The wall fell sooner than you might have expected from that initially good performance, but that’s just how these things go. Our forces were still inexperienced and poorly trained for the most part, compared to those orcs at least, and with the siege engines allowing them to storm our walls in numbers there’d never been much doubt of how things would go.

  So it was a good thing this whole retreat had been anticipated and planned long in advance, then. Putting aside the amount of damage already done to our attackers by the constant hammering of cannon fire, we’d prepared a good number of pathways the men on our walls could follow in heading back to safety.

  I scarpered right down them, barely resisting the urge to scream and flail around in a most decidedly un-Heroic way. Most of the other men followed suit. The orcs were delayed in waiting for their numbers to build as they readied to chase us, resisting the usual urge to just sprint after and right into the jaws of a trap before more of them could scale the walls.

  Another thing helping was that we were heading to a great many barricades set up around the city, between its occupied population centres and the outer walls. This meant that as we ran, there was a practically inexhaustible number of gunners covering our retreat with withering shots of arquebus-fire that mutilated orcs with every hit.

  What followed was less of a melee and more of a sustained shoving match, one which we were able to hold off for a good long while until the forces of our side ended up being galvanized under direct leadership. Then a counter-charge followed. This was where my heart ended up right in my mouth again, because the risk of dying was all too great. Plate armour was good stuff, but I’d long since had any feelings of invulnerability beaten right out of me. One of my pauldrons, in fact, was caved in at that very moment.

  But I’d gotten my breath back in the brief period spent cowering behind our barricades, and there were a great many corpses lying around still warm from their recent deaths. I began my charge with flames, and the men behind me seemed all too eager to follow after. There was no end to the number ahead of me, even after I softened them up by blasting Thaumaturgy into their ranks.

  Fortunately, there was no end to the men behind me either. All of them screaming with blood up from violence; the fear of it and the love of it, and the damned abundance of it everywhere as far as the eye could see. We cut a path through the orcs right until we reached their siege tower, isolating the ones between it and us from their allies and engulfing them in the stormfront of blades.

  After that, it just became a matter of sustaining the pressure. The orcs knew it too, they became all the more fearsome now that they were at risk of losing their hard-won foothold. All the slow burning lethargy of our previous fighting disappeared as things became frenzied and dangerous, bonfires turned to exploding powder kegs.

  Having recently had a far closer experience with blasting powder than I’d have ever liked, the mounting violence left me tense and panicking. I didn’t know what to do except keep fighting, and my monomaniacal focus left me dangerously unaware of my surroundings. The worst ended up happening, of course. I got shot in the head.

  As usual, I was lucky enough to survive. In this case that demanded quite a lot of luck indeed.

  For one thing, the shot didn’t come from atop the walls. It must’ve been fired on the ground below, and cutting dozens of paces through the air exhausted a good fraction of its momentum before impact. Then there was the helmet to contend with; good steel and properly made, it yielded only after forcing the musket ball wide and jagged, slowing it, expanding it, mangling it. What was left punched through the chainmail below easily enough, then hit my skull.

  My brow, as it happened. The thickest part of my skull by far. I was knocked right down and saw stars dancing in my vision, at the time not having the faintest idea what had just hit me. Then I got up to my feet, fully convinced I’d taken a stray crossbow bolt. Blood was running down my face from a gash in the skin, and my head throbbed, but I was fine.

  Later on, I’d learn the lead ball had been damaged enough that it just splintered apart on my cranium rather than even cracking it. That’s Heroism for you, enjoy a huge stroke of fortune and watch everyone else turn it into legend.

  Unfortunately, while I was not instantly killed by the shot, as far as everyone who witnessed it could tell I’d just been struck dead by a bullet. This did fairly predictable things to morale, and the momentum of our assault started to pitter out and die as men began to freeze up or outright break and run. That sort of shift can lose a battle before it’s even really been fought.

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  But there was more good luck following that, because the misconception didn’t go away once I got up. No. Plenty of men realised I’d lucked out and not been seriously wounded, as they saw me fighting again, but a few more—idiots, all of them—got it into their heads that…well. That I was immortal.

  Now, this had a few unpleasant consequences regarding their concern with keeping me from dying, as you might imagine. But it had one hell of a benefit for the general mood of our side, as retreats turned into second winds and the whole body of fighters defending Arvharest started churning into the orcs like a whirlpool of blades.

