Chapter 336: Enemy At The Gate

The army kept coming.

From the height of the fortress wall, the hobgoblins seemed to cover the plains in a filthy, heaving mass of muscle, hide, and crude iron. Their numbers swallowed the ground beneath them. Dust rose around their feet in thick brown clouds, while their roaring blended with the pounding of clubs against shields and armor.

They were brutish.

Dirty.

And impossibly loud.

The noise reached the fortress long before the first creature came within range. Thousands of throats howled together, each one trying to be heard above the rest. Tree-trunk clubs struck the earth. Metal scraps rattled against bone armor. Somewhere within the army, deep war horns released ugly blasts that rolled across the open land and shook dust from the battlements.

The soldiers stationed around Kael tried to hide their worry.

They did a poor job.

Hands tightened around spear shafts. Archers checked strings they had already checked three times. One of the men loading Kael’s nearest ballista whispered a prayer beneath his breath while another stared at the approaching horde with his jaw locked so tightly that the muscles along his face trembled.

Kael could hardly blame them.

There were easily a thousand hobgoblins charging toward his side of the fortress alone.

That was only the northern wall.

The army stretched toward the east and west, splitting naturally as its ranks approached the enormous bastion. Thousands more thundered toward the other gates and walls, every one of them comparable in size to the Mutated Hobgoblin that had once served as the boss of the second floor.

A second-floor boss had become common infantry.

Kael rested one hand on the controls of the restored ballista.

"The Tower really knows how to make progress feel worthless."

A quiet laugh came from nearby.

Kael turned his helmet slightly.

The golden-haired Leonard stood several paces away, looking out across the army with a satisfied grin. He had climbed back onto the outer wall shortly before the wave began, apparently wanting to witness the failure of Kael’s defenses before retreating to the safety of his turrets inside the city.

"You look pleased with yourself," Kael said.

"I told you that you were wasting your time."

The Leonard gestured toward the charging army.

"You’re not stopping all of that with newly repaired turrets. They’re missing upgrades. They’re slow, completely manual, and require too many people to operate. You’ll lose this gate soon."

Kael looked toward the nearest ballista.

Five fortress soldiers stood around the weapon. Two waited beside a rack of enormous bolts. Another pair held the mechanical cranks attached to the high-tension firing cord. The final soldier remained behind the aiming mechanism, using his full weight to turn the restored weapon toward the advancing horde.

The Leonard was not entirely wrong.

The relics worked, but the basic models were cumbersome. Every shot required coordination, strength, and time. Any mistake in the loading process would leave the weapon useless while hundreds of hobgoblins closed the distance.

Kael looked back toward the inner city.

"And then they charge into the city so you can farm them, I suppose?"

"Correct."

The Leonard did not even attempt to disguise his satisfaction.

"The walls were always going to fall. My formation simply accepts that instead of wasting resources pretending otherwise. Once the hobgoblins enter the streets, they’ll be funneled toward the central keep. My turrets will kill them by the hundreds."

"And the people living between the gate and your turrets?"

"They’re irrelevant."

Several nearby soldiers heard him.

Kael saw the anger pass across their faces, though none abandoned their assigned weapons. The Leonard either failed to notice or did not care.

"There’s nothing to see here," he said.

He turned away from the battlements and began descending the stone stairs toward the city, leaving the soldiers to face the army he had already decided would overwhelm them.

Kael watched him go for a moment.

Then he looked back toward the plain.

He did not care much about the Leonard’s opinion. The man had built his entire plan around sacrificing everything except the mission objective, then manipulated the other climbers into funding it. Whether he believed his strategy was genuinely optimal or simply wanted all the contribution for himself no longer mattered.

The first hobgoblins entered firing range.

A fortress officer raised his sword.

"Loose!"

The ballista in front of Kael fired.

Its tension cord snapped forward with a violent crack. The weapon’s arms shook, and the massive bolt vanished from the rail fast enough to leave only a blur behind it.

The projectile crossed the distance in an instant.

Its iron head struck the first hobgoblin directly between the eyes.

The creature’s skull burst backward.

The bolt barely slowed.

