Milc/C.J. Milnes
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Chapter 58 - High Ground
🕑 Added 2025-05-28 21:45:58 +0000 UTCThere wasn’t any posturing or pontificating from the human elements of Mortimer’s army. They saw we had broken through, and a barrage of spells was launched at us. Most of them were blocked by shields, but I felt dozens of threads snap in my soul from behind me.
Jandak was a blur, leaping from side to side as bolts of elemental fury blew past him and he closed the distance to smash into the first line of physically gifted Soulbound. The first one caught a spear to the knee. He used the man’s leg as a pivot, driving the pinned leg into the ground with a sickening crunching sound that was audible over the din of battle.
He polevaulted, throwing himself nearly twenty metres over the heads of the first ranks of the enemy and taking his spear with him. His first victim screamed as the tip came free and almost severed the man's leg.
We were too close for fireballs now, but I summoned half a dozen Fire Spirits. They burned so hot that they were almost invisible, wavering shapes of solar heat that melted anything they touched. I flipped my visor open and chugged another mana potion, then slammed it down and closed with the badly shaken mortals.
I no longer required any finesse to deal with this kind of foe. I realised that parrying and dodging were largely a waste of time. My sword could cut through theirs, and any lucky blow that made it through simply bounced off my armour. I’m my left hand, I carried the mace with Death's Source at the tip. When it slammed into people, the damage was catastrophic. The lucky ones were turned into red mist, reduced to splashes with a few surviving limbs scattered about.
The unlucky ones were launched away from me in one piece, screaming in agony as their flesh melted or the buboes burst across their skin and acidic pus sprayed out. After the first one had been unlucky enough to avoid the insta-mist effect, I stopped in shock and stared at the thing in my hand. Half a dozen blows slammed into me and snapped me out of my horrified reverie. A spin with sword and mace extended dealt with the nearby attackers, and I rushed forward to reach that bloody fool.
Judging from the sprays of gore and the screams, Jandak was having a great time. When I burst through into the clear space around him, I threw a Heal Other at him, and his tattered skin began to knit back together. His weapon didn’t just cut through iron armour or blades. He had to fight with skill and ferocity, qualities he possessed in abundant quantities.
I stepped over the pile of corpses that formed a bulwark around my friend just as Kos arrived and started circling to the left. He was fighting with two short daggers crafted by Sulk, back at the Pass. Where Jandak favoured a swirling, flowing spear-style, my brother in law was more than happy to duck and dive to get in close and slip a point between a chink in an opponents armour. Armpits, groins, and throats were his primary targets, and I nodded in approval; it was very professional knife work.
I used Size on myself, my armour, and my weapons. I was now a mini Huskar, and I stomped in the opposite direction to Kos, working to clear more space for the wounded Jandak. I sent another Heal his way as I kicked people into pulp.
Between Kos and I, the piles of corpses Jandak had made, and the roar of the rest of our teams catching up, the enemy began to back away slowly. No army on Urth could stand against a Shikrakyn without one of their own, or some nightmare like the amalgams summoned with the borrowed power of a God’s Source.
As I returned ot my normal size, I opened the storage rings where I’d stashed our golem forces and released a swarm of bronze death, whirring mechanical terminators, bizarre constructs, and finally Bob appeared on the battlefield.
“Go have fun, Bob. Just watch out for their casters.”
“Understood, Raymond.” The spider-legged gave me a mock salute with one of his killing tentacles and spun at the waist to rattle out into the mob around us, now clearly close to breaking. The first one tossed down his weapons but was stabbed in the stomach by the man next to him, who roared a battle cry and charged towards the golems.
“That probably deserves a Darwin award,” I muttered. “How’s it going, big guy? Feel like you’ve got your honour back?” I asked Jandak as I knelt beside him on one knee. He reached up and pulled an arrow or bolt from his shoulder and snapped it by clenching his fist. He glowed green for a moment, wounds knitting closed.
“That was fun, but I could use another Heal?” I pulled out a pair of mana potions and passed one to him as I cast Heal Other again. I drank mine as he did likewise.
I reached out to Glimpse and borrowed his senses. He’d been bombarding the main formations of living humans, perhaps twenty thousand strong, an hour ago, but now happily reduced, with fireballs from the sky. We had devastated the enemy army. We had hit them from the southwest; the other advanced team had hit them from the southeast. Both groups had cut paths deep into what had once been an orderly force surrounded by a sea of undeath. Marbo and Mulius seemed ot have eaten their fill of zombies for now and were focused on killing in the north.
Quality also has a quantity of its own, to invert the old saying from Earth. I could see dead Huskar and nomads scattered about; we hadn’t had this one all our own way. My main army was hurrying in from the north, the nomad cavalry was barely twenty minutes from joining the fight, and the legions weren’t far behind them.
In the south, the third advance team was hurrying to cut their way into the section we had missed when we launched our flanking manoeuvres. We had them surrounded and outclassed.
