People. Or what once were people. The distinction wasn’t so clear anymore. There were soldiers there, relatively normal looking, but they were screaming. They screamed, then picked up their spears and marched to the gap and up on the wall. I couldn’t see why they were screaming, but I knew I’d find out. Whether I wanted to or not, I would find out.

  Othai didn’t re-target Pomoroi. If the enemy wanted to form up in tight bunches in front of the gate, she was happy to let the artillery mow them down. No sense in sending our people into the range of the archers if we didn’t have to. Apparently someone in Wastet had a brain, because they quickly cleared the blockage, and rushed frog centaurs out.

  The centaurs rushed out the gate but rather than charge straight at us, they started moving parallel to the city wall. Didn’t take a genius to see they wanted to loop around our formation and hit the artillery. I briefly thought about sending my cavalry out to pin them down, but it would be six unarmored, lance carrying scouts versus a hundred heavy armored, glaive wielding centaur knights. Can’t say I cared for those odds.

  Othai didn’t like them either. “Corporal Mika, lead a squad of crossbows and support the Artillery. Pikes, follow me! Matchlocks, screen the rear.”

  Her instructions seemed kind of vague to me, but were apparently good enough for army work. The whole formation shifted, moving to protect the artillery. The cavalry kept swinging around, trying to catch us out of position. In some real Sun Tzu business, Othai countered motion with stillness, keeping her Pikes all at the vertical ready position. Mika, on the other hand, kept shifting her squad around to face the cavalry.

  Pomoroi? She had orders to blast the gates, and saw no reason to stop. Since there weren’t any troops conveniently standing in the doorway, she opted to broaden her definition of “gate” to include “gate posts, gate houses, and the bits of the wall touching the gate.” The results were not as spectacular as I was hoping. Clearly the walls were very thick. I shrugged it off. It was doing something, and I’d bet it was keeping more troops from rushing out.

  It sure didn’t look like anyone enjoyed the cannonballs ripping through the gatehouse. I could see the bodies of archers flying out, and the wounded trying to limp away. A few more volleys, and they would be crushed completely.

  “Here they come. Remember to stay close, Tower Master.”

  I yanked my head around and saw what Versai was talking about. A hundred monstrous centaurs. Heavy black armor covering their human portions and their chest. No signs or adornments. Just the rough black of steel. The glaives were brutal looking things- long handles and a blade like a fat-bellied saber with a spike coming out of the spine. They too were the rough grey-black of forged steel. I wondered if they bothered to sharpen them, or just let the crushing weight of the blow do the work.

  It looked like they had gotten around the side of the formation. Mika couldn’t keep up without throwing her formation into chaos, so all there was between the cavalry and the artillery was the left side of our pike formation. Our… square pike formation.

  Othai, you devious little witch. The cavalry committed to the charge. The second they did-

  “PIKES! LEFT FACE. PRESENT PIKES. BRACE!”

  The formation turned in place, pikes perfectly vertical. Then they dropped, braced, and turned into a wall of death. The monstrous troopers didn’t even flinch. They swung their long glaives up and around, pushing aside the pikes in their path, forcing their way closer. I could see steel spear heads scrape along the dull armor. For a moment, I thought they might be able to force their way through.

  Only for a moment.

  A pike formation was never just the front row. It was the first four rows, or more. Twenty foot long spears- you would be crazy not to reach out over your comrade’s shoulders. The glaives could smash aside some of the pikes. Not all of them. Good Genudan steel stopped the charges dead, either skittering along the curved breastplates of the cavalry, or finding gaps in it to rip through.

  The front rows held back the frog-centaur cavalry. When they tried to push in closer, the pikes shortened their grip and planted their spears in the center of mass. One would have slipped off, but each cavalry that reached the pike formation was held back by two or three. Those in the back row kept stabbing down and out with their spears- stabbing at the enemy’s hideous face, the neck, anywhere the armor might be thinner.

  The heavy armor did its job- they couldn’t reach the pikemen, but they weren’t losing many centaurs either. Fortunately, this was a problem with a solution. Guns.

  The comparatively highly mobile matchlocks swung around the sides of the formation, hiding under the long pikes, and shot at the unarmored flanks of the frogs. Even that wasn’t enough to kill them instantly.

  The fight ground on for long minutes, and I kept checking the gate to see if more troops weren’t mustering to run out. Pomoroi was doing a good job of keeping them behind their walls. Mika finally got her crossbows shifted around enough, and planted their shields. They opened up on the armored frogs as well. I swear I saw some of those bolts of light ricochet off the heavy steel armor. Some got through. More got into their flanks.

  The monsters never stopped pressing forward. Their ugly glaives rose and fell, trying to hack through the pikes and close with the enemy. Genuda was very familiar with the tricks of their old enemies. They stayed planted. Stayed calm. And ground them down.

