Chapter 10 (Part I): Redoubt

When Schroeder had arrived at the main gate, tensions were high, but the fighting hadn’t started. He had a lot of men there, and they’d shored up barricades as well as retaining control of the overlooks built into the walls above and around the gates. It made for enough protection that they’d be a challenge for the Firebrands to get to. As a mob, the Firebrands could sweep through and kill them, but the dragon's lackeys hadn’t gone full-fanatic yet – every one of the Firebrands knew that the first guy to try to clamber over one of those barricades would have an arrow through the heart courtesy of the cityguard archers in the overlook. Everyone there was fine being the fifth or sixth guy in, but no one was zealous enough to throw himself across that barrier for martyrdom.

Evidently, though, Syliva’s mercenaries must have had orders to keep things going. Schroeder couldn’t figure why for certain. She probably wanted control of the gate, and maybe she wanted to see a large portion of his disobedient guardsmen wiped out, but it might have been that she just didn’t want her zealots to lose momentum.

Whatever the case, while the mercenaries probably understood the risks of being the frontline better than the Firebrands did, they also had quite a lot more armor. It was at least enough armor to give them a chance against anything that the cityguard archers had.

So, after the Firebrands stood and shouted threats for a while without making good on those threats, the Blackguard mercenaries pushed their way through to the front, and readied their shields. The order came from a familiar voice – Medes was on horseback at the back of the mob, wearing the same black armor and flanked by more mercenaries. On his command, the mercenaries charged forward as one.

Rather than try to clamber over the barricades and make themselves targets for the archers, though, they actually slammed into the barricade. Granted no amount of armor can help a man who throws himself into a solid wall, but this wall was not solid – it was a hastily constructed mishmash of overturned wagons, crates, barrels, and construction scraps, with some sandbags to hold things in place. The wall shuddered, shook, and a few piled things tumbled. It held – at first.

The black armored men leaned in and kept pushing, and the wall began to slide, wobble, and eventually buckle. One of the elf runners had told Schroeder there was one last large group of evacuees hurrying up the route to the gate. If the barricade fell, those people would be running into a trap, and Schroeder could only see one way to relieve the assault on the barricade.

He ran and jumped over it.

He didn’t think to give an order; if he’d stopped to think, he’d probably have been too scared to say the words, so he just shouted unintelligibly, drew his sword, and started hacking at the firebrands. It was callous, he knew, to attack the mob of civilians rather than the mercenaries he had leaped past, but he also knew that he could maim or kill five of the unarmored Firebrands in the time it would take him to down one of the armored professionals, and he knew that if the Firebrands were routed, even just for a short while, his men could put up enough of a fight to make the mercenaries go back to the dragon asking for a raise.

Of course, the mercenaries weren’t fools; they knew they were depending on the weight of numbers from their allies, and that meant defending them. Several of the mercenaries pushing at the center immediately abandoned their attack on the barrier, and converged on Schroeder. A distraction was all Schroeder had really hoped to provide though – he’d hoped he could buy the evacuees just a few more moments – exactly as long as his thirty years of experience could keep him alive while surrounded by an angry mob.

The bravery of his men was not something he’d really counted on, but it was considerable nonetheless. When the mercenaries turned away from the barricade to attack Schroeder, his men seized the opportunity. The cityguard behind the center of the barricade, as well as many enthusiastic orcs, piled over and inundated the mercenaries coming after Schroeder. Some of them followed Schroeder into the mob – Figgy, a large orc who'd shown up with farm tools in each hand, now tore through the mob like a steel plow driving through soft soil.

Schroeder could hear shouting, and then the approaching sound of armored boots, stomping rhythmically on the brick-covered street. He kicked himself free of his opponents, ran back, and scrambled up onto the barricade to see over the mob. Two dozen more armored mercenaries were marching down the street. They’d be fresh, not tired like his guards or the men they were fighting, and they’d reinvigorate the Firebrands.

From the other direction, Schroeder could now see the last of the refugees, dozens of men, women, and children, rushing down the street towards the gate. Five minutes more. They’d be out in five minutes, and once they were out the door, his men already had the order to drop the portcullis, preventing the Firebrands from following quickly.

The Firebrands, though, had apparently taken notice of their reinforcements, and as he feared, those who’d begun to retreat now turned heel and rushed back into the fight. It was a massive crush of people that even his armored guards couldn’t withstand, and his men were quickly being forced back to the barricade. Schroeder knew this was always how it might end, and he’d already decided what he was going to do when it did. He just hoped the remaining men at the barracks could defend his family.

Schroeder shouted again, and leapt back into the fray. He charged hard and fast through the mob, shield raised, making a straight line for Medes. He’d hoped he might reach the man before he died, but there were just too many people in the way – his progress slowed, little by little, and his armor rang with the blows of clubs and chains. Soon he was fighting to hold onto his shield, and his sword was caught in something, or someone. His old knees buckled as the weight of the mob bore down on him.

And then there was a scream.

There’d been many screams – even fanatics scream when you cleave into them with a sword or split their head open with a shield. The guards, the firebrands, and the mercenaries had all done their share of screaming. This though was the sort of shriek one normally associates with staged melodrama. And it was followed by another, and another, and before long the firebrands were as much fear as fury. Figgy knocked some of the panicking Firebrands aside, embedded one of his sickles in a man’s face, and pulled Schroeder to his feet with his freehand. What the orc pointed him to was reasonably terrifying, even in the midst of the blood-slicked carnage that surrounded them.
Storm drains, access covers, and anything else that connected to the tunnels below the streets were disgorging dozens of bizarre, monstrous creatures made of bone. The creatures rattled and chattered, flailed menacingly, and even began throwing pieces of themselves at the mob. The mercenaries who’d been marching to join the fight were completely surrounded by the things, and had locked together, back to back, shields raised but uncertain what to do.

