Distant thunder rumbled softly over the wide, gently sloping valley as raindrops fell upon this verdant land and the highway that ran through it. Drizzling rain fell with a pittering on tender leaves of the nascent crop sprouting up all throughout the valley. Raindrops gathered on the leaves and coalesced into pregnant droplets that gathered on the leaftips before being released by the weight of accumulated rain and fell upon the loamy earth, releasing the earthy smell of springtime rain into the air.
Tirigue, as this land had been called in the time before the Necromancer, was one of the breadbaskets of Leria. In ages past, its perfectly-loamy soil was coveted among the southern realms, and this fertile valley had been fought over in many of the wars between the great powers of Leria. But even after Leria's final war, Tirigue remained just as vital to the undead as it had been to its living lords. Certainly, the undead did not need corn or tuber to sustain themselves, but potent alcoholic spirits distilled from crops served as the main reagent of aqua vitae and other embalming fluids that staved off rot and kept lifeless tissue supple and strong year after year of undeath. Unable to reproduce and unable to secure fresh new corpses with the living armadas maintaining their blockade of Leria, Eagoth's minions needed vast quantities of potent spirits - and by extension, fermentable crops - to maintain the undead legions in peak working and fighting condition.
As Theleden cantered down the highway through Tirigue, he was struck by the lushness of this young crop of... potatoes, perhaps? Theleden had been a prince in life, not a farmer. But just from looking across the valley, one would be hard pressed to find much difference here after Eagoth's conquest compared to before. What, fundamentally, Theleden wondered to himself, had changed since his master had come to rule this land?
The fields were still being tended to just as before. Sun-bronzed peasants had been replaced with ghouls, of course. Theleden saw a few in the fields even now. A pair of worn-down ghouls grubbed through the muddy furrows beside the roadway to pluck out weeds and bugs - only three limbs were left on their bodies between the two of them. One of them had enough cognizance left to look up from his toil and regard with empty, eyeless sockets as Theleden, his horsed revenants, and the three-score skeleton guards went by.
Theleden could imagine how the living might counter that thought if given the opportunity. 'The heinousness of undeath is its lack of dignity', he imagined some living detractor protesting. 'The ghouls are nothing but soulless automatons, compelled to toil until their bodies fall apart, and then get tossed into a barrel of scraps for the meatworks.' Was the lot of those living serfs who toiled these fields so much better? They too were compelled to hard toil in the fields for the vast majority of their lives, tending to beets or grain for the benefit of some worthless baron. The serfs too toiled until they could toil no more, dying gracelessly and broken in some daub hut at the age of forty-three. What dignity did they ever have?
Leria had been much improved by the Necromancer's conquest, Theleden reasoned. For the first time
ever, all of Leria was at peace. The Pax Mortis had ended all warfare on the continent - with only a very few notable exceptions. And furthermore, by extinguishing life, the Necromancer had effectively eliminated death! Well-maintained wights could last indefinitely, and with so much time at their disposal and all war prohibited, the undead could focus their efforts on peaceful and productive endeavors. To think of what could be accomplished when the Necromancer's forces finally broke through the armadas of the living and brought the Pax Mortis to every corner of the world! Eternal peace from Epiranth to Salarmand!
But why then did he feel a twinge of sorrow for the eyeless, legless ghoul in the field? Why had he traveled halfway across Leria to make sense of these visions?
"You did not fail him," Theleden whispered to himself. "It was the Necromancer you failed. But he is great and forgiving. He has given you a chance to redeem yourself."
"... but what if I hadn't failed? What if things had gone differently?"
Ash settled gently upon the golden locks of Theleden's mane - greasy and unkempt though still equally striking for lack of care - as the Lion of Esteline surveyed the countryside over the massive merlons of the city's walls. Billowing clouds of smoke blew eastward toward the port of Ludire, blotting out the sun and casting amorphous and fast-moving shadows over the patchwork farmland that surrounded the city for several leagues. Theleden grimaced at the implication. The army of the dead was fast approaching, and time was running out.
The smoke came from huge fires to the west, ignited not by the dead, but by light cavalry operating on Theleden's orders to destroy everything of conceivable use to the undead horde. Crops, houses, grain silos - anything that couldn't be carted off to Ludire was to be destroyed. Dead men and animals - if encountered - were under no circumstances to be left intact. Corpses were to be tossed into burning buildings, and if there were no buildings nearby to burn and use as ad hoc funeral pyres, the scouts were to dismember the bodies and scatter the pieces to prevent any cadaver from being risen and used against Theleden's army. The scouts had reported finding a surprising number of dead bodies in the hamlets they came to raze, slain not by ghouls or looters but cocktails of hemlock and moonseed vine. Theleden had heard one heartbreaking report from a fearless juggernaut of a cavalryman - one that Theleden had personally witnessed dispatch some thirty wights at Sour Bridge - who could barely relay through gulping sobs how he had encountered during a heavy rainstorm a farmhouse with a dozen young children poisoned in their beds. Having no dry firewood to burn the bodies with and needing to dispose of the corpses in short order, he and his men had no other option but to dismember the dead babes with their own swords. The smell of burnt flesh on the wind indicated the the light cavalry had encountered a substantial number of corpses that needed burned. Theleden hoped that it was merely livestock his riders had found.
