Demontech: Rally Point: 2 (Demontech Book 2) (30 page)

As soon as enough of the people had crossed the fence, the corporal commanded his Blood Swords and other Skraglanders to “Take bows!” Then said, “Shoot as soon as they’re within range.” All the Eikby Guards and three Blood Swords took up the bows and nocked arrows. Maetog ran about making sure all the people were safely across the fence, then told the few fighters he had what he wanted them to do when the attackers reached the fence and they could no longer stand there shooting arrows.

A nervous Eikby Guard fired the first arrow when the Jokapcul were still cantering a hundred yards away. It missed, but may as well have been a signal, for at that instant the Jokapcul broke into a gallop. Then other arrows flew. They also missed, but the Jokapcul line lost its sharp dress as swordsmen and lancers dodged the missiles. The first of them tumbled from his horse when they were only fifty yards away. Four more fell before they reached the fence, one when an arrow hit his horse in the face. The first two horsemen who reached the fence tried to jump it but their horses tripped on the high wires and crashed to the ground beyond. One horse landed on its rider’s leg. It struggled to rise, but fell back, pinning the Jokapcul. A boy with a knife ran up and slit his throat, then put the horse out of its agony. A dismounted lancer made it through the fence and ran the boy through before a Blood Sword severed his head with a single blow. The other Blood Swords drew their blades and joined the three at the fence, chopping and stabbing at Jokapcul as they clambered through the strands of the fence. The other six backed off and continued aimed fire into the massed Jokapcul. But the Jokapcul fought fiercely, stabbing and slashing as they came through the fence.

“Women!” Alyline screamed. “To the fence!” She brandished her gold handled dagger and sped to the defense. Other women and the older boys picked up knives and hammers and lengths of wood and followed.

The Golden Girl raced toward a Jokacpul swordman who was hung up in the fence. He grunted as he yanked at the mesh of wires that had hooked onto his armor when he tried to force through without lifting them apart to make space. A wire broke and coiled with a
spang
, and barely missed his face as its pointed end whipped away. He bulled his shoulder against another wire and it gave. Barbs hung in his armor and tried to hold him. Another push and he was almost through. He never made it.

A shriek to rival that of a banshee made the swordman jerk startled eyes up. He gaped at the woman bearing down on him, golden hair flowing behind, a short, patchwork vest didn’t quite cover her breasts, patchwork pantaloons rippled with the pumping of her legs, gold coins jangled and glittered on her girdle.

He reacted blindly to the glint of her dagger by thrusting with his sword, but a wire barb snagged his arm and threw off his aim. Then she was on him, pulling the side flap of his helmet, exposing his throat, slashing it. He screamed at the wire of hot pain, then the scream became a gurgle. She let go of his helmet flap and he jerked backward. In vain he slapped his hands to his throat to stanch the bleeding. . . .

Alyline spun toward a woman’s scream. A few feet away a woman flailed with a hammer while she grappled with a lancer who had made it halfway through the fence. He was bending her backward, leaning his own weight onto her, buckling her legs.

The Golden Girl’s dagger took the lancer across the eyes. He screamed and let go of the woman, his hands slapped over his eyes. The woman staggered briefly then jumped forward and swung the hammer overhead with both hands onto his helmet. She recovered and delivered a crossbody blow that staggered the lancer, dented his helmet. She swung again and the helmet flew off. She beat down on his head with the hammer and his body shuddered, then sagged. She struck him again and the hammer sank into his skull. As Alyline ran to stop another Jokapcul from crossing the fence, the woman was still screaming and pummeling the pulp that had been the lancer’s skull. Then another lancer thrust his weapon deep into her side to end her screams.

Zweepee and Doli were preparing food when the Jokapcul began their charge. Zweepee thrust a large butcher knife into Doli’s hands and snatched up a heavy cleaver. “Come on!” she commanded in a voice that sounded too big and strong to come from so small a woman. She grabbed Doli’s arm with her free hand and dragged the bigger woman along as she ran to the fence.

