42 – Assault on the Keep

  Jilly pointed up the cobbled street to the corner ahead, and whispered, “That road leads to the keep.” They’d been sneaking—as much as a band of adventurers accompanied by a huge, armor-clad bear could sneak—through the city for nearly two hours. Twice, they’d had to stop to defend against a swarm of giant rats, and despite Rundle’s roars, or perhaps because of them, they hadn’t run into any further blitz-rat patrols.

  They’d been hearing sounds of combat from distant corners of the city on a near-constant basis, and Andy was beginning to wonder if perhaps the more intelligent, organized rat-people specimens were overwhelmed by the laukin uprising or other adventurer groups, though they’d not seen any sign of the latter. He nodded to Jilly and gestured to Rundle. “Can you tell him to wait while I scout ahead?”

  While Jilly conveyed the message, Andy turned to the others. “This might be the last stretch before some kind of boss fight.”

  “I was thinking the same—” Bella started to say, but Bea interrupted:

  “Be careful about thinking of this place as a game. As we’ve all felt, the wounds these rat creatures deliver are all too real.”

  “I wasn’t saying it’s not real,” Bella replied, her dark brows drawing down sharply. “It’s just the System seems to operate that way.”

  Andy nodded. “Yeah, if anything, I’m saying we need to be more careful. There’s probably a significant challenge ahead.”

  Lucy pulled the hood of her cloak up. “I’m going up to the corner to cover you.”

  “All right.” Andy started out of the alley. “Be back soon.”

  He led the way to the next street and paused to look at Lucy. “Good?”

  She nodded. “Good.”

  “Be right back.” Andy cast Cloak of Shifting Smoke, and then he turned right, moving uphill in the keep’s direction. The streets were wider there, with more shops, taverns, and inns mixed in with the housing buildings. Broken tables, chairs, torn curtains, and a hundred other odds and ends littered the street, apparently thrown there when the rats ransacked the place.

  Andy saw movement inside some of the buildings, but when he cast Ember Vision, he was surprised to find that many of the shadowy figures were laukin, not vermin. It made him wonder how many “infested” buildings they’d passed were actually harboring the rightful denizens of the city.

  The street wound around a wide corner to the left, and when he traversed most of the curve and had a clear view up the hill, he saw the keep not an eighth of a mile distant. Just as he’d presumed, a squadron of blitz-rats lingered outside the gates, and he saw more on the wall. It was hard to tell from that distance, but he was pretty sure they were carrying crossbows.

  He continued up the hill, slinking through the long shadows near the shops on the left. When he was close enough to see clearly, he counted the rats guarding the gate: twenty blitz-rats on the ground, and ten patrolling the wall—three with crossbows and the rest with recurves. The wall curved around the keep all the way to the big city wall and the mountains beyond.

  He didn’t see an easy way to bypass the guardians, but another option was perhaps a little too obvious. When they’d taken the keep, the vermin had used rough-cut, but sturdy-looking ladders. Andy knew this because there were still two of them leaning against the base of the wall. The twenty-foot wall was curved slightly, but at the “corners” leading back toward the keep sat two squat guard towers, built of the same gray basalt stones as the wall. The door to the tower on the left was missing, likely destroyed in the vermin invasion.

  Andy scanned the scene again, making sure he didn’t miss anything. Then he turned and jogged back to Lucy. When he cancelled his spells so his mana could regenerate, she jumped slightly and hissed, “I lost track of you when you got to the corner. Can’t believe you got this close!”

  He smiled. “Come on. I have a plan.” He jerked his head toward the others lurking in the alley mouth further down. She nodded, and they jogged back together.

  “Well?” Bella asked.

  “The rats are there, and they’re ready. I have a plan, though.”

  “Go on,” Omar urged.

  “Okay.” Andy took a minute to describe the scene, then he said, “The biggest threat are the archers. We could probably take the twenty blitz-rats. I mean, I know we could. But if they’re free to rain arrows down on us, that’s an issue.”

  Rundle grumbled, nudging Jilly, and she whispered into his massive ear.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Bella asked, ignoring the laukin.

  Andy grabbed the top edge of Bella’s shield and gave it a shake. “My idea is for you all to approach slowly, behind these shields.” Rundle had a shield, too, even bigger than the ones Omar and Bella had taken from the blitz-rats, and Andy pointed to him. “If Jilly, Bea, and Lucy walk behind Rundle, I think the risk will be minimal. They’re not gonna get much of a chance to shoot at you, anyway.”

  “Um, why?” Lucy asked.

  Andy grinned. “Because I’m going to use one of their ladders to climb up. I’ll take out the archers while everyone’s looking at you guys. Then we can deal with the blitz-rats.”

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  “I can help with the archers,” Lucy added.

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, as long as it’s clear, if you want to snipe a few, that would be cool.” He looked at Jilly. “Can you ask Rundle what he thinks?”

  While Jilly spoke to Rundle, Bea asked, “Andy, are you sure about trying to take on ten archers?”

  He nodded. “I’ll kill a couple before they know what’s happening, and then I’ll use my smoke for cover. Just ask Lucy—archers don’t like it when a guy with a spear gets in their face.”

  Lucy shook her head. “No, we don’t.”

  “And if something comes from the keep to reinforce?” Omar asked.

  “Well, I thought of that. I mean, I have a feeling we’re ‘supposed’ to deal with these guards. There will probably be another fight or two before we get to the baron.” He looked around, meeting their eyes, wondering if anyone would confirm his thoughts or even argue, but all he saw were a bunch of expressions that said his friends believed in him way too much.

  “Rundle agrees with your plan,” Jilly announced. “He says that we’ll have the option to retreat if need be, but that you’re risking much. He cautions that there may be more vermin in the guard towers.”

