Legend of The Young Master

Chapter 216: Eaten Alive

Master Li Zhang raised a hand, made a sign, and spoke a word—a single word that Wuyi did not know—in ancient Zenith. Something definitely happened, but Wuyi didn't know what it was. It became clear, though, that he had given some orders to the warriors he had brought.

"Wine and war horses, then," Wuyi said. "The king is coming. Let's not get rash."

Overhead, the ballista slammed into its supports, and the whole area creaked. Several massive arrow flew out into the early morning.

Above him, on the remnants of the south tower, the heavy crossbows began to thwack away at the creatures in the fields below.

"You called?" asked Xilai.

"I need to save the Bridge Castle. He's throwing everything at it—and he's waiting for us to respond. I'm hoping that we can pound his attack flat with arrows, but I can't count on it. The Lotus Order branch master here has offered us another trick up our sleeves, but I need more. What can you do?"

"It's the King's advisor!" Master Li Zhang said. "The king has never ceased to look for you."

Xilai shrugged. "I was never lost." He fingered his beard. "I think this is a case for misdirection," he said with a particularly nasty smile. "He thinks I'm dead."

Below the fort Zhenying led the attendants and the spearmen against the white-looking swamplings. There were fifty of them, and they were bigger and far better armored than the normal swamplings who had climbed the tower walls.

By the time Jin reached the courtyard, many of the merchants who had come in the first convoys were dead. They were no match for the swamplings, who were faster and better armored, and whose every limb had a killing scythe or a spike. The merchants did not live in their armor like the normal warriors; they fought unarmored, and they died.

But in the light of the sun, Jin and his archers, high above in the tower, began to slaughter them like rats in a trap. The heavy longbow arrows went through their iron armor with a wet slapping sound, and the big swamplings shrieked as they died and tried to crawl over each other to reach the tower steps.

They were already flowing up the ladders to the curtain wall—up the top and the underside of the ladders. They jammed the open doorway of the tower, and Zhenying set his feet and fought to hold the door.

"Fortress is signaling!" called one of his subordinates. "On the way." Zhenying grit his teeth and moved.

The arrows flying from the towers were answered by flights of stones from the ground outside, from the courtyard—the hole there was a yawning maw vomiting monsters.

There were massive Duskreavers, nothing like the creatures he'd seen before, but as big as a big man, armored in special armor with shields and long swords. There were some special swamplings, some as white as the moon and others as black as night, with hooked spears and iron-like plate. They came at him in one gout.

The farm-boys slammed spears past him—sometimes they fouled his sword arm, and one pinked him in the buttock, but he was their shield and they were his weapon. Their nine-foot spears pinned the armored things so that Zhenying could cut pieces off them. Just past the door, the hail of shafts continued to reap the enemy. But there were more and more of the things out in the courtyard.

The raid group appeared after a heavy volley from all the ballistas in the fortress, with large arrows and crossbow shafts raining down. They rode down the fortress ridge at top speed, a blur in the dark, and stopped at the foot of the ridge to form their wedge. But they took too long.

Men and horses lagged behind—some men overshot the assembly point and had to turn back—wasting precious time forming up.

Luding watched the enemy raid group emerge. He watched them ride down the cliff face, and he felt the taste of the power of the group that surrounded them. He spat at the taste. Luding sent the signal to his ambush and triggered the massive spell he had spent the day preparing. Power leapt across the late morning light, raw and gray, and coalesced—

Luding choked. That was not the raid group. It was an illusion. The specter of a raid group.

The Fallen advisor roared his rage. But it was too late, and the carefully prepared power of his magic fist slammed to empty earth.

"He didn't used to be this easy," Xilai said, looking up to Wuyi, who sat on another war horse. In the last war, his horse had escaped but had suffered some injuries and needed time to recuperate. The old man Xilai grinned like a small boy. "The Demonic Wild has sapped his imagination."

The shattering thunderclap of the outpouring of the Enemy's power rang in their ears, and the massive flash still burned across Wuyi's retinas.

"Can he do that again?" Wuyi asked.

"Perhaps," Xilai admitted. "I doubt it, though."

Wuyi exchanged a glance with Meiying, who rode by his side. It was Baijian's turn to have the fort duty, and the big man was fretting about missing the raid group.

"No heroics," Wuyi called. "Right across the plain to the castle, then around the walls. Kill anything that comes under our hooves."

The horses were all tired, and many of them bore light wounds, muscle strains, and scars—so did their riders. There were twenty-five warriors—a pitiful number against a sea of foes. And at the base of the ridge, a perfect circle of cooling glass marked the best efforts of their foe.

Wuyi was operating in a haze of fatigue and minor pains that all but subsumed emotion. The death of the pavilion mistress had affected him to some level whether he liked it or not. But at another level, he walled all that away.

Can you fight every day?

He knew he could. Every day, until the sun died.

The place in his head where his subordinates were dying was like a bad tooth, and by an effort of will, he didn't run his tongue over it.

Nor did he think, If we win today, they're saved.

He didn't think that because he didn't really think much beyond his next stratagem, and he was now pretty much out of tricks. All of this went through his head between one leap of his new mount and the next. Even after Liwei's healing and his statue of light, he still felt ache and hurt in his body. They all did. And then the raid group was down onto the plain and forming their wedge.

While the raid group moved below the fort merchant Zhenying was more tired than he had ever been, and had he not been wearing first-rate Qi armor and had some Qi training, he'd long since have been dead. As it was, blows slammed into him more and more often as the monsters in the courtyard crawled over their own dead to reach him.

Twice, shouts behind him told him that more of the cursed things had made it onto the tower or the wall—apparently using their vestigial wings, or perhaps they were a new and horrible breed—but the spearmen at his back held their ground.

Twice he had a respite from the attacks on the door, but he had no idea why the white things stopped coming. He would pant, someone would hand him water, and then they'd come again. The white Swamplings were bad. The big Duskreavers were worse.

A farmer tried to help him in the doorway—braver or stupider than the rest—and died almost as soon as he took his place, while one of his mates begged him not to go.

"You have no armor!" a bigger, local-accented man called.

He didn't have armor on his arms and legs, and the wicked scythes on their limbs sliced him to pieces, dragged him down, and carved him up. And they ate him—even the dying ones took a bite. Zhenying couldn't do much anymore but watch.

He knew while his armor protected him it was just a matter of time before he was struck in any narrow area of armor —only luck and the efforts of the spearmen kept him at it.

More Duskreavers came. They took their time coming over the low mound of dead, swamplings followed and they all came at Zhenying together. A shield of enemy caught his outstretched arm—his arm guard held the blow, but he was unbalanced, and the Swamplings dragged him to his knees. A blow struck the back of his head, and he was down.

He could feel a sharp pain across his instep—something was hacking at his armored shin—and then, to his horror, he began to be dragged out of the doorway, into the pile of corpses. He couldn't help it. He screamed. And then he wasn't being dragged, and a heavy weight crushed him.

Only the strength of his chest armor and his back armor and their hinges kept the crushing weight from taking the breath out of him.

There was a sharper pain in his right foot. He tried to call out, and suddenly he felt liquid on his face—he spat. It was hell—dark—bitter. He choked and spat and realized that he was drowning. In Swampling blood. He tried to scream.

More pain.

"Heavens! I am being eaten alive. Heavens! Save me in my hour of need."