CHAPTER 910: SILENCING A BELL (PART TWO)

The demon’s hot breath flowed through the hole in the door like an evil white cloud carried by the bitter cold air pouring into the stone tower through the ever widening hole in the door and with each snarl and grunt, the demon’s ax cleaved away even more of the suddenly fragile wooden barrier that was all that stood between Sergeant Garth’s men and certain death.

-PFEEEEEEE- -PANG!-

The sound of Saith’s sling whistling in the air before a small stone panged off the demons’s helm shocked Garth out of the fog of fear that clouded his mind as he began shouting orders at last.

"Slings are useless ’gainst armor," Garth bellowed. "Saith, go ring tha’ bell! Everyone else, grab shields an’ form up on me! Hold ’em back till Saith rings tha’ bell!"

For the first time in all his years as a soldier, Garth cursed Baron Hanrahan for being a cheap bastard. For years, he’d been willing to boast to other soldiers that he only needed to carry his war hammer on the march and that it was a useful tool besides being a weapon, unlike the the unwieldy long-spears that most soldiers were required to carry in addition to their close range weapons.

Now, however, he would have traded a lifetime of stiff shoulders and aching hands for just one spear to thrust through the hole in the door before the demons forced their way inside.

Meanwhile, the youngest soldier in the tower ran toward the stairs as fast as he could, taking them two or even three at a time as he rushed to open the door at the top of the tower to the open area where the massive bronze bell hung.

-FWOOOOOOP!-

Pain exploded in Saith’s right eye and half his world went dark before the pain grew so intense that he toppled backward, falling more than thirty feet through the air before crashing onto the stone floor below with the shaft and fletching of an arrow protruding from his eye. The impact alone was enough to shatter bones and his helmet could only do so much to protect his head from such a high fall. But even if the helmet had been backed by layers of quilted armor and he’d fallen on a feather mattress, it wouldn’t have changed the young man’s fate by more than a few heartbeats. He’d been as good as dead as soon as he opened the door atop the tower.

"Archer’s got tha’ bell covered!" one man shouted, his voice cracking with terror as he stared at the black fletchings protruding from Saith’s ruined eye socket. His hands shook uncontrollably, and the war hammer in his grip rattled against his shield rim as the reality of their situation crashed over him like ice water.

"We’re dead men anyway," Garth bellowed, grabbing the trembling soldier by his gambeson and physically hurling him toward the narrow spiral stairs. "Crawl on yer belly if ye must, but get up there an’ ring that bloody bell! We’ll buy ye what time we can!"

It sounded like the right thing to say, and perhaps if they were facing an assault from anyone else, it would have been, but these demons were brutal in their efficiency and the door that should have held off anything short of a battering ram for several minutes gave way in less than one, as its broken pieces fell from the hinges and clattered off the floor, revealing more than a dozen heavily armored boar demons, each one carrying a wicked ax and a shield covered with spikes.

"I’tt’ärkwa’p’al!" the leading demon shouted in their strange, clipped language as they charged into the confined space of the tower.

"Come an’ die then!" Garth roared back, his war hammer raised high as he charged across the scattered bedrolls and overturned bowls. The confined space should have favored the defenders as there was barely room for two men to fight side by side between the central hearth and the curved stone walls, but that same confined space forced the soldiers to fight on a floor littered with everything from dropped dice to scattered soup bowls with their feet getting tangled in their own blankets.

It was a horrible place to make a last stand but Garth had no choice but to meet the demons head-on, boots splashing through spilled soup and knocking scattered dice aside as he tried to buy precious seconds for someone, anyone, to reach that bell.

His shield rush was a classic move, one that should have given Garth the ability to press the demons backward, pinning them in the doorway and buying his soldiers at least a few moments for someone to climb the stairs and ring the bell while he locked the demons into close combat where short range eliminated many of their advantages of greater strength, but these demons fought in ways that Garth had never even dreamed of.

The spikes on the demon’s shield weren’t just intimidating decorations. When Garth’s wooden shield crashed against it, the iron points bit deep into the layered wood and leather, punching through like nails into timber.

The boar-demon wrenched its shield sideways with inhuman strength, using the embedded spikes as hooks to twist Garth’s shield arm out of line and dragging his body painfully along with it. His feet slipped on the blood-slick stones as his shield arm was twisted at an agonizing angle, shoulder joints popping as tendons strained beyond their limits.

The pain that consumed Garth’s entire left side like a searing hot brand lasted only for a moment, however, before the blade of the demon’s ax fell cleanly into the gap between the bottom of his helm and the collar of his padded gambeson, biting into his neck and releasing a spray of hot blood that splashed across the walls of the tower as his body crumpled to the floor.

The last thing Sergeant Garth ever saw before the light of the world left his eyes was a horde of armored demons, wielding axes like lumberjacks and felling his men as easily as a woodsman felled trees. New recruit or old soldier, newlywed and lifelong bachelor, their blood mingled in a pool on the stone floor of the tower, binding the squad together in death as they had been in life... and no matter how they struggled, not a single one of them managed to ring the bell.