Meek

In the road behind the beast-brood, Four Arms was absorbing the corpse of the mandible-brood into its own body. Flesh sloughed off the dead brood and seeped into the living one, forming new musculature and armored plates and spikes.

Eli cursed as he trotted onward, watching through a spark while Four Arms grew larger and wider. And more terrifying. Then the gates of the outer wall of the Keep slammed closed behind Eli. A pack of hostile guards surrounded him, scowling and unsheathing their swords and--

"Get that man a weapon!" Lady Pym snapped.

"M'lady?" the captain of the guard asked.

"You heard me. A weapon. Let him through."

"And a meal," Eli said.

Pym snorted. "And a meal. Come."

"What kind of weapon?" the captain of the guard asked, as Eli fell in with Pym.

He almost said a sword, but swords couldn't penetrate these angelbrood. "A mace."

"The heaviest one we have," Pym called over her shoulder, crossing toward the stairs that led up to the wall tower. "With a steel shaft."

"You've changed your tune," Eli said, behind her.

"No, I still hate you. I just hate them more."

"Fair," he said.

She stopped and looked back at him. "When you drew those brood away, you saved a lot of my people."

"A lot of people," he replied, meaning not 'hers.'

After a moment, she said, "Fair."

Pym continued to the top of the stairs, then stepped onto a wide platform on the wall, where a bunch of soldiers crewed two ballistae. One of which fired as Eli joined her. His sparks showed him the Keep bailey behind him, where civilian stragglers were still running for the inner gate and the Church beyond. In the city street in front of him, the angelbrood continued to stand where he'd last seen them.

"What're they waiting for?" one of the guards asked.

"They're, uh, compensating for their wounds," Eli said. "That's my guess."

"Not healing?" Pym asked.

"Close enough. They're shifting. Transforming. The big one absorbed the dead one."

The guard made the sign of the Angel.

"We could attack now," Ty said.

Pym shook her head. "We'll wait for them to come to us."

"What's the plan?" Eli asked.

"Put ballista bolts in them when they approach. If we get lucky ..." Pym wiped speckles of blood from her neck. "We'll hurt them. And then, once they overrun this wall, we'll surround them in the bailey. Hit them from all sides with everything we have"

"What do you have that'll hurt them?"

"Mages, for one. Is Fluer ..."

"Dead," he said.

Pym closed her eyes. "Then we have Mage Cristonel, the ballistae. My crossbow, Ty's blade..." She opened her eyes. "You?"

"Yes," he said.

"And a thousand soldiers who'll die before they let them reach the Church. They ... the angelbrood carved their way through the theatre district. There's already hundreds dead."

"It's a concomitance," Ty told her, his halberd still not far from Eli. "There's nothing you could've done."

"Where do you want me?" Eli asked her.

"Ideally? On the front line, where you'll kill angelbrood and they'll kill you." She shook her head. "You can't trust me to--"

"Pym," Ty said warningly.

"He's not stupid," she told her brother, before looking back to Eli. "I want you inside the gate, here at the outer wall, to slow them down while we take our shots." She shrugged. "But I can't force you. Go where you think you'll do the most good."

He grunted. She wasn't stupid either, letting him make his own decision after telling him the only thing that made sense.

"And you go to the inner wall, Marchioness," the captain of the guard told her.

"I won't leave my--"

"Or we'll die protecting you instead of fighting those things. You want that?" He glared at her. "My lady?"

"You're valedamn bossy for a subordinate," she grumbled. "Fine. Ty, Arcuro, come along."

"I'll stay here on the wall," Eli told her. "I'll move inside the gate when they get closer."

She grunted acknowledgement. "Don't die too soon."

"Of course not. I'll wait til exactly the right moment."

She gave him a complex look, then headed back down the stairs.

In the city road beyond the outer gates, the three angelbrood shifted and hummed, just beyond the range of the ballistae. Well, two of them shifted and hummed: the skeletal one and the beast. Four Arms stretched, reveling in its improved body. It was half again its previous size, with fists as big as treasure chests. Its black-veined face was flatter and wider, embedded in its chest, and its shoulders were twice as broad.

"Bury my bones," Eli muttered in dryn.

Four Arms took two massive steps and swung its upper arms at a stone fence, methodically smashing it apart while its lower arms tossed the stones into a pile in the road. Most of stones looked around the size of a horse's head. Well, a little horse. A donkey. Eli wondered how Fern and Lara were--

Four Arms hurled a rock at the wall, as easy as Eli might throw an apple.

