Lane blinked blinking against the light that fell into her face, trying to clear her vision. She couldn’t see anything but the Rot and one of the golems outside, but it had to be Morgulon, right? No other werewolf would be powerful enough to break the Rot’s spell with a single howl.

It took a long, long time for her to realize that she shouldn’t have been able to see even that much.

There was a hole in the wall. A huge, gaping hole with jagged edges where something had broken through the massive timbers.

While Lane still stared, the clay man gripped one of the Rot-creatures trying to get in through the gap in the walls and threw it into a pile of them. The golem was missing one of its hands and something had taken a big chunk out of one leg, too, but the giant wasn’t slowed down by that. The Rot, however, was spell-bound by the echo of Morgulon’s voice. They moved sluggishly, and Lane thought she saw some insecurity, even glances back towards the place where the two queens watched the battle.

The fighting slowed enough that Lane could hear Mr. Kohen yell: “Golems! Don’t attack the werewolves!”

A second later, Eyal bellowed: “Grab your tools, everyone who can! The werewolves are here but it ain’t over yet! Get ready to fight!”

How many people had the Rot dragged off and killed while she had been out of it? There were a lot of holes in the walls all around, even though most weren’t nearly as big as the one right in front of her. Lane stood up in a daze and turned around herself. Where was Andrew? Isaac? They’d been right next to her!

Up on the walkway, Audenne was pushing past the navvies who were stumbling about, coming to their senses slowly, just like Lane. The motion caught her eyes.

“Excuse me,” he called, pushing along the balcony to get to a window on the other side. “Excuse me, but I do need to see this!”

He used his elbows liberally to make his way to a broken window that overlooked the southern side of the camp from where they had heard Morgulon.

“This is going to be an important scientific discovery, the first fight between a werewolf and a Rot-queen ever recorded! May I – excuse me – make way for science!”

Lane stared after him, then out of the big hole in the northern wall, where the Rot-queens were visible. A dryad and a werewolf. Lane didn’t recognize it, so hopefully, it used to be a mad one.

“Ladders up!”

Digger’s booming voice shook her out of it. “Quit gaping, men! Get down here, you cowards! Quick, while they’re distracted!”

Before he even finished the words, the handless golem kicked one of the brutes hard enough that it flew through the air right at the two queens. The dryad bellowed as it stepped aside, a deep, echoing roar that sounded completely wrong coming from the tiny, lithe queen. The host of brutes threw itself at the golem, even abandoning their attempts to get to the navvies, bringing it down.

Lane stumbled out of the way as all around, people were gearing up, arming themselves. She let someone press a shovel into her hands with a long handle and a mean, sharp edged blade. She barely noticed. She was craning her neck to see through the cracks in the wall, get a look at Morgulon. All she saw was Calder as he bore down on a brute. And there was Ragna, ripping apart another.

“Focus, girl!” a man who couldn’t be older than she was yelled at her. Before Lane could yell back, someone else spun her around by the shoulder.

“You there, girl, you’re perfect!” the guy declared. “Hitch yer skirt up!”

And before she could protest, Lane was grabbed on both sides, lifted high and onto the man’s shoulders. She almost screamed in surprise when she found herself close enough to the Rot to kiss it: A smallish Rot-brute, pushing through a hole right underneath the balcony. Too high for the men to reach from the ground. It had gotten one arm free and the wooden wall was sprouting new branches already. Lane swung her shovel when it reached for her.

At least she was fully awake now.

The other two navvies helped steady her, yelling encouragements, and an axe was offered to her instead of the shovel.

“Get that sucker! Smash its ugly face in!”

Lane swore under her breath and swung the axe with all the strength she possessed. She hacked the arm off, first, and then hit the thing right into its not-eyes. It howled so loud she almost tumbled backwards into thin air, but the navvies had a good grip on her boots and stopped her from falling. She hit it with the axe two more times and the howling stopped.

“Shovel!” Lane gasped and they obliged her at once. She used the longer handle to dislodge the brute fully. Someone offered her wood, nails and a hammer, but before she could even try to board up the opening, the next Rot-thing showed its ugly mug. Lane let it extend an unnaturally long neck and then beheaded it, so that the body got stuck.

“That should do it!” the man with the nails cheered.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only hole high up in the walls. Lane found herself lifted down, lifted up and handed around like a doll. A doll with an axe in her hand.

At least she was doing something useful.

She ended up standing on Andrew’s shoulders, in front of a hole so big, whatever had cause it had taken out part of the balcony above, too.

