Chapter Forty Eight: Of Mad Dogs
(Artwork not mine, all rights to the owner)
Thorian could hear Kaelin’s old man roaring and screaming so he knew that someone had brought the old doggie to a proper fight but he couldn’t go and help right now as he still had a pest to deal with. The white werewolf that was supposed to be leading the pack at the seven thirty position, if the Wizard’s Tower was one of those great big ticking things humans said counted time, well that white werewolf didn’t have the sense it was born with. There it was, surrounded by most of its pack, dead as doornails with the rest having upped and run away ‘cause they’d had enough of getting their tails kicked and it didn’t have the brains to realise that it ought to do the same.
Thorian sniffed. He knew that other folk thought his people had no brains in their heads but this one was taking the whole cookie tin along with the biscuit.
Fine, if it wanted to be deaded tonight rather than tomorrow that was fine by Thorian.
The dragon hide whip flicked and cracked through the air. The white werewolf jumped, twisting through the air with a snarl, yelping as the tip of an ear went zipping away. Thorian’s siege beast crashed its teeth together, the white werewolf stumbling and falling as it leapt back just in time. It rolled and rolled again as Thorian’s siege beast stamped and stamped, cracking the road way as it tried to turn the white werewolf into a greasy stain on the pressed gravel. It missed but the white werewolf was panting and gasping by the time Thorian’s siege beast stepped back to get a good look at where the white werewolf now was. Because the siege beast’s back was flat, in line with the ground, its head was so far forward of its feet that it couldn’t directly see what it was trying to stamp on while it was doing the stamping. It’s ears pricked forward as it spotted the white werewolf slightly further left and closer to a wall than it expected.
The white werewolf panted, possibly reconsidering its life choices at that moment.
It wasn’t the only one in trouble.
The goblins at the four thirty point on the map battered away at the white werewolf and the werewolf mutants left. The white werewolf snarled and reared to its full height, swinging its clawed hands and flinging goblins left and right, throwing them like dolls but the goblins seemed to bounce, rolling to their feet and charging back in, jabbering and waving their little rusty knives. They were the embodiment of death by the thousand cuts and the mutants that were left with their white pack leader bellowed and howled, dozens of stinging cuts opening up on their hides and wisps of fur falling as they heaved and lunged, the goblins swarming all over them like ants scissoring apart a mantis or a large spider.
Estella stumbled as she climbing the steps leading to the top of the outer wall, biting back a sound of pain as she bruised her knee. She would not distract Valodrael when he was keeping the danger from both of them. She scrambled on hands and knees, straightening as she reached the walk way behind the battlements. This was a safer advantage point for her to fight from as it gave her time to see them coming and they’d have to climb to reach her.
She looked at what was left. She was fairly sure the damned souls at six o’clock could take care of the white werewolf which was all that was left of that pack, which really meant that the only threat left near her was the siege beast in the south quarter that had no rider. Very well.
She settled her stance and lifted. The damned souls started back a pace as the siege beast was suddenly smacked in the face by a fist of water that appeared to burst out of the ground. It staggered back, dripping and snorting, shaking its head but there was no long lasting damage.
Estella pursed her mouth and changed her stance. Her talisman’s started spinning around her channelling the power as she summoned and shaped it, the multi-hued sparks hanging in the air as she gestured and turned her arms.
The siege beast froze for a second after it hit and then roared! The damned souls leapt aside as it flung its weight against a building, biting and tearing at the masonry, gouging and clawing the walls apart.
Valodrael grinned and bounded through the streets, his steps sounding more like crashing waves than foot falls. He scaled the side of a building at a single leap and flowed from roof to roof, eyes locked in the siege beast that was engaged in structural disintegration. He knew Estella’s touch when he saw it. His queen really was utterly marvellous. It yelled as he crashed into its side, knocking it flying off its feet. They fell in a tangle of limbs and black goo, thrashing and clawing at each other, the siege beast’s claws goring Valodrael’s chin as the Void Dragon bit and snapped at its face, the hunger echoing up from his belly. They rolled over and over down the road, crushing and splintering through the wreckage of damaged buildings.
Jeremiah did have to admit that the sight was almost half way impressive but he had more important things to concentrate on. He gazed down at the swirling knot of werewolves, damned souls and goblins, Lady Zilvra’s siege beast stomping and roaring in its midst. It did seem to be the most promising opportunity he’d had all night and he wasn’t one to give up opportunities, especially when it came to the glory of his god.
“Oh my god, the most wise and glorious god of all that is or was or ever shall be, the one true god,” he chanted, “He who organised the heavens and the earth. He who is judge and jury over all of Hestia and beyond. Look down upon these rude beasts and cast your judgement upon them. Visit upon them your sentence for their lack of mind and will. Judge they who pervert your ways and demand the power of self will. Smite them who defy your will and make their own choices rather then submitting fully and completely to your control. May they suffer the full measure of your wroth for their disgusting acts of choice and degenerative belief that they have the right to think anything but the thoughts that you decide that they may have. Cast them down with the fallen, those that wished to be something more than what you made them to be and defiled the order of your righteous judgement with their selfish need to create something by their own will and wish rather than being pure vessels of your essence and will. Purify them now with the strength of your awesome right hand!”
Jeremiah flung forth his hand and released the prayer.
The white werewolf looked round in stunned amazement as the werewolf mutants around him screamed and wailed, covering their eyes, burying their muzzles in the dirt, pawing at their heads, trying to cover their ears, howling as what they witnessed fractured their minds.
Jeremiah smiled as the goblins also started crying out, throwing themselves prostrate in the dirt.
“Dragon!” they wailed, “Dragon!” They jabbered something else in their own debased language but it was enough for Jeremiah to know he was blessed by his god’s favour once more, that the little vermin had also been blessed with a vision of the one true deity.
Lady Zilvra gritted her teeth and held on like a cave cone, a creature of the Underworld very similar to a limpet, as her siege beast bucked and whirled and trumpeted, its eyes wide, froth collecting at the corners of its mouth. She grabbed out and seized its ears, using Thorian’s method to bend it to her will, pulling and twisting as it turned to bolt. It yelped and stamped in a full circle, whimpering and sweating, its fur slicked down with the cold drench of fear. Zilvra’s will was stronger than its fear and she would not cower before the destroyer of worlds. She knew what that priest was invoking and she refused to run or bow to that which had betrayed the Begetters. Her people did not forget, they did not forgive and the moment she had a chance she was going to see if her favourite could scribe as well as he could talk. She would send word to the Man King of this land and tell him exactly what his servant was bargaining with and what danger he posed to the rest of the people of this land. If the Man King wasn’t strong enough to deal with the priest then perhaps she needed to reconsider whether or not her people would stay in this country.
Jeremiah smiled down at the chaos he had wrought and knew the approval of his god. That was good, then he turned his attention to his puppetted undead drake, which stood drooling green fire onto the ground.
“Kill,” he told it. It lunged.
The white werewolf turned just in time to see the shape of its fate but not fast enough to do anything about it. It didn’t even get the chance to scream. The drake should not have been able to swallow it whole, it was still a creature of flesh and flesh should not be able to stretch like that but stretch it did. The back legs of the white werewolf kicked and waved and despite the fact that it shouldn’t have been able to scream with its head half way down the drake’s gullet it screamed, a muffled chorus of desperate agony. Green fire lapped round its ribs and the lower half of its arms where they met the drake’s jagged teeth, then the drake gulped.
Lady Zilvra looked away. It wasn’t a mouth that swallowed the white werewolf that had been leading the pack she had been fighting, it was the doorway into a furnace, a furnace of green flame that coiled and writhed into screaming faces. She shuddered as she realised that the face of the white werewolf would now be in that chorus of agony.
