The Song of Roland Ch. 20

Without conscious intent, she tugged just gently upon the unseen string that had been tied between each other over the course of their shared experiences; it was much like Carl's filament, only thicker. Deeper. She could feel his heartbeat. Her head swam and her mind raced as that fact became immutably clear to her. He was alive! She had to know more; she had to find him, bring him back to her.

She followed the thread, pushing herself farther than she ever had with one so distant. But there was something strange in the connection; a feeling of melding, of connection beyond mere inspection. She could feel his haggard breath, the slow rise and fall of his chest as though he were touching her skin to skin. Intrigued, Kelsea dug still deeper.

Her eyes clouded and the world around her fell away. She felt something strange: a pressure in her chest, making it hard to breathe even as she exerted herself. There was a smothering sensation, like another's body being held against her. Each footstep upon the ascending steps drifted her farther and farther away from her present. She knew she was standing, climbing as well. Yet for some reason her perspective shifted. She was on her hands and knees, draped as if upon a bed.

There was a presence beneath her. A silhouette, black and indistinct despite its proximity. It appeared to be startled at her sudden appearance, but soon settled into an ambivalent sort of disquiet. She could hear a voice, speaking softly to her. It was a one-sided conversation.

"Aye. It's nothing, Callie. Just..." There was a pause. "Nevermind. It's nothing."

Callie? Who was-

"Thank the Gods, yeah?" The voice continued. It gave a terse chuckle. "'Tis a far fairer face I get to wake up to, each morning."

Kelsea tried to call out to him, but her voice was airless. Her throat a nonexistent notion.

"Who knows?" Roland muttered, his voice terse and subdued. "Flying badgers and the like, maybe? I can never recall my dreams after waking."

Kelsea didn't understand him. She pulled harder at the string, trying to get his attention, to talk to him, to find where he was. Roland. She called out. It was a command, like the one she'd given to Carl before.

She felt the figure draw back, it twisted back and forth beneath her, seeming to squirm from her overt influence. "A-aye..." Roland said, he did not hear the question she asked. "I saw it again: us. That field outside of town. You were running through the sunflowers, and I gave chase. I caught you, but then you..." There was a painful silence. Kelsea's own chest constricted. "You changed." She did not understand what he was talking about. "It's just a foolish nightmare."

Can you hear me?

"No." He replied. Her heart leapt for a moment before she realized he wasn't responding to her.

"What?! No! Of course not!" He leaned forward, his illusory lips brushing against her own. She felt a ghost of a kiss. "They won't have to know. After we're wed, we can-" Kelsea wanted to cry at the words. She wanted to move the sky itself to reach him in that moment.

"They don't have to." He said firmly, "I love you Callie; that's all that matters."

The momentary euphoria dribbled away. Bit by bit Kelsea came to realize that something was truly amiss. Roland! She cried out, now truly desperate. She was all but yanking at his thread. It's me! It's Kelsea! I need to know you're okay! Who are you talking to? She felt a pang of helplessness when he didn't respond. Don't ignore me!

"To hell with them, then!" He said, not grasping the irony of the words he spoke. "I want you with me." He reached out and touched her face. Kelsea could almost feel it. "Here. For good... and damn the consequences." Kelsea shook her head. This was all happening too fast. She could not process any of it.

Roland laughed, an uproarious, booming thing that Kelsea had never heard before. It made her want to return it in kind, despite her own despair. It sounded so... happy. She didn't think she'd ever heard him so honestly joyful. "You think I care for titles and honors? I'll resign the Guard tomorrow, if you'll just say yes."

The Guard... he had once said he'd been a part of his town guard. But wasn't that years ago, now?

Where are you Roland?

"I don't care." Roland said, fierce and fearless in the statement. "He can be as mad as he likes. My life is my own to live." He kissed her again. Kelsea closed her eyes as she felt a yawning chasm open in her chest. "With you."

It was her... the girl he had told her about, in the aftermath of her deplorable decision to indulge her petty jealousy and sleep with both Carl and the Harpy in the cave. It was the only time he had ever volunteered a word about his past that hadn't been dragged out of him by her own tireless efforts. She'd never inquired further about it, after all that had happened since. But she had not forgotten the brief anecdote.

