David Mcintee - The Light of Heaven

Distantly, he heard Stoll's voice calling: "South! Loose!" and turned to his right. Sure enough, another wave of goblins was sweeping over the barrier, screaming with rage and lust for blood. Erak ran to the centre of the line facing the onrush, and braced himself.

He cut the head from a polearm that was swinging towards a conscripted defender, then spun and took the head of its owner. The weight and balance of his sword led it naturally into an overhead swing that came down onto a goblin's collarbone and cut down almost to its groin. As someone to his left speared a goblin that was swinging for him, Erak kicked the bifurcated body free and cut down two more.

He looked for anything resembling a leader among the goblins and cut his way towards a burly goblin covered in tattoos. With a roar of defiance delivered right into its spittle-flaked face, he cut the creature's legs out from under it. Another goblin leapt forward, only to receive a shield-boss in the face, hard enough to snap the vicious creature's neck.

Yes, he decided, he was definitely enjoying himself.

Travis Crowe was angry. The goblins had forced him into the hands of the Final Faith and were generally screwing up his day. He also hated them on general principles and imagined that everyone else did too. They were inhuman, flesh-eating parasites that needed to be put down hard.

Darting to fill a gap between two Faith pikemen who were kneeling and letting the goblins run onto the blades of their polearms, Crowe blocked the swing of an axe with his broadsword. He then swept the sword round to hook the axe-head with the quillon and pulled it out of the axe-wielder's hands. Then he jabbed the pommel into the goblin's face and thrust the blade-tip through the monster's throat.

Another goblin was right behind its felled comrade but Crowe grabbed the end of the broadsword with both hands and swung the hilt towards the Goblin with all his might. It was an old mercenary trick the goblins hadn't seen before. The quillon punched clean through the thin metal helmet and into the brain behind it, dropping the goblin instantly.

That wasn't nearly enough for Crowe and he screamed back at the goblins, daring the ugly bastards: "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

They may not have understood the words, but they understood the stance and the tone of his cry. Several converged upon him and he laughed in their faces as he parried clumsy and untrained blows and counter-thrust to scrawny green throats all around.

Kannis used hand signals to direct her men to the areas of the barrier that were under the heaviest attack. The fight kept her busy, but nothing was going to stop her wondering where in the Pits these creatures had come from. Her unit had seen some villages razed by goblins, but nothing that implied as many of the creatures as had descended upon the troop the previous day, or as many as were here now.

All around the market square, men and women struggled bravely, bringing down goblin after goblin, but there was no sign of an end to the horde.

Kannis' right-hand man fell first, bravely fencing with three goblins at once, before a goblin got behind him and took his head. She spun and took the goblin's in return, but it was too late for her comrade.

"Sharks!" she called, "Let's show these green bastards who's got the sharpest fangs!"

Her men cheered and pushed forwards. They were almost on the barrier itself, slashing and cutting, kicking bony goblin heads back towards whatever rock they had crawled out from under.

Kannis was satisfied with the way things were going; they were outnumbered, but superior training and weaponry was more than enough to make up the difference. The irony occurred to her that her company probably could have fought their way out of town quite easily. It didn't matter; this was the first decent fight they'd had in years, and the Faith girl was pretty generous with pay.

"Let's earn that pay," she called, blocking a goblin axe and kicking its owner to the ground. She stabbed down with her sword to finish the goblin, then slashed upwards at another's groin. It doubled over and fell.

A gauntleted goblin fist slammed into the side of Gabriella's helmet, sending it clattering across the ground. Too stunned to think, but reacting on instinct, Gabriella slashed out at the fist as it came in again. Her blade bit into goblin sinew and bone and, as the creature screamed, she ran it through before risking a glance around and seeing that almost all her fighters were falling back towards the church.

"Fire the barrier!" Gabriella shouted. The cry was taken up and passed along, all the way along the lines of defenders.

Flaming pots of pitch and some lanterns, arced across and into the midst of the wall of goblins as they surmounted the barricades. A few screamed as the pitch stuck to them and burned, but most ignored the fragile missiles and let them shatter on the rubble. Jeers and hoarse screeches flew back at the defenders of Solnos from the unimpressed raiding party. Then the fragments of burning pitch grenades made it down to the naphtha and spirits-soaked rags that had been packed in between the dry timbers and rubble. Where burning pitch or oil met naphtha or spirits, fire bloomed, reaching out from under the chunks of cracked brickwork and snatching at the legs of the attackers. Gouts of flame burst upwards all along the barrier, forming a curtain of fire that separated the square from the rest of Solnos.

It sounded as if the town itself was screaming, as a few wounded defenders who couldn't get off the barricade and the less-than-human goblins were ignited. Their clothes burned on their backs and limbs, while their skin bubbled and softened, sticking the burning clothing to them.

Blazing goblins ran in blind terror. Some went back into the press of goblins that were stunned by the sudden inferno and ignited many of their own fellows in their thrashing. Others stumbled on through the flames and were dropped in the square by arrows from the church roof.

"At them!" Gabriella heard herself scream. Then she was running forward, her swords slashing left and right, slicing through limbs and throats. Beside her, Erak's longsword cut down everything in front of him and Kannis' troops rallied as they charged over the barricades, as soon as the fire had settled back down, in search of vengeance for their fallen man.

The other soldiers and townspeople fought just as hard, swords and axes biting into goblin flesh with gusto. Kerberos gazed down inscrutably as the fight spread out into the streets and beyond. The goblins were weakening, both physically and psychologically, and within the hour most of those who were being killed by the defenders were being struck in the back as they ran away.

By morning, no goblin still lived within the environs of Solnos.

The sun cast its light over a square filled with blackened corpses and shattered arrows. The stink of blood and seared flesh hung in the morning air, with little enough breeze to dissipate it. The defenders of Solnos were bone-tired, none of them having slept more than an hour, just in case the goblins had planned a second assault.

Gabriella walked over to where Erak rested against the side of the church.

"Let's see if there are any goblin survivors," she said. "One of them may be able to tell us why they have come this far out from the World's Ridge."

They made their way across the square, towards a sprawl of broken and battered goblin corpses. There were defenders mixed in there too, their blood mingling with the greenish ooze that flowed from goblin veins.

Travis Crowe was prodding some of the goblin bodies with his broadsword, just to make sure and he looked up as the two Knights approached.

"You enjoyed that, yeah?" He said. "I know I did. There's nothing quite to so enjoyable as giving vent to your anger, is there love? Taking it out on someone who really deserves it."