The undead became so numerous that as the sun’s ascent continued across the sky, its light glinting off the armor made the lake look invisible under the reflection of light off steel. The frogmen on the wall swung their clubs back and forth with desperate, wild abandon, smashing against steel helmets with wooden clubs, the finest of which had stones embedded in the middle of their heads.

Heketi lost sight of the fighting in various places, remaining as she did at the center, her strongest warriors used all their martial arts to fend off the onslaught, and the mindless undead hacked at the wooden barriers, splashing churned up mud and blood into a reddish-brown mix. Everytime a frogman’s foot was caught or a stray sword pierced an exposed belly, the undead swarmed and tore the living to shreds before the eyes of their very comrades.

The undead were strong and full of hate, devoid of weariness or fear, they would not stop, there was no pulling back for them, just a single charge of do or ‘undie’.

Little by little, the undead began to scale the wall. More than once they were kicked far back into the waters by powerful frogmen legs. Though the the undead fell in piles when a powerful blow sent them flying back like projectile weapons instead of enemies. The platforms that served as throwing positions quickly ran out of rocks, and the warriors who were slain for the second time began to tumble in greater numbers.

Heketi fought on, never leaving her position, while her warrior elites did the same, the others switched out. Some fighting for an hour or more before drawing back for a brief rest, serving in rotations on the wall.

The screams of her people suddenly went up in horror just out of her view. Her sharp hearing told her what it was. ‘A breach. At least partial… Part of the wall gave way.’

It became a brutal fight as warriors who had not gotten a complete break, jumped from where they sat and lept high through the air to fall on the undead, the weight of their bodies, clubs, and gravity coming down hard on the first undead to enter the breach and for the present, stopping the advance.

‘How much longer…?’ Heketi asked as she smashed the end of her spear into the head of another undead, her weapon crunching into an unguarded skull, dropping the undead where he stood, while another simply took his place.

The armor of the undead made it harder, the undead could only be put down by taking or smashing heads, and many of those were still armored. Her warriors were growing weary. ‘I wonder if they’ve run out of martial arts yet… if they haven’t, they will soon.’

More shouting, more screams… this within view, Heketi saw out of the corner of her eye where the undead successfully pulled a few defenders down into the undead dominated side, and reached the top of the wall. “Fill the breach!” She cried, but it was a needless order, another weary group of frogmen pushed off with their mighty legs and soared to land atop the undead, swinging their clubs with wild desperation, briefly gaining a few precious inches of space between the precious frog eggs that were probably already evacuated, and the undead that would certainly trample them.

The thick knot of her males at a break in the wall were lightly reinforced as the eldest of the elder frogmen charged in to support their sons and grandsons, they were strictly speaking, expendable. The young were vital, and the old threw themselves into the fray to protect the future, a gift from the past to those who wanted to forge ahead into the future.

Elder frogmen died screaming as human swords and bony human hands tore into the thick frogmen muscle and ripped their legs open until they were torn from their bodies.

And yet for all the bloody stinking horror, Heketi could only feel pride in their courage as the elders threw their lives away without fear for the pain they were enduring to buy their young even one more minute of life.

The stink of blood was thick in her nostrils, and the blue water began to turn an almost violet shade as it was blended with the churned up silt and blood of frogmen that had fallen to the front of the wall.

One of her elite champions yelped in sudden horror, he cast a brief glance at Heketi, an undead climbing up from below grabbed at his vine armor and yanked, he began to fall, and the undead with it.

Her hand thrust out and grasped him from the back, for just an instant he hung there, suspended between the throng aching to tear him apart, and the safety of the Queen he was protecting.

Two swords pierced his vocal sac as he had fallen too low, and blood began to pump out, she felt him go limp in her hands and she almost let him go. ‘No! He is mine!’ Heketi told herself and yanked the body backward, he fell to the other side of the wall, an armored corpse whose fears and hopes were over with the moment of his passing. He couldn’t float in the low waters, but the ripples echoed out from his body as if he might still stir to rejoin the fight.