Tasnar would not have minded visiting some of that agony upon the werewolf packs. Bartholemew blinked and flicked his tongue as Tasnar slid down from his back carrying the hacked and bloodied bundle that had once been his cousin. Sabal’s mortal remains flopped and lolled bonelessly, hardly recognisable as the person he had once been.
Tasnar laid him down in a patch of ground ivy, the hardy little plant still showing its purple flowers even this late in the season. Sabal would have liked it, its soft leaves and earthy scent, the dots of purple petals a wonder that did not grow in the Underworld. Tasnar straightened Sabal’s limbs, what was left of them and then stood up, turning to Bartholemew heedless of the tears that rolled down his cheeks. His face had a terrible stillness as he swung up on to Bartholemew’s back and he drew his sword with a steely whisper.
Bartholemew swung his head round and charged the pack that menaced Quenril and Ulrich, his throat ballooning and contracting as he pulled his legs underneath him, riding higher, his gait smoothing out, his back no longer wiggling from side to side.
His head crashed into a werewolf mutants side, connecting with a meaty thud. The mutant yipped as it was bowled over, Tasnar just missing its face with his sword. As Bartholemew snapped and hissed with reptilian ire at the mutant beneath it, Tasnar lashed out again, mutants ducking and leaping back from the blows that were silent as only hate could be. Tasnar’s eyes burned in the face flecked with his cousin’s last struggle on Hestia and as the werewolves closed in again he seized the glove on his left hand with his teeth and wrenched it off.
The mutant that snapped at him first reeled back with a cry, the whole of the right side of its face completely numb from the ringing slap Tasnar had given it. It shook its head and pawed at its left ear, realising that it couldn’t hear properly out of that side. Turned out that weakness and distraction was deadly.
Quenril changed with a savage sounding rip and a howl that rivalled the roar of a dragon. Clothes, weapon belt was shed like leaves before the hurricane, hand bow thudding into the road. Waves of crimson,vermilion and scarlet rippling across his fur as he threw himself at the pack. The first didn’t go down, it exploded as Quenril sunk his claws into the things ribcage and heaved in opposite directions. The second received a chunk of shattered ribs, pointy ends first, to the throat. The third had the chance to scream as its arm was broken so brutally bone erupted through skin and then said bone was forced through the roof of its mouth, its head slammed into a wall to make sure that the jagged end touched the inside of its skull. The last two turned to run and there was a sickening crack as Quenril landed with all his weight in the small of the slower ones back. It squealed, clawing at the road way, back legs dragging behind it as Quenril bounded after the last. He knocked it off its clawed feet and it yelped as it rolled, a yelp cut short as Quenril’s knees slammed into its stomach. It screamed, for a while, not for long, but it did scream as Quenril’s claws went to work, giving in full what the pack had done to Sabal.
When he rose from the shredded thing that had once been a werewolf, it was hard to know what of the red was the result of an Ash Wolf being blessed by the Begetters and what was the red gore of battle. The crippled mutant whimpered and tried to turn. Quenril didn’t run, he had no need to, his pace was unstoppable.
He reached down and his claws latched on to the back of the mutant’s skull. It squeaked and squealed, maybe pleading for its life. It hadn’t listened when Sabal screamed as it helped to tear him apart, it wasn’t listened to now.
Quenril slammed it face first into the wall, draw back his arm and slammed it again. It wasn’t a fast or a furious pace of blows, it was measured, rhythmic, like a hammer on the anvil, like the beat of curiosity, as if Quenril was counting just how many blows it would take for the werewolf mutant to crack open, like an egg. Peter the giant centipede twitched his antennae as if even he was shocked by the raw brutality of it.
Ratcliff roared and heaved, his blow knocking Marmaduke off balance. He howled as the automaton’s sword grated free of his arm and bucked. The siege beast tilted its head, feeling the noisy thing wriggling beneath its toes and pressed down harder. Ratcliff screamed as his leg bones and pelvis started feathering towards the breaks that would precede total failure but even as he did so, the wound in his arm stopped bleeding, the flesh creaking as it closed and became whole, hardly a white hair to show where it had been. He grinned up at Ulrich.
“This is the blessing of the Wild!” he snarled, “I am her chosen champion, the one that will cleanse you human filth off the surface of the world and give the land you disgusting kind stole back to the one and only chosen people! You are nothing, you are foul! It was the disease of your kind plaguing the world that sickened her until she had no choice but to burn the lost continent to try and get ride of all your kind! Your kind are nothing but an infectious tumour upon the face of Hestia and I am the cure she made to root you out, root, leaf and stem until she is cleansed of you and her real children run wild and free once more!”
Ulrich looked down at him.
“You know, I almost agree with you.”
Doubt flickered in Ratcliff’s eyes.
“Almost,” Ulrich continued as he tugged the knot free and let the rigging hang loose again, “ ‘Cause I’ve seen what selfishness and greed and a total lack of morals does when those in power stop remembering their responsibilities and start taking everything with no care for the seventh generation. But, that’s the thing – it does exactly what you did in the Citadel of the Snake Clan.” Ulrich started climbing down. “You can pretend you are doing it for Hestia but you’re not, you’re only doing it for yourself, same way my father did it for himself when he and his friends chose my mother as their ‘kept woman’. You’re no different from my father, you’re just more hairy and have less table manners.”
Ratcliff howled.
So did the south siege beast.
Kaelin slammed into it with all her might, clawing and scrbbling, biting and biting as she swarmed over it like a mad monkey, yanking and tearing at everything in her reach. It roared and span, clawing at itself as it tried to dislodge her. She was the very worst of fleas, first she was here, next moment she was there, nipping, biting, inflicting a hundred and one nasty little stings and bites and scratches. The siege beast span and snarled, snapping its teeth at the little pest it just couldn’t reach. It’s head smashed into a house and stones tumbled. It reeled, shaking its skull as the damned souls closed in once more.
Lady Zilvra closed out the noise, eyes narrowed as she tracked the milling werewolf mutants. Her siege beast had just about stabilized, though its hide still rippled with the spasmodic shivers of controlled fear. She was definitely going to send a missive to the Man King. She understood that those in the King’s Special had done things their society couldn’t tolerate and this was their chance to earn their place in society back but the priest was not making any effort to earn his place among his people any more.
She lifted her hand bow, sighted and squeezed the trigger. A werewolf mutant yelped, jumped, spun and collapsed to the ground, life bubbling between panting lips. Lady Zilvra nodded to herself and wracked the re-cocking mechanism.
Rtcliff bucked and struggled, claws gouging at the siege beast’s toes as the orange glow built in the air around the tower once more. He twisted his head down and snapped at the siege beast but all he managed to reach was its talons, as thick as a man’s arm and even his teeth couldn’t scratch them.
The light of the tower’s defences lashed out across the sky in a wave of burnt umber glow. Most of the werewolves merely snorted and shook themselves like dogs shaking off water. One of the mutants that still stood at the four o’clock point, its white werewolf leader swallowed by an infernal furnace masquerading as the servant of the priest, its mind fractured by the horror that had stared into its soul, that one didn’t have what it took to survive. With a last whimper it collapsed, twitches racking its frame before it was finally, blessedly still.
The goblins chittered, staring round, trying to understand what had happened, what they had seen. They yelped and howled, pounding their chests, whipping themselves into a frenzy as they fought to purge what they had seen in that blistering light in their minds.
