Chương 79: Chapter 78 – Completely Outnumbered

The coaches got them close, and close was as far as speed was any use to them. Andy called the halt himself, a mile out by his own reckoning, and the six of them climbed down into trees that smelled of wet bark and something colder underneath it — ash, maybe, old and rained-on, drifting down from somewhere further in.

"So what's the plan?" Thomas kept his voice low, but it still came out too fast, one word chasing the next. Bramble pressed against his leg the whole way through the undergrowth, ears back, reading him the way he always did.

"We split into three teams." Kalsar didn't slow down to say it, didn't look back to check who was listening — everyone already was.

"Come in from all sides. Me, Andy, Hazel — we each lead one. I've got you, Thomas. Hazel takes Maren. Andy takes Ray." He looked to the two men walking a little apart from the rest, weapons already loose in their hands.

"Sam, Duncan — you read the field. Join wherever the fight's tipping the wrong way. Don't wait for me to tell you where." Sam gave a short nod. Duncan didn't bother with even that much.

"Mahkir." Kalsar said the name without turning, the way he'd learned to over the last few months — not expecting an answer, just making sure the creature knew he was being spoken to directly.

"I don't know how much of this you follow. Doesn't matter. Your job's Ant and Kris. Find them. Get them out. Whatever that takes." Mahkir's head came up. He held Kalsar's eyes a second longer than the instruction needed, then dipped his head low, more bow than nod, and moved out ahead of the group without waiting to be told twice.

They reached the treeline they'd retreated from days before, and Kalsar felt his stomach knot the way it had the night Raven went down here — his boots finding the same roots, his shoulder brushing the same low branch, his body remembering the ground faster than his mind wanted it to. No sign of Ant. No sign of Kris. But there — past the fire, past the huddle of dark buildings — a grey shape tethered to a post at the camp's back edge, too large to be anything but an elephant standing very still.

The camp itself was awake. Nobody stood guard with a spear held ready, but the fire in the center burned high, and shapes moved between the buildings with the loose, unhurried patrol of people who thought the night still belonged to them.

"Whatever tipped them off last time," Kalsar murmured, mostly to himself, "they didn't count on us coming back tonight. Not this fast." He checked the sky, the thin grey seam already creeping up behind the treeline to the east.

"We've got maybe thirty minutes of dark left. After that the sun does our hiding for us, and not the way we want. They're not expecting this. That doesn't mean they're not ready for it. We hit hard, we hit fast. Questions?"

"Yeah." Ray's tiger paced a tight circle against his leg, restless.

"Does the looting rule still stand?" Kalsar didn't answer that. Silence, from him, had come to mean exactly what Ray wanted it to mean, and Ray took it that way now, already grinning like the matter was settled.

"Andy." Kalsar turned to him last.

"You and Hexa hold back until you see us go in. Once the fighting's started, come in loud. Give them something to panic about. Panic makes people sloppy." Andy inclined his head, and the corner of his mouth twitched, thin and clinical — he'd already worked out the same tactics for himself, and hearing them said aloud out here only confirmed it.

"Alright." Kalsar looked at each of them in turn, one last count before the counting stopped mattering.

"Ready?" Nobody said no. Kalsar took Thomas east. Hazel and Maren peeled off west, Vulcan low and quiet at Hazel's heel. Hexa stayed folded into the dark at the treeline's edge — too much creature to hide properly, so instead she simply didn't move, which did almost as well. Kalsar keyed the comm device at his collar.

"We go in five. Four. Three. Two. One—" The building on the near side didn't so much break as stop existing for a second. Xylock came through the wall shoulder-first, four arms already working before the dust cleared, and Bramble was a half-step behind him, teeth in a throat before the first two Kithren guarding that stretch had time to register they were under attack. Thomas made a sound low in his own chest, disbelief more than fear, watching Bramble move like that. He'd never once seen him want to hurt anything.

On the far side, the night lit orange. Vulcan came off the ground molten and screaming, and three men went down under a wave of it before they'd even cleared the doorway they'd come running out of. A heartbeat behind him, Axel waded straight into the scattering men, all four arms driving through anyone still standing, throwing bodies clear rather than burning them.

Maren stayed close behind Axel the whole way in, reading the fight a half-step ahead of him and letting her weight and stance do the correcting rather than her voice, and he answered each shift before Kalsar's own eye had caught the reason for it. A spear came in at her from the side, thrown rather than thrust, and she twisted clear of it by a hand's width, Axel already turning to answer whoever had thrown it.