When they were at the fence, Zweepee let go so she could use both hands to chop at the forearm of a Jokapcul who was spreading strands of wire so another could crawl through. The soldier’s chain mail stopped the blade, but a bone snapped inside his arm and he yelped and let go of the wire to dance away holding his injured arm.

Doli squealed as she poked the butcher knife at the face of the man in the fence. He snarled and batted the blade away with his mailed arm. He twisted his body and stepped the rest of the way through the fence. But before he could bring his weapon to bear on the woman who was now backing away screaming, a blow to his back staggered him. Snarling, he turned to see Zweepee beginning another swing. He swung his arm up and back down to intercept the cleaver and knock it away, but Zweepee was off balance and she fell forward—he missed the cleaver and it
thunk
ed into his boot, splitting the hard leather and chopping into his foot. He roared in pain and swung the butt of his lance into Zweepee, flipping her onto her back. He reversed his hold on his lance and stepped forward to plunge it into her body but Doli leaped onto his back, forgetting the large blade she carried. He spun around off balance and crashed into the fence with Doli between him and it. He bounced off the wire—Doli, stunned and hooked by barbs, stayed on it.

Zweepee struggled to her knees and swiped with her cleaver but it slid across the leather instead of breaking through the joint. He bent over and grabbed her by the throat to hold her in place so he could stab his lance into her.

Doli recovered enough to remember the butcher knife. She picked it up and jabbed it up under the rear apron of the lancer’s jerkin. He screamed and flinched away, arcing his body away from the blow and wrenching the knife from her grasp. Freed, Zweepee fell away, came back to her knees, and chopped at his foot again. The lancer fell and Zweepee chopped at his neck but the studded leather flaps blocked her blade. Then Doli grabbed the butcher knife and twisted it out, making him scream in pain again. The two women exchanged a quick glance and remembered another time they went to work with blades on a Jokapcul. They were grinning when they went back to work on the lancer.

He screamed again.

The Eikby Guards stood back and fired arrow after arrow into the Jokapcul climbing through the fence, but the attackers’ armor deflected most of them. Two of the guards dropped their bows in favor of swords and joined the melee. Corporal Maetog seemed to be everywhere along the fence, chopping, stabbing, slashing at the soldiers clambering through the fence until a thrust to his throat brought him down. There were simply too many Jokapcul for the few fighters and the women and children to keep out. The four remaining bowmen dropped their bows and, swords in hand, charged into a group of Jokapcul who made it through an undefended section of fence.

Five middle-sized boys armed with knives and staves ran up behind a Jokapcul and beat on his back. One tried to hamstring him, but his knife was ineffective against the chain mail that covered the lancer’s legs. He spun about, swinging his lance like a sword. Its shaft knocked one boy down, its blade sliced through the belly of another. The other boys ran so the Jokapcul plunged his lance into the chest of the boy he’d knocked down.

The defending soldiers were bigger and stronger than their foes and their swords were better suited to close combat on foot than the lances wielded by many of the attackers, but the Jokapcul fought with an unnatural ferocity, as though they were possessed by demons—or cared not whether they lived or died. And there were many more of them than there were defenders. They took many with them, but Blood Swords and Eikby Guards alike fell before the fierce attack. Many of the Jokapcul began to rampage among the women and children.

Then more than a dozen horsemen crashed into the mass of Jokapcul, scattering them, many with red-running wounds or broken bones. The Jokapcul quickly recovered and threw themselves screaming at the horsemen, jabbing with their lances, grabbing at their arms and legs, trying to jump on their horses and pull them to the ground. The horses reared and lashed out with their forelegs, bucked and kicked with their hindlegs. Spinner fended off his attackers with his quarterstaff, smashing bones and pulping faces—he wished for a sword but didn’t have time to draw his. Silent’s huge sword swung in high arcs that carried it from one side of his great mount to the other; it dripped with more red and gore each time it rose. The other swordsmen hacked away at the small men harrying them, breaking lances and drawing blood. But the Jokapcul were like a wolf pack on a stag, and there were too many. An Eikby Guard was gutted by a lance thrust, a Skraglander was dragged off his horse and pinned to the ground by three lances. A hamstrung horse fell, screaming awfully, its rider was stabbed repeatedly before he could pull himself from his downed mount.

