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Chapter XX - The Battle of Amarthane

Swirling snow had the City Wardens huddling on the rooftops of Amarthane, wrapped up in their cloaks and trying to stay warm as much as keeping watch. The thick fall would make long-range visibility near impossible. Nonetheless, Vanyal had volunteered to climb up and stay with them for the moment, as Tomasj was under better care than he could give, and Timid and Cel were still somewhere inside the Cathedral.

He prayed they would survive. Captain Summers' Guards had bashed down the front doors to find a horde of the undead within, clawing and moaning for flesh, and was now engaged in a close-quarters brawl with the things, using their shield walls and armor to grind the swarm down hallway by hallway and room by room.

Down below in the great square before the Cathedral of Many, nearly half the Guard in the entire city were marshaled, organized and ready to dispatch to anywhere in the city at the first call, while hundreds of civilians ran about setting up tents and following barked orders. Somewhere down there, Tomasj was lying on a cot, wrapped in blankets, spitting up blood and water and every manner of vicious curse word he could think of. Van worried for him, the wolf's already-weak lungs having been half full of water when he'd been pulled from the freezing river.

A soft crunching of snow heralded the arrival of another Warden to join the two he stood watch with. For hours, they had exchanged watchfurs all up and down the rooftops, to help keep everyone on their toes and watchful. Van lifted his hooded head, and then quirked a brow at the incoming fur.

It was standard, in this kind of weather, to wear a face mask of some sort to prevent heat loss from the muzzle. This one was puffing hot breath from an un-covered face, sending up plumes of steam as he panted, and fell to a knee on the snowy rooftop.

"Master Thieren at South Gate says...Hff...Hff..."

Van put a paw to the straining squirrel's shoulder, squeezing it and pulling him toward the lantern they'd set up for heat.

"Sit, catch your breath, then speak brother."

The squirrel shook his head shakily, and grabbed Van's arm with his paw.

"Thieren says...Guard fires on the west wall-gate...Out...Can't send anyone to check."

Van frowned, and didn't have to say a thing to get the other Wardens moving, as he pulled the squirrel toward the lantern and sat him down on a furs-covered set of bricks.

"Take our post, keep the lantern going unless you're attacked. We'll go check it."

The nameless wolf couldn't find a voice with which to yell, and even if he could, the horde was moving past him so quickly there would be few that heard it and would have any extra chance to survive thanks to it.

He crawled, paws and knees scraping numbly on the blood-splattered cobbles, away from the western gate, sobbing and shivering in the freezing cold. Frost-stung eyes stared out from his haggard face as the undead smashed through flimsy peasant hovels and slammed down heavy wooden doors into inns and businesses, seeking out the screaming, surprised and terrified morsels within.

From a hoarse throat, he tried to call out, tried to yell warning. As if a veil had been lifted from his eyes, he saw horror-struck what his own madness had allowed. Rape and abuse, torture and deprivation, no matter how severe, had been no fault of these poor doomed souls.

As he looked on in terrified horror, a little horse girl ran shrieking from her parents' home as her mother and father fought with fierce but futile valor against a swarm of invading dead. The nameless wolf reached out toward her, trying to call her to him so he could do something for one little girl, save one lost soul from the Hell he'd unleashed here.

His gut wrenched and his face lanced with agony from the scream torn of his freezing throat as she blindly ran right into a flailing swarm of murderous undead, and vanished beneath their onslaught.

Tears freezing to his frosted fur, the nameless wolf crawled further. All thought of warning or fighting slowly fled, until all he could see was a burning home, some lamp knocked over in the undead assault turning it to a burning inferno. He crawled toward it, so cold he'd ceased to shake, though his thoughts weren't to getting warm any more.

When he reached the edge of the blaze, heat beginning to singe his fur, the nameless wolf continued his will-driven crawl, until he finally came to a lip, and rolled himself into the blaze, hoping to burn away his horrid guilt and die in the cleansing agony of a flaming penitence.

Van felt as if he were a sparrow in a flock, and the sense helped him settle his burning grief for his dead family and swallow his worry for his wife as he and the other two Wardens sprinted and leapt from rooftop to rooftop along the Thieves Road. Below them, the ground-bound soldiery and volunteers of Amarthane seemed small, slow, turtle-like with their armor and sluggish motion.

Ahead of them, through the whirling, thickening snowfall, Vanyal could see lights on the western part of the city, and for a moment he hoped the western signal fire's outage would just turn out to be a simple, temporary accident. Then he realized what he was seeing, by the burning embers flying up into the night sky, was no signal fire but instead immolated buildings turning to towering infernos that defied the biting cold.

He restrained the urge to curse under his breath, and poured on speed, arms and legs pumping and tail shifting for balance as he leapt a wider avenue and landed in a slide atop a tiled roof. From there, he had no choice but to dismount the Thieves Highway, the western district's roofs too fragile or far apart for such running to continue. A moment behind him, two other Wardens dropped down, as he was checking his blades by sheer habit.

One, a lithe and wiry bobcat whose name Vanyal recalled as being Lorry, spoke up in a gruff whisper.

"Counterattack by the bloody royalists?"

