Ch 12: Hell’s Hail

It’s a curious thing what explosives can do when placed behind, or inside, stone. Stone is strong, but when put under extreme explosive force, it turns into shards. A simple boulder can output enough stone shards that it makes a claymore mine look like a child’s toy, the edges of the broken rock behaving like arrow heads knapped from flint.

When several bricks of TNT are put into drainage holes or little notches in a castle wall, the entire damn thing turns into a shaped charge of sorts, sending thousands of little arrow heads flying through the air at Mach fuck.

Whatever had thought they were being clever in front of the gate got turned into shreds of flesh and hunks of body parts, and the several hundred yokai flooding into the already destroyed courtyard behind the first wall layer found themselves only adding to the body pile.

To my relief, this caused whatever was leading the forces to pull back and take a breather, leaving me to actually take a chance to look around for the first time since the opening assault had taken place.

The lower walls were a ruin, and the secondary walls looked like heaps of rubble with little pieces of regular wall still standing tall, but my desired effect had come to reap. Over a thousand broken bodies lay ahead of the tertiary wall system and its gatehouse. Leading to the walls were more bodies, hewn down by Brody and Tano while Deckard and I had been busy setting off the charges. The field guns still lay broken, likely maddening their commander who had spent who knows how many man hours collecting them and getting them here for their grand moment.

I would easily bet money on there being a few mortars out there in the wings, waiting in the shadows to drop a high explosive eggplant right onto my forehead.

It had been fast, super fast.

The enemy was not there, then there, and then everything started happening all at once. If I hadn’t had Deckard focus on those artillery guns, there was a fair chance they would have opened holes all the way up into the main castle, and it was only by his accuracy that the secondary wall stood to do its duty.

The Oni and their allies were ringed around the castle still, outside bow range, but despite my frazzled mind I sent a few rounds in their way to remind them that they belonged in the shadows.

Tano must have seen me do this, as she opened up as well, and we both chased the retreating forces into the woodline.

While my last brass casing was bouncing along the slush covered stone floor of the walls, I turned to see Otani Noritada standing behind me, his eyes bewildered at the weirdness of it all.

“The Grand Dragon and the rest of those unable to properly fight have been ushered down into the safety of the castle’s depths.” He said, then looked out to the two levels of ruined walls. “They got past the first wall.. I don’t…”

“Artillery.” I said with a sigh, pointing out the cannons. “Ancient ones they likely dredged up from old and forgotten places. Your stone walls couldn’t bear two shots from their shells, let alone three. It’s only lucky we saw them in time or they would have plowed a hole straight to the castle with them.”

Noritada looked from the artillery pieces, then to me. “What else will they have?”

“Guns.” I said with a shrug. “Mortars. They’ll form up to get us to also take to the walls, likely drop a few shells on us to rattle us and give them cover on their charge.”

“How do you even know this?!” Noritada spat out, looking around him in outrage. “How did you know? How?!”

I gave him a hard look, my lips pressed tight, then turned away from him to check along the walls. “Because it’s what I would have done, in his shoes.”

In the lul of the sudden attack, I sought Deckard, then Brody and Tano, checking them over and their weapons. Tano was flushed in the face and filled with a nervous puppy-like energy, rapidly telling me all that she had done and the kills she had made. Brody was shaken, but more from the odds and the amount of bodies that were going to be thrown our way.

Deckard seemed bored, if anything.

After sorting them out and replenishing our ammo, I sought the crows.

I managed to find one, the rest in hiding, and called to it. “Yo! Get over here.”

The crow hopped over, tilting its head at me and ruffling its feathers. “Yous’ coulda’ just asked me to come ovah’ nice, ya’ know. We been gettin' shot at the whole damn time you been blowin' up the castle.”

“You’ve been getting shot at?” I asked it, furrowing my brows.

It nodded its beaked head at me. “Oh yeah, buncha friggin' chowderheads with shotguns sent us flyin' off to the castle. Any time we try ta’ get close, they take down more of us, they do.”

I frowned at that. I was hoping that they could fly out and try to spot those mortars, but I supposed the Oni were wise to us using the crows as spotters.

“Did they leave any survivors from the villages?” I asked.

“Dephends on wha' ya mean by "suhvivoah." Dey’ got a buncha’ peeps impaled on poles... but dey’ ain't dyin'. Just sittin' theyah’ on the poles screamin' and writhin'." The crow said with a winged shrug. “We're stayin' put right heah’, though. No point in flyin' out if it means we're gonna be layin' dead in the snow wit' pellets in our chests.”

I didn’t like the answer, but I nodded to it, walking away with the fog of my breath flowing over my face as my mind began to spin. I didn’t get too far before a bunch of militia bowmen and combat magicians intercepted me, Arihada at their head.

“What?” I asked them hotly, coming to a stop with a rattle of gear.

Arihada stepped forward, her face taught. “What are we to do?”

“Wait for them to approach us and use your bows.” I said, walking away. Arihada kept pace with me, as did the militiamen, so I kept talking. “This turns into a standard siege with slight modifications. They are going to come in force and likely try to place an explosive on the doors. Do not be behind it if they do.”

