“As a Paladin of the Order of Light, I demand you open this gate,” the silver knight demanded in his deep, booming voice. “Where’s your commander? Paladin Light is a Councilmember! Where’s Lord Relgar?”

Atop the walls stood a line of guards holding bows and crossbows, refusing to respond to the crowd’s pleas and curses. Was there that much bureaucracy involved in opening the gates? Did the people in the city have a grudge against these villagers?

Two of the three knights present, who had been at the front of the escort, left the silver knight to castigate the guards and rode back through the frenzied crowd, yelling.

“Fighters, form up! Hold out until the gates open! Get back here, fools!”

They were going to fight here, right in front of the gate? Those people on top of the wall were going to watch them get slaughtered?

The knights were only two, but their mounted, armored forms projected authority, figures to gather around. The armed villagers moved with the knights, reforming the second group, receding from the wall like a wave on a beach.

A few figures moving against the crowd like fish swimming upstream escaped the mass and darted along the wall, ignoring the knights’ orders. Was there another entrance? Another city nearby? Or did they think they could hide in the tall grass until it was safe?

Most obeyed the knights, though. Hoping that the majority was right, Valerie let Amelia down. “Stay by the wall, okay?”

In all honesty, she wanted to stay by the wall, too. But everyone with a weapon was going with the knights, leaving the defenseless in the shadow of the walls. Even some unarmed people were following the knights out.

“No! I’m not staying!”

Amelia’s grip tightened, and Valerie realized she didn’t have the heart or energy to forcibly pull the girl off her. Besides, at this rate, being on the frontlines, closer to the knights, might be safer than being by the wall. Who knew?

“Fine, stay behind me, then.”

As long as the girl didn’t freeze up again.

Amelia nodded vigorously, and they ventured away from the wall, angling toward the nearest knight, his helm glinting in the light cast down by the torches atop the battlements.

The villagers were given no time to form up. When the pair was still dozens of yards from the knight, a wave of Stalkers crashed upon the receding wave of armed townspeople. Cries of pain and shouted Skills mixed with snarls and yelps.

What the fuck was this?

Scrambling backward, one hand grasping Amelia’s, the other, even more tightly, her sword, for the umpteenth time today Valerie felt in every terrified fiber in her body that this was not where she belonged.

As she turned around, a mass of snarling fur flew from the side, crashing into a thin man with a rapier a few feet in front of her. Slavering jaws tore into the screaming man. Familiar haunches filled her sight.

The beast was between her and the wall.

Damnation. That wouldn’t happen to her again! She wouldn’t fucking let it!

Before she knew it, she was rushing toward the creature, sword raised in an awkward two-handed grip as if she were trying to bat with a running start. The blade swung down, slicing the beast’s leg, drawing out a growl, and jaws filled with savage teeth whipped around toward her.

Shit! She’d barely hurt it. She needed —

“Divine Strike!”

Shining a bright orange, the sword chopped into the beast’s midsection, sending chunks of flesh flying and cleaving its flesh so easily that she stumbled as she struggled to hold on to the hilt.

The beast collapsed, spasming briefly before going still.

Refusing to make the same mistake as last time, she planted a foot on the side of the beast and heaved until the sword was free.

At least the thing’s name was easy to remember. She’d done it. She’d killed that thing. Easily.

She gave the beast a kick to be sure and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t move. Then a shock ran through her body.

“Amelia!” She shouted, whirling around.

The girl was right behind her. Thank God. “Are you all right?” With a nod, the girl grabbed her wrist.

Fuck, she could’ve hit the girl with the sword when she’d turned around. She had to be more careful.

A large voice shouted out at them.

“You’re with the Order?”

A bear-like man with an axe hustled toward Valerie. In fact, several people were hurrying toward her, armed and unarmed, for the same reason, she realized, that she’d originally headed for the knight: the takedown had been flashy enough to turn heads.

In addition to the axe-man, several men with clubs, a woman with a dagger in each hand, a couple of teenagers with pitchforks, even the thin man with the rapier, who must’ve pulled himself out from under the dead Stalker — honestly, she’d assumed he’d died. A blood-soaked cloth wrapped around his left shoulder. He nodded at her.