The fox flicked his ears to either side, then forward, stringing his bow and untying the peacebonding on his hand axe. Before Van could respond, the limber squirrel Warden he'd been introduced to as Kor spoke up.

"Could be. Seems pretty deep into our territory, though. Might be a distraction to aid a push across the bridges."

Van simply nodded, and abandoned all thought of possibilities as he stood, emptied his mind, and focused on his breath while walking across the messy, abandoned market square. Distraction, he knew, could be their death if they walked into a trap by Casso's saboteurs, and he was sure the Duke's soldiers were canny enough to have hidden if they couldn't get across the bridge before the Guard locked it down earlier that night.

Behind him, the squirrel and bobcat watched their silent Forest Warden cousin, and met one another's eyes with paired shrugs. If he wasn't going to participate in their banter, they figured, best they join the taciturn ranger in silence.

Van's footpaws, with their soft-soled boots, made barely a sound as he padded down the wide avenue and clung to the shadows like a flitting ghost, while the two wardens behind him followed along on the other side, eyes scanning and heads swiveling. At a paw signal from Van, they nodded recognition and continued down several blocks of frost-windowed, closed-down shops before waiting on their forester friend to catch up.

As the signal had indicated, he snuck around to their position, and they watched his back as the agile fox clambered up the side of a stone smith-works building to get a better view. Van dug his fingers into the roof's stone gutters and pulled himself up and over, slithering flat on his belly to the opposite edge.

Firelight flickered in his eyes and lit his face as he peered down from the tall structure, shielding his vision from glare with a paw. He counted four blazing buildings, some ten long blocks away and down twisting poor-side alleyways. In the distance, the howling winter wind called out, foreign in its voice to his forest-born ears.

Then, his stomach lurched low, when the wind died down and the howling chorus of moans continued. Somewhere off in the dark, a blood-curdling shriek rose and fell, cut off as suddenly as it had begun, and he heard through the roof of his perch as the smith latched windows and hid against what the fur likely assumed was more violence in the street he wanted no part of.

Then, through the snow-misted dark, shambling shapes began to quietly emerge, shambling, from the avenues but a few hundred paces ahead of him. Many looked days or weeks dead, dripping rot and slime, but others were still red with their own blood, eyes not yet discolored, merely flat and dead, some even still clutching gore-splattered peasants' weapons.

He broke silence, sprinting to the roof's edge, and shouted down urgently to the two below.

"Lorry, Kor, get back to the city center and ring the bells, the dead are in the city!"

"What?" Kor exclaimed, staring up at him with eyes bearing disbelief in their wide stare. Lorry just grabbed him by the scruff, yanked, and charged off toward the Cathedral of Many, as Kor scrambled to keep up.

With a grim nod of satisfaction, Van drew his bow from where it lay around his shoulder, and tested the string to make sure the wet hadn't stretched it. At his side, as his paw traveled down the path it had journeyed a million times and more, he felt the quiver of arrows made for him by the village wives, and strummed his fingers delicately over the soft feathered fletching.

He knew that to warn the locals would likely not save them, but at least in being awake for the fight they could do some damage to the enemy, or at least give the attempt to escape. A quick twist of his head showed him the nearest bell, in the pointed steeple of a small neighborhood temple, across streets too wide to jump over and well behind the advancing tide of undead and beyond the normal range of a bow.

With absolute clarity and blankness, an arrow was knocked and released before thought could ruin its flight. As his grandfather and father had taught him, the arrow knew the way, and was a third the distance to a perfect hit as he fired a second arrow toward the bell, then a third that left his bow just as the first struck with a discordant, pealing toll.

In the streets below, the monsters let out a cacophonous moaning roar as windows began to light up, furs responding to the three-toll distress bell.

Van began to fire, with careful deliberation, into the swarm.

Thieren stalked back and forth, stomping his boots to keep his feet from freezing solid, the big mountain lion keeping active to stave off fear of the motionless dead beyond the gate. Now that they were trapped on the other side of an iron gate and not doggedly chasing him through an ancient, terrible forest, they seemed far less terrifying. Still, every time he looked at them too long, he felt his heart jerk, in response to memories of watching long-time friends torn apart by the things.

He rubbed at his face with a broad, thick paw, scrubbing at the image in his head of his brothers in arms, straggling and running exhausted from a lost battle, being leapt upon by the hideous running long-clawed creatures that had come before the swarm. Captain Tetra had been torn apart, shredded like ground pork, by a pair of the things fighting over his remains.

A yell drew his attention back toward the gate to spot one of the black-cloaked Guards shouting back and forth with a Warden up on the crenellated wall. Others were beginning to rush about, urgency in their widened eyes, and Thieren strode back at a solid clip.

"Report!"

The Guard he'd spotted yelling had blanched, the insides of his ears going pale, and he pointed at the gate, at something beyond the concealing wall of undead who'd shoved their arms through the portcullis and were scrabbling sluggishly for anything that got too close.

As Thieren peered, brows coming up in confusion, the crowded mess of undead began to shift and move, shambling aside as if somehow commanded. Thieren's insides started to writhe, and he reached for the hilt of his greatsword, drawing it with a soft scraping of metal on leather.

Beyond the massed swarm that had clogged the gate, huge grisly shapes were moving in the snow-drifted darkness. Somewhere out there, a scarlet eye glowed like a firelit ruby.

