Chương 76: Chapter 75 - The Wrong Trees

The territory came up out of the dark like something that had been waiting for them. No wall around it, not really — a few felled trunks dragged into a loose, sagging perimeter, gaps wide enough to walk a cart through if anyone had wanted to. Buildings sat scattered beyond that, low and squat, no order to the layout that Ant could make out from the treeline, roofs patched with whatever material had been closest to hand.

Smoke hung thin over one roof, gone cold hours ago from the smell of it, mixed with something sourer underneath — rot, maybe, or a midden pit too close to the buildings for comfort.

"Kris." Kalsar's voice barely carried past the four of them.

"You and yours head to the trees. Bow ready. Anything comes out looking for us, you're the last thing standing between it and our backs." Kris nodded once, already unslinging the bow, his elephant folding down into the brush behind him with a patience that looked almost unnatural on something that size, ears settling flat against the great skull like it already understood the assignment.

"Will do."

"Good man." Kalsar didn't look back again after that, already moving, low and quiet, Raven a step ahead of him reading the ground like it owed her something. Xylock came behind him without needing to be told to, all four arms loose at his sides, moving with a lightness that shouldn't have been possible for something built that broad. Ant fell in behind, Mahkir a shadow at his heel, Ray bringing up the rear with his tiger padding silent despite its size.

Ant kept to the darker ground without thinking about it now, an old habit from years of not wanting to be seen — outer foot first, never the heel, sticking to the black gaps between buildings where the moonlight didn't reach. They crossed the felled-trunk line without incident. That was the first thing wrong.

"Nobody's watching this," Raven murmured, crouched behind a rain barrel gone soft with rot, eyes tracking rooflines carefully.

"Not one lookout. Not one dog. Fifteen, twenty people living here and not a single set of eyes on the perimeter."

"Could be asleep," Ray offered.

"Could be." Kalsar didn't sound like he believed it either.

"Doesn't sit right." Nothing moved. No voices, no fire crackle, no clatter of someone turning in their sleep against a creaking cot. Just the buildings, dark and silent, and the four of them crouched in the space between two of them like the whole camp was holding its breath along with them. Ant's skin crawled with it, the specific unease of walking somewhere too easy, every step waiting for the ground to give beneath him.

"Well." Ray was already drifting toward the nearest doorway, easy as anything, tiger padding silently after him.

"Since we're here. Might as well see what's worth lifting."

"Ray." Kalsar's voice stayed low but sharpened.

"Purely reconnaissance." He was already through the door.

"I'm very discrete about it."

"Discreet," Kalsar muttered, not looking at him, already moving to follow.

"That's what I said." Kalsar swore under his breath, glanced once at Raven, and the two of them moved to follow rather than let him wander alone. Ant went with them, Mahkir pressed close, his chest tight with something that had nothing to do with the cold. I don't like this, Mahkir said. Too quiet. Fifteen, twenty people don't just go silent. Something's wrong.

They made it as far as the open ground at the center of the camp — a cleared circle between the buildings, packed dirt worn smooth by years of boots — before the alarm went up. It wasn't a bell. It was worse than a bell, a high rising shriek that seemed to come from every direction at once, and the buildings that had sat dark and silent a heartbeat ago tore open all at once, doors and shutters and one whole wall panel that Ant hadn't even clocked as a door, and people came pouring out of every one of them. Fifteen.

Maybe more. Weapons already drawn, moving with the kind of coordination that meant this hadn't been a surprise at all.

"Ambush," Kalsar snarled, already turning, sword clearing its sheath in one motion.

"Back to the trees — now!" There wasn't time for anything more careful or cautious than that. A man came at Ant first, axe already swinging in a wide, committed arc. Guard. Step. The forms took over before he'd decided to use them, two mornings of Kalsar's drilling collapsing into a single motion — he turned the axe wide on Soul Render's flat instead of meeting it edge-on, let the man's own momentum carry him past, and put the recover-step in without thinking about it at all.

Mahkir was already moving into the gap that opened — low, fast, claws raking the man's leg out from under him before he'd finished overextending. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Two more, your left, Mahkir said, already turning to meet them without waiting for an answer.

"Flame Breath — low, wide!" Mahkir didn't need telling twice. The burst caught both men across the shins, more warning than damage at that range, but it was enough to buy the half-second Ant needed to close the distance and put the nearer one down clean. The second broke off, favoring a scorched boot, and didn't come back. A woman came at Raven from the left, club already swinging, and Raven ducked the first arc clean — met the second with a dagger that should have opened the woman's forearm to the bone.

Should have. A second attacker's sword caught Raven across the same arm a half-second later, opening a line of red through her sleeve, and the club came around a third time while she was still recovering, catching her full across the temple with a sound Ant felt in his own teeth. She went down without a sound. Just folded, the way bodies did when the switch got flipped off rather than worn down, dagger still loose in one open hand.

