Colonists seemed to be running every way
possible along the top of the wall, with some of them climbing over the edge
and dropping down into the streets below to escape. Ellis saw more than one person limping towards
their home after a sprained ankle, or worse.
On the other side of the wall the Stoneskins were approaching fast. There were only a few seconds left before
they could be engaged, and could engage in turn, time enough for Ellis to dart
through the chaos to reach the parapet and put himself in charge of a kind of
hypostatick gatling gun.
The trigger was light and sensitive. It seemed Ellis had barely brushed it before
a stream of glowing slugs spread out into the approaching Stoneskins, chipping
scales, drawing blood and sending many to life face-down in the ash, their eyes
dimming away to nothing.
No time to
think about it.
In truth it as difficult to think about
anything other than the feel of the trigger in his hands, the assisted weight
of the gun as he swivelled it round to spray the oncoming horde with
hypostatickaly charged lead. All of
space and time seemed focussed down the the narrowest corridor, his field of
vision and, within even that, his focus on his task and his targets. He barely noticed when others joined him,
either on cannons of their own or with the long-range weaponry 'Santa' had left
them that morning. For their part, the
Stoneskins weren't just falling to their deaths like cartoon lemmings, they
were firing back. Arrows flew over the
wall, followed by screams of fright or agony.
Ellis heard someone ushering the children away to safety, though many
left their toys behind, whirring and chattering from somewhere over Ellis'
shoulder.
And then the first of the enemy reached the
wall itself and everything changed.
Those who had been firing volleys before were suddenly pushing back
Lithoderms as they climbed the slippery, brass-plated surface. Melee weapons were drawn were needed and
blood, human and stoneskin, was spilled beneath the parapets. Ellis' cannon kept many of those swarming
after the front lines at bay, but he couldn't angle it close enough to the wall
to stop any that slipped through. He
could only trust that his back was being watched as he focussed on what he
could achieve, so, when a growling Stoneskin voice said, "at last, you
die," almost into his ear, it was something of a surprise. He spun away from the gatling gun, reached
down for his hypostatickally enhanced sword and then felt the talons of the towering
green-eyed Spiketail wrap around his throat.
"You killed my mate," the creature
said, "you killed my friends, but you humans are all the same to me,"
he increased the pressure on Ellis windpipe just a little more, "and I
take no more pleasure in this death than any other."
Ellis closed his eyes, waiting for the snap,
the pain, the oblivion he expected to come.
Instead there was a loud scrape of steel against stone, a moist gurgling
and then grip which held him went suddenly limp.
He dropped down to the ground beside the dead
Spiketail and looked up to see Siren standing over them both, her improbably
knives in hand.
"Thank you," he said.
"Wouldn't do to get married without a
groom, now, would it?" Siren said with a smile which was more relief than
anything else. "Now get back to
your gun. We need to hold as many of
them back as we can!"
And so the assault wore on. Reinforcements came, eventually, from those
who had scattered back into the Colony proper and, as the dark day descended
into an even gloomier evening, Annabella and the Former Baron could be seen
picking up the abandoned toys, lining them up along the parapet and filling
their tanks with black sand. Eventually
they were each pushed over the edge, one by one, and, where they landed, a
unique kind of chaos ensued. A little
porcelain-faced doll turned into something like a ninja assassin, hunting
Stoneskins along the frontline. A set of
toy vehicles drove off into Lithoderm ranks and exploded with considerably more
force than one would have expected for something so small, sending Spiketails
and Grinders flying through the air to land, broken, amidst (and often on top
of) their peers. A spinning top worked
its way amongst the enemy, then spun so fast it produced a vortex that picked
up anything in its past, flinging Stoneskins off into the middle distance at
impossible speeds. Each toy held the
enemy at bay just a little longer, and allowed time for those on the wall to
recover and take stock before continuing the fight.
Then, as the last vestiges of daylight
trickled away beneath the horizon, the Former Baron made another announcement
via his loudspeaker. Defenders were
asked to step back from the parapet for a moment whilst several huge automated
turrets grew out of the wall like the world’s most heavy-duty weeds. Each was accompanied by a team of Mosskind,
who were still tinkering with the massive weapons even as they began firing on
the enemy below. Ellis quickly found
that the ensuing barrage relieved some of the pressure and even began to drive
the Stoneskins away from the walls. As
he watched it seemed they were increasingly pulling back to a safer distance,
watching, assessing and, somewhat worryingly, completely encircling the small
settlement.
And then there was stalemate. Those guarding the wall along with the
Mosskind stared out into the dark at the eyes of hundreds of Stoneskins,
glowing, staring back, and nobody moved.
And as the seconds stretched out into minutes
and on towards hours, it was Siren who most succinctly voiced what everyone
seemed to be thinking.
“This is going to be a long, long night.”
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