Thieren's bellow cut the silence like a knife.

"OGRES! To your places, warriors! They come!"

Scrambling away from the gate, Thieren cursed under his breath, watching as the Guards moved to their practiced formations. With tactical advice from runners that had sprinted from the Cathedral Square over the last few hours, Thieren had assisted the various Guard sergeants on drilling their warriors in how to deal with a breach. They'd fallen into line all too quickly, he thought, likely due to him being the only one with actual experience fighting these damned creatures.

Before him, solid shield-wall ranks formed, spanning across the city's main thoroughfare in a bristling line of steel. On the flank roads that ran along the base of the wall, similar shorter lines formed just as thick, warriors packed into formation and pressed against each other in a combination of comforting touch and ready will.

In the center of the box created by the gatehouse and three walls of warriors, Thieren took his position along with thirty or so other heavy-weapons wielders. These, if the plan went to form, would blunt the expected charge from massive rot ogres, which all the sergeants had agreed would likely be the cause of any gate breach, once he'd told them of the beasts' horrid strength and malignant intelligence. Thieren raised his heavy great blade, and pressed his forehead to the crosspiece, bass voice uttering a prayer he only hoped his ancestors would hear.

"In victory or death, grandfathers and grandmothers, give me glory!"

Around him, others among the great-weapon wielders heard his words and repeated them, in a susurrus of self-reassurance. Thieren smiled grimly to hear it, for these city-folk weren't of any tribe or clan that would make such prayers under normal circumstances. It felt good, he realized, to be among furs who seemed to admire him that much. He didn't bother thinking on all the reasons for them to hate him instead. They didn't know of his recent past, and didn't need to.

The thick iron bars of Amarthane's great western portcullis gate had withstood hours of the immortal strength of the walking dead without so much as a bent bit. Now, Thieren prayed the terrifying ogres he'd seen from afar back in the forest would be unable to breach them as well.

A strange whistling sound filled the air, and guards atop the gatehouse ducked reflexively. Thieren gritted his jaw and held his ground, praying the bars would hold.

The boulder struck with terrible force, shaking the very cobbles beneath their feet as it impacted the portcullis' bars and bent them with a horrible shriek of twisting iron. Then a second struck, perhaps two paws' breadths above the first, wrenching the inches-thick bars with a noise that made Thieren restrain a wince for fear his furs might notice it and become nervous.

Dents, he knew, the portcullis could handle. So long as the enemy's aim stayed poor, the Mason's Guild would be able to continue building and repairing defenses. Once they arrived, he corrected himself with a scowl of annoyance.

Then, all time for such thoughts was over, as two more boulders sailed in and struck the same spot, tearing through the gate with a shriek of fatigued metal and the clanging of torn-off sections bouncing across the cobbles.

"One small hole! Sergeant, send to the Captain!"

"Aye sir!"

Moments later, a light, long-legged hare had shucked his chain mail and was off at a full-body sprint, bearing message to Captain Summer's headquarters of the coming breach.

"Remember! Kill the rotten ogres first, then push the dead back through the gate! They have little in the way of tactics or formation, so we use ours to beat them, aye?"

The roared "AYE!" of solidarity and understanding came from all around him, and Thieren grinned as his hackles rose with the spirits of battle, feeling as if they were clawing at his insides for a way out and slaughter to deal.

Another boulder crashed down, and slammed near the initial hole, widening the shoulders-sized breach farther, bent iron clattering away or remaining hanging uselessly from the gate. Thieren hefted his sword, stroking his palm over the worn pommel of the familiar, trusty thing. He swallowed back the urge to shout and rush, despite the thrumming urge building in his chest, knowing the anxiety just before a first charge would be overwhelming for some if it was so severe for him.

The battle-tested veteran waited, until finally the portcullis began to cave, with thunderous crashes as three more boulders hit and struck through, bouncing across the empty space and smashing into dirt-filled carts he'd ordered left between soldiers and gate for just such a purpose.

Then, a moan shuddered forth from so many throats it sounded like an agonized storm more so than groaning dead furs, and the undead were pouring through the gap in their mindless hunger, rotting arms dripping flesh and out-held, claws up and grasping as they came.

From above the undead host, archers atop the gatehouse began loosing shafts into the swarming mess, hardly able to miss heads even if they hadn't aimed, so closely-packed were the dead. At the same moment, from the building-tops behind them, City Wardens opened fire, arrows arcing down with the deadly accuracy their brotherhood was trained to.

The shamblers reached his dirt-filled cart and were stymied by them, their headlong rush of weight and numbers broken by the half-rectangle of entangling wood and soil in just the fashion he'd hoped for. Just as he'd predicted, the ground began to shake, and terrible basso roars rent the air as a trio of immense, slavering, rotting giants began shoving their way through the lesser dead, crushing many in their mindless hunger for flesh.

"Hold! Wait for them to clear the barricade!"

Around him, warriors shifted and gripped their weapons, nerves having built to the breaching point as the enemy slavered and groaned and clawed so close they could see the putrescence of their eyes. Then, as if a dam had broken, the pressure released in an explosion of roars and charging furs as the first hulking rot ogre battered aside a half-ton cart of dirt like it was a box of tinder twigs and charged into the skirmish line.

