The room shook and dust drifted from the roof. Wretch swallowed the last of his ration and turned another page in the Compendium of the Hunt. He flipped between monstrous figures printed in dark ink.
No mention of slaughter hounds.
A wave of shouts came from outside. Wretch looked up, listening closely.
It’s beginning, he thought, standing from his chair and weaving through soldiers tending a massive boiler.
He swung the door open. It was night and the chill wind brushed against him just as two fiery orbs arced overhead. The projectiles vanished beyond the battlement. A moment later the ground shook from the impact, followed by a wave of screams and shouts.
Men and women in uniform rushed past, some heading toward the outer wall, others carrying supplies in the opposite direction. He looked down at the few worthwhile belongings he had brought all the way out to the fortress.
The Blinking Blade. The Compendium of the Hunt from his father. A pouch filled with pennies and a damaged coat given to him by Cynthia, his former cellmate.
He walked toward the outer wall, dragging his naked left claw along the stone. A woman and a youth ran past him, each one clinging to their possessions as if that would save them.
The claws caught something that moved, a loose stone. He stopped and pried it free, revealing a hollow space no larger than a loaf of bread. He gave the book one last look, letting his fingertips travel over the worn leather.
“Wait for me here,” he whispered.
He placed the book and his baubles inside, then pushed the rock back into place. He rested his hand against the stone for a moment, then moved on, continuing his walk toward the outer wall.
He had not given up on finding his father, though as he had grown the importance of that search had undoubtedly decreased.
Perhaps as a Blaze I will stride into the archives and demand they sift through every old logbook.
With each step the drums from beyond grew stronger.
His shoulders were tight and he drew a crooked smile as he passed a soldier fidgeting with a spear. It was not just anxiety, though much of it was. It was also anticipation.
Whatever happens tonight, it will be bloody.
He climbed the stairs as a chorus of steam cannons rattled away, blasting against his eardrums while the smell of burned wood filled his nose.
He scaled the last steps and pushed through a group of soldiers to peek over the wall.
It was a sight worth remembering. A thousand paces stood between the fortress and the approaching horde, an army of fur and claw flooding through the night toward the walls.
The smallest of the hounds were larger than most men, while others were hulking monstrosities the size of buildings. Some carried torches and weapons. Others manned wooden structures capable of hurling burning rocks across the sky. All were laughing, a screeching cacophony like a choir gone mad.
Except for the rear bridge, Sternthal was surrounded.
Stepping stones toward the summit.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up. Elenya.
“A decent supper?”
“It was great. Is Edmund still with the Major?”
“Yep,” she said with a nod. “They sent Astrid to the infirmary in the church. Reinforced walls, close to the train station. She’s safer there.”
“Good,” Wretch said with bared teeth and a twitching tail. “You and I are in the right place too, aren’t we?”
The duo looked down the slopes to the tide, lit torches like a swarm of fireflies in the night. Siege towers on uneven wheels, brutes in chains, all crawling to the steady beat of drums and laughter.
A soldier to the side, a young man with pale, sweaty skin, looked at him with wide eyes before emptying his stomach over the battlement.
Wretch’s gaze trailed along the wall and he caught the stare of another. A middle aged man with a uniform too small for his broad shoulders. He recognized him as one of the workers from the train.
Seems the army is recruiting more than just hunters, he thought.
The man looked away at once.
Strange. His expression held no fear.
Elenya’s voice broke his train of thought.
“You think this will do?” she said, adjusting her thick plate armor, a speck of tension in her voice.
He looked out into the night.
“If this doesn’t get you to Fireling, nothing will,” Wretch said, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his weapon.
A whip like twang came from the tide.
“Heads up,” she said. “The trebuchets are firing again.”
The siege engines swung to the yelps of the tide, arcing a dozen fiery orbs toward Sternthal.
“Trebuchets, huh?” Wretch said. “Well, they’re aiming for the wall.”
“Brace for impact!” a Blessed soldier shouted from farther down the stacked wall. Fireling Oksana, the commanding officer at this section of the battlement.
A moment before impact, Wretch ducked under the lip of the battlement, pressing his shoulder against the rock.
The world shook. Rock splintered and dust burst with a deafening crack that rattled his skull. He fought nausea and pain in his ears as he stood up, swaying on his feet.
The ringing in his head was gradually replaced by screams.
He looked around. To his right was a hole in the wall the size of a cart. Elenya lay on the other side. Large chunks of stone were already crumbling away into the courtyard below.