Should she clear up the misconception? Surely she was among the weakest of the townspeople. She’d fought, seriously fought with the possibility of death, for the first time today. There were much stronger-looking villagers here. The huge axe-man, for one, looked as though he could have been a pro wrestler. If they compared her to the knight in the distance, who was dashing from one slain Stalker to the next, she’d fall miserably short. And, she realized with dread, she wouldn’t be able to use Divine Strike again for … too long.

The attention might keep Amelia and her alive.

“Yes, I am.”

The hulking man nodded and took a position to her left. The rest looked at her expectantly, their eyes flickering between Valerie and a fight a stone’s throw away, between a group of armed villagers and another Stalker.

Her group — it was her group — felt like a coiled spring. At her command, they’d charge toward the Stalker. That’s what a knight would’ve done — put themself into harms way to help others. But what if that was the wrong call? For the moment, her group was safe. What if she led these people back into the fray and some of them died?

The other group decided for her. After one fell to the beast, the rest fled toward Valerie’s group with the Stalker in pursuit.

“Heads up!” the hulking man shouted, nearly deafening her with his huge voice before rushing out to meet it. Valerie and the rest of her group followed, wordlessly spreading out, trying to flank the beast while the axe-man kept it busy from the front.

As the Stalker lunged at the axe-man, its sides seemed open, and Valerie stabbed wildly, once, twice, as the man next to her broke its legs with a club.

“Watch out!” the axe-man yelled. “There’s another one coming!”

Then they’d just have to finish this one off quickly. She was good at this medieval knight act. Lunging further and harder than she had previously, she stabbed deep into the creature’s belly, and then hung with most of her body weight on the sword, slicing down.

Blood and putrid guts came pouring out of the Stalker, and then the whole thing collapsed on top of her.

Valerie coughed and sputtered and tried to grab a hold of a leg to pull herself out. Her eyes watered and stung from blood. Foreign fluids filled her mouth. Natural functions ejected them, along with the contents of her stomach.

Grabbing tufts of grass, she pulled herself out from under the still-twitching Stalker. Someone was pulling her by the collar of her shirt. The grass helped her wipe the fluids from her face. Amelia, frantic, hands covered in the Stalker’s blood. She thanked the girl, conjuring a smile, and beckoned the girl to hide by the corpse. They crouched by her kill, half-hidden by its bulk, and she readied her sword, which she’d managed to hold on to again, as she took stock of where her group was.

Her group members were nowhere in sight. Instead, she saw chaos. The battlefield was pure chaos. The defensive line, the groups fighting — all organization had crumbled.

Nearby, a woman stabbed at a stalker with a spear. Valerie ran toward her and, after she’d taken two steps, another Stalker pounced and bit off the woman’s head, giving Valerie a glimpse of a cross-section of the woman’s neck. Heart pounding, pressing down another wave of nausea, Valerie darted back to Amelia and the shadow of her kill.

Were these people out of their minds? They were peasants, farmers, retirees. They couldn’t fight monsters. Most didn’t even have real weapons. She was like them, a peasant. Never trained in fighting, never taught how to stare down danger, how to watch others die and keep fighting. Where were the knights and soldiers? If Valerie rejoined the fight, she was going to die. Even the heavily armed and armored knights — even Paladin Light had fallen against these monsters. What chance did a frightened crowd armed with poles and hoes have? She’d be mauled in the shoulder and the stomach again, except this time there would be no Paladin Light to save her.

She checked on Amelia again. The girl was visibly shaking, but her eyes were open. Was that good or bad? This could be traumatizing . . . a child psychologist — Valerie shook herself, snapping off that train of thought. Worry about that later. Having open eyes now would help the girl survive.

In another direction, a knight and several townspeople fought a Stalker. The townspeople held the stalker at bay with poles while the knight darted in and out, slashing and stabbing. They were doing fine.

Nearby, six men with rakes and hoes were beating on a heavily wounded Stalker. One of the men closed in to finish it off. The Stalker’s jaws snapped, and a hand fell, separated, to the ground. The other five, shouting, beat on the Stalker to get its attention, then backed up away from their fallen friend.

They were going to run straight into the knight’s group.

“Wa — ” Valerie started to yell, then stopped. If she drew the attention of a Stalker, alone, both Amelia and she would die for sure. The flesh and blood of the woman’s headless neck flashed across Valerie’s mind.

No! She wouldn’t be ruled by fear. She could do this; she’d done this. Fight. Survive.

Steeling herself, she yelled, “Watch out!” at the townspeople and the knights. No reaction. Either they couldn’t hear her over the din of the fighting or they didn’t realize the words were directed at them.

