My horse sacked. I jumped off it and held to a tipped over cart, clinging to the wooden frame by the side as the wheels and the gears went zooming past my head. My torso lifted off the floor, I held strong. My horse dragged, leaving a trail in the sand up until it got close enough to the vortex. There it was struck with the debris. Wooden spikes impaling it across its body, scoring it. Gutting it. Eventually ripping it into pieces, all spinning and grinding and blending together with the men and women and steel and wood. A fine little yellow vortex now, up and away with all the pieces of man. It was coming up to me and starting it’s way towards the front. Vincent was starting his mad gait away, focusing towards the little patch of oaks spoken about.

It was a matter of survival then.

I pulled myself closer to the cart, seeing what had kept it’s weight. I pulled myself down the side, my arm almost dislocating when I lost one side of the grip. I stabbed my obsidian blade into the wood. Used it as leverage and got my ass underneath the cart, there a little exit door was sprung open. As is the case with most of these carts, these little trap doors to get rid of things quickly underneath the raised cart.

The wheels were spinning, half of them were missing. The other half was in sand, and filled a quarter ways. Which was good, probably what kept it weighted. I struggled inside the trap door and looked inside. There I saw Old Chet, eyes open and blinking, half in sand. I disappeared inside. The wind couldn’t yank me, but I could hear it wreaking the wood outside.

I grabbed the kitchen cauldron laying in one corner and pulled it over myself and Old Chet’s upper torso. We waited in the darkness.

“They’re in the dead trees.” I said.

“What? I can’t hear you?”

“Nevermind.” I held down the rim of the giant pot, my back rounded and shaped to the interior. And we waited. The wood falling all around us, brief moments where the I felt the pressure pulling onto the pot like puppet strings. Sand slipping from underneath us and towards the source of noise. Men screaming and horses crying and the turbine reducing all sounds to little background murmurs. Something took out the roof from us, I felt the vibrations in the floor. The sudden pop of a wall coming undone.

And then it was over. Or rather, further from us. I stood crouched, breathing hard. Old Chet looked up and blinked, his wheel chair stuck completely in sand. The top felt heavy, it could barely move when I turned to lift it off. When I did, I saw the planks and wood fall, scattered about. Looking behind me to the gaps in the cart, I could see where the boulder had struck and taken out half of the domicile. Looking ahead, I could see the Vortex still. Wreaking as it did. With men scattered as they were.

I stood and pulled myself up the flipped over cart, standing on its sides.

“You safe, Chet?” I said.

He looked up, blinking and took out a bottle. The sand fell from the top and he drank. Though there wasn’t much left in. Just mud, soaked absinthe tasted dirt. Old Chet nodded his head.

He looked up, blinking and took out a bottle. The sand fell from the top and he drank. Though there wasn’t much left in. Just mud, soaked absinthe tasted dirt. Old Chet nodded his head.

“Are you fucking dumb? Of course I ain’t.”

I shrugged. Grabbed my knife from the cart (how it stood is a surprise to me). And started my way towards the sharp boulders the rest of the fourteenth had ran to. Well, what remained of the fourteenth.

I started my walk, shaking my leather armor and my fuligin and my pelt of all that was dragging me. Bits of food and bits of wood and bits of sand. The taste of iron and blood in my mouth. All across the floor you could spot it, the hints of people. The small giblets of corpses. Never a full body. Perhaps just a cornea. A finger. Teeth. Blood. Scattered remains indiscernible from the man they came from. Faces lost to grinding death. My shoulders tightened, I grit my teeth. An arrow flew past my face and I turned. A stretch of them on the other side. Kavalians, painted to the face with white designs. Screeching and shooting their arrows at me. Missing mostly.

I ran. Skipping into a zig zag. The arrows hit the sand and dug inside, or rolled around down the slope.

