I quickly checked how many bones I earned and almost went blind. Should have slowed down. Eased into it. That is a lot of zeroes.

“Osain, any new units I can recruit? Any new anything?”

“Yes! You can get Scrapyard Lansiwr Gwaywffon, and you can recruit the Ancient and Honorable Birdwatching Society.”

Time was at an absolute premium, but I still had to take a second to try, and fail, to process that. “Lancer Gainfon?”

“What?”

“What the hell is the first thing you mentioned?”

“It’s a Lansiwr Gwaywffon. But those are illegal to own by civilians and not the kind of thing that can fall off a supply wagon, so these are made from bits of scrap metal, wood and rope. Not as long ranged or powerful as the military sort, but the fact that they exist at all is pretty damn incredible.”

“Right. Yes. What. Are. They?”

“Does what it says in the name.” Versai was giving me one of her very ‘patient’ looks. “It launches spears. They have some fletching on them, but it is what it is. A damn spear.”

“Ballista. Or a scorpion.”

“What?” She gave me a very blank look now. But no, I was out. Done with that one. Sounded good, would check prices. For now-

“And the birders?”

“The Ancient and Honorable Birdwatching Society is a group of retired gentlemen who enjoy long walks in the country, watching the birds and occasionally hunting small, unregulated game like rabbits or pigeons for their famous club dinners.”

The top of the wall got very chilly all of a sudden. I looked around and found Madame and Versai staring daggers at Osain. He couldn’t meet their eyes.

“Bowmen. You slimy, miserable, wretched little man! You think I don’t know what you sold? You think anyone in Shaddek Square didn’t know what you kept behind the red door?” Madame’s voice came out in a long hiss.

Versai didn’t bother condemning him. She just pulled out her bright blade and started walking closer.

“I arranged it, not him. They reached out to me to volunteer. Discreetly. I paid a certain price.” Sebastian materialized in front of Versai. His usual humor was entirely gone.

“Uncle?”

“I know. I know. Nobody who stayed in the Quarter expected to survive the night, Versai. Most of the ones who ran weren’t optimistic about survival either. Not on foot or with farm wagons. I got the Society’s families out, all the way out to the Môr Glas, where a fast ship awaits them.”

“Bowmen. Retired, honorably retired Bowmen.” I could hear the tears in her voice.

“I know.”

His hands rose, wanting to hug her. Held back by the time and place.

“I don’t. I’m sorry, but can you explain?”

They yanked their attention back to me. Grief. Pride. Frustration. So many emotions drifting across their faces. It was Madame who spoke first.

“Anyone can pick up a crossbow. A week or two of training and you are as competent as anyone, really. Bows are different. It takes years of hard training to use a longbow well. More than a decade to be an expert. They start young. The bows they use are very heavy. It starts warping their spines. Their right arm and the right side of their back gets much more muscly than the left. They try to train to even it out but it doesn’t work very well.”

She took a deep breath. “It hurts. All the time. My girls offered half price massages to Bowmen even before the Monsters started pressing in. Anything to take the edge off the pain.”

“But we needed them.” Sebastian’s voice was bleak. “Always have. Always will. You can enchant a crossbow, but it’s damned expensive and it wears out eventually. Your ladies across the way have a discipline tied to their shields, I think. But a bowman can use disciplines with their bows. Which means each of them is an utter nightmare on the battlefield, for decades. It is an honorable life of immense sacrifice, and very few live to reach retirement. We enshrine their bows when they die, preserving them for the next generation.”

“They earned their peace.” Versai’s voice was brittle. “That’s the deal. You do your twenty, then you get to retire. You can count your meals and your roof on the Gradden family. Four generations, now. Longer, if you count the time before we established the March. You get to be done. You get to try and heal.”

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. Like some combination of Witchers and special forces, tied up with some cultural thing. The key thing was, they were badasses.

“Osain, how many of each can I recruit?”

“Up to ten Lansiwr Gwaywffon,”

“We gonna call ‘em ballista.”

“What? What does that even mean?”

“It means, tell me how much each Scrapyard Ballista costs.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“A hundred Runed Bones.”

“And the… honorable retirees?”

“Two hundred. Each. Maximum of five.”

The disbanded militia cost twenty. I sucked my teeth a bit. End game units. If this wave wasn’t the last, we were nearing the end. It said something that the last wave hadn’t kettled up enough bodies to trigger Crusher Jim’s appearance. I checked my pouch. Rounded down, it worked out to fifteen hundred rune bones. So… I couldn’t max out my supply of both endgame units. I hmm’ed a bit.

“Guessing the Ballistas aren’t very mobile?”

“Well. Matter of perspective, I guess. Compared to other siege engines, they are very mobile.” Osain smiled.

“So, for our purposes, not mobile.”

“No.”

“Ah. Alright, I’ll take your whole stock of em. Then ten more Disbanded militia…” that left me three hundred. Hmmm. HMMMM.

“What has a more powerful effect on improving damage output- the Whales or your working girls?”

“Whales, and it’s not even close.” Madame shook her head. “My girls can enhance a few people a bit. Whales can enhance three people a hell of a lot.”

I did some high speed math. Whales were thirty bones. I could get ten at most, but… “Three of the Whales, one of the Birdwatchers.”

