There was no more talking after that. They left the ruined castle, and the guards barred the door behind them.

Jasper slumped back up the stairs to his room. The straw stung against his injured back, so he rolled over onto his side, pulling his cloak over his body.

The night sank over him–

— — —

And in that night, a sound disturbed the peace. It was a small sound. Jasper, later, wouldn’t be able to say what made it stand out against the usual tapestry of night-time sounds, the owls in the high eaves and the night-watchmen playing cards below, the wind whistling through cracks in the stone, the foundations of the castle settling.

But it did.

It was an alien, intruding sound, and it jolted Jasper awake.

Something was wrong.

His first instinct was to reach for the sword Big Dog had left him– and as soon as he touched the hilt, he received that same rush of knowledge, the certainty of a trained warrior. It told him to rush downstairs, to sound the alarm.

Jasper’s own thoughts cut through. No.

His borrowed skills were clumsy and basic. His own instincts were sharper.

Jasper– no matter how good he got with a sword– wasn’t a hero or a soldier. He was a nobody from Earth, and when things got tough, he got going in the opposite direction.

So he went up the tower, clambering his way out onto the rooftops. His cloak was wrapped around him, veiling him in gray as he dropped down to the tiles. The night was a cold one, with a bright silver moon that cast a dim half-light, leaving the world below plainly illuminated.

Something was wrong. As he huddled behind the shadow of a gargoyle, Jasper looked down, and saw the night guards lying slumped against their table. Sometimes that had happened before– they got a ration of grog, and they were old men, prone to falling asleep at their posts– but never this early.

Something puddled beneath their boots.

The clouds drifted past the moon, and for a moment, the night thickened and fell into shadows.

When the light returned, it gleamed on something stuck through the night guard’s throat. Jasper saw it clearly now. An arrow stuck out of each of their necks.

His blood froze cold.

Someone was crouched on the walls. He saw them as they moved, dropping down into the courtyard between the fortress ramparts and the castle proper– where the bandits slept in their tents. Two more figures followed them, as silently as cats in the night.

One of them carried a long spear. Light flashed on its blade. The other was dressed in robes, with a strange, beaked face– after a moment Jasper realized it was a mask.

They advanced on the tents, on the sleeping bandits.

Jasper almost opened his mouth to yell…

But his eyes settled on the guards lying slumped at their tables, on their dead faces. Those shots were perfect. One through the throat, and coming so fast that none of the old-timers had a chance to call out a warning.

So Jasper held his breath.

And watched as destruction spread across the camp. The spear-bearer was first. With a flashing strike, he carved open the walls of a tent. With a downwards stab, he killed the man inside. He trampled over the corpse; he killed again and again, carving his way down the line of sleeping bodies.

Someone finally screamed. It was a gargling death cry.

But it kickstarted the process already underway. People were rising from their sleep, hearing the stomping of boots, the faint sound of metal scything into flesh. One of them shouted, now, a full-throat cry of alarm. A bandit burst from their tent with a sword drawn–

He made it three steps before the spear stabbed through his chest. With a casual, muscular motion, the spear-bearer lifted the man above his head and flicked him over one shoulder.

The masked, robed figure stepped forward now. The bandits were rising from their tents– but she threw something against the ground and it blossomed into a wave of brilliant blue flames.

In a moment, the camp was consumed in fire. People struggled to free themselves from their own tents, getting tangled, screaming as the burning fabric wrapped around their legs and pinned them down. Others were able to throw themselves free– but they were engulfed, and no matter how they rolled and thrashed against the ground, the fire refused to go out.

They were dead men walking.

As the barrier of flames rose towards the sky, Jasper lost sight of the men on the far side. He could only hear the screams and the clash of metal.

“Men! To me!” Big Dog’s roar cut through the sounds of battle as he strode out of his tent– for the first time, Jasper saw him adorned as a warrior, dressed in wooden splint armor with a cape of white fur around his shoulders. The men who were caught on the near side of the flames looked to him, and began to form ranks around him.

And then an arrow shot through the curtain of flames.

It caught a bandit in the throat. Before the man had even hit the ground, another arrow flickered through the flames, striking down another body.

A half-dozen were mowed down in the blink of an eye.

Big Dog’s sword carved through the air, striking an arrow aside in a spray of sparks– just instants before it would have struck him through the heart.

“COME OUT, COWARDS!”

The flames were dying down. It had clung to everything it had touched, but it hadn’t spread, not like a normal fire would. As it dissolved into lingering sparks, the three attackers were revealed.

A man with long red hair and a freckled, blunt face, round-jawed with a hanging slab of scarred brow, his entire body corded in muscle beneath an armored leather coat. Chains hung around his sleeves, a pauldron of yellow printed with black chevrons on one shoulder.

A woman with bronze-dark hair bound in braids and knotted behind her head. She was fire-scarred, her skin melted into wriggling, pale-white threads of scar tissue that reached across her cheek and paralyzed her mouth. She was the bowman; she carried a white-wood bow as tall as she was.

And the masked one, in the plague doctor’s hood. There was nothing to say about her; she was a mystery in black robes, vials and pouches strapped to her body in bandoleers and belts.

Three of them.

And against those three, fourteen bandits and the Big Dog himself.

There was a momentary pause…

And then hell broke free. One of the bandits lost his nerve. With a roar, he threw himself forward– and caught an arrow in his throat. As his dead body tumbled over, his brothers charged across his body, blades drawn, their voices joined into a wild howl.