  The noise was unreal. The yells, the screams of the dying monsters. The constant crash of the cannons and shocking cracks of the muskets. Steel scraped against steel, screaming and screeching until a battered spearpoint found flesh. The roaring of the soldiers. The battle cries of the Ancients. And through it all the asinine thought crept through- “Just another day at the office for Genuda.”

  They hated the monsters. Hated traitors. Hated Wastet. But they were being paid. Here on a job. This was their trade, and as far as they knew, they were the best in the world at it.

  A brassy horn blew from Wastet. Loud enough to be heard over the sound of battle hundreds of yards from the wall. The frog-centaurs started disengaging, working themselves out of the press of pikes, backing up in a way a horse would struggle to manage.

  I looked towards the blown open gate, and soldiers were running out and scattering wide. They must have seen we didn’t have the cavalry to roll them up, so they were minimizing how many losses they would take to the artillery. We had killed or wounded a lot of their frog-centaurs, but they were still a dangerous force. They could keep our pikes pinned down protecting the crossbows and muskets, leaving the time and angle of attack to the Ko’Ras infantry.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I desperately tried to think of what to do, and drew a blank. The cavalry could disengage, and we couldn’t run them down. They would take losses doing it, but they could manage it. If we charged at the infantry, they would eat us up starting with Pomoroi.

  Tower defense doesn’t really reward high-mobility. Rache is kind of an outlier because she’s a scout, but she also hits like a nerf bat if she isn’t running flat out. She can’t clash directly with the enemy. Once I got the attack speed hack up and running, the thought of cavalry never really crossed my mind.

  Ah.

  Um.

  Well. This is the dumbest idea I have had in a while.

  “Versai, right goddamn now, before the cavalry has completely disengaged, go at your absolute top speed and cripple as many of those frogs as you can. Hack their legs. Don’t even try to kill them, hack and go. Do NOT let yourself get pinned down! If you even think you are getting bottled up, retreat back to me at once. The second they are clear of the pikes, retreat at once! Now GO!”

  She bolted off.

  “My Lord, sending your bodyguard out-”

  “I know, Othai. I know. You fight this battle. I’m going to stand right next to you, so don’t worry about me. Just you fight this battle, and make sure I don’t owe Truso any money at the end of it. Or at least not too much.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  The enemy was rushing towards us in a wide line. I could see their archers jogging along with their pike units and a mix of halberdiers as well as ax-and-shield men. A pretty diverse array of troops. It wasn’t completely random. The ax-and-shield troops were out in front of the pikes, who were out in front of the archers, and both were flanked by halberdiers. Not a crazy number of any of them, though.

  I tentatively decided that this map was balanced for between one and two hundred mercenaries. A number that would either require massive cheese to manage, or actual cash buying those Medals of Valor. Well, call me Monsour Fromage, because we are breaking the balance here.

  Mika rotated her crossbows away from the cavalry and started the slow process of lining up against the oncoming infantry. The muskets kept firing into the frog-centaurs, confident in their ability to reposition before the infantry arrived. And Versai? She did exactly as I hoped, working under the pikes and hacking away at any unarmored feet or legs she could reach.

  Most of the monsters just didn’t see her. Too many spears to the face, I guess. Not that easy to back out of being stabbed to death by twenty foot spears, if you have been trying to work your way as deep as possible. And then some little rat comes and hacks your knee open and stabs your feet. Over and over and over. She wasn’t going to get all of the frog-centaurs. She wasn’t even going to get most of them. But every one she crippled now was one that couldn’t escape to kill us later. She didn’t have to kill them herself. That’s what the face-stabbing-spears were for.

  Pomoroi was still shattering the top of the wall and knocking down their gatehouse. I don’t know how many troops they had up there to begin with, but by now the number was a lot smaller. The advancing Ko’Ras infantry formed up, assembling into dense formations and advancing quickly towards us. They hadn’t been dawdling before, but now they were definitely on the attack.

  “Archers, stand ready. Wait for the word. Wait for it. I’ll tell you when it’s time. So Wait. For. It.” Mika was on one knee behind her shield, dead in the middle of the formation. Her voice carried up and down the line. Calm and easy as could be. Just another day at the office. A good day. A day for killing traitors.

  The Wastet infantry rushed closer. They knew what was coming, they had their shields up, trying to hide behind them as much as they could. I didn’t know what speck of barren heath Mika was looking at to take her distance, but once the enemy crossed that line, her voice snapped like a whip.

  “Loose!”

  Up and down the line, the arms of the crossbows snapped forward, driving bolts of light. Some were stopped by the shields. A lot were. Not all of them. There is something horrible, even with everything I have seen, something uniquely awful about watching a man get gutshot. About watching a bolt shatter a pelvis.

