Anwen

They were dying. Not that it stopped them.

No mob of people could have sustained their rampaging, rampant assault through the kind of casualties they were taking. The bodies were high enough to reach Anwen's knees, and had begun to work as a barricade, slowing the creatures behind them as they climbed over fallen Gloamtaken. The Salamander barrels to her left and right glowed red, hot enough now to cook flatbread on, and the air was thick with the stink of burnt flesh. The last minutes had worn away the once thick callouses on her fingertips, and the pads of her thumb now bore the embossing on the back of a Salamander's casing.

And all they managed, despite the dead now forming a wall around them, was to slow the Gloamtaken.

The horde was beginning to envelop them. At first it was just a few, easily cut down by the rangers on the wings. But as the front of the mob pressed close to try and reach them, others flowed around their formation like water hitting a wall.

Cadmus had a sword out now, less an object and more a blur of flashing light as the steel caught the sun and the Spire and cast it into Anwen's eyes. She wouldn't know he was even holding a weapon, except Gloamtaken kept falling at his feet. The Rangers near her were a blur of swinging weapons and a staccato of blue fire. And at the centre, Captain Dremora had littered the ground at his feet with so many that the creatures had stopped trying to reach him, treating their own dead as a barrier to be shied away from.

"Rangers!" The Captain bellowed, as he took a step back and sheathed his knife. "Time to go."

The middle of their formation turned and ran. Eight people, including the captain, dashed behind Anwen and ran for the next trench, just a dozen feet away. Once they passed, Anwen turned and followed, sprinting as she reached the sudden drop in the dirt, and then leaping as hard as she could. She didn't quite make it over, and had to scramble to claw her way up the other side of the trench. Someone caught her hand and helped her up, and she was embarrassed to see it was her sergeant, who had managed the jump despite disengaging later than she had.

The Captain was standing at the edge of the trench, Salamander held loosely in one hand as he watched the mob. "Glad to see everyone made it," he said. "We might have to do that sort of thing again, once this mob makes it to Barleybarrel. We can hold, as long as they don't get around us."

Without the Rangers driving them back, the Gloamtaken seemed to collapse on themselves, their own tight ranks working against them as they tried to turn and advance. The confusion it caused almost brought the mob to a halt, and Anwen found herself with nothing to do but wait and check her equipment, despite having thousands of creatures so close she could hit their closest ranks with a rock.

Beside her, Sergeant Cadmus turned around, and smiled. "Looks like they're ready," he said.

Anwen glanced over her shoulder, and saw Lieutenant Issac Conger holding up a burning branch, leaving a trail of smoke in the air.

"Spitfire," the captain called, without looking back. "Give them the signal."

Anwen pointed her weapon straight up and fired. Lieutenant Conger then tossed his branch aside, into a nearby pile of brush. The fire spread quickly; the small brush and grasses were so dry from being beneath the Gloam it was almost glass-brittle, and at a march even the Rangers would have been proud of, stretched in both directions across the field.

"Rangers, form a line. Back to pilot-light distances, let's spread the Gloamtaken back out a bit," the captain ordered.

They moved, taking positions more than forty feet apart, keeping to the south side of the trench. Anwen took her post and began to fidget as she waited, until the captain gave the signal.

It wasn't a long wait. Captain Dremora's signal was a shot straight into the mob, one where he swung his barrel as he fired, and put two more of the monsters into the dirt. The rest of the platoon took up their guns a heartbeat later, and Anwen's world focused back into the long-drilled steps of using her Salamander.

Aim. If you can, blink as you pull the trigger, to keep the muzzle flash from blinding you. Open the breach, toss the spent casing, reload, check the fit, close the breach. Repeat until you run out of things to shoot, or you run out of ammo.

And given the mob they were fighting outnumbered Barleybarrel, Anwen was fairly confident she'd spend all of her shots first.

Aiming was easy, with how many of them there were. Asides from aiming at the chest, there was little to worry about, as every shot would cut through one and hit a second. Or even a third, as the captain managed with his next shot. But even as they fell under a withering hail of fire, it drew the mob towards the source of the fire.

Aim and fire. Shooting these monsters had become almost routine. Despite the danger she was in, her thoughts even began to wander as her hands worked, and her enemy fell.

Which is why Anwen nearly dropped her gun when the Gloamtaken charged.

It was unnaturally precise. All of them, from the closet to as far back as Anwen could see, all leaned forward. They did it, as far as she could tell, at exactly the same moment, making the same motion, leaning forward the same distance. And when they all ran, they did it with their left leg forward, an unnatural synchrony almost mesmerizing in its terrifying precision.

"Burn me," Anwen muttered, as her suddenly trembling hands struggled to reload. She took a quick breath, bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, and forced herself to keep on her task. Her left leg had a tremor that felt like the hum of an engine, and her ears perked up in hopes of hearing a whistle.