Arihada nodded. “I saw what happened to the second gate before the walls exploded, do you think they will do that as well to the third gate?”

“Without a doubt.” I replied, pointing down at the ruined sets of walls. “They’ll come through here, trying to crawl up through the barbed wire will be suicide. They will likely drop explosives on us as they charge to try and buy themselves space, but it is imperative the arrows don’t stop.”

“What about the students?” Arihada said with worry.

I stopped walking and turned towards her, my eyes hard. “Some will likely die. If all goes wrong, we all die, but I think that was a given. Your militia and your students will be fighting shoulder to shoulder in order to not be eradicated, and I would voice it in such a way if I were you.”

I turned away from her, and went back to my study of the field.

After an hour of pacing back and forth along the walls, moving around bowmen and melee militia while looking through my binoculars, I didn’t see any kind of vehicles. That much was a relief, as even a little dinky Japanese tank from the second world war would be detrimental to our effectiveness at the defense.

Tano came and found me after the hour-long lull turned into two, bringing me hot tea, sake, and food after eating some herself with Brody.

She had that feverish look in her eyes that I had seen a time or two, that spiritual awakening of combat that everyone got after their first true firefight. To keep her anchored, I ate and drank sake with her in one of the sandbagged murderholes, talking to her softly and asking her what all she saw during the opening stages of the firefight.

She spoke quietly and rapidly, telling me about how “freeing” it felt to kill her own kin and keep them away, and that she was shocked at the amount of different yokai that Prince Aozora had managed to scrounge together. According to her, there were several kinds that were hard to find and powerful to boot, including mountain witches and spiders that knew magic.

She had gone for those first, managing to bring a few down while the rest scattered to the relative safety of the woods.

I smiled at that, giving her words of encouragement and making sure she knew she was doing a good job.

Tano then went on to tell me about how some of the students had helped Brody by forming water around her M249, essentially turning it into a watercooled barrel. This had a minor side effect of filling the hallway with hot steam, the students struggling to keep water around the barrel as Brody fired.

Brody, being Brody, was shucking clothes the entire time as she was firing and trying to stay cool, giving the male students a bit of a spiritual moment when she was laying down lead in her sports bra and trailing sweat all over her body.

I had a small laugh at that, as Tano sold the story with her telling of Brody having to yell at the students around her to keep forming water, as they all kept getting distracted by both the noise, flash, and Brody herself.

Tano and I barely managed to finish our sake when the radio kicked on in our ears, and Brody’s voice trickled into them.

“Movement, they aren’t letting us breathe for too long.” Brody said, and let out a long burst of M249 fire to keep them honest.

I checked my watch, the hands pointing out it was only one in the morning, and I sighed. “They are looking to keep us fatigued, these people have likely been up all day getting ready for the festival.”

“It makes sense from an offensive point of view.” Tano said, pulling around the M110 and checking the bolt for brass. “The more tired we are, the less effective we are.”

“We’ll fucking see about that.” I muttered, holding my rifle at a low ready. “Come with me, we’re going to be watching the oblique.”

“The what?”

“The obl-... a hard angle, we’re going to be watching the hard angle on the gate.”

“Oh!” Tano shouted as she finally understood, nodding to me. “Okay!”

I rolled my eyes, but set off into a jog towards the gate. I spotted Arihada and Noritada talking to a bunch of the other staff and a few folk who looked like guard Captains, and I dropped my rifle to clap my hands.

“Eyes up people! They’re coming to kill you!” I shouted, sending them scattering to their positions as hundreds of bow wielding students and militia ran to the walls. I slowed down, cupping my hands and shouting as loud as I could. “They are going to be dropping explosives on us! Hang tight to the walls and make sure the arrows don’t stop flying! Keep them away from the gate!”

Tano began shouting the same thing in Japanese for those out of range of my earring, holding a wand to her cheek to make her words louder.

I was beginning to wonder if these Oni had comedic timing, as a mortar round came whistling straight overhead and hit the side of the castle proper, blowing a hole in the side of the third floor and spitting wooden shards all down the other floors.

“Can they hear me?” I asked Tano, but all she did was shrug as we tucked down near the angled murder holes.

A few more mortar rounds fell across the walls and splashed along the courtyard of the castle, causing a few wounded militiamen to get dragged into the apothecary wing, but it could have been worse.

This spelled the doom for the early rush past the lower walls, as they were met with a hail of night arrows fired from bowmen that did not cower from the explosions.

Now despite the doom and gloom, I did sit and watch the bowmen do their thing for a rather long time; I had only ever been able to see stuff like this in the movies, and seeing volleys of arrows shriek through the air and impale themselves into bodies was fucking awesome.

Tano seemed to catch onto this, and sidled up next to me with a grin. “You think it’s cool, don’t you?”

“It is fairly neat.” I admitted, listening as Noritada shouted the command to loose. “We don’t really get to see this kind of stuff anymore, not in the modern era.”