Valerie looked Amelia in the eyes. “Stay here.”

“Wait,” Amelia pleaded in a surprisingly strong voice. “Don’t leave!”

Shaking off the girl’s grasp, Valerie rushed out to the five farmers and took up a position in their semicircle, stabbing at the Stalker’s snout every time it snapped in her direction.

The farmers took another step back, and Valerie didn’t. The Stalker focused on her. Her heart pounded; adrenaline surged. She could do this. Remember how those knights acted, how they led, how they killed. She was a Paladin.

“Strike its head!” she ordered.

Without waiting to see if the farmers would obey her, she ran half-crouched at the Stalker. A paw swiped sideways and she ducked, the claws missing her by inches. As she ran past it, she slashed at its legs, and it twisted and tried to bite her, but she was already running around the other side, slicing, slicing, slicing. As her sword cut into the Stalker’s legs, she still felt fear, but there was also a thrill, a glory, a feeling of truth. Maybe this was why she’d been sent here, to become a fighter, a defender, a savior.

Level up. Your Paladin Blessing is now Level 3.

The monster’s legs buckled.

“Stab it! Kill it!” she shouted at the farmers who were already smashing its head into a pulp of purple and black. “Kill it!”

By the time the farmers stopped pounding on it, it had long since stopped moving. Two of the farmers went to help their friend who’d lost his hand, while the other three looked at Valerie for direction.

“Thanks for the help, sir. Thought we had him, but, uh, guess we didn’t. Are we doing all right?”

While the battlefield was still chaos, the situation wasn’t as dire as she’d thought when she’d panicked. The Stalkers were huge and terrible, true, but they were severely outnumbered by the refugees, even only counting the armed ones. Not to mention the knights, who were methodically traversing the battlefield and putting down Stalkers one after another. There were casualties, wounded screaming for help, and surely there were dead, but not many, not compared to how many people were fighting.

They were winning.

Over the next few minutes, Valerie helped kill several more Stalkers. Each time a Stalker went down, the victorious group would rush to the nearest fight, resulting in larger and larger coordinated groups that quickly and safely encircled Stalkers when they leaped in from the dark. Where on Earth were the beasts coming from? And why were they so separated? If they’d arrived in one pack, they would’ve decimated the villagers.

After the fourth — or was it the fifth — Stalker she’d helped bring down collapsed, the fifty-strong group she was with, seeing that the remaining few Stalkers were already well surrounded, raised a cheer that swept through the battlefield like a wildfire. Even those by the wall joined in, including the unmistakable higher-pitched screams of children. The sound echoed off the hard stone of the city walls, magnifying it. The gate remained closed.

“Shut up!” A large man was trying to yell over the cheers. “Shut it!”

It was the axe-man! Of course he’d made it.

The hulking axe-man was in Valerie’s current group — incredibly, she hadn’t noticed him until he’d started shouting angrily at the others to stop cheering for some reason. He pointed toward the frontline, and Valerie’s eyes followed his gesture, landing on a knight. The knight, helm missing, faced backward, toward the cheering villagers, and was waving his arms in the air as if —

As if their lives depended on it.

Suddenly, Valerie remembered that there was something else she ought to be worried about.

Which way had she come from? This … no, this way.

With the imposing city walls serving as a compass, Valerie retraced her steps, shoving her way through the cheering villagers.

Please still be there. The fighting had moved further away from the walls. The girl had to be all right.

Another chant was rising from the frontline, but Valerie couldn’t make out the words. It was as if they were at a sporting event, and the away team’s fans had started a chant to disrupt the overwhelming cheering for the home team.

To Valerie’s relief, Amelia was where she’d left her, hiding and crying in the shadow of a dead Stalker. When the girl noticed Valerie, she ran up and clung to her leg.

“It’s okay, I’m back.” Valerie sheathed her sword and embraced Amelia, picking her up. “All the monsters are gone.”

“Don’t leave, don’t leave,” the girl sobbed, muffled, face buried in Valerie’s neck as though trying to make her feel as guilty as possible. Maybe she shouldn’t have left the girl alone, but she’d helped kill those beasts. She’d saved lives. In truth, Amelia should have stayed by the wall, then she wouldn’t have been alone. It wasn’t as if Valerie hadn’t been scared — it had been a scary night for everyone. The important thing was that the Stalkers were dead.