It took a hard pat on her shoulder to make her realize she had missed the signal. Her Sergeant was right beside her, right hand on the hilt of his sword. "Time to go, Spitfire. Die here, and you come back to fight us."

"Right, right," Anwen said, clearing her head and putting her feet in motion. "Thanks, sir."

Most of the Rangers were already running. This time, though, they weren't withdrawing into a tight clump like they had before. At the far side of the next irrigation trench, a line of burning brush now stretched so far its curtain of smoke now obscured Barleybarrel. They left a small gap in the middle, barely enough room for two people two swing swords in. And incredibly, they left the small plank bridging the trench in place.

To her right, the Captain was still holding the line. The mob seemed to change their course, and suddenly their thousands turned, and converge on where he stood.

Anwen bellowed something, she didn't know what. Something to warn Captain Dremora, not that the man couldn't see what was happening. But despite the danger he was in, the captain only gave her a quick glance and pointed with his thumb towards the brush-fire.

"Anwen, ten yards behind the captain," Sergeant Cadmus said as they ran. "We stop there and wait for him."

Anwen nodded, saving her breath. She printed ahead, and skidded to a stop to wait. Her left hand fumbled at one of the pouches at her belt, to check her ammo count first, and then pull out her water.

She opened it, tipped it over her mouth, and nearly threw the bottle at the Gloamtaken in a fit of rage. "Spit and simmering ash!" she cursed, holding the bottle upside-down and glaring at the empty container, as if it were hiding the rest from her.

Small discomforts were easier to notice when you felt safe. And there were few places in the City as safe as standing behind Captain Dremora.

He was astonishingly good at murder. Anwen called it murder in her thoughts, because calling it a fight lent credibility to the most absurd of mismatches, like a toddler fighting a soldier, or a normal person attack a Crafter. Every move he made looked rehearsed, like he had already thought through the fight. The Gloamtaken. on his left takes a shot to the chest, and as the one on the right closes, the Captain has already opened the breach, and somehow tosses the spent casing out with the same motion he used to stab it. The third one between the others takes the next shot to the chest, but the Captain swung the barrel as he fired, so a fourth one just behind the third dropped with it.

The Captain took a step to his right, and the creature closing on his left trips over the fallen creature in front. With that step, he's reloaded again, shoots to his right, and stabs the closest one before it recovered from its stumble. And somehow, he fit that stab into his next reload, and fired again before the creature he killed with his knife fell to the ground.

Against the deadly precision of Anwen's Captain, even this mob of monsters, the terror of the City, looked like a victim.

"Captain," Sergeant Cadmus bellowed. "Everyone else is clear."

The captain waved in response. He didn't look back, but he somehow fit three quick steps back without slowing down his Salamander work. With one last spiteful shot into the mob, he turned and ran towards them.

Anwen put two quick shots into the creatures following close behind Captain Dremora. Her sergeant did the same, and the captain had somehow managed to switch the rifle he was carrying in hand while in a dead sprint.

"Make for the gap," the captain shouted as he ran. "Time to give third platoon something to do."

Something felt very good about having permission to run for your life, under the circumstances. Anwen threw herself into a dead sprint, and crossed the field to the next trench faster than she had ever run in her life. She crossed the bridge first, followed closely by her sergeant, and then the captain.

The familiar faces of third platoon took up the gap just as the captain crossed; nineteen more Salamanders tightly packed and pointed in the same direction. Looking at it now, a single platoon looked so small when faced against the oncoming mob.

Which is exactly how her platoon must have looked out there.

The mob closed in a wave, rushing towards the bridge they had crossed. It looked so, so much like water rushing over levee walls set too low, or like smoke blowing through a street. Or like the Gloam, when the fires went out. It was hard to see, as the Gloamtaken rushed them in their thousands, now a few soldiers and burning brush could hold them.

Then the Rangers fired.

The sight still shocked and impressed Anwen, despite how many times she had seen it — she even blinked instinctively when they fired, to protect her sight from the flash. The sound hit her like someone swung a pillow at her chest.

And the volley halted the mob.

Gloamtaken collapsed, and the ones behind them tripped and fell as they tried to press through and around the ones in front. Anwen didn't know how long it would last, but the confusion of just that one volley definitely slowed the monsters down. But before she could see how well it worked, the Rangers fired again.

And again.

There were, perhaps, three people in the Rangers whose hands were as quick with a Salamander as Anwen could manage. None of them were in Third Platoon. But every Ranger was faster than the average soldier, and even synchronizing their shots they still managed a volley with every breath. And the fiery death those shots inflicted brought the entire mob, in their thousands, to a standstill.

And beyond, the Gloamtaken stopped. In their thousands. Tens of thousands. And they stopped as if they were stuck behind one of the walls, with no Golem to open the way.

"We are the walls," Anwen whispered. She wondered if she ever knew what the words meant, before now.