The first loose line of skirmishers rushed forward, and were contemptuously bulled and clubbed aside like foot balls as the thing swung a massive stone club, smashing one fur to pulped chunks and breaking the limbs of others. Thieren's roar seemed to split the world in his own head, and with thunder in his ears he hurled his great weight of muscle into a red-rimmed charge.

Thieren's world dissolved into a riotous bedlam of rushing furs, shivering roars, and the hollow crashing of flesh striking and struck by steel. A massive leg whipped out, and sent the boar to Thieren's left flying through the air, broken limbs windmilling, and without thinking a moment the big mountain lion let loose all the tension in his shoulders, slamming his greatsword into the offending monster-limb with a meaty thwack of impact, shearing halfway through it and sending the fifteen-foot giant down with a howl of rage as the lower half of its lower leg flopped bonelessly.

He put a boot to the thing's thrashing limb, snarling open-mawed and fangs bared as he ripped the greatsword free. Without needing orders, a dozen other brave warriors rushed the downed monster, leaping onto its enormous heaving chest and driving blades into it over and over, as it spurted gory blood.

Thieren blinked at a realization. Rotten-fleshed though they were, the ogres had to be alive, to gout blood in such a way!

"Aim for their groins, lads!"

A second ogre was crashing forward, then, having won free of the clawing horde that was slowly spilling through the gap. Arrows were peppering into the towering monstrosity, as it was leaked blood like a sieve. A massive, looing bull charged, ferociously bulling aside a pair of grasping shamblers and planted himself, swinging his weight backward to lever a long-handled great axe straight up into the roaring, berserk ogre's crotch.

The ogre let out a noise somewhere between a thunderous bellow and a piteous, hideously loud squeal, and fell down with an earth-shaking crash as its huge rotting fingers cradled ruined testicles. Some fur with murder on its mind more than mercy leapt up atop the thing's throat and planted a heavy halberd blade through its eye socket, silencing the ogre's terrible dissonant calls of agony.

"That's two! One more, then fall back behind the shield wall!"

Somewhere to his left, Thieren heard the ogre's ground-jarring footfalls, and turned in time to duck under its sweeping club, headfur pulled by the wind of its passing. The mountain lion roared so he wouldn't shit himself, and stabbed forward with his sword, hearing a meaty thunk and crunch as the blade passed into the ogre's knee and lodged under the cap. Thieren almost winced for the giant, as he twisted the sword and tore it free, but he was far too busy levering the blade with his shoulder as the fulcrum and slamming it up into the creature's inner thigh.

Rotting flesh parted, and the cougar found himself spluttering and falling back as he was blinded by a torrent of blood, then buffeted by something large and heavy smashing into his side, spinning him to the cobbles and bending his breastplate. His ears were ringing, deafened by a terrible roar and the force of such a hit, his eyes filled with stars as paws grabbed at him, scrabbling, clawing, dragging him across the rough stones with great strength.

Something else struck him then, grabbing his leg, and he was twisting, writhing, trying to get his sword up out of the press of creatures moving around him to get in a swing. Another roar broke from multiple throats, and suddenly he was free, dragged back away from the monstrous horde he could suddenly see quite clearly scrabbling at his helmet and armor as some fur or another was pulling him back and fighting them off.

Then he was inside the shield wall, being helped to his feet by a pair of Guards, one of them offering him a water skin he stared at blankly until someone poured it over his head to wash the blood and grime away enough for him to properly see.

"Cap'n Thieren, all three ogres're down! We're pushin' em back!"

He couldn't tell from which direction the words came, or from whose lips, but he nodded his head and forced a laugh from lips that felt no desire to smile.

"Good! Any word from the masons guild?"

"Aye sir, messenger just in! If we can hold them off an hour or so, they'll have a second wall built up! With no more ogres to use, the walls'll hold after that!"

Thieren blinked, wondering just how in the hell they intended to build a whole new wall so quickly. He also hoped the boisterous warrior was right. He wasn't so certain there were no more ogres, or even more deadly undead siege engines, out there in the wintry forest.

The tiger came back to consciousness with his arms tied together in front of him at elbows and wrists, pulling his shoulders towards one another and leaving his body bowed. His legs likewise were tied at ankle and knee, and as he forced lead-heavy eyes open, Toryen realized something was missing. He listened, just as hard as he could, and was surprised at his own fear of silence.

The voice was gone. For the first time in his life, since he was old enough to know the voices weren't usual, he realized the terrible weight of silence. Deep inside, in a place he hadn't often known before, he felt a quivering of fear. Without his father's voice, without the voices in his inner world, without his brother, he felt lost, as if he were standing alone on a featureless plain without map or compass.

As he stirred, a voice spoke, with a strong but comprehensible Svalich accent, coming from a hoarse throat and accented with what he could only think of as malicious amusement.

"Ah, so you aren't going to die after all. Not yet anyway."

Toryen shifted again, and rolled, realizing he was staring up at the roof of a tent, partly covered with a scratchy wool blanket. As he shifted, he saw others in the large pavilion, perhaps sixty, laid in rows on whatever could be had for bedding. Five paces to his left, a skinny, sallow black-furred wolf with red-rimmed eyes and dull matted fur sat in an actual cot, heavy wool blankets on his lap leaving his scar-riddled chest exposed.