"RAVEN'S DOWN." Kalsar's voice cracked across the clearing, already cutting toward her, but three more had closed the gap between him and her body, and Ant was closer.

"Mahkir — get her out! Now!" Mahkir didn't hesitate. He was moving before the words finished leaving Ant's mouth, a red blur low across the dirt, claws opening the leg of the nearest attacker before the man even registered a threat had arrived. Shrike screamed overhead, furious, and dove talons-first into the face of the second man closing on Raven's body, driving him back with nothing but sheer violence and noise. Mahkir got his jaws into the collar of Raven's jacket and dragged. It wasn't graceful.

It wasn't meant to be. He hauled her backward across the packed dirt in short, brutal pulls, snapping sideways every few feet to take a chunk out of anything that got close enough to matter, Shrike wheeling and diving above them both, carving a path through nothing but sheer commitment. Got her, Mahkir said, distant now, already yards toward the treeline. Moving.

Xylock was a wall by then, planted between Kalsar and the worst of it, two arms catching a spear shaft and snapping it clean in half while the other two swept a man off his feet entirely and threw him bodily into a third. He didn't retreat an inch. He didn't need to.

"Ray!" Kalsar's shout came from somewhere to Ant's right. Ant turned in time to see it — a man with a spear driving in low at Ray's side while Ray was still finishing off the one in front of him, tiger locked in its own snarling knot of claws and teeth three feet away, too far to help. Kalsar didn't get there in time to stop the strike.

He got there in time to take it instead, twisting his own body between the spearpoint and Ray's ribs, and the blade that should have found Ray found Kalsar's side instead, a wet tearing sound that made Ant's stomach turn even from a distance. Kalsar didn't go down. He grabbed the spear shaft with one massive hand, hauled the wielder off balance, and put him down with a single flat strike from the other.

Xylock was already there beside him, one arm sweeping the next attacker aside like he weighed nothing at all, the other three still moving, still finding targets. Blood ran steady down Kalsar's side now, dark against his shirt, and he didn't so much as glance at it.

"Get to the trees!" Kalsar's voice came out ragged now, one hand pressed to his side, blood already dark between his fingers.

"Both of you — go! Xylock, cover!" Ray didn't argue. He got a shoulder under Kalsar's arm, tiger falling in beside them both, teeth still bared, blood matting the fur along one flank from a cut Ant hadn't seen him take, and the three of them started cutting a path backward, still fighting, still swinging, every step a small war against the ground trying to slow them down. Xylock walked the retreat backward, all four arms working, a moving barricade nothing seemed able to get past. Ant turned to follow.

A man crashed into him from the side — someone he hadn't seen, sword already coming around in a wide arc that Ant barely got Soul Render up in time to catch. The impact rang up his arm. He shoved back, hard, and the man staggered, and by the time Ant had cleared the space to look again the whole fight had reshaped itself around him — three more bodies had folded in, cutting the straight line to the treeline into a crooked, contested mess.

He fought his way sideways instead of straight, buying angle rather than distance, Soul Render moving through motions his body knew better than his mind did in the moment. A blade caught his forearm, shallow, more heat than pain in the moment it happened. He put the man down anyway.

Across the clearing, he caught a glimpse of the treeline — Kalsar upright but bent wrong around his own side, Ray beside him, Xylock still swinging, Mahkir already there with Raven laid out at his paws, Shrike settling low and vicious over both of them, wings still spread like she hadn't decided the danger was over. Six shapes, counting the tiger circling them, teeth bared at the treeline's edge.

He didn't have time to finish the thought before another two closed on him, and the gap between himself and the trees widened instead of closing, fresh bodies pouring from somewhere behind the nearest building to fill every space he tried to cut through. He put one down. Then another, Soul Render catching a wrist and turning the follow-up strike wide.

His arm ached with every parry now, the forearm cut stiffening under the sleeve, and still they kept coming — not in twos anymore but in a loose, shifting wall between him and the treeline, more bodies than he could count without taking his eyes off the nearest blade. Somewhere behind him, or ahead of him, he'd lost track which, a horn sounded twice, short and flat, and the crowd around him tightened instead of thinning.

"WHERE IS ANT? WHERE'S KRIS?" Kalsar's voice, tearing across the whole clearing, raw enough to carry over everything else. Ant opened his mouth to answer and took a boot to the back of the knee instead, the ground rushing up to meet him before he'd finished registering the shout at all. He got one hand under himself, tried to push back up, and a knee drove down across his shoulders hard enough to flatten him again, pinning him, Soul Render trapped somewhere beneath him and out of reach.

Hands found his wrists next, then his collar, hauling him up onto his knees hard enough that his vision swam. HP: 1/70. The number surfaced somewhere under the ringing in his skull, distant and useless, nothing left in him to do anything about it. Ant— Mahkir's voice, distant, frantic, the last clear thing before the world tipped sideways and went dark, the noise of the clearing folding down into one long ringing note and then nothing at all.