The initial skirmishes in the outer town were but a scattering of raindrops before the deluge. As dusk bled into true night, the goblin horde stormed forward in a wave of shrieking malice and clanking iron, their torches a sea of fireflies swarming towards Woodhall.

  And then came the horror.

  At the forefront of the assault, driven by the whips and prods of their goblin masters, came the dead-walkers. They shambled forward with an unnatural, jerky momentum, their decaying forms a grotesque parody of life.

  Revulsion and sorrow swept along Woodhall’s troops on the battlements. These were their kin, their countrymen, perverted into a mindless, advancing meat shield. "Gods have mercy…" A young archer beside Ronigren choked out, his bow trembling in his hands.

  Ronigren stared, his face ashen, at the lurching figures. A cold dread clamped around his heart. He remembered the faces of the Alderholt villagers, their desperate courage. Were they too out there, marching in horrifying perversion of their eternal rest?

  Shield-Captain Eghel’s strained voice cut through the stricken soldiers: "Steady, men! They are not who they were! They are puppets, abominations! Grant them the true death they have been denied! Archers, loose!"

  The first volley of Argrenian arrows tore into the ranks of the undead. Some fell, pierced through decaying chests or skulls, collapsing into rotted heaps. But many, despite grievous wounds, staggered on, driven by dark sorcery, untouched by pain and fear. Behind this gruesome vanguard, heavily armored goblin formations pushed forward their siege weapons: battering rams and tall, rickety siege ladders shielded by the advancing undead. Several wolf riders directed the assault, their snarls mixing with the guttural chants of a shaman positioned near one of the largest rams.

  Ruthiel’s melodic voice rose in a song – a lament, crystalline and sorrowful, woven with threads of natural magic. It sang of release, of returning to the earth. As the notes flowed, soft silver light emanated from the Elf, reaching out towards the advancing dead-walkers.

  Where the light touched them, some of the undead faltered. The glow in their eyes flickered and died. Their unnatural animation ceased and they crumpled to the ground, finding true rest at last. It was a merciful unbinding, a gentle severing of the necromantic threads. But there were so many, and Ruthiel’s power could only grant peace to a few.

  A few paces away, Artholan engaged the goblin warlock in a duel of wills. The shaman was imbuing the ram with dark energy, and its wooden head glowed with glyphs channeling foul forces. Artholan weaved intricate patterns in the air, and tendrils of crackling blue energy snaked out from his fingertips, seeking to unravel the shaman’s enchantment. Bolts of pallid green energy erupted from the shaman’s staff, met and deflected by Artholan’s shimmering ethereal shields in a silent battle of otherworldly forces against the backdrop of screams and steel.

  The Argrenian archers, recovering from their initial shock, now unleashed volley after volley, with arrows thudding into undead flesh and goblin shields alike. From the flanks of the fortress, where Finn and the other scouts and trappers had melted back closer to the walls, sporadic arrows continued to pick off goblin stragglers and disrupt their formations, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent a full encirclement and keep the routes contested, yet the horde crept nearer and nearer, glints of eyes, teeth and steel visible now even to the contingent atop the city walls.

  * * *

  Deep within the dungeons, Sabine and Marta listened to the muffled sounds of the battle raging above. Sabine paced the stone floor, her impatience a restless fire in her belly. "We should be up there!" She exclaimed. "Fighting! Not… not hiding down here with silent stones!"

  Marta placed a calming hand on her arm, looking up at her. "Patience, child. Ruthiel spoke true. Their time will come when it is meant to. Forcing it will achieve nothing." Sabine looked at the six colossal Keepers, their forms unmoving, yet she could feel a subtle tension in their stony silence, as if they were listening, waiting.

  A familiar, sleek black form trotted into the dungeon, appearing from nowhere. Monty the cat, his tail held high and vibrating with excited anticipation. He sauntered over to the feet of the stone guardian with the obsidian axe, and stared at Sabine. He blinked his knowing yellow eyes, and gave a small, almost encouraging, "mrrp."

  Startled but comforted by the cat’s nonchalant presence, Sabine knelt down and began to pet him, her fingers sinking into his thick, glossy fur. "What are you doing down here, Monty?" she murmured. "Shouldn't you be… well, somewhere safer?"

  Monty simply purred, shifting his gaze to the stone guardian above them.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Uh, do you like the pretty statues? The pretty… useless statues?” She cooed. Monty blinked slowly at her, then laid on his side, demanding to be worshipped as cats do.

  * * *

  "They will fight until the false-dawn," Snik croaked, his small body trembling, golden eyes fixed on the raging battle beyond the arrow slit in Captain Eghel’s command post. "Then… then they will pull back. The Deep-Whisper… its hold is weaker in the True Light. The Stone-Skins… they do not like the sun.”

  Captain Eghel, deep channels carved in his face by the sleepless night, listened intently. The goblin informant was proving to be an astute observer of his former masters’ tactics. "So, they’ll throw everything they have at us tonight, hoping to break us before sunrise?"

