Walls of Iron
Day Eleven, Year Unknown
"Rally, rally Normands!" you shout and you are proud to see them do so. In the face of horror, in the face of death walking and grasping them they do, rushing each to the defense of their fellows as best they can to face the foe shoulder to shoulder. Not one man flees to the dubious safety of the towers. A few even manage to lunge at the stumbling horrors, wild stabs driven by desperation as much as skill but they find their mark just the same, the enemy seemingly unconcerned with guarding their own foul existence, needing only to kill.
You hear the strangled cry of one man slammed into the muddy ground by a frenzied corpse, his spear knocked from his hands as the thing flails about like some grotesque puppet.
One Man-at-Arms Unconscious (-7 HP)
Two Men-at-Arms Wounded (8 and 10 HP)
"Blades out!" you cry as you pull Zaia behind you. Spears would be no use out of formation even if you could trust that those already dead would die from being pierced rather than hacked apart until foul sorcery could no longer drive them forth
As you trim the head from the corpse you had just unarmed, ignoring its scrambling against your armor, two of your men manage to sink their own blades into the monster that had overwhelmed their comrade and half-stab half-throw it away. Elsewhere blows that were meant to fight living men were light as a feather against those who knew neither pain nor fear. Worse, Nico had found himself away from the protection of his fellows and the things had enough wit and malice to single him out.
Eleven
For a moment you are caught between protecting Zaia and rushing to his defense, before the doctor takes matters out of your hands. He steps out from behind you and draws from one of the many pouches at his belt a delicate glass vial and tosses it onto the mob of corpses. What is in it you cannot say but it burns like the devil's own spit, flesh and bone bone sizzling with the scent of foul vapors.
With the madness of battle on him Nico charges, the name of Verley in his lips, and hacks the weakened flesh of the most burned corpse shoulder to groin, and though he does not escape the claws of the others unscathed his armor takes the brunt of it.
Ten
Another man is pulled from the makeshift line, pummeled and clawed at with filthy fingers, and as you run to his defense a second horror lunges at you from behind and tears off your helm, sending you reeling. You kill one more of the ones Zaia had burned with his devil water, your armor keeping you safe from the blows of the other. Looking around wildly you see two of your men had managed to cut the legs out from another one of them.
One Man-at-Arms Unconscious (-6 HP)
You take 5 Damage
Eight
The doctor rushes again towards the thickest fighting, ducking behind the armored forms of your men when he can but emerging again with another of his strange vials. Again dead flesh smokes and bubbles, again your men managed to kill another pair, just as young Henri has his arm broken in a sickening twist, almost sending him to his knees.
One Men-at-Arms Wounded (1 HP)
Six
One more falls as you send its jaw flying then drive your sword into its brain. You had killed more than half of them, and if these were normal , living men they would have broken long since, but they are not. You face the dead and damned and only in victory might you find absolution. A mad laugh leaves your lips at the thought, still more at the fact that you believe it.
"I only have so many vials!" the doctor shouts with the affronted tones of a shop-keep thinking of his coin pouch and not a man in the midst of deadly battle. Burning water runs together with the blood of the living and the foul fluids of the dead, but it is the latter that flows thickest. Alas that he had mistimed his throw and there is no one to distract this gathering of corpses from him. The dead stumble forward, but you are on your guard. You lash at one as it stumbles forward and end it, slaying the second on the backhand.
Four
By now your men had learned that they are swifter and far cleverer than their foe, able to use strategies against them that would never work against a living man, drawing them apart then turning to hack at them. The last four die, as much as something of that ilk can be said to, and in the end your sword is dripping with ichor.
None
Of the seven men you had brought with you only five are still standing, one of them barely, cradling a shattered arm, and in that moment the gate to the outer wall of the keep slams open... but nothing passes through, there is no sound more.
What do you do?
[] Enter the fortress, you cannot leave more of this foulness behind you (your men must pass a morale check to accompany you)
[] Order a withdraw, you need time to plan, to think about what just happened (risk of being taken by surprise while you regroup)
[] Write in
OOC: The zombies either rolled like shit or they got nat 20s, there didn't seem to be much middle ground.