The Vampire Legion

Cassidy straightened her swordbelt.  She had the distinct feeling she was going to die tonight.  She hated dying, but sometimes it just couldn't be helped.  She looked up, over the light of some of the cookfires the army had started, at the great basalt walls they'd soon be throwing themselves at.

The defenders had a clear advantage, not just having defenses in place, but also numbers and even supplies.  The hardpoint could hold the valley, and from there harass any occupying forces in the land.  It was a legitimate problem but she still had little faith in the general.  He was an overpromoted noble and his own men didn't even like him.  They feared him, or at least his lieutenant, enough to keep fighting.  The legion however, didn't fear anything, and Cass would have never taken the contract if she'd known it would end up here.

One advantage the legion had was morale.  Live a few hundred years and the appeal of living more starts to slip away.  They never routed because death was a privilege to them.  Sure a bit of propaganda helped.  Die gloriously in battle rather than walk into the sun, usually worked.  Something about suicide was offputting for the types that were drawn to the Legion.

The darker side of this is that whoever hired them tended to throw them at the worst possible situations.  That meant things like assaulting fortresses that hadn't ever fallen to a besieging army, with little to no hope of success, just because their contract was up in a weeks time.  As that deadline loomed every king or state that hired them tended to devolve into a frothing madness trying to find more things for them to do.

A crack signalled the high ballasta had fired again and she listened to the whistle as it's bolt flew.  The regular soldiers scattered like roaches.  Members of the legion ignored it, or paused in what they were doing to watch it sail through the sky.  It finally landed about 30 feet to her right, pinning one of her lieutenants to the ground.

"Son of a Bitch!"

"Garret, we're fighting tonight, should have moved."

Garret sighed, something of a feat given the 6 foot length of oak in his chest, "I was distracted.  That stew was really good.  Kid said it was his mother's recipe, and I swear I'm going to kill a hundred of them for making me spill what was left."  He paused, flailed a bit, and then looked at Cass.  "Um... little help?"