Feathered Dragon - Douglas Niles [126]
In the meantime, a thousand ores-a full regiment of the beasts-pressed around behind the village. The insect plague cast by the cleric had dissipated by now, and the few warriors who stood in the regiment’s path had been brushed easily aside.
Even as the defenders fought courageously to hold their key outpost to the last, the monstrous advance slowly cut them off from all retreat. In the smoke and the chaos of the night battle, this maneuver went undetected until it was too late. Abruptly the men on the pyramid realized that the village had been taken around them and that all connection with the rest of their army had been severed.
And now the breach in the pyramid’s defense had been opened. More ogres, followed by ores, rushed onto the side of the structure. The archers atop the pyramid poured a deadly fire into the creatures’ faces, sending many of them tumbling back. But others-others without number, seemingly without fear-advanced from the darkness to take their places, and slowly the beasts pressed higher up the four sloping sides of the pyramid.
The arrows of the defenders couldn’t last forever, and when the last missile was exhausted, the archers drew their short swords and prepared to die fighting. Now, with the village in flames around them, the pyramid cut off by the ores behind it, they could think no longer of escape. They could only fight and die like the men they were. In another moment, the last of them fell, and a dozen ores howled their triumph from the top of the structure.
Back! Fall back!” Cordell shouted the command, and trumpets brayed in echo. Along his line, decimated by the first phase of the battle, the exhausted fighters pulled away
from the equally exhausted monsters. The second rank of Zaltec’s attack rushed across the muddied ground, still a mile from the withdrawing defenders.
Nayap, the foremost village in the defensive line, now spouted smoke and ash, a funeral pyre for the men who had died there. Indeed, the only men remaining in the village were those who were dead.
“Where to?” grunted Grimes, riding beside the cap general.
“Hold Actas” The captain-general pointed to the v that formed the inland end of his line. “Hold it at all but we’ve got to shorten the line! Keep your riders ready watch our flank!” Cordell gestured to Daggrande, who trotted over to him.
“Divide your men into two companies,” the commander ordered. “If all else fails, you’ll have to cover our withdrawal into the fort.”
“All right,” grunted the dwarf, grimacing at the thought of splitting his already depleted company. He saw the line shortening as the companies of Mazticans and foreigners drew closer together, filling in the gaps left by their fallen comrades.
The second wave of the monstrous attack now rumbled through the line of the first battle, knocking their own battered comrades aside. The beasts lumbered through the smoldering ruins of Nayap, paying no attention to the bodies around them, uncaring even whether the fallen had been human or their own bestial kin.
Some of the survivors of the first attack, the most aggressive among the monsters, joined in the second wave, and a powerful force of ores, ogres, and trolls rushed toward the narrowed band of defenders.
Once again the shower of arrows, the thunder of the harquebusiers, the speeding darts of crossbow and halfling, took their bloody toll of the attackers. But now there were fewer missiles and more monsters. The effect could only be lessened.
The first of the attacking regiments crashed into the thin rank of the desert dwarves under Luskag. But here the
monsters, who towered over their diminutive opponents, as well as outnumbered them, met a rude surprise.
The dwarves ducked low at the first impact of the charge, darting beneath the shields and raised weapons of the attackers. Their keen weapons, with the razorlike edges of plumastone, struck upward, and hundreds of ores reeled backward, screaming and wailing in agony. The wounded monsters fell and