On the opposites side of the circle to them, at the ten o’clock position, Quenril and Tasnar fought to keep the pack off of Ulrich’s back. Tasnar’s bright blade lashed out one handed, raking and scoring red cuts over and over his targets, not deep enough to be serious but enough to sting, enough to cause flinches, enough to distract. Worse was the ringing slaps he dished out, punishing strikes that left flesh numbed and cold to the touch. The werewolf mutants backed away from the cold faced rider on the giant lizard, suddenly afraid of him and his icy grip, the frozen anger in his face worse than the Alpha’s rages some how.
Quenril was somehow every where and no where, claws cutting, teeth tearing, not trying to grip and hold but instead bullying past knocking them off balance and slashing at hamstrings when they tried to turn on either Tasnar or Ulrich. Weight and speed and reflexes where his weapons as he bled the ones who had killed his cousin one slash at a time. The werewolf pack were learning the hard way why Quenril’s people had endured ten thousand years in the Underworld and why the Alpha had wanted their power under his control. Only now it wasn’t under his control it was turned against them in a rip tide of hate that understood what it was to lose to them. Quenril forced one of the abominations back and back, slashing at it so many times that it had no choice but to focus solely on him. As such it didn’t see what it was backing towards. Ulrich’s siege beast, seeing a walking snack, bent down and plucked it into the air by one of its three back legs. It screamed and trashed, dangling upside down as the siege beast shook it like an angry child with a rag doll.
In the confusion of the north east corner, the two o’clock mark, Hartseer swung and the head of a werewolf mutant bounced across the road way. The five limbed abominations pressed in, clawing and screeching. Hartseer laughed, that dry, husky sound that was the closest thing he could manage to a proper chuckle, blades whipping so fast they hissed through the air with the sound of tearing linen, stitching a cloth of pain.
Abominations screamed, limbs, hands, fingers falling like rain. One stumbled back, mutilated hands clasping its damaged face, its cheeks split all the way to the jaw bone and part of its tongue severed. Hartseer strode through the ruin like a vengeful god, which was what he had been made to be. He was Kronzyn’s judgement, come to strike down those that would persecute the god’s followers.
“It is a good day to live!” he bellowed, “It is a good night for you to die!”
A blade flashed down and severed the head of the abomination trying to grasp its severed limbs with the stumps of its arms. Another curled around a chest wound and dropped. The one with the ruined mouth lunged forward again, talons raking, making shrieking squeals as they scratched across Hartseer’s chest plate. It gargled as Hartseer’s blade rammed through its throat and dropped as he tugged it free.
The last of the pack proved that they had more brains than most of the werewolf packs combined, turning and fleeing from the red splattered man of metal, yelping and crying their fear to the dark. No matter the Alpha’s anger, he could not be worse than the monster that walked like one of the pathetic man things and yet had no flesh to tear and no blood to spill.
Jeremiah sniffed, listening to the screams of the fleeing pack. It was unseemly that these things would be more afraid of that judgemental stick insect than of the one true god. He beat his wings and rose higher.
“Hear me, my god,” he muttered, “My god, the one true god who is the be all and end all of all things. The one to whom all the world should kneel in supplication and submission. He who tramples the unworthy under his feet and unmakes the unrighteous. Grant me the power to smite these worthless dogs in your holy name, so that you maybe glorified and worshipped by all those that are pure and worthy in your sight. Make me the means of the destruction you shall visit upon them and cast their valueless souls into the deepest pit of your holy hatred and righteous anger so that they may suffer in the flames for all eternity. So may it be!”
He swung his arm down and his god’s holy fire jumped from his finger tips. The werewolf mutants that it struck didn’t even get the chance to scream. The light shone right through their flesh out lining their skeletons and then their skeletons longer had flesh upon them, standing there like mounted, anatomical specimens, bones fused together by the terrifying power of Jeremiah’s god.
The last of them turned and ran, charging back to the breach it had climbed in by scrambling up the rock fall, gasping and choking, eyes wide and unblinking, face locked in a rictus of terror. It had seen, it had seen the dragon hovering over the city, the glaring light of its form throwing the shadows of the Wizard’s Tower into stark relief. It knew, unable to say how but it knew that it was not a dragon in the true sense of the word but something else, something that had broken barriers between material and power in ways that should not be possible. It charged into the night, mute, deaf, unseeing even as its eyes stared.
Jeremiah smiled and twitched a finger. His drake swung round and padded to the corner of the irregular inner wall so that it could see where the damned souls where still struggling to persuade the white werewolf that was the last survivor of the pack that had attacked from six o’clock to just give up and go away. It stubbornness and persistence was soon to be its undoing.
The green flame of the drake’s breath scorched along the walls, licking over the stones, wailing as the faces within twisted and writhed and screamed. The white werewolf didn’t scream as the flames reached it, the flames forcing their way between its teeth the moment it opened its jaws. It’s eyes turned into pools of green fire as its face warped into a silent howl of agony. Its claws withered and turned to ash. It dropped from the wall but never made it to the ground, bursting open in a geyser of emerald fire that scorched up the wall. The damned souls backed away hastily, crying out in their strange, inhuman tongue as the fire warped, twisted, snarled at them and faded. They panted in the sudden quiet on their stretch of the wall, shivering and shaking in the back wash of fear.
To the south of them the damned souls fighting the southern siege beast piled back on, ripping and gouging. If they couldn’t bring this thing down with one big strike then they’d pull it apart one handful at the time, until it either went down or got the message and ran away, its welcome well and truly out stayed.
With an eerie sounding, almost seabird sounding cry the damned souls on the south wall rose into the air and dived to help them, claws and talons spread as they came shrieking through the air.
“Take to the skies!” Elisha commanded his body guard, seeing the danger to Ulrich and the Ash Elves. Though one squad of damned souls had engaged with the werewolf pack at the nine o’clock mark they were too few and the white werewolf leading them was preparing to split the pack to flank Ulrich and come to Ratcliff’s aid. The damned souls around him hesitated.
“As you love your Lord do as he says!” Crowface snapped, his broken wing shifting in its sling. The damned souls thundered into the air and dived, screaming, to the attack. The white werewolf vented a hate fuelled howl of rage as the damned souls crashed into the half of the pack that were splitting from the ones engaged already by the first squad of damned souls to attack them. It lashed about it, hitting damned soul and werewolf alike in its rage but the damned souls were not easy to intimidate and when they served a Lord that commanded not just by force but by love also.
Slightly to their north, the siege beast that had attacked from the west roared and span, stomping and shaking clawing at itself as the squad of unwinged damned souls clambered all over it, biting every chance they got, their claws and talons puncturing dozens of small but deep wounds all over its hide. It barked in annoyance and snapped, unable to turn its head back far enough to bite the little pests that vexed it so.
It’s brother in the south answered in agreement as it still thrashed around, the squad of damned souls and Kaelin doing an excellent job of keeping it too distracted to attack the inner wall beyond slamming itself broadside into the wall in an effort to try and squish some of them. Some of the damned souls dropped off to avoid that gristly fate but they dodged out of the way of its pounding feet and leapt on to its legs as it spun away, teeth seeking its hammer strings. The siege beast screamed, head rearing back.
Kaelin dived and its roar became a shriek as its neck wound was wrenched open even further, the red showering the ground. It roared again, quieter this time and staggered, shaking its head and pawing at its ears.
“Keep going!” Kaelin yelled encouragement, “It’s weakening!”
Valodrael needed no encouragement, biting and slashing, the claw on his left forefinger lengthening and glowing with the furnace heart of a star. The blow opened up a long, sizzling gash down the siege beast’s side and it screamed, its ribs cut to the bone.
