As soon as Lane stood in the courtyard, it felt like she had reached a completely different place. Despite the fact that the doors to the keep stood open, to allow soldiers to faster reach the stockpiles of cannonballs and other projectiles, Lane hadn’t been able to smell the Rot at all inside. Out on the yard, though, the stink was almost suffocating, and she stumbled rather than walked up the stairs of the walls.

She could hear David’s voice on the western parapet, where the Rot was coming at the castle in scores. Two of the elders were fighting by his side. Lane couldn’t tell who it was with all the soldiers and younger werewolves running around them.

“How’s Morgulon?” David asked with a grunt once she made it through to him, and impaled one of the smaller Rot-monsters on his own, silver-coated spear. A soldier with a torch set it on fire, now that it couldn’t scuttle away.

Lane gaped. She had never seen humans fight the Rot, not in close combat like this.

“Like it?” David asked. “Grab a spear or a torch, we can always use more hands.”

Lane nodded slowly and shook herself. “Right, torch,” she managed, and one was promptly shoved into her hands. Soldiers were walking around with big baskets, making sure the men fighting didn’t run out.

“How’s Morgulon?” David asked again, while pushing a creature over the balustrade before it could get to them.

“She’s fine,” Lane said. “Two of the young ones are born.”

“Yeah, I think we all felt that,” David said. “They’re all right?”

Lane nodded before she realized that he couldn’t spare any attention to look towards her. “The second one turned before she was fully out, but the doctor handled it. They’re both fine.”

“Glad to hear that something is working out,” David grumbled.

He was splattered in blood and plant sap and some other gore, the residue the dying Rot creatures left behind. Lane noticed one squad of soldiers being circled out, send down into the courtyard where they could catch their breath, and drink some water, while a different group took their position. David didn’t look like he had taken any rest yet.

Neither did his brothers. Mia stood between Nathan and Andrew, who did their best to try to stop the Rot that came at the young woman with a vengeance. David was standing next to Alvin, protecting him in the same way.

Lane shuddered, trying to focus, and swung her torch around when the next ugly not-dead piece of rotten meat crawled over the edge. She could see bones but had no idea what animal it might have once been. It managed to avoid her torch, but not the spear of a soldier, and once it was pinned down, Lane set fire to the creature.

She just wanted to turn to the next one when someone put a hand on her shoulder. She almost elbowed the guy in the chest.

“His Highness wishes to speak to you, milady!”

Lane blinked surprised at the messenger, but nodded and handed her torch over.

The large clock in the war room of Oldstone's keep said that midnight had just passed when Lane entered. George Louis and the Captain were both looking at reports.

“How is Morgulon?” George Louis asked, as soon as Lane stepped in.

“She’s – she was fine when I left,” Lane said. “The first two children were, too.”

“Let me know if that changes,” George Louis said, and Lane could tell that that was all he had wanted to know and she was already dismissed again. She walked closer to the large table, anyway. Most of the papers seemed to list supplies, but one sheet also listed the wounded – as tally marks only.

“It’s not too bad. Yet.” George Louis had noticed what she was looking at. “But it’s only the little creepers right now, and some of the middle-sized creatures. Every now and then we can feel them killing another human sacrifice, but there has been no sign of them since the first two went down. They’re probably hoping we’ll deplete our stocks of the burning cannonballs before they send them in.”

“Are we?”

George Louis sniffed. “You think I’m that stupid? You’ve been up on the walls, the men have firm orders only to use the cannons against the sacrifices. It’s nearly all close combat right now. I don’t think the High Inquisitor realized that the werewolves would be able to fight the Rot even while they look human, and he certainly didn’t expect some of them to transform on new moon night. It also helps that the Rot is fully focused on them. They can take more of a beating than regular soldiers can, and it makes the Rot more predictable, too.”

“I’m surprised the little creatures are attacking us at all,” Lane said. “Four elder ones should be more than enough to keep them away.”

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“Must be part of the Valoisian magic then.”

Lane nodded and hesitated. She didn’t want to go back to the fighting – no one in their right mind would – but she couldn’t imagine sitting here with Duke George Louis, just waiting for the next report to come in. And if she went down into the cells again, she would only disturb Morgulon.

So after a moment of hesitation, Lane braced herself and returned to the battle outside. She grabbed a torch from one of the soldiers with the baskets and made her way around the castle until she found the place where David was still in the thick of the fighting. When Lane leaned forward to maybe see what was going on outside the castle, all she could see was a heap of smouldering Rot-creatures down at the base of the walls, and a little further away, the still-burning husks of the two human sacrifices.

“Brutes coming up!” yelled someone close-by, and Lane was pushed aside as soldiers grabbed the waiting buckets of oil and poured them over the banister. Other soldiers held their torches to the flowing liquid, and for a few seconds, Lane could hear nothing but the roar of the burning Rot.