The tiger's eyes traveled over his form, as the wolf labored to take slow, raspy breaths, and gave him a yellow-fanged smirk that glinted with viciousness reflected in the dark pools of his eyes. His chest was a tracery of scars, most from swords or knives, though they paled in comparison to the naked scar that covered him from ruined left nipple to hip, one and a half paw widths wide and angry-shaped, like a huge blotch of paint had been thrown on him, splattered, and become a terrible smooth-skinned white scar traced through with white and blue veining.

The wolf saw where his eyes had fallen and smirked again, showing Toryen the flecks of blood on his yellowed teeth.

"You can come touch it if you like."

The cat glared at him. He laughed in response, a snickering huffing sound.

"Oh right. Tied up. Too bad I can't come to you.

Toryen opened his mouth to retort, and the cold air across his tongue gave him a fetid taste of how filthy his mouth was, leading the cat to spit until it was clear before responding.

"Be silent, wolf! My father will hear of this!"

His angry words seemed to only amuse the wolf more, who tilted his head back and had the temerity to openly laugh at Toryen Casso, son of the King of Amarthane. The tiger felt his hackles rising, fur shivering, eyes wide with rage as he glared with all of his hate.

"Your useless father is trapped in his castle with all the world turned against him. He won't live out the week, little boy. You'd best hope someone here takes a liking to you, or you'll be tossed in the river to drown like the overfull chamberpot your words make you out to be!"

The cat's furious retort was cut off as a trio of black-cloaked Guards rushed into the tent, panting as if from a long run, and began to speak heatedly with what Toryen could only assume was some manner of apothecary or physician. The black wolf hacked and spat up a lump of something foul, before speaking again.

"Tomasj is my name. You're Toryen Casso. Nice to meet you."

"Fuck you, wolf," the cat said off-pawedly as he was trying to focus on hearing across the tent full of sleeping, snoring, and groaning wounded.

"You'd like that, hey pussycat?"

Toryen's ears tried to pin back in annoyance, and he had to fight instinct to keep them forward, an odd feeling all by itself. The cat wriggled on his bed of fusty blankets, arms and legs gone numb from so long settled after being tied up, and flinched as prickles of sensation began running up them. Meanwhile, the conversation's urgency came to a breaking point, and the physician began bellowing, waking resting or wounded soldiers.

"The walls are breached! All able-bodied furs are ordered to kit up and be ready for deployment!"

Tomasj snorted and spat.

"Fools. We are all going to die if the walls are open. Not enough of us to hold back that tide of death. Not with Shadow Namers among their number."

Toryen began to struggle, grunting and twisting in his bonds. The voices were gone now, and his heart was racing, already nervous by their lack of presence and now thrust into lethal danger. He didn't bother with disbelief, his mind whirling ahead far enough to know that no one would go to this far a length over simple sedition.

"Help me you black fucking bastard!"

"Why would I help you? What does it gain me to set a dangerous enemy loose?"

Toryen squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to calm himself, wheezing in breaths too fast to let them back out. His heart trampled about in his chest with the need to be free of bondage. Images of shambling corpses were strewn all over his dreams, now made real by this nightmare world. Images, he realized, the Voice had shown him so many times, and only now that it was gone was he able to recall at will.

"Fuck! Anything! Don't leave me here for the monsters! Please!"

Tomasj tilted his head at the desperate tone, from so proud and insane a creature as Toryen's reputation had said of him. From what the Guards who'd left him here beside him said, this creature was mad, without fear, a rapist and sadist, and to be shot dead if he tried to escape.

It brought a smirk to the sick wolf's lips, and he raised Nastasia from under his blanket, pointing the weapon's blood-dribbling muzzle with unerring steadiness at Toryen's right eye.

The cat froze, staring down her barrel, a morbid fascination rolling through his body as if his very soul were hypnotized as the weapon bled and dripped slowly on the dirt floor of the hospital tent. It spawned in him a sense of revulsion not unlike what he'd felt the first time he'd looked at a woman's cunt up close, or the encompassing terror he'd felt the first time his father had held him by an ankle off a castle parapet and threatened to drop him if he pissed the bed again.

The black at its center loomed, filling his vision, his ears full of rushing sound as his eyes began to leak hot tears of despair and fear, for he knew this wolf understood the monstrosity, and would have no hesitance in ending it forever.

"I...I swear I won't be your enemy! I will suck your cock whenever you like...Kill for you if you like...I'll be your slave, only...Only don't let me die." In a much softer voice, so low the wolf could barely hear it. "Don't leave me alone with father..."

Tomasj tilted his head the other way, and gave a hard, barking laugh flecked with phlegm, as he lowered the pistol.

"Fail in keeping your word and I will put my Nastasia up your little pink asshole and fire bird shot. You'll shit blood and intestines until you die of it, screaming and writhing in your own filth."

Toryen nodded his head, feeling blank and empty as he stared at the floor and simply cried, head hanging off his cot.