Thankfully, very few had given up all hope as those poor souls had. The vast majority of the populace of Leria's southern realms had answered Theleden's call to rally at Ludire for the largest exodus by sea in history. Most those refugees had already arrived, ready to embark on what had to have been the largest fleet ever assembled. From Ludire, the refugees would be sailed across the White Straits to Orybulus, Phasto, Epiranth, Chayoun,
anywhere but Leria. This was not simply a humanitarian endeavor; Theleden was going to deny Eagoth as many corpses as he possibly could before evacuating his own army to sail away and fight the Necromancer elsewhere.
This plan left much to be desired, but was the best option given the reality of the war against the Undead. The victory over Eagoth at the Neck of Leria had provided a sorely-needed morale boost for the living, but holding the undead hordes off at the Neck forever was just not possible. For the undead horde stymied at Sour Bridge was just the snout of an Undead serpent 100 leagues long and millions and millions of ghouls strong; growing stronger by the second with every man, woman, child, and animal slain to the north of the Neck. Fighting such a vast force head on was impossible. A war of attrition, the Lion reasoned, was the only path to ultimate victory against Eagoth. Give the Necromancer as few cadavers as possible, while simultaneously destroying as many he could.
The southern lords had proven quite amenable to Theleden's requests, particularly after the great victory at Sour Bridge, and acquiesced to demands that would have been unthinkable early in the war against Eagoth. By now, it was clear that full support of Theleden and his army was their best hope for the survival of their kingdoms, and themselves. But it was the White Wizard of Yzen, Callidus, who remained Theleden's closest ally among the surviving kings and dukes of Leria. From the very beginning, Callidus had supported Theleden, and had been instrumental in devising the current strategy against the undead legions. It had been Callidus who had suggested that the refugees of southern Leria should rally at the city of Ludire - predicting more favorable seas in the northern waters during this time of year instead of the more southerly port of Eilas. Furthermore, Callidus had pledged to submit all of Yzen's fighting forces to Theleden's command once the White Wizard had conducted his own evacuation of Yzen and the towns of the Vale.
That had been a month ago now, and the dead were now at Ludire's doorstep. It would seem Callidus and his forces were now separated from Ludire by an undead army at least one million strong. Fighting through such a host was utterly impossible. The most hopeful scenario at this point was that the Wizard had retreated to the west or south to find another harbor from which to evacuate. The most pessimistic scenario - and probable - was that Callidus and his army had been overrun and vanquished. Whatever the case, Theleden would have to hold these walls without the Wizard's aid. The 20,000 fighting men Callidus had pledged - including many knights and well-armored guardsmen from wealthy Yzen - would be sorely missed. Numerically speaking, 20,000 additional men would do little to even the staggering numerical difference between Ludire's defenders and the practically-endless undead hordes. But fighting from the ramparts of these massive walls, those soldiers might have made all the difference - to say nothing of the advantage a wizard as powerful as Callidus would have provided.
No benefit in wondering what might have been, Theleden thought to himself. Callidus or not, these walls had to stand. And so the Lion went across the ramparts in order to ensure the defenders were prepared for the fast-approaching assault.
For the moment, each segment of wall was only occupied by a score of men or so. Some watchmen with eyes glued to the western horizon, the rest were porters carrying supplies up to the wall. Barrels and barrels of pitch, countless cords of firewood to heat giant cauldrons of boiling oil, rocks, even boulders for the mangonels affixed to the roof of each crenelated guard tower, all rode up the stairs to the ramparts on the sturdy backs of strong men. Theleden offered them a nod of approval as he passed them by. Positioned behind every other merlon was a quiver of arrows or crossbow bolts - all together they may have comprised as many as a fifth of all the arrows in Leria, and more were arriving by the minute as the city's fletchers worked feverishly to produce as many as they could. Even with such a plentiful supply, Theleden expected to exhaust the arrow supplies in the first hour of the assault and had instructed the archers to wait until the dead were at the very foot of the walls before loosing arrows. This would be an assault after all - not a siege. That was important distinction that Theleden had stressed to his commanders and lieutenants. This would not be a long, protracted siege. Eagoth's legions could afford to do anything but wait, lest they allow the hundreds of thousands of refugees in the city to escape by sea. The dead would come hard and fast. The sole objective of each defender was to dispatch as many ghouls they could, to hold the undead outside the city for as long as possible and give the refugees time to get aboard one of the vessels of the evacuation fleet.
