Wandering Warrior: Jury - Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Calling our fallback point a castle was using some pretty strong words where they didn’t belong.  When someone said the word ‘castle,’ it most definitely didn’t describe what I was seeing when I looked at our fortifications.  Stacked boulders with extra parts would be a much better way to describe what we were working with.

“Murphy, get the little barrels of burning oil placed in the trench.  Leedy, help Jess get the horses in the corral.  James will get the gate in position.”  Cross was shouting orders to the others, his blackened arm pointing where he wanted people to go.  “I’ll get the crossbows loaded and ready, and we’ll all meet at the top when we’re done.”

“Sounds good!”  Leedy dashed for the square fence of roughly cut logs behind our stack of boulders, knowing that it would be a pain for Jess to get the makeshift gate open by herself.

Considering it was basically just a few trees cut in half lengthwise that had been tied together with old ropes and brittle vines, it took some finesse to not have it fall apart when you lifted the stupid thing to swing it to the side.

That pretty much described our entire setup.  What had initially been a clearing filled with boulders and a few encroaching trees, had been transformed by Jess and Cross into an improvised base during an extended training session.  We had decided to make it the place where we stored our bigger items, and continued to add to it as the days went by.  Now, we had a lumpy mess that was certainly defensible, but rough was putting it nicely.

I made it through the steep dry moat before I walked over to the palisade of stone spikes and pointed logs that lined the perimeter of the site.  The dry moat wasn’t completely dry, since it had about a foot of dirty water in the bottom thanks to the rain, but the slick mud would only make it harder for an attacker to climb out of it.  I found the open section where we had left a gap, and lifted three pointed logs that had been lashed together to fashion a gate.

Dropping them into the narrow hole where they were supposed to fit was easy enough.  They were a good two feet shorter than the rest of the wall of spikes though, and weren’t nearly as steady, since the hole was loose around the logs.  I kicked in some gravel and dirt to try and fill in the gap, and it made it sturdy enough that I didn’t feel like wasting mana on a spell to fix it.  I had a feeling I was going to need every bit of magic in just a few minutes.

A spike of earth mana spun me around, and I saw Jess had dropped the section of moat where the horses had come across.  She raised a few more stone spikes to finish out the palisade so the corral was closed off.  Now, the ghouls best option was to come through the sections that had wood instead of stone.  Which is exactly where we would be, and not the horses, or all our stuff.

“Uh, a little help?”  Murphy waved at me from the other side of the wall.  “I’d like to be on the inside when the monsters get here.”

I guess I should have waited for him before dropping the gate in place.

“My bad, Murph.  Hold on.”  I jumped to the top of the gate and leaned over, reaching down for him.  His armor lit up, providing him with the physical boost necessary to make the six-foot leap so I could pull him over the eight-foot section of wall.  We both hopped down, and started making our way up the stacked boulders to where Leedy and Cross were already waiting for us.  “How many barrels were you able to set up?”

“We’ve got four along the edges, and two right in front of the gate.”  Murphy brushed back his sopping wet dark hair, the faint curls definitely longer than the regulations the Wardens had ever allowed him.  His rugged good looks, dark stubble, sharp jawline, and muscular frame could land him on the cover of any romance novel in my home world.  It was almost enough to make a guy jealous, if I had a little less self confidence.  At least I was taller.  “They are going to get a nasty surprise when they try to go through the front door.”

“Let’s hope they decide to go that way.”  I looked back at the possible approaches, noticing several places they might choose besides the gate.  “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover if they don’t.”

Once we got to the top, Cross handed each of us a loaded crossbow.  They were weapons we had recovered from the destroyed platoon of White Wardens that had tried to kill us while we were fighting the lich and his undead army.  It might have ended poorly for them and their commander–some jerk named Gibson or something–but it had been great for us to get all the new gear and equipment.

“It won’t be long now.”  Cross passed out a small quiver of the special bolts I had prepared to go with the crossbows as Jess finally joined us.  There was a nervous energy buzzing in the air, so he did his best to soothe everyone’s nerves.  “Everything’s as well prepared as it can be.  I’ll handle setting off the barrels.  You focus on hitting them with the crossbows.  If they make it through, we make our stand here.  As much as we like them, the horses aren’t as important as our lives.  They probably won’t bother with them until they’ve killed us, anyway.  Stay focused, and we’ll stay alive.”

Everyone gave him a sharp nod, with Leedy even throwing in a salute.  I guess old habits die hard.  It made me happy to see Cross taking charge of the situation, because it meant I didn’t have to do it.  I knew it also made Leedy feel more comfortable, since the former corporal preferred getting orders from his captain.  And, one day, I wouldn’t be here anymore.  They needed to get used to someone else telling them what to do.

