~ Levalas ~
Levalas ran out of the manor gate with eleven guards behind him.
The night air was hot, and the light from the manor braziers disappeared behind them as soon as they turned onto the gravel road. Ahead, the southwest gate waited in the dark, beyond the empty market square and the unfinished stretches of marked road. Somewhere outside the village, an adzee howled again.
The sound made a few of the guards slow for half a step.
"Keep moving," Levalas said.
His own voice sounded steadier than he felt. That was good. The men behind him needed steadiness more than honesty right now.
He was not Hudan. He was not Tesyb either. He did not have the captain's strength or Tesyb's open courage. He was 19, lean, quick, and better with a dagger in the dark than with a spear in a line. In Cinran, the work he had done for Zoricus had not involved standing in front of monsters with a shield in his hand. It had been quieter than that. Uglier too, in a different way.
But that life was behind him now.
Lord Kivamus had given him a chance after everything he had confessed. Feroy had trusted him when others still watched him with doubt. And in the months since, Nesser had made sure he learned to use more than a dagger. Spear, shield, sword, crossbow. Every manor guard had to be at least decent with them, and Levalas had learned because there was no other choice.
Tonight, decent would have to be enough.
They passed through the market square. The place looked wrong when empty. During the day, there were vendors, servants, guards off duty, children running near the edges, and people stopping to trade or talk. Now the stalls were shut, the old shops dark, and the wide open ground carried every footstep too clearly. In the distance, a large log fire burned outside the southwest wall, around fifty meters from the palisade. Its orange light reached the clay-coated logs and the lower part of the watchtower.
A horn sounded from the north.
Then another howl answered it.
Levalas kept running.
Calubo was also in this group, a tower shield braced on his left arm and a spear in his right hand. His face was tense but focused.
Levalas knew the man was promised to Hyola, though he did not know the details and did not need to. It was enough to see the way Calubo gripped his spear. Hyola was somewhere on a watchtower tonight, and Calubo had more than the village to fight for.
They reached the southwest gate breathing hard.
The guards already posted there turned toward them with relief. Above, on the watchtower platform, Isomi stood with two female guards and an archer. Levalas could not see much of the scorpion from this side of the wall, but he could hear the wooden clicks and creaks as one of the women worked the side handle. Isomi leaned over the parapet, looking out toward the fire burning outside.
Levalas still found it hard to believe Tiranat had built a weapon like that. He hadn’t used a scorpion himself yet, but he had seen the bundled target-planks the guards had brought back after the testing, with holes punched clean through them. If the scorpion could do anything close to that to the beast outside, the men at the gate might have a real chance of surviving tonight.
"Report!" Levalas called.
“Only one adzee on this side,” Isomi shouted down. "Near the fire, moving toward the gate!"
Levalas stepped close to the palisade and looked through one of the narrow viewing gaps left at eye height near the gate.
At first he saw only firelight and dark ground.
Then the beast moved.
It was larger than he had expected. He had seen the dead young adzee from the winter attack, but seeing one alive was different. This one was grown, taller than even the captain, broad through the shoulders, with a heavy head and thick legs. It paced near the fire, watching the wall. The flames lit its side for a moment, showing rough brown hide and a mouth full of fangs.
A hard twang came from the watchtower above.
The bolt shot past the beast and struck the ground behind it.
“Missed it!" someone on the tower shouted.
The adzee jerked its head toward the impact, then toward the wall. For a moment it stood there, like it was confused, staring at the place the sound had come from. Then it lowered its head and charged at the gate.
"Tower shields forward," Levalas instructed, not knowing if the gate would survive the impact.
The guards moved into position just inside the gate. It was not a full shield wall, not in the narrow space, but close enough. The six men in the front line carried the new tower shields Darora’s workshop had made, their heavy wooden boards reinforced with iron bands. They were clumsy against men and too heavy for long fighting, but in a forest region full of dangerous beasts, there were times when ordinary round shields were not enough. They might even help against knights one day, if Baron Zoricus ever became ambitious enough to send armored men against Tiranat.
With the tower shields braced in front, the spears angled through the gaps between them. Calubo took the left side of the front line, with two of the older guards beside him.
Levalas placed himself just behind the first line, close enough to step in, far enough back to see what was happening.
That was where he was more useful.
The adzee hit the gate.
The impact shook the logs.
One of the newer guards cursed and stumbled back. The gate held, but the bar across it creaked hard enough that Levalas felt the vibration through the wood.
“Hold on!” he yelled. "It did not break.”
That was good, because this was the most dangerous place for the beast to be. The scorpion above had been built to kill creatures exactly like this, but it could not aim straight down at something pressed against the gate. If the gate broke now, the guards inside would have to stop the beast with shields, spears, and their own bodies.
The adzee struck again.
This time the whole gate shuddered. Dust and tiny bits of dried clay fell from the wood. The men in the front line flinched, but none of them ran.
Above them, the scorpion was being loaded again. Levalas heard the wooden contraption creak as the string was drawn back.
"Do not open until I say," he told the gate guards.
"No one wants to open it," one of them muttered.
The adzee slammed the gate a third time, then snarled and backed away. Through the gap, Levalas saw it turn toward the fire again, as if deciding whether the wall was even worth the effort. It prowled some distance away from the gate, still visible through the viewing gap and far enough for the scorpion above to target.
The scorpion released with a sharp wooden clack.
This time the bolt struck the beast.