It seemed that the cheering villagers were curious about what the new chant was, as the cheering subsided, and the new chant became audible.

“Hold the line! Hold the line!”

The cheers fell silent, and, as if in response, a bone-shaking roar echoed from over the hills, the same furious sound they’d heard earlier before they’d sprinted to Castia. And then another roar joined the first, and then a third, so loud that her ribcage vibrated. A cacophony of animal-like cries and inhuman shrieks rose like a hellish chorus, growing louder while still out of sight than the Stalkers had been when they’d crashed on the refugees. In hindsight, the Stalkers had been oddly quiet.

If these creatures had killed Paladin Light and the dozens of knights the refugees had left behind, how terrible were they? She spared a brief thought for Paladin Light. Despite occasionally coming across as a swindler, he deserved better than a vain death. Not just for himself, but because if he hadn’t managed to severely wound those beasts, Valerie would likely soon be following him into the afterlife.

While the knights that had accompanied the villagers were all, as far as she could tell, still alive and fighting, the frontline was no longer safe, if one could’ve called it safe previously. Rather, the frontline was now undeniably the most dangerous place to be.

And everyone recognized it. The refugees began to flow back toward the wall with panicked shouts, and Valerie fled with them. No way in hell was she going to be the last to the wall. The mass pressed against the gate like pigeons flocking to a woman scattering crumbs. Desperate, armed pigeons.

“Hold the line!” The chants from the brave but foolish few who hadn’t fled toward the city sounded forlorn this far away.

Why hadn’t anyone opened the gates? At this point, the people in the city could be considered to be actively trying to kill them. Couldn’t the refugees find a way to break down the gates? Surely the silver knight was strong enough, or the axe-man, or if the knights worked together.

But those people, except for the silver knight, who was still shouting through the portcullis, were nowhere near the wall. A surprising number of armed villagers had remained with the knights on the frontline, and they continued to shout vainly at the retreating crowd. While a small group surrounded the last visible Stalker, the rest, giving up on the other refugees, turned away, lining up to face the oncoming horde. And, though the darkness yet hid it, there was no doubt it was a horde. Screeches and animal cries filled the air at a deafening volume, and the ground shook as if from an earthquake. The cries were so loud, they sounded as if —

A girl’s scream came from beside her.

“What — ”

Yanking Amelia toward her, Valerie caught sight of a lump falling off the girl’s bleeding knee. A rat? A chipmunk? The rodent launched itself with poor timing, gaining just enough air to be sent flying by an accidentally well-aimed kick.

What on Earth? A rabid rodent?

Cries and shouts erupted all around as a new battle began in the shadow of the wall. Small creatures scurried through the grass, difficult to see in the dim light and shifting shadows. After a few stabs that only ended with having to yank her sword out of the dirt, Valerie switched back to kicking and stomping, saving her sword for the few creatures taller than knee-high.

The ground trembled, and another roar declared the source of the shaking — the roar was so close now that it rattled her skull and palpitated her heart. At the frontline, a creature the size of a small elephant but with many more thick limbs and — were those multiple heads? — was charging through the fighters, knocking them aside like a bowling ball. It seemed to have a target — a knight on the ground struggling to get up. The monstrosity lunged.

A blinding orange ray shot from the top of the wall at the monstrosity, striking it in mid-air, and the monster instantly became enveloped in flames. It let out a defiant roar, but it began running erratically, zigging and zagging, yet the fiery beam held as if it were a tether made of fire, thickening like a laser increasing in power. The roar increased in pitch until it was a screech, and then it cut off, and the only motion from the monstrosity’s body was the wavering of its flames.

What was that? Some sort of long-range flamethrower?

As she and many others searched for the source of the beam, a wave of fire, starting from atop the wall, rolled through the air. That was the only way to describe it. It was a cylinder of flame hundreds of feet long, lighting up the battlefield bright as day as it passed overhead spinning through the air. It seemed to move oddly slowly, impossibly slowly — the flames should have gone out before it reached anything — but it reached the ground a little past where the knights and their followers had formed their final line of defense, and when it did, a wall of fire roared up as if the ground had split open to reveal a direct chasm to hell. Grotesque creatures, less terrifying now they were lit by the flames, burst into flames as they leaped through the wall of fire, the larger ones surviving long enough to lunge a few times at the defenders before collapsing into flaming heaps.