The boarding process was underway even now. Out in Ludire's harbor and spread across the azure sea for leagues and leagues beyond, the fleet had converged in an disorderly constellation of ships of all shapes and sizes. Deep-draughted merchant cogs, caravels, galleys, galleons, fishing boats, and others congregated in the waters of the harbor; the sheer number of boats gave Ludire's harbor the appearance of a forest of sail masts. Bobbing in the wake of so many ships were an even greater number of rowboats, coracles, hastily-assembled rafts, even driftwood logs piloted by paddle-toting gondoliers. Anything that floated was being used to ferry refugees onto the ships. Even from this distance, many of the ships looked like they were filled to capacity already. And yet there were still so many refugees.
Even now, a trickle of stragglers were streaming through the western gate through the city's ring of towering limestone walls. It was left cracked open to permit newcomers, but ready to shut and lock at a moment's notice. The paved highway leading into the gatehouse was left a muddy, cluttered mess. Dozens of muddy paths radiated out from the western gate in long dendrite ruts stamped into the soil by escapees converging here from every direction. Hundreds of carts and wagons had been left abandoned at the foot of the walls; the only worldly belongings of so many evacuees deposited at the foot of the walls by order of the gate guards - who were denying entry of all wagons except those of critical supplies in order to improve traffic and reduce crowding inside the walls. Such a vast number of people still needed to be loaded aboard ships. Theleden, who thrived on martial orderliness, could barely stomach watching the chaotic process unfold.
Unfortunately, a far more unsettling sight was just about to unfold before the Lion of Esteline.
"They're coming!!" One of the criers screamed from a guard tower. "The dead are coming!!"
Theleden's stomach dropped as he heard the warning. Immediately he was against the merlons, squinting to see any sign of movement on the western horizon. He hoped dearly that it was a false alarm - that the watchman had mistaken a party of refugees for the undead army. Theleden saw a flicker of movement on the horizon, emerging from the shadows cast by the haze of smoke in the air. And it seemed initially that it was indeed a false alarm. After watching for a time, Theleden could see they were horsemen - his light cavalry - riding at a full gallop for the gates. But as the cavalry charged across the farmland surrounding Ludire, Theleden could see that they were not alone. Something was pursuing the horsemen. Something small, fast, and numerous.
Dogs.
A hundred undead hounds were following right on the heels of a dozen riders. And as they drew near, Theleden could hear their deep, sickly baying. One dog, with no concern for self preservation, lept at the neck of one of the rearmost horses and clamped down upon the horse's throat with yellowed, broken teeth. The horse gave a neighing scream and tumbled into a fallow field in a cloud of dust and dirt clods. Its rider was catapulted from the horse and crumpled into the dirt a few feet away. Before the rider or horse could react, they had been swarmed by a dozen dead dogs. Even from the considerable distance, Theleden could hear the sound of flesh being torn apart over the ferocious snarling and baying.
Bowmen!!" Theleden called out. Despite the walls not yet being fully manned, some 200 archers were in earshot - and shooting range. "Notch arrows!!"
Arrows clattered against quivers as every archer and crossbowmen in firing range of the gate loaded their bows.
"Make readyyy!!"
"Sire! They're going to hit the horsemen if you have them shoot those dogs!" A watchman standing beside Theleden warned over the sound of bowstrings tightening. "You're going to kill them!"
"I know!" Theleden snarled through gritted teeth.
"You saw what those hounds are capable of, same as I. Those riders are already dead. It's too late to shut those gates and if those dogs get inside, they're going to kill hundreds of people before we can put them down."
Theleden looked back down through the crenels, and saw the horsemen rapidly approaching the gate. They were close enough now to see the archers on the ramparts, aiming directly at them. The hounds were pulling ahead of the winded horses, ignoring the horsemen and now making a furious dash for the gates left open for those very last refugees.
"...Loose arrows!!" The Lion ordered, squinting back watering eyes as the air whistled with flying arrows.
Smoke haze drifted over Ludire, tinting the sun an infernal red. The hellish light cast the city's grand monuments of chalky white limestone in a dismal orange, including the belltowers of the Basilica of Saint Nyssian, which now rang out in alarm. The bells called the fighting men of the city up to their positions on the ramparts. Unfortunately, the bells also instilled panic and disorder among the great throngs of non-combatants desperately seeking refuge on the ships in the harbor. Panicked shouting and screaming rose up from the thoroughfares of the great city - all thickly congested with refugees - knowing that only 30 feet of walls and a hopelessly-outnumbered army stood between them and the numberless and merciless dead.
