Chương 65: Overrun

While Maelle was trying to focus on her spells, it was hard not to turn her head toward Amberlin. Everyone else was too. It might have something to do with the cackle she let out with every muck she blasted. And there was a lot of blasting. She sidled up to her party leader.

"Um, Amberlin?"

"Here's some life advice, Maelle! Do what you love and get paid for it!" Amberlin shot off another [Fireball].

"Uh, sure. But you might want to pace yourself. We're going to have to keep this up all night."

"Don't worry about it, don't worry about it!" Amberlin's next spell landed in a stack of six mucks, spraying bits of flaming goop in every direction. This elicited a big cheer from the adventurer.

"Did you see that? These are just big bags of slime!" The archer next to her leaned in to Maelle's ear.

"Could you ask your friend to ease back on the heat? Some of the buildings are timber."

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

"She's a bit intimidating," the archer admitted. She turned to Amberlin.

"Be careful not to burn anything down, okay? We don't want to start a fire."

"You got it!" Amberlin replied. The next [Fireball] was considerably smaller, and while the mucks still popped in a goopy mess, there weren't any lingering flames. At the same time, Amberlin's cackling tempered down into a soft hum, the tune matching the song being played by the bard behind them. Even at this reduced rate, most of the mucks were being cleared before they reached the ground crew, who were the last line of defense before the zone was breached.

There were actually three teams stationed there, with two of them held back in reserve. One of the reserve teams rested while the other one patrolled inside the zone for the occasional muck that made it past the perimeter, usually by the rooftops. Dory was down there with the active team, expertly cutting mucks down with her sword while another knight with a torch set them alight before they could reconglomerate.

There was one big downside to being up in the tower, which even the music couldn't drown out, and that was the persistent wailing of the ghosts. Not because it sounded loudly in the ear, but rather it was a persistent pressure, something that vibrated in your chest and on the inside of your skull. It was a common tactic in warfare. Just as adventurers had bards, armies had bands, whose music boosted the morale and stamina of the troops.

There were songs that enhanced speed and strength and the fire in their bellies. But that wasn't all they were good for. Music could be used offensively. During the Supreme War, the demons had created special horns to mimic the war cries of Maelle's people, a sound that naturally drove fear into the hearts of all earthbound races. According to Marina, there were generals who trained their soldiers in special dances designed to break the enemy's spirit.

Maelle once had an occasion to watch a human breakdancing performance, and she could understand a soldier's reluctance to drop [Fireballs] on anyone capable of busting out such sick moves.

"Hey, guys?" The archer next to Maelle pointed.

"We've got trouble!" She followed his finger to see a swarm of mucks sprinting along a string of flat rooftops. More than a few of the clumsy monsters fell off, and not all had the right appendages to make the jumps. But there were so many of them that it didn't matter.

"Oh, jeez," Amberlin said.

"Permission to go full blast?"

"No!" several voices cried out simultaneously. The archer was shouting down to the ground crew.

"Incoming! On the rooftops! Big horde! Pull back!" The ground commander yelled in an authoritative voice, "Retreat formation!" and blew his horn. Dory's team pulled back through the perimeter gate and barred it closed. The reserve team that had been resting nearby moved to join them. But the second reserve team had gone down a side street to hunt down a stray muck and was out of position when the first of the rooftop horde arrived.

"South side, cover the ground crew! But watch your fire!" the tower commander ordered.

"The rest of you, keep clearing that road! Don't let them break through!" With the tower's firepower divided, the road was becoming dense with mucks. It didn't help that the ones that fell off the rooftops were joining the ground stream, coming from a direction that the other towers couldn't easily cover. Already they were pounding on the perimeter gate. Maelle picked them off as fast as she could, but they were coming even faster. Up until now, she never really thought of the mucks as strong.

Her only experience had been them getting blown up, set on fire, or cut down by a knight's sword. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. And it was true that by the standard of a knight, the mucks were weak. But they weren't weak for a lack of strength. They were weak because they were clumsy. They were weak because they were untrained and inexperienced. They were weak because they had limbs in all the wrong places.

If she needed any evidence of the mucks' raw physical strength, she only had to look at what remained of the walls the humans had erected closer to the harbor. The mucks were strong, and with so many of them hammering away at the gate, it quickly tore off its hinges, and the swarm poured through. Maelle kept shooting off her [Firebolts]. It was all she could do. Every muck she killed was one less that the ground crew had to deal with. But the flood was unstoppable.

"She jumped off!" The cry came from behind her. She spun around to see what was going on. It had to be a mistake. Jumping from this height, even a gold-ranker would be seriously injured. She looked to Amberlin but her friend wasn't there anymore. Her feet moved on their own. She pushed her way through the soldiers to the southern guardrail and peered down.