“The gate is open!” The booming voice was unmistakably the silver knight’s.

“Into the city!” bellowed a much louder woman’s voice, so loud that her voice must have been amplified.

The gate was indeed finally open, and villagers began to stream through the unblocked archway. The wall of flames threw the villagers’ shadows high against the city walls, and many of the shadow puppets raised their arms as a cheer rose, although it was not as loud as the cheer earlier.

As Valerie half-dragged Amelia, stumbling, toward the gates, stomping and kicking a few more rabid creatures, she searched for the source of the amplified voice. She had to look up to find it.

A woman in a fluttering red cloak hovered fifty feet above the battlefield.

“So slow,” the flying woman muttered. “Do they want to get caught by that Horde?” It seemed she’d forgotten that her voice was still amplified. That, or she thought it might help speed up the refugees, which it did.

On the other side of the gate was a large open square paved with cobblestone. Three large streets branched off from the square. Directly across the square from the gate was an eye-catching building made of stone with stairs lined with animal statues leading up to the building entrance. Most of the other buildings along the sides of the square and lining the streets were made of wood. They were all dark, and their windows were closed with wooden shutters.

Inside the city, a thin perimeter of twitchy guards who bore clubs and nervous expressions tried to pen in the refugees by the entrance. Refugees darted past whenever they saw an opening. The guards beat anything that tried to make it past them, creature or human.

As the guards savagely beat a man while his wife cried and pulled their child back into the huddled mass, Valerie became certain that at least the city’s guards were hostile to the refugees.

Atop the wall, an army of guards loosed wave after wave of bolts, outside the wall, thankfully, their crossbows creating an orchestra of twangs.

Valerie, pulling Amelia along, sidled toward the silver Paladin, who was talking to the previously flying woman, who’d descended inside the walls. It was always better to be close to those in power.

“. . . the vanguard, not the main body of the Horde.”

“Then I hope Paladin Light is all right.”

“He’ll be fine, but he won’t know we’ve made it into the city. Could you retrieve him?”

They thought Paladin Light was alive? Then why had the monsters gotten past him?

“Relgar has forbidden sorties. The king ordered the gates closed. I’ll be in enough trouble, opening the gates. You know how the king treats Undergrounders.”

“He barred the Order of Light? Unbelievable. We had to be let in by criminals?”

“Hey, no need for name-calling. Do you know how much trouble I — ”

“It’s a Twisted Horde! How could he forbid sorties? We can’t let them roam — ”

“Why’re you asking me about the king’s decisions? Do I look senile? If you find out, please let me know. Were those Abominations?”

The silver knight let out an enormous sigh, and then he nodded.

“This is going to be a long night,” the woman remarked, sighing in such a way that it almost seemed as though she was mocking the silver knight, and turned toward the refugees.

“Remember,” she announced, her voice amplified again, this time so close to Valerie that it hurt her ears, “that you were saved by the Crimson Tide. All of you would still be out there if not for us.” Red eyes swept over the exhausted refugees, and then the woman casually floated into the air as if she were Mary Poppins and flew away.

It wasn’t the strangest thing that Valerie had seen today.

She sat down on the hard stone, exhaustion overwhelming her. They’d made it. Though they were surrounded by club-happy guards, and who knew what would happen to them tomorrow, everyone seemed confident the wall would hold off whatever was approaching, and they were inside the wall. Now that she had a moment to listen, there were no sounds of the creatures pounding on the gates, no signs of them climbing over the wall, as horror movies would have had her to expect. Feeling a tug on her hand, she turned and crouched down until she was at Amelia’s height.

“See?” She ruffled the girl’s hair, which was stiff with filth. “We made it.”

“Is it safe?” The girl’s eyes were half closed.

“Yes, you’re safe. We’re safe.”

Her phone was dead, the night sky was filled with shifting lights, Ruben had refused to let her send a present to her daughter, she’d been eviscerated multiple times, and she had no idea how to go home, but she’d fulfilled her promise and brought the girl to safety. Sure, she hadn’t done it alone, but — if you asked Amelia, or if you asked Valerie — she’d saved the girl, from fire, from monsters, from death, from fear, from being alone — more than she’d ever done in one of her fantasy-fueled daydreams.

And yet, as she let go of Amelia’s hand and looked up at the unfamiliar sky, Valerie was filled with self-loathing.