Part 11
The colonists soon wiped out the demons who had landed in the community, 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 the latter course, as the demons were uncomfortable 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 nineteen 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 against the occasional rushes of the demons with bows, swords, and throwing darts, and they were glad that the spells on their armor and weapons were permanently or semi-permanently charged. They were also very glad 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 plate armor, thin steel blades on the leading edges of their wings, steel spikes on their tails, and wielded light swords, knives, lances 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-plate armor that they’d assembled and fitted from many different sets in order to ensure that each piece they wore was the most functional and comfortable 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 black 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 black staff of power topped with a diamond as big as her fist, and it struck with a Concussion capable of blasting 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.
of demons of every size, and when this occurred on Mark’s section of the wall, his squadron of nine would quickly move to meet them while keeping their formation. The largest demons had no choice but to face Kragorram and Povon, who would bracket the demons
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
with the larger men wielding lances and pole-arms, the rest with swords and bows. When a large attack came, they all provided
on one side or the other would recover enough magic power to do something with
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
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
tipped a tall fir tree onto the top of the wall and used it as a scaling ladder, after cutting it down in some silent
shelter!” Mark announced as he stood in the thick of the battle where the tree crossed the wall, cutting
control of the Command Link and enough power to Translocate Helemia to the nearest of the underground emplacements that were distant enough to have not been used
diamond power-batteries the emplacement had contained. She left all but one, and used that one to power her Translocations to the rest of the unused emplacements 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