In one case the Stolsh gunners were a little too good at killing the advancing foe. They fired one volley too many, and when it was time to pull back, they were too slow and were overwhelmed by the enraged Guldur and torn to ribbons. A reserve element was immediately moved up to the next set of barricades, filling the gap left by these losses.
That one success only fed the enemy’s bloodlust. The fury, the wrath, the rage of the attacking Guldur was a thing to behold. There was no controlling them. Far in the distance they could see the remnants of the fleeing Stolsh civilians, their rightful prey, crossing the bridges into the upper city of Ai. They yearned to gratify their lust upon those bodies, then satisfy their hunger with their flesh, and slake their thirst with their blood. They charged the barricades and death exploded yet again, from every doorway and window, and the buildings collapsed down upon them.
And still, still the snipers, the thrice-damned snipers, picked off their officers like a fussy child might flick the seeds from a bun.
Valandil and Westminster grin. Happy, contented grins. Like wolves, as they lope back to the next position, their monkeys looking back over their shoulders, ready to block any stray bullets. The right side of their faces are blackened with the gunpowder of hundreds of shots. Hundreds of dead enemy leaders. Their business is killing, and business is good.
Finally, after fighting their way over an endless series of barricades on every street that led directly toward the bridges; finally, after fighting through a living hell of death and destruction; finally, the attackers reached the bridges and swarmed onto them in great, living, raging masses.
Then the bridges were blown, and the attacking masses burst into the sky. Hundreds of Guldur and Goblan became spinning pinwheels, artfully pirouetting up into the air with balletic grace.
Those immediately behind the luckless attackers on the bridges were suddenly faced with a huge gap in the bridge. But that wasn’t their major problem. Their major problem was the thousands of other attackers behind them, propelling them into the waters of the River Grottem. Untold thousands were pushed into the river by the enraged masses behind them.
The river. Sewer and morgue, serving from womb to tomb, hastening the journey helpfully whenever possible. The reeking, stinking river opened its loving arms and embraced an army. All without blinking. All in a day’s work. Their passing was marked only by an occasional bubble, rumbling to the surface like the echoes of beans in a bathtub.
An army without leaders is a mob. A mob dies easy. Like sheep. Like cattle driven off a cliff. It might not have worked with another species, but the Guldur’s mindless bloodlust made them vulnerable to this approach.
There were too few leaders to stop the enraged attackers from pushing thousands of their comrades into the tender mercies of the River Grottem. And when the attacking mob tired of that, there were still too few leaders to stop the mindless rampage. They spread out into every side street. Into every building. Atop every roof. Into every basement. They sought vengeance. Blood. Flesh to slake their lusts.
All they found was fire.
Westminster and Valandil lope across the bridge, two of the last few defenders to cross the bridge before it’s blown. They run with the same tireless stride that carried them across the rooftops, on carefully preplanned and prepared routes, stopping constantly to pick off the enemy leaders. Many Stolsh snipers hunted the rooftops of Ee this day, but the survivors all speak in awe of the fearsome toll taken by the two rangers.
When the bridge is blown behind them they don’t even look back, they simply continue to trot up the slope, the monkeys on their backs batting aside a few bits of falling debris. Halfway up the steep road that climbs up to the battlements of the upper city, Gunny Von Rito waits with a BAR slung over his shoulder. Beside him is Cinder, with a monkey on her back. They have been standing by to cover their friends’ retreat if need be. Cinder barks and shimmies with doggy joy upon seeing the returning rangers, while her monkey hops joyfully up and down on her back. They both drop to one knee next to her, turning now to look back while their monkeys scamper onto Cinder’s back, to greet each other.
“Everything go okay?” asks Von Rito.
“Hooah!” replies Westminster with a calm, satisfied smile. “It’s been a good day.”
The Westerness consul, the Honorable Milton Carpetwright, dressed in an elegant black suit, is standing by Gunny Von Rito. His squad of consulate marines are with him as bodyguards. A black bug in the midst of a red blossom, he strides forward to shake the rangers’ hands.
“A tremendous job!” he gushes. “Our allies are all talking about you. Our contribution may be small, but you have definitely brought credit upon us. Tell me, what’s your secret, how did you get to be so good?”
“Do you play golf?” asks Westminster with a lazy smile as he turns to shake the diplomat’s extended hand.
“Why yes. Is it like golf you think?”
“Piss on golf,” says the big, buckskin-clad ranger, laconically.
“Eh?”
“You asked me mah secret?” drawls the ranger. “The secret is, you just say, ‘piss on golf.’ ”
The diplomat turns without a word and trudges up the hill, his grinning bodyguards trailing behind him.
“Diplomats,” snorts Von Rito. “A fully loaded BAR is the best diplomat I know.”
The three humans, the dog, and their four monkey compatriots look across the river, watching with contented smiles as the fires begin. . . .
It began in the vats and oil stores in the Merchants Sector and all along the Street of Restaurants, progressing in a blazing series of explosions and fountains that cooked the invading Guldur in a great, malefic skillet. The lower city of Ee usually was a teeming anthill of citizens, but it had been turned over to the enemy after only token resistance. Now it was a great, swarming, seething mass of Guldur invaders, and they were burning, burning.
Sweet, enchanting odors mixed briefly with the burned pork and charred fur smell of incinerating humanoids, as the blazing inferno hit the Perfumers’ Market. It was sadly anticlimactic when the firestorm hit the whore pits and brothels of the Court of a Thousand Delights and Perversions. This was partly compensated for when the flaming tide hit the storerooms of the Avenue of Pharmacopoeia, Apothecaries and Druggists. The fumes caused the invaders to have conversations with their gods. Necessarily short conversations. And then they went to meet them.
Sparks drifted like fireflies across the river, where the defenders waited to drown each ember. Smoke from the inferno could be seen from hundreds of miles away, a vast, wind-sculpted shroud for the invading army.
Damn. I wonder if their fire insurance covers that? thought Melville with a grim smile.
Standing atop the battlements in the damp, warm air, the allied commanders watched as their artillery fire plunged mercilessly down on the Guldur masses clogging the gates as they struggled to escape the city. Earlier the same guns, hurling red-hot cannonballs, preheated in furnaces and fired with precision into preselected locations, had started the fires.
The commanders’ various staff officers were currently dispatched to help put out nearby fires caused by the swarm of glowing embers that came across the river. For Melville, his “staff” today consisted of Broadax and Hans, along with a squad of armed marines as bodyguards. All of whom were off fighting fires.
Melville stood atop the crenelated ramparts beside the Sylvan and Stolsh commanders, holding his puppy in his arms. If given positive exposure at a young age to things like water, gunshots, wire-mesh stairs, or combat, then a dog will have no fear of these things. If his dog was going to be a properly trained war dog, he needed to be exposed to guns, blood, death, gore, and killing at the youngest possible age.
Earlier, one of the elegant, foppish Sylvan staff officers had made an effort at polite conversation by asking the dog’s name.
“His name is Boye,” Melville replied with a polite smile. “As in, ‘Here boy!’ but with an ‘e’ on the end.”
“I have not previously heard of such a name. Art thou making some clever historical allusion?”
“He’s named after one of the most famous dogs in our history. ‘Boye’ was a trained war dog that belonged to Prince Rupert of the Rhine. This was during the English Civil War, pitting the ’roundheads’ against the ‘cavaliers.’ The roundheads feared and hated the aristocratic cavalier’s fierce war dogs, particular Prince Rupert’s Boye. They celebrated when the dog was finally killed in battle. There is a famous nursery rhyme that was originally a poem, mocking the motley, ragtag, cavalier army.
“Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,