By the time Eli reached the ballista crew being attacked by the brood-bats, they were dead--and so were two more of the bats. He kept running, then threw himself off the wall. Anchoring himself with his sparks, he curved around the next tower and into the cloud of bats.

Up close, the bats were horrifying. They had multiple eyes, like spiders, and barbed wings and he pummeled four more with his sparks before he landed.

One smacked his face before flapping past and a wounded one on the wall-walk bit off his big toe.

What the vale was with his left foot today?

He stomped that one to death with his heel. The guards finished off the injured ones while his sparks chased the final three as they dove toward the bailey. He smeared them into gristle against the wall, then checked that was the last of them.

A soldier behind him on the wall said, "Hey!"

"Yeah?" he asked, turning.

"Sorry for putting a bolt in your arse earlier."

"It happens," Eli told him.

The soldier snorted. "Not to most--"

Eli shoved him aside with two sparks as the skeletal brood leaped atop the wall. He threw another three forward to keep the dagger-fingers from impaling the soldier. His sparks couldn't stop the brood, though. They couldn't even slow it down much as it pivoted to target Eli.

Still, they helped him push himself backward so the blow only clipped his arm.

The impact didn't even v break his elbow.

Huh. Steelsilk.

For half of a heartbeat, the brood hunched above him, spine curved like a crescent moon, humming with inhuman calm. Then the dagger-fingers slashed and Eli shoved himself closer, inside the swipe, and wished that he hadn't valedamned left his mace behind on the first stretch of wall, like three kinds of idiot.

Ten feet away from him--far too close--the surviving members of the ballista crew scrambled to swivel their weapon. They were angling for a shot at the brood while dagger fingers jammed into Elis back and pierced the steelsilk.

But not deeply.

Not more than a few inches.

He felt himself smile. "My turn."

He slammed five sparks into the side of the brood's knee. Bone cracked and the brood stumbled down to his level and Eli whipped the dome of his head into the creature's face.

Which almost knocked him out. It was like head-butting a boulder. Still, he felt the creature's nose break. Despite the tears in his eyes, he slammed sparks forward and sidestepped and--

Lost his balance because of his missing toe.

He stumbled to the ground, and the brood slashed him three more times and drew blood twice. The fourth time, he grabbed the creature's wrist with both his hands. It was too strong, he couldn't keep it away for more than a few seconds.

Still, he used those seconds to shove sparks into both of its eyes. He felt something pop and the humming changed and the ballista fired.

The bolt took the skeletal angelbrood through the shoulder. Eli struck with a storm of sparks, punching hard and fast, from every angle.

The creature shook violently, hurling Eli away.

He careened over the parapet, into the bailey, into the yard where the armored squad was waiting.

He caught himself with a few sparks then landed on his back without taking more damage. He breathed raggedly while his toe re-formed, watching though his highest spark as the ballista crew hacked at the wounded brood.

Then a C-steel-tipped crossbow bolt took it in the throat.

Far behind Eli, inside the road leading to the inner gate, Lady Pym lowered her crossbow. It was quite a shot. Then the captain of the guard escorted her away.

Eli took a moment to heal and heard Four Arms hammering with fists like battering rams against the gate of the outer wall. Before it had absorbed the dead one, he wouldn't have worried about it breaking through. But now? He worried.

He pushed himself to his feet, and a spark showed him the tail end of a massacre on the other section of the wall. The weasel-beast must've climbed the wall, then torn through every soldier there. It was prowling over the bodies now, heading for a final nest of guards inside a watchtower.

Eli cracked his neck and took a step forward.

"Wait!" a woman called behind him. "You, stop."

She was a member of the heavily-armed squad. There were eight of them, wearing plate mail and mostly wielding blunt weapons.

"What?" he asked, looking at her without turning.

"We need to slow them here, for the Mage."

"Good luck."

"We need you here, too."

He hesitated, then nodded. If he wanted to beat these things, he needed to coordinate with the Rockbridge forces.

"How did you pull this duty?" he asked, finally turning to look at her.

"We're the last members of the Marquis's Handguard," a bearded man told him. "We failed him. This is penance."

"Oh. Well, kno--"

"Ruffian!" the courtier called, from atop the wall. "Ruffian!"

He looked up. "What do you--"

Using two hands, the courtier threw the steel mace at him. "You might considering using this."

When he spoke, the bestial brood stepped from the other side of the watchtower, dripping blood. Then started crawling down the inside of the wall like a gecko.

Ballista bolts fired from rooftops and windows behind Eli, but the beast curled around them, dodging every one. And the moment it reached the ground, the skeletal brood stood from the bodies of the ballista crew atop the wall, missing an arm and a foot, with one ruined eye and a crossbow bolt in its neck.

Blessdamn. Eli had thought it was dead. He started forward again, but the skeletal brood toppled off the wall, landed in a jumble, and lay there motionless. Oh. That worked.

