Meek

As Eli fell from the high window, wind rushed past him. The pain in his thigh made him whimper, and the hard throb of agony spreading from his mangled foot was even worse.

Cracks sounded as the brood smashed into library wall, while the bestial one waited below Eli, with gaping jaws.

In a panic, he threw his sparks against the wall, hard enough to change the trajectory of his descent. The bestial brood's teeth snapped beneath him as he threw himself past the fence into the street. Disoriented by fear and pain, he landed on his shattered ankle. His vision narrowed as he staggered sideways. Only his sparks kept him upright--then started pushing him away from the archive, away from the brood, away from--

The sparks showed him a blur of motion, but he couldn't focus.

He'd taken too much damage over too much time: that first mage Arrow and the crossbow bolts, then the brood and the other brood and the other brood. He'd taken too much damage. His ankle wasn't healing fast enough and his sparks showed him the motion but his mind couldn't decipher what it meant.

Not until the bestial brood hit him with a paw like an anvil.

He felt bones break.

He landed in a hedge fifteen feet away and hauled himself through the scraping branches with his sparks. He flopped onto cobblestones and didn't know where he was. In a side-street? No, in the main road again, with the beast prowling toward him

He still heard the distant slam of the angelbrood against the archive wall high above. One of his sparks showed him stones breaking from around the window and tumbling to the ground. Neither of his legs worked so he clawed at the road. He dragged himself away from the beast-brood with his arms while five of his sparks batted at the creature like a swarm of gnats, trying to distract it, to delay its approach.

The other two sparks scraped him across the road, but too slowly.

Far too slowly.

The beast opened its jaws to snap him in half.

A crossbow bolt thunked into its neck.

That one pierced its thick, leathery humanskin hide, and it hummed a deeper note. A dozen more bolts struck the beast but they all failed to penetrate, tumbling to the ground instead.

Through his haze, Eli saw the Rockbridge soldiers farther up the road.

A formation of thirty or forty them, with an interlocking shield wall in the front, spears jutting from behind them, and crossbowers in the rear. Including Lady Pym, who was already firing again. Her bolt pierced the beast again--using some kind of high-powered bow or bolt--and the brood turned from Eli and leaped at the new threat.

Eli breathed into his pain and weakness, waiting for his trollblood to lend him strength. To fix his legs and clear his mind. As the bones of his ankle started snapping into place, the beast rammed the soldiers' shield wall.

It bowled the front line down like they were training dummies. Spears snapped against its side and another of Pym's crossbows thunked its chest, but didn't penetrate deeply enough to do any real damage. The beast-brood's teeth tore spearmen apart, then it crushed two shield-wielders with a single blow of its paw.

A soldier bellowed a war-cry and slashed his short sword at the brood's rear leg. The brood twisted sideways, snakelike, and chopped the soldier with the blades lining its spine. More soldiers attacked as the beast drove toward Pym.

Swords and spears struck, but the angelbrood shrugged off all the blows--until a blade slashed a long rent in its shoulder.

Lord Ty's halberd cleaved through the beast's hide as well as Pym's bolts, though Eli didn't know why. Maybe--oh! Oh, hadn't he heard something about the twins using C-steel weapons? Yeah, which cost more their weight in diamonds.

Eli shook off his dizziness. He still couldn't feel his feet, but his legs worked a little. Enough to crawl. He rolled onto his stomach as the brood tore apart a soldier who leaped to protect Ty.

Blood splattered the lordling's face as he thrust again with his halberd and a slap sounded.

A sharp fleshy impact.

Blood and flesh spewed from the beast-brood as a mage Arrow dug a divot the size of Eli's head in its flank. Its hum hit a sustained high note and it launched sideway.

Toward Mage Fluer, who'd been waiting around the corner, in a side street between two marble-walled buildings, with another unit of guards protecting her.

Apparently Ty and Pym had been baiting the brood into position for her shot.

"Can you stand?" a man asked Eli.

A spark wobbled higher and showed him the captain of the guard, crouching behind a nearby hedge.

Eli pushed himself to his hands and knees. That was as close as he could get to standing.

"This way," the captain said. "I'll carry you."

Eli blinked at the man. He was supposed to trust this guy?

"Marchioness's orders," the captain told him."I'd leave you to die, myself. She says we need every weapon."

While Eli crept toward the hedge, Mage Fluer fired two more Arrows--a sling bullet and a razor disk--at the bestial brood. The first smashed into one of its spine-blades, snapping it off and sending it crashing into the second floor of a building across the street.

The second sliced the wounded brood's muzzle. Spears struck at its belly and shattered. It swiped once, crushing more guards, then made another shout-hum, calling for the others, who were still battering their way through the archive wall.