Then the footmen, led by Haft, came through the fence and fell on the Jokapcul. Unlike Spinner and the horsemen who had gone around the fence, Haft and the men on foot raced straight across the enclosed area and didn’t take much longer to reach the battle.

The fighting was furious but brief. The Jokapcul, surprised one time too many and suffering losses they couldn’t sustain, broke and ran back to the fence and through it to their horses. The defenders who could find bows picked them up and fired arrows after them. Xundoe arrived in time to use his small demon spitter—five mounted lancers went down to the weapon before the tiny demon in its handle popped out and demanded to be fed.

Beyond the retreating Jokapcul, the heart of Eikby was ablaze, high flickering flames and billowing smoke blotted out the forest beyond. Panicked, screaming people ran in all directions as horsemen galloped about, cutting them down. Other Jokapcul formed up in front of the burning town, facing the campsite and the people beyond it. They began to advance at a trot. Some of them unlimbered the tubes of demon spitters. Two wore magicians robes.

A double column of fresh horsemen appeared at the southern verge of Eikby’s land.

“The Jokapcul are coming! The Jokapcul are coming!”

For generations that cry was heard only on the coast of Kingdoms of Matilda and Rumpole on the west of the continent of Nunimar. In those bygone days, it was a sounding of the alert rather than the cry of terror it is today. Those earlier coastal raids weren’t intended for conquest, the Jokapcul raided to steal women, food, and sheep. (You can use your own imagination to figure out why they wanted the sheep.)

Then, within the current generation, Lord Lackland, the infamous “Dark Prince” of Matilda, turned renegade and conjured up a vast library of magical tomes for the Jokapcul. The formerly annoying coastal raiders put those tomes to good use as they learned how to harness the powers of a variety of previously unknown demons to make some of the most horrific weapons ever seen.

The Jokapcul then set out to conquer the world. Now when someone cries out,
“The Jokapcul are coming!”
it’s in the nations of southern Nunimar and is a cry of terror, usually followed closely by the thunder of an infernal weapon.

The demonic weapons employed by the Jokapcul can be divided into two general categories: offensive, and defensive. Here’s a brief overview of some of the main weapons in each of these categories—just bear in mind that almost any weapon can be used either offensively or defensively.

1. The most common are Demon Spitters, which come in two sizes. Nobody, other than the Jokapcul themselves, knows the actual names or natures of the demons used in these weapons—until the Jokapcul first employed them in their conquest of Bostia, nobody had ever heard of demons that spit with such explosive results.

The smaller of the Demon Spitters is normally used only by a magician. It is held in one hand and can penetrate any armor worn by a man at a distance of one hundred paces or farther.

The larger Demon Spitter is commonly used by ordinary soldiers who have been specially trained in its use by magicians. It’s a tube about 49 long 2.50 in diameter. This one is explosive. Depending on what the demon’s spit strikes, when it explodes it can scatter fragments at velocity high enough to penetrate the strongest armor worn by men. A man standing close to it can be shredded into bloody pulp. There are unconfirmed reports that the spit can pulverize rock.

There is another rumor worth noting: Jokapcul magicians are said to be working on harnessing other spitting demons to make weapons midway between the large and the small Spitters and one that is to the big one what the big one is to the small one.

2. Phoenix eggs. This isn’t the phoenix of mythology, the beautiful bird that lives for centuries and dies in a glory of fire only to be reborn from the fire’s ashes. It’s a fist-size jeweled egg that magicians can cause to crack open, releasing a fiery bird the size of an adult Roc. The released phoenix causes incredible fire damage to everything within reach of its wings as it unfolds them and gains flight. No one has ever seen where the released phoenix goes after it takes off.

3. Breathing Dragon. Unfortunately, nobody has ever survived a Breathing Dragon attack to describe it.

1. The Azren is a man-size demon normally used to guard prisoners, slaves, and other captive populations. It haunts the dreams of those it guards, and mercilessly slaughters any who try to leave its custody.