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Chapter VI - Wintry Calm

Even within the barn, within the cart, beneath the blankets they had strung along the cart's bottom, sides, and over it's top, the biting cold of winter slithered and struck like a living thing, biting into Timid's running snout with a savage, snapping chill, as he lay wrapped up with the rescued boy Nall. The youth, for his part, admirably ignored the pain it caused his wounded joints, for he and Timid both knew that if they did not huddle together so, they would eventually freeze.

Cel, the thick fur of her snow leopard heritage protecting her best from the snow, had ventured out thrice now seeking anything that could be used for fire, only to return empty-pawed, frost crunching in her plush pelt and heavy clothes, the thick wool she'd wrapped about her face crusted in ice. With her great and mighty strength, the crippled warrior braced her good leg and yanked, grunting and struggling against the whipping, whistling blizzard wind to pull the barn door shut again as it groaned and moaned like a tortured fur.

When it closed with a thunderous thud, Timid's ears perked, surprised by the relative silence that bathed them, filling the room with a crisp, cold desolateness broken only by the steam-puffing breaths that blew from Cel's scarred muzzle.

"No sign of Tomasj or Van," she huffed out, breathing hard from exertion. She'd been pushing through the snow drifts, Timid realized, as he pushed up the cart's blanket top and sat upright into the biting-cold air. How she could manage such motion, with her knee as destroyed as it was, he did not know. Nall stiffened, but even in drowsing sleep allowed no wince to show on his face, as Timid moved, and gave the boy an apologetic grimace.

The tiger-striped housecat then forced himself to stand up carefully, ignoring the cold even as the dreaming lion-child next to him let out a soft, airy groan at even that slight motion. Reminding himself that the boy would live, to calm his racing fears and worries, Timid leapt down from the cart, then waved Cel over.

"Get that snow off you and get inside the cart," he said in a firm, worried voice, brooking no argument. "Are you trying to freeze yourself to death?"

Her response was calm, as she limped his way, brusquely slapping the clinging white from her heavy cloak and breeches.

"Your life is worth no less than mine, Timid, so don't lecture me for taking risk upon myself for the sake of others."

With a blink of surprise, he simply stared at her, taken aback by the gently-spoken rebuke. As always, when Cel spoke in that meaningful tone of hers, the words were chosen with care and drove to the heart. He chided himself for forgetting that she was a knight, in addition to being his mate, pregnant with a child they had decided was their own, and was used to speaking in defense of her and others' persons and honor.

With a nod, and an apologetic smile, he offered her a paw, helping the cripple-kneed woman warrior into the cart.

"You have the right of it, of course...My apologies, Cel. I was just worried for you and our child is all."

She took his paw, and with a grunting exertion of will ignored the shooting pains in her right knee, while swinging that leg up and into the cart so she could settle in to warm the once-again sleeping boy.

"I am more worried for Van and Tomasj. Trapped out there in this...Let us hope they found shelter somewhere."

"And that the storm has frozen the dead solid...I dread to think what will happen if those bitten folk the hyenas let free get into the cities."

Tomasj spat a glob of blood into the soggy mess of his scarf as his howling battle-roar came out short and choking, drowned on the phlegm in his lungs. Nonetheless, his sword, heavy and old but beautifully embossed beneath all the gore that now caked it, swung hard and hit true, snapping the head clean off a mostly-frozen monster that had lunged blockily toward him from the ice-rimed brush that crunched like glass beneath the thing's rotting footpaws.

From behind, two arrows whipped through the blistering cold in streaks of grey goosefeather, planting themselves in eye sockets of the oncoming cadaver, as the two more and more weary warriors advanced steadily to stay ahead of the massive host that was upon their heels, howling out amongst the sparse forest and dense fog in a harrowing, howling parody of marching songs.

On a hilltop ahead, barely visible through the blowing white and only visible at all due to its elevation, Tomasj saw Tory wave his firebrand with his other arm occupied holding the swaddled wolf child, leaving a streak of black smoke in the air to signal he'd found something. The black wolf laughed thickly, feeling the blood gurgling in his lungs, as he took another step to the right, planted his hard leather boot, and spun, slamming his blade through the neck of another shambler that followed the pile around him into death.

They had left a trail of scattered undead bodies behind them for what felt like leagues, and had been at least three hours by the wolf's reckoning. Through the ice and biting cold, they had slogged until their horses dropped dead of the chill and exhaustion, and yet they continued, spurred on by the knowledge that a far larger host of the hungry dead was at their heels, following with a horrid determination only barely slowed by the cold. These they had killed were but fore-runners, like lost fish swarming before a great school.