“I wish we had anything to shoot the Rot with!” Isaac yelled. He was lying flat on his belly on the remaining platform. It groaned any time he moved to push back at the creatures that tried to climb in with his shovel. Lane was rather glad that she stood securely on Andrew’s shoulders.

She was too out of breath to answer, so she just nodded. Unfortunately, bullets where completely useless against the Rot, even silver ones. Maybe if they had a cannon to shoot the burning ammunition they’d had at Oldstone Castle...

Morgulon howled again somewhere outside. Lane craned her neck hoping to see her, but the she-wolf was moving around the camp all the time, avoiding the two queens that chased after her, trying to box her in. Ragna and Calder took out one brute after the other, but there were just so many of them!

Was that an echo? Lane thought she could still hear a werewolf, only softer, more distant, from a different direction. But there were no mountains around to reflect Morgulon’s voice like that.

Unless it wasn’t an echo at all?

“Please, Lord Mithras, let it not be another Rot-queen,” Lane muttered, which earned her some weird looks from Isaac.

“What?” he asked, just as Morgulon howled again

“Listen,” Lane whispered.

Yes, there was definitely an answer from the distance.

“Watch it!” Isaac yelled.

Lane swore. A ghoulish creature had climbed up to them, a monster of a creeper joined with the corpse of one of their own men. Lane’s and Isaac’s spades clanked together in their haste to push it down again.

Lane sneaked a glance over her shoulder to where the wounded lay in the middle of the hall. Anthony and Rhuad had been freed when Morgulon had appeared, and were busy licking their wounds clean to make sure they didn’t catch with the decay that had cost Nathan his foot.

One of the golems went past the hole and for second, Lane could lower her weapon. Her arms were getting heavy. Luckily, so far she was without injury, but she had no idea how much longer Andrew would be able to carry her, or how much longer the golems would be able to keep the Rot from tearing down the rest of the walls.

If Morgulon didn’t get into the fight soon, they’d be in huge trouble. There was no way the navvies would be able to fight off this army, not without help from outside.

“Hey, isn’t that Greg?” Isaac yelled, loud enough to be heard even over the noise of another brute trying to climb in.

“What?” Andrew snapped.

“Yes, I’m sure it is him!” Isaac went on. Lane tried to see what he was talking about, but he had a different angle than her, and then the Rot was right in her face again.

When she had time to pay attention, she realized that there were suddenly a lot of werewolves in the camp – there was Greg, and then there were at least three werewolves Lane was certain she had never seen before.

Audenne was running around up on the still safe parts of the balcony as fast as his old feet carried him. “There’s – there’s a whole pack out there!” he yelled. “I see – one, two, three, four, no, that’s the same one again –“

Lane hit another brute and then she heard Audenne yell: “Nine new werewolves! Nine! They’re driving the Rot away from the roadhouse!”

The Rot-queens must have sensed the danger, too, because they roared again. Lane swayed and almost fell when her legs grew weak. Morgulon was forced to stop and howl again to break the spell. Lane shook her head and forced herself to breathe deeply, even though the air reeked of decay. The powers clashing all around made her hair stand on edge.

She barely managed to push back the two brutes that tried to climb in at the same time, and she could hear people scream. The number of navvies defending the hall was dropping faster than the number of Rot-creatures outside.

Mr. Kohen and a couple of other men did their best with some bandages, but they had no healers, or even doctors, and most navvies who got injured where out of the fight for good.

Lane forced another brute down from the hole and waited for the next one. It didn’t come. Instead, Lane noticed a strange, deep, reverberating sound. It had no effect on the defenders, but it seemed to scare the Rot. She watched them retreat, even flee, away from the werewolves and the last two heavily damaged golems.

“Now what?” Andrew asked.

Lane looked over to Morgulon. There was someone standing at her side, a smaller, nearly black wolf with a lot of grey around the muzzle. The stranger was growling deep in their chest, and so was Morgulon.

“Let me down?” Lane asked. “New werewolf,” she explained once she stood next to Andrew. “They even look old.”

“You seen Greg out there?”

Lane nodded. “Briefly.”

Andrew promptly hurried away. He glanced out of the biggest hole in the walls, blocked only by a couple of hastily nailed together tables and guarded by Eyal and his best men. When he didn’t see anything, he went up a ladder, hurrying along the windows, until he found one that let him see what was going on.

By the time Lane had caught up with him, the Rot was parting in front of Morgulon, Ragna, and a werewolf Lane didn’t know.