Kelsea could not let it go. Using the whole of her strength she clawed at the taut string, using all her might to pull at him, to draw him closer to her. She saw something, a faint mirage, far more indistinct than even Roland was to her. There was something there, in the darkness. A second presence, a dark figure with eyes like her own. It stared back at her, unceasing and enraged at her intrusion. The wire snapped back, and Kelsea was catapulted from Roland's mind.

She fell, feeling no wind as the void within her welled up to fill her cognizance. She screamed, but there was no sound.

There was a cold breeze. A hand was roughly shaking her shoulder. The world slid back into place. She blinked, her eyes turning in blank incomprehension as she found herself standing at the top of the Cloister wall, her journey completed. Beneath her, the stone steps had already slid back into place within the wall. Far below, a squat Dwarven priest was warring with a throng of Imps. The battle wasn't even close, like a provoked anthill trying to slay a mountain range. She glanced back, and found Carl standing there, an abnormal expression on his face. The wind tousled her hair, and as she moved to brush the stray locks aside the back of her hand felt wetness on her cheeks.

"Are you even listening to me?" Carl was shouting, but she heard it like a whisper. Kelsea could not seem to shake her unsteady vertigo. His hands were on his shoulders and he was shaking her. There were men running about on the narrow wall. Soldiers with crude weapons and ill-fitting chainmail tunics of mismatched coloration. Behind Carl's shoulder, she could make out the sight of eight great structures set within the circular shape of the inner walls.

Kelsea shook herself to try to knock herself out of her stupor. She felt like she'd aged years in the space of seconds, her emotions on her sleeve and a vulnerable tread on her spirit. She blinked hard again. "I'm-" She forced herself to exhale. "I'm fine. What happened?"

"You tell me." Carl said, staring at her. "We climbed up the steps, and halfway up you started growling. I asked what was going on and you didn't even look at me. Your eyes were-" He shook his head. "Well, they weren't 'human' if you catch my drift. You got to the top, and then you just... stopped. You've been standing there like a statue for almost a minute, now." Carl peered at her, shock stretching itself across his face. "Are you-"

Kelsea turned away and wiped at her eyes. "Yeah." She said. There was no sense trying to hide it. "Let's go. We have to get to the southern gate."

The look on his face told her that he was still disturbed by her sudden lethargy. "Change of plans, actually." Carl said, a hard note in his voice as he said it. "Seems 'Captain Guyles' needs us over there." The bowman pointed in the rough direction of a spot on the wall where a large concentration of militiamen were in the midst of a frantic defense against an unseen aggressor beneath them. It was on the opposite side of the wall, where the fires in the Outer Cloister burned brightest. "He saw us climb the wall and told us to follow him, said the Imps were starting to scale the walls from over there and none of the Priests can be spared to help."

"What about Almyra?" Kelsea asked.

"You wanted to win the battle, make sure we live the night?" Carl nodded in that direction. "-Then odds are that's the direction we want to run in."

Kelsea breathed in and out, her mind a jumbled mess as it swayed dangerously back and forth between the present, the past, and that abiding dreamscape where she'd found Roland. He was alive. For now that would have to be enough. She nodded at Carl, and together the two of them soldiered onwards, their course taking them right instead of left, following the circle of the wall's outline towards the thickest of the fighting.

They crossed the empty thoroughfare of the thick, alabaster parapets. The avenues atop the defenses were almost abandoned now, with what sparse militiamen there were scattered in small groups upon the wall separated by long sections of emptiness. They were little more than lookouts. Kelsea and Carl sprinted past the northern gatehouse, a formidable defensive barrier manned by a half dozen frightened looking men. They gave startled glances as the two strangers moved in their midst, but did little to impede them.

Onwards they ran, the din of combat and twanging bows growing as they approached a great mass of guardsmen, straddling the walls as a concentrated line of resistance. Everyone was running to and fro, standing up from the crenellations, lowering themselves to reload, calling out to one another and pointing at some unseen danger. There was shouting, yelling, and the occasional frantic prayer. Most were wielding bows, firing straight down at something directly beneath them. Kelsea could hear the scrape of stone and the sound of snarling Imps. In the center of it all was a large man bearing a thick, grey mustache, his body clad head to toe in heavy chainmail that for once seemed to actually match his stature. 'Captain Guyles,' she presumed.

