Chapter 400: Book 6-20.2: Enemy at the Gate

Yuriko exchanged glances with Gwendith then they both hurried towards the keep. As they exited the southern barracks, Yuriko heard the gates slam shut. Twilight cast long shadows across the courtyard and she could see militiamen hurrying towards the armoury. A glance along the walls showed her that it was manned by red-coated legionnaires. Harsh white light emitted from spheres set on poles at regular intervals.

Yuriko began the process of creating her sunshards. She also picked up as many pebbles as she could and dumped them into a compartment in her hip satchel. As she did, she polished the pebbles to make them as smooth and even as possible, and to make the weights as close to identical as she could manage.

As they neared the keep, a flock of messenger cranes erupted from the windows. One of them made a beeline for her, and alighted on her hand, unfolding as it did so. The ink on the paper glowed softly ensuring that they were readable in the dark. It was a summons, basically, but Yuriko saw some who received the cranes head towards the wall.

Gwendith followed behind, face quite grave. There were no sounds of battle yet, but she could practically feel the nervousness and tension in the air. For the barbarians to attack now… Was it coincidence or were they after vengeance for those she killed?

She kept her musings to herself though, and she wasn’t that averse to having another go at them in the first place. Her anger simmered whenever she thought about them or looked at Gwendith. And not a little bit of remorse. Gwendith had suffered throughout that year and a half simply because she had chosen to help her instead of running. She hadn’t expected that of the other woman at all.

“Knight Davar!” A youngish man wearing a messenger’s insignia pinned over his chest ran up to her when she entered the keep. “This way please!”

They were led to the same conference room where she had been debriefed. Fort Commander Perry was already there. Her face and emotions were carefully controlled though, but that was understandable. She had been the leader of Aegermonth and they fought barbarians every year.

The majority of the people inside were Centurions, though only five were from the Agminis infantry, from their insignia. The others in red coats, which denoted that they were also from Agminis, had the Colossi Core Pilot added to their Agminis sigils, a mattock crossed with a blade. There were actually more Knights who were pilots than there were Knights in the infantry.

As soon as she and Gwendith entered the conference room, those already inside turned to give her a passing glance. Or perhaps that’s what they intended to do. Nearly all of them stared at her intently, and only the knowledge that the Mishala Mien was less effective on those on her own level assured her that she wasn’t about to have a sudden plethora of suitors.

Anyway, she found out back in Realmheart that cold indifference was the best deterrent to unwanted attention, although there was the odd duck who was emboldened by it instead. Commander Perry nodded towards an empty seat near the militia Centurions, so she took that one. Gwendith sat behind her.

After a few minutes, a few more Knights entered the room. There were nearly sixty of them inside. The commander gave off the same air as Da did, so Yuriko assumed she was at least a Knight-Captain.

“We’re not under immediate attack, according to the scouts, but we will be in a couple of hours.” The Commander said.

“Barbarians?” Yuriko asked before anyone else could, which did earn her a few glares. She met those with a cold gaze and felt a bit flustered when she saw the heat in their eyes wither. Still, she kept her face impassive.

“No,” Commander Perry answered.

“Eh?”

“A Wyldling Wave,” she continued. “However, we know that the barbarians are subservient to the Asheron Court, so this is not unrelated. More importantly, this confirms something we only had speculations on. That there is an unknown Tidelands between here and Aegermonth. The Wave is coming from the south.

“A horde of swarmlings plentiful enough to cover the fields, that’s what we’ve got coming in. No reports of Wanderers or Hunters but they’re sure to follow. This early, no reports on the Will of the Wave.” The commander shook her head. “I don’t think they’ll appear so easily, and even if they only send swarmlings, they can tire us to death long before we run out of provisions. The rotation on the wall will be as follows…”

The meeting went quickly enough since an attack was still coming. Yuriko, because she wasn’t attached to any of the units in the outpost, was given the duty of providing backup for any wall that needed it. She was to rotate among the four walls, shifting every couple of hours, and then was to stand down and rest afterwards. Gwendith was attached as her aide, as was Desire, for that matter. The fact that she had a bound Chaos Lord didn’t elicit much protest, at least from Agminis. The militia were a bit more reticent, but Yuriko assured them that Desire wasn’t a very combative Chaos Lord to begin with. That earned her a few more stares. After all, the Asheron Court was all about returning the planes to Chaos.

She and Gwendith were in place on the southern wall by the time the swarmlings arrived two hours precisely after the alarm. The Luminous Moon had slipped past Half and was headed towards Dark Moon, so the Chaos flows in the skies were brighter than anything else. They had the tendency to paint whatever she saw in odd hues though.

Still, the brown fur or scales of the swarmlings stood out against the snow, so she had no trouble seeing them. It was the numbers that were distressing. In the last Wave, she had mostly fought while in the forest. The one previous to that was the one where Da killed the Will of the Wave before they could even surround the Watchtower. The sight she saw now was what she imagined the Watchtower dealt with regularly.

It looked as though a carpet of brown moved across the white snow, covering everything for longstrides around. They moved through the trees, but more than a few were bumped long and hard enough to topple them. The crunching of the snow and skittering filled the air that was now devoid of regular animal calls. Not that there were many to begin with.

The North Gate had cleared much of the trees in the vicinity, even on the east and west sides where the hill the outpost had been constructed on was steeper. It meant that there was a clearing of about a longstride around them. All of it had turned completely brown over the course of half an hour. The swarmlings haven't attacked yet, and it was eerie how they stared up at them with their deep blue eyes. Then, as soon as the encirclement was complete, they charged.

