As the harpies approached, I looked around to see if I could spot any coloured wings, but I only noticed white wings. Irritated, I snapped off a shot on the approaching flock. Shots and arrows from around me joined in and scores of harpies fell from the sky. However, it did not seem enough.

I quickly reloaded my musket and managed to snap off another shot, before grabbing my rifles and moving beneath the cover of the stone shield. My bodyguards and most of the troops at the battlement followed, only a handful of Anders’ troops remained to notify us when the harpies were in range.

“They’re less than a hundred metres out,” I informed the men waiting. We had formed up into a square formation at the back half of the tower. The two first ranks were my men, armed with spears, the same with the last rank and the left and rightmost column. The rest were Anders’ troops, armed only with bows and shortswords. Damn cheapskate. The only hole in our square was where the ramp came up.

Anders was standing in the middle of the formation, his hands on the big pillar in the middle, ready to blow it up. I slipped my rifles to Kiril and Alan, who slipped the sling over their head. They would give me the rifles if I needed them. We took our place in the third rank.

“Ready arrows,” Anders commanded his troops. An extra fifty arrows would have been nice, but they would be on us too fast to make the switch, which was why we had men with spears at the ready.

In no time at all, the troopers at the battlement turned around and shouted, “Fifty metres!”

Anders nodded and drained a large mana crystal, a clear one. All mana crystals were clear, however, after my brush with mana combustions, I had started seeing a small spark inside them, the colour depending on what kind of magic that made them. A white one for healing, a red one for fire, a whitish-grey for air, and no spark at all for the ones created by myself or priests.

My attention was brought back to the battle at hand when I felt the vibration through the tower. That meant that Anders was powering up the shield to explode outwards.

“Twenty metres!” came the shout from the battlement. I raised my musket.

“Ten metre—” they shouted, but their voice was drowned by multiple loud cracks as the shield exploded into thousands of pieces that shot upwards. The cracks were so loud that my ears were still ringing, but I could faintly hear screams of pain. The shield gone allowed us to see the hundreds of harpies that had been descending towards our tower. Most of them had stopped to prevent flying into the hailstorm of shrapnel exploding towards them. Making them perfect targets, those that did not present themselves thus were bloody and falling out of the sky already.

“Loose!” I screamed, barely able to hear myself, or my musket as I fired it at a harpy with red wings, the hasty link ensuring that I hit her heart. Arrows flew over me as five more reports of musket fire sounded from beside me, indicating that my senior squad leaders and my three bodyguards Kiril, Alan, and Niska had opened fire as well.

The arrows struck the mostly stationary harpies dropping a large number, but it also shook the flying elves out of their shock from the exploding shield and they descended with a vengeance. Muted I heard Anders shouting, “Fire at will!”

“Brace for impact!” I shouted and slung the musket over my shoulder. As I drew my sabre the first of the elves swooped down towards our ranks. My troopers did their best and stabbed at the flying pests, many of them scoring hits. They managed to drop a few handfuls of elves, but they received many wounds in return. Some of my men fell to the ground, some of them maybe never to rise again.

Elves started landing and engaged our troops in melee, making Anders’ archers less useful. I stepped forward, slipping around the trooper in front of me and stepped over the fallen trooper in the front row. I slashed down at the sword that was seeking the side of the trooper on my right, while my left hand shot out to grab the elf’s wrist when his sword impacted the stone beneath our feet.

The motion took the elf by surprise because I managed to grab his wrist and yank him towards me, where my sabre met his throat with a quick slash. I released his wrist and kicked the dying elf backwards, tangling him up with the two elves approaching behind him. The troopers on either side of me thrust out with spears, holding the advancing elves at bay.

A glint of light warned me of danger from above, and I managed to pull my head to the side as a sword from an elf flying by slashed down at me. It still managed to hit my left shoulder, but I was already healing that as the elf was skewered by the troops behind me.

“Watch out, Milord,” I heard them call, as the body dropped to the ground behind me, forcing me to take a step forward. I parried a slash from an elf on my left side. I transitioned the parry into a slash of my own, forcing the elf back, allowing me to draw my shortsword.