  Snik nodded vigorously. "Yes, Captain. All night. They try to wear you down. Break your will. Then, if walls still stand, they camp, wait for next dark."

  He couldn’t match the enemy’s numbers, but he could use the darkness, their knowledge of the terrain, and sheer audacity to harry and disrupt. He sent out small raiding parties from postern gates under covering fire.

  On the walls, the battle was a maelstrom of fire, steel, and sorcery. Artholan, face contorted in concentration, his robes billowing around him, let out a triumphant yell. "Ha! Unravel, foul assemblage of necromantic filth!" One of the largest battering rams, its enchanted head moments from striking the main gate, shuddered. The dark glyphs upon it sputtered and died. With a groan its main beam cracked, splintered, collapsing into a useless heap of timber, much to the shrieking fury of the goblins manning it.

  The shaman, a hunched figure wreathed in otherworldly green light near the ruined ram, let out an enraged howl that ripped through the din of battle. In response, he gestured violently, and from the rear of the goblin lines, a new horror was unleashed. A catapult fashioned from a massive, springy tree trunk, whipped forward, launching a spray of jagged rocks and heavy debris towards the battlements.

  "Incoming!" a lookout screamed.

  The deadly shower rained down upon the defenders. Men cried out as heavy stones smashed into shields, dented helms, and found unprotected flesh. Ronigren ducked behind a merlon as a chunk of granite the size of his head smashed into the stone behind where he had been standing, spraying him with rock chips. He heard a sickening crack to his left and looked up in time to see a young archer crumple to the ground with his chest caved in.

  A fresh volley of rocks arced towards their section of the wall. Ruthiel reacted instantly. The Elf’s hands moved in a swift, intricate pattern. The air before them shimmered, and a dozen of the largest projectiles simply… stopped. Suspended in mid-air, caught in an invisible net of silver light. With a sharp, focused gesture, Ruthiel flung them back with lethal force towards the catapult. Shrieks of pain and surprise erupted from the enemy lines as their own ammunition turned against them.

  Despite the sabotage raids, despite Artholan’s magical duel and Ruthiel’s elegant defense, despite the constant barrage of arrows and crossbow bolts that rained down from Woodhall’s walls, the horde continued its advance. They clambered over their fallen, undead and goblin alike, driven by the shaman’s dark will and the imperative of the Entity.

  Ladders scraped against stone, grappling hooks sought purchase, and the remaining rams thudded with metronomic persistence against the gates and weaker sections of the wall, sending tremors under Ronigren’s feet.

  Woodhall was an island of defiance in a hostile sea, and the long, bloody storm had only just begun.

  The main gate of Woodhall groaned under the relentless assault of two battering rams, their rhythmic thuds a sickening heartbeat counting down the fortress’s resilience. Elsewhere along the western wall, ladders scraped against the stone, and shrill war cries announced the first attackers scrabbling for purchase on the battlements.

  "They’re on the western curtain!" A runner gasped, finding Ronigren amidst his breach reserve. "Section near the old sally port tower! They’ve got a ladder up!"

  This was it. Ronigren’s hand tightened on his sword. "Gregan! Iron Lances, with me!"

  He led his handpicked force down into the belly of the keep. They raced through a narrow, winding passage that led to an abandoned sally port, a small, reinforced door concealed on the outer wall by boulders and overgrown shrubbery.

  They burst from it in an eruption of steel and fury, carving into the flank of the goblin party attempting to scale the wall. The goblins were caught completely off guard. Ronigren’s first blow took a ladder-bearer in the throat. Gregan, roaring like a berserker, ran past and waded into the thick of them, his axe piercing deep into a goblin’s chest armour with a slash, kicking the dying creature dangling from its blade.

  It was close-quarters, brutal work. A goblin spear skittered off Ronigren’s shield, another grazed Gregan’s arm. An Iron Lance trooper went down with a scream with a jagged blade buried in his stomach. But the shock and ferocity of the Argrenian counter-attack were overwhelming. The goblins, caught between the sally port force and the missiles from the wall above, broke.

  "The ladder!" Ronigren yelled. He and Gregan fought their way towards it, hacking through the remaining goblins. With a combined effort, they managed to topple the heavy siege ladder, and sent it crashing to the ground, taking a few screaming goblins with it.

  A momentary, savage triumph bloomed in his chest, but as they paused, catching their breath amidst the goblin dead and wounded, a volley of arrows arced down from the darkness beyond their immediate perimeter.

  "Back!" Ronigren roared. "Back to the sally port!"

  Another trooper fell with a strangled gurgle, an arrow piercing the base of his throat. They scrambled back through the narrow opening, dragging their wounded with them, just as a heavier volley of arrows thudded into the boulders and stonework around the concealed door.

  Ronigren’s heart was a cold, thumping, hard knot in his chest. Two men dead for one ladder. The brutal arithmetic of command burned like acid in his gut.