Upon the walls, the armies of the living rallied. Horn blasts communicated orders across long stretches of rampart, and knights and lieutenants shouted commands to the yeomen in earshot as the men gathered shoulder to shoulder all across some two and a half leagues of walls, running in a rough semicircle around the natural cove around which Ludire was built, terminating at both side in guard towers built onto the very precipice of wave-hewn cliffs that dropped off into the sea. To so densely man such massive fortifications, the Lion of Esteline had to command one of the greatest mortal armies ever assembled. Any natural foe would have quailed at the very sight of such redoubtable defenses.
But Theleden faced no natural foe.
The living faced an army numbering in the
millions. Depending upon how many the Necromancer and his Revenants decided to commit to this attack, each living warrior would be outnumbered anywhere between ten or fifty to one. A mortal army, most of which comprised of volunteers or levies with no combat experience to speak of, vastly outnumbered by a host of fearless, tireless undead. Ludire's fall was inevitable. This battle would instead decide if the last meaningful resistance to the Necromancer fell with it.
Theleden stood atop a guard tower near the main western gate into the city, surveying the countryside around the city. Smoke haze reduced the distance one could see, but for at least a league away, the undead horde was nowhere to be seen. A network of crude, shallow ditches and moats had been dug into the farmland and filled with dry branches and brush that the Lion knew to be soaked with pitch. Ignited with fire arrows, these moats would not necessarily stop the undead host, but funnel its ranks into the firing line of the numerous mangonels built atop the guard towers. And even if not ignited, Theleden suspected the undead would steer clear of these fire ditches anyway, after having suffered such a staggering defeat from similar traps at the Sour Bridge.
Theleden's survey of the battlefield was interrupted by the sound of arrows clattering together in a quiver of arrows laying against a nearby merlon. As if the arrows had been set to tremble from an earthquake...
The undead approached. Visible at first from the northern segments of the wall, evidenced by the fact that Theleden heard horn blasts off the north; four in rapid succession: that was the signal for first sight of the enemy. Then to the south, and then from Theleden's very guard tower.
The archers positioned around him went wide-eyed as the first ranks of the Necromancer's horde emerged from the smoke. Shuffling silhouettes ambled forth in wobbling, uneasy gaits out of the ruddy haze. As they approached, the individual ghouls and revenants could be distinguished in finer detail. The vast majority of them had been peasants, unarmored and still dressed in what the garments they had been slain in. Their mortal wounds were still covered in blood, long since crusted-over and dried brown, soiling their tunics, gowns, or bare chests in macabre stains. Their weapons were improvised for the most part: farm implements, rusted knives - many ghouls were armed with nothing more than stakes and staves whittled down to a sharp point. Though the peasant-derived bulk of the Necromancer's forces were poorly-armed, their rude equipment was compensated many, many times over by their numbers. The first ranks emerging from the haze and approaching the walls now must have numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Only Eagoth knew how many undead were behind this first wave - still obfuscated by the smoke.
The dead were approaching the brush-filled moats, dug out some 300 yards away from the foot of Ludire's walls at the outer edge of archer range. It was time to thin the horde's numbers.
"Bowmen!" Theleden announced. "Fire arrows on the moats!" Theleden's orders were echoed all along the walls by his lieutenants and knights. Archers along the ramparts acknowledged the command by dipping the bodkins of their arrows in evenly-spaced barrels of pitch and igniting them in the coals of braziers. Greasy smoke trailed off the flame-tongues lapping against the shafts of thousands of arrows as the archers notched and drew back their bows, aiming upward to achieve a long-arcing volley.
"Loose volley!"
Thousands of fire-arrows launched up from the ramparts and arced high into the hazy air before raining down in a diffuse, fiery rain among the foremost undead ranks. Plenty of the arrows fell into the dry boughs of the moats, igniting fast-burning brushfires that quickly grew and joined together to form walls of furiously-burning brush. The ghouls had begun climbing over or pushing through the moats in some spots, and they soon found themselves utterly engulfed by the blazes. Some simply fell into the brush and succumbed to the fire, though a few emerged from the moats as walking torches, continuing their march toward Ludire oblivious to the flames licking their bodies until the burns consumed their bodies and sent them tumbling to the dirt in writhing, burning heaps. Cheers erupted across the walls of Ludire at the sight of the ardent dead. Over-excitement, Theleden reckoned, over a few hundred ghouls destroyed when
millions remained. But let the men have their morale boost.
The dead had redirected around the blazes and were funneling in through the many gaps between the fire moats. Thousands upon thousands of ghouls were teeming through these gaps, all positioned directly in front of the catapults perched upon the guard towers.
