03 - Call to Arms (23 page)

Without thought for his own safety, Dieter pushed on into the enemy, relying
on his comrades to cover his flanks. Leaping over the wall, a goblin tried to
hit him with its club, only for Dieter to smash the creature’s head to pulp with
his shield. Another goblin followed it. Dieter killed it swiftly, and moved on
to the next. Instinctively, he realised this was a key moment in the battle. If
the goblins managed to push the Scarlets back from the walls so early in the
siege, the battle would be all but over.

Cutting a bloody swathe through the goblins swarming over the wall, he
managed to reach the scaling ladder that was the source of the breach. Unlike
the other ladders the goblins used, this one had a metal hook at the end that
had bitten into the substance of the wall and held it fast.

“Cover my back,” Gerhardt said from beside him. Without Dieter realising it,
the older man had kept pace with him as he cut his way through the goblin ranks.
“I’ll unhook the ladder, but I need you to cover me.”

Nodding his agreement, he took up a position directly in front of the ladder
while Gerhardt hacked at it with his sword and tried to dislodge it. Wary of
blunting his blade on the metal hook, Gerhardt struck at the hook’s wooden
housing instead. Suddenly, a goblin appeared at the top of ladder and tried to
strike at him.

Slashing the creature from its perch before it could achieve its aim, Dieter
realised the flow of goblins up the ladder had slowed to zero. Such was the
creatures’ cowardice, they stopped ascending the ladder the moment the two men
had appeared at its top. Presumably, the goblins below had assumed the humans
would destroy the ladder and, except for one foolhardy soul, had decided not to
risk climbing it while there was the danger of the ladder being dislodged.

The situation made his and Gerhardt’s task easier. Guarding the ladder as
Gerhardt hacked at it, Dieter saw his comrade’s sword finally smash through the
housing, sending the broken ladder falling to the ground.

Looking right and left along the ramparts, Dieter saw the goblin attack was
faltering. The enemy had managed to gain access to the wall in a couple of
places, only to be pushed back by the defenders. Gazing down from his vantage at
the goblins below him, Dieter saw that the greenskins had already started
turning to run back to the safety of the woods.

As the last of the goblin attackers retreated, Dieter heard a cheer along the
ramparts as the Scarlets celebrated their victory. Around him, men started to
move the wounded and the dying off the ramparts, while throwing the bodies of
dead goblins over the wall. Joining in to help them, Dieter was pleased to
notice Gerhardt, Hoist and Rieger, as well as the marksman Brucker, had all
escaped the fight relatively unscathed.

Looking further up the wall, he saw that Krug had also survived—a fact he
felt less inclined to celebrate. It was clear the feeling was mutual. Seeing
Dieter glance his way while he talked to his crony Febel, Krug responded with a
sneering smile.

Ignoring him, Dieter turned to help Hoist lift a wounded handgunner down from
the rampart to the courtyard. Once the last of the wounded and the dead had been
cleared away, he returned to take up his place on the wall once more with
Gerhardt and the others. Even as he resumed his position, however, he saw a new
horde of night goblins had begun to emerge from the cover of the tree line.

At the centre of the enemy mass was a group of goblins carrying a huge
battering ram. They were flanked on either side by archers. Behind them, Dieter
could see other goblins, some of which herded monstrous, muscular, round-bodied
animals that bobbed up and down impatiently and strained to go forward. Each
animal had a mouth that extended across the full width of its body, filled with
rows of sharp teeth. They were so unlike any other animal Dieter had ever seen
that he could not help but find them disturbing. Looking more closely, he
realised they could only be the creatures called squigs that Brucker had talked
about.

It looked as though the battle was far from over.

The next attack took the form of an assault on the main gates.

Showing more tactical organisation than Dieter would have credited them with,
the second wave of night goblins attacked with a definite battle plan. While the
goblins carrying the battering ram advanced on the gates, their archers
unleashed a rain of arrows obviously intended to force the defenders into
keeping their heads down.

