Chapter 51 – Leading the Charge

  “Cole,” came Nona’s voice. “I’m in place. They’ve got Leon up on the battlement on the north side. He’s got his two guards with him. Their priestess has a communication crystal. The armored one just took charge of the garrison.”

  Cole shook his head, angling north. How did she even know what a communication crystal looked like?

  Even further north, lanterns were lighting up along the trench line, and the distant pop and whistle of hand cannons reached them. Cole kept running, rifle tight across his chest. With his enhanced speed, it took just a couple minutes to cross the rough terrain between the fort and the next reserve trench line. He crossed a support and logistics dugout full of surprised personnel, and several squads of reserve soldiers with spears and crossbows. They pointed at him, more in confusion than alarm, until their officer started shouting at them, dogging them on. And then they were up and over into no man’s land running practically alongside him with a battle cry.

  Did they think he was one of them? If only they realized, thought Cole.

  “Cole, some of the demon spellcasters are through the barrier. It looks like they—”

  Besson was a little more direct in his radio call, cutting off Nona. “Incoming IDF!”

  The flare of an overhead spell arced down, bursting in bright too-crimson flame that engulfed one of the soldiers running nearby. Some sort of hellfire artillery magic. All up and down the line, the report and shrill whistle of hand cannons and medieval guns redoubled. Cole kept going, outpacing the reserve troops. More spells landed nearby. One of them spawned a tiny nova that shot barbed strands at anything that drew too close and pulled them in. Another in front of him turned a twenty foot patch of the ground to boiling mud. Cole burned a charge of Meteoric Leap in order to cross the full distance. The Vaelian soldiers close behind him couldn’t stop in time and fell chest deep, screaming and flailing. Now having to deal with Howie’s mortars as well as demons inside the barrier, the fort mages were completely task-saturated.

  His leap carried him high and fast, cutting down over half the remaining distance between him and the fort. When he reached the apex, he finally got a bird’s eye view of the front line. It was a surging mass of red outlines highlighted by his ability. Demons were flooding across the fields between the trenches by the thousand. Cannons and crossbows from the defender’s trenches cut down most of them, while spellcasters added fire and gas attacks that swept aside demons by the dozen. Other mages focused on keeping the demonic magic and return gas attacks out of the trenches. For every twenty demons that charged across the field, perhaps one or two made it to the human trench. But that was still hundreds throwing themselves at the swords and spears of the Vaelians in a bloody, brutal melee.

  The leap didn’t give him time to ogle. He reached the apex and started to fall back down. Now, having left even the fastest of the reserve troops behind, Cole was practically in the shadow of the tower. He landed, blasting out a ring of dirt and mud, startling a trio of Vaelian soldiers carrying a crate of field gun shells between them. They dropped the crate and stared at him. Cole lifted his rifle and put two rounds in the chest of the closest one. Over the last three years he’d learned that sometimes that moment of surprise was the only one you’d get, and he was right. One pulled a curved saber and charged, the other pulled his sling around to reveal a hand cannon capped in wax to keep the rain out.

  Cole fired again, hitting the man with the saber in the middle of the chest. The man dropped, still sliding forward in the mud. But before Cole could swing his muzzle to the second, the soldier discharged their primitive firearm. The wax cap on the barrel exploded and Cole felt like a sledgehammer hit his chest plate. He stumbled back, falling to the ground and struggling to breathe. The soldier dropped their cannon and pulled out a saber of their own.

  Gasping for air, Cole lifted the muzzle and shot the Vaelian. He could see the man’s confused expression through the crystal lenses of his gas mask, probably wondering how he’d shot so many times without reloading. He dropped, and Cole pushed to his feet and stepped over the body, wheezing. He had to keep moving. The rest of the Vaelians may have thought he was charging to the fort’s defense, but some of them had to have seen that exchange or heard the cannon going off behind the lines.

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  “Cole, they’ve got Leon up on the battlements, something’s going on,” said Nona.

  “Details,” he said, hand feeling under his plate carrier. His ribs ached, but he didn’t think anything was broken and the shot hadn’t penetrated the ceramic plate.

  “They’re forcing him to draw the sword. He’s holding it up like a flag.”

  From his position, now that his active target marking had worn off, all he could see was the frenzy of activity and almost everyone was wearing masks. But a moment later, he spotted a slight figure with a sword raised above their head in two hands.