The noise and screams of living and undead continued unabated, but even while her people began to weaken, she saw the truth, the truth came in the form of more undead, ‘That clinches it… someone did this, those had to have come from where the other positions would see them…’ They were fewer in number, a few hundred undead knights at most, but they emerged from the waters as the bulk of the first horde had, and added their howls of hatred and their strength to the fray.

From where she stood, the Queen could see another breach begin to open up.

“Hold on! Hold on! Just a little bit more! We’ve almost won!” She screamed the admonition to her weary people, most couldn’t see the reinforcements, fighting was now on the ground, some undead broke through in places and were running among the interior huts of the settlement, tearing into anyone living that had not made an escape or rejoined the fight.

Screams of her dying frogmen were behind her, before her, and on either side of her. Heketi swung her spear again, and put down another. The only thing holding her people in place was that there was nowhere to jump to that would promise safety. The undead would never tire, never stop chasing them, but their spirits couldn’t hold forever.

She never knew who the first of them was whose courage fled, but somewhere along the wall, it happened. She caught sight of one of her own not running, but leaping wildly away, using his comrades to buy him time to save his own life.

Heketi cursed the nameless one. ‘May you die alone, and live long enough to regret this day.’ She hurled her hatred at the one she counted as a coward who left his brothers to die, and yet he was not the last.

“Just a little bit more! Will you leave your Queen to die!” She admonished her soldiers, and though some said “yes… they would leave her to die” as they hopped and fled into the distance with not even a weapon to burden their escape, others continued with desperate courage.

It was then that she saw it.

More bodies began to emerge from the waters. ‘No… not more… no more… no more…’ She begged the gods of the lake to spare her more, until she saw more clearly what they were when the stirring waters parted.

A roaring ribbit of reinforcements hit the air, the undead had no sense of strategy and left nothing to guard their flanks, nor did they keep order and maintain the pressure on the walls.

Instead they charged the nearest targets which bought the frogmen on the wall a moment to breath.

The frogmen reinforcements hopped onto the attackers with wild frenzied killing intent, though they had only crude clubs rather than ones prepared for military use, they nonetheless had ‘something’.

They hit hard and drew pressure from the wall, the undead on even ground seemed initially to still have the advantage, but the frogmen were fresh and nimble, leaping over the battle area, splashing into waters or luring the undead into deeper areas where they could be isolated and killed.

A useless effort when the numbers of undead were many, but reduced by hours of fighting, they were more manageable for the fresh forces.

“We’re reinforced! Attack! Attack! Attack!” Heketi called for her weary warriors to sally forth and strike, and those who remained, followed their Queen as she jumped off the wall as high and far as she could, her spear held aloft like a goddess of war, she landed on an undead and smacked his head clean off his neck, sending it far out into the lake to sink to the bottom with the weight of its helmet to carry it down.

Thus inspired, the frogmen bellowed with desperately renewed vigor and followed suit, abandoning the walls and closing in on the undead from all sides, entangled and insensible among one another, the undead began to fall like flies.

From there, the noise and undead screams of hate began to diminish, thousands had been reduced to hundreds, hundreds to dozens, and at long, long last… There was only one, the desperate undead knight knew only to tear at flesh until the end, and it charged Heketi with a will that would have been called courage had it been from a living being.

She thrust her spear home, catching the helmeted head through the eye socket, and yanking back so hard that his head was torn free and sent sailing high overhead to land somewhere within their settlement.

The undead body fell with a splash into the waters, and for a moment the whole of the remaining frogmen army was utterly silent.

It was over, the Queen raised her spear overhead, and as if that were some signal on which they had all been waiting, they held their clubs up and shouted a victory roar.

“Heke-ti! Heke-ti! Heke-ti!” They chanted their Queen’s name like a war cry, but towering over them as she did, she received their cheers only reluctantly, at her back she could see that the blue waters had been stained with blood so copiously that they were nearly violet, an ugly bruise-like shade, dozens of feet out from the remnants of the wall. ‘How many… how many remain in my army…?’ She had no answer, and once again, an unanswered question filled her with a dread she could not escape.