Obrick ran forward, shield out. I ducked behind him and we started heading to cover, behind me the blast of arrows striking at his bulwark, ricocheting off and snapping. It sounded like toys, like a child’s war. We made it to cover behind the boulder. I stood close to the wall and hung, looking over. A giant shadow loomed over the damaged and hurt people. It was a boulder molded out the side of a dune, with a lip so pronounced that a good three hundred yards were within its cover. There, men were sat or sprawled and tired and coughing. Others were worse. Bleeding out their missing limbs, men with feet and legs barely hanging. I saw a man with candle stick stuck up his bicep. Another with a flag staff through his heel. Another with a shard of wood skewering both his cheeks and most of his jaw shut. They were collected, watched over by gentle hands.

“I left the old man in his cart.” I looked over one of the stones, starting down the slope towards the carts. Old Chet was moving his body back into the cauldron. “I think he’ll make it.”

“Fuck!” Obrick threw his shield down. He started kicking at the arrows impaled on his shield. Edwin came over the top, shot an arrow. I spied the Kavalian he killed. One through the eye.

“Great. A hundred left.” I sighed.

“We never stopped the mages.” Kal said.

“Yeah.” I looked at the tornado up ahead. “Vincent was on it.”

We saw him. Shining sword off in the distance, running through four Kavalians with daggers. I ducked behind the stone, an arrow falling next to me and skidding across the stone. I scratched my head, padded myself down to inspect for any injuries. Nothing. Around me; Kal, Obrick, Edwin, Lowell and some of the other miscellaneous flock. Strays from the sixth. Mostly fourteen.

“Alright. We’ll mount an offensive.” I grabbed a stick and started on the floor, drawing small circles and x’s and a line of division for the cliffside. Then three lines where we’d come. The flank and the main forces. I looked around every so often, seeing them stare back with ajar mouths and with a general sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

“Two main forces, from the north and west.” I said. “Kal and I will come in from the flank.” I said. “Questions?”

“Just you two?”

“More than enough.”

They nodded. We readied ourselves. The men grabbing their swords, whoever was able bodied. Some shields, some tied rope to halves of the carts and raised them above their faces. In minutes I had a size-able force of two dozen. Most with broken spears or shields, with armor dislodged and hanging by their shoulders just barely.

“You’re leading one, Obrick. Edwin, you’re leading the other.” I said.

Lowell groaned.

The men grouped at two ends of the cliff, the arrows still flying past them and skidding on the gravel and sand. The men gulped and looked back with sweat down their faces.

“Raise your shields.” I said. They did. The sweat leaked into their thin cotton shirts. They skirted along the edge of the cliff.

“Go. Charge!” I said.

What a run. Men catching the floor and almost tripping on their swords, their armor clanking and falling to pieces as they made rushed past and towards with Kavalians. An arrow struck two on the legs and both men stood, crippled, shields still up and holding for the other barrage. The others scattered from the two. Arrows hitting their little planks like thin paper, chunking it to pieces and then ripping through their faces. One fell. The other followed. Both shot as they laid on the floor, five and four fletchings through their faces.

I twitched and looked back to Kal, nodding my head.

When most of the men were halfway, back to where our carts were, we mounted our offense.

Kal gripped his sword and ran forward, dragging his steel across the sand. I flew forwards, hidden behind the northern assault before breaking east.

“On the dune, look.” I pointed. Kal nodded and raised his steel to his face, an arrow hit it and shattered into splinters.

I ran, skipping side to side. Arrows falling past me. I raised both knives and started up. Kal ran up ahead, raising his sword like a giant shield. We steadied and went up the crawl. I could not see the other men, could not even expect them. I just held still to Kal’s back, watching his face light up as arrows struck him and pushed him some. We steadied up, me pushing him with my shoulder. We stopped. What felt like a hundred arrows hitting the sword all at once, the sparks flying - a dizzying yellow.

“I’m breaking off.” I said. He looked down to me, nodded.

I nodded my head and kept going, hearing for the barrage to ease and then -

There it was. I jumped. Ran. The sand below my feet breaking into giant waves and scattering every which way. I went up, so fast that the archers had to adjust their aim every half second. They never caught me. I leapt up at the tip and looked down, knives pointed towards a dozen archers.

