Fire was blazing through the clearing, great gusts of wind sending flames flaring. They caught in a timber building, roaring into hungry life, blazing red and orange light onto the clearing, clouds of black smoke rolling across them. Between smoke and flame Sig saw Gulla. He was hunched over another acolyte, drinking blood from her throat, as he had done with Burg. Other acolytes were curled upon the floor, spasming and twitching in some convulsion of rebirth while still others were spread about them in a defensive half-circle.
Guarding them while they are vulnerable.
She glimpsed a shadowed figure on the far side of the table, sprinting towards the boulder that had been turned into gaols for those experimented upon but obviously untrusted. The figure’s hood blew back as he ran, another shaved head, but Sig recognized Keld, his beard still wild. He ran to the first gaol, struck at the lock and chain with his axe, a burst of sparks as it shattered, Keld ripping the chain away and hurling the barred door wide. He ran to the next gate and hacked at the lock, this one snapping more quickly, ripped the door open, dashed to the next door as things burst from the open gaols behind him. More cells and chains, more Feral beasts leaping, shambling, snarling from their gaols, throwing themselves into the acolytes that encircled Sig, Drem and Cullen.
‘NOW,’ Sig yelled at the top of her lungs, her voice ringing out, at the same time the three of them surging through a cloud of smoke towards the enemy before them, smashing them to the ground with their shields, trampling over them, carving them to bloody ruin. In the distance Keld’s voice was crying out ‘Truth and Courage,’ taken up by Sig, Cullen and Drem.
The clearing burst into chaos anew, a place of fire and smoke, steel and blood, ringing with the screams and snarls and growlings of half-men and the dying, and through it all Sig and her companions cut a bloody path out of the clearing. Abruptly they found themselves with no enemy before them. Keld erupted from a cloud of black smoke, a wild grin on his face, and then Sig was running, down a flame-lit gap between two buildings, the others close behind.
Within heartbeats they were at the palisaded wall, Cullen racing up a stairwell, but a burst of wind and Sig’s warning shout made him pause – a spear hurled from the sky above thrumming into the stairs just before him. She raised her shield and caught another spear aimed straight at Drem’s heart. Sig hacked the shaft away, but the blade still embedded in her shield dragged her arm down. She dropped it on the ground. Gulla’s half-breed daughter alighted on the palisade walkway.
‘Not so easily,’ she hissed, voice as twisted as her body.
Feet thudded behind them, Sig turning to see acolytes and Feral men swarming after them. They stopped a dozen paces from Sig and her companions and a figure stepped to their fore, the shaven-haired woman, Fritha, the Starstone Sword in her hand. Wings beat and a Kadoshim landed beside her: Gulla, a spear in his fist, veins in his body dark and bloated, even his wings seeming to be heavy, weighted with the blood he had consumed. Crimson lines trailed down his pale chin.
‘You cannot leave us,’ Gulla said. ‘I have someone to introduce you to.’
Behind the swarming acolytes a dark shadow loomed, wider and taller than Sig. A great bear appeared, muzzle and head emerging from the darkness, a hint of madness in its eyes. And upon its back sat a giant, broad, wrapped in leather and fur, still masked by the shadows. A war-hammer was slung across its back.
‘Ah, well,’ Sig snarled, ‘if it’s time for introductions, let me introduce you to Hammer.’
Sig put two fingers to her lips and whistled, and to her right the palisaded wall burst asunder, timber exploding in a spray of splinters, and Hammer’s two front paws crashed into the compound. Her dark fur was covered by a coat of chainmail, harnessed and buckled with leather, gleaming and sparkling in the starlight like a coat of diamonds. She roared a challenge, spraying spittle. Acolytes scattered like flotsam before a tidal wave. With a swipe of her paw she eviscerated one that moved too slowly, her head lunging forwards, jaws grabbing another, the sound of bones cracking, a scream cut short.
The half-breed on the palisade took to the air as it collapsed beneath her feet and swooped on Hammer, hurling a spear, but it was stopped by her coat of mail, skittering harmlessly away.
The other bear roared a challenge of its own, the giant upon its back shouting a command, and it lumbered forwards, charging at Hammer, who was in no mind to stand around waiting for it. She leaped into a charge of her own, acolytes diving in all directions to escape being trampled and broken. Sig ran too, a few long steps, but then Gulla was flying at her, acolytes swarming behind him, and she was ducking swords and spears, sweeping blades aside with her own, barrelling her shoulder into one acolyte, throwing him into the side of a building, where he slid to the ground, twitching.
The two bears came together with bone-crunching force, teeth snapping, claws raking, bellowing. Sig saw Hammer draw first blood, her claws gouging red gullies through the flesh of the other bear’s shoulder.
All around Sig battle exploded, Cullen, Keld and Drem drawing tight together, defending against Kadoshim from above and acolytes that had managed to find a way around the two bears as they were busy turning the encampment into splintered ruin. A building disintegrated as the two animals crashed into it, a fountain of shattered timber raining down upon them all.
Sig took the head from a Feral as it leaped at her, body and head spinning in different directions, and strode after Hammer, but something slammed into her side, sending her tumbling to the ground, the half-breed, wings flexing. She had a flat, broad face, hair shaved and growing out in dark clumps, her body heavily muscled. She snapped her teeth at Sig, more animal than human.
A hand rested on her shoulder, dragging her back, throwing her into the darkness, and Gulla stepped in front of her.
‘She is mine,’ the Kadoshim growled.
Sig made to rise and he kicked her in the head, sending her rolling, grabbed her by her mail shirt and dragged her to her feet, stronger than she would ever have imagined, even for a Kadoshim.
‘I have the blood and bone of Asroth flowing through my body now,’ he snarled, his jaws opening wide, teeth gleaming.
Fear hit Sig then, a jolt like jumping into ice-cold water as she knew what Gulla was about to do to her. She struggled but his grip held her, those teeth moving inexorably towards her throat.