Chapter 61
Part 11
The colonists soon wiped out the demons who hadnded in themunity, then it became siege
warfare against the three hundred or so enemies outside the ridge, who outnumbered the surviving
defenders by three-to-one. The engineers’ recent works proved their worth, for now the demons had to
scale a steep slope and a sheer wall to get into the settlement, or go around the edge of the ridge and
approach from the channel. Few chose thetter course, as the demons were ufortable and
generally ineffective in water, though they could all swim to one degree or another. Those few died on
the beach, skewered by arrows and huge bolts from the ballistae.
The siege went on for neen hours, with three-quarters of the defenders on the walls and the rest
defending the beach. Mark and his family stood and fought together atop the wide walls, defending
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against the asional rushes of the demons with bows, swords, and throwing darts, and they were
d that the spells on their armor and weapons were permanently or semi-permanently charged. They
were also very d for The Skills of Visinniria.
They fought between the dragons, with the four children in the middle to take advantage of their many
hours of sparring together, and their family training in the evenings paid off handsomely as well. They
kept a fairly tight formation; Kragorram on the left end with Talia and Alilia beneath him or to his right,
Karzog in the middle with Helemia, Reggie, and Valentia in front of and beneath him, then Mark with
Povon above him and to his right.
The dragons wore chain vests, knee and elbow covers and gauntlets of te armor, thin steel des
on the leading edges of their wings, steel spikes on their tails, and wielded light swords, knives,nces
and crossbows sized to their mighty proportions. Kragorram had crafted all of these items, sometimes
with his mate or his son’s assistance.
Mark and his family all wore their finest armor and bore their finest weapons. The children used the
armor and weapons they’d received as birthday presents, while Mark and Talia wore mismatched full-
te armor that they’d assembled and fitted from many different sets in order to ensure that each piece
they wore was the most functional andfortable of its type that they owned, from their gauntlets to
their boots. As they’d learned in their first course of training with Quewanak, appearance was irrelevant
once battle was joined. Mark’s hands bore only GrimFang; the great ck two-handed sword that cut
any material without resistance. Talia alternated between Ria and a highly spelled short bow, while
Alilia distained armor in favor of an elven Belt of Protection with seemingly infinite charge that turned
every weapon that struck at her before they could reach her skin. She wielded a ck staff of power
topped with a diamond as big as her fist, and it struck with a Concussion capable of sting the
biggest Greater Demon off the wall. She remarked during a pause in the battle that it held enough
charge to keep doing so for centuries, continuously.
Perhaps the finest benefit of their training was that none of them ever hit each other, despite fighting
with so much weaponry in the confined space atop the wall.
Most of the demons were efficient climbers, finding purchase in the tiniest cracks with their w-tips,
and could swarm up the rougher sections of the wall as fast as a tall man could walk. They tended to
attack at one or more narrow points on the wall, to concentrate their attack and try to gain the top of the
wall before the defenders could shift enough force there to prevent it, and it was a more effective tactic
after darkness fell. They would erupt out of surrounding forest in a disorganized mixed pack of demons
of every size, and when this urred on Mark’s section of the wall, his squadron of nine would quickly
move to meet them while keeping their formation. Thergest demons had no choice but to face
Kragorram and Povon, who would bracket the demons attack point. As the big demons faced the
dragons, Mark, Talia and Alilia would strike at them from below. Their formation funneled the smaller
demons into the middle, where the children duplicated their parents’ tactics. The medium-sized demons
had no choice but to face Karzog, and the smaller ones who scrambled around those confrontations as
they tried for the top of the wall were met by Valentia and Reggie. Only Helemia had the quickness to
deal with the very smallest demons, and she did so with fierce crity.
The unicorns formed the other heavy-response team. They wore full te barding armor with swords
mounted in front of their horns. When the demons mounted a concentrated attack on their half of the
wall, the unicorns would gallop along that section of the wall, one right behind the other, striking at
every demon they passed with their head-mounted swords. When they were past the attack they
turned and ran back on the inner half of the walkway, then did it again over and over, like a continuous
looping chain of death.
Meanwhile the rest of the men and elves dealt with the smaller sudden attacks that the demons
bows. When arge attack came, they all provided supporting bow-fire to the two heavy-response
teams.
asionally abatant on one side or the other would recover enough magic power to do
something with it, which the demons generally spent on magic attacks, and the defenders used for
temporary Shielding.
Between rushes, the demons would asionally toss one of their smaller fighters onto the wall to raise
havoc until it was killed, for even a single small demon could kill or maim a few people in a few seconds
if it caught them by surprise.
After so many hours awake and fighting, everyone was bone-tired, dirty, and stinking of demon blood.
The defenders’ ordeal was made more frustrating by the need to clean any demon-matter from their
skin as quickly as possible to avoid being poisoned by it.
Finally the demons tipped a tall fir tree onto the top of the wall and used it as a scalingdder, after
cutting it down in some silent manner.
“Prepare to evacuate to the main shelter!” Mark announced as he stood in the thick of the battle where
the tree crossed the wall, cutting demons down with GrimFang like he was harvesting wheat.
“Wait, let us do this first!” Reggie called out, then he and Helemia quickly seized control of the
Command Link and enough power to Translocate Helemia to the nearest of the underground
emcements that were distant enough to have not been used in the recent battles.
“She’s the lightest.” Reggie exined, and a momentter Helemia was back with all the diamond
power-batteries the emcement had contained. She left all but one, and used that one to power her
Translocations to the rest of the unused emcements and shelters, and Send their batteries back to
her father. The amount of power the batteries contained wouldn’t have been significant at the beginning
of the battle, but at this stage they made enough of a difference that Mark had already wiped out the
rest of the demons with a massive Lightning attack before she had Sent thest of them.
“The exercise is finished. Well done.” Quewanak announced.
“All right everyone, eat, clean up, and sleep.” Mark instructed as he looked around at his blood-soaked
family and Helemia arrived back from thest shelter. “We’ll de-brief in the hall in the morning after
breakfast.”
He used the remaining power in the diamonds to re-cast the Wards, though they were weak indeed,
then he and his family wearily walked home.
None of them had sustained a major injury after they ran out of power to Heal them, but they were all
beaten and bloody, they were half-sick from the stench and poisonous offal of dead demons, and all
their armor and weapons were in need of maintenance.
They spoke little and were subdued as they cleaned up and ate, and they all felt the need for a lot more
hugs and personal contact than usual. Finally all six of them went to bed together in Mark and Talia’s
huge bed, where they cuddled together.
“Sleep well, my loves.” Alilia murmured. “Remember, it was only an exercise.”
Then they slept like they wereatose for almost ten hours.