  There is that moment of awful realization. You can see it in their face. That moment when they realize that they are out of the fight. That they won’t be surviving this. That they won’t have any kind of dignified or honorable end. It won’t even be quick. Then seeing them trampled by their one-time comrades. Crushed and broken under hobnail boots.

  Then the next volley snapped out, and they got to do it all over again. The only problem was, I didn’t think they were doing it fast enough. The shields were doing their job- blocking the bolts and letting the soldiers get in ax range. They had timed their form-up perfectly too- too close for the artillery to target, and even if it could, it would be shooting through our troops.

  We only had six cavalry scouts. Lancers. Little zippy guys relying on speed and divine intervention to keep them alive. They were, however, also Genuda scouts. They followed a simple combat doctrine- the enemy cannot shoot you if they are dead.

  Those idiots rushed the Wastet back line, their lances flashing, stabbing the crossbowmen in the back as they raced past. They didn’t score a lot of kills. The did make the crossbows and pikes pause for a minute.

  You could see the pathfinding glitch out. Cascades of if-then decisions washing through decision making trees, telling them to advance, to stop and shoot, to reform, to move to intercept, to ignore the feint, to kill in detail the isolated unit. Just like a normal unit without good leadership, I suppose. They locked up in decision paralysis.

  Eventually, they turned back towards us and charged on. A gap had opened between them and the axmen, though. Their front line was now almost a whole minute ahead of them. A minute extra for Othai to use against them, or that could be used to focus down the leading unit.

  Then the cavalry finished its loop, and ran straight back to the crossbows. Picking off another half dozen of them, before galloping away. This time the lock-up lasted longer. The repeated danger was shifting weighted priorities, encouraging the pikes to turn and defend the crossbows. They reset eventually, focusing back on the last real order they had- to rush our lines and crush our formation.

  But now they were three minutes behind. And three minutes was an awfully long time, if you knew what you were doing.

  The frog-centaurs broke contact and hopped away at speed. Not many of them left. More than our measly six cavalry, though. I tried to count helmets and came up with “Twenty-five, maybe.” Seventy five percent losses. It should have broken them. They were moving like it wasn’t even an inconvenience.

  “Mission accomplished, Tower Master.”

  “Fantastic work, Versai. Fantastic work. Now we just need to see what we can do about these damned axmen.”

  Versai looked awkward, like she wanted to say something but couldn’t.

  “Is there something you don’t want to talk about?”

  “Yes, Tower Master. Incidentally, and on a… I think the phrase you use is “on a completely unrelated point,” those axmen have the same problem I do. Armored and shielded up front, but once someone gets around behind them, death is almost certain.”

  I was about to point out a certain lack of cavalry, then paused. The frog centaurs were moving around to the opposite side of our formation from the axmen. They weren’t so much trying to pincer us as to prevent the pikes from fully focusing on the advancing infantry while they protected the artillery. The muskets were peppering the monstrous cavalry, but they weren’t exactly dropping them at speed.

  “Do you think you can get behind them and attack them from the rear, then make it back to us before the pikes and halberds arrive?”

  “Given that I now have something to ‘attack’ behind our lines? No problem. Their shields and my own, plus my armor, should keep me safe from friendly fire too.”

  “Do it. Come back alive.”

  Versai dove out our lines once more, her sword hacking through the air as she “missed” over and over, accelerating towards the enemies on the wall. That put her on a slight angle to the axmen. Once she was on their flank, she turned and aimed at the oncoming pikes. Got behind the axmen. And butchered them.

  My bodyguard’s day job, these days, was slaughtering monsters bigger, stronger and faster than humans. She was a furious warrior trapped in a tireless doll's body. It seemed like the axmen didn’t have the same armor as the frog-centaurs. At least, there was nothing protecting their necks. Nothing that could stand up to Versai. Heads fell nearly as fast as Versai could move.

  “A battle well begun, Othai.”

  The last few axmen fell before Versai could reach them. She ran back to our lines, not bothering with the speed hack. She had plenty of time.

  “Good job!”

  “Thank you, Tower Master.”

  Mika had the crossbows burning down the incoming pikes and halberdiers. She was having a much easier time, now that she didn’t have shields to shoot around. The scout cavalry was doing its part, rushing in to pick off a few archers and freeze up the formation. The frog-centaurs were making little feints towards us, but clearly weren’t willing to commit to a charge. Fine with me. That gave the muskets more time to kill them. The monster cavalry were already down to twenty effectives, and the rate would only accelerate as there were fewer targets to focus on.

  “About time for phase two, I think.”

  “You have another plan, my Lord?”

  “No. The enemy does.”

  There was another brassy trumpet blast from the city, and a thunder of kettle drums.

  “Lots of things talking about fear effects right before this invasion. Brace yourselves. We are in for something uncommonly nasty.”