As we settled in to wait, I noticed Cross was unconsciously flexing his darkened hand, the lich-curse drinking in the light around it.  Wherever the blight spread, it caused him to feel a tingling numbness that I knew was hard for him to ignore.  The curse was weird to see, almost like the eye didn’t want to focus on it.  Veins of throbbing black streaks went from the middle of his forearm to his elbow, much thicker than they had been when I had restored his hand and tried to isolate the curse to one spot.  It seemed like the more he used magic, the further the curse spread.  No matter what I did to try and stop it, all I could manage was a series of roadblocks to slow it down.  If we didn’t find a cure or counter-curse before it made it to his heart or brain, things weren’t looking good for the home team.  I didn’t know what would happen to him, but I was sure it wouldn’t be very pleasant.

“I think they’re here.”  Jess had the eyes of a cat shifter, so it made sense she was the first person to see the ghouls making their way to the edge of our perimeter.  “They’re spread out too far apart for any of my bigger spells yet.”

She sounded glum, but I figured she’d be okay.  Jess shouldered her own crossbow, the tip of the special bolt gleaming in the fading light that managed to make it through the clouds.

To make sure Cross had passed out the right set of bolts, I cast my Identify spell on it.

Item: Crossbow Bolt (Enhanced)

Type: Organic Corrosive Compound

Grade: 4/5

Description: A simple steel and wood crossbow bolt that has been treated with an alchemical mixture, making it brittle and prone to shattering. After striking a hard surface, the wooden portion will splinter, releasing the powdered acid hidden within.  Any organic tissue will suffer immediate damage, dissolving most cellular membranes in seconds.  Effects vary based on environment.

Yep, that’s definitely the ones he was supposed to pass out.  I had two other kinds made, but they wouldn’t work nearly as well on the ghouls.  Their heavy bone armor might be able to stand up to the corrosive powder, but all it needed to do was make it between a few gaps and they would start falling apart.  Of course, we wouldn’t be able to use them after the initial wave without risking getting some on ourselves.  The acid would burn itself out quickly, so we would be okay as long as we played it smart.

“Aim for the big ones.  They’re usually slower, and won’t be able to dodge.”  Cross was preaching to the choir, but I knew he was just talking to steady nerves.  “Pick your targets early.  Start from the edges and work your way inside.  Don’t forget to lead them a little.  Center-mass is all we need, don’t get fancy.  Fire and reload as fast as you can.  Once they get halfway to the moat, stop shooting.  We’ll wait for a few seconds to see how they handle James’s little surprise.”

There wasn’t time for anyone to acknowledge his orders, because that’s when they rushed us.  It was outright unfair how something that big and nasty could move so fast over open ground.  We all fired as quickly as we lined up our shots, the steady twang of the steel cords and crossbow arms finding a drumbeat-like rhythm that ran counter to the hunting howls of the bone-armored ghouls.  Somehow, most of our shots managed to hit their moving targets, but they were shrugging off the hits as if the bolts were little more than the rain.

While the storms had died down in intensity, there was still an occasional flash of lightning that lit up the skies.  When one flashed overhead as I was reloading my third bolt, it made the charging line of ghouls look like twisted knights in demonic plate armor, their jagged faces warped beyond recognition of anything that could have ever been alive.  It made both the Paladin and Judge inside me burn with anger, and I could feel the lightning inside my mana generator thrash in sympathetic rage.

I tracked my third target, a ghoul with an unusually oversized head spike, and fired as it leapt over a tree stump.  The bolt caught it in the hip, and it stumbled for only a moment before running for the moat.  All of the ghouls were still running for the moat.

“Hold!  They’re getting too close.  We’ll melt our faces off if we keep shooting.”  Cross leaned closer to me, trying to keep his voice low.  “Are you sure those bolts are going to do something to them?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”  I finally had a solid count of the ghouls, now that they were in the open.  We were facing exactly thirty-five of them.  Even seven-to-one odds.  There was no way in hell we could kill all of them without casualties.  If the acid didn’t work, some of my people were certainly going to die.  “Just give it a minute to kick in.”

The ghouls stayed spread along our front, either smart enough to know we would use an area spell on them if they did bunch up, or because they all wanted to be the first in line to eat our faces.  Probably a combination of both.  After all, I bet my face was delicious.

