“Stand clear! Launching in 3…2…1.”

The operator yanked a string attached to the iron pin that was holding back the mechanism and the mana in the gold circuit. The enchantment on the trebuchet’s counterweight switched from reducing to increasing the weight, while the opposite happened on the netting that was holding the giant magically compacted boulder.

The roping was pulled taut by the falling counterweight. The trebuchet’s wooden arm creaked as it spun and hurled the payload towards the wall. The enchantment reducing its weight lingered in the air for a moment before the arch of the boulder became steeper. Those of us in the watchtower held our breath as it angled down into the wall of smoke blocking our sight.

We’d encountered a problem with the chasm I’d made not long into the morning. It was taking too many resources to kill the ones that had fallen inside, and the bodies were starting to pile up. I’d argued for filling it and the connected trenches with water to create a moat in which we could drown the ghouls and fish the bodies out.

Setting it ablaze using oil and spells won out, so now we had a dedicated team of mages stuck pushing the plume of smoke into the ghouls rather than us.

The boulder punched a hole through the wall of smoke before vanishing. A deep crack resounded across the field as it clipped the back of the wall but made it over, going by the distant crash.

“Think it hit its target?” “Close enough.” “Tell them to increase the mana supply to the enchantments.”

“Maybe if we didn’t have this immense fuck-off fire in our way, we could see better,” Tometh said, having disagreed with both the water and fire route.

“It was a majority decision, captain,” said Commander Arardish, wearing the marble from the second wall as his necklace, the same as Tometh. They were among the four captains who had the honour of being able to wear the trophy. Three were present, and their names were put forward for the title of commander of this fight.

Arardish held the title due to a majority vote of two compared to Tometh, while the third bowed out.

The second trebuchet hurled its payload with the increased mana supply, clearing the wall without issue. The original was having another boulder floated into the netting while the counterweight was rewound into place.

Only two of the four trebuchets worked after being neglected for many years. The counterweight on one swung off-centre and smacked into the supporting structure, while the netting on the other snapped during firing. The latter was an easier fix than the pile of timber the former had collapsed into.

I sat back down, crossed my legs, and floated a new bundle of sticks and timber up to the watchtower, bypassing the usual pulley system. When I’d asked for more arrows after using up most of mine, I’d been rejected. The more experienced soldiers needed them and were far more effective at using them, so I understood why.

When I asked for the unprocessed arrow shafts and planks, they were happy to dump the excess into my lap.

I would have also liked some steel for the tips, but the smithies were already behind. It wasn’t just ahead of us shrouded in smoke. Plumes of it covered the sky over the city as blacksmiths tried to keep up with the front's demands before the stockpiles were depleted.

Captain Tometh and a few other captains without their units on the battlefield were in the tower because it was near enough to the fighting without being in the way, closer to the open fields past the fortifications. Those fields contained Tometh’s mounted unit, who were leaning down from their horses to stab stragglers coming along the wall from the east.

Tometh collapsed a spyglass spell with a scowl. “They’re competing for the kills.”

“What’s the point of keeping count if you’re not going to try to win.”

“There's a difference between keeping count and going for a high count,” Arardish said.

Anything that he and Tometh could agree on, I wanted no part in arguing against.

I didn’t meet their gaze and brought one of the wooden planks into my lap. Although it was long dead wood, I effortlessly split it down the middle, repeating the feat until I had equal lengths of long blocks. I smoothed one into a cylinder and balanced it on my finger to check the weight.

“You’re going to run out of mana soon,” another captain said, taking a break from watching the battle to smoke. His blend of herbs was far harsher on the nose than Maisie’s, and I was glad the watchtower was open air. “With how inefficient you use your mana reserves and how abysmally small it is, I give you three more.”

“Mhm,” I hummed, sliding rigid leaves into grooves to use as fletching since I wasn’t important enough to open the feather stock for. I sharpened the point as far as I could with magic, then carved off the last bit with the thumb of my gauntlet. “My mana use isn’t that bad…Is it?”

I didn’t get an answer.

“Sir, Cap—Commander Arardish, sir,” A voice said from below. “We’re running out of mages to power the trebs.”

I leaned through the railing of the watchtower, spying a woman holding out empty mana stones in each hand.

“Pass them up here, cadet,” the commander said. “We have a few mages with nothing better to do.”

“Ah, reduced to simple crystal replenishers already. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

“You can hardly claim the title of mighty when you need to go to the clinic every few months to get the gunk out of your lungs.”

The pulleys squealed as the box of crystals was brought up. Each captain took several, with Tometh glancing towards his unit before reluctantly participating. He had complained his reserves had been slow to refill with the current drain on the surrounding mana.

If I stretched my senses too far out, I got dizzy, feeling as if I was at the centre of a whirlpool as the ambient mana was pulled into the vacuum.