Yuriko had the odd thought that what the critters were doing was utterly futile. The top of the walls was at least twenty paces above the ground level, twenty-five if she counted the bottom of the ditch. The swarmlings she encountered back in Shillogu Woods weren’t even able to climb up to the trees. What would they do? Die and use their comrades’ bodies as a stepladder?

How many would die before they could even reach jumping distance? Each swarmling was about chest high to her back then. Waist-high by now, she supposed. They must be in the hundred thousands or so. And their bodies dissipated to dust after a while, so they couldn’t even do that for long.

Once they reached within two hundred paces of the wall, the bolts of superheated plasma started to fly. Yuriko flung a few pebbles, not even infusing them with Empowered Strike. The speed and force, not to mention the height she threw from, was more than enough to shatter a swarmling’s skull. The angle was wrong for hitting more than one though unless she aimed at those farther away. Of course, the speed of her projectiles was enough that the pebbles broke after hitting, so it was a moot point.

She had to stop after a while since she didn’t have enough pebbles. Maybe if she were closer to the ground she’d have unlimited ammunition, but as it were, the wall was made of earth packed so tightly together that it might as well be stone. So she couldn’t just pry bits of it off. She might weaken the integrity of the wall if she did.

There were few shooters on the wall though, maybe a couple of hundred out of the seven hundred or so militiamen and legionnaires on the south wall. The rest held their fire, though some didn’t have plasma weaponry at all.

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Whooomp!

Booom!

The Plasma Carronade set on the east corner fired an orb of superheated plasma that exploded in fiery destruction when it collided with the ground. The explosion covered several paces across and the superheated plasma engulfed dozens of the critters.

Yuriko could see them melt and burn as the pale blue plasma washed over them, their meagre Protective Field sparked piteously as they were overcome. The carronade on the opposite corner fired too but then fell silent. Also, after an initial two or three volleys, the marksmen had stopped shooting and let the critters come closer to the wall.

Only when they started to bunch up did the slaughter resume. One warrior every three paces or so leaned over the wall and held out their hands. Fire, light, ice, and a few other esoteric energies, acid and poison, and one who flung an invisible kinetic force, slammed into the swarmlings below. They were squashed into the dirt, burned, frozen and shattered, and otherwise killed.

The carnage lasted for a few seconds before they stopped and stepped back. Another set replaced them and used their Animus techniques to rain death upon the Wyldlings.

The desire to fight and kill rose in her, but…a glance at the Wyldlings, so small and weak, made her feel somewhat disappointed. After the corpses piled up enough to make a ramp that reached halfway up the wall, the carronades fired a squiggly looking ball of orange plasma. This time, instead of obliterating the bodies, or burning them to ashes, it spread a cold looking flame that ignited the Chaos dust drifting out of the swarmlings. The bodies disintegrated to dust, melting the ramp until the surrounding area was clear.

It didn’t last long though. More and more swarmlings came out of the forest and rushed the walls in an unending tide. The south had the most attackers. The other walls had cleaned up their targets and the Wave didn’t spew out enough of them to instantly encircle them.

Hours passed with no end in sight. Yuriko didn’t think it was so easy now.

She helped a few times by summoning and using her sunshards. From the bottom of the wall, her shards could hit those up to ten paces away. She killed at an astounding pace, but not too long later, Gwendith tugged at her sleeves.

“Don’t waste your strength,” she said. “You and the other Knights are our counter to Chaos Lords and strong barbarians. Don’t exhaust yourself.”

“Oh. Right,” Yuriko muttered. “Well, I’ll stop as soon as the sunshards dissipate.”

“How long do they last?”

“An hour or so.” Yuriko shrugged. “Manipulating them doesn’t cost me Animus.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be mentally fatigued afterwards.”

Yuriko shook her head. “Not for a while.”

“Alright.”

She and Gwendith moved over to the next wall, the west, after two hours. If anything, it was even more boring. There were fewer swarmlings there and the ranged Strikers and Destroyers pretty much made a sport of killing them. The north wall was even more desolate, and if not for the gate there, the number of warriors manning the wall would have been much less. The east wall was the same as the west.

After eight hours, Yuriko and Gwendith went back to the barracks. Yuriko penned a quick report via messenger crane and sent it off to the keep. Afterwards, she took a bath and went to sleep.

The next morning, which was actually close to noon considering she’d been up until after midnight, she and the other two ate and then returned to the walls. By twilight, she cut her watch short, had dinner and slept.

The routine continued the next day. And the day after, and the one after that. It lasted all of two weeks with nothing but swarmlings rushing the walls. No Wanderers, Hunters, or Chaos Lords. It was unsettling, to say the least, waiting for the greater Wyldlings to come, or for the barbarians to launch their assault.

Instead, they had to suffer through this relentless slog. And it wasn’t as if there was an end to the swarmlings.

“Each of the little ones only has a fragment of an Anima. The main body remains in the Chaos Sea, and each time one dies, the Anima fragment returns there. Even if you destroy it, or consume it, it’s only a matter of time before they regenerate.” Desire said when Yuriko remarked on it one evening. “If you want to get rid of them, you’d have to track down its nest. But another will likely grow in its place before too long. Ah, it’s a bit of effort to corral this many nests’ worth. The Asheron must have spent Seasons gathering and controlling this much.”

It was either they hunt down the nests in the Tidelands, which was probably dozens of leagues away, or wait for the Will to make itself known. Or hunt it down. She worried that Marron would have difficulty returning here with this many of them.

Two weeks of boredom.

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