A few moments of shuffling later, and the wolf, naked to the waist, was at his side, sawing through the ropes with a dagger so sharp it sliced the skin of Toryen's wrists shallowly with each movement. He grimaced, an bit back a yelp of pain and reproach until his paws were free and he could yank them back in front of him to examine the wounds.

He growled, seeing them dripping the slightest bit of blood. Shallow, but likely to sting like hell later.

"You son of a whore, you cut me!"

Further imprecations were broken off as, to his startlement, the wolf slapped him open-pawed across the back of the head.'

"Shut up, slave boy. Pop off to me like that again and I'll cut you far, far worse than that."

Toryen looked back, eyes wide with surprise, to see the deadly, calm certainty in the wolf's own orbs. He spoke the truth, and it gave Toryen chills, and a sick sensation as he realized the fear others had felt seeing his own eyes that way. Worse was the knowledge that he felt something about it beyond pride at his own power. Something he could not yet identify.

"The Cardinal shall never again live rich when his people die in the streets. He will spend at least one day of every week working in the fields alongside peasants, and at least two days of the week assisting in hospital duties."

As the hundred or so surviving nobles, clergyfurs, soldiers, and Paladins escorted him through the battle-damaged halls of the Cathedral of Many, a studious-looking skinny mouse of a cleric scribbled down Timid's annoyed dictates, pausing only to wet the pen with his tongue.

To his left, like a stone sentinel given life, Cel strode with her icy blade whisping tendrils of white fog off her shoulder, eyes filled with the blue fire that gave Timid chills of satisfaction whenever he looked at them too long. She had cut down dozens of the enemy in their pitched courtyard battle, and though the Paladins had clearly eyed her with shock for her female body, not one had even so much as muttered under his breath that she should not guard him personally. To be who she was, and having gone through all she had suffered, and then to fight with such passion was heartening. It gave him hope that despite the decimation facing them, the mortal spirit could persevere.

"Females are henceforth to be allowed in all clerical and paladinic positions to which they are able to qualify. The Finder makes no distinction, when rescuing souls, based upon what hangs between their legs or from their chests. Only on what grows within their hearts."

More scribbling of the pen, as the paladins leading his party of survivors located another cluster of shamblers and began the furious but cautious task of dismembering the damnable things to make way for their exit.

"During times of tumult, the Temple is to stand on the side of the common fur AND the noble-fur whenever possible. We are not some damned political game piece to be played! We will adjudicate and protect, not seek our own foolish greedy goals."

Cel gave him a half-grin, before quickly fighting it down to retain her serious demeanor, to keep nobles cowed and away from them both as he wrote laws that would stay with the Temple likely for decades. Assuming the Temple survived at all, after the gutting of its holiest place by rampaging monsters.

"I also hereby found the Order of Knights of the Sarellas. Their duty is to hunt down and destroy monsters and minions of the Shadow that threaten our people. To be overseen by...Er..." He looked to Cel, who reached over to touch his shoulder gently, giving it a warm squeeze that made him grin and utter a laugh of relief.

"To be formed and commanded by Sir Cel of the Eight Duchies, with oversight on their actions granted to the Clerical Council. Oh, which, by the way, we will be forming one. You know, to advise the Office of the Cardinal when he is being an idiot and ignoring doom at his bloody doorstep."

A door was wrenched open somewhere ahead of them, and Timid paused his edict-making, wondering just how heady his sudden promotion was making him. To be sure, it could be temporary - If enough of the clergy had survived, they would certainly not accept a new high cleric without votes and endless bureaucracy, for which he had neither the time nor the stomach.

From up ahead, he heard the Paladin-Commander speaking.

"Identify yourselves! Are you friend or foe?"

A gruff voice responded, grouchy and rumbling.

"I'm not trying to eat you and you're not trying to eat me. Pretty sure that means we're friends, for the moment."

Timid's heart leapt with relief, and he gently moved the oblivious mouse scribe aside with an arm on his elbow, so he and Cel could push their way forward. As they rounded the corner, he saw the ominous black-armored Paladin-Commander shaking paws with a scruffy, gore-spattered tiger with an angry, swollen claw-wound on his forehead. Behind the tiger, a small army of black-cloaks were clearing rooms, splitting off from the mess hall they occupied to clear the rooms and cells to its sides.

To his side, Cel let out a sudden, hard laugh of amusement, as she slipped an arm around his back and leaned in. He couldn't help a slight shiver, though he fought it down inwardly, as she whispered into his ear so that he could hear her over the din of continuing skirmishes and yammering nobles.

"Captain Tyberius Summer. He won't recognize me like this, but I know the fur. He worked for King Callian as the Captain of the City Guard and castellan of the Black Tower. He's grumpy, gruff, vicious, smart, and honorable. Perfect for what we need to save this city."

Timid laughed from relief, at the sudden appearance of an ally. He'd expected the exit from the Cathedral to take hours or perhaps an entire night of brutal fighting, especially after the blood-drenched desperate melee in the Cathedral courtyard. In a moment of whimsy, he turned and kissed her cheek, whispering back as she blushed and stiffened.

"Let me guess, you've beaten him on a tourney field too, oh invincible paragon of knightly virtues?" His words were joking, and well-meant, and Cel fought down the urge to shove him away for the sudden familiarity, and the flush it gave her. She knew her anger was no fault of his, and besides that knew Timid wasn't one of the rapists who'd plagued her dreams for days.