  The beam tower shot a tight lance of energy straight into the sword, which glowed the same red color as the beam. Potential began to build in the air. Cole could feel his hair rising, and subtle pressure built up in his ears. Then, a wide wedge of red light blasted down from the sword, so wide he saw the roiling explosions in no-man’s-land stretch out on both sides of the fort. Thousands of demons incinerated in an instant. The line quieted for a moment as soldiers on both sides processed the enormity of the attack.

  Heroes are like atom bombs, he remembered Moriarty saying.

  Leon fell to his ass, dropping the sword like it was a thousand degrees. He covered his head with his hands and screamed—but an armored figure next to him yanked him back up to his feet.

  “Have eyes on Leon,” called Cole. “Moving in.”

  “Covering,” said Roxy.

  “Softening target,” said Besson.

  The sound of a shotgun and machine gun on the south side of the fort drew the attention of every soldier on the battlements. Rapid fire was far more foreign to Vaelians than massive magic explosions, after all. Shouts on the walls preceded a volley of arrows and primitive munitions, and the tossing of a few dozen grenades that fell far short of Besson’s support-by-fire position. He had an angle on the rear of the fort, and his otherworld machine gun raked across the battlements, forcing shield-bearers to turn around to provide cover for their companions and giving Cole the freedom to maneuver.

  The distraction let Cole reach the lowest wall, and he slid to a stop, shoulder pressed against it. A handcannon probably aimed at him struck the back-side of the fort about a dozen meters along the wall. He flinched and looked back, where a few more of the primitive firearms from the reserve troops were starting to point his way while the rest of the soldiers continued charging. But that wasn’t the biggest problem. On the wall, covered behind a pair of thick shields, one of the cannon teams was turning their artillery around, aiming the broad bombard cannon toward Besson’s position.

  Cole raised his rifle, ignoring the crossbow bolt that impacted the bricks next to him, and shot the cannon team’s sergeant through the narrow gap between his breast and backplate. The man crumpled, and the rest of the team stared until Cole put another round through the throat of the mage enchanting the shells. The rest of the team scrambled for cover as the second of their number dropped. He keyed his radio. “Howie, standby, I’m almost inside the fort.”

  “Good copy!” he called. “Standing by.”

  “Demons breached the line on the north side of the fort,” called Nona. “The armored guy with Leon just jumped down. The soldiers on that side are focused on the Scarred. You’ve got an opening.”

  Perfect distraction, and it had left Leon even less defended. Renewed shouts of alarm went up on the other side of the wall, and Cole moved, hugging the east side until he could swing around to the north side. He swapped a new magazine into his rifle and turned the corner. Sure enough, he could see demons starting to climb out of the trench with swords and spears and flails being met by yet more defenders. But the Demons were getting through. They began to rush the walls, some climbing, some slithering up, and others simply starting to smash the bricks with fists like wrecking balls. A few spotted him, as well, and raised weapons to charge. A reserve element was already moving down the trench from further north to re-claim the breach, but that meant little in the short term.

  Before they could reach him, Cole burned another charge of his ability and leapt up. Two charges down, he thought. Still enough. Bricks blurred past, then the downward-facing wooden spikes placed to deter would-be climbers, and then he was over the wall and about five meters above it. He swapped his fall speed to max as he descended and crashed down onto the rampart. The wave of force blasted out, splintering wood planks and knocking two men off the battlements into the demons below and a third into the courtyard of the fort. Other defenders spun to face the commotion, turning crystal lenses his way. With shouts and screams, they raised clubs, sabers, and spears and began to charge. Cole moved forward slowly, picking his shots as best he could, considering the rapidly closing distance.

  Soldiers dropped—killed or injured—assisted even further by Besson’s support by fire. Cole kicked a fused grenade dropped by one of the soldiers, and it detonated somewhere beneath him. More men were coming. Cole juked to the side and slammed his shoulder into one, sending him toppling over the crenelations and screaming down to the demons below. He fired at point blank range into the next, bullets slicing through the man’s leather jerkin. He could tell only a few seconds had passed because the men on the tower were still lit by his ability—and he felt like he didn’t even have to aim. He was innately aware of everything happening in his field of vision—including Leon’s other party member shouting down to the warrior on the ground below and pointing in Cole’s direction.