“Brute,” was apparently the new word for the mid-sized monsters, like the one Greg had fought last fall.

“Oil is at half-empty,” reported one of the men who ran to replace the empty buckets with full ones.

Lane saw David grimace at the words. As far as she knew, he had no official command post, but all the soldiers and werewolves were looking to him anyway.

“Half empty is fine,” he said after a second. “The night is half over, too.”

Did David realize that they still had to face the much worse monsters brought forth by human death?

But of course, he knew. They all felt it when another throat was cut, or however the priests did it. Was he hoping for sunrise? But if even the little creepers weren’t deterred by the four elder werewolves on the walls, daylight wouldn’t do much to stop the biggest Rot creatures, would it?

She really wanted to ask David if there was something she was missing, or if he was just trying to give the rank and file some hope that they could hold out long enough, but there was no way to speak to him, or even get near to him. So instead, Lane teamed up with Jody and did her best to keep the creepers off the werewolf.

They could all feel it when the next werewolf was born, and then the other two followed quickly. Lane considered going back down to have a look, but then decided against it. No one else could just walk away from the fight, and just because she was a woman and the soldiers probably expected her to run away at some point didn’t mean that she should. So instead she stayed, and shoved the little creepers back down onto the heap of gleaming, smoking husks, poured oil onto the bigger brutes, and set everything on fire that tried to crawl onto the parapet. They raked at her and bit her, but with the werewolves mostly offsetting the corrupted magical aura, it was more like tedious and exhausting menial labour than a fight.

At two o’clock in the morning, the order came for the werewolves fighting to stand down and get some rest. Only when Fleur approached to take Jody’s place on the wall, and Dale and Bernadette came to replace Fenn and Calder, did Lane realize that they had been fighting at half strength to defend the keep. They still had some reserves.

When David handed over his spear, Lane decided to follow his example.

“They’re weaker,” she pointed out in a low voice. “Bernadette and Dale, I mean.”

David nodded. “They’ll be fine as long as it’s just the creepers and some brutes,” he yawned. “Go get some rest, everyone!” he added, louder. “Eat something, and then go, sleep as much as you can. This isn’t over yet.”

Lane inhaled deeply as soon as she entered the keep. Morgulon’s presence was still keeping out the stink.

Alvin had stopped in his tracks and blinked owlishly, taking deep breaths. Nathan gently had to push the kid forward, so he wouldn’t block the door. “Food, Alvin,” he said.

Alvin didn’t seem to have heard him, but he moved. He looked even worse than the soldiers: His shirt was almost entirely gone, ripped to shreds, and his chest and arms were covered in hundreds, if not thousands of cuts. George Louis had said that the Rot was focused on the werewolves, and Lane had seen it with Jody, but she hadn’t realized just how much of the heat they were drawing away from everybody else.

How much blood loss could they take? And was there any point in bandaging them up?

When Nathan stopped pushing, Alvin walked a couple of more steps, and then just stood around again, so David directed him over towards the table where soldiers were already flocking. Lane followed Nathan to get some food and took one of the three bowls he tried to balance before he could drop it.

“Thanks,” Nathan said.

They all ate in silence. More than one soldier and werewolf fell asleep right at the long tables. Fighting the Rot was still far more draining, especially mentally, than it should have been.

“You going to check on Morgulon?” David asked.

Lane nodded.

“Good. Let me know how she is. Wake me up if necessary.”

Lane nodded again, too tired for many words.

When she went down into the basement, Morgulon was fast asleep, too. She was still a wolf, which was both a surprise and a relief to Lane.

“How are the babies?” Lane asked Dr. Barnett, who had woken from his doze when she walked in. Morgulon had curled up around them, and she didn’t want to disturb her to have a look.

“Well, human babies aren’t my specialty,” he admitted. “But I can’t see anything wrong with them. Your fiancé will be interested to see two of them.”

Lane groaned, but then she just had to bend over Morgulon’s back to have a look. And sure enough, she spotted a tiny, brown foot at the one end of the heap, and a head full of curly black down on the other.

Lane straightened up again and then just stood there for a minute, wondering if she should tell David right away. But then she shook her head to herself. He needed to rest as much as he could, and she was fairly certain that he wouldn’t, if he knew that Greg was a father. There would be time to figure out how to handle this later.

Was there any way to figure out who the fathers of the other children were?

But that, too, would have to wait, if there even was a way. She climbed the stairs again, up to where the soldiers were resting on simple blankets on the stone floor. They were all tired enough not to care. She found David, who had apparently saved her a spot, and stretched out next to him, not even bothering to take off her boots.

She was just wondering if she really should wake him when he muttered: “Everything all right?”

“Morgulon is fine. Still wolf, fast asleep,” Lane reported.

“Good.” David never opened his eyes. A moment later, his breathing evened out. Lane let her head fall to the side and went to sleep, too.