"Actually, I've never heard of him entering a tournament. But he did ring my bell good once, during a practice bout. Dirty fighter, but very good."

Timid let go of Cel, and she of him, as Captain Summer was led through the ranks of suddenly nervous nobles. Though he wasn't particularly tall, he seemed to tower over the noble-furs, as they cowered away from him and were utterly ignored, as a mountain ignores gnats. Timid extended a paw to the older fur, and found it gripped with the strength of one who knew his own power and had no need to demonstrate it. Meeting his eyes was like staring into a font of will, iron-hard and wily.

"Captain, thank you for coming to help us. How is the city?"

"Riotous and invaded. I've just had word of a breached section of wall. The whole bloody company there wiped out somehow, and we've got undead in the north-western sectors of the city running amok."

Timid only grimaced, where once he would have nearly been overcome with tears for the dying. He felt the sadness, and the urgency though, knowing full well that with a breached wall the whole city might soon join the vast undead host.

"Then let us delay you no longer."

Timid looked around at the clumped, huddled nobles and their guards, and pointed towards one of the paid warriors with his white, heraldry-less shield.

"You. Gather the other mercenaries under your command and do whatever Captain Summer tells you to do."

The sell-sword bowed his head, looking suddenly on the spot, but not shirking the new-found order. Timid turned to the Paladin-Commander next, and considered for a moment what to do.

"Commander, our duty now is to the people. The situation is far too dire to worry about the Temple, when the very furs it ministers to are under threat. I want you and your paladins to seal the Cathedral off as quickly as you can so no more of the undead here can make their way out. Much as it pains me to leave possible survivors behind, we must if we are to save anyone, understand?"

As he knew the zealous commander would do, the wolf simply bowed his head, clapped a fist to his chest with a hearty clang, and marched off to begin his task.

Timid turned, feeling eyes on the back of his head, and clasped a paw to the warmth of the Finder's Star. The middle-aged tiger chose that moment to look away from him and to Cel, brows beetling slightly together as he considered the Slaughtered Knight.

Cel raised a paw in a salute, miming the raising of a helmet visor, and his brows shot up as the plane of his gaze fell to her wrapped chest, then back up to her bandaged face.

"Sir Cel?"

Cel laughed heartily, and extended a paw to clasp wrists with the old soldier, who for his part had a brow up and looked generally a bit gobsmacked for a moment, before clamping his expression back into the mask of professional gruffness he wore like a shield.

"Sorry, captain Summer. I never meant to deceive anyone. Just that I couldn't serve him as a woman in the way I was meant to by the gods."

Summer shook his greying head and snorted, giving her wrist a squeeze.

"Nevermind that, I'm just glad you're alive. Decent reliable folk are in short number these days. Your two companions are at my base, just outside in the Cathedral Square. You'll need to brief us on what to expect and how to fight these gods-damned things."

"With pleasure, captain."

Ten minutes, a few dozen fast-slaughtered shamblers, and a quick walk through a swarming tide of purpose-filled soldiery had Timid and Cel sitting with Tomasj, Summer, and a few other Guard officers within the now mostly empty rest pavilion, seated at a simple wooden table as the world outside went insane with signal trumpets, yelling furs, and when the wind was just right, the distant ominous moans of their implacable foes.

Tomasj smirked at Cel and Timid, dressed in a simple white jerkin and his trail-weathered black boiled leather pants as they gave him a full and accurate description of their journey, truncated for brevity and focused largely on the types and methods of undead they'd encountered.

"So then, the bloated ones tend to explode or leak toxic humors. The black-skinned ones with the unhinged jaws can bite through just about damn anything. Rot ogres we already know about, big and stupid and alive under all the decay. And you've confirmed my suspicion that at least one of those damned things is intelligent, which is our real problem.

"That, and you have some vague vision about the lot of you and two others doing something to put a stop to this...Which is about as useful as tits on a bull, as you've no idea what to do next or how long it will take."

Timid nodded his head, the small cat's expression dour. Summer's quick briefing on Amarthane's condition had confirmed his worst fears; the walls breached, fighting in the streets, the undead horde gaining in number and only barely contained, at a second potential breach, by the valorous actions of a noble few.

"Captain, the situation here is horrible. Tomasj has told me this is only a fraction the size of what annihilated his homelands. The city has grain stores, but even if we manage to hold off this horde indefinitely, without farms to grow more food, those stores will be gone in what...Six months?"

Summer nodded, his face grim and slightly pale, but for the angry and swollen claw marks across his forehead.

"Perhaps a year, by the time the killing's done. That's assuming none of it goes rotten or is sabotaged by Casso's idiot followers. Do you have some other solution? These things don't seem to grow tired, if what you say is true, so abandoning the city and trying to outrun them will be bloody suicide."

Timid's eyes fell to the table's rough top, and he worried at a sliver of the silvery wood with a claw-tip. In his mind, he played out the scenarios. Flight would simply mean being overtaken and torn apart in open ground, yet staying was tantamount to suicide as well, albeit from starvation rather than slaughter. Counter-attacking the horde would be like trying to hold back a raging river with nothing but his paws. He frowned, and furrowed his brows thinking until his head hurt.