Then the gate shattered and Four Arms marched through.

Bigger than before. Broader and stronger and faster. The black veins on its embedded face throbbed and its white eyes seemed to gleam.

"We need to hit that one with everything," Eli told the soldiers, tossing his mace to himself with a few sparks. "All at once."

Except before he took three steps, the weasel-brood leaped at him. Ballista bolts criss-crossed the bailey, but the beast was too quick and sinuous. It twisted in the air, dodging every bolt, and the ballistae fell silent as the crews reloaded.

Humming tunelessly, Four Arms bulled into the armored soldiers--the Handguard--while the beast brood snapped at Eli with teeth like a serpent's. It was five times faster than he was, but the sparks were faster still. They shoved Eli aside and slammed a fang so hard that it snapped, then tried to block the brood's back half from curling around and whipping him--

Except they couldn't.

They were faster than the beast brood, but not stronger.

The impact cracked into Eli and drove him backward. His steelsilk armor saved him again. He didn't break more than a few ribs despite the force of the blow.

He chopped six sparks down from above, driving them into the base of the beast's skull. He screamed as he swung his mace with all his might. Even with the sparks hammering downward, the creature still dodged--but not enough to avoid the blow completely.

The flanges of Eli's mace tore ruts in the beast's temple ... then a more powerful impact drove it sideways. There was a catch in its endless humming and a gouge appeared in its side.

Eli's spark caught sight of Mage Cristonel, hidden behind a pyramid of barrels, firing her metal marbles. The next one caught the beast in the back and Eli struck at its face again then dove sideways, drawing its gaze away from Cristonel, so it wouldn't spot her.

It fangs snapped at him but a spark shoved him backwards fast enough that he only felt its breath on his leg. Didn't even lose a foot that time.

Cristonel fired another marble, then another--and the skeletal brood that Eli had taken for dead was on its feet, stumbling toward her. Well, on its foot and its stump. It was limping and listing, but because of its size, moving as fast as a man could run.

But not as fast as Eli could run.

He pulled and pushed with his sparks and sprinted to intercept the skeletal brood while Four Arms waded into the unit of plate-armored Handguard. It shrugged off their attacks, grabbed one in each of its four arms, and hurled them into the ballistas.

Its aim had gotten better.

"Hey, bony!" Eli shouted at the skeletal brood, ramming his sparks against the stump of its leg.

It toppled and two more mage arrows cracked its skull, nearly taking its head off. That one wasn't getting up again, that one was--

The weasel-brood tackled Eli from behind.

Claws raked him. The world spun. A pelt like an iron rasp tore his skin.

Four Arms threw three more Handguard soldiers at the rooftops, taking out the final ballistas as Eli battled for his life. Fighting this close, he was completely overmatched. The beast brood was stronger and faster and more blighted clawed than he was. It was like wrestling a tiger, but at least his sparks kept its fangs from ripping his throat out.

He shoved his mace into the brood's jaws as its arse-end leaped and curled, avoiding mage Arrows. The last four surviving members of the Handguard attacked the beast with flails as Four Arms pounded closer. When one of them caught the gouge on the brood's side, it turned from Eli and curled into a snake-like coil around the four Handguards and squeezed.

Another mage marble slammed the beast-brood while all seven of Eli's sparks yanked its head back toward him. He hammered his mace into the ruts he'd already opened in the side of the beast's temple.

That time he heard bones break.

When the beast-brood tried bite him, his sparks dove into the wound, trying to pry the creature's skull apart like opening a walnut shell.

As Eli swung again and again, Cristonel screamed. "Cover! Guard!"

Eli was half-blind with all his sparks fighting the beast, but one caught a glimpse of Four Arms leaping above him--then landing on the pyramid of barrels hiding Cristonel.

Wood exploded into splinters and Cristonel raised a mage-shield.

Four Arms shattered the shield with a single punch and she raised another and the brood shattered that one, too. Her third shield looked faint and weak, but soldiers poured from the buildings around her. They surrounded the towering four-armed angelbrood. Dozens of them, with more rounding the corners, responding to some signal Eli hadn't heard.

His mace cracked into the beast-brood's head two more times before it fell limp. Its coiled body loosened, releasing the Handguard, but Eli kept swinging until there was nothing left but shattered bone and pulped flesh.

Eli went to pull the weasel-brood's corpse off the Handguard, but they were already dead. Crushed inside their armor. All of them except the bearded man, who was still clinging to life.

"It's dead?" the man whispered.

"Yeah," Eli said. "You--the Handguard took it down."

The man's beard moved, maybe in a smile, and he whispered again, too softly to hear.

"What's that?" Eli said, sending a spark closer to his mouth. Listening for the man's final words, expecting him to ask Eli to give his love to his family or something.

"Get your arse to the valedamned church," the man whispered. "Stop for nothing."

"I'm not--"

"Fast," the man said.