"Fire the mangonels!"
On the mangonel directly behind Theleden, an engine crew climbed up to the throwing arm of giant wooden contraption armed with burning torches, igniting the boulders inside wrapped in pitch-soaked rags. The crew quickly scampered down off the beams of the catapult before the lever of the machine was thrown. The guard tower jolted under Theleden's feet as the mangonel's torsion was released all at once, sending the throwing arm vertical in a swift, jerky motion. Three flaming boulders roared over Theleden's head as they careened from the ramparts down into the undead. The boulders crashed into the undead ranks in ember-laden smoke clouds, and even from this distance, the sound of a thousand bones snapping and crumpling could be heard. Fiery projectiles arced across the sky from the other guard towers: boulders, bricks, even some barrels filled with a mixture of pitch, lard, and sawdust with burning rags stuffed into the bung. Upon impact, they meted out horrific damage upon whatever they landed. The pitch barrels were particularly spectacular, instantly splattering their contents on impact and igniting it all in a great fireball that consumed scores of the densely-packed ghouls. A shame more of the pitch barrels hadn't been made.
The march of the dead had quickened under the fire of the mangonels into a charge. As fast as their legs could carry them, the first wave of the dead charged for the mighty walls of Ludire. Perhaps their revenants had ordered the ghouls to move faster to close on the walls in anticipation of arrow volleys that never came.
"Hold your arrows!" Cried the knights on the ramparts. "Save the arrows until they at the walls!"
The undead tide was at last at Ludire's walls. A wave of ghouls crashed against the city's defenses like those of the sea not far behind them. The walls trembled beneath the feet of the defenders as the dead threw themselves at the foot of the walls. All the groaning, screeching, howling, and all the other vocalizations of the ghouls blended into a dull roar that radiated off the approaching dead, building in pitch as more and more of the dead reached the walls.
"Arrows at will!!"
With that, the archers drew their bows and aimed straight down into the faces of the ghouls just below. Thousands of arrows raced straight down into the ghouls, embedding themselves up to the fletching as they found their marks on the heads and shoulders of the ghouls. In such dense throngs of ghouls less than thirty feet down, it was impossible to miss. A thousand ghouls collapsed in that first volley as arrows pierced their skulls and destroyed their minds, finally freeing them from Eagoth's rapture. Those destroyed ghouls went slack and sank beneath their countless comrades to be gracelessly trampled.
Withered hands struck the stones of Ludire's walls. Fingernails splintered as dead fingers wedged themselves into the mortared grooves between the stones, giving the ghouls purchase as they began their suicidal attempt to scale the walls. They rarely made a single reach or two before being picked off by the archers above. Arrows and crossbow bolts hit their skulls, causing some to go limp and tumble back into the horde, but others hung tenaciously to the walls even in death - clutching their purchase in rigid death grips. Those that hung on provided cover - and handholds - to the climbers behind them.
Arrows clattered against the battlements as the dead began firing on Ludire in their turn. The arrows arced harmlessly over the ramparts or plinked against the merlons, but posed just enough threat to the archers to huddle back behind the battlements as they notched fresh arrows onto their bowstrings - slowing their withering fire on the ghouls below.
"Ladders!" Someone called out over the sound of arrowfire and the roar of the dead. "They are bringing ladders to the walls!"
Like flotsam bubbling up from the depths of the undead sea, ladders were appearing at the foot of Ludire's walls by the dozens. Theleden watched through the crenels as one of the ladders was hefted up over the heads of the ghouls. Straddling the top rungs of the rising ladder was no mere ghoul: a barrel-chested warrior clad in a snug-fitting cuirass of ringmail armor. Wild, white eyes looked on ravenously at the living defenders as he ascended, brandishing a pitted bastard sword as he roared maniacally through an unkempt red beard. Somewhere in Leria, the Necromancer must have slain and raised a number of reavers: those ferocious warriors from the Bone Islands to the northwest of Leria. Even in life, these reavers were savage and fearless fighters that loved nothing more than a hard fight. But in death, they would be almost unstoppable.
"Take him down!" Theleden ordered, casting a pointed finger at the reaver riding the ladder up toward the walls.
A company of crossbowmen opened fire on the reaver, striking the undead warrior in the chest and thigh. The reaver's battlecry became a maniacal cackle as the bolts embedded themselves into his muscled flesh without any deleterious effect. The ghouls raised his ladder vertically before shoving it toward the ramparts without finesse, vaulting the reaver through the crenels and onto the rampart. Immediately, he was beset by archers - who had now drawn swords against him. The revenant northman swung furiously at the defenders, breaking off little bits of stone off the merlons or rampart pavers with each wild swing. An archer engaged him, successfully landing a blow on the warrior's left arm. The blade rent leather wrappings and cut to the bone - a grievous wound for a living combatant, but little more than a scratch for the undead berserker. The reprisal was swift and furious: the reaver delivered a ferocious uppercut with the battle-dulled sword, hacking - not cutting - through his attacker, rending the archer into two mangled pieces and showering his fellow defenders in a spray of bright red blood. Theleden knew at once he would have to deal with this revenant himself.
