"The Holy Kingdom of Theodinaz was another such bone, one where getting rid of their nuisance was mostly considered not worth the expenditure. Long a theocratic state, a revolution three hundred years ago, supposedly started by descendants of immigrants from my homeland, cemented the Holy Kingdom into what it became nowadays.

A kingdom of fanatical zealots, to whom their revered God-King's words were law and divine command at once. This fanatical zealotry was what gave most of the small nation's neighbors pause about starting hostility, despite the Holy Kingdom's hostile policy against them." - Excerpt from "History of the Nations of Alcidea" by Owain Fiachna, Scholar and Historian, circa 565 VA.

The fighting that erupted around the fifth, and final line of defense, a mere thirty meters away from the chapel, was violent, chaotic, and desperate. The leaderless zealots just threw their bodies at the defenders, without the slightest care for their own lives. The defenders, backed into a corner with no way out, fought like their lives depended on it, for it did.

Less than five hundred defenders held to the last line of defense, while nearly five times their number in zealots rushed at them wildly, with no semblance of strategy or discipline whatsoever.

Nearly half of the defenders were badly injured people who forced their body to move and fight with sheer willpower, as they went back into battle to help the others. Far too many of the original defenders were sent to the warrens with heavy injuries, or lay dead on the blood-soaked hill.

Reinhardt saw how a couple of dwarves brought Barnaby away on a makeshift stretcher, the dwarven mercenary captain bleeding from a serious head wound. He saw uncle Angus, Graf Harscape himself, lead the wounded volunteers to help bolster the defenses personally. Even now the old dwarf fought at the frontlines along with the rest, which helped their morale some.

Grünhildr had returned to the frontlines a few hours after she withdrew, probably around midnight. The brawny woman's arms were wrapped with bandages all over, and the void blades she clad her axes with flickered from time to time, a sign of her mana being unstable, yet she stubbornly fought on regardless, as she cleaved one zealot after another.

Elfriede fought next to Reinhardt, or rather, she borrowed his bulk to shelter behind. She had taken a couple bad hits to her leg, one of the wounds bleeding quite badly, and he noticed how she moved with a pronounced limp, yet she refused to go back and also fought on.

From high on the bell tower, Salicia kept firing arrows, often to directly help the wavering line. Twice Reinhardt turned to an onrushing foe just to see them struck dead by an oversized arrow from above.

What few archers remained amongst the zealots had not remained idle, and had riddled the rooftops and the bell tower with arrows. All the other archers who were with Salicia had either withdrawn with injuries or died.

The one-eyed woman herself somehow managed to remain atop the bell tower. She used the corners of the tower and the bell itself as cover, while firing back whenever she got a chance to do so.

Reinhardt himself had no idea how long they had fought, or what hour it was. He just fought on, without pause. The polemace he usually wielded lightly felt heavy in his arms, and his legs tired, yet he kept himself moving, fighting, killing.

Over a dozen smaller injuries scored his flesh, bleeding wounds that had no time to heal with his constant fighting. The darkness helped somewhat, as the zealots fought worse in the darkness, their blows less accurate, whereas most of the defenders had little issue with the darkness.

Sometimes they got unlucky, however. Nicole had tripped and fell down while she tried to take a step back, and immediately was pounced upon by a spearwielding zealot. The spear pierced through her stomach and out her back, pinning her to the ground even as she swiped with her blade and took the man's head off his shoulders.

Reinhardt saw a couple of older women - the dependents who could not fight - rush over and risked their lives to bring Nicole away, towards the warrens where their few healers awaited. He just did his best to cover their escape.

He was somewhat delirious, perhaps due to fatigue, perhaps it was the blood loss, he did not know, but the rest of the battle was a blur in his memory. His body moved, guided by the memories of his well-trained muscles, as he struck and stabbed, bashed and pierced, and stood his ground with the rest.

When a zealot threw a knife that stabbed into Elfriede's shoulder while she killed another, he replied by bashing the offending man's head in. Brain matter, blood, and bits of skull splattered everyone in the vicinity, including Reinhardt, but he had not cared.

Another, younger zealot - barely out of childhood, perhaps - snuck in towards his wife from behind the man she was in the process of eviscerating, with a knife in her hand, her intent obvious. Reinhardt pushed away the man whose axe he had blocked with the shaft of his polemace, which placed him next to the surprised girl.

He then smashed his mace towards the man he was fighting, forcing the man to block with both of his hands, and at the same time, leaned towards the sneaking girl, and tore the surprised girl's throat out with his fangs before she could react.

The man he was fighting bellowed with grief and agony, and pushed his mace away with a surprising sudden burst of strength, but by then Elfriede returned the favor, and before the man could do more, her blade had found his heart and pierced through.

He gave her a grim nod to thank her which she returned without turning his way, as they fought on, against the seemingly unending wave of zealots.

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

The battle in Fort Ascher lasted until the sun had risen the next morning.

Not many remained standing on the battlefield, probably a hundred, in a circle around the cathedral itself, on the defender's side. The zealots had five times that, yet these ones were those who had wavered, who had stayed in the back as their more zealous brethren charged and gave their lives for the cause.

They dithered. Fanatical belief warred against self-preservation in their minds. If they all charged, it was likely that they would be able to wipe out the remaining hundred defenders, who were on their last legs, some barely able to just remain standing on their feet.

Yet they doubted. The carnage that spread as far as their eyes could see had implanted a seed of fear in their hearts. Their steps, even when they tried to advance, were uncertain.

They tarried too long.

The clip-clop sound of hooves on a trot slowly, but surely became audible, a sound that gradually seemed to increase in volume, coming from their south.

Some of the remaining zealots wavered once more. They know they did not have any cavalry remaining in the region, much less to the south. A few turned to run, to the protestations of others who tried to rally the rest.

It was too late for them either way.

With a sudden rumbling noise, the rubble that used to be the southern walls opened, an opening wide enough for twenty dwarves to march side to side.

Through the opening, came the source of the noise everyone heard. A thousand dwarves mounted on large, sturdy, wooly rams with huge coiled horns rushed through, shield and weapons in hand, as they urged their mounts to a gallop and charged the remaining zealots.

The cavalry had arrived.