Shadows Linger

Morning after the day coming up. But it did not work that way. Nobody told the Dominator he was supposed to wait.

He got in the first strike six hours before jump-off, while most of the troops and all the civilian laborers were asleep. While the only Taken patrolling was Journey, who was the least of the Lady’s henchmen.

It began when one of those bladder-like things bounced over the wall and filled the gap remaining in the Lieutenant’s ramp. At least a hundred creatures stormed out of the castle and crossed.

Journey was alert. He had sensed a strangeness in the castle and was watching for trouble. He came down fast and drenched those attackers with the dust that melted.

Bam! Bam-bam-bam! The castle hit him the way it had hit his one-time wife. He fishtailed through the air, evading the worst, but caught the edge of every crack, and went down smouldering, his carpet destroyed.

The banging wakened me. It wakened the entire camp, for it started the same time as the alarms and drowned them entirely.

I charged out of the hospital, saw the castle creatures boiling down the steps of the Lieutenant’s ramp. Journey hadn’t stopped more than a handful. They were enveloped by that protective glow One-Eye had encountered once before. They spread out, sprinting through a storm of missiles from the men who had the watch. A few more fell, but not many. They began extinguishing lights, I suppose because their eyes were more suited to darkness than ours.

Men were ru

them in the way.

The Lieutenant charged through the chaos bellowing orders. First he got his batteries of heavy weapons ma

The Lieutenant had trebuchets throw ca

flames.

So much for my thinking the Lieutenant was wasting

time building useless engines.

The man knew his job. He was good. His preparation and quick response were more valuable than anything done by the Lady or Taken that night. He held the line in the critical minutes.

A mad battle began the moment the creatures realized they were cut off. They promptly attacked, trying to reach the engines. The Lieutenant signaled his under-officers and brought the bulk of his available manpower to bear. He had to. Those creatures were more than a match for any two soldiers, and they benefited from the protective glow as well.

Here, there, a brave citizen of Juniper grabbed a fallen weapon and jumped into the struggle. Most paid the ultimate price, but their sacrifice helped keep the enemy away from the engines.

It was obvious to everyone that if the creatures escaped with many bodies, our cause was lost. We’d soon be  face-to-face with their master himself.

The ball pairs began coming over from Duretile, splashing the night with terrible color. Then Taken dropped from the night, Limper and Whisper each depositing an egg which hatched the fire that fed on the stuff of the castle. Limper dodged several attacks from the castle, swooped around, brought his carpet to ground near my hospital, where we were swamped by customers already. I had to retreat there to do the job for which I was paid. I kept the uphill tent flaps open so I could watch.

Limper left his aerial steed, marched uphill with a long, black sword that glimmered evilly in the light from the burning fortress. He radiated a glow not unlike that protecting the castle creatures. His, however, was far more puissant than theirs, as he demonstrated when he pushed through the press and attacked them. Their weapons could not reach him. His sliced through them as though they were made of lard.

The creatures, by that time, had slaughtered at least five hundred men. The majority were workers, but the Company had taken a terrible beating, too. And that beating went on even after the Limper turned the tide, for he could engage but one creature at a time. Our people strove to keep the enemy contained till the Limper could get to them.

They responded by trying to swamp the Limper, which they managed with some success, fifteen or twenty piling on and keeping him pi

That ploy having failed, a band of the creatures clotted up and tried to break out to the west. I don’t know whether they pla

Those five immediately encountered the portal from elsewhere that expelled the cold breath of the infinite. They all perished.

Whisper, meantime, was scrambling for altitude. A drum-roll procession of bangs pursued her up the sky. She was a better flyer than Journey, but even so could not evade injury. Down she came, eventually touching down beyond

the fortress.

Within the castle itself creatures were out with the cats-o’-nine-tails, extinguishing the fires started by Whisper and the Limper. The structure had begun to look pathetic, so much of its substance had been consumed. Gone was the dark, dreadful grace of weeks before. It was one big, dark, glassy lump, and it seemed impossible that creatures could survive inside it, yet they did, and continued the fight. A handful came out on the ramp and did something which gnawed black chunks out of the Lieutenant’s conflagration. All the creatures on the slope ran for home, not a one forgetting to scoop up at least one body.

The ice door opened again, its breath dumping on the steps. The fires died instantly. A score of the creatures died too, hammered to powder by the Lieutenant’s missiles. The things inside took a tack I had anticipated fearfully since I had seen Feather crash. They turned their booming spell on the slope.

If it wasn’t the thing that had pursued the Lieutenant, Elmo, One-Eye and me that day, it was a close cousin. There wasn’t much flash or smoke when they used it on the slope, but huge holes appeared, often with bloody pulp smashed into their bottoms.

All this happened so swiftly, so dramatically, that nobody really had time to think. I don’t doubt that even the Company would have run had events been stretched out enough to allow thinking time. As it was, in their confusion, the men had a chance only to pursue roles for which they had been preparing since reaching Juniper. They stood their ground and, too often, died.

The Limper scampered around the slope like an insane chicken, cackling and hunting creatures who hadn’t died on the steps. There were a score of those, most surrounded by angry soldiers. Some of the creatures were slain by their own side, for those knots made tempting targets for the booming spell.

Teams of creatures appeared on the ramparts, assembling devices like the one we’d seen them try to use before. This time there was no Taken above to drop and give them hell.

Not till fool Journey came rushing past the hospital, looking cruelly battered, and stole the Limper’s carpet.

It had been my notion that one Taken could not use another’s vehicle. Not so, apparently, for Journey got the thing aloft and dove upon the castle again, dumping dust and another fire egg. The castle knocked him down again, and despite the tumult, I heard the Limper howling and cursing him for it.