It began with the pressing of the invaders. As they marched towards the wall, ever chanting, Mika could spot something being brought up to the front of their lines. Long and wide they produced their great shields, though they seemed more like portable barricades to him, and acted as such for the invaders' purposes. They did not rush the march, but continued at a steady walk. A sea of torches filling out the valley wall to wall. The scribe looked in wonder at the great mass, and mostly at their leader far behind upon his horse, silent as a statue. They seemed like some supernatural wave of flame.
But the garrison of the mountain pass considered this not. Barak had mounted the wall, and was leading his soldiers to rain down dart after dart upon the invaders. Though at first the barricades absorbed much of this, they instead turned their fire far behind the front lines.
"If the first assault does not want it, then give it to their younger siblings." The lines behind the front three rows of men and women marching were struck by the volleys, and hundreds of torches began to go out. This filled the men of Northguard with a small hope, only to see it smothered out as rank upon rank that fell was quickly replaced with those further back. Not for a moment did their numbers seem to truly dwindle.
Crack!
Something struck the stone battlement beside Mika's head. He ducked and noticed this happening all along the wall. Small rocks. The invaders that walked behind the front line were using slings to cast stones at a deadly speed towards those upon the wall, and soon no fewer than thirty soldiers fell dead. From this point, Barak commanded his men to hide behind the battlements and took careful shots rather than to risk their lives.
Below, Uriah was directing the reserves to fill the now empty positions upon the walls. Once this was done, he and a following of twenty outlanders worked on cutting trees down to barricade the gate to the point of making it impossible for anyone to go through one way or the other. It had become clear to the sellsword that this attacking force would need the gate itself rather than overtake the wall, and as long as they were able to hold it, they might have a chance.
Men crying out in death, and the scent of blood and shit filled Mika's senses. The invaders took no chance in rushing their assault. Indeed, once the slinging had gotten started, they knew there would be little time for the defenders to shoot back without dying themselves. The night itself seemed alive to the scribe, as if the mountains themselves were screaming in horror.
Among the front lines was an invader, much larger than the others, giving out commands that Mika could not make out over the rage of battle. He seemed to be giving directions that were passed down through the whole of the invading party, but not acted upon yet. The scribe looked further back and saw something dark, forming a great length, was being brought through the valley.
That was when it happened. The commander at the front spoke some phrase, and all at once, the entire invading force took the torches within their hands and stuck them head first within the ground. One moment the valley was alight, the next near total darkness had taken all. For a moment the men of the wall kept up their cries of battle and loosed their arrows into the darkness. But no matter how many darts they shot out, no longer did they hear the pain of their enemies dying.
For some time the garrison waited. The torches of their own, along the wall, illuminated up to the trenches on either side of the road. Knowing the invaders could not go beyond this without being spotted, they all turned their attention beyond.
All watched the dark valley, and all fell silent. Mika spotted, as did many others, the note of two flames burning still, far near the back of the great expanse. Only, these were not as singular as the torches. It seemed to Mika that he could have been looking at two distant bonfires. He assumed, for a few minutes, that he was looking upon a siege camp. That Enoch and his commanders, if he was the sort of leader to have them, sat about these fires strategizing their attacks.
Then came a sound of metal moving and wood creaking far away. Both flames moved upwards and into the sky. Then every man upon the wall realized the meaning of these lights.
"Take cover!" Barak shouted.
Through the night sky the projectiles flew. Perfectly aimed, they struck upon the walls. Not to destroy. Even these invaders would realize hurling stones at the walls of the mountain pass would be a fruitless effort. Instead, they exploded in a magnificent splash of flame. Like water the embers spread upon the walls, leaving each side of the gate coated in fire. Many of the soldiers had time to duck, but then many more of them did not. A hundred men ran about burning alive. One of them fell at Mika's feet, begging to be saved as his flesh bubbled and melted away from his face. The scribe could only press himself up against the wall of the mountain, terror stricken.
As Barak tried to rally his men once more, there came a sound in the valley. A great battle cry. Then, suddenly, the invaders were upon them. With the walls still on fire, between the trenches poured hundreds of invaders. Their front group holding a battering ram. Above it they held their wide long shields high, stopping all arrows from slowing their sprint. Barak called down to those behind the wall to brace the gate.
Uriah led his men from the forest, carrying the felled trees between them, and rushing at a dead sprint. They met the gate at the same time as the battering ram and halted it from finding an easy entry. Log after log they placed up until the invaders found themselves struggling against the mighty doors. The sellsword then commanded another hundred troops to the walls, and not a moment too soon as that was the exact moment the first ladder mounted the stone.
Through the flaming walls, invaders climbed their steel ladders, all the way up. But the defenders would not let them get far. Swords and shields met their advances, and time after time they found themselves cast down. For every dozen Northguard men that fell, three dozen invaders would pay the price. The young men, while outclassed in battle experience, had the wall on their side. Its ancient construction had been designed for such a thing. A defending group could hold off an attacking force three times its size. A fact the invaders were discovering with each failed attempt at taking the structure.
But then there came a loud cracking of wood. The gate, the real focus of the assault, had finally given its first hint at failure. The sound worked like a rallying cry to Enoch's people, and they doubled their battering at a frenzied rate. Second by second, strike by strike, the gate fell away until nothing but a pile of chains and wood remained. They wasted no time throwing the battering ram aside and surging through the stone archway.
