City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [195]
There was no hope of recovering these bodies until later, so Brynd beckoned the others to move on. He could not blame them for standing there gaping with their jaws slack and eyes wide in disbelief.
We move on, he signed.
Too late? Lupus queried.
No. These are abandoned. Young and old. Probably find citizens still alive further on.
Tiendi was the first to shake herself out of the shock, coming to stand alongside Brynd, expectantly.
Into the next room . . .
Where hundreds of hostages lay slumped on the floor – but still alive.
Suddenly they began stirring. They had already noticed the arrival of the elite troops, more of whom were now appearing through different entrances.
Don’t talk, don’t talk. Brynd made obvious signs for them to remain quiet, but it was no good. The sounds that would blow their cover rippled through the warehouse, and within a few heartbeats, enemy soldiers began filtering in to the room.
Fuck.
Brynd now shouted the commands for combat focus.
The Night Guard united ranks as best as they could, while Lupus fired repeatedly to distract the enemy, his arrows plunging into the enemy, who were now spilling into the vast warehouse. Arrows and crossbow bolts sparked off the stone walls.
No sooner had a significant cluster of the dreaded Okun burst in, than Nanzi disgorged a thick drool of silk from above. The enemy was instantly halted, unable to navigate the sticky pulp. Lupus began an insane dash, sprinting across the front of their line, firing two arrows at a time into their weak spots as they waded through the viscous substance – and they began to crumple one by one.
Hostages were shouting and screaming by now, making a chaotic situation even worse.
Nanzi dropped to the floor and reared up on her back legs to force the hostages in hysteria towards the rear exits – and towards freedom. She then turned to confront a unit of the redskins, and Brynd ordered Tiendi and Smoke to provide her with backup.
The redskins lined up uncertainly before her, at first not quite sure what to make of this intruder, and suddenly some of their archers buried a dozen shafts in her abdomen and thorax. There was a deafening screech as her legs buckled, and she toppled forwards. Several others rushed forward to hack at her legs. She swiped at them with her razor-sharp limbs, severing their heads and arms in one go.
More came in, driving their blades into her thick black spider-flesh.
She screamed. She wheezed. The texture of the warehouse subtly changed.
As she settled herself down amidst her torture, a horizontal wave of purple light burst from her body and spread across the room.
A deep explosion knocked everyone to the floor, blew the upraised shield from Brynd’s arm. He sprawled across the flagstones to retrieve it.
The battle regained momentum as the civilians scrambled to safety, and eventually the Night Guard managed to get themselves into position of forming a wall between the enemy and the hostages. By now about seventy enemy soldiers had arrived, and dozens more were soon filing into the room, many more than Brynd had anticipated, but he didn’t reckon they would be too much to handle.
He screamed an order. The Night Guard merged, locked shields above their heads and in front, utilizing the hoplon’s shape to form a phalanx formation. Arrows came crashing into them, an inexorable iron rain.
Under this metal shell, they nudged forwards.
*
Voland almost despaired at the sight of another delivery of casualties. Most of the time he felt like he was merely patching up the living dead.
Over the last two days he had slept for maybe