Lady Zilvra also heard its cry and decided to travel in that direction, to not only find what trouble Kaelin was in but to also see if she could find her favourite. She had a feeling that he was probably having fun somewhere near by, if he wasn’t also in trouble and either way she wanted to be there. Her siege beast stomped up behind the priest’s drake and as it was some what taller and also had the flat backed stance common to the siege beasts she could see all too well the writhing, stomping mass that was the south siege beast. The sibilant syllables of the Ash Elf spell of fear dripped from her lips and her fingers flicked the spell loose at the siege beast as it struggled, bleeding and torn under the weight of the damned souls clinging to it. It started panting,louder and faster, eyes widening, teeth snapping at something that wasn’t there, every lunge and attack on the empty air wasting the last of its strength.
Estella smiled and settled her stance, arms spinning as she called up the sprite power now lodged within her blood and bones. Her talismans twittered and dancing in the air, flying, swimming, galloping to their mother’s aid, turning in the air about her, singing like a miniature orchestra as they help shape the power.
The south siege beast howled a second after the power struck it, but not in rage. This time it howled in fear, trying to cover its massive face with its arms. It cringed, it cowered, it whimpered and vented the sharp, acrid stink of fear. The damned souls collectively frowned and then one of them smacked it for good measure, much to Valodrael’s delight. His throaty chuckle encouraged them to smack it again.
Amelia had a much more direct effect upon the battle.
Leaving Hartseer behind to deal with the last of the pack at two o’clock, she circled high into the sky, her internals churning as they created more of the chemical cocktail that was her elemental weapon. When she judged she was high enough she heeled over and swooped, the dive calculated to a nicety as she breathed in, gathering pressure behind the internal organs. She focused on the werewolf pack at the twelve o’clock mark as they were finally driving the damned souls back, gaining the wall top as they beat off the damned souls that had been raking them from the wall.
Amelia opened her mouth and…
Half the pack and the white werewolf leading them ceased to be, the world turning midnight for them and them alone.
Damped by the sweat of their exertions the sodium sludge didn’t ignite on contact, it exploded, the noise echoing back from the walls of the Wizard’s Tower and shaking the forest beyond. The damned souls spiralled higher calling to each other in shaken voices while on the wall below the Abominations clinging to the stone work shook their heads, their ears ringing. They crept up and peered over the battlements, wondering where the mutants they had shoved up first had gone.
Ulrich didn’t let the noise distract him as his feet touched road way again. Instead he let go of the rigging, drawing both swords as he advanced on where Ratcliff lay still pinned below the siege beast’s foot.
“Worthless human!” Ratcliff snarled, “I’ll chew on your liver after I have wrenched your still beating heart out of your chest and swallowed it whole! I’ll…”
He choked on whatever he was about to say next, Ulrich’s swords slamming into his neck. He choked and coughed red, the crimson flood staining the ground. Ratcliff, against all sense, bucked and twisted, hands trying to force the blades back out, lacerating palms and fingers. He gargled hate, glaring fury.
“You can’t regenerate if there’s a length of sharp metal in the way!” Ulrich grunted, leaning his weight in, making sure the old werewolf was going to stay bleeding this time. Ratcliff grinned through the pain, tensing for the strike that would rip his foe’s guts out as the pathetic human was still stood within arms reach. Like some dung brained man thing hadn’t tried this trick already? He shifted the fingers of one hand loosening their grip on the blade in his throat.
Marmaduke’s blade slammed down and the old werewolf bucked, muscles fighting the pain blooming within his chest. With mechanical detachment Marmaduke twisted his bronze sword and then twisted again. Ratcliff bucked, heaved, flopped like a fish out of water and was finally still, eyes wide as they stared into nothing.
“Thank you Marmaduke,” Ulrich nodded to his mechanical soldier as he pulled his swords free, “I wonder if I could get the taxidermist to preserve the look of surprise on his face. I’ve always fancied one of those rugs that still has the head attached.”
“Beasts of the Wild!” Tasnar roared, standing up on Bartholemew’s back and lifting his sword high, “Beasts of the Wild! Your leader’s DEAD!”
For a second the pack they were facing hesitated.
“Let Marmaduke pick this thing up,” Ulrich patted his siege beast’s ankle and it moved its foot. Marmaduke hefted Ratcliff by the scruff of his neck, like a bag of old and rather dirty laundry.
The howl started in the pack that witnessed it and spread round the circle ringing the Wizard’s Tower.
The mutants of the packs at the ten o’clock and nine o’clock of the circle turned tail and ran, bounding off into the darkness, yelping and barking in fear. They sounded almost puppyish in their confusion. For a second they milled at the outer wall, lost and without directions. Then they found the smashed open gate and spilled out of it, charging through the battered fields beyond, their frightened cries fading into the distance as they plunged into the darkness of the dead swamp and disappeared into the night.
Unfortunately none of the white werewolves or the siege beasts had the gosh darned sense to run away, neither fear nor intellect telling them that the battle was hopelessly lost and the only pack of abominations that had the sense to run where the survivors of the pack that were facing Hartseer. They fell back, staring at the blood slicked silver figure. Hartseer crossed his blades and then flicked them, spraying a pattern of red droplets on the floor between them. They broke, turned, ran, howling into the dark, crashing through whatever obstacles where in their way.
Hartseer did consider following them, he hated leaving live enemies behind him but he could hear the roars and bellows in the distance that meant battle was still joined, that he had a more pressing job to see to and with one last glare after the retreating Abominations he turned and broke into a run himself, bounding through the darkened streets towards where he could see Abominations climbing the stonework up and over the edge of the battlements despite the damned souls best efforts to clonk them over their heads with whatever they were holding.
Jeremiah hovered, considering his next move. The goblins for once, were quiet gazing up at him in awe. The light shining in their eyes was not fire light or star light. Instead they reflected a different sort of light, one that had not been seen in all its glory on Hestia for ten thousand years. Jeremiah smiled and glanced about for Karma before remembering he’d told his vjgor pack barer to hide outside the walls. It finally occurred to him who it was who had most likely sent the vicious little beasts after him and he realised that here was the perfect chance to put a stop to all that nonsense.
He flicked a finger at his drake, sending it a mental prayer to go and maul the south siege beast while he was busy. It proceeded to trundle off and claw at the siege beast’s leg like a cat clawing at a table leg but it did little more that peel strips of scaly skin off. Still it was keeping the big beast occupied and itself busy so Jeremiah could concentrate on what he was about to do next.
“Peace, my good children,” he proclaimed, gliding lower with dignified grace, “The peace of the one true god be upon you, his peace I give you. You have been worthy and good in his sight. You have earned your worth and your value having done what was pleasing in his eyes and brought his righteous wroth upon his enemies. You are true and worthy servants of the one true god and he reaches forth his hand to you, recognising in you the spirits of submission and sacrifice that once dwelt in the soul of Stink-of-the-Midden. Stink-of-the-Midden was gathered unto him and the one true god found him much pleasing. Bow your heads before the servant of the one true god and he will accept you all the days of your life while you are faithful and submit unto him.”
The goblins blinked, the light fading from their eyes. They stirred and muttered among themselves. They all agreed that they had seen it, they had seen the great dragon of light and purple shadows hovering over the striking down the big, ugly dog beasties that had been digging out so many of the burrows and eating the children. They had all seen it come lower, come closer to them and become the Mage of Lightning as it had done so but they were confused. The news of how Stink-of-the-Midden had been murdered had reached them in the time of hot heat and short nights but the Mage of Lightning seemed to be saying that it happened a different way. They were not sure and in the distance they could hear the screaming and howling.
A goblin at the back of one of the mobs suddenly yipped and heads turned in their direction. They were pointing off into the dark to where the white werewolf who had been leading the pack at the three o’clock mark was battling furiously with a squad of damned souls. It was bleeding and ragged in many places but had evidently given as good as it had got or even better, seeing that it was out numbered, the damned souls before it tattered and torn, some missing ears or hands or even eyes.