I put down the stick I was stripping of bark and motioned for the crystal. He nodded gratefully and placed one of the three he took in my gauntlet’s palm. I juggled it into my gloved hand and held my gauntlet back out for the other two.

By the time Tometh lost our silent fight over who would get the crystals using raised eyebrows, tilts of the head, and eye rolls, I had the first crystal brimming with mana. I handed it back while balancing the other two in my palm.

Filling up all three large crystals was a bad idea, especially two at a time. I overdid it, expending too much with the shortage of mana in the air and my blood loss. My hand fell asleep, and I hung my head as the wood planks I sat on seemed to rock me back and forth.

Someone took the crystals from my hand after prying open my fingers and placed a hand on my forehead. “I can’t get a read on her vitals.”

A deep breath of cold air let me lean away from the hand. “I’m good…should have done one at a time.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” asked the captain with the pipe in his mouth. He turned to the side, letting out a long breath of white smoke, and held out the pipe to me.

His smirk and surprise when I took the pipe showed he wasn’t expecting me to accept the offer. The lung full was harsher on my throat, but my throbbing headache subsided, if only for a moment, before creeping back in.

“That’s what you get for dumping so much mana at once,” Arardish said, still on his second crystal. “Do they not teach you the basics up in the north?”

“I’ve hadn’t tried filling so many in a row before.”

“Don’t teach the girl bad habits,” Tometh said, snatching the pipe away from me before I could take another drag.

The growls and clamour from within the dark smoke from the burdening bodies in the chasm reached a new high as the ghouls surging out were shoved forwards. I’d already warned them about the numerous variants and the increased strength of those in the interior and been told it was accounted for.

Something leaping out of the smoke quicker than the bumbling masses drew my attention, and I quickly stood to get a better look. One of the four-legged ghouls jumped over the first row of spikes and landed in the ditch beyond, sprinting over the bodies of its predecessors. Tometh had already noticed, donning his helmet and picking up his sword. The other captains were confused until a scream was cut off as a set of jaws clamped onto a knight's throat.

A ballista bolt from Nicholas speared it through the stomach and pinned it to the ditch’s incline before the other archers could draw back their bows at Tometh’s directive.

“Fucking smokescreen,” Tometh said, stepping onto the ladder and sliding down.

“Can you look after my bag?” I asked, having found it right where I left it. I gathered my arrows and picked up my poleaxe to follow after him.

Commander Arardish gripped my wrist, leaving me almost suspended as I searched for the rungs with my boots. “You’re here so we can keep an eye on you.”

“Oh? I thought I was here by choice.”

“We never know what will prompt the next piece of crucial information to spill from your lips. You’re staying here.”

I tested his grip, finding it ironclad. “I’ve told you most everything, and I’ll be with the captain. And I don’t think you could keep me here.”

“I don’t know what game you two are playing, but undermining my authority isn’t in your best interest as it is his,” he said, pulling iron bindings from his waist belt.

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I raised an eyebrow, slowly sliding my mana over itself in my arm. Alp was a nuisance, yet he had at least taught me the basics of forging lightning. “That’s what you’re worried about? Not those things bearing down on us?”

“A boat with two captains will run aground,” he said. “Our peers elevated me into this position; he should respect that.”

I shrugged as my hair rose from the static. “I’ve never been on a boat before, so…”

There was a tick where his hand gripped my wrist and a flash of pain, enough for him to let go in surprise. I hadn’t got the magic right as the shock also hit me. My mind was dragged to the night in the forest with Barick and the doll, but my hard landing brought me back to the present before too many unpleasant memories could cloud my mind,

I thought I was over the arguably minor ordeal that lasted a mere evening, yet over and over, I would relive it from the slightest provocation.

Tometh was already weaving through archers on his way to the trenches, and I rushed to catch up. He turned near the chasm and walked along the row of wooden spikes, using it to jump into the ditch with the hunter variant. It was still thrashing about, snarling at those trying to reach the wounded knight under it.

Tometh dragged the sword from its scabbard, the enchantment for sharpness flaring to life. He swung the blade down, the point nowhere close to the neck of the creature. The enchantment carried forth the force of the strike across the distance, splitting head from neck. I ran along the same spikes and landed near him in the blood-soaked grass.

Footsteps, fighting, melted snow, and dragon’s breath had ruined most of the terrain. No longer was it an expanse of grass and shallow ditches but rather muddied trenches with half-formed defences.

I stumbled back as Tometh spun and raised his blade to me. “Why’d you follow me here? Aren’t you supposed to be out of mana?”

The first was an interesting question I hadn’t had the time to ponder. “You want me to wait up there with those people?”

