43 – Flanking Maneuvers

  Andy’s initial instinct was to go for the ladder and run to his friends. If that giant, armored ratman joined the blitz-rats against them—which seemed likely—then they might be in serious trouble. As he turned, though, a second thought occurred to him, and he turned back to the courtyard, squatting behind the crenellations as he watched the giant trundle toward the gate. It was still closed…

  The sounds of vermin voices squealing came to him, and Andy leaned past the crenellation, peering down over the wall. A group of normal-sized ratmen were down there, shoving each other, yelling in their high-pitched voices, as they fought with one another for space in a narrow doorway. Was it a gatehouse? Andy was no expert on medieval architecture, but he had a feeling the controls for the gate would be in there, which meant they were probably planning to open it for the giant ratman.

  He contemplated the drop—at least twenty feet. Could he survive it? He figured he could; he was a lot sturdier since the System had been granting him levels, but still… Another idea came to him. While the huge ratman stood before the closed gate and roared, pounding its metal fists on the cobbles in frustration, Andy gathered some mana from the pool at his center and shaped it into his new spell, Smoke Drift.

  The mana rushed through him, invigorating his muscles and giving him a sensation of speed and lightness. Andy knew he was taking a risk, but he also knew he had a chance to keep the giant ratman out of the fight with the blitz-rats—to keep it from catching his friends by surprise. His Cloak of Shifting Smoke spell had broken when he’d cast Cinderstorm Blast, so he quickly recast it, then checked his mana level: 355/615. Pushing caution to the wind, he gripped his spear and dropped off the wall, falling more like a feather than a two-hundred-pound man.

  It was a strange sensation, that slow descent, but Andy capitalized on it. He dragged the fingers of his free hand on the stone wall, guiding his fall, so that when he came down, he was just to the side of the gatehouse door. The giant ratman smashed its gauntlets on the ground, and now that Andy was standing in the courtyard, he felt the jolt through his feet up to his knees, and the clangor of the impact made his left ear ring. Something in his primal brain screamed for him to run, but he focused on the job at hand and slipped through the doorway.

  It was dim in the gatehouse, but there was enough light streaming through the door that Andy didn’t have to cast Ember Vision. He saw five ratmen huddled in the far corner. Two were hanging from the wooden spokes of a huge winch wheel, one was trying to work an iron lever in the floor, while a fourth was berating the last, screaming something in their chittering tongue and shoving him toward the wheel. It was almost comical, but as the ratman on the lever threw it forward with a clunk, and the wheel began to move, Andy realized it was no laughing matter. The gate was opening.

  His first impulse was to blast the room with a Cinderstorm. Then he recalled the three wizard-rats out in the courtyard and thought that maybe he ought to try to keep them from realizing what he was doing. So, he darted toward the leader’s back, aimed for a spot where he knew he’d find a gap in his ribs and drove his spear into his heart. Before the ratman boss realized what had happened to him, Andy yanked his spear out and slammed it through the neck of the ratman on the lever. When it threw its furry hands up, grasping futilely against the blood spurting forth, Andy gave it a shove and then grabbed the lever, yanking it back so the wheel locked.

  By then, the three ratmen on the wheel had realized something was wrong, but by the time they let go of the spokes and turned toward their dying boss, Andy was on them, his spear stabs a blur of quick movement, almost too fast for the eye to track. Of course, his Critical Mastery guided his strikes, but his intent was to deliver as many doses of his Balefire Lance’s caustic fire in as little time as possible. He almost felt sorry for the vermin; they never had a chance to brandish a weapon.

  When there were five smoking ratman corpses in the gatehouse with him, Andy hurried over to the wheel, grabbed one of the spokes, then slammed the lever the other way, freeing it. Just to be sure they hadn’t opened it enough for the giant ratman to get through the gate, he spun it the other way until it wouldn’t move any further. After that, he locked the lever and crept over to the door.

  Before peering out, he cast Cloak of Shifting Shadows again and checked his mana: 327/615. The number startled him; he’d expected to have regained some mana because he’d attacked, which caused the cloak to drop, but then he realized his Smoke Drift spell was still in effect. Hastily, he severed the mana feeding it. He was still burning mana with his renewed Cloak of Shifting Shadows, but it would be slow, almost canceled by his regeneration.

  Another crash reverberated through the stone walls, and this time the giant ratman screamed a rage-filled roar. Higher-pitched voices yelled strings of gibberish-sounding phrases, and Andy looked through the doorway to see two more ratmen running his way, spurred on by a scowling, robe-clad ratman. He strode behind, swinging his staff after them to hurry their movements. It seemed like the right kind of logic for a vermin society: if the gates weren’t opening with five ratmen, send in two more.

  Andy looked over his shoulder at the five bodies, still bleeding thin trails of smoke from the wounds he’d inflicted. He figured he had about half a minute before the two new ratmen arrived, so he hurried over and started dragging the bodies toward the wall so they wouldn’t be visible from the doorway. It was a sloppy job; blood smeared the stones in dark swaths, and the room smelled like smoke and punctured bowels—enough so that Andy gagged as he pulled the last body over. Still, he hoped it would give him a chance to silence the two new ratmen before they raised an alarm.

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  Squeaking, chittering language announced their arrival, and Andy stood ready, shoulder to the wall, spear pointing toward the doorway. He wondered whether the wizard was still behind them. Would he come all the way into the room? The giant ratman helped him with his deception by smashing its fists on the ground again and bellowing another rage-filled cry. One ratman stepped into the gatehouse and paused, eyes widening, but the one behind gave him a shove and followed him in. Andy struck.