Another elf approached but was forced to step back because the troopers on either side of me stabbed at him. However, the trooper on my left overextended and was met with a sword thrust from another elf. The trooper behind him dragged him into friendly territory and a new one stepped into his place.

Meanwhile I attacked the elf that had just hurt my trooper. My sabre flashed at him, and he deflected it, but he had not seen the shortsword that took his hand. Disarming him. Which opened him up for a quick thrust to finish him off. I almost got skewered by another elf, but managed to step to the side, only getting a small scratch. A couple of slashes later, and another elf hit the ground.

The elves tried to form a formation, but the arrows disrupted their approach and thus their formation, making it more of a skirmish. Seeing a chance, I darted out of the line, catching an elf by surprise. Instead of killing him immediately, I rammed into him, knocking him to the ground. The two elves behind him were even less prepared, and I managed to dispatch them with only a few strokes. A downward stab killed the prone elf.

The elves started closing in around me, so I quickly made my way back to the line, killing another two elves, but receiving a few wounds in return. Nothing serious, but it still drained some of my mana to heal me.

Back in the line, I worked together with the troopers next to me to bring down another couple of elves. For a moment there were not a lot of harpies on the roof, most of them were still in the air.

So I stepped backwards, careful not to trip on the body behind me. Immediately one of the troopers behind me stepped up to fill the rank. I quickly sheathed my swords and unslung my musket, starting to reload.

While reloading I took in the scene around us. Our archers were mostly keeping the harpies on the move, meaning they could not hover in place and shoot arrows at us. They also had to fly in low and land on the roof of the tower to engage us in melee.

Glancing at the other tower I saw that it was swarming with harpies, it seemed we had lost the top of the western tower already. Our own formation still stood strong, but I could see we were down a third of our men. Hopefully, the lack of corpses meant that they had been mostly wounded and brought downstairs for triage.

A bolt of lightning slammed into our formation from behind us, filling the air with even more screams of pain and the stench of ozone and burnt meat. Finished with reloading I wove through the ranks towards the back.

Able to see what was going on inside the castle, I saw that harpies had overwhelmed our defences and slipped inside. There were harpies fighting with troopers all over the inside courtyard. They were likely assaulting the barracks as well, I just hoped that my people there would stay safe. They had also landed on the roofs of the barracks and shot arrows at our men at the walls. The barracks being lower than the towers meant we were not hit.

“Anders, tell half your men to focus on the barracks, we need those roofs cleared,” I shouted while looking around for the yellow winged bastard. I heard Anders start shouting orders.

Combat was exhilarating. Something I had found myself experiencing more and more during the siege. It was not the act of killing that I found exhilarating, in fact, I felt nothing when I gunned down people at a distance. What was exciting was the melee combat, the adrenaline, testing my skills versus theirs. The same feeling I had when practising martial arts, just a hundred times more exciting because my life was at stake. It made me feel alive, I was turning into an adrenaline junkie.

‘There!’ I had found the lightning mage, fluttering about coming in for another attack. Raising my musket, I fired and saw the satisfying result as the ball impacted the leather-wearing elf. The impact sent him spinning, his wings no longer working and he plummeted to the ground below. Unfortunately landing on a trooper.

I stepped back to allow an archer to take my spot, I reloaded the musket as I made my way back to the front rank. Taking a peek over the side of the battlement to look down on the gate below, I noticed that things were not looking good. A large contingency of harpies had landed and was trying to get to the gate. Troopers from both towers had gone to defend it. I saw a dozen corpses in my dark green uniform lying on the ground below. The wall between the two towers had been taken, with troopers holding the doors into the tower.

“Concentrate on shooting the elves on the wall below,” I ordered one of Anders’ squad leaders. A handful of archers immediately moved to the side and started pelting the elves with arrows.

I looked around for a more worthy target. Not that a dead elf on the wall would not help, but with my magic assisted accuracy, I was almost guaranteed to take out an enemy mage. That would have a much larger impact on the battle than a single archer or melee trooper.