  Andy tilted his head and shrugged slightly. “Yeah, I suppose so. I’ll be okay, though.” He turned back to Omar and the others. “We ready? I’ll lead you as close as I can, then you’ll have to give me a minute to get into position.”

  When no one objected, Andy turned and jogged up to the corner again. The sound of the group trundling behind him—boots clomping, armor jangling, and battle-bear huffing—made it clear they’d have to take it a little slower going forward. He advanced up the street, hugging the left-hand buildings, walking a good deal slower. When they reached the bend in the road, he went as far as he could before exposing them to the stretch leading up to the keep, then he paused and turned to everyone.

  “Okay,” he whispered, “Give me to the count of one hundred to get up to the ladder. I imagine the blitz-rats won’t charge at you because they’ll want to stay inside the cover of the archers.”

  “But they’ll be looking at us,” Bella said, grinning in understanding.

  “Exactly. When you guys see the ladder go up, start creeping forward, shields up. When you see the first archer go down, it’ll be game time.” He looked at them each, ensuring everyone understood, then he nodded. “Going.”

  Andy cast his cloak spell again, then padded noiselessly up the street. He supposed there was always the risk that one of the blitz-rats might have some magical item that allowed them to see him. There was also the chance that there might be sneakier, stealth-oriented rats that would take him utterly by surprise. He didn’t think so, though—not in that dungeon. They’d been through a huge portion of the city and hadn’t seen anything like that. The closest had been the wizard rat at the inn, and Andy didn’t see anything like that arrayed before them.

  The blitz-rats didn’t keep orderly lines. Some of them were sitting down, munching on questionable snacks. Some were leaning against the wall, too close to the ladders for comfort, and a few stood in clusters, chittering away in their strange rodent language. Andy approached the far end of one of the ladders, just ten feet or so from a pair of blitz-rats, but when he froze inside the shadow by the wall, he knew there was little chance they’d see him—not obscured as he was by his magical smoke.

  He’d only been crouched there for a few seconds when one of the rats up on the wall screeched something shrill, and the sound of bows twanging came to Andy’s ears. The blitz-rats jumped up, rushing forward, but their commander, a slightly bigger, gray-furred ratman, roared something, and they all froze. The bows stopped twanging, too—perhaps the archers had realized Andy’s friends were just a little too far, or perhaps the commander’s roar had halted them, too.

  It didn’t matter in any case. The rats’ attention was focused down the street, so Andy leaned his spear against the wall, then smoothly bent to pick up a ladder. He leaned it against the wall, grabbed his spear and climbed. He was halfway up before he could see the archers over the top of the crenellations. They were all to his right, eyes focused down the road.

  Andy spared a glance over his shoulder and saw his friends huddled in a mass, their shields up as they slowly crept toward the gate. They couldn’t have been doing a more perfect job. He reached the top of the ladder, still a couple of feet shy of the gap in the crenellations, but he stood on the top rung and noiselessly grabbed hold, pulling himself up. His spear made the movement a little awkward, and he bumped it against the stone, but his Cloak of Shifting Smoke was good magic, and it muffled the sound.

  When he dropped down and looked at the archers, he realized he had them all before him—ten ratmen in an almost perfect line. It was too good to pass up, so he decided to kick things off with a Cinderstorm Blast. With the magic coursing through his chest, he inhaled convulsively and then coughed out a gout of black, fire-filled smoke.

  He caught the ratmen utterly unprepared. Even as the smoke engulfed the first ratman and he squealed in panicked agony, the others continued to stare ahead, some drawing their bowstrings as if an unknown threat might be coming toward them. It didn’t matter; even if they’d seen the smoke coming, they couldn’t have escaped before it washed over them. The black, cinder-filled cloud poured over the narrow walkway atop the wall, and every ratman archer caught alight.

  Some leapt to their doom, some collapsed, trying to extinguish the fire by rolling or slapping their fur madly. Andy didn’t like the vermin; he’d yet to see a redeeming quality in their strange rat-person society, but he hated to see things suffering. Inside his burning smoke cloud, he could see, and he hurried forward, driving his spear into hearts and eyes, ending their suffering as quickly as he could.

  Of course, he realized he’d gone against the plan by initiating the first attack rather than waiting for his friends to charge. When he reached the far-side of his smoke and looked down at the street, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw he hadn’t broken the plan. In fact, he might have improved it—the blitz-rats had charged his friends, but they’d done so haphazardly, allowing Lucy to go to work on the leading rats and giving Omar and Bella a chance to spread out a bit from Rundle. They were outnumbered, but far better organized.

  Andy was about to run back to the ladder, but as he turned away, he saw Bea raise her staff, and then an honest-to-god cloud took shape over the largest cluster of blitz-rats. Andy’s eyes went wide as he watched sheeting rain pour down on them. With a double-take, he realized it wasn’t just rain; it was sleet. The rats began to slip and fall, sliding down toward Rundle only to be smashed by his enormous shield or cut to pieces by his enormous axe.

  Grinning, Andy ran toward the ladder, but then an echoing, coughing roar vibrated the air like a bass drum, and he turned toward the keep-side of the wall where it had come from. Eyes wide, he waved away his smoke and looked down into the courtyard. A gigantic figure was down there—a ratman easily five-times the mass of a blitz-rat. He had to be twelve feet tall, clad in black, spike-studded iron armor. Behind it, three robe-wearing ratmen waved their hands in strange, fluid gestures, their voices droning in a weird chorus that made Andy’s ears hurt.

  The giant ratman growled and shook its head as a crimson glow appeared in its eyes. Andy vacillated, trying to decide if he should run to help the others or try to sneak closer to this new threat. Before he moved, one of the robed ratmen gestured toward the gate and screeched some kind of command. The gigantic ratman roared again, smashed its metal-clad gauntlets onto the cobbles and charged.