While the Sect forces were caught by surprise by their capture of the conscripted prisoners, they soon recovered and began a general assault against the fortifications.

A small group emerged from the woodland with a number of siege ladders and grappling hooks, passing them out amongst the front ranks.

As soon as the siege equipment was distributed, the whole force began to advance, the mercenaries pushing forward to take the lead.

The average Sect retainer was adequately equipped with armour and weaponry, but the mercenaries all wore metal armour and bore large shields. The mercenaries at the front seemed carried maces or flails, while those at the back bore crossbows and shields with a large spike at the base.

“Loose!” Silver’s voice rang out as the guards armed with their own crossbows sent out a smooth volley, joined here and there by a few militia who had their hunting bows.

A few mercenaries and retainers went down under the initial attack, but the mercenary crossbowmen were quick to rush forward before they could reload, planting their shields down spike-first to provide cover as they returned fire.

An abrupt gust of downward wind knocked the bolts off course as Gwen and Carla made themselves known, though they refrained from anything more dramatic at this point.

Roughly half of the Sorcerers the Sect had sent had ranged attacks, but they lacked the range of the crossbows, forcing them to move past the mercenaries, opening them up to attack.

A dozen bolts shot out as soon as the Sorcerers were in range, though these were not from the general troops; they were all from the Aether-enhanced crossbows and were using the bolts that Verdan had supplied.

Auger and Vanada, two of the Sorcerers that had been revealed within the guard, added their own power to the volley. With so little training time available, the guard Sorcerers had focused on learning a single technique and gathering as much Essence as they could.

Auger’s bolt flashed out with pinpoint accuracy to take an unwary Sorcerer in the eye, while Vanada’s bolt grew in size once fired, ending as something closer to a ballista bolt than anything else.

Seven of the twelve Sorcerers targeted were killed in the opening shots, many of them dying with shocked expressions as the enchanted ammo tore right through their protective shields.

Powerful as the attacks were, the Sect forces were moving fast now, and return fire was slipping past the Witches here and there.

“Thanr bel,” Verdan pointed his staff, releasing a small ball of concentrated fire that shot down to the group of mercenaries, striking one of their shields before erupting in roaring flames.

The screams of the archers as the flames played over them were lost in the deafening roar that followed as Gwen and Carla conjured a storm that began to lash the Sect troops with high winds, freezing rain and blasts of lightning.

“Ast,” Verdan muttered, throwing up a pair of shields around the two Witches, aware of how exposed they were to return fire now they weren’t actively controlling the winds.

The localised storm was wreaking havoc among the Sect force and was made all the worse by the periodic shots from archers on the wall, but it did require the full attention of both Witches, which the Sorcerers were quick to notice.

Gwen and Carla required line of sight to keep the effect going, a fact that played against them as a pair of poisonous Essence blasts struck the shield around Carla.

Verdan threw down a second fireball to hopefully quell such thoughts, but one of the Defiant Flame Sorcerers was able to contain the blast, throwing it back at Verdan and those around him.

Reasserting control over the flames as it drew close, Verdan broke it down into a number of smaller attacks and sent them spraying down at all of the Sorcerers he could see. Most evaded or shielded against the attack, but a few were caught off guard.

None of the siege ladders made it up against their wall, but the packed earth and stone wall wasn’t entirely uniform, especially not with the fighting going on, and a pair of Weeping Death Sorcerers took advantage of this to scale the wall at one end in a rapid series of movements.

The two Sorcerers moved with the same sort of speed as Kai, and within moments they had killed several guards and formed a breach on the wall.

A lot of the Sect forces had fallen, but the close combat Sorcerers were scaling the wall where they could while the retainers and mercenaries moved one of the fully intact siege ladders down to the breach that had formed.

“I’ll go deal…” Kai started to say before spinning and stabbing out as a wiry Sorcerer in dark robes came leaping over the lip of the wall, stabbing out at Verdan with dripping daggers.

“Thanr,” Verdan barked as blasts of flame flew in at them, and he fought to take control, protecting the two of them as Kai duelled the Sect Sorcerer with blistering speed, flashes of green and red sparking where their Essence collided.

Thankfully, while Verdan and Kai were kept busy, Tom and Cullan descended on the two Sorcerers at the end of the wall.

The Weeping Death Sorcerers were fast and accurate with their attacks, but their blades bounced off of the stone Tom was sheathed in, while Cullan took great delight in matching them swing for swing with his obscenely large greatsword.

Everywhere along the wall, the few Sorcerers that had gained a foothold were quickly attacked by the reaction forces that Kai had established.

Where possible, Sorcerers dealt with Sorcerers, but those within the guard were new and lacking in experience with their Essence, so they were backed up by their non-magical comrades and the support of those with enchanted weaponry.

Out of the corner of his eye, Verdan watched a Defiant Flame Sorcerer who’d managed to clamber up the wall throw himself back off when faced with the snarling visage of Hope’s familiar Winifred in its tiger form.

Verdan caught a blast of poison on a shield and delivered a brief burst of healing to an injured guard before moving on to the next trouble spot, Kai staying by his side to deal with any close-in threats.

As he looked around, though, Verdan saw no further enemies on the wall and only a few dozen scattered survivors fleeing back towards the Sect.

“Hold your fire,” Verdan called out as some of the guards went to take shots at the fleeing survivors.

Gwen and Carla gave him a questioning look, but Verdan’s attention was on the movement he’d seen in the woods.

The Sect survivors were halfway to the closest woods when the Airta emerged, already in their wolf forms and accompanied by a pack of mundane wolves.

Verdan forced himself to watch as the last remnants of the Sect’s assault force were ripped limb from limb.

They’d sent a message here, one that he hoped the Sects would choke on.

-**-

With the utter destruction of the assault force, the defenders had some time to gather themselves, but they had no idea how long.

Treating the injured and removing the dead was the first order of business, and Verdan was quick to assist with the first part, using his magic sparingly to keep the wounded stable.

As much as he wished to do more, they were in a fight of endurance now when it came to magic, and every bit would matter.

The Sect’s dead were moved away from the wall, though Verdan doubted they had the time to give them a proper funeral.

Unfortunately, not all of the fallen were the enemy.

Nineteen defenders had fallen in the fight, barely a tenth of the force that had been defeated, but this was as ideal a situation as they could expect.

The Sects would be wary of them now and would hit them hard in retaliation. Verdan and the others would do what they could to protect their allies when the fighting began, but today, they had seen how little that truly meant.

The average Sorcerer was a mediocre magic user at best in Verdan’s eyes, but that had made him underestimate the damage they could do when fighting against ordinary people in close quarters.

Thankfully, the power of the enchantments that Verdan had been providing made the guards almost as lethal to the Sorcerers, but that just left both sides without a capable defence.

Things would be better once they retreated to the true walls of the city, but they would hold this wall for the next attack. That way, they could use the larger storm that Gwen and Carla had planned, as well as the pit traps.

This first battle had been to show the Sects that they meant business. The second one would give them a chance to show their power and hopefully do lasting damage to the army at their gates.