“How is Macarius?” Janine inquired as a laser beam of her rifle ended another rider before he could run down Elzada and Ignacy.
Bogdan jumped on them, gave them both a smack on the head for trying to do maintenance on the damaged prosthetic in the open, and dragged the wounded wolf hag and his brother to the relative safety of the wall. He groaned jokingly, receiving a light smack in his snout. Though Elzada held back in recognition of her mistake, her blow still threw Bogdan’s head back. He bared his neck, but the wolf hag ignored the offer.
Janine took a few breaths, convincing herself that her daughters were fine. She needed to split her own pack; Marty’s own force would be understrength otherwise, and Impatient One and Anissa were among the strongest fighters available. Both were smart, fierce, loyal, and level-headed. Her princesses will be fine. They must be.
“Unconscious, Warlord Janine!” a knight-captain replied, stepping to stand beside her and leveling his gun sword. The first bullet shattered a hordeman’s pauldron, and the second drew a small geyser of red from the exposed body. The rider cursed at his uselessly dangling arm and holstered his pulse rifle, escaping into the streets. “Our lord has suffered no life-threatening wounds; just give him several minutes to recuperate, and we will…”
“Can it,” Janine barked. “We are picking up civilians and leaving.”
Half of her vision disappeared, replaced by the map and incoming reports and requests from their allies. Wolf hags were to handle the calls for aid, and the warlord focused on the overall situation, guiding the Reclaimers out of the town.
“But there are still people here!” the knight-captain argued. “Soldiers and civilians alike! If we leave now…”
“They will suffer. Possibly die,” Janine replied calmly. “I am not without eyes, kin. Open yours as well and look. We have civilians on our paws who will certainly die when the enemy unleashes the full force of their artillery on us. We have pushed the enemy back and damaged their command structure. And it is still not enough. Gaze into the walls’ cracks. Can you see the land beneath their feet? Can you hear the roar of thousands of approaching engines? Do you understand what will happen to those under our protection if we fall? It is time to cut our losses and run.” She snapped her jaws before his helmet, silencing the protests. “Enough. I am the senior officer here. The shame and guilt are mine and mine alone. The honor of the Order remains intact. We will withdraw.”
“It’s not about honor, Warlord.” The knight-captain saluted. “There is a pain in our souls. A shame for the lives we fail by retreating and a desire for vengeance.”
“Hold onto it,” Janine advised the Ice Fang. “Never forget or forgive this day; let the memories of those who died today sustain you and sharpen your focus in the days ahead. Survive, Captain. Soon the Blessed Mother will learn of the invasion, and we will return here to bring retribution.”
Janine despised herself. This wasn’t a simple disgust or dissatisfaction of her own inadequacy like she had experienced in her youth. It was even greater than the hatred that had tormented her when she had been irritated at Ignacy for his fear in his youth. No, she wanted to use the Taleteller’s blade to ritualistically lacerate her body and then pry her ribcage open, dragging every rib backward to form wings of extinct eagles. The knight-captain had nothing to do with it, and she wasn’t even angry that she had to explain herself to a male instead of biting him into submission.
Her heart, hardened after over a century of war, strained under the burden of leadership and the necessity of sacrificing civilians. Never. Never had she imagined herself in such a situation. Always, Janine had found a way, a path, to tip the scales, be it through a reckless charge or a sneaky ambush.
Where is Ravager? Where is the Blessed Mother? Where is Devourer? Outsider? Dragena? Alpha? Zero? Or the Dynast? Why did she have to be the one to make this call? Why was her brain planning the most optimal retreat route and not calling her to advance and die with honor? Where was First, and why wasn’t he responding to her summons? She would even obey his command. Why… why must she be the logical one here when cubs were dying in the town? If ever there was a time to let emotions rule, it was now!
There was no response, no answer, save for the words of the Ice Fangs and the Provincial Army’s units Army that had joined them. Officers confirmed their orders and preparations for the safe retreat were set.