The captain grabbed Eli's arm and dragged him behind the hedge. When he finally managed to stand, the captain said, "We've got to move."

He pulled Eli's arm around his neck and started toward the Keep, toward Pym and the soldiers. Eli's feet dragged ... but they felt stronger with every step he took. He was finally healing.

Not fast enough, though.

Twenty yards in front of him, the wounded bestial brood tore a spearwoman's arm off then bounded across the road and leaped onto the wall of one of the buildings that lined the side-street. The brood's claws dug into the stone long enough for it to lope twenty feet while clinging to the vertical surface.

A mage disk scored the wall behind it--then the brood crashed down into Fluer's guard. She fired one last razor disk, tearing a stripe along the beast's back, but neither that nor her guards could stop it.

A moment later the brood was on her.

With one snap of its jaws, it tore her head off.

As it swallowed, two of the three remaining members of her guard stabbed it, aiming their spears at the wound she'd opened. The beast spun at one of them, snapping again, then moved beyond Eli's spark's field of view.

When Pym saw the captain of the guard helping Eli closer, she called for the retreat. A moment later, the shield-wall reformed. Well, in part. Most of the troops were dead or dying. The uninjured soldiers carried the wounded but abandoned the dead as they headed for the outer Keep wall.

Eli shook off the captain. "I'm okay."

As the captain stepped away to help the injured, the third-floor wall of the archive shattered.

Four Arms burst through the wreckage and landed on the road a block behind Eli. It was followed a moment later by the skeletal brood.

"Move!" Pym barked. "Move, we're almost in range!"

The formation sped into a trot as the two angelbrood oriented on them.

Eli hesitated to follow, and Pym called, "Arcuro! You're with me."

After another hesitation, he limped toward her. Ty trotted into place behind him, as if ready to strike from behind if necessary.

"You bought us enough time to get the civilians inside the wall," Pym told Eli, as they retreated.

"The wall won't stop them," he said.

"No, but it'll box them in."

He didn't know what that meant, but this wasn't the time to ask. He felt his heel bones coming together, then the flesh of his foot regrowing. His gait evened as he jogged alongside Pym. Ty kept glancing at him warily--all of the Marchioness's guards did. He couldn't blame them, but he kept his attention on the angelbrood.

Four Arms marched steadily forward, but the skeletal one with backward-jointed legs and dagger fingers leaped ahead like some kind of monstrous grasshopper.

Eli exhaled as the angelbrood drew closer. He still didn't feel right. He couldn't catch his breath, and his link to his sparks was dim and blurred. Yet if that thing caught them from behind, they'd all die. So he cracked his neck and started to turn--and Pym touched his elbow.

"Keep moving," she said. "We're almost there."

"Where?"

She didn't answer, she just kept moving as the skeletal brood vaulted closer. Eli braced two sparks on the ground in front of himself and moved the other five behind, to intercept the brood.

Then motion flashed from the Keep.

Ballista bolts. He hadn't seen those since the troll fight, but Pym must've positioned them on the wall. Six or seven bolts whipped overhead. A few missed the brood but two smacked into its bony chest, one into its pelvis and one into its forearm. The mid-air impact cut the long arc of its leap short. It crashed to the road on its side but squirmed away to dodge another ballista bolt, which chunked into the cobblestones.

Once on the ground, the brood was too mobile to hit at that distance.

It kept humming as Eli retreated with the Rockbridge soldiers. Behind it, Four Arms reached the dead brood, the mandible-brood that Eli had killed. It grabbed the corpse with its lower arms and hugged the body close, then stomped forward to stand behind the wounded skeletal brood.

Their tuneless humming changed. As Eli listened through his closest spark, the Celestial 'music' started to sound like a dozen voices humming at once.

Then he was out of range--in the shadow of the Keep's wall.

The gate opened when Pym approached ... and the skeletal brood pulled the ballista bolts from its body.

After it removed the last one it stood again, its spine hunched into a curve. Its dagger-fingers brushed the ground like a gorilla. It stood there a moment--healing? re-shaping?--then took a few exploratory steps. Eli couldn't tell if it was still injured. He didn't think so. At least, it didn't look hurt anymore; it just looked different.

Apparently those things could compensate for wounds.

A moment later, the bestial brood shuffled into view from the side-street. That one definitely looked wounded. But not dead. Not by a long shot.

As Eli watched, the beast-brood's spine-blades melted away. Its body thinned and lengthened. Its wounds closed as it changed shape into something both quadrupedal and snake-like. And uninjured.

Then Eli looked behind that brood, and his breath caught.