Tomasj smirked, as Van caught up to him, the wolf leaning on his sword with its tip planted in the frozen soil as he tried to suck in enough breath to keep moving. His vulpine companion grabbed him hard by the arm, and yanked Tomasj forward, dragging the staggering wolf as lights swam in front of his eyes. The urge to lie down and sleep in the snow was strong; that it looked warm, soft and inviting to his eyes warned the Svalich warrior that he was near to death.

"Keep moving, Tomasj, or you'll freeze!" he yelled, over the whipping howling storm, the moaning chorus-cacophony, and the keening ring in his ears. With dogged persistence born of loathing and murderous psychosis, the wolf forced himself onward, leaning more and more heavily against his companion as they went.

When Toryen's voice cut through the gloom, Tomasj realized he'd lost consciousness at some point, perhaps when he'd last blinked, though looking down at his ice-covered boots told him they hadn't stopped walking. He laughed at the idea, walking while asleep, perhaps even briefly dead...

"There's a manor up ahead! I think there are still people in it!" the tiger exclaimed, excited and energetic, for he had not been forced to fight his way through the dead. The lithe little thing had slipped right past the monsters, ordered to do so by his master when Van had insisted protecting the child and finding shelter took precedence over having one more largely-unnecessary fighter.

Tomasj tried to respond with the bile he felt at that idea. Better to stand and die in the snow, cutting down every demon he could reach, than to hide like a coward behind stone walls. His lips felt numb, though, and he could sense the cold had already worked its way past even his thick clothes, built for Svalich winter, and was numbing his limbs and muzzle to uselessness. He could barely move, every motion requiring greater and greater exertions.

Vanyal spoke in his place, and Tomasj felt a shot of hot annoyance for it.

"Lead the way, Toryen, and keep your head about you. We've no way to know if these nobles are friend or foe!"

Toryen's tittering laugh, covered in the spines of a hedge of his very own madness, boiled up from the prancing tiger's throat.

"They will be friends, foxy! Everyone loves me, after they get to know me!"

The wolf, with his flagging consciousness, could feel tension vanish from Vanyal's body where he rested up against it. So odd a creature, he pondered, giggling in the back of his soggy throat, to lose tension when he was considering killing someone. Somehow it made letting the fox carry him onward easier. They were alike in at least one thing.

Then as they continued to slog forward through the snow, struggling for speed to stay ahead of the dead, the wolf felt gentle paws sliding around his chest from behind. The gentle press of his dead wife's soft breasts against his back was so familiar, so pleasant that it made his chest burn and ache, tightening as if she were trying to squeeze him to death. The thought brought a laugh that choked its way out, gurgling over the blood in his lungs, as she leaned in and whispered words into his ear.

Words he couldn't put meaning to. Witchery, he thought, and struggled to care enough to draw and fire his eldritch pistol. To lift his paw and reach for it. To move. To breathe. To stay awake.

All around the manor, Lord Barahan's guards had striven to fortify with all the speed and fervor of a farmer battening his home against an oncoming sandstorm. The commoners, streaming in from the outer villages and hamlets by their lord's quick-dispersed order, had been directed to swift building, following diagrams left behind by Barahan's quick paw.

In just hours, they had erected a dozen longhouses, all leaned up against the manor in a hodgepodge that would have made Barahan's ancestors groan in anger. As he paced outside the patchwork fortress, glaring at the manor's ancient outer curtain walls, Farhad promised to flay those unquiet ancestors if they came to criticize Barahan's swift and merciful actions.

As yet another messenger rushed up to him, leaving a spray of floating snow in his wake, the old veteran straightened, scratching blunt badger claws at the bandage on his arm where he'd been pierced with a hyena dart during the mad flight home.

"Sirra, I report!"

He waved his paw, grunting out his permission to continue. He'd little use for ceremony now, when their young lord fought for his life within the manor's surgery. Stammering, the yeoman hare managed to shove out his message.

"B-beyond the west wall, the hyena barbarians set camp. We think they intend t-to siege, sirra!"

Farhad snorted in derision, and swept grizzled old eyes about at the walls. Upon the balconies and scaffolds that climbed its inside, six hundred frightened but resolute peasants stood guard with their clothes double-thick for some limited armor and carrying burnt-tipped wooden spears, bolstered by another two hundred of his own trained but inexperienced warriors in their burnished scale male. Perhaps one in twenty had any firsthand knowledge of the true horrors of war, and most of those were old enough to be slowing down under the weight of their decades.