Please, Spirits, if there is any justice in the world… Let me die painfully for what I have done today. Janine did not dare to lie. She wasn’t forced. There was an option to die honorably here, to let civilians escape under the protection of the surviving Army troops. Some would even make it to Houstad. It would be better than letting cubs die. Inflict unspeakable agony upon my body so that my soul may be redeemed.
“Sister…” whispered the apparition of Terrific, but Janine ignored it, focusing on an urgent report.
She faced the southeast, and her keen eyes spotted a large complex, more like a small fortress outside of the main wall. A military hospital belonging to the Order. The attackers ignored it, wary of the minefield that had cost them troops. Sword Saint Leonidas, his elite soldiers, and sages were supposed to evacuate medical personnel by any means, culling the mortally wounded soldiers and taking the rest along.
Only… None of it happened. According to the report on Janine’s HUD, the precious doctors were still inside, calling for immediate assistance. The lights were shining, and there was no sign of Leonidas, nor was he replying to any calls. Perhaps in their panic, after the first shells landed on their walls, the facility began broadcasting pleas for help on an open channel.
A channel that anyone could hear. The Horde included. There was no way those bastards would pass up a chance to capture fresh slaves of such quality.
“Where is Sword Saint Leonidas?” Janine tensed, reloading her rifle.
“I…” The knight-captain bowed his head under her heavy gaze. A flat of the Taleteller’s blade slammed against his helmet, prompting the fool to keep firing. “I know not, Warlord. Our sages have departed to assist him. Sword Saint Macarius didn’t deem it necessary to inform us of the reason for their absence.” The knight-captain regained his footing, and she caught a hint of annoyance in his voice.
They keep secrets even from their own… Janine dismissed the treacherous thoughts at the back of her mind. The tribe had its own mysteries.
“Damnation!” Janine spat, weighing her options.
Abandoning precious medical personnel was out of the question; even if the Blessed Mother despised them, these men and women saved lives, including Wolfkins’, and the Order employed some of the best doctors. Their talents and skills had to be preserved.
“Wolf Hag Elzada.” Janine stopped, growing increasingly frustrated at her inability to bring up data on the Order’s troops on her HUD. She could see through their oculars, but that was it. Names, ammunition counts, and health status were unavailable to her. Elzada’s armor reported that Ignacy’s repairs partially restored the woman’s artificial leg, but it had suffered a loss of about ten percent in mobility. “Knight-captain. It’s do or die for you. Lead our people and rendezvous forces with Warlord Martyshkina. I have already informed her of our course of action. Do so without fail, or I will torture you endlessly in the afterlife. Elzada, if I die, Wolf Hag Anissa is to take my place and banish any mention of me from the pack forever.”
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Tell my daughters I love them. Janine swallowed these words. Now was not the time. Their mission was dangerous, but far from impossible. A warrior preparing to die was a warrior who had already put one foot in the grave. She was ready to kill to see her children live and meet them again.
At her command, Predaig and Eled issued similar commands to their own wolf hags and joined her. The warlords assembled a group of males and warriors to join them, taking the expendable soldiers. Janine tapped her own knee, interrupting Ignacy and Elzada’s warm farewell embrace, and her sons joined the newly formed pack. Everything inside her—memories of their birth, their precious time together, the times she and Colt had read them bedtime stories or tended to their wounds after a hard day in the pits—screamed to send them away. But that was not to be. Favoritism was not allowed.
The two groups parted ways by overloading the generator deep within the Knight’s Academy as a final parting gift to the Horde. For all the teasing and jokes told among the Wolfkins, one thing was undeniable. Their composed and gallant, white-furred brothers and sisters easily kept up pace with the black-furred. Carrying civilians in their paws, the army raced into the retreat, and small parties were busy planting mines to distract the inevitable pursuit.
