Jacob couldn't believe his eyes. He just couldn't. The undead, dozens of them, no hundreds, discharging from buildings all across the other side of the road like an endless stream of puss from a septic wound. He screamed. It was a nightmare! Got to be one. First Sarge turned into a damn tree, and then the same thing happened to two soldiers further down the parapet. It's got to be nightmare!

He slapped his face. "Wake up, Jacob! W... w... wake up!"

It didn't help, of course, neither did pinching – and he tried really hard.

The air soon filled with the bellowing cries of the Bloodmaws, the bleating of horns, and the ringing of alarm bells all across the Golden Holt. When he managed to wrest his gaze from the monstrous tide sweeping towards him, he could see that his comrades were already spilling from tens and houses all along their side of the wall. The whole army was on the move to their assigned posts. One question remained, though...

How the fuck would they get to his little piece of this nightmare with both access towers blocked?!?

"S... Shit!" he muttered, pulling his sword from the scabbard. He needed two tries to do so, and then he dropped it onto the stone floor, his hands were shaking that bad. It skittered over the floor towards the rim of the parapet and the subsequent void below, for there was no wall on their side of the Golden Wall, just a twelve stride drop down onto hard cobblestones. He bolted after it, hurling himself forward, his fingers closing around the wire-wrapped grip of the hilt just as the sword tipped over the rim. He'd put too much force into his lunge, though and was slipping over the wet stone, like shit over a greased shovel.

No-no-no-no!

Jacob cried out, digging his fingers into the stone of the parapet, almost letting go of his sword when his fingernails broke and splintered. He came to a precarious rest, half his body on the parapet, the rest flopping from it. Strange how the droop to the cobblestones below seemed even deeper, even though he technically was closer to the ground than when he had been standing upright.

"Oh shit," he hissed. "Oh sh... sh... damn."

Would a drop from this height kill him or merely cripple him. It certainly had proved quite deadly for Ulli, he realized, when his gaze was drawn to the body of his former comrade. Down there he lay, rain pooling in his eye-sockets. Just a couple of steps away from one of the supply wagons, limbs twisted at unhealthy angles, brains spattered in a wide corona over the cobblestones. At least, Ulli wouldn't come back, not with that head wound. Slowly, with the infinite care of a snail crawling over a razor blade, Jacob pushed himself back, then rolled onto his back.

For a moment, he just remained where he was, breathing hard, rain battering his face, his heart, in turn, battering his ribcage like a caged lunatic. He didn't think he had the strength to get up... and then it came to him. Why should he get up? It probably was but a matter of moments before the first of these bloody spiked ghouls came over the parapet. Maybe they would think him dead and just leave him be?

Hmm...

Or maybe they would tear him apart and stuff his warm flesh into his mouth?

Suddenly Jacob was up again, sword in his hand, looking around frantically for any means of escape. The two towers were out of the question, their upper stories collapsed and no doubt blocking the stairs. It would take the boys some time to clear the rubble, time he didn't have. Time they didn't have. The parapets were out of the question as well, the walkway in both directions now ending in steep drops.

He looked around, realizing with a dread more profound than any he had felt in his life that he was the only man on this section of the parapet. There were half a dozen other soldiers by the second tower, blocked off like him from retreat by a section of collapsed walkway. That left him with roughly fifty paces to cover on his own.

"S... hit. Shit. S...hit!"

He tentatively looked over the barbican, eyes almost bursting from their sockets as he saw that some of the monsters had already reached the wall, were climbing towards him. Those damn steel-studded ghouls! They scaled the rough stone like some debased kind of salamanders. There was a good half dozen of them and as a man, their beady black eyes all fixed on him, ropy teeth-studded tongues flicking from leech-mouths in eagerness for his flesh.

Fuck that!

