Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Things were a mess once I made it up out of the ruined tower basement and into the actual battle for the fortress. But apparently things were even worse for the Rangers pinned down at the gatehouse. Worse and getting worse by the second.
The Rangers could not move forward across the first courtyard and into the next line of defenses. Arrow fire from the Black Hawk Orc archers was finding its way into the gatehouse and keeping several Rangers stuck inside. The Black Hawks were excellent and relentless marksmen. Or marks-orcs. Vandahar had unleashed a powerful lightning bolt against the next gate in the second line, but some kind of magical warding had caused the bolt to reflect and dart off into the morning sky with a sudden thunderclap.
“Hmm,” the indignant old hedge wizard was reported to have murmured as he hunkered with the assaulters under heavy incoming. “That doesn’t bode well.”
The assault teams were down to trying the Carl Gustaf and the last 84mm round the detachment was carrying. The sergeant major and his group were looking for an opening in the gatehouse to fire from where they wouldn’t get nailed by the monkish archers King Triton was throwing against them.
And there was a problem with that last round itself. It was an FFV441 HE round. Or an airburst round used as anti-personnel munition. Fire it into a group of enemies, or their positions, just above their heads, and it exploded steel balls in every direction. It could be devastating against lightly armored personnel, but chances were, it wasn’t going to do much against structures like the wall of the next line of defenses within the fortress where the Rangers needed to create a breach.
That was where Team Rogue was supposed to come in. We were
supposed to be hitting the enemy defenses from behind and causing them to pull enough assets away from the main defenses to deal with us, thus allowing the assaulters at the front gate to start moving up through the lines of defense.
But, as I’ve said, we were late to the party.
The Rangers were pinned and doing their best just to avoid being turned into pincushions by incoming arrow fire. They were down to one mag for primaries and firing back when they could get a shot on the shadowy orc defenders. Wounded men were being dragged out from under fire, arrows embedded in their bodies where the ESAPI plates hadn’t protected them, clinging to the hope that the poison they’d been warned about wasn’t as bad as they’d heard. A few mags for their secondaries and then the found weapons they’d scoured from the battlefield back at Ranger Alamo was what was coming next.
“This is it, boys,” the sergeant major was heard to say as he moved among the hunkering teams who were just moments from being given the order to assault across open ground and try to get under the next wall, scale it, and overcome the defenders regardless of a secondary attack that wasn’t going off as planned. No diversion, follow the plan because that was all that was left. And of course heavy arrow fire was everywhere. Streaking in through the breaches and windows. Whistling into the furniture and architecture. Thudding and snapping on plate carriers. Sinking into flesh as Rangers swore and returned fire with their dwindling ammo.
Someone opened up with a half a pouch on their SAW, all they had left, and ruined a cluster of archers who’d gotten a good angle into the gatehouse and had already shot several Rangers.
“That’ll learn ’em,” the Ranger said, tossing aside the two-four-nine and pulling out his tomahawk. He was one of the true believers. And it seemed he’d been waiting for this moment all his life whether he’d known it or not.
It would be a massacre. Crossing open ground under fire. No two ways about it. But if they got against the wall on the other side of the open ground kill zone, then there were a few breaching charges left, and someone might get in.
“That Valhalla y’all are always on about is callin’, Rangers,” the sergeant major muttered as he moved from cover to cover inside the ruined
gatehouse. Organizing who could go forward and who had too many arrows sticking out of ’em.
“One way or the other,” finished the sergeant major. Now they were just waiting on the captain’s final order to move.
Near the main assault point out of the gatehouse, the scouts and Captain Knife Hand’s security team were set to go first and lead the charge across open ground. Sergeant Hardt chanced a glance at the commander and saw that his captain didn’t look too good. One of the scouts told me later, “Hell, Talk. Looked like he was gonna be sick all over the place right there.”
But no one thought that Knife Hand was looking horrible due to fear. That wasn’t even considered. Everyone knew he’d been sick with some kind of bug none of the rest had picked up.
“We was all scared, Talk,” continued the scout. “I’ll admit that right here. Ain’t no shame. But when you Ranger, you still do it and all whether the fear’s there or it ain’t. Ain’t nothin’ if the Knife Hand was scared. He’d still go even if he was. But he wasn’t. He was just real sick. Like he had bad food poisoning or something. And now, at the worst possible time, he was real sick like he was just gonna die right there, Talk.”
But that’s not what happened.
Knife Hand was sick. He did look like he was going to hurl everywhere, and according to those close to him he was sweating like a pig and looked pale to the point of gray.
“He was mad and getting angrier by the second because everything was going wrong inside the gatehouse,” said the scout. “His team sergeant had taken an arrow right in the throat. Man was down and probably dying but Chief was all bloody and trying to save the team leader. It was bad, Talker. Really bad in there.
“Then Captain says, just to himself like, ’I’m gonna be sick.’ But it don’t sound like him at all. It’s like… I don’t know. Like a growl and all. Like an animal that ain’t so happy. I turned around to find the XO because he was probably gonna have to take us out across that kill zone where we were all gonna die in a few seconds, and when I look back at the captain, who’d stumbled off to find a corner to get sick in, I’m looking at a damn werewolf, Talker!
“’Cept it ain’t no werewolf, man. It’s like a… a weretiger. Like if a
man suddenly became a tiger. Orange stripes, white fur. Tiger face. Big white fangs. But walking like a man with huge claws. And I swear he’s comin’ straight at me and he’s got pure murder eyes like one of them big cats. So things just got worse and we’re done. Then the captain just takes off running right straight through the breach regardless of the incoming, right where we were about to go through, moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen, and he’s up on the wall of the next defenses in a bound or two. Moving like a cat and a man at the same time, using his claws to gain the top o’ the defenses where the orcs are shooting from. He just goes straight up the wall like a cat. You ever seen ’em do it? I have. And guess what, the orcs, they’re as surprised as I am and the rest of us, as suddenly the captain, and I know it’s still him because there’s shreds of his gear hanging off all over his new tiger body, is just ripping them to shreds like Wolverine in the X-Men. Claws and jaws and everything.
“He just goes Cro-Mag on them like some running back who cannot, I repeat cannot, be stopped. Not that I ever got one o’ them on my fantasy team, mind. He’s slashing their throats with these big-ass claws, bites a guy’s head off. I mean an orc. And one time, right there in all that chaos as he’s just ruining their defensive line, I seen him pick up two swords and just start running at some of the orcs and then straight through them up there like he’s a spinning top. Except with two really sharp swords because there’s blood spray and I tell you… he’s takin’ limbs off with one slice.
“Everybody’s like… y’know, ’what the…’ and that’s when the sergeant major keys his mike and sends out, ’Net call, all elements, assault, assault, assault.’
“Then it was really on. Assault teams breached the next wall no problem because the orcs with bows and arrows are either trying to shoot the captain now, impossible, or save their asses by getting out of the way. So we had enough time to get over the wall and in among them. After that I lost sight of the captain ’cause we were fighting room to room, but I heard the orcs in other parts of the defended wall screaming for their lives.
“It was awesome, Talk. Barely heard their screams over the tiger roaring and growling, which, honestly, is just about the scariest thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life. Ain’t like at the zoo when it’s behind a cage. Ain’t like that at all. When you’re out there in the jungle with it, and there ain’t no wire, Talker, it’s real scary as real gets, man.”