The Lion parted through the defenders on the walls, still firing at feverish pace on the rising tide of ghouls trying to scale the walls. A ramp of corpses gave the dead as much as a 5-foot head start in some places, and it was taking significantly longer now for the archers to dispatch the climbers. Nimble ghouls would get as far as halfway up before being stopped by an arrow through the skull. But the fire of the archers was divided now between the climbers and ladder-bearers. Emerging through the smoke haze, the silhouettes of siege towers appeared on the horizon. Slow, lumbering contraptions, though hefted by hundreds of tireless ghouls, the archers would soon have to contend with them as well.
The reaver had cut a blood-slicked gap in the defenders when Theleden reached him, and a steady stream of ghouls were beginning to climb the ladder behind him. The reaver's lifeless, milky eyes met Theleden's, and immediately recognized him as someone of import. A cut above these levied whelps for certain, and perhaps even a worthy opponent.
"I am Rulfir the Butcher!" The reaver snarled. "Heed my name and know it was I that brought you to serve Jarl Eagoth. Now fight me, you worm!"
Theleden did as the Butcher commanded, drawing his sword and closing toward the reaver. The revenant gave a growl as he swung down at the Lion. It was easy enough to see coming, and Theleden stepped out of the way and swung for the reaver's neck. The reaver's pitted sword met Theleden's with a sharp clang. Rulfir drew back and gave another swing, aiming to rip through Theleden's gut, only to be blocked there with the clanging of steel. Bouncing off of the reaver's blocked sword, Theleden spun around on his heels and transferred the force into a slice at the butcher's neck. Theleden felt the blade slide between the reaver's neckbones. The reaver's head - beard and all - flew off the tip of Theleden's sword and spun about as it flew over the wall and fell down into the teeming horde below to be crushed under the feet of so many ghouls. Rulfir's headless body went limp and collapsed onto its knees before falling flat at Theleden's feet.
The first of the ghouls had scaled the Butcher's ladder: a helm-sporting soldier still wearing a tattered tabard bearing the sigil of Comiriom. Theleden plunged his sword through the ghoul's helmet before he had even stepped onto the rampart, sending his listless corpse tumbling down the ladder - knocking another ghoul off the rungs before falling into the teeming dead. He gave a deft kick against the top rung of the ladder, sending it teetering off and skidding against the walls before tumbling back to the ground - knocking a score of undead climbers off the wall. The archers pressed back in to the opening cleared by Theleden, and resumed raining arrows onto the dead. The walls jolted underfoot as a mangonel on one of the nearby towers launched another projectile - a flaming pitch-soaked boulder - out into the dead. A contrail of smoke and embers arced over the dead as the ardent projectile scored a glancing blow to an approaching siege tower. The corner timbers of the tower were splintered, and collapsed under the great weight they supported. In a cloud of dust and embers, the siege tower collapsed, crushing a hundred ghouls in an avalanche of falling planks and timbers. Enthusiastic shouts and cheering resounded from the living at the sight of the fallen siege tower. For a brief moment, Theleden thought that he and his army could hold these walls.
That brief reverie was cut short when a corpse fell out of the sky, slamming into the battlements of a nearby guard tower with such force and speed that it burst on impact, spraying the archers on the walls with viscera and brown, coagulated blood. Before Theleden could even comprehend what he had just witnessed, another body crashed into the wall directly below him, collapsing into the climbing ghouls in a crumpled heap of pulverized flesh. Just barely visible beyond the smoke of the fire moats, Theleden could see the throwing arm of a trebuchet rocking back and forth from just having been launched. Peering through the smoke, one could see another trebuchet launching even now, throwing arm rising skyward as a giant counterweight dropped toward the earth. At the zenith of its throwing arc - Theleden could make out four small projectiles flying out of a sling on the distal end of the siege engine's arm.
Not projectiles, Theleden realized as he watched them sail through the haze toward Ludire,
ghouls.
The ghouls tumbled crazily through the air, flying over the wall and landing on the rooftop of some tenement near the walls with a meaty thud and shattering of roof tiles. To Theleden's horror, the ghouls got back onto their feet. Another cluster of ghouls sailed over the walls. And another. Theleden's stomach sank as he realized that Eagoth had discovered that the Undeath made it unnecessary to capture walls anymore. Given enough time, a large undead horde could simply catapult their forces over any defense.