Jacob turned around, lurching to the other side of the parapet, looking down. There had been a hay cart standing down there the other day, he'd seen one, he was sure of it. Damn it, where was it? There! Maybe four paces from the wall, by the road. He swallowed hard... It was still a twelve pace drop and he wasn't even sure it was the same card he'd seen. This one had canvas spanning it to keep the hey dry. He blinked. If there was any hay at all... Maybe it was empty. Maybe it was full of arrows and spears and other pointy things.

The image of those ghoul's tongues flicked through his mind. The teeth on them too had been pointy too.

"S... Shit on... it," he muttered, falling back to get a good run.

If I survive this, I'm going to find that damned bullshit artist of a minstrel and string him up by his balls!

At least the parapet was three strides wide. Not much for a running start but better than nothing. He had to be quick now, had to, not only for the ghouls crawling up the wall but also because of his comrades. There was a lot going on down on the streets already, a plethora of soldiers in the colors of Marschen clogging the base of the tower, unable to get to their battle stations. Sergeants and officers doing what they were best at – bellowing orders. If anyone saw that he fled his post, they'd probably hang him – even if he survived what he was about to do.

The thought of him dangling on the end of a rope, though out, eyes bulging, shit and piss oozing down his twitching legs as the world faded to black made him falter. Then he heard the scraping of metal over stone... his head jerked around and he saw a bony hand with steel spikes driven directly into the fingers reach over the stone.

Suddenly he was in the air. There was no rational decision, no more weighing of options. One moment he was standing on the parapet, the other he was falling, eyes wide with terror, mouth clenched tight shut so he wouldn't scream and alert anybody to his heroic retreat. He flailed desperately with arms, kicked spastically with both legs as his behind somehow got buoyancy. It seemed his body somehow believed it could change the fact that he was dropping like a turd down a waste shaft and he tilted up, up until he couldn't see the ground any longer.

All he could see was the grey, lusterless sky high above him, a part of him flabbergasted by the fact that the rain seemed to stand still – which of course it didn't. It was merely hurdling towards the ground, just like he was. They were both falling equally fast... He screamed then, knowing with absolute certainty he wouldn't make it, the scream plucked from his mouth and carried away by the wind. He wouldn't make it. He was sure of it... any second he would scatter his brains on those unforgiving cobblestones like Ulli, or worse, break his back and lay there, unable to move.

He closed his eyes.

There was a feeling of contact, something briefly slowing his fall, then giving way, tearing... then all the air was driven from. Something squelched ... he was pretty sure he was that something.

That's it, he thought, death... squashed onto the cobblestones like a pile of dung.

Then his body asserted his needs again and he gulped down air. He instantly started choking. Death smelled like shit! He opened his eyes, a groan escaping him unbidden. He tentatively moved his fingers, then his leg. Amazingly all was still working, but where the hell did that stink come from? He tried to lift himself up, his hand sinking into something that felt like mud. It squelched...

Then the realization hit him.

He'd not dropped into a hay cart, but into the cart for horse dung. They've started collecting the stuff when it became clear that there was not a lot of wood to be had in the Holt. Dry horse shit burned quite nicely, after all...

"S... S... Shit," he muttered.

Shit had saved his life... at least for now.

He let his head fall back into the heap of dung that had been his savior and started laughing. He didn't want to – he had to get the hell away from here after all – but just couldn't help it. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed some more, rain falling onto his face through the roughly man-shaped hole in the canvas above. Still giddy, reality slowly pressed back on him though and he managed to get on his feet, squelching his way to the rear of the wagon, dung sucking on his boots.

He reached the end of the wagon, pulling aside the canvas and slithered outside, falling into a puddle of brown water that had collected below the wagon. Jacob didn't care, still smiling, giddy with being alive – a smile that froze on his face, as the thunder of hooves on stone made him jerk his head around.

A figure on horseback came barging his way, a broadsword in meaty hand. Jacob paled as he recognized the tabard of the man. The pictogram of a black skeletal tree upon a green... The symbol of Marshen. It was one of the officers.

"Coward!" the man bellowed and Jacob scrambled onto his feet as his life depended on it – which probably it did.

