The impact of the defenders and the Demons was loud, ringing across the grounds and well into the city. The larger Demons stopped the forward movement of the wedge, but only momentarily, for their lines were very loose and disorganized. The Demons did not fight as a group, they fought as a collection of individuals, and that prevented them from reacting to the tactics the defenders used against them. Instead of regrouping in the hole that Darvon and Tarrin opened in their middle, they instead each fought its own private battle. But the spears of the Legionaires kept them from closing in and using their size to break up the defenders' lines, and those trying to get at the Knights found that their heavy armor and powerful broadswords made them impossible to split up. The wedge began moving forward as the first Demons to reach them were cut down, and those Demons reaching them after the initial rush came with a wider and wider gap in the center as Tarrin and Darvon, still side by side and moving ahead of the formation, split the charging Demons into two groups, leaving the rapidly dissolving bodies of their victims behind them as they advanced. When they ran out of Demons in front of them, they split up, Tarrin going one way and Darvon the other to engage those on the flanks, and the Legionaires, now with Ulger serving as the head of the wedge, advanced into the hole they created behind them. Amid the din of shouts, ringing steel, and the shouts and cries of the wounded, and the howling and screaming of the Demons, the wedge passed between the lines of the Demons and began to widen as the Marines rushed out from the core to either side and enveloped their foes, surrounding them.
The formation worked perfectly. The two pockets of Demons, realizing to their chagrin how they had been trapped, fought with zealous ferocity, assaulting the Legionaires and Knights that now stood between them, but the spears of the Legionaires on the front rank had been discarded and now they wielded glowing shortswords. They let the Demons crash into their shields, and then expertly shifted the large shields and stabbed out from behind them with their short-bladed weapons. Demons screamed in pain and fury, clawing at the shields, the stronger ones ripping them away, but the Legionaires simply closed ranks around any man who fell, men who lost their shields stepping back into the formation against the shields of the second rank and letting the men on each side in the first rank close the hole with their shields, denying the Demons a chance to get between them. The Legionaires in the second and third ranks still wielded their spears, jabbing and thrusting them at the Demons, pushing them back and preventing them from getting inside the front rank, aiming for the face and chest and shoulders, trying to maim or incapacitate if they couldn't kill. Marines that had swiftly gotten behind them and began assaulting them from behind now proved to be a deadly distraction to those trying to get past the Legionaires and Knights, allowing those in front to get in a killing blow as the Marines behind harried and harassed them.
Without their magic, without their invulnerability, and without any kind of coherent battle strategy, the Demons fell quickly to their highly organized and cooperating adversaries. Darvon and Tarrin continued to cut wide swaths through the Demons, breaking them up into smaller and smaller pockets, and the wedge finally broke up as the Legionaires and Knights helped the Marines surround those dwindling pockets of resistance and chop them down. In mere moments of furious, intense fighting, a force of two hundred Demons had been destroyed by a thousand mere mortals, and there was an eerie silence after the squeals of the last Demon faded away.
Then one man, an Arakite Legionaire with blood flowing from a nasty claw gash over his left eye, raised his spear and shouted in triumph. Another man joined him, then another, and then more, until the survivors cried out, flushed with victory over their unnatural enemies.
Tarrin didn't feel like joining them, and neither did Darvon, it seemed. He raised his sword quickly and got their attention. "It's not over yet, men!" he shouted. "Fan out in groups of fifteen and make sure there aren't any loners out there! Five of each, and watch each other's backs!"
Tarrin paused while the men quickly scrambled to obey the Lord General. The attack had no real sense to it. Did the Demons come here just to make him return, just to cause trouble? Where was Jenna? Was she alright? He cast out his senses into the Weave, and even that seemed to tire him. But he could feel her somewhere in the city, relatively stationary. The Weave around her showed no signs that she was doing anything, but it was shifting a little with her emotions. He could feel it clearly; Jenna was very angry. Something had happened out there, something to draw her out of the Tower, and then the Demons swarmed in while she was gone.
Wait. That was not right. The Demons showed no sign of using any kind of coherent battle strategy, but luring Jenna out of the Tower meant that there was a design behind things. What could be gained by getting Jenna out of the Tower? Tarrin mulled that over quickly, lowering his sword as he thought. Getting her power out was the first thing he saw. If Jenna had been here, the Demons would have been stopped almost before they could have gotten started. The Goddess would have used Jenna instead of him, and what was more, Jenna could have Circled with virtually everyone in the entire Tower, creating an awesome magical force that even a Demon would fear, a force that would have stopped the attack in its tracks.
Something a Demon would fear.
Jenna had been lured out of the Tower to prevent her from stopping the invasion. That much was plain. But why? The Demons out here didn't do anything but run around and try to kill people on the grounds. None of them he'd seen had tried to force their way into any of the buildings, and they'd had the chance to do it several times. Why come out here and attack men on the grounds when they went to all the trouble to pull Jenna off the grounds? They didn't do any lasting damage. The only thing they'd managed to do was bring him back to the Tower.
They were a diversion!
With an awful cold feeling in his stomach, Tarrin turned and bolted for the main Tower, but before he took more than a dozen steps, the Weave suddenly wrenched, wrenched with such a power that Tarrin felt it like a knife twisting inside him. There was a drastic, dreadful surge in its power, as if the entire Weave was trying to flow into one place.
And that place was in the Tower.
Jasana! Jasana was crossing over!
Only one thing could make her cross that line, to make her desperate enough to have to resort to Sorcery. She was in danger!
The Demons on the grounds had been a diversion! Their real target was Jasana!
Unable to Teleport or project, almost too tired to run, Tarrin still managed to dig as deep inside him as he could and summon up reserves from some unknown source, reserves tapped out of abject fear and concern for his daughter. It propelled him faster than any horse had ever run, and his mind raced even as a cold hand gripped his heart and squeezed it mercilessly. They'd distracted him and everyone else while someone or something else had snuck into the Tower and attacked his daughter! That was why none of the Demons tried to force their way into the Towers… they didn't want to interfere with what was happening inside! Tarrin endured the pain as he felt the Weave writhe and contract under his daughter's personal struggle, felt it rush into her like an avalanche unbidden, felt it seek to infuse her until her body literally exploded from the energy contained within. If she lost control and was Consumed, the explosion would kill everyone on the Grounds and bring the Towers down!