I spotted a flash of brown wings approaching the gate, coming in low. Taking but a second to manifest the link and aim, I pulled the trigger and saw the elf drop for a second. His wings started beating again, taking him back towards the elven army. Frustrated at myself I reloaded again.

As I made my way through the ranks, I spotted several grievously wounded troopers being carried down the ramp. Coming up to the front, I noticed that the front rank had fallen, less than half of the second was left, having been replaced by archers with their shortswords.

Not liking the direction of the battle, I called out to Anders who was busy reloading his pistol, “See if we can get some reinforcement up here.”

He looked for a moment as if he was going to argue, but gave a sharp nod and turned around. I turned my attention back to the score of elves arrayed in front of our troops. Some of them were throwing dead bodies over the side, to make room for more elves to land. The roof was starting to be slick with blood, and very few places were not covered in it.

One of the elves parried a thrust from a spear and proceeded to stab one of my troopers. Avenging my fallen soldier, I shot the bastard almost point-blank in the face. I picked up a spear from the ground and drew my sabre with my left hand. Lunging forward and over my fallen trooper, I managed to catch another elf by surprise and nick his neck. The elf turned to deal with me when he was slashed down by a shortsword.

A sword flashed at my right side, and I spun to parry with my sabre, thankful for all the hours I had spent training lately. However, I had not trained a lot with the spear, so my responding stab with the spear was awkward and not hitting anyone.

I quickly recovered from my attack, careful not to overextend, because the elves’ swords were fast and hitting any opening left. An arrow suddenly came out of nowhere, hitting me in my stomach. Stumbling backwards and falling to my knees, I used healing magic to suppress the pain.

Looking up I saw the archer was already knocking another arrow. He was only five metres up, hovering outside the battlement. With a thought, I created a link between him and the spear. Hauling back I threw the spear at the fucker, feeling a strong pull at my mana, as the healing magic dulled the pain.

It was satisfying seeing the spear sail through the air and skewer the bastard in solar plexus. With a shriek, he fell to his death, hopefully. Death was coming towards me as well. Two swords were flashing at me, too fast for me to do anything.

Another sword struck down on both of them, sending them wide as Kiril stepped in front of me. He was soon joined by Alan, as both of them kept the elves away from me. Niska leaned down next to me, “Let me get you downstairs, Milord.”

“No need,” I grunted and pulled the arrow out, flooding the wound with healing magic. I gave her a wink. “Thanks, but I’m fine now.”

I got to my feet and took another moment to look around while starting to reload my musket. Niska looked at me with a frown, but followed my example and reloaded. She was a bit faster at it than me. I blame the blood on my hand. Her musket roared and she took down one of the harpies on the roof. I nodded in approval, going for a guaranteed kill was a good choice for a relatively untrained shooter.

I saw that there were not a lot of green uniforms on the roof. Most of my men were either dead or wounded. The archers with their shortswords were struggling in melee against the longer swords of the elves.

“Where the fuck is Anders? And where the fuck is our backup?” I grumbled in frustration. I knew it had only been a minute or two, but it had felt like a lifetime already. With so many archers forced to take up melee, only a dozen or so were still using their bows. Fearing the worst I had looked to the skies, but they seemed relatively free. Not a lot of harpies flying around, and none of them around our tower.

That meant I was free to target one of the bastards trying to take it. I had to wait for Kiril or Alan to move. Kiril stepped back, fending off a relentless flurry of blows by an elf. That made room for me to push my musket forward and blow the beautiful elven maiden’s face off. The ball did substantial damage as it hit her forehead, with an explosion of blood going out the back of her head.

Switching back to melee, I had to wait for a moment for it to be safe for me to slip in between Kiril and Alan. As I darted around Alan, I caught his attacker by surprise and landed a vicious slash at his right arm. Dropping the sword opened him up for Alan’s counterattack, which skewered the elf through the throat. Alan kicked the elf backwards, making sure to keep the ground in front of us clear to move around.

