“Yeah, yeah,” Dandre said impatiently. “You guys can all flirt later. Open the gates, damn it!”
The group trotted in and leapt off their horses. A few squires in training, little more than children, ran up and led the horses away by their reins. The marshal looked around her, hands on her hips, and said, “So where’s Quinn? And where is your father, Adalee?”
“Quinn is recovering,” Hana said. “He…”
Adalee covered for her. “We were attacked last night by a Karinon. Went straight for Quinn. If it wasn’t for Hana and Pachi, we’d have lost our Elder.”
Dandre’s face went pale, her lips pursed. Then she walked closer to Hana and squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you. You do not know what you’ve saved us from.”
Hana shuddered. “I’m pretty sure I do. That beast was evil to its core. Anyway, we improved the defense where we could, convinced Corell to move everybody but a contingent of guards into town, and prepared a few nasty surprises.” The marshal nodded as Hana caught her up on the changes she’d made to the defenses. Her brows lifted a few times, but I could see that Dandre approved of Hana’s suggestions, even if they were drastic in spots.
“You are a woman of frightening determination,” she said when Hana had finished. “Not at all like the trout poacher I first met.”
Hana grinned at the reference, and I could only imagine that the girl had gotten herself in some trouble upon first arriving to town. Then all thought fled my mind when a warhorn pierced the air, several more echoing its call. I would never call myself knowledgeable about war, but it sounded a lot like a call to attack.
The marshal seemed to think so, too, and she put on her commander’s hat and screamed in a voice that belied her size, “To your positions! Everyone, man your positions! Battle is coming!”
I watched as Hana ran up to one of the towers, her new bow in hand. Each tower was little more than a guarded platform large enough for a dozen archers. Another group of archers ran to make a formation a few dozen feet behind the gate, perhaps another twenty in total. I had to scramble out of the way as a squad of spearmen from Bridgerun stood immediately behind the gate, no doubt a reserve in case the gate should fall.
Others disappeared to positions all over the town. I wished that I’d had time to get a full accounting of the defense before the battle began, but an old friend came to my rescue. Oliver ran up to me, a cluster of players behind him. “Oy! Ready to do some serious killing?” His teeth flashed white through his green face.
“You’re nuts, man. But hell yeah. What do we do, though?”
“Just follow me. We have a special task. I’m in charge of one group, and Akira and Xiao Pang are in charge of the other. Consider us fire extinguishers,” he said as we jogged through the town. “A quick response force if you will. If crap goes down that we don’t expect, we are the ones to jump on it.”
The simplicity of my role made me feel a lot better. The Battle of the Bridges had been a relatively simple strategy. Ambush, fall back, defend a highly defensible point. This was a lot crazier, and the town hadn’t been built to withstand bandits, let alone a small army.
Tejón and Pachi were in our group, along with eight other high-level players. We all ran to a dead-end alley between a couple of houses and stopped. The clash of battle was hard to listen to without doing a thing, but I was all about following orders on a day this hectic. Still, after we had been waiting for a few minutes, I got impatient. “What the hell, man? We just gonna wait out the battle?”
Tejón and Pachi twitched with impatience as well and I could see the same frustration in the other player’s eyes.
Oliver held up a hand. “Some of the casters made speaking stones. Apparently, they are annoying to make, but worth it. We are supposed to wait here until we hear otherwise. Just trust me. When the time comes, we are going to rush out that gate and kill stuff, okay?”
“What gate?” I asked, still not satisfied.
Oliver pointed at the boarded-up wall, and after I inspected it, I saw a pair of hinges on one side. “Oh! Alright then.”
And thank the god of mezcal and molle, we didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, the rattle of armor passed by the gate we hid behind. There was no way to tell how many enemies had passed us, but I’d guess a few dozen. Moments later, Oliver held up a burning red stone and the voice of some mage came through. “Now! Charge the Pond Gate!”
Oliver looked around at us and counted to three. Then he yanked the wall back and we poured through. A few ratkin were still trying to make their way past when we emerged, our axes and swords dispatching them quickly.
“This way!” Oliver shouted and we followed him as he sprinted down the lip of the pond toward a shabby-looking fence. In front of it, and quickly overwhelming the soldiers who manned the structure, were twenty or so heavily armed ratkin and a few hulking trow.
The fight should be quick, I thought, until Oliver thankfully reminded us of something that should have been obvious. “Be careful with your AOE skills! We need to keep that gate intact. Just kill these bastards quick and then we run back.”
When our lines clashed, I couldn’t use Quake Stomp, and Tejón couldn’t use Gravel Storm. No, we just did it the old-fashioned way.
The hardest part was the fact that we had about ten feet of firm land to fight on, and then the pond turned the last few feet into mud. So we kept Pachi and Tejón behind to