Sadly, from the goblin perspective, neither tactic proved particularly
successful. The effectiveness of the goblin archers was blunted by the fact they
refused to advance from the shadow of the forest. Given the lack of power and
relative lack of range of their short bows, the archers’ refusal to advance
meant the majority of their arrows fell pitifully short, while the few that made
it to the ramparts or the courtyard were easily deflected by the Scarlets’
shields.

In the meantime, having suffered several casualties from the sporadic
gunshots of the handgunners, the archers abruptly withdrew, leaving the goblins
manning the battering ram without any missile support.

The result, predictably, was that the assault failed. The men guarding the
gates rained down stones and gunfire on the goblin besiegers. Within a short
space of time, the goblins fled, leaving the battering ram abandoned behind
them.

“So much for that,” Brucker said, watching the goblin retreat. He glanced up
at the moon overhead. “But there’s at least another four hours before sunrise.
They’ll attack again, and again, trying to wear us down.”

“Is the sunrise that important?” Dieter asked him. “You think they won’t
attack in the daytime?”

“I can’t say it for definite, but usually they don’t like attacking by day,”
Brucker told him. “They know they have the advantage when it’s dark. Deep down,
all goblins are cowards. If we can hold ’em off until sunrise, there’s every
chance they’ll give up—at least until tomorrow. Even then, there’s a chance
they might give it up for good. Goblins don’t do sieges well, not unless there’s
an orc about to keep them at it.”

“Get ready,” Gerhardt called out, having spotted movement in the forest.
“Here they come again.”

All at once, dozens of small glowing lights appeared amid the darkness of the
trees. At first, Dieter wondered if the goblins had lit candles for some
unfathomable reason. Then, the true source of the lights was revealed as the
enemy archers emerged from the forest once more.

Each goblin archer had a burning fire arrow strung in its bowstring. Raising
their bows, they sent them arcing towards the mill. Evidently, having failed
twice to take the mill by frontal assault, they had decided to burn them out.

“Pathetic,” Hoist grunted as they watched from the rampart as the fire arrows
streaked through the night sky. “I know they’re goblins, but you think they’d
realise this is no different from the last time they used arrows.”

His words were quickly proven right. The majority of the fire arrows fell
short and petered out in the mud below the exterior walls. The few arrows that
hit the mark were swiftly extinguished by the mill’s defenders.

“Incredible,” Hoist shook his head in weary amazement. “I know greenskins are
supposed to be stupid, but you’d think they’d notice there’s a stream running
through the mill. Even if they had managed to set the building alight, we’ve got
a ready supply of water to douse the flames.”

“I think they did notice,” Rieger said, drawing his comrades’ attention to a
commotion further along the wall. “In fact, I’d say they are trying to make use
of it.”

Turning to look in the direction Rieger had indicated, Dieter saw the
activity was among the men guarding the section where the mill stream went under
the wall. The source of their concern seemed to be something that was happening
at the foot of the wall.

At first, Dieter was at a loss to understand what was going on. Then, he saw
goblins moving by the entrance to the mill stream tunnel and realised what had
happened. Unaware of the presence of the iron grille that barred entrance to the
mill via the tunnel, the goblins had apparently sent a raiding party to enter it
under cover of the fire arrow attack.

Predictably, the attempted assault had ended disastrously. Dieter saw a few
wet and wounded goblins stumbling away from the tunnel as the Scarlets made
mocking catcalls and threw rocks and stones after them.

“So much for greenskin subtlety,” Rieger said. “They’ve tried three different
ways into the mill in the last half hour, and so far all they’ve managed to do
is give most of us a breather. I can’t imagine they’ll leave things that way for
long, though. We’d better get ready. It’s only a matter of time before they
revert to the standard greenskin way of solving every problem—outright
physical force.”

It soon became clear Rieger had called the situation correctly. Having
briefly adopted a more subtle approach in their siege of the mill, the goblins
swiftly reverted to type. They launched a full frontal assault again, attacking
from all sides at once and, this time, combining the use of scaling ladders with
a simultaneous assault by battering ram on the front gates.