“You should have seen the field battles.” Tano said wistfully. “A cloud of arrows filling the sky… it was something to behold. The romance of war has been robbed with black powder.”

I snorted at that. “I’ll take your word for it. Keep an eye out for anyone holding something that looks like an explosive.”

The press of bodies roaring into the gaps of the second wall began to pile high, but it was when the bowmen began screaming that I knew something was wrong.

Several militiamen were holding their bloody faces or falling away from the walls, stiff legged and dead, while several students were straight up ripped away from the walls, trails of blood following them as they tumbled into the snow.

“We have shooters!” I yelled into the radio, then rolled into my slot and pushed my rifle through.

Brody opened up first, ripping a ten second burst of M249 fire along the walls while I found my targets.

A group of the long nosed yokai and Oni had multiple airguns, shotguns, and older muzzle loaders, laying down covering fire for their fighters. They were odd looking, but I realized that they were using a mix of ancient samurai matchlocks, Mauser 71’s, stone hand cannons, and I even spotted a few Arisakas mixed in with the more modern shotguns and air rifles.

“Tano! We have riflemen in defilade!” I shouted, ripping back on the trigger of my Socom as I gunned down an Oni wielding a massive punt gun. “Take them out! Now!”

Tano pressed herself to the buttstock of the M110 and laid down a withering web of fire with me, pummeling their riflemen with lead. The fire fight turned real when the Oni and their long nosed gunners began to try and return fire, ripping away shards of rock from the walls and forcing both Tano and I to duck down into cover.

Deckard weighed in with his shotgun, pelting them with buckshot while Brody still tried to find an angle, but it was becoming difficult now that they were beyond the second wall.

It took Tano giving me covering fire as I chucked grenades that finally got them to budge, killing a fair score of the riflemen and forcing them back into the cover of the ruined walls.

I however was brought to a shocked standstill when I saw two large Oni women holding a sea mine, with two long nosed men with red faces running along beside them with cables.

“Holy fuck!” I screamed, then turned on my radio. “Deckard! Deckard hit that sea mine! Now!”

“Sea mine?!” Brody yelled into the radio. “What the fuck do you mean a sea mine?!”

“Deckard!” I yelled again, pulling up my Socom rifle and firing at it as fast as I could. “Deckard now!”

Deckard, having been squinting through his scope after hearing about the damned thing, realized that the long ranged optic was shit for something so close. He instead tilted the over-shoulder Barret to the left, using the angled iron sights and drawing them along the sea mine.

“Hold on to your asses.” Deckard called out over the mic, then hit the mine with a high explosive incendiary round.

I saw the round zip through the air and hit the mine with a comical “twang!” of lead hitting steel, but the boom from that thing sent me and Tano flying away from the wall and falling into the snow. The concussion bubble slapped us so hard that our feet left the ground despite the cover of the wall, and we went rolling away.

The flash of light had damn near blinded me, and I was dazed purely from the blast wave. Snow was falling everywhere, thrown from the slatted roof that ran along the walls and the castle itself, the gate house, or just thrown upwards from the ground.

Militiamen were laying everywhere, dazed or knocked out completely, and a dark mushroom cloud was hovering in between the second gatehouse and the third gatehouse.

My mouth tasted like copper, my ears were ringing despite my earpro, and Tano was laying face down in the snow.

“Tano!” I yelled out, my voice muffled even in my own ears, and I pushed her over to see her frontage. “Tano, are you hit!?”

She was fine, and I didn’t see any shrapnel stuck in her, but she might have knocked her head pretty hard against the stone floor of the walls.

I shook my head with a grunt, and could hear the rapid staccato of Brody’s M249 going above me, then the voice of someone yelling in my earpro finally got my attention.

“-Coming over the walls! Get up god damn it, they’re coming!” Brody was screaming, and I shook my head again, getting up shakily to my feet.

I turned, and was greeted by an Oni warrior standing in the space between the wall parapets.

I squinted at him, then raised my rifle and shot him four times in the chest.

He grunted, then just fell backwards and off the wall, exposing the hook of the rope he had climbed up.

“Get up!” I howled, stumbling towards the rope and fishing for my knife. “Get up you sonsa’ bitches! Up!”

The bowmen heard my words but were still trying to find their grips on the world again, which caused a few to get clubbed down to the ground when more Oni came over the walls.

I fell over a few times towards the rope, and another odd looking gremlin Yokai made me have to draw my pistol and shoot it off the wall, but I finally managed to crawl over and cut the rope away from the grappling hook.

The roaring challenge of swordsmen and other armsmen was crawling its way into my ears as Noritada’s student militia and regulars showed up, slamming into the suddenly rather busy walls as the bowmen were getting their bearings back.

A pair of hands gripped the sides of another parapet by me, and a figure grunted as it hefted itself up into view.

“Fuck off.” I spat as I brought up my Sig P229, aiming vaguely at the chest of a charging green Oni warrior and plugging it with 9mm until he fell backwards and back over the wall.