Camilla felt momentarily euphoric. It felt really good to have her sword back. Really really good. She tried not to think about it but instead focused on whether she should flay Yantz alive for leaving their weapons where, theoretically, anyone could have found them. Doubtless it was some arcane prognostication by Dietricha but the thought of the Rieklander rifling her few possessions was enough to make her anger blaze.

Without warning ropey tentacles flopped over the wall, landing with flat slapping sounds reminiscent of meat being dropped onto a butcher’s block. Whatever fell bargain had been struck by the recently dispatched vampire and the agents of Chaos evidently hadn’t stopped the Northeners from devising a contingency plan. Before she could draw her blade back t strike at the nearest appendage beastmen scrambled up tentacles of whatever unholy spawn had crept to the bottom of the wall. The bombardment on the western side of the city increased, with dozens of flaming projectiles plunging into the city. The attack there was evidently a feint to allow a small force to take this section of the wall. The fact that it was unguarded was almost certainly Rishnekov’s doing, only by the order of the Regent could an area of the city be so effectively stripped.

A large goat headed beast man leaped from one of the improvised ladders to land atop the battlements, hooves striking sparks as the clattered on the ancient granite. Its bray of triumph choked into a squeal as  Camilla pivoted smoothly slashing up through the things guts before it could heft its own axe. The blade exited the thing shoulder and she was already using the momentum of stroke to leap into the air, avoiding the tentacular swipe of the living siege tower. At least a dozen tentacles griped the walls, each allowing a flow of beastmen and barbarians to scale, already there were at least a score on the wall. At the apex of her leap Camilla caught a sconce with her left hand and pivoted around so that she fell onto the back of one of the barbarians, her weight driving the elven sword into his back even before her feet hit him, knees bending to absorb the fall.

“Suona l’allarme!” she yelled forgetting that she was speaking Tilean for a moment and then figuring it didn’t much matter. A sickle arched in at her side and she twisted her wrists and flicked the point aside before delivering a backhanded riposte that sent a gout of arterial blood spraying from the things severe neck. Behind her she heard the distinctive sound of Cydric’s sword hewing into an enemy and she backed towards it, giving ground grudging as her sword wove a ring of steel before her. WIth a flex of her elbow one of her concealed daggers dropped into her hand and she flipped it, caught it by the point and hurled it through the eye of a giant red bearded barbarian.

“We have to get off the wall!” she shouted to Cydric as they were pressed back to back. In a few moments the raiding party would organise and no amount of fancy blade work would save them from being torn to pieces. 

“We can’t surrender the parapet!” Cydric shouted back his sword cleaving through the arm of a spear wielding beastman as it drew back for a strike. Camilla ducked an arcing axe blade, snatched up a fallen blade and hacked into the ankles of her assailant, toppling him back into the mass of his fellows.   There had to be thirty enemies on the wall now, howling for blood and surrendering all pretense of stealth.