Now that, that was something the goblins understood. A good dust up against the beasts that had hunted them more thoroughly than the humans ever had was straight forward and didn’t need explaining. As one the goblins turned and in a jabbering rush, scurried away to give the white werewolf a really hard time of it.
Jeremiah shrugged. It wasn’t the full submission that he had wanted but he could tell that the goblins had listened, they had listened and that would be enough to plant a little seed in their skulls. Jeremiah smiled, little seeds could grow such big things, such very big things.
Quenril’s mind, even in its currently wolf shaped head, was not on big things. It was on small things, such as keeping his sister’s favourite alive for the next five minutes. The red had faded from his fur under the cover of gore to be replaced with an earthy orange. He had lost his Clan, his Citadel, his way of life and now these things had taken his cousin! They would not take anything else from him this night. He didn’t care that his head ached, his limbs trembled and he felt truly, overwhelmingly sick. He didn’t care about any of it as he slashed and bit and snarled, keeping the abominations at bay, Peter a rippling, whistling mass of chitin at his side. All he cared about was stopping them from taking one more thing from him his family and his people. He didn’t notice that he was crying as he panted. It didn’t matter if he was, all that mattered was saving his family.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Thorian sniffed as his siege beast struggled to defend its ankles against the white werewolf trying to take out its Achilles tendon, “I’ve really had enough of this.” He craned sideways, catching glimpses of the white werewolf as he coiled up his dragon hide whipe. Once it was tied on his belt again he chose his spot and jumped. The white werewolf was bowled across the road, smacking up against the side of a building, grazed, dazed and angry.
“Oof,” Thorian grunted, bending and straightening a leg with a pop of his knee joint, “Good job mah bones are stronger than little Ulrich man’s.” He grinned at the white werewolf. “So doggy you gonna get the idea now? Yah gonna run away?”
It rose, growling and rippling its lips at him, ears back, eyes flat glares of hate.
“Alright,” Thorian grinned, reaching for his sword, “You want to play? I’ll play.”
The white werewolf crouched, tense, coiled ready to spring.
It leapt.
Thorian’s siege beast snatched it out of the air with one massive fore paw, claws puncturing deep into the white werewolf’s side. It squealed and struggled, kicking and screaming as the siege beast lifted it and…
The crunch was very final and the silence that followed was absolute.
The siege beast swallowed and bit again.
“Clever girl,” Thorian beamed.
Estella grunted and spun her arms. This time the water that surged up from out of cracks and drains, pots and pipes didn’t even try and smack the siege beast, instead it wrapped around it, a coiling, glistening rope of water that ensnared it like a python encircling its prey.
The south siege beast bellowed and then wished it hadn’t as its ribs creaked under the pressure. It grunted and wheezed, trying to draw a breath that just wouldn’t come. It’s vision, blurred and wavering, detected movement to its side and it threw itself sideways.
Estella grunted, struggling to hold the water steady as Valodrael’s teeth crashed together a hair’s breath from the siege beast’s face. The Void dragon struck out in sheer peak, gouging a long slice along the siege east’s jaw. It yelped and yelped again as Kaelin used both feet to black its eye, smacking into its face at full diving speed. It roared at that and kept rolling, turning over and over, shredding damned souls as it did so, the smaller beasts leaping clear of its kicking mass until it crashed into a house and the structure collapsed particularly over it.
“Burger it!” Estella cried the warning as her magic disintegrated, “I can’t hold it!”
Lady Zilvra heeled her siege beast and as it stepped forward she concentrated, testing how far the link between her and Ceann Mor could stretch.
“By this word declared, this power now I share,” she spoke aloud, this time focusing the spell.
“Interesting,” Valodrael muttered, the extra eyes blinking open on his forehead. He made a husky rumble in his throat as he considered his struggling foe, seeing new angles, new details, new options for attack. “Very interesting.”
The siege beast screamed, seeing what was coming for it.
The white werewolf at the three o’clock mark had its own problems to contend with and couldn’t answer the cry for help. It scrambled up the side of a building, panting, pursued by both damned souls and goblins. The goblins were the worst. It had been holding its own against the damned souls. They were clumsy and old, battered by the weeks of combat they had been through, none of them had been free of injury even before this night had started. The goblins on the other hand?
There were just so many of them! They were vermin, they were bugs and like bugs they swarmed! The white werewolf could hear their screeching and squeaking as they climbed up the wall after it, standing on each other’s shoulders, climbing up each others backs, dragging each other higher. It slapped out at the first few green faces that pocked above the battlement, knocking them tumbling back into the asses below. The white werewolf grinned and kicked the next face that pocked over the edge. The goblin flew back with a screech, limbs wind milling, finding nothing but empty to grab on to.
Another goblin and then another got the same treatment. The white werewolf lolled its tongue. It was beginning to enjoy this, it was…
Clawed hands grabbed it from behind. Two of the damned souls heaved it up over their heads, ignoring its kicking and struggling and threw it off the roof.
The white werewolf howled as it arched through the air and was then most firmly reminded that it was not one of the winged ones as it fell down, down.
The smack as it hit the road way drove all the breath from its lungs and made coloured spots dance before its eyes. It gulped air desperately, hearing the shrieking goblins closing in.
Amelia, swooping on, dived again her sodium elemental weapon bursting forth. Too late she realised her aim was off, the stream cutting a path between the western siege beast, where it struggled against the damned souls and where the abominations that were determined to avenge Ratcliff’s death screamed at Ulrich and his allies. For a moment the greyish silver sludge lay on the street dripping and running where it had splashed down walls. Then it started to steam and smoke.
Tasnar didn’t flinch as it ignited with a coughing roar. He stood, braced by his knees on Bartholemew’s back, hand bow utterly steady, eyes locked on his target.
The white werewolf at the back of the pack that was throwing themselves towards Ulrich barked and snapped at its minions, driving them on, driving them forward, bonding them to its will. So the Alpha was dead. So what? With the Alpha gone then it was simple, it didn’t have to beat the Alpha to become the next Alpha, all it had to do was bend the surviving packs to its will. It could rally the deserters to its will. All it had to do was gather enough to control the femhounds back at the den sites and then it…
It stumbled and swayed. It turned its head, its dying brain wondering why it suddenly had something in its eye. It fell flat on its face but that couldn’t drive the bolt in any further as its point was already scratching the back of its skull.
Tasnar wracked the slide and dropped another bolt into the grove.
“Tally Ho!” Ulrich yelled, meeting hide and fang with steel and skill. Shiny skinned abominations barked and twisted aside, driven back by Ulrich’s steel and Marmaduke’s bronze. The abominations fell back a pace or two, snarling, tensing ready for the spring forward again.
They screamed and yelped as Ulrich’s siege beast trampled in, kicking them left and right, sending them bouncing and rolling across the ground, slamming into buildings and leaving them scrabbling in the dust.
The orange glow of the tower began spiralling up again becoming brighter and brighter. Elisha was sweating but the power was beginning to come a little easier as both he and the Tower learned each others ways.
The light lashed across the sky and the Abominations yipped and squeaked as it arched through them, raking sharp pain over nerves, fizzing through teeth, burning skin. They stumbled or crawled, shaking and panting, phantom pain chasing through their bodies.
The ones at the twelve o’clock mark sat at the bottom of the inner wall, nursing their heads and glaring balefully up at the damned souls hovering above the walls. The damned souls glared back, barking in their own language but the message of ‘get out of town’ needed, should have needed, no translation. Unfortunately werewolf abominations appeared to be more stubborn than mules and more pig headed than wild boars. They also didn’t pay attention to the fact that they weren’t watching their backs, weren’t checking that something wasn’t coming up behind them, something tall, metallic, extremely dangerous and truly ticked off with the entire night.