The ballistae… were a disappointment. After all the emphasis on “they launch spears,” I expected something a little longer. The ballistae were about three and a half, maybe four feet long. The launchers were dragged around on a little three wheeled cart. Big, crossbow style metal arms out front, a windlass was at the back. Each came with a two man crew.

“Can we get them up on this wall?” I asked. It wasn’t particularly crowded up here, mostly me, Versai, Madame, the Blue Roses and the Regulars.

“Yes.” Madame nodded, looking a little proud. Why shouldn’t she be proud? She sold her shoes to build them. I stationed the whales behind them. Each whale could cover three, which notionally left one out, but I could accept the trade-off for now.

The Birdwatcher was an odd duck. His right side was clearly over-muscled, though not grotesquely so. He walked with a bit of a hunch, a bit of a twist to his spine. I wished I had some way to help him. I didn’t.

“A pleasure to meet you, sir. Please join the rest of our archers up on the rooftop.”

“An old haunt, to be sure.” He grinned, and got on the roof with alarming ease. Time to see what a hero of the March could do.

My defenses were rebuilt and improved, as best the Regulars and Rakim could manage. I had a ton of firepower lined up. At some point, Jim would crash the party. Was everything set?

NO! DAMN!

“RAKIM! RIGHT damn now get down here and grab those sandbags! Checkerboard them, one bag high, across the street in front of the barricades and the walls. NOW! NOW! NOW!”

Please let it be in time. Please please please.

She only got three rows down before the cry “Incoming!” rang out. It would have to do. The oncoming wave came heavy, the block of Wall Breakers in front was so big, I felt like they filled the whole street.

“Back on the roof, Rakim. Regulars, back on the wall. Pomoroy, Radz, fire at will.” No priority targets here.

Miyuki, bless her little cotton tabi, had already started nailing them to the floor. The results were colorful. She could only shoot once every thirty five seconds, but the pinned, hippo sized Wall Breaker would instantly become a roadblock to all the monsters coming behind. A wall, if you will. So the Wall Breakers coming up the road behind them would lower their heads and try to run right through them.

The phrase “organ piñata,” while visceral, hardly does it justice. Particularly since the monsters would then trip, flip, slip, and generally be an impediment to traffic in their own right. And the beautiful cycle repeats. Miyuki, ah! If only you were slightly less Yandere.

It knocked out a few of them, but they were coming by the fives and tens. It didn’t take them long to build up speed. A few more seconds and they were at the checkerboard sandbags. I silently crossed my fingers.

The bags were heavy, dense fabric. Coarse and rough. Filled with sand and whatever tiny gravel came with it. The bags were about the length and width of a pillow, and when laid flat were a foot tall. Or, put another way, for a low-slung quadruped that was running fast, they were about shin high.

What came next was beautiful. They were in range of my crossbow units now, and they were wiping out. By keeping the sandbags flat on the ground, I didn't give the Wall Breakers something to ram into. The bags survived the impact, because they only caught a tiny bit of the force. The street got the real beating, as the armored hulks smashed down. Easy meat for the rooftop shooters.

The bowman was looking very casual. Not even drawing his bow, in fact. Just kind of looking around, vaguely approving. Possibly wondering about the availability of rice pudding later. It was that kind of face.

“Senior Bowman, you can fire at will.”

“Yep. That’s what I’m going to do. Fire at will.”

Fantastic. I am so glad I spent major money on this guy.

“Ballista, fire when they are in range.”

There was silence. I buried my face in my hands. “Lansiwr Gwaywffon, fire at will, targeting the Wall Breakers. Whales, use your rings on them.”

I swear I didn’t pronounce that right, but they seemed to understand me anyhow. There was the most incredible TWANG sound. The bolts didn't go as far as I might have liked- barely a hundred yards. I couldn’t bring myself to care. Each one plowed through four or five monsters before coming to a stop, and the crews were spinning those windlasseses back fast. I counted under my breath

“Twenty seconds. Twenty seconds per volley. Call it forty monsters dead every twenty seconds, at long range. My God.” I murmured, stunned. If I could just manufacture these for the Tower… I could hardly imagine it. The game would be over. Victory by artillery.

Not like my other shooters were being idle either. The Mikas and Sebastian’s ‘legitimate businessmen’ were shooting with a will. We had cleared out the Wall Breakers before they could do any major damage, but the sheer numbers of regular and armored monsters were quickly getting insane. Pomoroi and Radz would tear chunks out of them, long gashes and sudden voids, but they filled in almost instantly.

We couldn’t do enough damage, fast enough, to stop them from reaching the outer walls. Even having them zig zagging, clogging the narrow alleys with their bodies, we didn’t do enough damage. They reached the hedgehogs, and the militia… and stopped. The militia held.

Spears, row after row of spears, dove in and out. The militia was well used to stabbing over the shoulders and heads of the people in front of them. They formed three lines, and got to work. When a monster managed to reach through everything and injure someone, they were pulled out of line and passed back to Pammy and Maria for healing. It… worked. For now. Because while we were holding them and killing them, more and more were piling up. Sooner or later, they would be able to overwhelm our lines.

I gripped my wrists behind my back. The urge to fire the Spell Tower was strong, but… not yet. Not yet. More and more monsters piled in. Practically filled the street. But not. Quite. Yet.

“Up you get lads. I’ll come by in a moment.” I could feel a mountain arriving behind me. Crusher Jim was here. It was all going to go very, very badly. For the monsters.