Theleden shoved his way through the defenders - now fighting off climbing ghouls just below the battlements - and seized a horn-toting knight by the shoulders.
"Sound the retreat!" Theleden demanded.
"But sire, we still hold the walls." Countered a rather perplexed knight. "Aren't we to hold the walls for as long as possible and allow as much time for-"
"Do you see what they are doing!" Theleden screamed, pointing into the ash-laden sky as ghouls catapulted over their heads even now. "If we tarry, they will send enough dead over the walls to surround us while they massacre the refugees! We are out of time!"
Without further complaint, the knight drew his horn and gave six blasts on the horn, repeating again and again until the other buglers echoed the order to retreat across the walls.
"Withdraw!!" "Withdraw to the ships!!"
"Hold still, everyone." The gondolier ordered to a overcrowded rowboat of panicked occupants. "Hold still and stay calm. The quieter you are, the faster we can get you onto the ships."
The waves of the harbor crested precariously close to the rim of the overladen boat. It was a simple harbor boat, built to ferry perhaps eight to ten people and a few crates to merchant vessels in Ludire's harbor. Today, it carried thirty - mostly children and their mothers - from the wharves and jetties to whatever ships in the Lerian evacuation fleet could yet take on passengers. But in spite of the adverse conditions, the gondolier at the rear of the boat navigated the crowded harbor magnificently; steering about the crowded waters with what seemed like decades of experience. In spite of his skill, the boatman was not a porter or sailor by trade, but in fact a knight. In truth, Sir Robben of Hallenberg had never seen the sea before coming to Ludire. The young knight had once been a vassal to the Duke of Comiriom, but abandoned his liege to serve the Lion of Esteline instead when Comiriom's leadership deigned to commit to a foolhardy and futile defense against the Necromancer.
Upon arriving in Ludire to evacuate southern Leria by sea, Theleden had tasked Robben with overseeing the evacuation of the non-combatants. And with so many still awaiting passage off of Leria, Robben had taken it upon himself to assist in the mammoth task of ferrying the refugees himself. The only indication that this boatman was a knight was the scabbard-bound sword on his hip; his suit of heavy chain armor would certainly drown him if the boat were to capsize. He wouldn't have been the first.
Several lifeless bodies bobbed among all the debris and flotsam floating in the harbor: refugees from a boat just like Robben's that had swamped or turned over. One such floating corpse approached on the left, floating just at the surface on his stomach.
"Everyone look straight ahead, hold still now," Robben ordered, trying to keep the children in the boat from seeing the dead body and panicking. Corpses tended to elicit terrible fear in children these days, now that it was possible for the them to rise up and try to kill them. Less than a mile behind them, beyond the walls of Ludire, a vast host of such walking corpses had converged on the city of Ludire with the sole purpose of murdering every living thing inside its walls. Only the bravery of the Lion of Esteline and his men kept the Necromancer's host from accomplishing that goal. Robben wished he could have been on the walls, keeping the dead at bay with steel in his hand. Ferrying peasants to the ships, while absolutely vital, was nevertheless cowardly work for a knight in the middle of such a battle.
Robben's rowboat was not the only boat in the harbor that was pushing the limits of its carrying capacity. Ludire's fleet of merchant galleons, those deep-draughted treasure boats that helped make Ludire the most prosperous port in all of Leria, were loaded to the brim with refugees. So overladen were they that the crews had resorted to jettisoning crates full of wares into the harbor in a desperate bid to lighten their load and alleviate the miserable crowding belowdecks. On almost every ship in the harbor, refugees were crowded elbow to elbow. Most of these boats were in the process of leaving the harbor and departing Leria's shores. But the crowded harbor and dangerous overloading of the ships had slowed the departure of those vessels to nearly a standstill.
Robben paddled around the galleons and cogs, out to the less crowded ships waiting on the periphery of the harbor upon which he could offload his passengers. As he paddled out toward the open see, he could see unfurled sails approaching from the southeast. Triangular lateen sails billowed in the wind, belonging to no fewer than a hundred galleys. Painted upon many of the sails was the head and fanged mouth of a hammerhead shark: the sigil of the armadas of Phasto.
Shouts of exhilaration sounded across the harbor as the refugees and crewmen of the evacuation fleet rejoiced at the sight of Phastos' fleet. The southerners had arrived at last to support the Lerians against their common foe. Robben hoped that they brought soldiers and intended to commit them to supporting Theleden's forces on Ludire's walls. Even if not, so many of the large, maneuverable galleys could take on a vast number of refugees and expedite the evacuation tremendously. With renewed hope, Robben paddled out of the harbor to the approaching armada.
