’s other eye swiveled toward the tower and narrowed, spying Dan. The giant opened his mouth to shout, and Dan stomped the pedal.
Pang-pang-pang-pang-pang!
The Fist jolted in Dan’s grip. The barrels cycled, spitting steel.
The giant jerked and roared with surprise as red holes opened in his stomach.
Pang-pang-pang!
Dan walked a line of red explosions up the giant’s torso. Divots of bloody flesh leapt away. The Fist punched a line of holes up the huge chest and—Pang!—the giant’s forehead caved and a red cloud blew out the back of the massive skull, raining down brain matter and bone fragments. The hulking raider toppled, dead as a stone, and crushed screaming foot soldiers bunched up behind him.
One second had passed since Dan first stomped the pedal.
The cry of “Fire Ridge!” erupted along the ramparts, and hundreds of arrows fired as one, raining death upon the barbarians below.
Judging by how few savages managed to raise their shields before the arrows struck, Dan figured that they had indeed taken the raiders by surprise.
But a barbaric horde like this was less rattled by a surprise attack than a more organized army might have been. They didn’t break ranks. There were no ranks. And they didn’t hesitate, trying to reposition elements of assault.
The savages roared as one, sounding both furious and elated, and charged the front gate.
Dan swung the Fist toward the second giant, who was drawing back his great battle axe and bellowing at the guard tower where Dan stood.
By the time Dan had the giant in his crosshairs, a dozen arrows slammed into the huge warrior, sinking to the feathers in his limbs and torso and face.
Dan stomped the pedal.
Pang-pang-pang!
He watched holes open in the giant’s arm and shoulder—and then saw the gigantic axe whirling straight at him.
“Down!” he shouted to his fire team.
The tower shook as the axe sheered through a support, hit the floor, and bounced back up again, fifteen feet of shining death spinning through the air straight at Dan.
He shouted and dropped behind the Fist. There was a loud clang, and the gun jerked above him, clipped by the passing axe, which slammed into the far wall with a crunch and lodged there. Overhead, the roof cracked and sagged to one side, but the tower held.
“Holy shit!” Dan shouted, and then, inexplicably, he was laughing, a strange thing not just because the axe had nearly killed him but also because he was at that moment seized by a red fury the likes of which he had never known.
How dare these assholes march across his field and attack his people? He was going to kill every last one of these motherfuckers!
And then he was firing again, shouting curses as the Fist pang-pang-pang-ed, punching red holes in the giant’s back as the huge man broke and ran, stepping on his allies and crushing them as he zigzagged around the far corner of the wall.
Down below, barbarians crashed into the gate of lashed palisade logs. They roared, chopping at the heavy timbers with axes.
Dan swiveled the Fist and stomped the pedal.
Pang-pang-pang-pang!
Steel rounds tore through the shock troops as if they were boiled chickens. Whole vectors of savages died as spheres blasted through one man and another and another. Only the sharp angle at which Dan was forced to fire stopped the rounds from plowing through still more raiders.
He raked the Fist back and forth across the mass of raiders chopping at the wall, while from the walls flashed wave after wave of elven arrows.
Around him, the fire team hustled. He heard the winch cranking as one of the ammo crates lowered into the floor for a refill.
Along the wall, elves screamed as arrows rained down. Dan saw only one elf drop away from the ramparts. Otherwise, his soldiers had shielded themselves behind the battlements.
Arrows rained down on Dan’s tower. One skipped off the railing and sliced across the arm of Teeka, who cursed and got back to work.
Pang-pang-pang!
He pounded the swarm of savages assaulting the gates.
Grappling hooks sailed up into the air, catching along the wall and his tower.
He swiveled the gun, blasting climbers from the wall, but he couldn’t see whoever had hooked onto his tower. “Cut that line!” he shouted to his crew and pointed to the grappling hook. “They’re trying to climb up!”
Two more hooks sailed into the tower, dragged back across the floor, and hooked into the railing.
Fuckers!
One of his elves ran to the hooks, cut a rope, cut another, then yelped and staggered back, shot through the shoulder with a arrow.
Teeka took the fallen elf’s place, slicing through the remaining rope, but two more hooks sailed in and dug into the railing.
“Don’t let them up here!” Dan shouted, and the entire fire team rushed bravely forward and started slicing lines.
More arrows smacked into the tower. One zoomed past Dan’s head.
He swiveled the Fist toward the enemy archers, who were firing from a hundred yards out.
Pang-pang-pang-pang-pang!
His first several shots chewed the meadow, pitching chunks of sod into the air, but he zipped this line across the ground and raked the archers, who were drawing to fire again.
The effect was beautiful.
In the front rank, twenty archers folded as if they’d all been punched in the gut. His rounds tore across their midsections, opening their flesh as if he’d pulled an invisible zipper. Blood and guts spilled to the ground.
Archers behind them jerked and toppled as rounds blasted out the backs of the front row to claim more victims.
Then he swept fire back the other way, mowing down more archers.
The survivors broke and retreated.
The cavalry had disappeared.
Arrows rained down on his tower from the other side of the meadow, rattling across the rooftop like hail. Points jutted down through the wood like stalactites. One of his fire team members cried out, skewered through the thigh.
Meanwhile, more hooks latched onto the rail.
“Keep them off!” he roared, but more hooks appeared.
“Teeka!” he shouted. “Take the Fist!” With half of his team injured, the archers pounding the position with constant fire, and more grappling hooks clawing onto the railing every second, he would be of more use repelling climbers.
“Yes, Master!” Teeka said, taking the gun.
Pointing across the field to the other set of archers, he shouted, “Kill those bastards first!”
He yanked his sword free of its sheath and rushed to the rail, where he started chopping ropes. One after another, raiders fell away, crashing down on those below.
There were so many!
Behind him, Teeka worked the Fist.
Pang-pang-pang-pang-pang!
Dan charged across the tower, chopped another rope, and something punched him hard in the shoulder as another wave of arrows slammed into the tower.
Looking down, he saw an arrow had blown almost through his shoulder. Only half the feathers were still visible at the front.
“Gint!” he shouted to one of his elves. “Snap and pull this thing out.”
Without hesitation, the red elf snapped the arrow, yanked it free, and got back to loading the Fist.
“Kill those fucking archers!” Dan roared.
A second later, Teeka’s shots tore across the archers, crumpling half of the front rank.
“Back and forth,” Dan shouted, “mow them down!”