“Elenya,” he said. “I know you can take more than that.”
She stood up with a curse, dusting off her armored dress. Wretch breathed out, only then noticing a soldier lying in the dust. The youth was missing half his head.
“Let’s take him to the infirmary!” another soldier shouted, rushing past Wretch.
The man’s leg twitched.
“Wait!” Wretch commanded, holding them back with an outstretched arm.
The dying man convulsed, joints cracking. A wail escaped his throat. The Blinking Blade flashed and the severed head flew through the air.
“It was already too late for him,” Wretch said. The pair of soldiers staggered back in shock.
“Stay focused. Remember your duty!” Oksana shouted over the chaos on the damaged battlement.
At her words a wave of unnatural calm washed over him. The soldiers straightened, their trembles receding.
A Blessing, Wretch thought, pushing up to the next transforming soldier.
“Kill the ones turning!” Oksana shouted, one hand on her hip, the other resting on the hilt of her sabre. “Cannons take aim!”
Steam pipes rattled and pressure tanks whistled. Wretch darted between uniforms. The Blinking Blade pierced the skull of a woman crawling on all fours, her face half turned to a dog.
“Fire!”
A crack of releasing pressure and steam shook the air. The front of the horde vanished in a cloud of dirt and blood.
“Crossbows, on my call!”
Wretch ripped his dagger loose and peeked over the edge. From the broken frontline a singular brute emerged, crawling on a forest of limbs across its body. Regular sized claws and legs stuck out in chaotic fashion. Despite its size the head was too large for its body, and a crude helmet fashioned from chains and scrap metal covered its forehead. It waded through its hollering brood, then burst into a charge, rocks and dirt tumbling down the slope.
I know that one, Wretch thought, claws twitching. Coming back for more after running in the mist?
Oksana’s voice roared over the battlement.
“Fire!”
A hundred strained bowstrings released. A hail of arrows whistled through the night, pouring onto the brute and digging into its hide. It didn’t halt.
“Cannons, fire at will!”
The steam cannons shrieked at her command, their explosions tearing the slope apart and enveloping the charging beast in a cloud of dirt.
“Did that kill it?” Wretch whispered, squinting.
The dust split. The creature exploded forward, ribcage exposed and blood splattering in its wake. Still it laughed.
“Incoming!” Elenya’s voice called. Another flaming volley from the trebuchets lit the night, crashing toward the wall.
“They are covering its charge,” Wretch muttered as he ducked. A moment later the world rattled, dust sprayed, and stone groaned.
He staggered upright, wiping his eyes. A soldier was slumped beside him, clutching his shrapnel shredded guts.
“Take him to the healers. Now!” Wretch shouted.
Two comrades hauled the whimpering man upright, dragging him toward the nearest stairs. A stray shot struck the battlement, pulverizing the trio into a rain of limbs and gore.
Wretch stared stiffly, a twitch running through him.
“Just a rail repair mission, huh?”
His eyes flickered beyond the rampart. The charging abomination was close.
“Shoot it again!” Oksana roared.
The cannons fired. Steam and heat from the furnaces below discharged with every shot. The blasts tore the beast’s crude armor to scraps, twisting its helmet and ripping through flesh.
In a last effort it threw itself against the wall like a living battering ram.
The battlement shook. Millennia old stone cracked and shifted beneath Wretch’s feet. He dashed aside as blocks plummeted inward, separating him and Elenya further.
Through the breach what remained of the beast crawled, its bloodied maw releasing a gurgling laugh.
“Hunters!” Oksana called.
Two figures launched off the wall, their eyes lit by fire. A red haired warrior plummeted through the dust cloud, her exposed skin dancing with shades of red as she clutched a massive cleaver.
From the other side of the breach a young man soared through the air. The back of his coat roiled and writhed, flesh bursting through it, muscle and bone intertwining into two massive arms twisting themselves whole.
The creature looked up, fiery eyes clouded with blood as its wounds struggled to heal. Wretch’s oversized fists slammed down with a crack, driving the armored head into the rubble.
Its neck was exposed.
Elenya came down as if shot from a trebuchet. The crude cleaver sliced the thick skin clean, severing sinew and muscle as it plunged deeper.
A gasp from an exposed windpipe followed by a thud and the head fell to the ground.
Wretch’s extra arms crawled back into his flesh while Elenya ripped the cleaver from the earth. A new cut appeared across her forearm.