The first man to die had his throat ripped out. I came down on him and made a slit for his tongue to escape, near the top towards his chin. I held the wound, getting a good grip with two fingers as if I was holding a fish by the gills. His head shook. He let go of his bow and tried grabbing my arm. But his hands were so sleek of blood that his grip was too slippery against me arm. I pushed him, dragged him in circles to take arrow shots as they came. When the first round was done I started on another man. By then most of the archers had reasoned that the bow was useless. They dropped them and rushed for swords along their waists. I caught them as they switched. Cutting them across the waist, emptying their bowls. Jumping on them, slashing at their eyes and faces. Men cut up and diced to ribbons, meat flaps hanging from their throats or cheek bones.

Behind me I heard the clank. Steel coming down fast on someone. The top of a man jumped over me and landed in front. His torso landed, the man’s eyes in complete shock. He held his sword and swung in the air, still thinking the fight was in him. After a while he froze into death.

The men had finally made their way, some of the pressure finally eased. I looked down at someone below my feet. He shook his head, begging almost. I stabbed him throat the neck, watching his eyes as the blood drained from his wound. They went wide. Then narrowed until he finally closed them.

The vortex raged on, voracious as it swallowed all. Horses rose to the eye of the cycle, before falling fast on their sides or heads. Their necks snapped into two. Their bones broke out of their chest cavities and stabbed through their skin. I put my hands above my eyes and shaded them, removing my knife from a corpse. Around me, mostly dead bodies. But some crows had survived, some capital soldiers as well. All of them laying down on their asses breathing hard, holding onto their shins as they took wide gasps of air.

“The good news is that they didn’t kill that many.” I said.

“Good news?” Obrick shook his shield, little arrow tips fell out. “Good news?! What’s fucking good about anything?”

“Most of us are alive, I think. The worse were the first who got it.” I said. “They took out most of our carts though. Horses too. I don’t see a fucker alive.”

I looked down slope to the wreckage of a line. Little planks stuck out length-wise from the sand. Old Chet raised the lip of his cauldron and looked out, he gave two wide sidelong looks then retreated back. Like a crab. Food, spears, leather straps and armor laid strewn and in shreds. Steel warped beyond recognition, into curlicues like some party clown had made terrible balloon animals of them. I angled my foot and slid down the slope. The sand rose in waves to my side.

“Where are you going?” Kal asked.

“I’m going to go kill those mages.”

“How the hell is that happening?”

“By running.” I said. “Ain’t that far.”

“Just let Vicentius handle it! Sylas is with him!”

I smirked and waved him away. I came to the base, walked over to Old Chet’s cauldron and took my pick of the kitchen knives. Butcher cleavers, chef’s knifes. I put them along my waist and looked out down the line. A straight and narrow path now graveyard to the wreckage, two long rounded columns on both sides where the sand had been shoveled into giant surf-waves. They coiled up and above the destruction. There were no men. No bodies. Only pieces of bodies, some so tiny it was hard to tell if it was human or animal. And the scene - the blood, boiled me. That was the truth of it, I could have left it to Sylas, to Vicentius. But then what of me? Of the strong ache in my neck that could not escape. Like a trapped bubble in my throat, choking me, straining me.

I ran down the straight path.

The sand rose below my feet. I must have looked like some kind of sea-animal on the water surface, with the absolute giant wave I left behind me. Running as fast as I could, too angry to feel the pins in my chest. The dead oak’s were coming up, the mages inside hidden behind the thin white trees. A small bundled forest of them, men surrounding it with their spears and shields and bastard swords. Vicentius out front. Fighting. The tornado behind him, going down the line of carts. Men scattering, all trying to separate themselves from the wreckage. Perhaps the mages didn’t want to hit themselves, perhaps the fight was too close for their magics to turn towards Vicentius. Or maybe they weren’t interested in winning the fight. Maybe it really was just to stop us.