At some unspoken signal, they rushed the moat as one.  Cross waved his cursed hand, activating the runes on the barrels.  It would take a good five or six seconds for them to heat up enough to explode, which was enough time for the ghouls to find out climbing out of the moat was much harder than jumping in.  A few of the smaller and more nimble ghouls jumped straight over the moat, and immediately started climbing the palisade walls.

They managed to get about halfway up when the barrels went off.

I had to cover my eyes from the light of the sudden explosion, blinking away a few spots before I could see the damage.  For the ghouls that had been close to the barrels, it was impressive.  They were burning like candle wicks, unable to climb out of the moat as the flames cooked them inside their armor.  The ones farther away were only knocked down, and unless any oil managed to splash on them, they went right back to climbing out of the trench.  Of the thirty-five that had entered the moat, only twenty-six would be leaving.  Better, but still not survivable for everyone.  And my acid bolts still hadn’t done anything.

The few ghouls that had been climbing the palisade had been knocked off the wall, but all of them were right back where they were moments before.  Their claws had no problem finding handholds in the wooden sections of our wall.  Things weren’t looking good.

Jess knelt down, placing one hand on the ground and pointing the other toward the palisade.  The runes in her armor lit up, and the mana around us thrummed in response.  I was happy to see all the hours of practice we had put in starting to show dividends.  She didn’t even vocalize a spell as sharp stone thorns suddenly began to grow from the stone sections of our wall.  The ghouls trying to climb were immediately tangled up, and left large chunks of themselves behind as they jumped down.

“Nice job!”  Murphy, who was bound and determined to one day marry Jess, scooped her up before she could fall over.  “You’re amazing!”

“She just exhausted herself before the battle is even halfway done.  It was a great spell, but she should have stopped at the halfway mark.”  I shook my head, walking over to gauge how drained she was.  I slapped her awake, not being gentle about it.  “Hey!  Wake up, crazy!”

“Huh?”  Jess opened her eyes, rubbing at her cheeks.  “What’s going on?  Did we win?”

“No.  You passed out for about two seconds.  Now you’re a liability that Murphy is going to have to guard with his life, instead of helping us fight.”  I knew I wasn’t being very nice, but I also wasn’t wrong.  This was the kind of rookie mistake that got mages killed all the time, and it usually wasn’t just the mage that ended up dead.  What had upset me the most was that we had talked about this exact thing in the past.  “Stay awake and concentrate on getting as much mana back as you can.  And we’re most definitely going to have another discussion about tactics for mages once all of this is over.”

Jess gave me an unsteady thumbs up as Murphy helped her get into a comfortable position to meditate.  Murphy didn’t look happy with me either, but Leedy seemed to agree with me for once.  He probably wasn’t happy that he would be fighting without his normal backup, since Murphy usually watched his back.

As I moved back to the edge to see what the ghouls were doing to get over the wall, Cross leaned closer to speak privately with me.

“You know she only got excited.  This is her first time defending a position like this.”  Cross glanced back to where Murphy was helping Jess sit up straight.  “I’ve seen similar occurrences from young warriors time and time again.”

“I know.”  I watched as a ghoul tried to leap over the wall and impaled itself, wrenching itself free and falling back over the wall after leaving behind a chunk of its calf armor and lower leg.  “But after this–if we survive–she’s not going to do it again.  It was a fantastic spell, and bought us some extra time, but it would have been just as good at half its size.  She’ll be one of the most dangerous mages on this planet when I’m done training her, but only if she doesn’t kill herself first.”

“All I’m saying is, don’t be too hard on her.”  Cross motioned to another ghoul that was defeated by her wall of stone thorns.  “You don’t want to stamp out ingenuity like that.”

“Fair enough.”  I sighed, trying to think over what our next step needed to be.  Whatever it was, it looked like my acid bolts had been a complete failure.  Finally, the undead decided to make their move.  “Get ready everyone, they’re moving.”

The ghouls had decided to stop trying to jump over, and were now moving toward the one spot on our wall where there weren't any thorns covering it.  The front gate.

“Wait for them to get closer, and we can try to crush them with something nasty.”  Cross was leaning forward, anxious to attack.  “Do you want to use fire?”

“I don’t want you to do anything.”  I looked rather pointedly at his cursed hand.  “My acid bolts failed, so let me make up for it.”

Cross looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew as well as I did that his life was on a timer.  Every time he used mana, Cross was burning through what little time he had left.  He let out a long breath and gave me a nod.  “Fine.  You handle it.”

I hopped down to the next row of boulders, wanting to get closer to the main gate.  This time, I didn’t want any mistakes.  No more shrugging off my attacks.

When they clustered up to break through, I was going to drop the hammer on these bastards.