“Our biggest kill yet. Would that be enough, you think?” she said and looked at the shallow cut with a grimace.
“It was barely alive,” Wretch said, rolling his shoulders. “It takes more than that to push you over the limit. Unless you want to be called Butcher of the Meek.”
“You going to eat it?” Elenya asked, wrapping a strip of cloth around the wound brought upon her by the weapon itself.
“You stole the kill, so it won’t count,” Wretch answered, cracking his knuckles. “Besides, I think I’ll have my fill tonight.”
Beyond the breach the horde surged forward, the ground shaking with their approach.
The two figures waited in the gap. Elenya tall and armored. Wretch short and in a torn suit.
“Retreat to the next section. Hunters hold the line!” Oksana shouted over the approaching drums.
“Two minutes, hunters,” the officer called as she rushed past. “That’s all we need!”
The flood of soldiers followed her in panic. Only one of them looked back at the two figures in the breach.
“We should be able to do that at least,” Wretch said as the tremors grew stronger.
Elenya looked at the approaching horde and took a deep breath of the night air. Then she reached a hand down the neck of the massive headless corpse, her arm digging deep into the flesh.
She pulled out a black stone that glowed with faint fiery light.
“Take it,” Wretch said, eyes trained on the breach. Elenya nodded. A trickle of light flowed from the stone to her chest before it crumbled to dust.
“My flame is moving, Ratty. It’s dancing.”
“Good. Show it the meaning of violence.”
Elenya took a wide stance with the cleaver while Wretch’s flesh twisted from his back, two massive ashen arms lined with teeth.
“Give me the first strike, will you?” Wretch said.
The horde reached the breach, a tide of fur and fang. Wretch slammed one arm into the ground while the other grabbed a fistful of rubble.
He flexed the conjured muscles, then hurled the splintered rock with all his inhuman might.
The stones crashed into the first dozen beasts, blasting them to shreds.
Elenya stepped forward, her eyes turning to fire as shades of red danced across her exposed skin. The cleaver blurred in her hands. She split a six legged hound in two, dismembering it with ease.
Wretch slammed one oversized arm down, crushing two more. He pried a block of granite free and hurled it into the pack in a symphony of cracked bone and torn muscle.
The horde kept coming, so they crushed and cut all that dared enter. Elenya’s precise, dismembering strikes wove between his wild blows. By now they knew each other’s tendencies, but more than that they were both born for brutality.
Corpses piled higher under their feet.
But the tide did not care about losses. For every felled creature, two more threw themselves through the breach.
“Let me borrow it!” Wretch shouted, spitting acid toward a charging hound. He missed but caught the shoulder of another. It screamed as its fur melted.
Without hesitation Elenya threw the cleaver high. Twin shortswords were drawn from her back, impaling a gaping maw a breath later.
Wretch launched himself upward.
One giant hand caught the cleaver midair, grotesque fingers wrapping around the grip.
He arced downward like a comet of flesh and blood, crushing several hounds beneath his weight. The cleaver flashed, carving swaths through the horde with each strike, spraying gore as the conjured muscles strained.
Elenya moved between his strikes like he had once moved around hers, slashing throats with perfect form.
Then a crawling horror of conjoined hounds dragged itself through the gap.
“Is there no end to you?” Wretch growled.
A hail of arrows whistled above his head, peppering the howling creature.
He threw himself back, sliding to a stop on contested ground.
He looked up.
The next wall in the defense was crowded. Fireling Oksana and her platoon manned steam cannons and reloaded crossbows.
“Hunters, return!” she called.
But something else drew Wretch’s attention. The worker from the mist, dressed in uniform, stood behind the commander. Their eyes locked and in that moment Wretch knew something was wrong. He was staring, but not at the hounds like the others, but at them.
What are you up to…
The man must have understood that something was amiss, because a trembling hand revealed a brass orb of interlocking gears. From another pocket the man produced a glowing rock.
A coal?
Elenya rushed past him.
“Get a move on, you—”
His oversized arm caught her.
The worker pressed the coal into the machine and it began to tick faster and faster. A fiery light grew within the mass of cogs. The other soldiers and Oksana turned in surprise to gaze at the light.
“Something’s wrong,” Wretch said.
The soldiers’ lips moved.
“Long live the Gulschaks.”
Wretch’s arms wrapped around himself and Elenya.
With a high pitched screech the light collapsed inward into the orb. For a split second everything was still. Then the sky lit. A roaring flash turned night to day and the gatehouse was no more.