"Numbers?"

"We d-do not know sirra...P-perhaps one thousand...M-maybe two?"

"Hn. If it's a thousand, we can hold for months. If two thousand, our chances are less good. Find out for me. But tell me of the east wall first."

At this, the hare's already-white fur seemed to take on a greenish cast, as the youth stammered and looked that way with fearful eyes, his paws beginning to take on the shake Farhad knew all too well. He grunted and took a striding step, and grabbing the thin-limbed rabbit by his wrist, eliciting a jump of startlement that budged his grip not in the least.

"Forget fear, messenger, for the enemy is outside our wall still. You have kits inside here?"

"Y-younger siblings...And m-my elderly parents."

"Then think of them. Hide your fear from yourself, or they will die, understand me?"

The boy swallowed and bobbed his head, the apple of his throat doing a fair approximation of the motion as well, before he straightened his spine and rushed out his report.

"T-to the east, the storm rages l-like a wall of white. Th-the guards on th-those posts say they can hear...Hear crackling song and...And moaning. Many thousands of throats. Th-they think an army passes us that direction. S-some think the army will stop and destroy us."

Farhad's eyes narrowed, and he grabbed from the boy's belt a scrap of scroll paper, and a charcoal stub from his own. Before the lad could protest being grabbed at, the grizzled old veteran grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him about, and used his back as a writing plate.

"I'm penning orders to abandon that wall for now. You'll take them to the watch commander there, and have him move his force to the eastern wall. Then you'll go to the village elders and organize a troupe of yeoman archers to take their place. The dead won't scale our walls, not with paws frozen solid by that storm, so arrows will do for them better than sword and spear. Understand?"

"Y-yes sir!" the hare yelped out, though he struggled to keep his back straight and contain his shivering fear.

He shoved that order into the hare's paw, and swatted him flat across the ass with a heavy paw, sending the boy bounding away with direction replacing fear.

"Good."

His gut roiled, as it often did of late, and the badger rubbed a paw over his growing age-paunch while turning toward the house. Somewhere inside, the master's surgeon was hard at work trying to remove that spire of ice from Barahan's chest. The old badger whispered a silent prayer to gods older than the kingdom for aid.

Little did he know, they had already sent what aid they could.

The blowing snow was so thick, Toryen imagined he could leap atop it and ride the stuff, like a magical cloud of air made to bear him toward the highest skies. The thought normally would have tickled the tiger, won him to giggling in that maddened way he often did. Now, though, his beloved master was bleeding from the muzzle, the tall black wolf held in a carry over both of Van-fox's shoulders as they fled the undead horde that filled in the land behind them like a black flood from some broken dam, streaming from the treeline in waves their dozens and hundreds.

Once-nimble feet were now numb with the cold, a sensation Toryen puzzled at, trying to comprehend. Never in his life had he been in such conditions, such freezing danger that could end his very life. Oblivious to the risk, he snickered as his footpaw slipped off a stone, too senseless to note it's slick state by touch. Luckily, his many antics had left him a nimble little creature, and though his rear hit the rock with both of his heels touching flat the ground, he merely snorted.

"Is that all, rock? I have been paddled worse!"

From behind him, panting with the exertion of carrying himself and an unconscious wolf that weighed almost as much despite a foot in height difference, Vanyal yelled out in an annoyed and urgent voice.

"Get up, fool! Get up that wall and get them to open the damn gate! I can't climb carrying him!"

Over his shoulder, in a quick wrap he'd built from part of his overcloak, Toryen's new little brother let out a sudden, miserably terrified squall, as if waking from a world of dream to a land of nightmare. It jolted a blast of painful, soggy heat through his chest, tightened his throat like a vice, and brought stinging salt tears to his eyes. When last he'd heard a child cry like that, it had been at the birth of his sister and death of his mother, and the memory tore dully at the aching hollow place in his soul.

Toryen surged to his feet, ignoring the spikes and prickling that were all he could feel of his limbs, and charged toward the wall that was barely visible through the swirling white and eye-bitingly cold toothy wind. Cresting a short drift at its powdery base, he leapt like an uncoiling spring, spraying snow from his boots, and slapped into the wall with tooth-rattling force to break the riming ice with his claws and begin to climb.

A quick glance behind told him the baby was sobbing, snot and tears trickling from its puffy face. It also told him the undead were closing on Van, who had set Tomasj down and was drawing his deadly forester's bow again. Toryen's grin had faded from his face, and he threw every ounce of his will and lithe, sinewy strength into digging his claws into the rough old rock wall and climbing with all speed.

