When Goblins Rage (Book 3) (17 page)

And his gaze never moved from her back. She could feel his hatred burning into her skin.

But chose to ignore him.

Hicks positioned himself to one side of a Caspiellan ladder and was gleefully hacking at helmeted heads as they appeared. His hatchet, clutching gore, glinted in the frosty light. Expression crazed and joyous with the heat of killing.

“You want some?” he screamed. “Here! Have it! Take it! Die, you motherfucker! Who's next? Huh? Who's fucking next? Oh! You want some? Here it is! Come and get it. Come on!”

Sharpe's heavy falchion cleaved into a Grey Jacket's shoulder, nearly splitting him down to his guts. The elf raised an eyebrow at the man's brutal strength and held her breath as he used his boot to push the soldier off the wall.

Another soldier squealed. A high and tinny sound. He staggered over the wall, a spear embedded low in his belly.

A few mercenaries grabbed him by his arms and threw him down into the street below, where an old woman calmly slit the man's throat with a fishing knife before rummaging through his pockets.

“Shoot, damn you, shoot!” Sharpe raged at the archers, who'd paused to glance at the soldier's gruesome death.

Tak, positioned close to the elf, crumpled with a startled groan as a sword flicked up over the wall to slither through the crenel and into his throat.

He gurgled for breath, bubbles of red dribbling down his chin.

She waited.

Redfist let loose a bestial roar, the axe making an awful sound as it sheared clean through a mail-draped torso.

Someone cursed beside him as they were showered in blood and gore.

Tak finally dropped his spear and twitched on his side, fingers trying to stem the gushing wound in his throat. The old mercenary's gaze fastened on hers, almost pleadingly.

She returned his look with an impassive stare which told him everything he needed to know. He died with an agonised shudder.

A gloved hand grabbed at the heavy stone as the Grey Jacket who'd killed Tak scrambled to get inside. His face, alive with fear and desperation, thrust into view.

His eyes caught hers and a look of shock made him pause.

Long enough for her to move.

She kicked hard, toe of her boot cracking into his jaw. And as he reared up and backward, he flailed with his sword while his other hand scrambled for a tighter hold.

For balance.

But before he could recover,
State of the Art
slid between his ribs to pierce his lung. She twisted hard and jerked the blade free. Blood showered the men still trying to surge up behind him.

His eyes showed their whites and his mouth went slack.

But he swayed there, at the top of the ladder. Held upright by the strength of his disbelief while she watched him realise he was already dead.

Then he slumped outward.

Fell without a scream.

More came then. In a savage rush of shouts and steel.

A barrel-chested man with wiry black beard.

Then two more, slim enough to try pushing over the wall together. They died together, choking on blood.

More soldiers.

Each fighting desperately to get over the wall. To be the one to break the spirits of the defenders. Weapons bright and lethal. But she saw just faces.

Their expressions.

Each man a pocket of red, spilling gory contents at her feet.

Spraying her face.

Screaming.

Crying.

Shouting defiantly as she cut through their rushed attacks. Attacks which had no time to rely on skill or precision. Just brutality and the need to survive felt on both sides of the wall.

Soon, her right hand felt numb from the constant jarring as her blades powered through armour and bone. Her shoulders ached.

A sword opened flesh just under her shoulder, and she bled freely.

Ignored the pain. Instead embraced the flood of killing. A flood she was drowning in as she realised this was the first time she'd stood before an army.

In Grimwood Creek, there'd been no cohesion to the Grey Jackets. They'd been spread across the town in small groups. And the men she'd killed in the inn had been cramped and unprepared. Many were unarmed.

But here, they were a horde. And, surrounded by the stink of loosened bowels and fresh blood, she came to know the terror of an endless wave of swords and hate.

Hudson rushed past, flashing a grin. Arm wet with blood up past his elbow.

She saw Eli, further along the wall. The impish grin was gone from his face, replaced by something more grim. He was looking down at one of his knives, which had broken about an inch and a half from the guard.