The damned souls above the werewolf abominations spotted the doom that was racing through the dark towards the abominations but Cyril Crowface had trained them well enough that they did not stared or focus on the re-enforcement pounding up the street to their aid, keeping their eyes fixed on the rattled abominations on the ground below. One of the damned souls adjusted its grip on the rake it held and threw it like a javelin, a badly balanced, rather rubbish javelin it must be said but a javelin none the less and it did make the abominations scuttle aside. The damned soul said something derogatory in its own tongue but it was understandable enough. Suddenly all the damned souls were shouting bad words that needed no translating to be understood and pelting their foes with everything they had to hand.
Around the whole circle the damned souls battered at the werewolves. Now that some of the packs had either quit the battle or been relieved of their use of the mortal coil, the damned souls were able to start bringing their numbers to bare. Two squads of damned souls, one flying, one Hestia bound hammered at the western siege beast. It reared and snapped and staggered into houses, sending bricks and slates tumbling to the ground below, internal wooden beams cracking and splintering.
The fliers that had been Elisha’s body guard crashed into the white werewolf who was in charge of the pack that had tried to split. It stumbled back and lashed out again, howling and spitting in its rage, the survivors of its pack boxed in by the damned souls that had slowed them in the first place and this new squad. The werewolves fought like they thought demons would do but the damned souls had been in hell, they knew how demons fought and they could fight like them. The cacophony rang in the heavens.
The damned souls to the south scrambled back on to the siege beast that was their foe as it struggled back to its feet, clinging on with claw and talon, its movements slowing, its balance unsteady, blood loss and shock beginning to tell. The damned souls had no need to risk destruction and being sent back to hell for another round of torment now, the weight alone of two squads was enough to distress it and buckle its knees.
The siege beast panted, stumbling and crashed more by accident than design into Valodrael. It clawed at him, gorging and tearing. It might as well have tried to rip treacle apart with its fingers. Valodrael grinned as time after time it tore into him only for the damage to close with a sucking gasp like mud in a bog closing over an unfortunate’s head, his hide rippling as it flowed back into place.
“Shall I give you rest?” Valodrael asked, “Shall I give you a place to sleep away eternity? It would only take a little pain for it to all be over.”
The siege beast panted and struggled, staggering under the weight of clinging damned souls, leaking from over half a hundred places.
The siege beast to the west was having more luck. It lashed out and knocked a winged damned soul from the sky with its claws, the red bursting into the air like an orange struck by a bat. It didn’t even scream as it splashed down on Hestia. The bite the siege beast followed up with crashed down on another winged one and for a second its broken and punctured wing dangled uselessly from the side of the siege beast’s mouth, then the most confused look crossed its fac as something inside forced its jaws back open. Fingers wriggled out between its lips on either side and then its mouth creaked open, one inch at a time, the damned soul braced within gasping with the effort, its broken wing dangling uselessly but it was unbowed, unbent and not swallowed yet.
The siege beast roared, thrashing its head from side to side and stomping wildly. There was a yelp as one of the unwinged damned souls round its feet was kicked and bowled down the road. It came to a stop whimpering, clutching at its ribs.
The screams rent the air.
The werewolf abominations weren’t just good at climbing sheer surfaces, they were also good at leaping and the pack at the nine o’clock mark had leapt, snatching two of the winged damned souls from the air and dragging them down to the ground. Once down, their claws and teeth went to work and the damned souls did not scream for long, their cries of pain replaced by the wet sounds of tearing flesh.
The pack at the twelve o’clock mark did not have such luck, scrambling up the wall once more to be met with punishing blows to their skulls. Even if they won they were going to have headaches like nobody’s business the following day.
The real damage came from the pack where Ratcliff had died.
With the sound of an accident in a church tower the werewolf abominations piled into Marmaduke, clawing and wrenching, knocking him off his feet. The squeal of stressed metal cut through the night with a counter point of Marmaduke’s shrill whistles that some how sounded as loud as Iron Rail.
“Get off him!” Ulrich thundered, piling in as well, laying about himself with his swords.
Hartseer needed no such noise. He was the silent death that came out of the dark. The only warning the Abominations clinging to the inner wall got was the sudden metallic, rattling insectoid sound and then one of them screamed as hundreds of cold, thin wires wrapped around its waist and plucked it from the wall. It struggled, tearing at the wires and they suddenly let it go. It’s relief was short lived.
Hartseer was standing below, two swords raised high.
The Abomination wheezed, a noise that bubbled in its lungs and then coughed, red and wet across Hartseer’s face mask. Hartseer, of course, didn’t blink. He could not. What he could do was tear his sword blades free and leave its remains ripped open on the road at his feet. The abominations of that pack froze, staring at the thing below them, their minds not comprehending what they were seeing.
The white werewolf at three o’clock was having an equally bad time. It could not rise for goblins, goblins that thrashed and gouged and bit, tearing and pulling and elbowing. And it could hear the damned souls of the squad that had chucked it from the roof closing in as well. It trashed and wriggled and bucked and still the nattering little green skins clung on.
Lady Zilvra ignored the noise behind her, focused on Kaelin as the wolf woman spiralled high into the sky. She was not fleeing. Lady Zilvra knew that, she was gathering the height for the dive demanded to put the staggering siege beast in the south quarter down once and for all.
Lady Zilvra concentrated, determined to keep Valodrael’s under the spells influence whilst bringing Kaelin into the fold.
“By this word declared,” she stated clearly, “This power now I share.”
Kaelin blinked as the eyes of power opened and then she was heeling over, diving, braced for impact.
Jeremiah got there first, having spent several minutes praying to his god.
The gout of flame from the mouth of his drake wailed through the air, the faces more numerous and detailed than ever before.
Unfortunately it was also off target.
Valodrael threw back his head and screamed as the flames licked over his nova speckled hide, whole galaxies burning and dying as their toxin green touch scorched and boiled him. The noise he made was a scream that was half formed, disintegrating almost, as his form sagged and bent and drooped under the touch of Jeremiah’s god. Then suddenly, blessedly it stopped.
Valodrael dropped to his elbow, panting.
“Do you mind!?!” he snarled, “That hurt!”
He turned his head, fully intending to deal with the heretic right then and right there only a crunch a second later distracted him.
Kaelin smacked toes first into the siege beast’s neck, not directly in its wound but just behind it, the force of the impact rippling across its skin. Something ruptured, the red leakage from its neck wound suddenly turning bright and arterial, shot under pressure. Within seconds it was on its knees, gasping for a breath that would do it no good.
The damned souls jumped off, peeling away, staring as the massive beast shuddered and twitched and finally lay still.
“Did you have to?” Valodrael petulantly, rising back to all four feet, “That was my lunch.”
“You can have it all,” Kaelin grunted as she landed on a roof to rest her wings a moment.
“It’s no use to me now,” Valodrael explained, “Dead flesh never is.”
Kaelin did not like what was implied by that.
“It’s Thorian time!” Thorian bellowed as he charged north, causing both Kaelin and Valodrael to turn their heads in that direction.
Thorian’s strides lengthened until he bounded through the streets, his siege beast following behind.
He laughed as he went, whooping and cheering. This? This was easy, this was simple. This didn’t need no big thinks that made his headache and his nose feel like it was plugged up. This was the strength of his legs and arms, his sword and an enemy he could hit.
The abominations at the nine o’clock mark turned just in time for one of them to have a last sight that was made of Thorian’s sword coming down towards its head. Thorian bellowed a wordless war and another abomination of the pack leapt at him.