His glare didn’t subside, but he lowered his sword. The other knights dragged out their comrade, still clutching his neck as blood flowed between his fingers while they healed him.

There were few of them in the trenches to begin with, as most were holding the shield wall or in the towers. The majority of the less experienced militia had been placed here to finish off those whom the archers wounded, not to hold the line.

The units holding the area around the chasm where most of the ghouls went were beginning to struggle as the mass of bodies was shoved into their shields. “Do we retreat into the city? We don’t want to fight these things in the open.”

“I thought you said they would be weaker,” Tometh said, standing his ground as the first row of spikes was slowly pushed over.

I stuck my poleaxe into the ground, wondering why I bothered to carry it around and drew my bow back. “Not by much.”

The first of the inner city ghouls squeezed through a gap in the wooden poles, reaching out for us. I shot it in the face with one of my arrows. They were easier to manoeuvre after firing since they still contained my mana, but the wooden point was less deadly. The arrowhead nevertheless buried deep into its skull through the squishy eye socket, and the ghoul slumped forward, blocking the way for others.

The next pole was pushed aside, and I glanced behind us to the next row of spikes that were keeping us trapped here, with another trench beyond that. The defences alternated like that several times before the empty fields with Tometh’s team.

The militia in the other trenches had run away after seeing a mage decked in armour almost get his head bitten off, and arrows from the towers landed too close for comfort. “Should we really be here?”

His voice sounded muffled from within the helmet. “You have no right to complain after following me without orders.”

I leaned around his chainmail shoulder and shot another ghoul before it could breach. This one didn’t die, but it was still stuck in the gap as it twitched. My boots were sucked into the mud as I repositioned while Tometh cut down a charging ghoul. The number of spikes pushed over and fallen flat in the loosened soil was growing.

The shield wall on the pathway was pushed back further, buckling in one area from an armoured variant getting through the first layer. Tometh’s sword flared with mana as it decapitated a pair of ghouls climbing through and struck a deep gouge in the wood.

I switched to an iron-tipped arrow as an armoured variant pushed through with little issue. The broad head of the arrow partially buried into its chest, only serving to enrage it for Tometh to deal with. His longer-ranged strike grazed the ghoul's hardened exterior, not slowing its charge.

I got one more arrow in before they clashed. Tometh ducked to the side as it went careening past him towards me. In a panic, I hit it with another arrow directly in the armour and reached for my poleaxe.

Tometh sliced the back of its knee, and it stumbled to fall face-first into the mud at my feet. I lifted the poleaxe high above it and plated the spike deep into the back of its neck. Tometh was already facing the next ghoul, and I fumbled with my next arrow, my heart racing from the close encounter.

I was used to dealing with them in the city, but sneaking about and slicing their necks open without their notice was a different experience.

The trench ahead of us was full of ghouls, and they had a direct route to the side of the shield wall. The captains there noticed the issue and tried to fall back, but the onslaught from the front wasn’t conducive to an orderly retreat.

A powerful knot of mana landed ahead of us and turned the area into icy shards. My breath came out misty as the winter air grew frigid. The ice statues of ghouls shattered, and in a heartbeat, it was as if the spell hadn’t landed at all.

I loosed the soil under a pole behind us, pushing it over to create a gap to the next trench over. I climbed up the trench wall and stood atop the fallen spike. Tometh took a blow on his chainmail while my back was turned, and his sword stuck in the chest of a dead ghoul. A dagger appeared from the lining of his coat, and he stabbed the offender through the skull before tugging at his sword again.

The trench was barely wide enough for him to swing, and it was quickly becoming more cramped. I thinned the numbers coming through with arrow after arrow. My stockpile was dwindling at an alarming rate. I used one of my last steel-tipped arrows on a ghoul that was absorbing far too much mana near its arm. I’d found that many more variants were invisible to the eye since their mutations were internal, and I didn’t want to find out what they did.

Tometh was taken to the ground before getting another swing in, and another ghoul quickly piled on. I hit the group that was pressing down on him with a mental attack. Their recoil from the captain and thrashing about made me miss my next shot, but the entire backdrop was ghouls, so I hit something.

The captain shoved a ghoul with a dagger stuck in its throat off of him and scrambled out of the mud without his helmet. I helped him up the embankment and dropped into the next trench after him, shifting the spike back in place.

He scraped at his face, trying to get mud out of his eyes and mouth with muddied hands. I pulled the moisture from the air and hit him in the face with a torrent of water. His hair stuck to his face as he stood, dripping wet and shocked into silence. I pulled the water off him and threw it in the ghouls' direction.

The arrows going overhead seemed to sink into the sea without effect. The spells were less powerful, every mage having expended their mana at least twice during the morning.

“Do we go back to your team?” I asked.

