Valor and Violence

“Medic!” Erwell shouted as he dragged Groth and Phillip back towards the dying sounds of battle. Or tried to, at least. The giant was literally twice the captain’s size. “Gods be damned, anyone! Help!”

The sergeant major was deathly pale and unsteady on his feet, only a smidge easier to move than a hundred and twenty kilo water bladder. Phillip wasn’t making things any easier either, neither resisting nor helping as Erwell dragged him by the collar of his robe. At this rate, Groth was going to bleed out before one of the squad medics could staunch the wound.

The captain glanced at the mage. The man’s mind was still broken. He likely lacked the faculties to move or do anything by himself at the moment, but leaving him unattended was still a massive risk. On the other side of things, not ditching him could spell the death of one of the finest and most loyal marines in the Corps.

“Fuck it,” he growled, deciding to abandon the mage when the weight of his sergeant major suddenly disappeared.

“Looks like you could use a hand there, sir,” Olic said as he easily took Groth, draping the sergeant major’s arm over his shoulders.

“Corporal! You’re alive!”

Olic’s eyebrows knitted together, though the faint hint of a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. “Aye, you sound surprised?”

Erwell looked past the towering man and realised he had stumbled back to the scene of his run in with the knights. The mace wielding knight was sitting against a stack of crates, wheezing and holding a hand to his caved-in chest plate. His breathing was shallow but slow, and getting slower as Erwell watched.

Ribs punctured the lung. He’s done for.

A second knight lay nearby, his helmet caved in and a pool of clumpy liquid leaking out the openings.

“Why did you use the mace?” Erwell asked, before spotting the final knight. He was lying face down, his upper body propped comedically off the floor by Olic’s sword, which had been rammed through the visor slit. “I see. Nevermind.”

“Aye. I’ll come back and pull it out later, damn thing is jammed tight. Let’s get the three of you back to the squads.”

With the loads distributed far more efficiently, the men hurried through the maze, coming upon the rest of the marines in short order.

“Squad leaders, report!” Erwell barked, roughly forcing Phillip to the ground as his two sergeants approached.

“Three dead, five seriously wounded, sir.”

“Make that six. The Sergeant Major needs immediate attention.”

One of the squad leaders nodded and shouted for his medic.

“Thank you,” Erwell said. “What of the enemy?”

“All dead. It was the damndest thing. They fought like demons to the very end. None asked for quarter, and it would have been dangerous for us to offer it.”

Erwell shook his head. He wasn’t surprised, but still confused. These men were no fanatics. Why did they all fight to the death?

“What the Pit happened here?” he asked no one in particular. His squad leaders shuffled their feet, unsure what to say until, unexpectedly, Phillip laughed. It was a dry, wretched thing, full of pain and resignation. “That’s funny, Captain. It was the Pit that happened here.”

Erwell turned around to look at the man. His eyes were still glazed, his mouth hanging slack with a stringy bead of drool spilling between the cracked lips, but it was definitely he who had spoken the words.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” Erwell asked, drawing his sword and advancing on the mage. “Speak plainly or I will run you through.”

“That would be a mercy compared to what is coming. We tried to escape, to reach the failsafe devices and bury this place. But it is too far, and they are close. I can feel them closing on us. Pit,” he said, taking a second to chuckle again. “You can hear them if you listen closely.”

Erwell straightened, straining his ears. At first he could hear nothing, save the wind whistling through the channels carved into the ceiling, but as he focussed, he gradually picked up on something else, underneath the noise. It was faint, and too easily wrapped up and swallowed by the ambient sound of the chimneys, but it was still there. It grew louder and louder until he realised; something was approaching through the tunnels. A lot of somethings.

And they were howling.

“Everyone! Back to the surface! Move!” he shouted. His men didn’t need to be told twice. They leapt into action, the bigger marines snatching up the wounded and sprinting alongside the smaller ones. Erwell grabbed one of the unencumbered soldiers as he shot past.

“You, take the mage. He said something about a failsafe device, I think it was those bands we passed a while back. Get him there and get ready to bury this place.”

“And you, sir?”

“I’ll be along shortly. Wait for us. Though, if anything other than a Calandorian marine comes up that tunnel… don’t hesitate.”

The marine gave him a steely eyed nod and seized the mage, running for the surface tunnel while Erwell walked to where Olic and the medic tended to Groth.

“What’s the hold up?” Erwell asked.

“Medic said he needs to make sure the wound is packed correctly. It’s a mess in there; if he leaves a gap, the sergeant major’ll be dead before we reach sunlight,” Groth replied. If he was worried about the baying coming from the tunnels, he gave no sign. The medic looked bloody terrified, though, his hands shaking and sweat dripping down his face as he worked.

“Steady, marine. Just do what you’ve been trained to, and everything will be fine.”

The medic looked up with gratitude written across his features.

“Thanks, sir,” he said.

“Bloody Pit man!” Erwell shouted. “Don’t look at me, keep working! Can’t you hear what’s coming?”

The medic yelped and went back to work. Olic gave the captain a disapproving glare, but Erwell shrugged it off. “We’ll be fine, but he still doesn’t have time to faff around,” he explained.

The men stood in silence, Olic producing a cigarette and sparking it as they stared down at the medic, doing their best to ignore the noises as they grew louder. The lance corporal glanced at Erwell and offered him the smoke.

“Thanks, but no thank you.”

Olic pointedly looked down at the captain’s thigh, and Erwell abruptly realised he was beating a nervous staccato out with his fingers. He sighed and accepted the cigarette, taking a grateful drag. By the time the medic straightened up, cleaning his blood-stained hands with a rag, whatever was surging through the tunnels was close enough that individual… things could be distinguished amongst the general cacophony.

“Well done, son. Olic, if you would.”

The lance corporal dutifully snatched Groth off the floor, settling the huge marine across his shoulders as though he weighed no more than a child.

“Alright, let’s get the Pit out of here.”

They sprinted into the tunnel, the sounds almost immediately changing pitch behind them as the mystery horde spilled out onto the impromptu battlefield. The volume reached a terrible peak as they closed on the fleeing marines, and Erwell dropped his hand to his sword, resolved to stand and buy Olic time to escape with the others. Just as he was ready to plant his feet and face this new and dreadful force, though, the sounds of pursuit began to fade. For some reason, Phillip’s demons slowed as they came across the aftermath of the battle. Erwell breathed a sigh of relief, although he tried not to think about why Phillip’s demons had been slowed by a pile of corpses.

“It seems like they’re hanging around in the workshop,” Olic muttered, barely out of breath despite the lit cigarette still dangling from his lips.

“Indeed, but I don’t know how long we can count on it.”

They passed the next few minutes in silence, save the sounds of their boots thudding through the tunnels and the increasingly ragged breathing of the captain and medic, before they rounded a corner and found Oliver, Phillip, and the marine who had dragged the mage from the arena.

The marine was dead.