Beneath his paws, fumbly with cold, he heard the ice crunch and slide, frozen so swiftly it was breaking away from the old brick wall. Yet still he climbed, spurred on by a frenetic desire to save his master, to get his little brother to safety, and to save his own pretty hide.

Something behind him drew the cat's eye again, as he huffed and scrambled, scrabbling with numbed claws to get higher up as swift as he was able. Silence had rolled out like a thick, mildewed rug, every voice of every moaning dead fur quiet as the graves they had escaped or never seen. With a curl of dread that made the mad cat giggle, he turned to look.

From the dark and frosty forest edge, a dread figure had emerged from snows that parted as if they were afraid of its touch. It stood taller than Van, though at the distance Toryen had climbed, such things were relative. Nevertheless, the small and distant figure walked through the roiling waves of the dead as if it were a king amongst its most loyal subject. They parted around it, shivering away as if pushed by some unseen force. The creature itself was black from head to toe, dressed in heavy leather armor that sprouted with mangy hair in a dozen hues and patterns, as if it were made of stripped and un-tanned patchwork flesh of living furs. In its right paw, it carried a bow of dark-stained material nearly as tall as its own body, that wavered with an ebon and purple flame that seemed to have no effect on the snow or the creature's fur-leather wrapped paws.

Of its eyes, he could only see a baleful scarlet glow that spilled over the trampled snow giving it a blood-filled character, as it raised the bow and nocked an arrow of purest night, whipped around by that same eldritch black fire.

Its words echoed in his mind like knives drawn across glass, and Toryen yelped, and very nearly let go of the wall, before clinging to it with a grunt of bruised fingers and torn claws. His mind rang as his ears would have, burning painfully at the touch of that demon-voice

Below, he saw Van flinch and wobble sidways, stumbling over Tomasj's unconscious form as he fumbled, pained, for his own goose-feathered white wood arrows.

Mine arrows will transform you! Do not resist. Join us in our endless dance!

_ _

Van's paws flew like water on wind, an impossible movement of grace and speed to nock arrow to his bow, racing an enemy who had already been drawn and ready. Their horrid foe's weapon, twice the size of Van's forestry bow and covered in mystic flame, loosed its deadly missile with a hissing thwap of cat gut and people-bone lamina as the recurved thing thudded forward with all the force of a raging boar.

The great black arrow's aim was true, and it flew for Vanyal's chest with all the blistering power of a flame-covered cavalry charge.

Vanyal's arrow flew at half-draw, and the fox threw himself sideways, faster than the mind could tell him to, a move of pure instinct. The flash of light, as Van's arrow, impossibly, struck the blackfire bolt head-to-head, momentarily blinded Toryen as he clung, yowling, to the wall, buffeted by wind and now shadowy lights that exploded in his sight.

Somehow, he knew to reach upward, just in time for a rock-hard paw to grab him, bite hard into his wrist with incredible strength and gauntlet-steel hardness, and heave him toward the rampart.

Then, he heard that 'thwap!' again, followed instantly by a horrible hissing pain that exploded from his lower back, a cacophony of blistering cold and sizzling heat, as his hips slammed into the wall like they'd once slammed into Cel's bound body, enough so as to make his hip-bone let off a terrible crunching sound, and his whole body to go numb but for the sense of agonizing waves rolling through it, bouncing and echoing off one another to the sound of his own close-throated shrieks.

His lolling head looked down, to see an arrow as long as his leg and thick as a javelin had penetrated him, burst through his slender athletic gut and lodged into a masonry crevice in the wall. Even sheathed in his stripey, frost-covered flesh, the black flames burned, and as white lights danced sickeningly in the suddenly-closing tunnel of his vision, the flame began to climb and blacken his flesh.

His world crashed to blackness with the sound of a terrible howling when someone grabbed him by both shoulders, shouting unintelligible words, and heaved him so hard the arrow's shaft broke in half somewhere behind his blood-gushing navel. For the briefest moment in the blackness, before it overwhelmed him entirely, he was amused with the sudden impulse to bite the paws that rescued him.

Sortan and Kimbek sat across from one another, separated by a flattened area of clean sand that was set with dozens of small stone figurines in a dozen brilliant colors. To either side, creating a circle around the battle-planning map, a dozen of Talroth's great warrior sub-chieftains sat, dressed in a panoply of armor and trophies of their decades of battle as mercenaries to one grand chief or another.

