However, he could not deny the fear coursing through his veins.
They reached the denser part of town where smaller streets and alleys branched off from the main thoroughfare. The sky above had not seized its rumbling, nor its glowing. Embers flew into Yelin’s face; he brushed them aside like a hunter would the buzzing flies around a carcass.
Yelin turned to face the squad leaders at his rear, directing each to a street or area of town to take men and search in an organised, grid-like pattern. The battalion split into a dozen smaller groups and dispersed into the devastated, narrow streets of Tellersted.
Yelin remained with the king and a hundred men as they steadily marched towards the Citadel. Yelin’s ears still rang from all the impacts, but he kept his mind silent and on alert.
“What is that?” one soldier asked.
Emery instantly held a hand up, gesturing for his men to stop where they were. Yelin then heard it too- it sounded like more distant rumbling.
“Is it more of those falling rocks?” a soldier guessed.
“No,” Yelin said, closing his eyes to help listen closer. The rumbling was different, not as pronounced, or nearly as dreadful, as the rainfall of rock and fire they had just experienced. “It’s… marching,” Yelin realised.
Emery cocked an eyebrow, staring down the long thoroughfare ahead towards Teller’s Square where the armistice had taken place, several hundred metres away.
The thoroughfare was lined with the collapsed remnants of the once-beautiful houses. Broken stones and shattered bricks scattered across the crater-riddled road.
Then, the noise became far more distinct. Movement came from up ahead, through the wall of smoke.
Soldiers in unfamiliar colours came from the other side of town and began to file into Teller’s Square. Hundreds of them. The marching grew louder, eventually turning into a storm.
The smoky street made it difficult to view any specific details.
Emery and Yelin stood frozen in shock.
“They’re not ours, are they?” Emery asked.
Yelin tried deciphering their colours to try and identify who they were through the smoke. “No way. Our men couldn’t have gone through town so fast.”
Immediately as Yelin finished his sentence, Emery drew his sword without a word of warning. The Blacktree soldiers followed by drawing their weapons in unison, like a symphony of metal. They held their shields out in front to create a shield wall, ready for anything that was to come.
Cinders from the burning buildings continued to rain down like glowing drops of water. The air was filled with plumes of black smoke. The smoke ahead blew in the wind and their sightline became clearer.
Yellow and white banners and uniforms. Spearhead sigils on raised flags.
This force was Caldaean.
“Shit,” Emery muttered under his breath.
“What? What is it?” Yelin said nervously. “What’s going on?”
But before Emery could reply, the Caldaean force down the road began charging towards them, swords and spears held high. They crowded into the narrowing thoroughfare like a wave channelling into a chasm of rocks.
“Form up!” Yelin shouted upon seeing what was going on.
Emery and Yelin fell back into ranks at the front of their force who huddled shoulder-to-shoulder from one side of the road to the other in a defensive shield wall formation.
An officer handed Yelin a tower shield which he gripped firmly.
“Why are they attacking us?” Yelin said to Emery. His red cheeks were glowing, and his forehead dripped with sweat.
Emery kept his eyes forward. “They think this was us,” he said starkly.
The Caldaean force continued their charge down the road, two-hundred metres out, swords glinting red from the reflections of the glowing sky, and faces consumed by rage and panic.
Yelin peered to his left and right, viewing the horrific destruction they were caught in. The burning homes, smouldering flowerpots, broken cobblestone.
“What do you mean? How could we have done all this?”
“We didn’t, but I suspect Tobius Seynard and Baron Decaster believe we may be responsible for this siege.”
The Ashen army braced for the coming impact, shields straight and in a row, swords pointed outwards at eye-level, legs steadied.
One unbreakable wall of shielded men, as they had been trained.
A huge soldier clad in midnight black led the Seynard rush, several feet taller than any other, a spear-shaped sigil imprinted into his breastplate. He wielded a large, menacing war hammer.
“Creator, who is that?” Yelin gasped.
“That looks to be Sen Dorval- Tobius’s personal bodyguard,” Emery said. “Met him at the armistice.”
“The Ogre?”
“Mm.”
Yelin wiped his brow one last time, feeling helpless and shocked. He’d heard his men talk about the beast of a man before, described as a raging bull. His reputation was extensive.
Yelin’s eyes were stinging from the sweat and his lungs burning from the hot air surrounding them. He remained by the king’s side like an armoured sentinel, ready to do his duty and defend his king.
“Hold, men. Keep your positions, guard the flanks,” Yelin ordered.
Officers shouted further instructions like an echo, with the force forming a square-shaped defensive perimeter to ensure the side streets and alleys were guarded from attack as well.
The Seynards continued their charge, gaining momentum as they descended downhill towards the Blacktrees. Hundreds of them. It was a harrowing sight.
“Hold!” Emery repeated, flipping the visor down on his shining helmet.
Through the smoke the Seynard army rushed head-on into the Blacktrees, the distance between them dissipating with each breath.
“Hold!”
Suddenly, the mission wasn’t about finding Petir anymore. It had become survival.
Sen Dorval roared, raising his giant hammer before launching himself into the Blacktree men with the rest of his vanguard. The flood of Caldaean troops smashed into the Ashen shield wall with incredible force