The spearman stepped forward with his weapon raised to above his shoulders. A single swipe of that long, bladed spear took the legs out from under the first to arrive. Then the point jabbed upwards, catching a man through the base of his jaw and up into his skull.

A blade swung for him–

And he deflected with the spears haft, striking out with the blunt end to sweep his attacker’s legs. An arrow cut through the air, straight over the spearman’s shoulders, and killed another bandit before his sword could reach the red-haired warrior.

The spearman swung once more, this time not to kill, but to force the mob back. He was retreating, step by step, his weapon swinging wildly against empty air, holding the distance as the bandits hesitated…

That hesitation cost them.

Two more arrows, two more lives.

“GO!” Big Dog roared, shoving forward.

He met the spearman head on. His sword swung down with that brutal speed– and Jasper realized he was cheering for the man, for his captors. He knew they were bandits. He knew they were probably bad people and that they’d certainly done bad things. But they were his– and he knew he’d be counting friends among the faces of the dead.

The longsword hacked down. The spearman deflected again with the haft of his spear, between where his hands gripped it.

Big Dog saw it coming–

His hand shot forward and yanked the spear forward, drawing the red-haired warrior up off his feet and into a descending headbutt. It hammered him backwards and his grip on the spear loosened– Big Dog’s boot swung into his knee and sent him sprawling to the floor, weaponless.

Three quick strikes in the space of a breath– and even as he fought, the Big Dog was following his other two opponents, using his grip on the spear to swing the red-haired youth around so that his body blocked the archer’s shot. She shouted out in frustration and shot another bandit instead– claimed another life.

The spearman tumbled back and the Big Dog flung the spear aside.

To either side, the surviving bandits rushed for the archer and the masked woman. The Big Dog spun his blade around to a reverse grip and lifted it to finish off his foe.

The masked woman drew a vial from her belts, flinging it to the ground. The glass cracked open and a hideous light bloomed outwards, exploding across the incoming bandits, blinding them. The spearman covered his face and rolled aside, the Big Dog’s sword striking empty ground.

The red-haired man came up on his feet with a short knife drawn.

There were five left. Three of them were rushing for the archer, but they could no longer see, and she easily wove between their clumsy, reaching strikes. One of them accidentally whipped his blade into the other’s gut– the wounded man responded with a downwards chop that killed his ally. A second later, he too was dead– an arrow through his head.

A second arrow killed the third man.

The two who had broken off for the masked woman– dead. Engulfed in flames as she revealed a brass tube hidden under her heavy sleeve.

And suddenly the world seemed very cold.

Jasper leaned forward, his fingers bending until the knuckles went white against the stone head of the gargoyle. The fight, by all rights, was over– and yet Jasper was still hoping.

For what, he wasn’t certain.

Maybe for a miracle.

The battle had narrowed to the Big Dog, and the three pups trying to bring him down. The man was dazed, half-blind, but he had the sense to lift an arm to shield his face and throat. The archer tried to go for the heart instead. Her shot punctured his heavy splint mail but didn’t sink deep enough to kill…

He blinked away his weakness and advanced forward with a shout, swinging down at the spearman. The boy, with nothing more than a knife, was forced to give ground. He scrambled back at the first blow, and then the second came chasing after, a long piercing stab rising up from below. He deflected and the tip of the blade still tore across his face, ripping off his ear.

A scream.

A split second instinct to duck, before the blade came flying overhead on the backstroke– a blow that would’ve decapitated him.

It bought him only a second of time. The Big Dog was a born fighter. Every strike led to the beginning of the next, an unbroken cycle, a net of silver-gray steel woven around his body leaving his enemies no space to attack or escape.

Now the blade was up high– now it was ready to chop down.

The masked woman flung a vial of something horrid. The Big Dog drew one hand away from his blade to deflect it across the back of his arm, and Jasper heard the scream as acid bit into his flesh– but the masked woman didn’t stop there. She tackled him across the waist, and for a moment, he stumbled before kicking her aside and whipping his sword from her shoulder to her hip.

It was shallow– but she was no fighter. It sent her to the cold earth.

But it had distracted the Big Dog for a fraction of a second.

An arrow slid through the air and burst through his neck.

Jasper bit back a sound.

For a moment, he reeled, reaching up to touch the arrowhead where it emerged from his throat– disbelief on his face. Jasper thought he would fall– the man was a mountain, and now all that weight, all that muscle, worked to drag him towards the floor.

Then he spun around and pierced the red-haired man through the guts. The spearman had tried to creep up with his puny knife, tried to finish the job– now the breath left him in a short, sharp gasp as the blade lifted him off the ground, redder than flame where it emerged through his back.

The Big Dog threw the boy aside and charged the archer.

She put an arrow through his leg. Then, through his chest. They seemed to leap from her bow at lightning speed– her hand was a blur. More and more feathered ends sprouted from his armor as she riddled him with holes.

And then his blade crashed through the bow, breaking it in half.

She dropped down to one knee and drew a short sword. The Big Dog was dying. It was unmistakable– he was slower, weaker, clumsier than he’d been even split seconds ago. His face was a death mask, wild rage and pure defiance.

They clashed. Her sword was sharp and agile. His sword beat down like a steel hammer.

One–

Sparks erupted where the edges met.

Two–

She was being driven back, towards the wall.

But no third strike came.

With a final sound, a guttural run of noise, the Big Dog simply fell over.