He strode across the battlements, shouting orders and encouragements in equal measure. Emblazoned on his wide surcoat was the image of a seven-legged spider with a crippled eighth leg, encircled in a ball of yellow upon a field of black. He bore no helm, his long mane of flecked gray and brown spilling down his shoulders like a banner. In one hand he clutched a long spear, and about his neck was hung a curved warhorn. He lifted the thing to his lips, his cheeks puffing from the force of the air he was expelling through it. He fired forth a sonorous burst of sound that carried across the whole of the village. He blew three times in quick succession, a signal of some kind. His barrel chest heaved as his face grew red.

Carl ran up to him, and Kelsea moved to follow, her fingers clutching the maul to her chest as she arrived at the final border of the Cult's failing borders. Beyond the walls, she got her first good look at the devastation that had been wrought by the attack. In the hour or so since she had fled with Roland from the dilapidated house she had first sought shelter in, almost the whole eastern half of the town had been set ablaze.

There was the stench of burning flesh and the crying agony of humanity. Though mere shadows beneath them, Kelsea's eyes could spot the telltale physical positions of monstrous rape occurring beneath her. Demonic hellflame had gutted the core of the houses and hovels that had dotted the exterior, and many on the northern side were still on fire. Kelsea could actually trace the direction of the still unseen Demon's path of destruction by the line of fires leading onwards. She couldn't be more than a hundred feet away from where they were, now. Even as she watched a large two story barn was completely engulfed in flames, its fires rising like entreating fingers towards the uncaring heavens.

Kelsea stuck her head over the side and saw a wide swath of wall covered in Imps, like chicken pox on a youth's face. They climbed, their claws spiking into the white stone as they scaled it bit by bit. None had yet managed to reach the top of the wall, thanks to an unending deluge of projectiles and dropped rocks knocking them from their perches. But the sheer arithmetic of the situation meant that it would not take long for some to finally do so.

As Carl arrived at the side of the man leading the defense, he exchanged a few rapid words lost to the wind. He pointed first at himself, then Kelsea, then made a circular motion with his hand. The grizzled warrior nodded. He gestured to a spot on the wall, near a point where the inner stairwell topped out and led downwards into the Inner Cloister's central courtyard. Carl nodded and grabbed Kelsea by the arm, dragging her along with him. She could barely hear from all the noise.

"Where are we going?" She yelled.

"Where the fighting is thickest!" He shouted back. Kelsea looked around at the exhausted and haggard souls manning the wall. The wall was too long, the defenders too few. Several soldiers' faces were locked stiff with fright, their eyes glassy as they robotically continued to fire arrows and drop heavy stones. They had to have been fighting here at the wall this whole time. The knowledge that they were the last line of defense for their friends and families had to add an element of desperation in their resistance. She could see several women in the group, apparently gender was irrelevant here, at the end of all things. It only mattered that they could fight.

Carl came up short to a spot on the walls that was unmanned. He held her back with his hand by the chest as he gave her a long look. Behind them was the stairwell downwards. Below them were what seemed like dozens of Imps, making their slow progress up the steep cliffs. "Stay here with me!" He shouted. "If any Imps come over the edge, smash them back down the way they came!"

And with that Carl turned, leaning over the precarious drop as he drew back his bowstring, beginning a slow, steady barrage into the teeth of the assault. Soon Imps were dropping from the wall, one by one in ever increasing amounts. Kelsea could not help but marvel at the fluidity with which he moved, the easy grace he had even as the world around them burned.

It wasn't enough. It could never be enough. The first of the Imps reached the lip of the wall in concentrated groups. The first sign of them came as the bowman the next crenellation over from Carl was skewered in the stomach by an Imp who reached the top. The exhausted fighter had been so focused on shooting down the monster's compatriots that he became overwhelmed as several climbed up at once. He let out a death cry as the Imp's strength dragged him off the wall, an acceptable sacrifice of useful fuckmeat for the sake of further plunders once they had taken the walls.