Janine led her troops to the southern wall, cutting off the Hordemen, attempting to reinforce the blockading troops to the west. The coordinated assault of the divided forces had caught the enemies by surprise; whoever was in charge after the khan’s death had failed to realize just how daring the maneuvers of the state’s New Breeds could be, and the prolonged defense had given them false confidence.
They died for that arrogance. Eled was the first to land amidst a large gathering that had found temporary cover in the ruins of the buildings. Her scythe slashed through everything in its path, and the debris buried her and the nearby Hordemen. A rider hurrying to assist his allies fell apart in two equal halves as Predaig stepped out of the shadows and passed him by. Her sword danced, sweeping wide arcs in the air, and people died. Behind her, Eled roared, breaking free from the rubble in an explosion of violence, her scythe little more than an extension of her own claws. The warlord lunged, slashed, and hacked half-madly, completely forgetting to use her wonderful long-range weapons but following the group.
After them followed the main force led by Janine, driving into the unsteady defensive ranks like a stake plunged into a heart. There was no restraint in this charge; the Wolfkins matched and exceeded the savagery of the invaders. Arms, riddled full of holes or burned by acid, were gnawed off by merciless jaws, hungrily devouring forbidden flesh. A killing field opened before Janine’s eyes, and she eagerly partook of such a feast.
Her single swing took legs from under three hordemen, and the flow of the black-clad bodies stomped the wounded into oblivion. A rifle was shoved through the open mouth of a surprised youth. There was a look of pure horror on his face. Perhaps he had lost his helmet in battle or had simply taken it off to have a nasty cut above his forehead treated. It didn’t matter, because at the touch of a finger, the weapon heated and turned his pierced head into a mixture of molten flesh and bone. The shot connected the rifle to an officer, and a grenade in his hand dropped under his legs next to his arm.
They pushed through the blast, an avalanche of metal moving too fast for artillery to target. Another sun flashed at their backs, and the Knight’s Academy disappeared, sending a massive shockwave through the ransacked town, shattering windows and collapsing the nearest buildings. There was a loud cheer as the Horde approached the widening crater left in the place of learning, and Janine smiled. The fools were concentrating on the wrong thing.
Each swing of the Taleteller splashed small pools of blood across the hordemen’s visors. Normie, New Breed, or something in-between—none of it mattered in the slightest to the warlords and their troops. A hurricane of shrapnel ripped through suits and ended lives; several walkers and hoverbikes exploded, but Janine and her named sisters stepped through the burning flames, wreaking havoc on those who tried to retreat from their path.
Drenched in blood and gore, supported by the warlords’ unhinged ferocity, the pack crushed the enemy resistance and pushed toward their goal.
****
Bertruda looked down. Amal was still clawing at his mouth, trying in vain to pull out the metal clogging his airways and lungs. His eyes were two white globes, his pupils rolled under his eyelids. No air will ever again reach his lungs. Bertruda expected to enjoy the bastard’s suffering, but now she found herself feeling disgust and pity at his desperate attempts to survive.
Just die already. She faced Martyshkina, who had landed on the destroyed airship, laughing contemptuously at the retreating foes. The warlord had briefly left her side after their forces had rejoined and returned later, showering praises upon the soldiers and ordering her troops to form up a defensive perimeter. They were in luck; after getting hit hard, the Horde chose to ignore them. No doubt those bastards were bringing in heavy vehicles and their own champions, but a reprieve was a reprieve, and they used it to tend to their wounds.
“What a day! Your soldiers are excellent!” Martyshkina’s laughter stopped abruptly, and her lenses focused on Bertruda. “Whatever your beef is with Janine, you sure can fight, Bull-Slayer.”
“There is no beef.” Bertruda bowed gracefully, pressing one paw to her chest and pushing the side of her tattered cape away with the other. “Thank you for the high praise, but it is your troops who have earned our undying gratitude. And the title Bull-Slayer belongs to another.”