"We strike at the heart," Timid murmured, so softly he barely registered himself speaking.

Summer rubbed a paw over his face.

"What heart do you speak of, high father? I've seen no such thing."

Timid looked up, his simple brown eyes glinting with a sudden intensity, as an idea struck him, like a sudden light in nighttime.

"There must be something commanding them. They've shown they understand tactics at least enough to breach defended gates, so there must be at least one intelligent foe. If we find and destroy it, it'll give you a chance, while I try to figure out where my visions are trying to make me go next."

The grizzled old veteran sat back in his chair and shook his head, despite Timid's sudden burst of words.

"We've no idea where to even find such a thing, and no scouts to spare for it, between trying to track the breakthroughs and bear the messages of their locations so we can contain them. You and yours are the only furs I can spare."

Tomasj spoke then, his voice raspy and wet with illness, punctuated by coughs.

"Then we will..." cough "find and kill the" hack cough "bastard ourselves."

Timid nodded along, though he gave the wolf concerned eyes. Cel, he noticed, was looking slightly pale, and he knew it was her knee again, now that they were further from the undead host and the magic keeping her able to move weaker for that same reason.

Finder, if you are listening right now, I'd love to know why you let her suffer so much when she's not directly doing the work you set out for her. It seems kind of cruel.

No answer came, as Summer stood and put his paws flat on the table, eyeing each of them in turn.

"We're relying on you. Your friend Vanyal is off somewhere in the north-western district of Poorside, last I heard. Use the rooftops, find him, and you may get some lead as to what's going on."

Timid nodded and stood, extending a paw that Summer took in a firm grip as the two leaders met eyes.

"Gods be with you, Father Timid, for all our sakes."

Twenty minutes later, the three slogged and limped their way through the snow-drifted streets. Cel's limp had returned in force, and she was leaning on Timid's shoulder, the misting sword over her shoulder, as Tomasj sluggishly dragged himself behind them.

"Tomasj, you should have stayed with the medical tent. You took bloody forever just to get your coat and hat on."

Tomasj smirked at him, and shrugged through a chest-wracking cough. He had taken but a moment to get his coat and hat on, Nastasia loaded, and his sword sheathed. The rest he had spent instructing Toryen, and telling him to stay out of sight while doing his assigned duty.

"Sorry. Had to milk my pecker into the keg of shitty bear they forced me to drink. I figure it might improve the taste."

Cel gave him a tired, sour glare over Timid's shoulder as the cleric just sighed in exasperation.

"How are we going to use the rooftops? You certainly can't run and jump, and Cel, your leg..."

"Will be better when we are close enough to need the rooftops, Tim."

Timid just nodded, and gave a sigh of resignation, as he gave Cel a gentle squeeze with the arm he had around her middle.

"If you're certain. But pain or not, the strain on your leg will just get worse. There may come a point where it is too ruined to heal."

Cel just lightly shrugged, with what he hoped was feigned nonchalance and not the same cavalier lack of self-preservation he suspected her of. Then a panoply of groans, from one side street or another that sounded all too close, shook him from his thoughts, and they all clambered up the nearest building façade. Surely enough, her leg held and seemed not to pain her, as Cel scaled the wall and leaned down afterward to help the other two up.

While Timid was getting his bearings, shaking his head at the strangeness of walking on rooftops and seeing the city from a height greater than horseback, a strange rushing sound struck his ear from somewhere far away over the smokey, snow-drenched city. As he searched, squinting against the moon-glare of icy rooftops, a sudden light burst over the city, making him wince and Tomasj yell out hoarsely as Cel pushed him to the rooftop as soon as he was over the lip.

Timid stared, as a great ball of fire the color of rotting blood reached the apex of its flight, for a moment hovering gracefully over the city, before plunging down with a terrible thunderous report as it struck that shook the snow even so far away as they were. Somewhere, down in the city, the ball of pitch and flame exploded, and in moments had lit an entire street aflame with sticky tar and the oily fire even a once-cloistered priest knew how to recognize.

"What in the hell?!" Timid exclaimed, before letting out a yelp as Cel grabbed him by the back of his habit and yanked him down next to her where she huddled with Tomasj in the lee of a sturdy brickwork chimney.

"Artillery! Stay down!"

A second rushing sound lit the night with baleful fire, and Timid jerked free long enough to see something that made his heart seize in horror and fury. The artillery was firing in earnest now, two and three great flaming balls at a time, and it was rising up from Castle Amarthane to smash down into the city as if at random, lighting streets and immolating crowds of tiny people far enough away to seem as scurrying ants, who in an instant were flaming cinders running about in panic only to fall and cease moving.

"They're bombing the city! Those are safe zones!"

With a stare of dawning horror, Timid saw the city beginning to light, as the cluster of trebuchet hits caused fires that began to burn outward from their strikes. Casso would rather light his people into burning candles of holocaust agony than save them at the cost of his vaunted throne.

Hot tears evaporated off his face as another ball whistled low over them, and exploded in a tremendous blast of heat as it crashed into the Northwest Market Square, where he'd been told to find Van.