The ogre corpses had reached their full height, their necks cracking sickeningly as they looked around to face us. My head barely came up to the largest brute’s waist, my eyes roughly even with its meaty, swaying knuckles. I felt slightly dizzy as I gazed up.
Charlie and I had only barely survived one walking human corpse; I did not like our odds against this massive pair. Perhaps if Pavel had still been alive to help—and if he had not been actively trying to kill us himself—we might have stood half a chance. He had, after all, been strong enough to take on the two brutes by himself. But now—
Pavel sat up. The early morning sunlight washed his pale, scarred face. It was the first time I had ever seen him upright in the daylight. He did not look better for it. His eyes, like the ogres’, were eerily vacant. The creature that had once been Pavel stood up clumsily.
“Lieutenant,” barked Serif. “I’ve got the larger ogre; you see to the lesser. Go. Seer—can I trust you two to attend to your reanimated informant?”
“We’ve got it in hand!” Jackaby said.
Virgule had already advanced on the first ogre, sword drawn. The brute took a swipe at him, which he ducked easily, rising to bury the blade in the ogre’s chest. The sword sank deep. The ogre glanced at the hilt protruding from his torso and then slapped Virgule with a blow that sent him skidding along the castle wall until he rolled to a stop twenty feet away.
Serif grunted as she launched herself against the other ogre, but my attention was quickly drawn to Pavel, who was advancing fast.
Jackaby gripped the wooden stake. “No hard feelings?” he said, and drove it into Pavel’s heart. The forces driving Pavel had clearly changed. The stake sank into his chest, but to no avail. Pavel did not slow, but rather pushed into the attack, catching Jackaby by surprise.
Fortunately for my employer, Pavel appeared to have forgotten that he had no teeth. He buried his gums into Jackaby’s neck. Jackaby cried out in alarm. The two of them were locked together, looking equally distraught for several seconds, until Jackaby came to his senses. He seized Pavel by the arm and flipped him around in an awkward tumble that sent both of them sprawling.
“Sir, look out!” I called. The remaining imp, still bounding along the parapets, was only a few leaps away. Jackaby looked about and grabbed his fallen satchel, which still lay atop the wall where Jenny had dropped it. He threw the entire thing haphazardly toward the imp.
He missed by a considerable margin. The sack flopped open on the ground about halfway between them. The beet red creature touched down one last time before he made his final pounce. Except, instead of solid stone, the imp encountered the inside of Jackaby’s enchanted satchel. The thing about Jackaby’s satchel was that there was considerably more of it inside than there was outside. The imp squawked in surprise and vanished from sight. Jackaby threw himself over the satchel and held it closed with his full weight.
Panting, he shot me a celebratory grin. “I’ve got this one,” he said, then his eyes widened. “Watch yourself!”
I turned in time to see Serif’s ogre, the larger of the two, stumble backward, nearly on top of me, as it recoiled from a blow. The brutes were slow and uncoordinated, but what they lacked in dexterity they more than made up for in sheer muscle. Crossbow bolts stuck out of this one like porcupine quills. The general had abandoned her bow in favor of her sword.
Virgule still had not managed to retrieve his own weapon from the chest of the other ogre. It lumbered after him like a grunting, angry kebab. Virgule wove around its strikes, but he was moving stiffly, and the living dead showed no signs of slowing.
On the ground ahead of me I caught sight of one of the discarded poleaxes. I grabbed the pole—and nearly fell over. The weapon was stuck fast, jammed in place between the outer parapet and the inner wall. I abandoned it and snatched up the other, only a few feet away. The weapon was much too heavy for me to wield with finesse, but I hefted it with both hands anyway.
I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the largest ogre thundering furiously toward me, Serif on its shoulders, dodging its hands as it swatted at her. She raised her blade and swung down, landing a blow across the ogre’s neck, but she had sacrificed her own defenses for the shot, and the ogre’s thick hide was unforgiving. The blade cut a sickly cleft in the corpse’s flesh that did not bleed so much as it leaked a dark, syrupy liquid. In return, the brute locked its teeth into her and tore a ragged bite out of her right shoulder. Serif’s sword clanged to the stones, and her legs buckled as the ogre dropped her.
Serif defenseless beneath him, the brute went for the kill, and my hands acted on their own. Before I realized what I was doing, I had swung the poleax. I struck the ogre off-center, lopping off the wretched creature’s ear and a goodly portion of its cheek.
My stomach lurched. I was going to be sick.
The creature turned slowly to face me. Well, it turned to three-fourths-of-a-face me. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick until you’re done fighting monsters.
The ogre lunged, and I pelted toward the guardhouse in the opposite direction, slipping past Virgule and his own hulking opponent. I could hear my ogre slam into Virgule’s as we passed, and I hazarded a glance over my shoulder. Virgule’s impaled creature had abandoned its efforts to catch Virgule and was loping along behind us, glaring, instead. Splendid. Because what I needed was to have both brutes after me. Clumsy or not, they did not look inclined to stop anytime soon, and the heavy poleax in my hands felt more like an anchor than an asset.
An idea danced in my brain. I willed my legs to pump just a little faster, to put just a little more distance between the ogres and myself.
I could feel the thuds of both brutes now loping behind me along the wall. They were slow, but for every three of my strides they needed only one. When I was nearly to the guardhouse, I dropped to the ground and rammed the pointed tip of the poleax into the outer parapet and shoved the butt against the inner. I gave it a firm kick to wedge it between the two crenellated walls as tightly as I could. It stuck soundly, but I wasn’t certain it would be strong enough. No time for certainty. I leapt back to my feet. Please work. Please work. Please work.
The first behemoth closed the gap, its disfigured face glistening and its lips snarling. I held my ground. Three more steps. Two. One. I dove aside, whipping around to watch the enormous ogre trip and tumble into the bricks. Its ankle smashed the pole into scraps. But it did not trip. It did not even stumble.