forward, bow fully drawn and aimed directly at his face. He instantly dropped to his knees, the arrow snapping the air above his head. Jerking around he was confronted by the sight of a tall Stahlhast warrior with an arrow jutting from the visor of his helmet. Sherin’s poison swiftly fulfilled its promise, the warrior immediately collapsing onto the battlement, blood frothing from his mouth as he twitched once and lay still.
The corpse was quickly dragged from sight as another Stahlhast clambered to the top of the wall, teeth bared as he hauled himself up using the iron grapple lodged onto the crenellation. Seeing Vaelin, he reached for the sabre on his back, stiffening in death a heartbeat later as the Order blade speared him through the throat. Vaelin drew the sword clear, letting the man fall, casting his gaze left and right to take in the sight of the Stahlhast labouring up the wall wherever he looked. The battlement above was now fully shrouded in smoke, the soldiers within it milling in confused fear.
“Forward!” he called to the Skulls, pausing to hack the hand off another Stahlhast as they crested the wall. He saw the one-time outlaws hesitate, some still distracted by the smoke-crafted tigers wreaking chaos amongst the other soldiers. But then Corporal Cho-ka lowered his spear, gave a brief shout of command and charged forward. The Skulls followed, the carefully drilled tactic of repelling attackers with a disciplined advance of two well-ordered ranks forgotten as they surged in an untidy mass. Despite its lack of cohesion, the speed and violence of the Skulls’ attack was enough to dislodge a score or more of Stahlhast at the first thrust of the spears.
“Cut the ropes!” Vaelin shouted, kicking another Stahlhast loose from the wall and slashing his blade through the rope the woman had been climbing. A series of enraged shouts from below indicated at least a dozen others were now plummeting to the ground. More followed in quick succession as the Skulls obeyed his command, all ropes within reach cut through in the space of a few seconds, although some were dragged to their deaths by the final desperate grabs of the enemy.
Robbed of their ability to scale the wall, the Stahlhast lingered at the base to assail those above with a hail of arrows from their strongbows, half a dozen Skulls reeling back with shafts embedded in face or neck.
“Oil and rocks!” Vaelin called to Cho-ka, who quickly organised a party to cast their baskets of heavy stones over the wall, followed in short order by the contents of several large clay jars filled with boiling oil. Screams of rage and pain from below indicated the tactic’s success, and a brief glance over the edge revealed the sight of a hundred or more Stahlhast fleeing into the darkness, leaving behind twice the number of corpses and flailing wounded at the base of the wall.
“The gate!” Juhkar appeared at Vaelin’s side, bow in hand. He pointed to the floor of the bastion. The entire structure was now almost entirely concealed in smoke as the phantom tigers continued to assail the battlements on either side. Vaelin could see no sign of Commander Deshai.
“There’s more than one,” Juhkar added, making for the nearest stairwell. Vaelin shouted to Cho-ka to hold in place and followed with Ellese and Nortah close behind. The tall tunnel that led into the guts of the bastion was so filled with smoke that Vaelin found it impossible to discern what might be happening within. It also roiled with phantom tigers, a wall of snarling cats that few of the soldiers nearby showed any inclination to approach.
He strained to hear the trundle of wheels that might indicate the approach of a battering ram sufficiently large to dislodge the gate, but instead heard only the din of battle and the shouts of panic from above. He was about to ask for guidance from Juhkar when he simply walked into the wall of smoke, bow raised. Vaelin started reflexively from the lunge of a smoke tiger, then steeled himself and followed the tracker into the fog. It was so thick he could barely see a foot in front of his nose, his throat catching the acrid sting, causing him to cough continually. He covered a dozen steps, then jerked aside, colliding with the tunnel wall as something fast and hard scraped over the shoulder guard of the hauberk he wore. The surrounding smoke twitched and the air thrummed with