Jam was brought into the plan quickly, his face flitting between expressions before deciding on a shape of tentative hope.
At Jack's request, two of the full water barrels and all of the cooking salt was fetched. A stroke of good fortune from one of the hunters; she'd brought a supply of rock salt for preserving meat.
‘The higher the concentration of salt, the colder we can get the water,' Jack’s thoughts raced through the impending problem. If they added all the salt to one of the barrels, they couldn’t take water out again. If that water wasn’t cold enough, they wouldn’t have a second chance. Better to start with less water, a higher concentration of salt, and for it to be as cold as possible.
They had a bit over ten kilograms of salt, more than he’d even hoped for. Water could only hold a bit more than one part-in-five of salt before it would stop dissolving. Half a barrel.
At his word, one of the barrels was emptied halfway and the salt was poured into the remaining water.
The two cooks each brought a hand over each barrel and began transferring the heat from the unsalted one to the salted, using another card to stir the fluid on the interior. Peering into the barrel with a spring-light, Jack could see how quickly the salt was dissolving. He reached a hand in and brought a drop to his tongue. Never had something so foul brought such delight.
With no visible trace of salt left, the temperature manipulators reversed direction and set about cooling the water. Jack had asked earlier how long it took one of them to bring a pot of soup to boil: a bit under a minute. The barrel had about fifteen times that volume of water remaining. They were going in the opposite direction but by Jack's estimate they had about the same amount of heat to transfer. It would take somewhere between five and ten minutes by his reckoning before the water would be as cold as they could get it.
While they'd been setting up another defender had fallen. They hadn't registered the attack until she stumbled back from the line, barely capable of standing, let alone offering effective resistance.
That was six fallen so far. Including Jack, only nine still stood. There would be only one shot with the colder-than-ice water, if it failed there would be too few to fend the umbrar off. They needed to land a critical blow, but delivering the water in sufficient quantity would be difficult, particularly when feeling the first drop would reveal their ploy to the umbrar.
'We need to douse it but good luck getting it to stand still for that. If we laid a trap? No, a pit would be obvious. Dropping the barrel on it can fail in too many ways.' Jack's mind raced through the possibilities, 'It won't expose itself to an unknown threat, but if we can make it seem like a known threat...' and settled on one.
He asked for and received a third barrel and a vessel holding flux gel from the wagon. He had the new barrel swapped with the partially heated one and then resealed.
'That's right, watch what I'm doing. I'm being so interesting aren't I? I threw the lantern. I've been around whenever unusual things have happened. People are listening to me. You like killing the people in charge don't you? But even better, you like making them feel hopeless.'
He made sure he was very visible when he slathered the gel over the barrel.
Jam came up to him as he finished off the first half of the gel.
"I can't say I see your destination," he said aloud, "are you leading us to ruin?" was implied.
“We need to get the water onto it—a lot of it. Unless you have a powerful hydromancer, I don’t see that happening without getting tricky,” Jack answered simply.
“And how does this get that to happen?”
“It’s cautious. So cautious that I doubt it will just smash a barrel we’ve been doing things to. But if it thinks it knows the threat, and if we encourage it by acting as if it’s our last desperate ploy...” he trailed off.
“It will revel in our misery when it dashes our hopes,” Jam finished for him, “I hope you’re right.”
"If I'm wrong I'll regret it the rest of my life," Jack replied deadpan.
"Can you light the oil at my signal?" Jam nodded, "Alright then, help me roll this out."
A gap in the spears was hastily cleared and their rolling advance was guarded by the spears of the others as they maneuvered the barrel several spear-lengths from their fortified area.
This was the biggest gamble of his plan. If the umbrar decided to strike at them now, it would be the end of them. He was relying on the paltry efforts they'd managed so far to put it at ease. It wasn't threatened, wasn't rushed to finish them. It could take its time to enjoy this, to prey on them at its leisure. He'd made himself a target being the driving force behind so much of the activity; it would undoubtedly have picked him and Jam out. If it was anyone else he suspected it would attack immediately, but the leaders... they were the main course. Their deaths would see the group come apart in an instant, and that would be the end of its play.
All that was left was to light it and run.
"Okay Jam, whenever you're ready-" Jack cut himself off.
Curling up his leg was a tendril of black darker than shadow. His calf muscle tensed involuntarily, and in that moment he felt the crushing strength of the umbrar's tail squeeze him until he forced himself to relax. A warning, delivered.
From behind him a low rumble. He almost laughed, holding it in only with the knowledge that the ensuing hysterics would be death.
'Of course they put cat in you,' the thought was tinged ugly. He'd seen what cats did to prey. He hadn't considered that all this stimulation might have made it feel a bit forward in its advances.
"Jam," he said slowly. There was no warning squeeze. "If I don't make it back, light the barrel. Then do the same again with the cold one. Alright?"
Jam nodded silently, but remained still otherwise.
He could feel the umbrar's breath on his neck, moist and hot. He could imagine it behind him, sitting upright on its haunches, tail holding his leg tightly. It was torn between the impulse to bite his neck right then and there, and the prospective pleasure of drawing this out even more.
If it chose the former, letting fangs pierce flesh until the spine shattered, he might even live for a time.
The breath was growing hotter, more rapid. If he let things continue, it would convince itself.
Stolen story; please report.
'Defiance? Death. Act meek? Death. Show too much fear? Death. Call for help? Death.'
There was no angle he could see, but one.
"J-Jam?"
"Aye Jack. I'm listening," he spoke low. Jack could hear the weight he was putting on his words, he was preparing to hear what he thought would be Jack's last words.
"If you stop by Calamut after this, there's this bread-seller..." he swallowed nervously, "...I had his wares for breakfast the day we left," he spoke casually, conversationally.