As the Phastan galleys neared Ludire, their sails were furled and oars extended out from under the decks, allowing teams of well-trained oarsmen to row the remaining distance. Glowing in what anemic sun was allowed through the smoke haze drifting off of the battlefield inland, Robben noted strange bronze contraptions mounted on the bow of these galley: trumpet-shaped cones, some of which were made to look like the snout of a snarling serpent. Robben watched one of the Phastan galleys approached a Lerian caravel, the refugees and crew cheered and waved as it approached. Robben's rowboat was just close enough to hear the Phastan captain give a single, horrifying order to his crew.
"Fire!!"
From the bronze cone on the galley's prow, a jet of thin, yellow liquid erupted, passing over the tongues of flame from a torch mounted just beneath the cone. The jet of liquid ignited mid-flight, transforming into a belch of dragon's fire with a heart-stopping whoosh. The jet of fire splashed onto the hull and deck of the Lerian caravel, engulfing the densely-packed refugees on the deck. Agonized screams rang out across the harbor as burning, flailing bodies tumbled into the waves - desperate to extinguish the flames as the caravel's sail and mast were engulfed in a roaring inferno. The rest of the Phastan armada had set about engaging the other ships of the evacuation fleet.
"What are they doing?!" Screamed frenzied peasant girl.
"They must think we're the undead, or that we're going to bring it across the Strait!" Robben deduced. "Everyone stay still, I'm going to get us out of this, but you have to stay still!"
Robben's command fell on deaf ears and terrified children thrashed about, watching the Phastan fire boats incinerate their fellow refugees. The fire ships had completely enveloped the mouth of the harbor. There would be no escape for the larger ships, but perhaps a small rowboat could slip through the onslaught. It was nearly futile. But chivalric duty obligated Sir Robben to try.
Robben dug his paddle deep, rowing furiously for open sea beyond the armada. The boat rocked with the frenzied children aboard, tipping the lip of the boat into the water. Water gurgled over the right edge, pouring in among the legs of the wailing refugees.
"Reach for something that floats!" Robben screamed, before the boat turned over and cast him into the salty waves.
An undead river coursed through the streets and thoroughfares of Ludire, spilling through alleyways and windows to crash into the unrelenting shield wall of the living as they withdrew from the walls to the harbor. The conscripted and less-seasoned men had been sent first off of the walls to secure passage aboard the evacuation fleet, while the hardened soldiers, knights, and former mercenaries joined Theleden in the rear, holding back the undead onslaught to maintain some sense of order and prevent a disorganized rout toward the sea. Ghouls charged headlong into the interlocked shields of the rear guard, comprised of Theleden's most seasoned fighters. They pulled at the shields, reached in between, only to receive a spearpoint through the forehead loosed from between the shields. But the shield wall was only so effective: the undead were on the rooftops now, throwing themselves off of the eaves and into the living ranks. Revenants armed with crossbows shadowed the living from the rooftops as well, taking potshots at the living before scurrying behind a chimney or roofline to reload.
As overwhelmed as the living may have seemed, they were only contending with a very small portion of the Necromancer's forces that had managed to both scale the walls and make it this far into the city. The city's gates were still firmly shut, all of them chained shut and then barricaded prior to the assault with rubble and debris; the gates would not be needed again until Eagoth was vanquished. The floodgates of the undead therefore remained shut, and the withdrawal to the harbor remained manageable - if only barely. And there still remained the problem of getting his men aboard ships while simultaneously facing off against tens of thousands of ghouls.
"My Lord! The fleet! It burns!"
Theleden shoved his way through the retreating soldiers, rounded the corner around the Basilica, and witnessed for the first time what thousands of his soldiers had just discovered. In view between the thoroughfares and over the rooftops of the portside markets was the hellish seascape created by the Phasto fireships. Hundreds of ships - the majority of all the seaworthy vessels in all the harbors of Leria - burned in the harbor. Towering blazes consumed sails and ran up charred masts. Theleden fell to his knees. Despair overcame the Lion of Esteline at last, just as it had his father.
Phasto had sent these fireboats to Leria, without doubt, to prevent Eagoth from capturing any vessels with which to bring the Undeath across the White Straits. And given such a mission, it was natural that Phasto would come first for Ludire - the busiest port in Leria. But for the armada to arrive just as all of Leria's ships gathered in one single port...
"Callidus, you bastard."
Theleden realized at once that the wizard of Yzen had planned
all of this. He must have foreseen Phasto's fireships coming for Ludire in late summer, and persuaded him to launch the evacuation from Ludire instead of Eilas. He had purposefully not sent his army to reinforce the city's defenses. This was not misfortune.
This was betrayal.
"Callidus," Theleden croaked, "you've doomed us all."
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