Back at the Buena village, Lys finished explaining the last of the instructions he could come up with to the two guards on the eastern section of the wall. Even though he knew they knew their jobs and places well, considering Vessa and Rhuvia had placed them here before going, he still tried his best as much as he could to make sure of everything, knowing not only the whole village, but also his own family's safety depends on these people right now. If these women slack on their watch even a little, stray monsters coming out of the forests might attack the village walls at any time.
Before too many monsters stack up around the village than the wall's defence could handle, they might have to send a small party or two of adventurers out there to thin it out. And that is exactly why he was now checking if guards were on the lookout for every monster coming out of the forests. Without keeping watch, monsters might stack up without anyone knowing. And if even a small part of the wall breaches right now, that would be a disaster.
Lys knew that very well.
"And you! Your shift changes every two hours; don't stay too long, unless you want to give excuses for being late later. There should be two guards here at all times, alright? I want at least one of you to always watch the forest through the holes. And of course, if you need to step away for any reason, the others have to take the watch first. Don't let a single stretch of this wall unguarded for even a minute tonight. Is that clear?"
Both women in front of him nodded. The older one, a villager who still carried the scars of some battle years ago, tapped the horn hanging at her belt.
"Yeah, we'll keep our eyes open, Lys. Go get some rest while you can." Despite her appearance, she had turned out to be much more obedient than Lys thought. So, he didn't have to repeat anything to her.
"Oh, before I forget, if monsters stack up in one place, don't wait for me to know and come; just go straight to the guild. Pell will take care of it. Adventurers are already ready for any changes here."
"Yeah, yeah. I get it already. You don't have to worry too much. I have a little experience with this kind of thing already. If anything serious happens, I'll send somebody to your house, so go and rest." The woman said as she pushed him to walk out of here by force.
Lys gave a short nod and started turning around, satisfied that nobody argued about anything with him on this side of the wall, unlike the western side.
After checking everything twice here and there, a thin thread of relief finally worked its way through his chest. The rotations were set. The people from the outer settlement were already inside the walls. There should be no people around the village in close proximity right now for whom he had to worry about, as far as he knew. Selene was also resting at the house with Mira.
Everything that could be controlled from the village's side had been put in place. There should be no blindsided cannon fire left out of his notice now. And that made him relax a little bit.
He reached the main market square and turned toward the main street, already thinking about sitting down for a few minutes and drinking whatever Mira had left on the table.
But breaking this relaxed mode of his, suddenly the horn blew from behind him.
"BRRRR-OUMMM!"
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"BRRRR-OUMMM-mmmmm!"
It was not the short warning blast used for drills. This was a long, raw, continuous note that tore through the night air from roughly a hundred meters east along the wall. The sound was desperate, unbroken, and wrong. Every head on the western section snapped toward it. The thin relief in Lys's chest that had started to form suddenly vanished in an instant as if it had never been there.
Without stepping even one step forward, he turned around and ran.
Two of the nearest guards, who were also going back to their home after their shift had been over, stopped hearing the blowing sound. They followed him toward the wall without needing an order. Their boots hammered against the packed earth of the walkway.
The horn kept sounding, louder and more urgent the closer they got, until they reached the eastern lookout post, the origin of the sound.
The woman who had blown, the same woman from before, who behaved well with Lys, still had her face pressed hard against one of the narrow viewing holes. When she finally pulled back, her eyes were wide, and the color had drained completely from her face.
"What? What happened, why did you blow the horn suddenly?" Lys asked the woman.
"Look," she said. When she noticed Lys had come back, her voice was thin, almost cracking. She stepped aside so Lys could take her place.
He leaned forward and put his eye to the hole, to see outside.
For a moment his mind simply refused to accept what it saw.
The tree line a few hundred meters out was no longer a dark wall of green.
It was moving.
Hundreds of shapes, maybe more, maybe already a thousand, poured out of the forest at full speed. They were the same dog-sized, bipedal dinosaur-creatures the village had seen earlier in the afternoon, in smaller numbers, for which Pell had sent a small party of adventurers to thin them out, when Lys was in the church.
But now those same types of creatures were coming in a continuous, unbroken tide. But unlike then, now it was in unimaginable numbers.
Low bodies flowed over roots and ditches without slowing. Claws tore the ground. Their hissing carried even through the thick wood of the wall, a rising, hungry chorus that made the hair on Lys's arms stand on end as he was looking through the small hole in the wall.
He pulled his face back from the hole in shock. Every muscle in his body had gone tight with horror.
"Monster wave!" he shouted, turning around. His voice carried down the wall and into the street below. "Everyone to positions! And someone run to the church and the guild, and tell Priest John and Pell, monsters are coming, in large numbers!"
The people who had been resting or talking near the base of the wall, just a little far from his position, scrambled into motion. Weapons that had been set aside were snatched up. Lanterns were lit in a hurry. And first runners ran toward the village road, without looking back.
Lys turned and almost collided with Maen and Shilla. The two Fiora women had come up here from their positions of guarding to check through the hole themselves.
"Oh… Your names were uhhh…. Maen and Shilla, right?" Lys kept his voice as steady as he could manage. "You guys should go to Elder Verna at once. She must be at the chapel, too. Tell her I need every fighter from your tribe she can spare, and I need them here as fast as possible. Do not stop for anything else. Hearing this from your mouth should make her realise the urgency of this situation. You guys saw the wave of monsters, right?"
Both women looked past him toward the wall, then back to his face. They did not waste time answering him. Maen gave a sharp nod. Shilla was already turning.
"We'll bring as many as we can," Maen said as she ran toward the chapel's direction, in the middle of the village.
Before Lys could issue the next order, more footsteps pounded up the walkway. Pell arrived at the head of a mixed group of adventurers, some from the guild, some independents who had stayed in the village after knowing the danger outside. Most of them still looked half-asleep or half-drunk, but the horn had pulled them out into the night with weapons in hand.
Pell skidded to a stop in front of Lys, breathing hard.
"What? What happened? Why is the horn blowing like that?"
Lys did not answer with words. He simply stepped sideways and gestured at the viewing hole.
Pell frowned, leaned in, and looked.
The change in his expression was instant. The usual casual vibe of his speech vanished. He jerked back from the hole as if the wood itself had burned him.
"Shit."
The other adventurers, curiosity overriding caution, took turns at the holes. One after another, they also pulled back with the same bloodless look. A younger woman, clearly a recent arrival, still wearing relatively clean gear, stared at the dark mass moving toward them and swallowed hard.
"Now what do we do?" she asked, looking at Pell. Her voice was small.
Pell looked at her, then at the rest of the group, then at Lys. Some of the usual bravado tried to return to his face, but it sat poorly against the fear still in his eyes.
"What else do you think we do?" he said. "We fight."
Lys stepped back to the hole one more time. The leading edge of the wave had already closed half the distance to the outer fields. In another few minutes the first of them would reach the ditches and stakes the village had prepared. After that it would be the wall itself.
He realizes, whatever they have, they have to do fast, before those things reach the wall.
Behind him, he could hear Pell cursing through his breath, "Fuck, the strike team was supposed to keep a major monster wave like this from coming at the village. Does this mean they fail…" He couldn't finish his sentence before Lys spoke up.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Mister Pell. They have their job to do, and we have ours. Instead of wondering if they failed or not, we should focus on things we can handle right now. I think that is the best we could do right now, considering our options."
"Yeah, lad. You're right. Sorry for getting out of focus." Pell straightened his almost non-existent hairs on his head and turned back at the adventurers, who were looking up at his face, waiting for his orders on what to do now.