“Fall back!” I bellowed with all the force I could muster. My voice was barely audible over the screams of the dying, and I doubted anyone needed the order anyway. Most were already running. Our lines had been broken, sending men streaming up the hill in a disorganized mass. Only about half retained their weapons. Most had simply dropped everything and run for their lives.
I let my battered leather pack slide to the ground and sprinted uphill. Every few steps I slid back in the mud, but I kept pushing despite the apparent lack of progress. A flash of lightning slashed the sky, followed immediately by a deafening peal of thunder. In the brief moment of illumination I spied the watchtower perched atop the hill. Fifty yards. I could make it.
“Captain, help!” a strangled voice bellowed from behind me. I didn’t recognize it, but that hardly mattered. Someone needed my help.
I skidded to a halt and peered down the hill. It was difficult making out much in the darkness, but I could see the teeming mass of consumed flooding up the hill in our direction. They covered the lower half of the hillside like a swarm of insects, seething forward like an implaccable tide bent on washing us away.
A dozen paces away I heard a strangled cry that must belong to the man who’d shouted for help. Sharp white teeth and red eyes flashed in the rain soaked night as a figured tackled the man to the ground. He tried to get up an arm to shield his face, but the consumed merely seized the wrist and bit down with inch long fangs. It suckled greedily as the man bleated like a sheep.
My sword was out of its sheath in the space between heartbeats. I half sprinted, half stumbled down the hillside in a suicidal dash. I could see the swarm of consumed getting closer, and I didn’t have time for this. But what could I do? I couldn’t leave the man to die. Not like that.
As I approached the consumed it was easier to pick out details. This one had been a balding middle aged man who’d probably been a plump shopkeeper judging by the ragged clothing draped around his amaciated frame. His skin hung about him in folds, and his last few strands of hair jutted comically from where the rain had plastered them to his scalp. The thing was too busy draining the knight I’d come to rescue to notice me.
I brought the gleaming blade down in an overhanded slash that severed both the consumed’s wrists. It’s face came up with a hiss of anger, and my stomach roiled at the slick gore covering its face. Severing its wrists did little more than anger it, but it also meant the thing would be off balance. I planted my foot against its chest and kicked for all I was worth. It tumbled down the hillside, rolling and bumping until it collided with one of its brethren about thirty paces below us.
“C-captain,” the knight panted. I recognized him now. It was Fedwin, one of most recent waves of recruits. He knew just enough not to slice off his own foot with a sword, and had probably just started shaving last spring. “S-sir, am I going to die?”
“Nah, that’s just a scratch. I’ve taken worse shaving,” I grunted as I seized his unwounded arm and slung it over my shoulder. I hauled him to his feet and started pushing up the hilll. “We just have to run a little further, then you can rest. We’ll bandage you up and tomorrow you can tell all the women about how you fought off a consumed.”
I could hear the teeming mass growing closer. Their shrill cries split the night in an awful cacophony, and I wished my hands were free so I could cover my ears. I tried not to focus on them as I used every ounce of strength to help Fedwin up the hill. Dalanthar willing we’d made the tower before the horde caught up to us.
Several lights flared in front of us, and it took me a moment to recognize them as torches. Their wavering light showed the top of the tower twenty or thirty paces away. This was going to be closer than I’d like. I redoubled my pace and tried to encourage Fedwin.
“Come on lad, pick up the pace. Unless you want to make friends with the mongrels behind us we need to get in that tower,” I panted. Fire stabbed through me with every breath, but I kept moving anyway. We had to make it.
An enraged shriek sounded behind us when I was a merely ten paces from the pair of oaken doors that led into the tower. We’d never make it with consumed that close. I gave Fedwin a rough shove in that direction, and spun to face the threat. Three of the blood suckers were tearing through the mud in my direction.
I backpedaled as quickly as I dared while yanking my sword from its sheath again. It wouldn’t kill a consumed, but I didn’t have any laurelwood on me and fire wasn’t going to happen in this downpour. It was my only weapon, though I knew how useless it would prove.
One of the consumed leapt into the air and came down in my direction. I dropped flat on my back and caught it in the gut with both feet. I used its own momentum to flip it towards the door to the tower, then rolled to my feet. It’s companions were scrambling in my direction, but I sprinted into the tower just before they arrived.
Two men were already waiting. One slammed the door shut, and the other dropped a stout oaken crossbar to pin it shut. Heavy thumps came from the other side. They were accompanied by frenzied shrieks as the consumed battered futiley at the door. Stewards, but they wanted in. How long would the door hold them, and what would we do if it didn’t?
“Are you alright captain?” the man who’d closed the door gave a quick salute. He was taller than me and broader of shoulder, with close cropped salt and pepper hair. The coarse grey stubble covering his face was out of place as most knights prided themselves on being clean shaven. It was a testament to how close to the edge we’d been pushed by our assailants.