“Belonged until you stole it.” Martyshkina landed heavily on the ground and stepped closer. “Listen, I loved the Twins,” she said warmly, and then her voice changed to a low growl, full of barely contained bloodlust. Her helmet closed around the snout, and the warlord spoke on a private channel. “For the sake of our blood ties, I will not exact my retribution for your disobedience. Let the big guy handle it. But know this. The Wolf Tribe does not forget and rarely forgives.” Her claws lightly scratched Bertruda’s helmet. The warlord snatched Elegance from an approaching knight-captain, swung it once in the air, and handed it to the sword saint with a respectable grunt. “They never offered to make us anything. Guess at the end of the day, they viewed us differently. As outsiders.”
“Or they never had the time,” Bertruda argued. “Those years were hard. The Blessed Mother never gave us any gifts, either.”
“Was her favor, her hide, her kind word not enough? Were our blood and bodies not enough?” Martyshkina pointed to where her deceased soldiers were being stripped of their armor, their ammunition already equally shared among the pack.
The armor was then crudely mounted on soldiers of the Provincial Army who had implants. Though cumbersome to the point where the soldiers looked like children in adult suits, the battleplates gave them newfound strength and speed to help carry the wounded. Bertruda was about to vomit when a scout unceremoniously sunk her claws into the neck of her dead comrade, ripping the head off. The head was then placed in a pack, next to grenades.
“Look.” Martyshkina grabbed the back of Bertruda’s head, and she had to nod to stop her Mountain Guard from interfering. “Look what you did. What the stupidity and arrogance of your Order has done. We can’t carry back bodies, so heads will do. This is war, girl! We don’t have time to play in a wounded pride, and the only reason I haven’t murdered you yet and spent time trying to make you understand is because Janine thought you had what it takes to be her equal.”
“She… she did?”
“Before the duel, yeah. The goof was itching for a chance to test her axe against your spear one day. After that, it was mostly warnings not to skin you alive to avoid tensions.” Martyshkina opened her helmet and spat on the ground.
Bertruda kept her silence, gesturing for the medic to treat the wounded and not her. It wasn’t disrespect, as she had already understood. They were sisters, and what sister doesn’t fight or argue? But a stab in a moment of weakness… I can’t fix it right now. Bertruda shrugged off the guilt and went to her troops, giving commands.
“Collect ammunition from their fallen.” She stared at her dead knights, remembering the cruelty the Horde had inflicted on their noble bodies. “And their heads.”
“But Sword Saint…” a knight-captain gasped.
“Do it. Part of them deserves a proper burial,” she said in a steely voice.
Martyshkina tapped against her helmet, listening to something. Her cloak, undamaged by flames or bullets, flapped in the wind like a whip when an explosion thundered from the direction of the Knight’s Academy. The incoming gale was so great that a sea of flame rolled over the wreckage onto the buildings.
“Great. Those bastards have found a way to jam us, and without technicians or a crawler nearby, we can’t stop them. I do so wish to skin you alive for the troubles, cousin.” Martyshkina’s words on a private channel. Then her helmet opened again, and she smiled brightly, patting a passing knight. “Rejoice, everyone! Supreme Warlord Janine…”
“Don’t joke like that or Warlord Alpha will kill my mom!” Wolf Hag Anissa asked worriedly, and Shaman Impatient One nodded in agreement.
“Then use shardguns next time!” Martyshkina hugged both women. “Anyway, Janine has sent us an order. We are to scram while she charges to the military hospital…”
“What?!” Bertruda cried out. Janine joined Macarius, so why didn’t he brief her?
“Scram. You know, pick up your legs and…”
“I don’t care for your idiotic jokes, moron!” Bertruda yelled, the barrel of a revolver pointed at her forehead. “Shoot if you dare, but first listen! They must stay away from the hospital!”
“Elaborate,” Martyshkina demanded. She moved her weapon aside and fired, killing a hordeman with a rocket launcher who had somehow crept up on them through the ruins.