With chainmail under his long coat, Melcher Fitz ascended the steps to the bell-tower of the monastery. There, three archers in their plague doctor uniforms stood in wait, arrows nocked to their bows.

"What are the Vermin doing now?" Fitz asked, raising his spyglass to his eye.

"Well, they surrounded the place," said one of the archers. "And now... they're just standing there, outside of bow range."

"And there are headless men with them," said another archer.

Fitz peered out at the line of Vermin in the distance and sneered. "Nasty beasts... if they're not here to attack us what are they here for?"

"If I had to guess? They are here to attack us. They're just waiting for something."

Fitz's fist closed tight around the pommel of his sword, still resting in its sheath. "Well, keep me informed if they..."

He stopped short in his sentence when he heard the squeals of wooden wheels approaching. He looked out to the tree line and squinted, trying to get a good look at what the Vermin were up to now. He gasped and slid his fingers down to the hilt of his sword when he saw that the rat-folk were rolling catapults forward.

"What the Hell?" Fitz muttered. "Who gave these scum siege weapons?"

"Maybe they stole them?" suggested one of the archers.

"Ring the bell three times," Fitz ordered. The signal for all within the monastery to back away from the walls and prepare for the assault. Soon, these creatures would lob boulders at the monastery walls, smashing holes through which they could pour in.

But as the bells rang, wagons rolled forward and rested next to the catapults. Wagons each pulled by only two of the Vermin. Fitz couldn't be sure just yet what lay under the sheets over those wagons, but they couldn't be as heavy as boulders. Two Vermin couldn't possibly be strong enough to haul that many enormous rocks so easily.

Vermin climbed up onto the backs of the wagons and threw back the sheets. Whatever lay in the wagons was a mass of red, black, and brown. Vermin waved their hands in the air, as if swatting away flies, then reached into the wagons with meat hooks and drew out the gruesome contents.

"Corpses!" Fitz cried. "Those are human corpses!"

The Vermin turned the cranks on their catapults and loaded the rotting bodies.

"Oh, God!"

Snap!

The rotting, diseased bodies of long-dead men and women soared through the air and splatted against the walls of the monastery. Red sprayed upon the impact, along with plague pus and bile. The archers in the bell-tower with Fitz turned away. One retched twice, tore off his mask, and vomited over the side, his sick sliding down the shingles.

The Vermin reloaded and launched more bodies at the monastery, their twisted, high-pitched laughter even more disturbing than the sounds of shattering bones and exploding viscera when the corpses struck the monastery's outer walls.

Smash!

One of the corpses broke through one of the windows on the second floor. Crows within wailed.

Vermin cheered and adjusted each of the catapults to match the one that had successfully sent one through the window. More bodies sailed through the air and shattered the windows, filling the halls with scarlet.

Fitz retreated down from the bell-tower. His plan had been to defend the monastery, hold out until the Vermin's numbers had dwindled enough for them to flee, but he knew his men's morale was at stake the longer this bombardment went on. They needed to put a stop to it.

On the first floor, Fitz approached a sniveling group of Crows as they tried to push one of the bleeding, stinking bodies back out the window. "Leave it!" he shouted. "We'll burn them later. Take your bows and thermal arrows, then get out there and light up those catapults! Now!"

The Crows exchanged looks with each other, but none could read if any of their fellows were as terrified as they were, so they did as they were commanded.

Fitz watched through a shattered second story window as a cadre of Crow archers rushed outside, their arrows aflame.

Vermin raised their rusty swords and maces just before rushing at the archers, their little legs carrying them faster than Fitz would have imagined.

Swarms of rats ran with the Vermin, moving in brown waves.

The archers down below released their flaming arrows as soon as they were in range, but their trembling hands caused most of them to miss their marks. The lights fell short of the catapults, or sailed far too high and lodged into the trees above.

The Vermin were bearing down on the archers, along with their smaller rodent brethren.

Half the archers on the ground turned and ran rather than face the oncoming hordes of vile rodents.

The other half nocked more arrows to their bows and lit the ends, taking aim at the catapults.

The flaming arrows loosed just as the Vermin cut them down, ripping their bodies in half. Only one of the flaming arrows hit its mark. One of the Vermin walked over to the front of the catapult and kicked the flaming arrow away. Another stomped on the flame until it snuffed out.

The archers in the belltower loosed their arrows at the Vermin, but they did not reach their targets.

The swarm of rats continued on, ahead of the Vermin, a bounding wave of disease. Arrows sailed down on the rats from above, but even those which hit their targets did little more than kill one rat in a sea of rodents.

The rats slammed up against the walls of the monastery, far from the front door. The vile rodents started stacking on top of each other, forming a ladder with their own bodies so that others could climb through the broken windows.

More bodies soared through the air, smashing through the windows and creating more passageways for the brown rats.

Fitz drew his sword and ran to the nearest open window. He slashed wildly at the hill of rats that had built itself right up to the top. "Come on!" he cried to the other Crows nearest to him. "Don't let them in!"

Those among the other Crows not frozen in terror (damn new recruits...) rushed in with mallets and crushed the rats.

One slipped past Fitz and scurried away, into the monastery's halls.

The momentary distraction allowed three more to slip past him, and he returned his attention to his ferocious assault on the hill of rats. High-pitched squeals and cries echoed down the halls.

"Die!" Fitz shouted. "You scum... die!"

He looked up just as another corpse flew at the window where he and his fellows stood. Just in time, he and the other Crows ducked, letting the body sail over them and splatter against the wall behind them.

The distraction was just enough for dozens of rats to pour into the monastery and scurry off into the shadows.

"Give me that torch!" Fitz commanded.

Fitz jabbed the flaming end of the torch into the pile of rats below the window, setting their fur ablaze. Other Crows rushed into the rooms nearby and returned with pots, heavy books, pans, and whatever else they could find to simply drop on the piles of vermin.

Crack!

A flung corpse struck Fitz in the chest and sent him sprawling back against the wall. His head hit the stone, and for a moment all his world was a blur.