The howls of wights cut through the night, drowning out the cheers of Aleric's undead servants.
"Attack!" Samuel echoed, pointing his sword ahead, where Oakdale's closed gates were visible in the dark.
He had dismounted long ago; now he began running.
The undead man's movements seemed slow and heavy. His armor clanged at every step.
But he was actually running as quickly as an average person without armor! Samuel was a trained warrior; in life, he could sprint even faster. In death, he became slower… But he could sprint for an entire day!
And so would other undead! Still in formation, they ran ahead. Undead slaves had worse coordination than servants, so they often stumbled and fell, only to rise again or even just crawl ahead. Some were slowed even more by the ladders they carried.
The even formations from before had crumbled, but this only made the wave of undead look more terrifying!
While defenders hoped to at least have some time to prepare, the undead defied their expectation by approaching with the average speed of infantry.
Aleric's archers continued to shoot arrows at the people on the wall, but now that they were ready, most of them hid behind the parapet. Someone rang the alarm bell. More shouts rose above the city.
Meanwhile, Aleric swung his staff behind him, to where his camp followers were.
"The rest of you, stay away from the fighting. I don't want anyone to be hit by a stray Light spell!" he ordered.
He could already sense some Light energy in the city ahead. Not only was there a large temple, actually blessed to protect from evil, but there were also three clerics.
These clerics only used first rank spells before, but against individual undead, they were quite effective.
Aleric himself dismounted from his horse. He was immediately surrounded by his new bodyguards: a dozen of the best undead servant warriors among his soldiers, not including Samuel. A pair of undead slaves was also carrying a wooden shield, large enough to cover Aleric fully from the projectiles on the wall.
He was safe this way; however, Aleric didn't charge into the attack himself.
After all, he had no intention to climb over one of the rickety siege ladders himself!
Instead, he watched his undead cross the distance to Oakdale's walls.
The army was halfway there when the first arrows flew from the wall…
Dealing absolutely no harm to the attackers!
"At least they could've tried to set the arrows on fire or sprinkle them with holy water," Aleric commented, grinning. "How pathetic. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered taking Tronvill first?"
And really, the attack was going extremely smoothly!
Unprepared defenders couldn't muster much resistance. After the arrows, some tried to throw rocks at the approaching undead; Aleric felt a few skeletons crumble from the impact, but this was like a drop in the ocean.
By then, the undead army grew close enough to raise the ladders and start climbing them.
For ordinary attackers, climbing ladders up a 20-foot-tall wall was an extremely dangerous task. A single wrong move…
Before Aleric's eyes, a pair of people on the wall pushed away a ladder that was being climbed by three skeletons at once. The ladder toppled on the undead behind it, smashing them hard enough to knock a dozen skeletons off their feet.
But a few seconds later, the zombies that held the ladder just began pushing it back up. The skeletons lying on the ground gathered what bones they could and began climbing again.
If these were living people, none of them would've stood up so easily.
And next to the first ladder, there were two dozen more ladders that the defenders had to push away before anyone got to the wall.
If more people were already on the wall, perhaps they could've had enough to stop the tide. At least, for a while.
But as it was, it only took a dozen minutes of raising ladders until the first wight—of course it was a wight!—howled victoriously from the top of a wall.
It was immediately silenced by a blow from the city's defender, but two more skeletons were right behind the first one.
Vicious fighting began all over this section of the wall. More people were coming from other sections and from inside the city, just as more undead were climbing the ladders and immediately lunging at the nearest enemy.
It was then that Samuel began to climb the ladder, too.
He had waited until this moment so that he wouldn't fall on any skeletons and crush them with the weight of his armor. But now he quickly reached the wall.
The defenders of the city were already scared to fight the living dead. But when they saw Samuel's justicar helmet rise over the wall, dread overtook them.
Even though Samuel was wearing different clothing underneath his armor, it was still engraved with the holy star of Light.
It was still a distinctive plate armor of the Church of Light's justicar.
But instead of praying and slaying undead, Samuel shouted:
"FOR ALERIC FENN! For the Supreme Necromancer!"
And cut off the head of a nearest living soldier with a single blow of his sword!
Another soldier shouted in panic and tried to stab Samuel with his short spear. Before the attack hit, Samuel cut the spear in two and stabbed the man in the neck, right above his cuirass.
Before he fell, Samuel already charged forward, killing man after man with blows of his sword.
A soldier lucky enough to stay behind, Samuel stabbed him with his spear, but the blow couldn't even pierce the armor. Then, the distracted soldier was jumped by a skeleton with a club.
Samuel wasn't fighting alone, but he himself was worth several dozen lesser undead.
Just watching him go from below made Aleric wonder if he needed an army at all when he had an invincible, tireless warrior on his side! In the past, Samuel died from dozens of small wounds, but now the same wounds would slow him down, at most.
Now, Samuel cleared a part of the wall and pointed a hand toward the stairs leading into the city.
"Onward, soldiers! We must open the gate!"