  There was no holding us back while this intensity took our advance, and the orcs fell away one after another. I was right at the front, in the thick of the fighting. This was no great act of courage on my behalf, of course. I figured the more violently I fought, the higher my odds of taking a wound that gave me an excuse not to fight more later on. The more heroics I pulled off beforehand, the more readily I’d be believed if, for instance, a tiny gash were to be accidentally widened with my own knife while nobody was looking.

  No such luck of course, apparently my miraculous rise from the grave had been a little bit too convincing. As far as all watchers were concerned they were fighting with miraculous aid from God Himself, and that meant a level of morale you just don’t see normally. The orcs tried to mount a resistance, but the sudden change was more than they were at all prepared to handle. They were beaten back right until we were before the very siege towers themselves.

  At that point? Well, I hardly had an excuse not to start torching them, did I? Granted it took a lot of doing, the damned orcs seemed to have soaked the wood through with water. It’d make the things rot in the long-term, but for the moment it meant they were just about immune to my flames.

  But not to Morlo’s.

  His power was such that the wooden structures exploded more than burned, something I would later learn was due to the moisture trapped within them suddenly evaporating and blasting out as shockwaves of steam. Many orcs died in those siege towers, and many more standing below died when the burning debris rained down upon them.

  But none of the men beside me gave much of a toss about that, far as they were concerned we were just seeing enemies slaughtered. Triumphant cheering drowned out whatever empathic grief might’ve flowered. As for me?

  Well, I was cursing my bad luck and looking for a secluded enough spot to poke myself with a few bad-looking holes to avoid being called up for the next round of fighting. I knew, objectively, that joining in at full strength was my best chance for long-term survival, but right then I just didn’t have the courage for anything long-term.

  Fortunately, in the grand scheme of things at least, I was kept from this particular spasm of cowardice by the men quickly locating and dragging me back for more celebration. After losing their hard-won footing, it appeared the orcs were back in retreat.

  This time, though, the victory came more hollowly.

  We’d taken heavy losses in that final push, and I could tell at a glance that if the orcs managed to make as much progress as they had before, we wouldn’t be undoing it again. On their part, the attackers had been decimated. That’s literally decimated, to be clear, in that we’d removed approximately one tenth of their total number, maybe a shade more.

  So, thirty-five thousand orcs against whatever was left of us. I was sure I’d heard of worse odds being overcome, but for the life of me no hard examples came to mind. I retreated to our rooms and peeled my dented armour off, stewing in the growing certainty that I was not long for this world.

  Vara didn’t mock me then, and I didn’t find myself annoyed at her very presence. All that bickering and whinging suddenly felt too much effort to be worth it. We got along, for those next few days while awaiting the next assault. Helping each other with our Thaumaturgy, exchanging tips and knowledge, preparing for the final push. Vara would be involving herself in the defence now, didn’t have much choice. However little her powers had expanded would have to be enough.

  Then the signals came that something was happening out beyond the walls, and we set off to see.

  I’d been expecting to watch another wave of orcish bodies clatter towards us in thick iron and wielding deadly weapons, to watch siege towers roll and stolen cannons fire. Instead I saw cavalry. Human cavalry. Royal human cavalry, because the Anglysh Army had finally come, and the fight was no longer to our disadvantage.

  Generally speaking, a Hero is supposed to regard such things with a stiff upper lip and a tight jaw. He’s meant to look stoic and inexpressive, as if finding out he’ll live is just some idle fact to be taken into consideration, then put aside before it can interfere with his more important priorities.

  I was not a proper Hero, though, and in fact am still not a proper Hero to this very day. I just started weeping like a little girl. Presumably nobody saw me doing so, all eyes and ears too preoccupied with the sight of our salvation, because I haven’t heard a single mention of that little factoid in any of the songs since.

  What did get a mention was the carnage that came from the Anglysh Army’s charge. They’d not managed to set up their own cannons yet, which were also less numerous than Arvharest’s of course, but that was just about the only saving grace the orcs got. Heavily armoured knights thundered into their ill-prepared back lines, lances finding meat and ripping it open. The charge twisted around and carried on away from the orcs before any of them could mount a counter, and then the infantry followed up while they were still churning in the shock of it.

  This time the orcs didn’t enjoy an advantage of training or experience, nor even numbers. And however the Anglysh Army had managed to get the drop on them, that they had was all that really mattered. That element of surprise turned a tight win into an absolute fucking slaughter.

  Within twenty minutes we were watching orcs fall back from the walls as one great mass, the day finally won.

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