“Well, if at first you don’t succeed,” Rieger said as hordes of goblins
emerged from the forest and the enemy strategy was made clear. “Try again.”

Dieter was calm as he watched the night goblins approach the mill, but still
he found it almost extraordinary that the other men around him could greet an
attack of such magnitude with so limited a show of emotion. The goblins had
overwhelming numbers on their side, even if the walls and other defences of the
mill gave the Scarlets and their allies the advantage. Everywhere he looked it
was as though they were surrounded by a sea of goblins. The mill was an island
in a broiling green ocean filled with hate and malice.

Yet, despite the situation, Gerhardt and the others seemed almost indifferent
to danger. Dieter supposed it was a matter of experience. Each of these men had
been a soldier for at least a decade, with years of hard campaigning and bloody,
desperate fights behind them.

War made men different, Dieter was learning. When he thought about it, he
found it hard to imagine what manner of man he would be in ten years’ time.

Assuming he survived that long, of course. At the moment, ten years seemed a
very distant prospect.

“Get ready,” Gerhardt said. “We’ve already repulsed them the last time they
used ladders. We need to do it again, prevent them from getting a foothold on
the walls. Above all else, we need to stop them from thinking they are making
progress. We want them to think it’s hopeless and lose confidence. With so many
numbers behind them, it’s the only way we’ll beat them.”

The battle mirrored the events of the goblins’ first attack. The handgunners
opened fire, doing their best to winnow the enemy numbers before they could
reach the walls. Then, the Scarlets dropped rocks and stones on the goblins’
heads.

When the greenskins pushed their ladders up against the walls, the mill’s
defenders fought them off. Even as he joined in the fight, however, Dieter
noticed a difference in the enemy’s manner. At times, during the first attack,
it had seemed as if the goblins almost expected defeat. They had given up
relatively easily, fleeing after their initial attempts to climb the wall were
repelled.

This time, the goblin army seemed more determined. When the first wave of
attackers failed to gain a foothold on the wall with their ladders, they were
swiftly replaced by a second wave of goblins using exactly the same tactics.
Then, when the second wave was defeated, a third wave of goblins appeared
equipped with more ladders.

Throughout it all, the attack did not falter. It was as though the goblins
had acquired new grit and determination from an unknown source.

To Dieter, it felt as if hours had passed. The Scarlets had exhausted their
supply of rocks and stones, just as the handgunners had exhausted their supply
of powder and shot. Bit by bit, the successive waves of goblins had begun to
encroach on the territory of the mill until it was as though the enemy were
permanently camped at the foot of the walls. It was no longer possible to
differentiate between the different waves of the enemy assault. Instead, the
assault had become one, long, drawn-out struggle. The worst of it was, little by
little, it felt as though the Scarlets were being slowly overwhelmed.

Refusing to retreat despite suffering appalling losses, the goblins continued
their assault. Over time, the ramparts at the top of the walls became awash with
struggling bodies as the human defenders and their goblin opponents fought in
savage hand-to-hand combat.

It was the hardest, most bloody fighting Dieter had ever known. No sooner did
he strike down one goblin than another quickly appeared to take its place. The
Scarlets had suffered their own losses, and as men fell from the ramparts other
men rushed up from the courtyard to take their place.

Despite the fact they were unable to repulse the goblin attack, Dieter felt
the mill’s defenders were holding their own. For their part, despite the
protracted fight, the goblins had not managed to take the exterior walls. As
long as Dieter and the other men on the ramparts could maintain that situation
there was every chance that goblin morale would eventually crumble and the
battle would be won.

Still, for the moment, mere seemed no end in sight. The goblins did not want
for numbers. Even as Dieter killed yet another enemy, he felt gripped by a
bone-numbing weariness. He was breathing hard, pushed to the edge of exhaustion
by the endless bloodstained grind of the battle. He knew the other men around
him must have felt a similar tiredness. The fight had gone on so long, time
seemed to have lost all meaning.