The elves drew back to form up, giving us a moment to catch our breath. There were less than a score of them left, with maybe around thirty of us still in fighting shape. We had the number advantage, but they had the reach advantage. Unless we used ranged weapons, but that was not possible with them being so close.

Two seconds had passed without a single blow being exchanged, which was a welcome reprieve for us. Nevertheless, giving them too much to recover and get into formation, would seriously be bad for us.

“Don’t let them recover,” I ordered as I leapt forward, Kiril and Alan just a step behind me. The elves had taken a guarded stance and deflected our blows. Well, my opponent deflected the overhand chop from my sabre but could do nothing against the shortsword that slashed through his wrist.

The elf grimaced, switching from a two-handed grip to an one-handed, bringing his sword up in the last second to parry my followup slash with the sabre. A slash from the elf on my left caught me by surprise, as it scored a deep cut on my forearm, making me drop the shortsword.

Using healing magic to dull the pain had become as natural as breathing, so it only distracted me for a split-second. I caught the opponent in front of me by surprise when I deflected his stab at my heart with my sabre. I had sent his blade upwards, leaving him overextended and open for my left hand to flick out and bury the dagger I had just unsheathed in his heart.

Shoving the elf backwards and off my dagger I flung the knife at the elf that had wounded me, scoring a hit in her thigh. Distracting her long enough for Kiril to run her through. Meanwhile, I slashed out at the elf to my right, distracting him, which allowed Alan to deflect what would have been a killing blow.

That was all the time I had to help him before the elf behind the one I had just killed started attacking me. Bereft of my shortsword, I drew one of my hatchets, while parrying an awkward lunge. I responded with a slash at the elf’s wrist, but he was too quick and managed to get out of harm’s way.

Suddenly a strong push of wind assaulted us, trying to send us backwards. I managed to stay upright, but out of the corner of my eyes, I saw all of the others stepping backwards, some of them even falling to the ground. Including Alan.

The wind attack must have been aimed carefully at us, because it looked like none of the elves were considerably affected by it. The elf in front of Alan grinned maniacally as he stepped forward to stab my bodyguard. His grin turned to pain when I stabbed him in the right side of his chest. Before I could recover, he turned away from me. I had to let go of the sabre, or be dragged off-balance.

Which would have been very bad as the elf in front of me lunged at me. I managed to step aside and deflect his blade with my hatchet. Not caring about who saw, because this was getting a little too dangerous, I summoned a fireball with my right hand and blasted it directly into the elf’s shocked face.

Screaming, he fell backwards, dropping his sword. I heard Niska shout behind me, “Down, Milord!”

I reacted instantly, ducking down just as I heard a musket roaring above me. Since I was at the ground anyway, I grabbed the dropped longsword. It felt lighter than I thought it should be. I used my crouch to make an explosive lunge at the guy attacking Kiril. He managed to react, if barely. My newly acquired blade caught the surprised elf’s cheek, and Kiril followed up with a slash that disarmed the elf. Literally. Chopped right through the elf’s left wrist.

“They’re retreating!” I heard someone shout, while I ducked beneath a slash from another elf. I responded by skewering the elf. The sword going right through up to the hilt. The elf slumped over down on my left shoulder as I looked around to see what was happening.

Only three of the elves were still fighting on the tower, while another handful was fleeing. I saw a grey winged elf looking at our tower before turning away. I had instinctively activated the links I had held all this time to the musket balls in my rifles.

“Rifles!” I demanded, letting go of my acquired blade and standing up fully. I threw my hatchet at one of the remaining elves, scoring a satisfying hit on her bicep, allowing the two troopers fighting her to skewer her with their shortswords.

Alan was the first to hand me one of my rifles and I strengthened the link for that one. In a smooth motion, I raised the musket and fired as soon as I had a beat on the fleeing mage. The ball struck him in the back and he dropped like a sack of potatoes. Looking back into the castle, I saw that there was still a heavy presence of harpies on top of the barracks.