With a sigh, he tossed the broken knife over his shoulder, where it spun like a wounded steel bird down onto the muddy street below. The elf's eyes followed the glittering trail and her eyes narrowed.

He caught her gaze and offered a nod which conveyed the depth of his fear.

He had the experience to know what Hudson had yet to fathom.

That they could not hold the wall forever.

The Grey Jackets would prove too strong. Too many.

Already, the mercenaries were tiring. And some were dead or dying. They didn't have the numbers to hold the wall much longer.

“I see you decided to fight on the wall too, my friend,” he called, injecting a little too much cheer into his voice. “It is a good thing we came. Without us, the bastards would be all over the town. We would never get any sleep.”

“Screw you, Eli,” Tonks shouted over the noise. “We didn't need you. You're useless, anyway. All mouth and no bollocks, you are!”

He barked a laugh, gouging out the eye of Grey Jacket scrambling to back away from his frenzied attacks. “I will show you my bollocks any time,” he called back to her. “But I am here, now. And if I leave, I will be bored. And Eli does not like to be bored. I am sure my good friend, Nysta, feels the same. After all, right now, what else is there to do in this town?”

She answered his grin with one of her own. A mirthless grin. Nodded. “Reckon I had some time to kill.”

Dog silenced them with a pain-scorched scream as a Caspiellan sword ripped into his shoulder, nearly severing the arm. The blade glistened, drunk on blood, as it pierced clean through his body.

As he staggered back and fell, he took the sword from the grasp of the soldier trying to climb over the wall.

Eli scrambled to fill the gap he left behind. His knife flicked with deadly precision.

Dog kept screaming.

Nysta tore her gaze away. Toward the young girl beside her who looked to be barely fifteen years old. She'd lost her club and was now using a spear to slash and stab at a Caspiellan twice her size. Without finesse, she used it like a skewer, but the long narrow blade would bite deep if she aimed it right.

She didn't.

The Grey Jacket howled as he snatched the shaft, trapping it between his arm and torso. Held it fast. Grinned at her.

Made to reach out. To get a handful of the girl's hair inside his fist.

Serious Callers Only
left the elf's hand without her needing to think about the throw. Rammed deep into his throat and sent him cartwheeling backward, spear wrenched from the girl's grip to fall with him.
 

Snarling, the girl snatched another spear from an old man running along the walkway who was carrying an armful for those who'd lost them. He struggled not to drop a small bucket he was also carrying.

With a grateful, but slightly irritated, glance toward the elf, the girl struck to disembowel the next soldier who'd managed to make it almost over the wall. She used the butt to smash a hole in his skull before pushing him over. Worked hard to try not to touch the corpse with her hands.

Nysta, faintly amused at the girl's ability to gleefully shred a man's belly before crushing his skull only to feel disgust at the thought of getting more gore on her hands, absently wondered how long before the girl's inexperience got her killed.

Then the elf spun, ears catching the sound of someone else scrambling to mount her area of the wall.

Her fist slammed into a youthful face. Took a few teeth, but the kid held to the ladder and wall. Lunged at her with his sword.

A short wide-bladed sword. It went close to driving into her ribs, but the elf was still quick despite the maddening fog lurking in her brain. Raking at his forearm with
The Grey Area
, she staggered back to avoid the slashing blade.
 

Nearly knocked an archer off the walkway. Then sent
The Grey Area
spinning through the air. It disappeared between the folds of the soldier's cloak and he slumped forward, blocking the crenel with his corpse.
 

“His head, Long-ear!” Sharpe's voice made her flinch. His outrage was worse than a slap in the face. “Don't go for his guts, damn you! Go for his fucking head! That's for the lot of you. Get their heads, you bastards! Or you'll only be fighting them again when their fucking cleric sends them back!”

Face flushing, she wanted to snap back at him, but knew he was right. She'd already sent men back down the wall with wounds any healer would find no challenge.

How many had she not dealt with properly?

She should have known better. So, why didn't she?

What was stopping her from thinking?