Whatever it was. Crow blood was spilled. Men old and new, with dreams of their own, following fools to dismal ruin. I grit my teeth and ran, knives in my hand. Here in the flank there were few men, two lines of them locked in clash and struggling against each other, taking small feints and stabbing motions against one another. I approached, trees finally taken up detail. The chipped bark coiled on dry dirt, blood scattered about the trunks. Nature so dried and hollow, small creatures took cover inside their empty trunks. I stepped over a branch. Took a stomp on the floor and jumped. Up above the line of fighters. They looked up, shocked almost by the leap. I came up behind the Kavarians, their yellow tunics spinning as they tried to turn. Two of them, immediately, cut through the throat. The chain mail on their heads broke, the links scattering into the air. Their heads bobbed back as the muscles holding their necks loosened, then ripped apart.

“Come, cowards!” I threw two knifes, hitting another through the eye and nose.

It must have been twenty there, all turning their heads. Half of them devoted to holding the line, the other half rushing and then stopping feet from me, cautious and prodding with their spears.

One gained the courage. Idiot.

He stabbed at me, I raised my foot and caught his spear by its length, snapping down at the wooden body. It broke. I rushed at the man, kicking him in the neck. He fell towards one of his friends and both fell, grabbing their skulls to stop the (I presume) dizzying concussion. More rushed. All at the same time. Smart. Some so panicked they stabbed their own friends in the hands as they swung. I jumped back, hands hidden behind my cloak. Each time the half dozen approached, just jumping back. I threw knives at the men guarding the line, hitting them in the knees or the back. Not killing them, but maiming them into taking a knee. I must have gotten four doing my little dance. Which was well enough to break it.

Then it was over, then and there. Long before the enemy was killed. The battle decided when the Crows flooded the weakened men. Gutting them, stabbing at them at the floor through the face. Ripping apart men in their armor to get at sweet belly and chest meat. A butchery for Kavalians. Spears flew past my head, hitting the Kavalians chasing me. At half their numbers - I ran. Dodging, pushing, so close to the steel with my head movement that my hair and cheeks were cut. Small nicks here and there, my armor getting chipped out. Waiting, biding, until finally…

One slowed. Tired. I took his eyes, a clean cut across. He screamed and I turned him by the shoulder. He stabbed at the air. The other two watched, swords shaking as the men around them died.

“And for what?” I asked. Not that they understood. They just shook there. And it made it easy for me to run up and stab them, straight through the sides, a repeated shank across their guts. One first. The other getting closer to defend his friend, before I grabbed. Turned him, took his rib cage for my own. He groaned and dropped his weapon. Then I raised him and brought him close to my face. I wanted to make sure, I wanted to hear the last of his breath leave him. A quick groan of death as he collapsed onto the floor.

I looked at them all. Some rolling in circles as they held their wounds. The blind man still spinning and flinging his weapon around.

“You dumb asshole.” I shook my head. A crow came up and hit him in the back of the head with the the blunt of his sword. The blinded one fell to the floor, flat.

Fatigue was finally onto me, it took a while to catch up but there it was. In my knees when I buckled. In my chest with each pained breath. I buckled and took heavy, heavy gasps of air. Inside the forest they were still there, the mages retreating further and further into the oaks. Their cloaked black bodies shifting between the lanky pale trees.

“What do we do?” A crow came up to me from behind. I was sat on the floor, sweating, looking at my hands and feeling the cuts around my body.

“Ask your commanding officer.” I said.

“He’s dead. Julian was caught by the storm.” He said. “We rushed over here to help.”

“Shit. Am I the commanding officer here?” I looked up. Sun bright. Dyeing the blood onto my armor, splotched red sticky prints staining the black trousers and armor. Making my red trim that more gruesome. The whole thing would be crimson after this whole fight.

“How many do you have?” I asked.

“’Bout. I don’t know.” He looked back. “Thirty.”

“I’ve got nine coming up.” I pointed my finger to the hill top. Kal, Obrick, the Silverfangs, and the other crows who had managed. They stood at the edge of the forest, inspecting it with their weapons out. Then rushed in.

“What do we do, Virgil.” He said.

I licked my lips. They were broken, grinning, frowning; it all shattered the thin line flesh on me.

“We’re going to kill those fuckers.” I said.

As it was. The Vortex remained, spinning circles behind us. Killing the horses, collapsing the carts.