It screamed, high and thin as it was snatched from the air by its arm. It screamed again, punching the siege beast’s lip with its free hand. Thorian’s siege beast grunted and then savagely shook its head from side to side. The werewolf abomination screamed for a third time as bines cracked and flesh tore.
It landed in a sobbing, bleeding heap, whimpering and moaning. It tried to roll over. The siege beast’s foot came down like the wroth of a god. There was nothing much left when it lifted its foot back up.
Jeremiah had turned to other things by then.
“Listen to me, worthy servants of the one true god,” he proclaimed, “You have found worth in his eyes. While you submit unto the one true god he will protect and shelter you. Bring unto him your burdens and he will give you rest. If you submit to him wholly and completely without boundaries then he will guard and guide you and give you the strength to defeat the non-believers. If you have faith in your god and cast out from among you any who doubt, any who stray, any who are not wholly committed to the total obedience of your god then he will grant you power and dominion over those who oppress you. He will grant you victory over the hordes and masses of those who do not bow in total obedience to the one true god. Obey the will of your god, the one true god and you will stand over the bodies of those who threatened and endanger the true and perfect people that the one true god has made for himself. Submit, submit I say, submit to the one true god and he will rise you above all others!”
Though most of the goblins were busy giving the white werewolf a right good kicking some at the back of the crowd seemed to be listening to Jeremiah, their heads tilted, their ears turned towards him. A darksome gleam seemed to be crawling over their eyes, devouring the colour that had been there before.
Elisha, though he could not directly hear Jeremiah’s words, sagged under their weight, going to his knees, one arm catching at the lip of the battlements.
“Master?” Cyril Crowface stepped forward, laying a hand on Elisha’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Elisha had one hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Sudden… sudden pain. In my head. I… I can’t do the spell again. Tell me, tell me what you see.”
“I see,” Cyril Crowface looked and then straightened, “I see friends. I see friends and family beating back the darkness. I see hope fighting, fighting and winning where they said hope would never be.”
Tasnar, one of those friends, levelled his crossbow and pulled the trigger. One of the werewolf abominations facing Ulrich screeched and twisted, the bolt buried in its side, too low to be fatal in a creature that could heal so fast and resisted infection so well but painful in the extreme. It stumbled into a pack mate, which turned to snarl at it, knocking a third off balance. They never had the chance to recover from their distraction. Ulrich was there and suddenly his swords were singing, singing a great and terrible song that was punctuated by the fleshy thumps of meat meeting metal and the jagged rasp of edge through flesh.
The first went to its knees one hand to its split stomach, the other to its bleeding throat, its eyes rolled back and it slumped over sideways. The second lunged and met the point of Ulrich’s sword coming the other way at heart level. The third lost its head and still lurched at Ulrich, claws slashing. Ulrich span out of its way and the pair of survivors of the pack closed on him, claws lifted to rake his unprotected back.
The crunch of crushing bone echoed through the night as Ulrich’s siege beast bit both their heads off in a single strike. Ulrich turned in time to see his siege beast pick one of the bodies up and flick it high into the air. Later he would say that the abomination’s remains were half way down the siege beast’s throat before it even gulped.
As it turned its attention to the other body, the wild siege beast in the west bellowed, crashing broad side into something to judge by the sound of falling stone. The damned souls seemed to be giving it a very bad night from the racket that it was making. Ulrich listened and frowned before turning to Marmaduke. The automaton wheezed and sparked, one arm hanging on by only a few nuts and bolts, the surprisingly delicate couplings of his elbow joint a fizzing, cracking mess that sparked and crackled. He whistled sorrowfully to Ulrich, peering out of one eye as he struggled to rise, his ankle not responding properly.
“You get yourself to a workshop,” Ulrich instructed, “I’ll meet you there.”
Marmaduke wheezed a shaky salute and started the slow business of trying to find a workshop while he limped and lurched along.
To the north at the twelve o’clock position the werewolf abominations tried again to clamber over the wall, this time with panic and fear in their hearts. Rumours had started being whispered in the wolf tongue of something that stalked the werewolf packs, something that did not smell like man or animal, something that did not make breath noise nor stop to eat, something that killed as brutally as they did and with as little care. Now that something was real and it smelled of blood and laughed as it came for them, its hair rattling and twisting and covered in thorns.
The damned souls met them at the wall top and battered them back, threatening to throw them from the wall down on to the waiting blades of the thing below. The damned souls fought with claws and teeth and wings, slashing and biting, buffeting and kicking. They fought with the dogged determination that they were not going to let these things destroy their home and their master. Destruction, desecration, despoilment, this was what damned souls had believed to be their purpose because that was what they had always been used for in the past, souls dragged from hell to commit more atrocity upon Hestia, feeding on blood and flesh as they did so. Then Elisha had called them forth from the pits of suffering and his hand though firm had been gentle. He had offered bread and memories and peace. He had seen them not as weapons but as tools, tools he chose how to use, not how others had used them and maybe more than tools for he had asked to know them, to listen to them and to learn from them. They would not see Elisha harmed and they would not allow the people Elisha had claimed as his own to be harmed. Some of them remembered other battles, battles where they had fought to defend the last of their people, their way of life, battles where they had risen in defiance of the Domilii and the paladins, battle where they had sung their death songs even as steel clashed and shields shattered and a red dawn had risen. They remembered and sang again, in their new tongue, the song of old.
“If we should die,
Oh well, so what!?!”
It was sorrow and defiance and the scream for tomorrow.
“Sorry my mother,
Sorry my father,
But if we should die,
Oh well, so what!?!”
Battered, torn, bleeding, they held their foe at bay, even in pain, even in exhaustion, some barely able to stand as they fought. The white werewolf at the nine o’clock point, the last of two on the battlefield, snarled and slapped with handfuls of claw but the damned souls would not give in and would not run. Their lord had asked them to defend the Wizard’s Tower and they would not fail that duty to him. They had come too far in this fight, they would see it done.
Above the battlefield Amelia turned on awing tip and thundered through the air. She swooped out over the north quarter, banked, calculating firing solutions as she mental measured distances between the damned souls on the wall top, Hartseer at the bottom of the wall and the werewolf abominations in the middle. Internally, systems bubbled and pressurized. She could feel a low trembling within her muscles. The length and number of battles they had faced over the last few weeks had depleted her internal sodium stock. She was running low in all reserves and it was beginning to strip the sodium out of her blood to make up for it. She needed a trip to the sea to replenish her internal chemistry since this country didn’t have the pink salt lakes her homeland possessed.
She ignored the warning signs and opened her jaws.
The abominations clinging to the wall yelled as the salty grey gloop covered them but they had little time to do more than that. The sodium ignited with a flame the colour of sunflowers only there was nothing gentle about this colour.
The abominations screamed and fell, rolling on the pressed gravel road. Hartseer stood aside as they shrieked passed him, black hides splitting as they bubbled and blistered. They didn’t get far, limbs contorting backwards, voices going silent as the fire consumed them. As the last fell and lay still, Hartseer turned looking for the last scraps to clean up.
He wasn’t the only one.
“Hi,” Estella called from where she stood on the opposite side of the circle to Hartseer, “Any chance of a lift?”
Lady Zilvra slowed her siege beast, looking around. With a small smile she nudged it over to the wall where Estella stood.
“For the one blessed by dragons,” she said, “Certainly but please mind the gap.”
“Thank you,” Estella smiled back, took a couple of steps back and then jumped forward, making sure she landed on the bundle of rigging and scrambling up to sit behind Lady Zilvra. Zilvra swung its head to the east and nudged it into continuing on, searching for her favourite.