The adzee let out a sharp, broken whine and stumbled sideways. The bolt had buried itself somewhere in its shoulder or upper body. It wasn’t enough to kill it, but at this range, it was certainly enough to hurt. The beast twisted toward the wall and snapped at empty air.
"Hit!" Isomi shouted from above.
The guards inside the gate stirred.
Levalas kept watching through the gap.
They could stay behind the gate. The beast had struck it three times and failed to break through, so waiting would be safer for the men here. But the captain and Feroy had made the orders clear earlier. If an adzee was wounded, still close to the gate, and within cover of the scorpion above, they had to take the chance to finish it. This pack was not going to leave easily, and if they let every injured adzee crawl back into the dark, the village would face the same threat again later.
The villagers were already scared of leaving the walls after the various sightings and howls from the past few days. If even a single wounded adzee stayed near Tiranat, whether because pain made it more aggressive or because the pack left it behind when it could no longer keep up, the workers going to the farms, mines, road work, or dam site would be helpless if it attacked them. Adzees were night predators, but a wounded beast could behave differently, and no one wanted to test that with unarmed villagers outside the walls.
Beyond the viewing gap, the beast was still standing. It staggered once, then took several uneven steps away from the gate, dragging one front leg a little. It was not far. If they opened the gate now, they could reach it before it fled. If they waited too long, it might recover enough to run back to the trees.
Or worse, it might come back to the gate again.
“Is there another beast nearby?" Levalas called out to the watchtower.
“None that I can see,” Isomi shouted. "Only this one!"
Levalas looked at the men around him.
They were waiting for him.
That was the worst part.
Not the beast. Not the dark. Not even the fact that he would have to step outside the wall. The worst part was the way the others looked to him and expected a decision.
Feroy would already know what to do. Hudan would probably have opened the gate and led the charge himself. Tesyb would have done the same, with that confident grin of his.
Levalas was not like them.
But he knew one thing. If he waited too long, the chance would be gone.
"Gate open," he said. "Front line, shields together. Spears low. We go out, finish it, and come back. No one chases if it runs. No one breaks formation.”
Calubo nodded once.
The gate guards lifted the bar.
"Open only wide enough for us," Levalas said.
The gate opened with a heavy scrape.
The first line went out quickly, their tower shields forward. Levalas followed on their right, spear in hand, keeping his smaller round shield ready but not pushing ahead. The large fire burning ahead made the ground easier to see, though the shadows still shifted with every step. The wounded adzee turned toward them and snarled.
Up close, it looked even bigger.
Its shoulders were as high as a grown man, and its head rose higher when it lifted its snout. Its paws were huge, claws digging into the dirt as it tried to steady itself. Blood ran from the scorpion bolt in its upper body, but it was not weak enough yet. Not nearly.
"Spread half a step," Levalas said. "Do not let it get around the shields."
They moved ahead as a group, the wall of shields as the cover.
The adzee lunged.
The front line stopped it with the tower shields and spear points. One spear drove into its neck and slid along the hide without going deep. Another struck the wounded shoulder and made it jerk back. Then the beast swung a paw.
The blow hit one guard's tower shield with a heavy crack.
The force threw the guard backward, and he hit the ground hard, the damaged shield still caught against his arm. Two of the iron bands had bent inward, and a split ran through the wooden boards.
Calubo stepped in at once, thrusting his spear toward the beast's head to keep it away from the fallen man.
The adzee snapped at the spear shaft and nearly tore it from his hands.
"Back!" Levalas shouted. "Pull him back!"
Two guards dragged the fallen man away before the adzee could leap on him.
The beast tried to follow anyway.
Levalas thrust at its side. His spear point sank in a little, enough to draw blood but not enough to stop it. He pulled back fast before the beast could twist toward him.
Another scorpion bolt shot from above.
It missed, striking the dirt just beyond the adzee.
The beast flinched at the sound.
“Shoot it again!" Levalas shouted, though the tower crew needed no order from him.
The guards tightened their formation again. The beast was wounded and thrashing, but the scorpion bolt in its upper body had slowed it. It could not turn as quickly as it wanted. Every time it shifted toward one man, another spear stabbed it from the side.
Calubo drove his spear into the beast’s ribs, making it jerk sideways with a pained snarl.
Another guard struck its front leg.
A sharp clack came from the watchtower above. For a moment, Levalas’s stomach tightened. The guards were close around the beast now, and a bad shot from the scorpion could hit one of their own, and at this distance a man would have no chance of surviving a shot from a scorpion. But not shooting was even worse. If the scorpion crew hesitated now, the adzee might tear through the front line before anyone could stop it.
The bolt struck the beast low in the side, near its belly, and sank deep. It was not a killing shot, but it made the adzee twist away from Calubo with a harsh snarl. For half a breath, the wound near the base of its neck was exposed again.
Levalas saw the opening and thrust at the wound near the base of the beast’s neck, where the first scorpion bolt had buried itself. He would never have pierced the hide that deeply with his own strength, but he was quick enough to hit the torn flesh beside the bolt. The spear point slipped in deeper than it should have, widening the wound before the beast jerked away.
The shaft was ripped from his hands and left sticking out of the wound. Blood sprayed from around the embedded spear, splattering against the ground, and the adzee staggered hard.
Then its legs buckled.
For a moment, everyone thought it was over.
The beast collapsed onto one side, chest heaving, jaws opening and closing. One of the guards stepped forward quickly, spear raised for the finishing thrust.
"No, wait!" Levalas shouted.
But it was too late.