It continued through the first hobgoblin and punched into the chest of the second. Crude armor folded inward as the projectile tore through muscle, bone, and organs before carrying the corpse several paces with it.

The bolt finally angled downward and buried itself in the earth.

Its shaft shattered.

Metal fragments exploded outward in a storm of shrapnel.

Hobgoblins surrounding the impact were struck across their faces and bodies. Several lost eyes. Others staggered as iron splinters buried themselves in throats, limbs, and exposed stomachs. One creature dropped its club and clutched at the side of its head, only to be knocked down by the hobgoblins charging behind it.

The injured fell.

Those behind them tripped over their bodies.

For a few seconds, the front of the formation collapsed into chaos. Massive creatures stumbled over one another, crushing wounded allies beneath their feet as the momentum of the army refused to slow.

Then more hobgoblins filled the gap.

The opening disappeared beneath green flesh and raised clubs.

"Reload!" the officer shouted.

The ballista crew moved immediately.

Two soldiers dragged another bolt from the ammunition rack and laid it onto the firing rail. The other pair threw their weight into the cranks, slowly drawing the thick cord backward. Every rotation produced a strained metallic groan.

Along the wall, more ballistae fired.

Enormous bolts descended into the army at different angles, each one carving a narrow tunnel through the hobgoblin ranks. Bodies were thrown aside. Armor split. Limbs spun through the air.

Then one of the restored cannons fired.

The explosion shook Kael.

Flame erupted from the cannon’s mouth, followed by a cloud of black smoke. The iron ball crossed the field too quickly for Kael to follow clearly and struck the ground in the middle of the approaching army.

The earth erupted.

Hobgoblins were launched into the air.

Some had been struck directly and reduced to broken pieces. Others were thrown aside by the impact, their enormous bodies spinning before crashing into the ranks behind them. The cannonball bounced once, struck another creature through the waist, then continued rolling through the tightly packed formation.

Every contact broke something. Bones, flesh, armor, and skulls.

By the time the iron ball lost its momentum, a jagged path of corpses had been carved through the army.

Kael turned toward the cannon in genuine surprise.

"That’s a little excessive."

The soldiers operating it did not celebrate.

The metal around the muzzle had turned bright red.

Heat shimmered above the barrel while the crew immediately pulled back, allowing several fortress workers to approach with long tools and buckets of treated water. They cooled the outer housing carefully, avoiding the opening as though the weapon might explode if offended.

Kael studied it.

The cannon required fewer people to operate than a ballista, but the firing mechanism placed tremendous strain on the ancient metal. Another shot before the barrel cooled would risk cracking it open or detonating the ammunition inside.

Powerful.

Slow.

Dangerous to its operators if used carelessly.

The ballista was more reliable. It needed five soldiers to work at an effective pace. Its individual shots killed fewer enemies than the cannon, but the weapon could continue firing as long as its crew retained the strength to operate it.

Kael glanced toward the neighboring walls.

The other climbers were holding their positions.

The spear user stood beside the western defenses, moving between her five restored relics as the fortress crews loaded and fired them. The staff-wielding woman had climbed onto a tower overlooking the eastern wall, using magic to take down anything that got too close. The burly man waited near the main gate, his enormous sword resting against one shoulder while his assigned ballistae and cannons fired over his head.

So far, no wall had suffered any serious trouble. They all stood. For now.

The restored defenses were killing the hobgoblins.

They simply were not stopping them.

For every creature thrown aside by a bolt, several more stepped over its corpse. Every cannon blast tore a hole through the formation, but the surrounding ranks immediately folded inward and closed it.

The army kept advancing through the hail of ballistae. But they still shrunk the distance to the wall. They kept advancing.

The archers began firing.

Arrows rose from the walls in dark clouds and fell across the first ranks of the army. Many bounced from crude shields or failed to penetrate the thickest sections of hide armor, but enough found eyes, mouths, throats, and unprotected joints to bring more creatures down.

The monster army finally reached the base of the fortress. As its first wave crash into the walls. Kael felt the impact beneath his boots.

Hundreds of hobgoblins slammed into the outer stone, while those behind continued pushing forward. Bodies pressed together until the base of the wall became a churning mass of muscle and clubs.

The enemy made it to the wall.