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Entry Point 10 - by Tom Barczak
The veil broke to the cacophony of war.
The child knight Al-Aaron stumbled through. The ghost of Malius followed close behind him.
The screams of missiles and the dying assaulted him. The blood of the dead painted the stone and wood ramparts in shades of red.
A rolling dark shadow filled the horizon, as dark as the Dragon itself. It was a horde, a legion a hundredfold. Its cry boiled and thundered. Its eyes burned in multitude.
The sun of this world was setting.
And in the growing darkness, the world’s cry set the stone and the wood to tremble, until the cries of the dying couldn’t be heard anymore.
The angels had told him to come here. The ghost of Malius who haunted him had followed him.
Al-Aaron held Baeryth out before him. The quickening light of torches and the burning casualties of war danced across its steel, beneath the soft gaze of gossamer that bound it, the cloth aglow with the reminder of angels, a sign of his promise to never to shed the blood of man.
Even here.
The angels had said they didn’t need a hero, but a teacher. And he was to be theirs.
The ghost of Malius, arriving as always after the angels were gone, had only smiled, as the portal opened before them, the gateway to this other world.
A harried knight strode up to him among the hail of stones and arrows. His chainmail hung rent open across a bandaged wound.
A smirk cracked open his broken jaw.
“Welcome to the defense of Ebulon, my lord.”
His hand made a pass across the burning citadel and city beneath them.
“You’re just in time.”
“For what?” Al-Aaron heard himself say.
The reflection of the man’s bloodied visage held across Baeryth’s length and the shield of gossamer that feigned to protect it - a virgin symbol of a promise broken long ago, that the knights of his order now hoped to reclaim.
“I do not know that I can help you.”
The man stalled, confused.
“What is your name, knight?” Al-Aaron asked.
“Doernyth. First Prince of Haardit. I am the last of my city, the only one to make it here alive.” He shook his head.
“I was sent here by an angel.”
Doernyth shrugged. “Why are you here if not to help us?”
“I am sworn to never shed the blood of man. My sword is only a symbol.”
The cry of the horde broke across the city wall.
“Ladders!” One of the defenders screamed.
“We are a spiritual order.” Al-Aaron continued.
Doernyth shrugged again. “Great for a priest, boy. Pretty bad for a knight.”
Doernyth pulled a medallion from beneath his mail, over his head and placed it on Al-Aaron.
The ghost of Malius, his hands outstretched, his face upturned, passed through them both, through the blood and the war.
“You can man the postern gate,” Doernyth said. “They need you there.” He signaled to the gatehouse. “And besides, you’re in luck. The horde which attacks us isn’t men.”
From the gatehouse, through the narrow door leading to the surround, a cry came from the dark, closer than all the other cries of war. “Let him through. He wears Doernyth’s medallion.”
“One of the hero’s then, are you?” the first voice answered. A broken face, full of scars, some old, some new, peered at him from just beyond the vestige light of burning things.
“My name is Al-Aaron. I am a Servian knight.”
“Follow me then knight.”
The cries of beasts heralded across the surrounds like trumpet calls. Dying sounds. Slaughter sounds. The defenders here sending them back, whatever they were, to wherever they came.
Dark shadows more beast than men with gripping poles with savage sword and splitting axe and snout and beak and fang. Their eyes burned yellow. Their blood flowed black.
The blood of the men on the battlements flowed red.
But the men held.
At least he wasn’t too late.
For whatever reason he was here.
The cries of women and children came from the citadel.
That was if a boy could do anything at all to help them. No. Not a boy, a Servian knight.
Naptha balls of fire streaked overhead. They exploded against the citadel in answer.
He followed the broken face through the narrow door and down sharp winding steps to a small passage the size of a tomb. A dozen faces of boys and old men stared back at him. Bravery was a cloak over the fear in their eyes.
“Here you go, hero.”
The broken faced man stared at him, his eyes rimmed red. He seized his arm. He thrust his mouth against his ear. Sweat and blood and spit and tears. “Please let them die well.”
Cries of beasts, cries of war, trumpeted beyond the small postern gate in answer.
A pallid haired boy who couldn’t have seen more than fourteen summers, no more than he had, drew up to him.
“Are you here to save us?”
“Are you are all that’s left?” Al-Aaron asked.
The boy nodded, then nodded to another, his hair more gray than pale. “I’m Gaydyn, our commander is Samuel, of the watch.”
Samuel nodded back then stared at the gate. “I’ve armed them, more for their courage then for the steel,” he murmured. “Steel won’t stop what’s coming to them.”
The ten others cradled their weapons nervously. Three boys with crossbows bigger than they were, their windlass already cocked for them, because they were too small to have done it for themselves. The other three boys clutched their spears to their breasts. The four men leaned against their own like crutches.
Al-Aaron felt a chill. The ghost of Malius whispered in his ear, “They are but lambs for the slaughter. A pity they would be without you here to save them.”
“Why do they attack you?” Al-Aaron asked.
“Because they’re Orcs,” Samuel replied.
“I do not know them.”
Samuel said nothing, his expression one of disbelief, then understanding. “Do you know evil then?”
The ghost of Malius smiled at him.
“I do,” Al-Aaron replied.
“Then that’s all that you need to know.”
“If not men, then what are these Orcs?”
“Beasts perhaps. But not. For even a beast will cower. Even a beast will stop when it knows it’s going to die. Not even a beast will kill until there is nothing left to kill.”
“No. Only men do that.”
“Until only we, the young and the dying, are left to defend ourselves.”
A shudder wracked the postern gate.
Mortar fell from the stones above.
“They’re coming,” Gaydyn whispered. The bravery in his face fled.
Al-Aaron came beside him.
“Then I shall stand beside you.”
Shards of splintered wood flew from the gate. Ax and spike and spear rammed through. But it was the sound that was the most terrifying. Beneath the breaking wood and bending steel, beneath the cry of death beyond it, was the absence of these things. It was a tired sound of silence.
The first Orc through died before hitting the ground with Samuel’s spear through his neck.
One bolt of the three found its home in the skull of the second Orc. A cruel wrought helm flung from her head as her death squeal fled, a crooked fist clutched to her breast.
Another, larger by two, broke through.
He was an ogre if ever there was such one. One eye gone, his rage blinding, his hammer crumpled Samuel’s chest and sent his corpse across the room.