Now, Sortan knew, the old ways were dead. These chieftains, a decade ago, would have just as happily killed one another over centuries-old blood feuds or imagined slights or even just to prove their own skill and viciousness. Now, with their homelands overrun and destroyed, the once-mercenary Jackal Host had become nomads again, as they were in ancient stories. Nomads seeking a home.

They were united for the second time in thirty years. Only this time, they were united to fight for his Golden Kingdom, and not against his father Yskar.

The irony wasn't lost on Sortan, but as beautiful and deadly Tessira rested her deceptively delicate paws on his shoulders, he forced his mind to the debate that swarmed about him.

"Hakkor Tribe has always believed in fast war, High Chief. They have no archers. I say we harry them to pieces!"

"Pah! Hakkor forgets we have no food! What good are arrows and bows we cannot eat? Dakkun Tribe says we strike toward the keep and crush the hyenas between us and Al Zar!"

"High Chief, a direct attack would be foolish. They outnumber us three to one, and theirs don't grow tired in prolonged fights. For every one of us they kill, they grow stronger instead of weaker! Sukkara Tribe says we let them try to storm Al Zar, and strike when they are weakened."

Kimbek sat, an impassive statue of ebon stone, glossy as polished marble in his bronze-inlaid lamellar. His face was no more animate than the rest of him, frozen in a stern and expressionless mask that hid the serpentine mind that lurked behind those dark eyes. Sortan still, two days after the betrayal, felt his gut churn acidly every time he looked upon the mighty warrior. Somehow, by the look in Kimbek's eyes whenever they happened to meet one another's line of view, the leonine warrior knew Kimbek both realized his hatred and accepted it.

Sortan kept his face neutral as well, as the various chieftains wheedled and argued, all striving in the traditional way for their own warriors to receive the most glory and thus greatest rewards, while seeking as well to keep their soldiers alive with a half-decent plan.

Meanwhile, in a semicircle behind their prince, the perfidious nobles that had betrayed his brother, King Nallak, to his death, sat looking studiously neutral. Their darting, worried eyes betrayed the nervousness that rested there, for they knew all too well how very wrong this battle could go if the wrong choices were made. Sortan almost wanted to fail, just to spite them.

What he really wanted to do was scream at Kimbek, tear out his guts with bare paws, and the fact that Talroth seemed to agree that it would be proper at the right time helped nothing. When Tessira's soft lips touched his ear, and blew breath hot as the desert sun across the furs there, he nonetheless shivered with barely-surpressed lust. Despite her participation in her father's treachery, she had won his respect with her sheer intellect and cunning.

Her whisper was just what he needed to hear to proceed with his plans, continuing her pattern of insightful advice.

"Hakkor's warriors are fast and lightly armored, but very skilled skirmishers. Dakkun's are the most heavily armed, and skilled at swift formation changes and heavy battle. Sukkara's warriors are used to raiding and ambushes, and are not prepared for this sort of warfare. Our own Talroth tribe is the best-trained for prolonged battle, but are short on armor."

Sortan grunted, and muttered back to her under his breath, with words spiked in annoyance.

"Then why does your father not just order his battle based upon that information?"

She just smiled, a curve and shift of satin-smooth lips against his ear that, despite his aggravation, his desire to hate her father for the perfidy that had happened to his brother, made him shiver beneath his fur and shift his knees to help hide the slight bulging of his tunic. He understood, by that simple sultry smile against his ear, just what Talroth's dark and labyrinthine eyes were waiting for when they met his for the barest instant on their path past the lion's face.

Sortan raised a paw, and gently alighted against the side of Tessira's muzzle, tracing the silk-soft sable fur there, as his other paw took her right one. When he stood, it took a moment for the bickering chieftains to notice, which they did only as they all one after another realized that Kimbek was looking up past them, no longer toward them. Their eyes were hostile and closed, as they turned toward Sortan with a slowness that spoke of their resentment toward the alliance their overking had forged in treachery and murder.

Behind him, the nobles stirred like nervous birds, their heads bobbing about atop their necks as they tried to whisper furtively to one another, words he didn't bother listening to as he straightened himself and brushed powerful paws down his gold-and-azure cotton tunic.

"Mighty Kimbek of the Talroth people, may I speak if I speak only truth?" he asked, the traditional overture for a respected enemy to address a war council. In past centuries, such words had been used by diplomats to ask for terms, to offer surrender, to give terms of battle. Never to address them with a plan for battle. Nevertheless, it had the desired effect; all three tribal lords went silent in surprise.

Kimbek merely nodded, his face an impassive mask of utter stillness. The glittering glint of a cunning smile was isolated only to his eyes. Sortan drew in a smooth, deep breath, and closed his eyes, meditating a moment there with all eyes upon him to still his heart and ready himself for the challenges to come.

