Scourge Six - Horde

“Let’s go see,” I say.

“See what?” Felix asks.

She has to know what I’m talking about. After all, there are a lot of people streaming away from the edge of the city. Obviously I want to go in the opposite direction.

“I’m not entirely sure if that would be wise,” Bianca says.

“Why not? If it is monsters, then they’ll hardly hurt us. Well, not Felix and I, and we can help defend you. And if it’s something else, then I’d rather know now rather than later.”

“What else could it be?” Felix asks.

A grown man goes running by, arms waving over his balding head. “Monsters! Monsters! Oh Gods, it’s the monsters!”

I watch him move by before refocusing on Felix. “I don’t know. Like bandits or some other nation’s army?”

“Vizeda isn’t exactly near the border, and I doubt it would be the first place attacked by an enemy army, not that the Republic is actively at war with any of our neighbours,” Bianca says.

“That leaves bandits,” I say.

“Who, while common enough, are not usually organized enough to mount an invasion against a walled city, even one as poor as Vizeda,” Bianca continues.

“Alright, so it probably is monsters. Which means that they were pushed towards the town, which is all the more reason to investigate.”

“We could go see Esme,” Felix says.

“If she’s reading, then she won’t notice the screaming,” I say. “And if she’s asleep, well...”

We both know how deeply Esme sleeps. Even Mom has admitted that Esme is a particularly hard sleeper. She’s impossible to wake up until she’s not tired anymore.

Time’s slipping by, so I grab Felix by the hand, ignore the smug smile that crosses her face at the too-warm contact, then pull ahead. The people coming from the edge of the city seem too busy to really care that we’re walking in the opposite direction, not that we’re the only ones. More guards are rushing in from elsewhere, and men with half their armour on are running past, often while tying down buckles and cursing every-other god under their breath.

“Where do we go if we want to see over the walls?” I ask.

“The South Gate has an easily-accessible tower,” Bianca says.

“It’ll be busy,” Felix replies. “They won’t just let us up there to see.” She points ahead with her free hand, towards the walls. There are stubby little towers. Those nearest the gate are the biggest and most impressive, but they’re not the only ones.

“That one looks like it’s not too far from the inn,” I say.

Felix nods. “We can run back to Esme if we need to.”

It’s a fair plan, at least to my ears.

We rush through increasingly empty streets. The few people I see are either boarding up their windows, or are packing things up and preparing to run for the far end of the city. There are also suspicious people in some of the alleyways we’re crossing, ruffian-looking sorts that I’m sure are going to try to make the best of everyone evacuating the area.

It takes a while, once we reach the walls, to find access into the nearest tower. They don’t exactly have big obvious signs out front pointing strangers in the right direction. The only way up the wall we find is a rickety wooden staircase. There’s a few people manning the wall itself, but they seem too busy staring out of the city to care about three girls running up the stairs.

“Oh,” I say as I reach the top and wait for my heart to still its wild beating.

The city has a wide, deforested section around it. Room for farms and fields and grazing pastures to feed all of the people in the city.

Well, actually that’s not quite true. A city of the size of Vizeda needs a lot more farming than what’s available so close to its wall. For every city, there’s a dozen hamlets all around that are basically nothing but concentrated farms with a few guards overlooking them. Usually the people living there are only the workers, the wives and kids stay in the city proper, where it’s a lot safer.

I shake my head, Esme’s the one that keeps reading all of these sorts of books about cities and such, it’s not something that I’m super interested in.

Basically, there’s a lot of space between the city and the nearest forest, space that’s very much empty right now.

“I don’t see any monsters,” I say.

“Hey, you three!” A guard clangs and bangs his way over to us, his armour loose even as he’s tightening some of the straps holding it in place. “What are you doing here?”

[Roger Diaz - Watcher on the Wall]

Novice Waterside Guardsman

Initiate Port Labourer

“We’re looking for the monsters,” I say before gesturing out to the killing zone just outside of the city. “Doesn’t look like the bell was rung for a good reason.”

“Get out of here,” he says with a quick shooing gesture. “We don’t need some girls getting in the way.”

“The way of what, there’s nothing there,” I say.

“Our way,” he says with obviously straining patience.

“Valeria, there’s something coming out of the forest,” Felix says. Her eyes are closed, and she’s wearing this knowing little smile, as if she’s been enjoying my back and forth with the guardsman.

I spin around and squint towards the woods.

At first there’s just one. It’s a big boar-monster, covered in bristly dark fur and with a pair of impressive tusks. It’s probably the kind of monster that would scare the average farmer, fast and strong, and with a lot of muscle on display. But really, other than that, it’s not much to look at.

Then a second monster runs out of the woods and trots to a stop, a wolf monster.

Then another, and another. Wolves and bears and boars, large spider-like monsters and raptor-like wingless bird monsters. They’re running out of the woods and slowing down though, for all that there’s a lot of them.

Then I notice the growing formation bulging out, being pushed... no, that part is chasing after something.

It doesn’t take long for me to spot what. A dog, of all things, with its fur painted black and what looks like a pack on its back. Once I notice one, I can’t help but notice others. Some are tackled by monsters and their packs torn apart, but most of them make a bee-line for the walls, and the monsters follow.

“Get back to safety,” the guard says before turning around and rushing away to a spot on the wall.

The guards have big, clunky-looking crossbows with a foot-stirrup on the end and a clunky looking releasing lever that are left leaning against the wall next to buckets filled with arrows.

I glance up and down the length of the wall. There are maybe two hundred people on it in all, most of them guards, but some clearly aren’t. It seems like very few people for a wall as long as the city’s.

“Lady Valeria,” Bianca asks, “do you know why the monsters are converging on the city?”

“No,” I say. “But at a guess, someone’s tricking them into attacking.”

More monsters are pouring out of the forest now. Bigger ones, like monster ents who look like small trees, and slower ones, like gelatinous slimes who are having a hard time keeping up with the rest.

Flying monsters take to the skies as well, an ever expanding number of them, and I can only imagine the number of tiny monsters down there. From terrifying little bunny monsters to more insectile wasps and dragonflies.

“They’ve turned into a horde,” I say.

“Pardon?” Bianca asks. She's still looking out to the forest.

“Monsters are... not very smart. Terrors have some smarts to them, and Banes more, but low ranking Monsters are a bit dumb. When they see another monster running by, they’ll often follow. Do that enough, and you can end up with a whole horde of monsters moving. It happens all the time. Usually they’ll either disperse because there’s really nothing around to fight or eat or whatever, or a higher-level monster will break up the horde.”

“So how would something like that form?” Bianca asks.

“It looks like some of the monsters were baited, and I can’t see anything stronger than a Terror. So someone might have culled the stronger monsters in the region,” I say. It’s all speculation though.

“So, this is an attack then, a purposeful one.”

“Yeah,” I say. That much I don’t really doubt. “And I don’t think it’s going to break on these walls.”

There must be two or three thousand monsters out there already, and all of them are clamoring for blood. There won’t be any logical lines, formations, or even anything like order. It’s just going to be a mindless slaughter.

The poor cuties.

***