He began to stutter in reply. "N... N... No, sir! I... I..."

The bulky man reigned his horse in, a big white beast steaming air into Jacobs' face and making him fall back.

"Liar!" the officer bellowed, waving his sword. "You did not even try to defend the wall! Traitor!"

Beyond him, a few dozen strides away, Jacob could see some of his comrades looking his way. Probably the show was to their benefit... Nothing better to motivate your own men with a bit of deserter punishment before a battle.

The officer's waxed monster of a handlebar mustache was positively quivering with outrage as he shouted. "I have seen you jump! You deserted your post, let the enemy into our domain! For cowards like you, there is but one reward."

Jacob's mouth dropped open, as the lunatic actually raised his sword to cleave his head apart. The unfairness of it all was almost too much to bear. To be killed – murdered – just so he could be made an example. It just wasn't right.

Just like before on the wall where he suddenly had been falling, Jacob noticed his arm was suddenly up and what was even more surprising, was that he somehow still had managed to hold on to his sword – a sword whose tip he'd rammed into his would-be executioner's groin.

Now how did that happen?

The officer looked down on him, eyes wide – shocked – his broadsword frozen over his head. Jacob was pretty sure that he looked no less flabbergasted than the man. He felt the insane need to apologize for what his sword had done. After all, he would never do something like this, not him. Never.

Before he could say anything tough or do anything, something blurred through the air and the officer was gone all of a sudden. A noise like a cupboard full of pans falling over indicating that the man had dropped from his horse. The white stallion reared, then bolted away, leaving Jacob with a bloody sword in hand. He thought for a moment, he'd killed the man.

The reality was much more reassuring – and horrible at the same time though.

One of the spiked ghouls had jumped onto the officer and ripped him from his saddle. Now the studded daemon was ripping into the officer. Clawing, scratching, tearing... there was not a lot of exposed flesh on the officer, so it went right for his face. The officer was twitching wildly, but not screaming – Jacob realizing with a start why.

The ghoul had actually shoved his long teeth studded tongue down his throat in a grotesque parody of a kiss. Just as he was watching, the worm-like thing burst out from the officer's neck in a gout of blood.

The monster had ruptured the man's artery, from the inside!

Then something crashed through into the wagon. His head whipped around. Someone – or rather something – apparently had the same idea as him. It, however, displayed not the same merriment as he had, was snarling and clawing its way from the muck with mindless ferocity.

He turned around as he heard metal scraping from above and saw his horror that the remaining ghouls were climbing down the walls head down, moving as nimbly as giant spiders, snarling and flapping their teeth-studded tongues around. One of them was halfway down the wall as it brought its feet under it, then launched itself from the wall and towards him.

He screamed, stumbled back, maybe soiled himself a little – not that it mattered, covered in shit like he was – and again his sword seemed to have a mind of its own. He just pointed it up and the ghoul impaled itself on it, the weapon driving right through his gullet and into his body. He'd seen something similar at a circus once. Sword-Swallowing, the trick had been called.

The effect was quite similar here.

His sword was wrenched from his hand, painfully jarring his wrist as the thing crashed down onto the ground. It wasn't dead though, jumping up immediately, probably being rather surprised that its range of view was limited to staring upwards now thanks to three feet of steel showed down its throat.

It was not pleased.

Clawing around ferociously, it stumbled around, claw-tipped fingers hissing through the air. Hissing and squealing also came from the wagon, and from the ghoul still crouched over the twitching officer.

And once again, the world skipped a few beats, for suddenly the ghouls were gone and Jacob was running, screaming like he was born to do nothing else. Luckily, nobody tried to stop the shit-covered madman running away from the front-lines.

His comrades had bigger problems now.    

********************************************

It seems like Jacob is in qute a pickle.

Ghouls behin him, crazy officers in front.

What would you have done in his case?  

And more importantly: "Who you gonna call?" 

;)

M.