Schroeder heard one Firebrand shout something about his aunt Elizabeth before screaming some more running back to the south, abandoning the fight altogether. Scores of Firebrands followed the man. Medes shouted to them to regroup, but it was futile; a mob that can be commanded isn’t really a mob. Finally he realized he needed to lead by example, and charged into a group of the creatures with his horse. He mowed them down effortlessly, scattering them like bowling pins. When his mercenaries finally attacked the skeletons surrounding them, it was the same. The bones fell, scattered, and rolled aside, knocked down like towers made from playing cards.

Medes shouted, “It’s but an illusion! You have nothing to fear from these creatures!”

But it was a hell of an illusion. Half the Firebrands were gone and nearly all the refugees were out the gate. Still, Schroeder knew that even if the refugees made it to safety, it would now be too late for his men. Medes still had more than enough men to annihilate the cityguard remnants at the gate, and given how personally he’d taken their rejection, that was is probably what he had come to do in the first place. Medes rallied Syliva’s mercenaries, and led them to the barricade at a fast pace, building momentum for a charge.

Fortunately, that momentum that was severely broken when a green fireball pegged his horse’s flank and sent it into a smoking panic. While the horse’s fur smoldered, Medes’ bright red cape burst into flames (apparently the Dragon wanted fine looking uniforms for her troops, but had gone pretty cheap on the material). His horse bucked wildly, finally throwing him to the street where his men tried to help put him out… by repeatedly stomping on him.

The woman Schroeder had talked to earlier was on a balcony of a nearby building flinging more fireballs down at the troops. Other Old Town residents, Men and women he himself had been unable to rally, were in second floor windows throwing whatever they could grab into the street. Furniture rained down on the soldiers – with great effort, two men actually launched a piano out a window – it only hit one guard, but it thoroughly removed him from the fight. It was when a couple of halflings started throwing out drapes that Schroeder realized they were pelting the mercenaries with combustibles. Before long the green fireballs had created a roaring bonfire in the midst of the troops.

The Blackguard troops scattered, very few of them seriously injured, and rallied to break into the houses where their assailants were fighting from, but before they could break in through the doors or windows, they were set upon by more enemies. The guardsmen and volunteers Schroeder had stationed along the now unnecessary evacuation route rushed up one of the side streets. The White Rose elves fired a volley into the Blackguard men with their expensive crossbows just before the guardsmen and orcs slammed into the mercenaries. They drove the dragon's forces apart, Medes and his Blackguard reinforcements were pushed back into the fire Azraea's group had created, and the Firebrands were caught between Schroeder’s reinforcements and his men at the gate like a school of fish caught in the mouth of a whale.

“You can’t hold that gate forever!” Medes shouted over the clamor of the battle, “You can protect your families at your barracks, or you can protect that gate, but you can’t do both!”

“You bet your ass he can!” a familiar voice shouted from behind Schroeder. His men hadn’t shut the portcullis when he'd ordered them to, and now Schroeder saw why. Men in highway guard uniforms were pouring in and climbing onto the barricade, loosing arrows into the Firebrands that didn’t have the good sense to retreat.

“Jericho!” Schroeder shouted, scrambling up to stand next to the man.

“Better late than never, right?”

“I’ll dock you points for punctuality but give some credit for style. How many?”

“Twenty two,” Schroeder said, “A lot of the highway guard has gone away without leave, and what’s left is straining to maintain some semblance of piece in the countryside. Technically the men you see here are on vacation.”

“Hell of a vacation.”

“You know what they say, ‘come to the city, see the lights, kill fascists,’” Jericho nailed a rushing Firebrand in the head with one of his arrows.

“Fascists?”

“Or anarchists? Honestly, I don’t give a shit what they are at this point. I’ll call them bad guys and have my moral introspection after this is over. The rest of the guard is held up at the barracks?” Jericho asked, “Strong position, but no escape from there.”

“I know. Our families are there too. Also got some people at the library.”

“Is this a fight or an organized withdrawal?” Jericho asked.

“A fight, Officer Stone,” Azraea had finally burned her way through the broken forces and made it over to the conversation, “At least for my part. I’ll certainly understand if Captain Schroeder wants to evacuate his people while he can.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Jericho said, “You’ve grown up a bit in the past… what? Has it even been two months?”

“You know each other?” Schroeder asked.

“Ms. Thanel had an unfortunate run in with some less reputable members of the highway guard. There was some mutual life saving. Are your friends around?”

“No, Kaira and Ochsner are working on a plan to kill the dragon.”

“Well that’s good. I already lost two fights with a dragon in my life and I don’t really want to test that third-time’s-the-charm rule.”

“If you’re alive, you can’t have lost too badly,” Schroeder looked at Stone skeptically.

“It’s complicated. How confident are you that they can kill the dragon?”

“Do you want percentages?”

“I want something that’ll make me feel good.”

“Very confident then. Provided we can get the dragon to leave the city and go to them.”

“Well then,” Marcus slipped into the conversation, wiping blood from his elegant curved sword, “What do we need to do to send our hideous overlord packing?”