It fell thirty feet short.

The brood threw another, and that one whipped over Eli's head and smashed into a building in the bailey behind him. Blessdamn. That thing had more range than a ballista? Well, at least more effective range--the last few bolts had reached the brood but without enough power to pierce them.

Four Arms started grabbing stones with its lower arms and feeding them upward. It hurled one with its upper right arm, the next with its upper left. Throwing a steady stream of rocks at the wall. Two crashed into the parapet, two into the wall, and another sailed past.

As the barrage continued, Eli spread his sparks wide to deflect rocks away from the nearest ballistae. He couldn't do anything for the ones farther along the wall, though, and eventually a rock struck true. The ballista shattered and a woman shouted in pain. A minute later, another rock bounced off a tower and clipped a second ballista.

Four Arms continued the assault, and Eli's nearest spark caught sight of a courtier rushing onto the tower with an armload of goods. He didn't think much of it--until he recognized the man. It was that annoying courtier from the clinic who'd wanted to shave his beard. Couldn't remember his name, though.

"Uh, mir!" the courtier said, approaching Eli. "Here's your ah, weapon and a loaf of bread and, erm ..."

"Good," Eli said, grabbing the flanged steel mace in one hand.

It was heavy and vicious-looking. A single piece of metal, so it couldn't break. Just right. He took the loaf of black bread from the courtier, who winced when a rock flew overhead--but didn't otherwise react. Braver than Eli would've expected.

The courtier still had a pile of clothing in his arms, and he lifted it toward Eli and said, "This is for you, too."

Eli took a bite of bread, and with a full mouth said, "A shirt and leggings?"

"Steelsilk. From the--" The man made a face. "The Marchioness insisted."

"Huh," Eli said, and swallowed.

The courtier handed the clothing--the armor--to Eli. He kept his sparks high, deflecting rocks as he pawed through the steelsilk. A padded shirt and vest with matching leggings, along with a coif that covered his head and left only his face exposed. Impressive.

"Could you ... bathe first?" the courtier said.

"You mean, before I put on the armor to protect myself from the angelbrood right over there?"

"You're filthy like a ruffian," the courtier said.

"And you're surprisingly brave," Eli said.

He set the mace aside and tugged the shirt around his--admittedly filthy--torso. The courtier made a disgusted face, then helped him with the clasps and the vest. The man didn't flinch when more stones whipped toward them, only to be knocked away by sparks. Vale, he didn't even flinch when Eli shucked the ruins of his trousers and replaced them with the steelsilk leggings. Which were too big for him, but the courtier laced them tightly, tutting, while Eli tore into the loaf of bread.

By the time he was dressed, only four ballistae were still functional. A squad of heavily armed soldiers had formed in the bailey behind him, where Lady Pym wanted him once the angelbrood got past the wall, and--

Black shapes swooped over the twilight rooftops.

Eight or ten of them, moving together like a flock of birds, except not birds. Bigger and faster than city birds, each one size of a vulture and--

"Above you!" Eli roared. "Overhead!"

Most of the guards who heard his shout looked toward him instead of upward. Then one of swollen, misshapen birds--no, bats. One of the bats landed on the nearest guard's face and started biting and scratching. The guard screamed and the rest of the bat colony joined the attack. The first guard fell dead and two more lay moaning before the bats rose like a single animal, flying in a cloud over the bailey then attacking the next tower from behind.

Except they weren't flying 'like' a single animal, they were a single animal.

A single angelbrood.

The tower guards drew blades and slashed furiously. The brood scattered, dodging with the acrobatic speed of a round-tailed bat. Only one fell while the others swarmed the next tower along.

As those guards turned to face this new threat, the angelbrood in the road started to charge the gate.

When a ballista squad refocused on the road, the bats slashed at them. Valedamn. Eli needed to stop the bats and the brood, but--

"The bats first!" the courier gasped.

Eli didn't know know why he'd listen to an annoying courtier who cared more about fashion than fighting ... but he did.

As he raced along the wall toward the bats, he watched the skeletal brood leap closer and the bestial one lope along. The beast had lengthened into a shape like a serpent-weasel, except the size of two horses. And Four Arms thundered in the rear, its upper arms whipping stones at the Keep from the stash in its lower arms.