Once Maelle and Amberlin had taken their position up in the watchtower, Dory made her way over to the zone's perimeter gate. She'd worried that being posted at the forward garrison for so long had made her sword rusty. But her battle with the muck at the waystation yesterday had proved that she still had it. The meeting with the governor hadn't gone as well as she'd hoped. She wasn't sure what she was expecting, exactly.

But when the adventurers lied about their skills and pretended to be weak, she knew there wouldn't be any special missions, no grand operation to push the mucks back into the sea. She wanted to ask why they'd lied. But it wasn't an easy topic to bring up, and if she didn't do it in the right way, she risked getting shut out. She needed them to trust her, to like her and her family. It still felt like this was their best hope of making it through this crisis.

She reminded herself that these adventurers had come to Ygg Latten Bay of their own volition. They'd come here to save her home. That meant they must have a plan. If their plan required them to pretend to be weak, then so be it. She had to put her trust in them. It was with this thought in her heart that she approached her task, bringing her sword to bear with great vigor. Up there in that tower, Maelle and Amberlin were watching, and she would show them the determination of a Star-Turq knight.

The team's bard hung back at the gate, playing an energetic song on his flute that made her body forget that it had been up since the crack of dawn. Dory lost herself in the flow of battle, and she was only pulled out much later when urgent cries rang up around her, followed by a horn signaling a retreat. She didn't understand what was going on. The mucks on the road were still at a manageable level.

But orders were orders, and she followed the team back through the gate and held it shut while they secured it with a wooden bar. The reserve team were already on their feet and joining her side. But there was supposed to be a third team, and they were nowhere in sight. She turned to the ground commander for instructions, and that was when the mucks started raining down from the rooftops. The commander barked orders.

"Red Cloaks! Cover the fore! Slayers on the flanks! Where are the Fire Eaters?"

"I saw them chasing a muck down Akersbay Lane!" someone shouted.

"There they are now!" someone else yelled out. Once Dory had taken care of the muck in front of her, she spared a glance up the street where the Fire Eaters had rounded a corner. They were slicing their way through the horde, but more kept pouring from the rooftops. A barrage of spells from the tower cleared a path, and the Fire Eaters soon joined with the rest of the ground crew.

"McRory!" one of them shouted.

"Where's McRory?"

"I'm here!" she called back. The other knight glanced at her.

"Not you!" The woman spun around.

"McRory! Has anyone seen him?" Dory's mind was still trying to piece together this absurdity when someone else pointed.

"There! That rooftop!" Her stomach sank. It was Remore, clutching that gittar he treasured so much. He was staring down fearfully at the mucks trying to climb up the awning to get at him. They were being shot down by the tower before they could get to him, but she'd never seen her brother so scared. Meanwhile the path between them was rapidly filling up with mucks again. Abruptly there was a loud metallic clang. The gate had been breached. By the looks of it, it wasn't the bar that failed, but the hinges.

A flood of mucks streamed in.

"Fall back! Fall back!" the commander was screaming.

"My brother!" she shouted back.

"Remore!" She tried to cut her way through the tide. She was getting kicked and punched from all sides. It hurt, but she'd been hurt worse before. The problem was that there were too many of them, and she couldn't make any progress. Something grabbed her. It was strong, and it was pulling her along. She struggled to no avail. And then she was thrust up and landed in the arms of her fellow knights. The ground commander was in her face, yelling angrily.

"Fall back now! That's an order!" The others were dragging her back, but she wasn't paying them any attention. Her eyes were on her brother, alone on that roof. But not alone anymore. A muck was coming up behind him—glorp! Its upper body was blasted off. But another was already climbing up to support it. Then something dropped from the sky. It crashed through the awning, sending up a cloud of dust and splintered wood. It looked like a person, but who could have survived a landing at that speed?

From the rubble, the person emerged, and Dory was once again mesmerized by the shining golden hair that she first saw two nights ago. Amberlin moved swiftly, her hands wreathed in fire tearing through the mucks like balls of jelly. Remore had climbed down to her side, his rooftop having been overrun, as the tower could no longer provide adequate cover with its attention divided on too many fronts. But he was safer down there with Amberlin.

The adventurer fought expertly around him, keeping any mucks from getting near. She moved with incredible speed, beating down a muck on the left, and the next instant kicking two away on the right. Dory remembered, back when she was a child, witnessing a sparring match between a visiting ruby-ranker and members of the bay's garrison. It was the event that first inspired her to become a knight. The dream that one day she could move like that.

At this point Dory lost sight of Amberlin and her brother, as the ground crew had turned down another street. She took up her sword and they fought a fighting retreat to the lane of the second gate, where they joined with the second zone's forces. She wished she could keep an eye on her brother, but she had to trust. As long as he stuck with Amberlin, Remore was going to be all right.