“Archers, to the battlements. Clear the roofs of the barracks,” I ordered and grabbed the rifle Kiril handed me. I moved to the battlement and peered down at the gate. Our troops had been victorious there, bodies strewn everywhere. There were still a few harpies on the wall, so I lined up a shot and killed another of them.

However, things were not looking good, the ram had reached the top and was only a few metres from the gate. Furiously I thought about what I could do to stop it, but nothing sprang to mind. With the other gate tower fallen, it would be up to us. A quick look confirmed that harpies were still holding the top of that tower.

With a curse, I went around grabbing my weapons and then headed down the ramp. The top floor was filled with corpses and wounded. The less gravely wounded trying to do first aid on the rest. The next floor saw much the same thing, though Hrothgar was still commanding some troops. It looked like the Seventh Platoon was mostly unscathed, but the other two platoons had been whittled down to half.

“Hrothgar, have you seen Anders, he was supposed to bring reinforcements?” I called out to be heard over the musket fire echoing around the room.

“He went down a couple of spans ago, Milord,” Hrothgar shouted back. I noticed he was bleeding from several wounds on his left arm.

“Get half of Seventh to the roof, it’s clear for now,” I ordered and set off down the ramp.

From behind me, I heard Hrothgar shouting, “You heard the Lord, Second Squad to the roof, now.”

The next two floors were the same as the top floor, dead and wounded. On the ground floor, I found Anders huddling away from the door opening, the same for the four or five platoons. Most of them in the blue uniform signifying that they were Anders’ troops.

“What the fuck are you waiting for there? We need to get out there,” I growled as I stalked towards him.

Anders looked at me irritatedly. “We’ll be fucking pincushions if we go out there.”

“The ram is at the gate, so we’ll be dead soon anyway if we don’t get out there,” I countered. I peeked around the door frame but quickly retracted my head when I saw several harpies pointing their bows in my direction. A second later the arrows hammered into the ground in the door opening.

“See!” Anders said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“You can raise a fucking wall, so yeah, there’s something you can do,” I countered.

“But—”

“No buts, just fucking do it,” I said forcefully. I turned to the troops. “How many platoons do we have here? All have bows?”

“Ninth.”

“Eight.”

“Tenth.”

“Eleventh,” came the four replies quickly from Anders’ troops. The last one adding, “And yes Lord, we’re all armed with bows.”

My own troops replied, “First.”

“Okay, the two barracks that offer us the most problems will be Third and Fourth Battalions. So I want Eight to rush out first, go left and concentrate on Third’s barracks. Anders, follow them out and start creating walls. Ninth goes next to the right and focuses on Fourth’s barracks. Tenth you follow, go help Eighth Platoon. And Eleventh—”

“We go right and help Ninth,” their senior squad leader said.

“Now wait a goddamn minute,” Anders said in English.

“Anders, there’s almost a thousand more troops on the way through the gates. We’re on the frontline, the other battalions are busy fighting against the harpies,” I said.

“But why is it my troops that have to go first?”

“Because, First Platoon goes with me to deal with those on the wall, and we’ll be in front when the gate goes down,” I said with a tone that brooked no argument. As soon as I had said that, we could hear a massive boom, as something struck the giant wooden gate on the other side of the wall.

“Fine,” he grumbled. For a minute or two, the troopers moved around, gathered in platoons and got ready to rush out.

“Are you ready?” I asked the room. When I got an all affirmative reply, I said, “Let’s see our guests out, they’ve made enough of a mess already.”

Not the most inspiring, but the troopers rushed out nonetheless, Anders followed them. A stream of blue-clad troopers preceded us, running out into the arrows that we could hear hitting them. Screams of pain filled the air once more.

Soon it became our turn, and I was the first out the door, setting course around the tower towards the gate. There were probably fifty troopers there, trying to hide alongside the wall, so as not to be hit by the harpies in the back.

“Everyone form up,” I shouted, not caring one bit if they were my troops or not. “The gate is coming down soon.”

I had barely finished when the gate groaned and started splintering.

“Fuck,” Alan succinctly said on behalf of all of us, as we saw the gate starting to break.