“Let's,” he said while breathing heavily. He glanced back at the shield wall fighting off ghouls climbing onto the path from the ditch we had left and stopped. “They need help disengaging; you go back. Tell them to reinforce one of the gates in the city.”

“I’m trying to catch up, so I think I’ll stay,” I said, perhaps too overconfident in my ability to escape if things got worse.

“What?”

“To your kill count?”

Tometh looked at me like I’d sprouted wings before shaking his head and turning to where a ghoul was trying to push through to our trench. He pulled out another dagger, but I picked up one of the many arrows stuck in the ground and hit the ghoul before he could reach it.

The shield wall on the path was circling the mages in their back line as more walking terrors rushed them from the sides. The archers in the watchtowers couldn’t keep up with those flanking now that the militia was vacating the trenches. Spells were haphazardly thrown to create walls, troughs, and elemental effects that didn’t help to stem the tide.

The captains there gave up on killing ghouls and focused on steadily walking back…past the entrance to our trench.

I shot the unlucky frontrunner coming around the curve of the trench. The second and third stumbled over the body, revealing the next in line to fall victim to my arrows. Tometh withdrew his dagger from the neck of a ghoul who was pushing through the spikes.

He turned to face the length of the trench while I made an opening for us into the next trench. Ghouls were getting ahead of us to either side as they threw themselves into the fortifications. The captain came through the gap with a ghoul clutching at his ankles and another jumping from the opposite incline.

I hit the one mid-jump with a blast of air, sending it flying back over the row of spikes while he chopped the arm holding onto him. A few militias were still holding this trench but getting overwhelmed despite the pale bodies piled around them.

The first row of watchtowers was vacated as the shield wall was forced to retreat past their ladders. Fewer arrows flew overhead, and a trebuchet’s boulder smacked into the wall, the last for a while since the crew was being hurried off.

The mages that had held the smoke plume at bay had long retreated, letting it blow towards us.

I pulled out my last iron arrow, my eyes widening at the variant I’d only read the description of. The spitter’s head and bloated throat were wedged through the fortifications, and a militia member approached with a spear to kill the seemingly trapped creature from the side. Its throat expanded as I drew an arrow back.

Out of the corner of my eye, a ghoul fell from spikes angled over me from behind. I loosed the arrow as the spitter opened its jaw, my attacker falling on top of me before I could bring my arms up. It was my turn to be shoved into the mud under the weight of a creature with no other interest than digging its claws as deep as they could go.

I didn’t have the chainmail to block them either.

The grotesque creature was too heavy to push off as I scrambled underneath it. I called for Tometh, but the last I saw, he was dealing with his own problems. It went to bite; I stuck my gauntlet into its mouth and hit it with a mental attack.

I’d deluded myself by calling what I was doing an ‘attack’ when I was really awakening the person hibernating within. I’d also forgotten the backlash from the stronger ghouls. This one pleaded with me to kill them. Not an echo of a long-dead soul, but the words of someone who could see me now.

I reached for an arrow that had spilt from my quiver in the fall, stabbing the flailing ghoul in the side repeatedly.

I rolled over to get the body off me, now weighed down by mud. Tometh had lost his dagger again and was relying on spells to cut down our attackers. I snatched up as many arrows as I could before making a new gap to get to the next trench. The militia member I’d saved from a face full of acid was dead, already trampled by the neverending rush of ghouls.

I didn’t stop and carried on through the layers of fortifications, feeling Tometh’s presence following me. The last few trenches were empty of ghouls and soldiers as the shield wall still held the entrance at the path. These rows of defences were not as full of mud and blood, and we retreated quickly to the field between us and the city’s wall of doorless, windowless houses.

Tometh’s team should have been there, but they were hundreds of paces away, dealing with a surge of ghouls coming from around the wall. They were quickly losing ground as the militia with them ran back to the city’s side entrance.

“Does that mean the other town fell?” I asked, spitting a clump of mud into the grass.

“Just their forward defences…I hope,” Tometh said, checking for another dagger.

“They’re going to get cut off,” I noted as the dozen horses of Tometh’s team were getting slowly encircled as ghouls came from the far side.

“They know to leave if things get bad,” Tometh said unconvincingly.

They were acting as the rearguard for the last of the militia limping along, but even then, ghouls were already running for the side entrance of the city. They would still be swarmed even if they left the wounded behind. They noticed the same thing.

A few team members pulled the wounded over their horses, and the retreat was sounded.

“I don’t think they’re going to make it,” I said, backing away towards the city as they trampled through the first ghouls to reach them. The rest of the hoard had noticed their noisy escape and changed directions from the city to them. Ghouls exited the trenches closest to the wall, adding to the encirclement.

Tometh went the opposite way.

I groaned and watched after him, no longer convinced I could escape the mess if I followed.