“Fuck,” she growled, bringing
State of the Art
down into the corpse's head. The blade split his skull and wormed into his brain as she lent it a spiteful twist to ensure he wasn't coming back. Yanked the knife free, spilling gore at her feet. Then used her boot to push him back so he fell on top of those still climbing.
 

Heard a few more shouts of dismay and a shriek of pain.

She never saw
The Grey Area
again.
 

Sucking air, she waited for the next attacker to show his face.

And it felt like she'd been there for hours. Days, even. But it could only have been minutes. Sparse minutes, too. Long enough to lose herself in the thrill of battle, but not long enough to drive the heavy fog from her mind.

What the Caspiellans thought they could achieve with such a bold attack, she couldn't guess. It was a ridiculous waste of life, and she wondered at the cruelty of the General who'd sent the boys to their deaths along the wall.

How cold his heart might be.

And she wondered where Daved was. Was he already lying dead at the base of the wall?

Might his be the next face to rise in front of her?

And what would she do?

She still owed him.

More screams to her left made her blink and she wiped the dripping sweat from her eyes. Sweat which defied the biting cold of the wind as it promised more snow.

An archer dropped his bow to leap onto the back of a Caspiellan who'd burst over the wall too fast for the mercenary to stop. Shrieking in fear, he used an arrow to stab the soldier repeatedly in the back of the neck until Hudson rushed up.

The hooded mercenary brought his hatchet in a sweeping uppercut which ploughed into the man's chin with enough power to tear up through his face and erupt free through the top of his head with a monstrous flash of red.

Metal clinked, but the sound didn't register. Her mind was floating on the mist which explored the edges of her brain. She could almost feel its fingers, probing into her memories as though her skull was a box of treasures.

“Nysta!” Hicks cried. “Behind you!”

She jerked her eyes back to her own position. Buried
A State of the Art
in the face of a man with eyes almost as violet as her own. Had to tug the blade to pull it free of bone. If she'd kept her gaze for another second on Hudson, she'd be dead.
 

The thought made her want to throw up.

But she had no time to think on it, or to thank Hicks for his warning. She had to deal with the body on the wall before more of the desperate young Grey Jackets could climb up behind him.

Still thinking of the man's violet eyes, she held the back of his head by his hair and considered lifting it to look into them again. Then frowned and pushed him off the wall.

And, as suddenly as it had begun, the violence stopped.

A horn blew into the wind and the Grey Jackets stopped climbing. A grim sound which made even some of the mercenaries shudder.

“Stop shooting! Save your fucking arrows!” Lord Sharpe yelled, and the archers lowered their bows. One glanced down at his bloodied fingers and looked ready to weep in relief.

Then silence filled the defenders, and they looked to each other in confusion.

“Is that it?” Hudson asked.

Eli grinned at him. He was practically vibrating on adrenaline. “Happily, they will be back. But not too soon, I am thinking.”

“Happily?”

Teeth bared, Eli's grin was that of a maniac as he chuckled. “It means we get to kill them all over again. It is a pleasant experience for us, but I do not think they would agree with us!”

Hudson blinked, not knowing what to say, but the elf knew Eli's words were hiding the hopelessness he felt.

Those guards and mercenaries still able to stand, pressed against the wall and peered out.

Each wondering what the enemy was thinking.

Why they'd suddenly stopped.

The elf listened to the buzz of muttered talk before impatience made her guts brittle.

She jumped up onto the parapet, ignoring Sharpe's shouted warning to watch for arrows, and looked down to see the Grey Jackets scurrying away. They took a few of the ladders, but mostly seemed concerned with the bodies of those they thought might be healed.

There was nothing in their manner which suggested defeat. Only acceptance that the wall might not be overcome by sheer numbers as they'd hoped.

And there were more numbers than she'd thought. Certainly more than the fifty or so she'd seen. Now there seemed closer to a hundred.

A hundred of them against less than a quarter of that in exhausted fighters along the wall. She thought it no wonder many of the defenders looked ready to weep.

She glared at their backs as they carried their wounded fast toward their own lines.