Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Necrosis ran forward straight to the wall, as if they were about to climb it.
I waited until the right moment. “Now.” I threw my arm down.
The cannons exploded, and the arrows sprayed the sky. They followed their arc and rained down again, a hailstorm of sharp missiles on Necrosis. Their army halted momentarily as the momentum made their bodies jerk, made some of them drop dead, but only those that took five arrows or more. The rest continued forward as if nothing had happened. “Archers, fire!”
They lit their arrows from the torches and aimed their fire down at the enemy. Arrows impaled necks and limbs, taking down most, but not all.
And t another wave of Necrosis was coming behind them.
We’d have to move fast if we were going to keep this up. “Cannons, fire!”
Nobody did.
I looked over the wall. They were frantically putting the arrows inside the cannon, lining them up as Elora instructed. “Fuck. Come on, hurry!”
They moved as quickly as possible, but by the time they launched, they missed the second wave and hit the third. The second wave sprinted to the wall, our archers doing their best to take them out.
Elora ran down the path, carrying more arrows.
“Elora!”
She looked up at me, out of breath with the quiver to her chest.
“It’s taking the cannons too long to reload. Create something so it saves them time.”
“I…right now? I have to make arrows—”
“Figure it out. Now!”
She dropped her quiver on the ground and got to work.
I turned back to the wall and grabbed my own bow and fit an arrow to the string. Necrosis was starting to pile up at the base of the wall, standing on top of one another to build a human ladder. I fired down at them, hitting a single Necrosis three times in the head before he finally went down.
Fuck, that wasn’t good.
The next cannon of arrows finally fired.
They landed on the next group of Necrosis, taking out at least half.
I lowered my bow and looked back to Elora. She was tying the bundles of arrows together with a string and then dropping them into the cannon. Then she would cut the ribbon before the cannon fired.
I knew she’d figure it out.
“Keep firing,” I ordered. “Don’t stop.” I turned back to the edge of the wall and lit my next arrow. “It’s going to be a long night…”
There were too many.
We didn’t have enough arrows, and even if we had, it still wouldn’t have made a difference.
Necrosis brought ladders from the rear and pushed them up against the gates.
We pushed them back down again, but their archers would shoot us.
My men would topple over the edge and land right on top of them—and I had to watch them be trampled or eaten.
Queen Rolfe was beside me, hacking up the Necrosis that managed to scale the wall. She sliced down every single one, toppling them back over so they landed on top of their own. “Ian, push the ladder off.” She sliced and hacked as I grabbed the ladder and gave it a hard shove.
But then there was another ladder to replace it. And another…and another.
At this point, we weren’t getting anything done, just expending our energy and stalling for time.
Archers rained down with fire, and while that took out Necrosis, it didn’t take down enough. There were just too many.
We’d lost.
I looked to the rocky passageway, my worst-case scenario now my only scenario. “Mother, we have to retreat.”
She stabbed one through the gut then sliced his head clean from his shoulders. “No.”
“We lost. It’s time to save people—”
“I said no.” She slashed at the next one, and he went down right away.
More ladders hit the wall, and that was when a horde of them came.
She was so focused on what was right in front of her that it was up to me to guard her back. I pulled out my blade of Ice and sliced clean through the first one. What would normally take four or five power hits took only one.
It made all the difference in the world.
“Mother, it’s time to go.” I kept them back, seeing a pile of my own men on the ground, their skin already desiccated because Necrosis couldn’t resist taking their souls in the middle of battle. The black blotches on their skin were now fair and white, their energy fully restored. Now they were more powerful than before.
She pulled back and finally came to her senses.
“I’ll hold them back.”
“No.” She pushed me aside and held up her own blade, taking down two at once. “Go, Ian.”
“No—”
“I said go!”
I took down a few men as I went, then headed down the stairs to the cannons. “Load the cannons.”
“We have no more arrows—”
“With boulders.” I pointed at the wall of the mountain. “And aim for the mountain.”
The guard hesitated.
“Just do it.”