  He stabbed the rear ratman in the throat and jerked his spear to the left, dragging him further into the gatehouse. The first ratman squealed in alarm, but Andy raised his boot and stomped forward, slamming him back into the wall. By then, he’d pulled his spear from his first victim, and he drove it forward, piercing the second ratman’s heart and holding him against the wall as his eyes dimmed. That was when, with the hissing sound of a leaky steam pipe, green gas poured into the gatehouse and Andy’s lungs caught fire as the world spun.

  ###

  Lucy drew back her ratman arrow, one that Andy had enchanted, and aimed between Omar and Rundle, releasing the string almost before she got the arrow lined up with a charging blitz-rat. She didn’t cast Double Arrow; she had too clean a shot and, with the arrow’s enchantments, she figured the blitz-rat was done for. She yanked another ratman arrow out of her belt quiver, nocked it, drew her string and fired, this time at a blitz-rat that was flanking Bella.

  Between her arrows and Bea’s utterly crazy ice storms, they’d managed to bring down half the blitz-rats before they’d even reached their party. Then, Rundle had gone to work, and he’d been so violent and so loud that it had taken Lucy a few seconds to start shooting again, stunned by the display. Rundle was powerful. As Lucy watched him throw an armored blitz-rat against the second-story bricks of a nearby building, she mentally made a note to ask him what the System said his strength attribute was.

  Jilly tugged her coat, pointing, and Lucy took aim at another blitz-rat pushing around to Omar’s flank. She’d pulled a mundane arrow from her quiver, so she cast Double Arrow before releasing the shot. The arrow, already glowing with silvery light—thanks to her Favored Enemy bonus—shimmered as it flew, magically doubling right before slamming into the ratman’s neck. The creature stumbled back, grasping at the offending projectiles. It yanked one out, only to hasten the loss of blood as it collapsed.

  A spray of hot liquid on her face, accompanied by the crunch of Rundle’s axe cleaving through a blitz-rat’s shoulder armor, reminded her she was still fighting, and she stumbled back, scanning for another target. There were no more blitz-rats running their way, and the closer ones were all engaged. Lucy checked to be sure Jilly and Bea weren’t in imminent danger, then darted off to the left, circling Omar so she could get some flanking shots in.

  As she moved, she glanced toward the wall with its big wooden gate and wondered where Andy was. His smoke had almost cleared from the top of the wall, and there was no sign of any archers. Had he gotten attacked by something else? Another echoing roar came from the keep’s direction, and she wondered if whatever creature was making it had anything to do with his absence.

  When she mounted the sidewalk and turned to put her back to the building, she focused on the job at hand, firing arrow after arrow into the shrinking throng of blitz-rats. Rundle kept the area around him clear, obliterating the rats closest to him, but then he pushed toward Bella, helping her, too. That made Lucy’s job easy: she focused on the rats around Omar, and in just another minute or so, the fight was over.

  As she hurried to collect her arrows—the ones that hadn’t been damaged on impact or destroyed by volatile enchantments—Rundle growled, “Gro dragha brun lar du von. Dungrada or lun doh var!” When he spoke the laukin language, he made it sound more guttural than musical. Lucy wished she could understand.

  Jilly made things easy by translating: “He says the roaring is a zerker-rat. He says we have to get the gate open so he can fight it; the ladder is too small for him.”

  “Where’s Andy?” Omar asked, panting and wiping his sweat-soaked brow on the inner sleeve of his armored coat.

  “I didn’t see him,” Bella said, turning to Lucy.

  She shook her head. “He didn’t come.” She pointed toward the wall. “Ladder is still up.”

  “Let’s go!” Bella said, starting off.

  “Wait!” Bea cried, but when Bella looked at her, the Water Witch frowned, then shook her head. “Never mind. He might need us. Let’s hurry!”

  Rundle started forward, rumbling something else in his language, and Jilly said, “Rundle wants me to stay with him on this side of the wall.”

  Lucy nodded, running to keep up with Bella. Omar wasn’t far behind. When they reached the ladder, Bella leaped a quarter of the way up before she started climbing, but Lucy took a moment to sling her bow over her shoulders. It wasn’t comfortable to carry it that way, but it was better than having to restring it in a hurry.

  By the time she reached the top of the ladder, Bella was there, and she held out a hand to pull her up the last couple of feet. Lucy lithely dropped onto the catwalk atop the wall and hurried toward the opposite crenellation. The roaring zerker-rat had been carrying on the entire time they’d climbed, and now she got her first look at it, and her blood went cold.

  The creature was bigger than Rundle and covered with heavy-looking black metal armor. It wasn’t its size that made it hard for Lucy to breathe, though; it was the red fury in its eyes. It pounded its metal-clad fists against the cobbles, already cracked and broken by previous blows. The sound was like something Lucy would expect from a heavy construction vehicle—a bulldozer or something.

  “Holy shit,” Bella hissed, crouching beside her.

  Lucy nodded, but a movement in the corner of her eye drew her gaze down, and she saw a gray-robed ratman peering through a doorway. It raised one of its clawed hands, and green smoke poured out through the open door. Lucy could sense the mana—something she’d been trying to do more often after Andy mentioned it to her. Whatever spell it was casting, she couldn’t imagine it was good, so she unslung her bow, nocked an arrow, and took aim…