Jam's expression almost broke him then. "Yeah?" His tone didn't help.
"It was excellent. Filled with melted cheese. Puffy, delicious bread. I'd recommend it to anyone."
Jack fell silent. Jam seemed to have trouble finding words.
The breath on his neck had dwindled away. The pressure on his leg was absent.
"Light it."
He didn't need to say that that also meant "run".
Within the reach of the spear-wall, Jack could still feel hot breath on his neck. He suspected he'd feel it for a while.
The umbrar was faintly visible, it had moved away from the barrel, no doubt suspecting foul play on their part. However, even as they watched, it approached the flickering flame on the barrel. It was cautious, made to treat the movements of people as inherently threatening if it did not understand their intent.
It wouldn't have encountered a flaming trap before, a barrel filled with explosives or more burning oil set to trigger, but the doubt was there. Was this something that could hurt it?
The watching crowd was silent. They knew to follow Jack's cue. The umbrar sniffed at the barrel carefully. Jack tried to make a voluntary noise seem involuntary, stifling an outcry.
That got its attention.
The umbrar placed its front paws on the barrel, stifling a portion of the flame. They could hear more than see claws dig into wood. The creaking of pressure and pull of tension until in an instant the wood splintered and hot water poured forth in a torrent over the umbrar.
'Need to sell it,' was Jack's thought.
He cheered with fervor, a boastful exultant cry. The others followed suit, a ragtag group expressing a release from unbelievable tension.
The umbrar stood still in the steaming water. Patches of the oil burned on even still.
'What's going on in your head right now? You must think we're pathetic, creatures of such meek ability that our greatest efforts don't even inconvenience you. Here we are cheering as if we accomplished something, that's a noise you mustn't like very much, not enough like screaming. You know what taunting is like, you did it earlier. Here's an opportunity to really see hopes crushed...'
As if in response to his mental beckoning, the umbrar stifled one of the remaining flames.
Jack let the cheer fade slowly. He made it tentative, as if confused. The others followed his lead, and by the time he fell silent, the clearing was once more of shadow and stillness.
‘There. That must have been delightful for you. Good enough to go again?’
“How’s the other barrel coming?” Jack asked. It was easy to sound hysterical.
"It won't give us any more heat, colder than I'd care to touch," came the reply.
Jack didn't nod. They were too beaten down for normal behaviour, needed to sell this performance, make it extra delightful for their audience.
"Jam I need you to fly off the handle," Jack stage whispered.
Jam didn't need to be told twice.
"What was that shit about bread!" he was bellowing, gesturing angrily to the remnants of the barrel. "That thing practically had your head down its throat and you start telling me about a street vendor?"
'I really didn't need to know that detail,' the thought was a shiver.
"It was REALLY GOOD BREAD!" Jack returned, pushing defensive anger into his voice. "You don't come across something like that every day!"
In a single step Jam came right up to Jack and grabbed him by the collar, hoisting him off his feet. "I'm not questioning the quality of the bread!" he screamed in Jack's face.
A gesture and a pair of others came to grab Jam off of him.
Jack angled his head, "Down" he meant.
Struggling still, Jam was pushed to the ground.
Coming in close, Jack whispered "Pretend you've been bound, this is a power struggle between us."
He stood up and sneered down at the glaring Jam, "That's right. That's what you get for not liking bread!" a taunting condemnation.
His attention shifted to the crowd around them. There was careful avoidance of his eye.
'Oh no. This is going to be a thing now if we survive this,' there was faint despair in the thought.
"Barrel!" he barked.
The two thermal manipulators already had it sealed and waiting, someone had even coated it in flux gel.
A call for someone with a card to light it saw the older of the two step forward.
He wasn't willing to expose himself to the umbrar again. The second time it would just kill him, unable to control itself regardless of how interesting he'd made the extra minutes of life it had granted him.
Fortunately, he didn't need to.
Each new thread unraveled of the umbrar's nature had been taken in and added to his calculations.
Learning the way it responded to counter-efforts, alternating its attacks whenever it was seriously hindered, let him control the method of its approach.
Seeing the fluctuation of its black camouflage in response to heat, and recognizing the effect, told him its weakness.
The delight it took in their suffering, the way it dragged out its play, gave him the means to manipulate it.
The barrel was lit and half-rolled, half-chucked out into the darkness.
It hadn't even come to halt before the umbrar pounced on it, smashing through in a crack of shattering wood—brittle from the cold.
The colder than freezing water erupted out at the impact, dousing the umbrar.
A scream from nightmares filled the air. Jack felt his teeth tingle through his clenched jaw.
But there, now a splotchy grey, the umbrar stood revealed.
Jack had accomplished what he'd promised, and Jam was ready to capitalize.
"SPEARS!" Jam bellowed as he stood.
The defenders readied their long spears and formed up. There were only six, but they organized into a hunting formation Jack recognized from description. Two central figures side by side—the core; another on each wing, just far enough to just touch fingertips to the central pair—flankers; and two hanging back a few steps, spears ready to intercept any charge on any of the forward figures if their own blow missed—opportunists.
A setup designed to minimize the risk from an agile and dangerous foe. Jack’s respect for Jam increased again—he must have drilled them to have such proficiency. The reasons for their success rate as an enterprise was showing itself.
The umbrar was trying to slink away into the shadows, but without its light absorption it was easy to track. The nest of shadows it moved in had abandoned it. Every move it made was matched by the spear-carriers, pivoting as a group without words to keep their formation centered on it. They strode forward, paces measured to one another, implacable. Finally there was something they could do, they didn't have to accept the slow encroachment of death, they could fight.