"Forward!"

Men on either side of him, their faces different from those he had been standing beside a few minutes ago as the dead were lost underfoot and others stepped forward to fill the gap. More men behind him, pushing him forward in a relentless press that urged the entire front line towards the enemy lest some lose their nerve and this disaster turn into a rout.

He blinked dirt from his eyes and another enemy stood before him. An Orc? A Wulver? Something else? It hardly mattered at this point, it swung at him nonetheless and he pivoted his body to let the claw or weapon pass through empty air. His shoulder locked up for a fraction of a second, but the following thrust was fast enough that it didn't matter as he drove his sword into the soft meat of it's throat and it fell back gurgling to reveal the next behind it.

"Forward!"

They pressed onwards again, creeping forward another few feet as they stepped over bodies both human and demon. None of them were brave or foolish enough to look down and check. Nor did he dare look back and see how few men were available to take his place should he or anyone else fall. Their shield wall advanced, stretching from one side of the wide avenue all the way to the other, those at the edges scraping the bricks with their kites and pauldrons. It was one of the main thoroughfares crossing the city, offering an easy path from the docks to the centre and the demons seemed hellbent on opening that path for their troops. The defenders, in turn, were equally hellbent on not letting them take it and was spilling copious amounts of blood towards that end, though from the sounds of fighting coming both from and the sides and behind them it seemed the demons had found alternate paths to take.

"Forward!"

Mateo has no idea who kept screaming the order to advance. He had lost sight of any sort of commander ages ago and the voice kept changing regardless. From how rough his throat felt, it might even have been him. It bore repeating though; each fresh wave of demons pushed them back precious meters which they then clawed back inch by inch with every shouted order to advance.

Another swing of his leaden arm saw another foe fall and was relieved to see open street behind it for the first time in what felt like hours. The shield wall exhaled audibly, relaxing a fraction of an inch even though they could see the next wave of demons already rushing them for the other end of the avenue. They had blessed seconds to rest before the fighting would begin again and at least this time Mateo could allow himself to use a bit of aura to help clear away the first dozen demons, before he started conserving it again.

"Forward!"

They marched, feet touching cobblestone for the time being as they advanced ahead of the carpet of dead bodies gained as much ground as they could before steel met fang and claw again. Mateo shook some life back into his limbs, wiped the sweat and blood and dirt from his good eye and silently prayed that the man on his right was stalwart enough to compensate for his lack of peripheral vision on that side.