Valodrael was way ahead of them, flowing like a raging flood of dark water along streets and by ways, closing in on the nine o’clock position, where the white werewolf roared and raged at the damned souls, ripping chunks and lumps out of them. It spat and snarled at the abominations. If the worthless things were going to serve then they were going to serve! They would serve him the same way they had served the Alpha. First they would put these annoying freaks down and then they would start claiming the humans and elves that had dared to make this fight so damn difficult. The one who had killed the Alpha would be rewarded by becoming the omega of the pack, fit only to take the beating from everyone else, while the females would become his personal breeding stock. The white werewolf lashed out again. The Alpha was gone and he would take his place, he would…
Valodrael’s jaws made no sound as they came down. His head thrashed from side to side as the white werewolf kicked, then he tilted his head back and gulped, once, twice, thrice. The white werewolf’s agonized form pressed up through his hide only to sink, thrashing back to where it belonged. Valodrael licked his lips.
“Hmmmm,” he rumbled, delivering his verdict, “Spicy.”
The abominations cringed away from his rippling, shimmering form, the light of dying stars chilling them he turned his gaze upon them. A second later Quenril slammed into them, grabbing two of them by their leathery scruffs and knocking their heads together until Valodrael’s nova speckled hide where not the only stars they were seeing.
The abominations fought back but they were loosing cohesion, some of them lunging for Valodrael, some for Thorian’s siege beast, some for Thorian himself. None of their strikes landed and were punished with slashes that left them reeling and screaming.
The western diege beast, the last untamed one on the battle field charged and stamped five of the unwinged ones into the ground as it bit and lashed out at the fliers. The fliers screamed and fought back, mobbing it on mass, clustered about its head, some going as far as to grab on and pull, clawing at its eyelids and nostrils, battering their wings in its face, yanking on its ears. It roared and reared, thrashing its head but the damned souls clung on like burrs, giving their flightless surviving comrade the chance to escape.
The white werewolf at the three o’clock mark rolled and managed to get its legs underneath it. With every last ounce of its strength it heaved, goblins flung aside as it rose. It clawed its way froward, snorting and blowing, eyes flaring red, teeth gleaming as the foam ran from its jaws.
The goblin landed on its back, knife stabbing it. The white werewolf stumbled. Another goblin landed, another rusty knife. The white werewolf lurched. Another and another goblin piled on, shrieking and jabbing, while above Jeremiah muttered a prayer, smiling all the while.
The goblin jabbered and yelled then gradually fell silent. Under their feet the white werewolf lay still and silent, hide rent and ripped in a dozen or so paces. The goblins stared, like children who wonder how they have managed such a grown up thing. One of them pocked the white werewolf and jumped back. When it didn’t move, the goblin pocked it again. No movement and the goblin grinned. It kicked the limp mass and then started dancing, a kicking, stomping wild sort of jig accompanied by a high pitched jabbering chant. The other goblins joined in, grinning and yelling their victory, believing themselves to be giants.
Jeremiah winged away to the main doors of the Wizard’s Tower, smiling to himself. The little peons would believe themselves to be giants for a while as he had prayed to his god for and then be all the more upset when they came to their senses. They would have their moment of victory and then have it stolen from them utterly and completely. He hoped they enjoyed the taste of ashes, he knew he enjoyed watching them taste it.
Below Lady Zilvra and Estella rode on through the streets, not knowing the level of cruelty one of their comrades had planned.
Valodrael was, however, planning that there would be no more battle this night and therefore no more risk to Estella. The western siege beast turned as just the right moment to save itself from being consumed but still screamed as Valodrael’s teeth sank into its shoulder and wrenched back and forth. It clawed at his neck, sending great splashes arching forth that only went so far before they slowed to hang in the air like water falls frozen in time. Valodrael made more certain of his grip and increased the pressure. Something inside its shoulder cracked!
As the siege beast screamed Kaelin dived on the werewolf abominations. One of them dropped to its knees and then toppled forward, clawed hands trying to hold its throat together. The second staggered, Kaelin’s wings beating wildly above them both as she hung on from behind, her lupin jaws worrying the gap where neck met shoulder. The abomination screamed, clawed hands trying to force her teeth away, the she made more sure of her grip and ripped. The werewolf abomination collapsed underneath her, the red hosing across the street and its last two comrades screamed and turned to run.
Unfortunately for them Thorian was already there.
“It’s Thorian time!” the orc crossbreed roared and the shiny edge of his blade was the last thing they saw just before their heads went bowling along the street.
“Well done sir!” Ulrich called as he secured the rigging for his siege beast and drew one of his swords, “Tally Ho!”
The crash as the two siege beasts came together was awe inspiring. The untamed siege beast, the last of the werewolves on the streets of battle stumbled back but then set its legs, straining and snapping at its opponent’s ears. Too close, too quickly to bring their teeth into play, the two siege beasts locked arms round each others barrels and wrestled, straining and shoving, grunting and groaning, heedless of the little things that scurried and squeaked round their feet, ignoring the crash and rumbled of more buildings being battered as they strained against each other.
Unable to reach from where he was on his siege beast’s back, Ulrich simply held on as its reared to the almost vertical and shouted encouragement to his mount. It heaved and swung its opponent sideways.
Standing back out of the battle, braced on Bartholemew’s back Tasnar took the shot, the bolt, was one he had held in his bare fingers until the metal of its head had smoked with the cold, Tasnar’s grip drawing all the warmth possible from the iron until it was utterly frozen, a sheen of ice spreading over the metal.
The siege beast screamed as the bolt sank into its eye up to the fletching and stayed there, an icicle digging into its brain. It screamed again as Hartseer leapt out of the night and opened its calve up, not quite hitting the major tendon in the back of the knee.
With the sound of tearing linen Amelia dived out of the heavens and slammed into the siege beast’s back, driving it to its knees. She stumbled off, shaking her head, dazed by the impact, leaving it to the mounting masses of damned souls to keep it pinned down, a job they did surprisingly well, swarming all over it like ants over a lizard.
Tasnar rode closer on Bartholemew and bayed the lizard stop. As the siege beast surged back to its feet, he squeezed the trigger again.
The siege beast screamed and collapsed back to the pressed gravel road way again, something cold and sharp digging into its vitals.
Kaelin picked up a long spar of wood, the end sharp where it had be shattered when the siege beast had crushed the house it had once been part of. She hefted it in her hands, considering. She levelled it and started running.
The siege beast roared as the spar tore into its side, driving deep between its ribs but the damned souls slammed into its back, pinning it down by sheer weight of numbers so it couldn’t shake Kaelin loose. She yelled with effort as she leaned on the spar, bracing her whole weight forward, straining against the resistance of flesh.
The siege beast roared again and then screamed as something suddenly gave, Kaelin stumbling against its side. It coughed and heaved, red and wet and streaming, bucking and kicking as it fought its last battle with death itself, a fight it could not win. With one final rattle the town around the Wizard’s Tower fell silent.
Ulrich went to cheer but then thought better of it. None of the damned souls looked like cheering and Kaelin was kneeling in the street, vomiting even as her bones cracked back into being human. His and Thorian’s siege beasts lifted their muzzles and vented a long, thin howl that was both triumph and sorrow mixed together into one cry that seemed to hold all the pointlessness of war. Thee was nothing more to be said after that.
Quenril yelped as his body went backwards through the change, back to being an Ash Elf. He lay down on the pressed gravel of the road way and closed his eyes, his skin a pasty grey that looked unhealthy even for an Ash Elf. Lead weights seemed to have been attached to his eyelids and he gave into them, letting oblivion claim him trusting his brother or sister to find him and keep him safe. Around him fires burned in the wreckage of war.