In a flash there were Imps in the area. Kelsea lifted her hammer, stalking over to them even as a paltry number of reinforcements rushed over from other sections of the wall to help. A furious war ensued as men charged the small beachhead the Imps had made. Kelsea waded into the fray, taking care to avoid swinging wildly as she used her superhuman strength to bat the creatures out of the way. Though the Imps were stronger one to one with their opponents, the sheer weight of coordinated attacks from all angles soon left the initial attackers overwhelmed. Kelsea stood atop the lip of the crenellation, swinging down at any Imp foolish enough to try to reach the top of it.

More were coming though, and she knew that they were fighting on borrowed time. Minutes became an endless cycle of lifting and lowering her heavy hammer. Though she did not tire in the conventional way her fellow defenders did, Kelsea could see the difficulty with which holding this place was becoming. As the Imps continued their attack, more and more spots on the wall would be threatened, leaving fewer and fewer to hold each individual point. Eventually something had to give. The Imps numbers were thinning considerably... but not quick enough.

Carl stood nearby, covered in sweat and panting profusely. He was soon emptied of his quiver, and had been forced to retrieve stray arrows cast about on the ground till one of the younger conscripts could fetch him a new one. His normally handsome, blonde features were matted with sweat and he strained to pull his bow back each time. Yet there was no hesitation; for all his hard words to her in the tavern, now that the singular moment was upon him, Carl was as ardent a defender as any on the walls. For a time, the pace and intensity of the fighting slackened as new waves of Imps concentrated themselves on new spots on the wall.

Kelsea, granted a momentary reprieve from the madness, exchanged a look with Carl as he continued to fire down without abatement. He met her eyes, the ash from the fires beginning to rain on the both of them as the clearing fog and dissipating snow was replaced with black smoke. His face was unfathomable, caught in a moment of struggle so momentous that all hubris and mendaciousness had stolen away from him. "What is it, Succubus?" He said, drawing back his strained arm. It did not pull back all the way anymore, shaking every time he held the string taught. They were lucky no one was near enough to hear.

"I'm sorry." She said, looking down to see a hideous creature with a shark's gaping maw snap at her from several feet below. She swiped at it, but the thing lost its balance as it attempted to dodge the attack, plummeting to the ground below. There were Imp bodies stacked a half dozen high in places beneath the wall.

Carl fired another arrow. "...For what?" He said. It was a genuine query, spoken in the moment.

She lifted and lowered her grip on the hammer in her hands, her nerves shot. "You know 'for what.'" She said. She was sincerely glad that none of the Cultists were paying them any mind, the fighting falling to a lull where they were.

"Ah." He said, shaking his head back and forth. He looked exhausted. "Pay it no mind, Succubus."

"Kelsea." She said, not really expecting a response.

He let out a weary chuckle. "Sure. Why not? 'Kelsea.'" She jerked in place, turning to look at him in surprise as he managed to draw her in with a brash smile. The fight was no longer in his eyes. He stood, rugged and lithe as the blue light lit up the left side of his face, growing in intensity till she could see the whole of him staring back at her in it's-

Blue light.

Kelsea turned her head, watching as if in slow motion the enormous inferno of balefire that rushed upon them from the Outer Cloister as if from nowhere. It overtopped the wall, roiling in a great mass as if contained within a bottle before it slapped against the battlements. It rushed upwards, like an irresistible tide against insufficient shore barriers in a storm. In an instant it was cresting the crenellations, spilling out like a flash flood upon the ground before washing up and over in an even more exuberant overflow. She moved, her legs wading through ankle-deep fire as she unthinkingly grabbed a screaming Carl by the collar and leapt with him off the back of the battlements. She led with her back, falling down six feet to the steps of the stairs before bouncing hard against the stone and rolling. She felt something snap, and her back jolted with pain. Her breath stole from her lungs.

He was in her arms. Gods, he was on fire: they were both aflame. Even as they rolled she could see the blue heat dripping down their side of the wall from above, splashing little droplets of hell like an overfull cup onto the stone around. They spilled to a heap at the bottom of the stairs, a tangle of human and Demon as both twitched and twisted together. Kelsea had taken the brunt of the damage falling down the stairs, but Carl...