His eyes flickered open, and his words boiled forth in a steady, rolling boom of command.

"Tribe Hakkor." The short one-eared jackal chieftain stared at him, as if barely comprehending his words. "You will engage the enemy first, and probe their positions with your swift-footed troops. I want one half of your warriors on the hilltops here," he pointed, with the tip of his suddenly-drawn dirk, to a series of mounds on their battle map, "here and here. Rain arrows down to draw the enemy's attention."

He continued, before the chieftains could begin to protest, though he saw the sudden flush of angry pride in their widened eyes and flicking ears.

"Tribe Sukkara. Your fast raiders are to circle around to the other side, and draw off as many enemy warriors as possible. Make them chase you through the desert, and make them pay in blood and gore for every grain of sand they dirty. We cannot face this number all at once, unless the castle sallies to aid us, and they may not have the strength...So we must divide the enemy and fight him in as small of bites as we can.

"Tribe Talroth will lead the main battle force." He shoved his dirk's tip into the sand, and drew it forward in three broad lines that passed between the hills upon which their Hakkor archers would stand. Each arrow pointed inward, toward a central point, dominated by the carved stone block representing Al Zar's mighty walls. "But Talroth will be only the front lines, and must be prepared to fall back. The true onslaught will come at the paws of Dakkun's mighty Iron Legion."

The massive, burly bulk of Karlok Dakkun grunted from its shadowy place by Talroth's side, and the ogrish jackal's night-black face split with a seam of viciously hooked yellow-ivory fangs, a smile that spoke of mayhem and violence. The brooding creature had been mostly silent, but for his earlier statement on food and fury.

Sortan marked him immediately as an ally, for as the Sukkara and Hakkor leaders puffed up like angered vipers, the great shadowy bulk leaned calmly over and said something into Kimbek's ear, that grizly smile still splitting his face.

The vitriol was swift in coming, as Sukkara's chieftain surged to his feet, shedding sand from the floor in a wave as he strode toward Sortan, barking in outrage.

"You do not command us, princeling! How dare you come here, and tell us what to do! Go back to your mother's tit, BOY!"

Sortan's dirk zipped upward, slicing through sand and coming free as the young warrior flew into motion. His left paw grabbed the jackal chief by the tassels of his open-chested tunic, and in half a moment had twisted them tight around his throat. As the chieftain's paws shot to his own weapons, Sortan's right fist, wrapped tight around the pommel of his dirk, rocketed forward, slamming him across the face to stagger the belligerent male. Then his right foot, long trained to the move, flew forward, wrapped around the chief's knee, and was followed by his elbow slamming hard into the male's muscled chest. Sukkara fell with a surprised expression, eyes widened as his back hit the ground and expelled his breath in a whoosh that blew across Sortan's face.

Before Sukkara could raise a paw to defend himself, before the other chiefs or their guards could rise or do more than make barked noises of surprise, Prince Sortan had his dirk's glimmering, razored edge resting across Sukkara's throat with the chief pinned to the sand, and was snout to snout-tip with him, roaring in volcanic fury that spattered the proud chieftain's lips with spittle.

"You swore yourselves to my kingdom! I DO command you, fool! Challenge me formally if you wish to deny it!"

All murmuring in the pavilion had gone deadly silent. The only sounds Sortan could hear was the raised thrum of his own heart, the harsh panting of the male beneath his blade, and the sound of destiny unfurling behind him like a cape of thorny wrath and honorable fury. He could not punish Talroth for the murder of Nallak, for the sake of the kingdom. But he could surely take out that rage upon the fools that would stand in his way.

Sukkara lay there, staring up into Sortan's face with angry, flared nostrils, ears pinned back and teeth bared. But his eyes glinted with fear writ large across their widened whites, as they flicked toward something past his shoulder. The lion knew he'd have moments before one of the chieftain's guards tried to be a hero, to decide whether it was more to his advantage to slit the bastard's throat or let him live.

His gut told him to cut deep, that the spray of crimson across his face would serve to quench his fury, slake his thirst for revenge, however tangential this frightened male was to what had happened. Blood thudded through his veins, hot and demanding, and thundered through his ears in a rush of blood lust unlike any he'd felt before.

But an image of his little brother, looking up at him with those bright eyes of his and a stern look that far outstripped his years, stayed his paw. Nallak would never have approved of such an act of foolishness; the boy would save his kingdom first, and his pride second if ever.