Uriah was prepared for this. He sat upon his horse before the gate, and with him were five hundred of the outlanders. He spoke to them in their native tongue, and they responded by lowering their spears and connecting their shields to form a half circle around the inside of the gate, cutting off any invader from entering Tovoran.
Through the gates they came like manic creatures, throwing themselves upon spears and shields without second thought. Though the great number before them remained closed tight, and a few of the men above the gate did their best to rain down arrows on the invaders, none of them seemed deterred in the slightest. Rather, it seemed to the defenders that they pressed on all the more to break through the shield wall's defense.
Mika noticed, from his shadowed space upon the wall, that Barak's men were beginning to falter, and Uriah had to send some from the back lines of the shield wall to aid them. He understood then, that for all their effort and strategy and bravery, the battle would soon be over. But then he remembered the far barricade on the hill. Two hundred outlanders had been stationed there. Would something like that make a difference? Perhaps it could act as a way to help the men retreat. Yes, Mika thought, they could retreat and rally with the other kings of Tovoran and together fight the invaders off. Not even an army this big could stand against the kings behind the mountains, if the stories were to be believed.
That was when a strange and terrible thing happened. A horn blew far away in the darkness of the valley, and in response, the invaders stopped. Their manic attack that seemed like something of a demonic state only moments ago, halted and they all froze. The soldiers, confused by this, also halted. A few of them killed those invaders before them, then too stopped after noticing that they did nothing to defend themselves.
In the silence of the night, Mika heard a horse trotting through the valley. Enoch rode up to the gate, smile on his face. The fire, still burning on the wall, illuminated him for all to see. He looked about, and nodded to Barak. Then he spoke to all present.
"Behold the power of your great walls and kings before me." There was a deadly silence, and all watched. Even Uriah gazed in terror through the felled gate at the man across from him. Mika felt such wonder in that moment that, even though he knew this would be his best chance to run, he leaned heavily over the battlements to see.
The pale man took a deep breath. Then, raising his right hand to the sky and pointing with his left, he spoke. The words reverberated the same as they had earlier.
"Atla beras."
A light peeked through the cracks present within the stone wall, and rippled out from its center. Then Mika heard a familiar thunderous boom shake the world around him. To all those watching, it seemed an impossible thing. One moment the wall stood strong. The next it exploded out. From southern end to northern end it crumbled beneath the soldiers' feet. Many of the outlanders defending the gate found themselves crushed. Those upon the wall mostly fell into the rocks and too were killed. Mika, at the very last possible moment, leapt from the battlements and landed on the grass behind the wall. Still, he twisted his ankle and collapsed in pain.
The scribe rolled over. His eyes blurred with tears of panic and pain. About him, survivors ran to the hill or fought those who attacked once more. Many stumbled around in a delirious state, only to find themselves being pounced upon by the invaders who had found the frenzy once more. They had not found him yet, and so he made his way through the battle and up the hill.
He had gotten it into his mind that if he could just make it back to the barricade that there would be some protection for him, if only for a moment to regroup. Indeed, he would have been correct. However, once he had finally managed to cover this great distance, and climbed up onto the barricade, his heart sank. It had been long abandoned. Probably since Uriah had left to defend the gate, and the outlanders had noticed that the threat of death upon desertion was gone.
He felt more tears well up in his eyes. Panic was taking the scribe, and he almost openly sobbed. Then something worse presented itself to him. A cry went up not far behind, and when he turned to look, he saw six of the invaders scaling the hill after him. Not after a soldier, or an outlander. Only after him. Closer and closer they came, and Mika felt himself clutching at his notebook before his chest, as if it were a magical tome. Then the strangest memory came to him, of his old nurse from his boyhood instructing him in an old prayer. Without thinking, he recited it to himself.
"Oh Adar, hear the cry of the people and answer them true." It was such a silly thing. A prayer from the old ladies' old superstitions that he knew nothing about. But, somehow, it calmed him, if only a little.
Now, only a few yards away, they were nearly upon him. The nearest, a strong man with wild red hair, bounded up the remaining hill, and raised his axe to strike the scribe in the head. At that very same moment, a great sword came down on the man's raised arms, cutting them both clean off. The invader fell to the ground screaming and then went silent after a few moments.
Mika blinked through the tears, confusion as to what he was seeing. Between him and the remaining five invaders stood a knight in full polished armor. The idea of his friend had totally left his mind sometime during the battle, and for the time being, he figured that this Adar must have indeed heard his prayers.
The five circled the knight, trying to get at him with their swords, and goad him to respond by screaming and fainting to strike, but the knight remained unmoved. Christopher was no recruit from the stables, nor outlander with no reason to fight. And so, he cut through the five men before him like a gardener cuts out weeds. The whole ordeal lasted only a few seconds, and then six bodies lay about him. His once shining armor, now totally red in the fire's glow. He turned and opened his helmet.
"My friend, what are you still doing here?"
"C-Christopher."
"You stupid scribe. Go and run you little fool."
"I-I don't-" The knight struck him across the face, then grabbed him by both shoulders.
"You listen to me you little fool. I will not have you die here. You take your legs and you run back to that castle Mount- whatever you call it."
"What about you?"
"I promise I will meet you there. Look at me. I swear you will see me there with you soon. Just go now before I kill you myself!"
Mika did not understand fully what happened next, but he knew that a minute later, he was running. Through the dark, over the hill, and down the road. He ran at full speed, totally forgetting about his twisted ankle. He ran, and as he ran he sobbed.
"Goodbye Christopher." He whispered, as the sounds of battle and flame faded away behind him.