The human forces facing us directly were breaking and starting to bolt. The units to the rear that still had discipline were falling back towards the sea to the east. They didn’t look like dolphins, so this was probably a bad move on their part. By the time they had their backs to the water, the main army would arrive and shatter whatever fragile morale they would be clinging to at that point.
I sheathed my sword and helped Jandak back to his feet. He nodded his thanks and went scrabbling through the corpse-piles to find his spear.
“Just use another one?” I called.
“That one was my favourite,” he grumbled as he began flipping bodies over. The rest of our unit had caught up with us and were streaming past us, driving the enemy towards their watery graves.
“You know what he’s like, Mond, no one loves his own spear as much as Jandak, except maybe Haylin!” Kos yelled. “I’m going to keep pace with the others, and they might bump into a captain or a champion. No need to take heavier losses than we have to!”
He turned and broke into a loping run to catch up to the forward elements, who were slaughtering the routers and beginning to encounter knots of unbroken resistance. Glimpse settled on my shoulder, and I pulled out a mana potion for my little divebomber. His beak dipped into the bottle, and he drank half of it greedily, then launched back into the sky. I looked at the remainder in the glass vial, shrugged with an armoured clank, and knocked it back myself. I crushed the vial in my fist, slammed my visor closed, and set off after Jandak, who had found his spear, and Kos.
I clanked across the torn and bloody remains of the battlefield, corpses crushing beneath my sabatons, and the heavy mace dragging a line in the dirt behind me.
Ray, the nomads have arrived from the north, and the third advanced element has reached the fight as well.
I briefly observed from Glimpse’s point of view. A wave of horsemen had crashed into what remained of the northern part of the horde. Archers showered them with arrows that erupted into fiery detonations of walls of lightning and flame. As the enchanted or imbued spells faded away, the lancers who had followed in the archer's wake charged while their ranged compatriots peeled away to either side and continued their barrage on a new section of the horde.
The close combat nomads tore into the mob of undead, most losing or abandoning their lances and switching to maces or swords as they ploughed deeper into the enemy. I nodded to myself in satisfaction as they pivoted to break off and regroup in good order. Professional. Without their lances, the next charge wouldn’t be quite so devastating, but they had cut apart the zombies that had survived the Titans' passage.
My monsters, not quite so hideous as Mortimer’s had been, had reached the human lines, and the mortal regiments were folding as soon as they smashed into them. Their weapons were useless; their spells seemed to do nothing. It was like the first time we had faced an amalgam, but the giant, armoured boot was on the other foot this time. I felt a brief pang of sympathy for them, but the Titans killed quickly.
There was none of the melting of their consciousnesses together and leaving them screaming in their own heads as their flesh shifted and warped, as had been the case with Ashrot. Splat, you’re dead, goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.
I’d left a trail behind me, a long line carved by Death’s mace. I was starting to catch up with my fighters, who were bogged down by some of Mortmer’s champions. The casters weren’t a threat. We were too close for either side to use magic effectively. We had started to run into the physical types. I bulled through to the front line and found Kos at my shoulder. Jandak had once again leapt ahead into the midst of the enemy and was taking a beating. Stupid bastard.
Shape Earth reached out, snatching the enemy into living graces, and lifting my friend up and delivering him behind our lines. My mace flashed forward, arcing over my head and reducing a heavily armoured warrior to something resembling a crushed beer can. I stomped forward and gained distance from the friendlies that a broad horizontal sweep of the mace cleared a three-metre diameter circle around me. I strode on and repeated the process. Nomads' screams and Huskar's roars rang out behind me as we pressed deeper, driving them before us.
I noticed the sand when I realized I was sinking too deeply into the ground. The dunes stretched away ahead of me, dropping down towards the sea in the distance. The sun glinted off the waves as they rolled onto the shore uncaringly. Soon they’d be carrying away the bodies of the enemy.
We pushed them. Drove them. Every inch was hard fought. They weren’t breaking and running anymore. With the water at their backs, they knew they had nowhere to go. It was fight or die. They weren’t up to matching us one to one, but there were thousands of them. Crimson sand clung to our boots as desperate men swarmed us, taking down nomads and occasionally a Huskar. They couldn’t stand against the Fangs and me, though. We pushed on relentlessly.
I’d phased out my souls harvested notification. I didn’t know how many men I’d turned to paste or had rot apart as they soared through the air away from me.
I could hear the waves. Even over the screams and grunts, the sound of the sea reached me. I slammed the mace down and crushed yet another tin-can man, then stepped over his remains. The waves were receding; no matter how quickly we moved, the waves were falling back.
I looked down from my crow’s eyes and froze dead in my tracks. Something clanged off my armour, but I was vaguely aware of Kos removing the man’s hand at the wrist, his dagger slipping between the plates of crude iron to send him reeling back, spraying blood across his terrified friends.
I snatched at all the threads in my mind and soul and sent a single overwhelming impulse that they couldn’t help but obey.
RETREAT TO HIGH GROUND NOW shot out from my mind to everyone I was bound to.