In that moment of hesitation, Sukkara swallowed, and gave the slightest of nods, scraping his thick skin against the razored blade just enough to part skin and give his assent. Sortan was off him and standing before his mind could catch his body, wiping the dribble of blood off his dirk and onto his pants, and offering Chief Sukkara his paw.

He felt as if thunder were roiling in the heavens, as Sukkara took his paw and used it to stand. A moment had come and passed, and in it a single action would shake the future.

Behind him, he saw why he hadn't been instantly rushed. Slender, beautiful Tessera, armored in nothing but a delicate array of silver and gold torques that spiraled up her arms and thin silks that covered her body, stood menacing the chieftain's guards with bared pearly teeth and a curved engraved sword as slender and graceful as she herself. They feared and respected her. He needed her. What was more, he wanted her.

Talroth had never stirred from his seat, his paw raised with a cup of hot salted tea, sipping from it as if nothing had happened. The crafty smile never reached his lips, but Sortan could see it clear as day in his eyes.

The lion prince's voice came out smooth and rich with authority, brooking no further argument as he stepped away from the newly-standing Sukkara.

"Chieftains, you honor me by coming to fight, and I respect every one of your people for their skill and bravery. Against this foe, we must combine those strengths to have any chance at victory."

He pointed his dirk to the carved-stone version of Al Zar, as Tessera slipped to her position behind him again with a liquid grace and rustle of silks.

"As I have described, we will win our way to the walls of Al Zar. I know my mother well, and she will have convinced the military commanders to follow her by now. When our attack begins to draw their attention, she will sally from the castle here, here and here," he said, touching different spots on the stone's base.

"We will crush the enemy between us. Expect a long and bloody fight."

Van's mind was empty with shock from that perfect shot. Never in all his life had he even heard reliable rumor of such a target being successfully hit. He hadn't yet struck the ground when a rain of fire-splattered wooden slivers began bouncing off his skin, from where his white-shafted goose-feathered arrow had struck the incoming, far more massive ballista-like arrow and shattered both shafts to pieces with their own weight and momentum.

A streak of blackness, cold as ice and hot as the sun, flew over his head, and Van threw himself to the side again, knowing it to already be overly late for deflecting another. He didn't bother to contemplate the second shot's failure to connect, as he rolled to his feet and loosed again with an arrow he hadn't even recalled drawing.

It streaked, in a flash of white and grey, toward the flaming foe, that Blackflame Archer, only to strike deep into the flesh of an undead creature that hurled itself in front of its terrible eldritch master at that last possible moment. As the thing widened its stance, Vanyal drew again, and fired again, and again, arrows flying from quiver to string to air in a passage of no thought.

His second shot struck another of the undead, blasting the top off its rotting skull in a spray of ichor and ice. His third met another of the great flaming black bolts as it flew from the Archer's string, shattering both yet again. Then the Blackfire Archer loosed a shaft in the half-second it took Van to draw and fire, and he narrowly avoided its skewering power by throwing himself to the side and firing another shot that sunk deep into the eye socket of yet another blocking corpse.

Every breath was another shot, another swift reposition, as the fox fought to pour as many accurate shafts into his foe as he could. The undead were advancing on him in their shambling gait, crushing hard-frozen snow with the shattering sounds of ten thousand bones, and his time was short. Every arrow that flew, unerring, from his thrumming string struck undead flesh, but not the one he sought, and each shot from the Blackfire Archer was met midair or dodged at the last moment, as he struggled to reposition himself, find a high spot to fire down from, draw the enemy off unconscious Tomasj, or even find a hole from which to escape.

If he had been willing to flee for his own life and leave the wolf to die, there were a thousand ways he could run. The thought never crossed his mind for an instant.

Leaping from atop a slippery, icy boulder, he loosed in midair, arcing his shot down over the heads of his massing foes, only to have his own shaft blown from the air in an explosion of black fire and flinders, as he was matched haft for haft by the terrible missiles of his horrid foe. The dead were drawing closer, one groaning, shuffling step at a time, and he knew his time was nearly up. A quick glance upward showed Toryen was pinned to the wall, slumping, blood trailing down as black flame wisped and climbed his tunic.

"Fathers of my fathers, mothers of my mothers," he whispered, in hisses as he drew and fired again, sprinting across the fast-closing noose of a half-ring of open space, dodging the front-most undead as they lunged toward him with clumsy limbs.

"Forgive my weaknesses, for I stand now on the door of death..."

A front-runner, faster and less rotted than the others, lunged toward him, leading the way with fingers gone black with frostbite. He slid low, kicking to one side, and shot the thing through the lower jaw, pinning its tongue to its pallet and putting an arrowhead up through the top of its skull.

"With my bow in my paws, and death on my heels..."

Tomasj stirred only when the first of the dead touched him, as if jolted to life by a fulminous blast of electricity leaping off the rotting toe that tapped his shoulder while the thing began bending to bite. His left paw, with that grisly terrible strength the emaciated creature possessed, shot out and grabbed at the rotten wolf's leg, yanking as he rolled away from it, tearing the leg clean from the beast's socket and sending it crashing to the snow.

Van managed a fierce smile to see the warrior back on his feet, though he streamed blood from his lips like a gorey spigot while laying about with that stolen leg bone as if it were a great two-handed sword. Tomasj bore a demented grin on his blood and snow-crusted muzzle.

"Know that I die with duty on my lips..."

The death prayer had continued without his notice, his lips moving in time to that same chant he'd heard so many times, said by dying old furs who had walked the forester's path. His clan, that of the forest fox, with its ancient traditions, had atrophied and shrunk smaller and smaller in recent years, and he was not about to let himself die without following that one last tradition.

He hoped that he was wrong; that the prophecy could indeed not be thwarted. The closing ranks of the dead, the failure of the gates near them to open, seemed to tell otherwise. As he lashed out with a boot and kicked one of the swarming undead away from him, and bobbed away from a wind-cutting swipe by a second, he prayed the prayer for the dying, and begged his ancestors to help Timid and Cel in their quest to save the dying world. Still the ancient death-prayer spilled from his lips,

Then one of the onrushing monsters crashed into him, though his arrow found its eye before it connected. Van's slender vulpine body was slammed back against the stones of the curtain wall, the wind blown from his lungs by the force of the impact. Cursing breathlessly, he dropped the bow and drew his long, slender knife, slamming it into the forehead of the first rotting monster that tried to pile atop him. Then the others began to swarm, and he was drowning in a sea of scrabbling, clawed arms.

Toryen shrieked, as something tugged on parts of his guts he'd never known could be tugged on. The pain exploded through his body, a fiery, deathly spasm of agony, as if every inch of his inner flesh were being torn asunder and sprayed with salt.

Paws clamped down on him, holding him down hard to something, and for the briefest moment, he caught a flash of a very old, wrinkle-faced wolf, holding a knife that gleamed with a terrible sharpness. Then the pain exploded anew, as that blade descended down out of his sight, and he shrieked out what few words he could think before the pain dashed him back to unconsciousness.

"My master is still outside! Save him!"

Then he was swimming through a sea of terror again, clawing at unseeable agonies and wrenching, terrible screams of agony that blew up from his gut and flew out his extremities like a frightful hot wind.

The tiger screamed, over and over again, confused and frightened by such pain as he'd never heard of before. Deep within him, he could feel the fire that radiated from where he'd been struck, eating away at the flesh and life that gave him form. It called to him, to surrender himself, to embrace the suffering and blackness that cored through him like a burrowing beetle.

He told it no, over and over, all the while yelling for his master, for the one who had helped him save himself from a voice so similar to the one that now clawed at him.

Finally, it seized for his throat, like a pair of spectral shadowy hands. Once he would have been too afraid to resist. His father's voice would have cowed him into submission, and he would have surrendered. This time, in howling wrath, he bit and clawed, and flailed in the dark places between consciousness and death. The blackness in his heart coiled like a living thing, and he took it in paw, slamming it against the terrible fire that smoldered from his cursed wound.

Then he woke, staring blearily across a stone chamber thick with swarming furs. Someone, many someones, were holding him down, as something jerked and jiggled in his gut. Toryen could sense the pain, but had suffered so terribly that he barely recognized it any more. As something was pulled free of his body with a horrible sucking-tearing sound, the tiger jerked, and gagged, and someone gripped him by the cheek, turning his head so he would vomit into a bowl instead of choking on it.

Then they were gone, and he was staring across at a bundle of bandages with a wolf's head, arms, and legs sticking out. A young, pretty wolf, around whom a half-dozen grizzled old soldiers crouched looking grim. Toryen needn't have known the local language to sight nobility. Something about how they stood told him that this young lord was loved, like a lord ought to be. Meanwhile, those who hovered over his body were merely doing so out of a sense of duty. Toryen wanted to cry, at the sudden realization.

Where was his master? Where was his brother? Tears ran down his face, as the cutting and bandaging continued, that grey-faced wrinkly old wolf slicing him apart to save him.