Hazel fought a step behind her the entire time, Vulcan low and vicious at her heel, the two of them carving a path through anyone who tried to close the distance between Maren and the wider fight. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! The noise carried fast in the dark, and it woke the whole camp at once.

They poured out of the central building in a mass, and for a moment Kalsar felt the numbers tip against them — too many of them, not enough of the six who'd walked in. Twenty, maybe more, each with a Kithren at their heel, spreading out to swallow the four intruders whole. A tiger came out of the dark from the north, tearing a path through anyone trying to flank Xylock.

From the south, the ground itself seemed to buckle as Hexa arrived — six necks, six heads, throwing bodies clear of the fight with a violence that had nothing gentle in it. Kalsar noticed, in the strange half-second his mind carved out for noticing things mid-fight, that none of the six mouths were doing what he'd seen them do at the lake. No water pouring out to drown a man where he stood. Just muscle and momentum — pull a creature this size off its own ground, he thought, and you take away more than you'd expect.

It didn't seem to slow her down much regardless. Through it all, low and near-silent, a small red shape moved between the buildings on a path none of the fighting had touched yet. A mole-type Kithren rose out of the dark ahead of it, alert, ears swivelling toward the sound of a footstep it had no business hearing — and then didn't rise any further, its head parted clean from its body before the rest of it understood what had happened. Vulcan was losing ground.

Three against one — Hazel's salamander pinned by a pair of leopards working in tandem and a third Kithren throwing ice fast enough to freeze his own attacks solid before they could land. The leopards broke for Vulcan's throat, both at once, pincer-fast, and Duncan's turtle was already moving before either landed, lumbering into the gap between one heartbeat and the next, its shell absorbing two strikes meant to kill.

"Call that an ice attack?" Sam didn't wait for an answer. His panther was already firing shards of its own, faster, colder, aimed with a precision that came from years, not months. Sam and Duncan moved like one animal wearing two bodies — spear finding gaps no one should have been able to see, shield closing every angle behind it a half-second before anything could exploit it. Nobody got close enough to land a clean hit. Nobody got close enough to try twice.

Bramble had drawn a bear-type Kithren nearly his own size, white-furred, built for cold the way he wasn't, and he was losing that fight in slow, grinding inches. Xylock had two of his own to handle and no arm free to spare him. Kalsar watched him back toward Xylock, ears flat, and had already started forward himself when eight arrows crossed the clearing at once, each one finding a target, and both Bramble and Xylock had a breath of open ground where a second ago they'd had none.

"Who said I was rejecting anything?" She dropped into the fight beside Kalsar like she'd never left it, spirit fox pressed against her side, directing arrows faster than his eye could properly track. Kalsar didn't have time to ask how she'd found them, or why, or what it meant that she had a bow trained on Shell Razor before either of them had asked her to.

"Where the hell did you—""Later." Rebekah didn't look at him, already nocking again.

"Point me at whoever's winning and I'll make them stop." He pointed. She loosed. Kalsar's side burned with every breath now, the wound Rowan had bound an hour ago pulling tight under the strain of moving at all, let alone fighting. He put it out of his head the way he'd taught himself to do thirty years ago and turned back into the fight, Xylock's shadow at his shoulder, a fresh Shell Razor blade already coming for the gap where his ribs weren't protected.

Rebekah fought like she'd been standing in this exact clearing her whole life instead of a woman who'd appeared out of nowhere with a bow and no explanation. She never wasted a shot, never drew twice on the same target, the fox at her side reading angles Kalsar couldn't have named even with time to think about it. Whatever questions he had for her, and there were plenty, they'd keep.

Right now she was putting arrows through throats that would otherwise be putting blades through his people, and that bought her more trust than any answer could have. Rebekah pivoted without a word and loosed again, and Kalsar was already moving into the space she'd cleared before he'd consciously decided to. A man went down screaming with a fletching buried in his shoulder. Kalsar finished what she'd started before the scream had a chance to draw help.

Across the clearing, fewer Shell Razor fighters were left standing now than weren't, and Kalsar could feel the fight starting to turn. Hexa had cleared a wide half-circle around herself that nobody was stepping back into twice. Sam and Duncan hadn't stopped moving as one creature since the first exchange, spear and shield trading the lead so fast it was impossible to say which of them was protecting the other anymore.

Xylock's runes had gone bright along both forearms, drinking down every scrap of fire Vulcan threw wide, and giving it back twice as hard. Kalsar caught sight of the largest building at the camp's heart between one strike and the next — dark, untouched, nobody guarding it because every last defender had already been pulled toward the noise out front. His stomach went cold, fast and sudden, and his grip tightened hard around his sword. That was where they'd keep a prisoner.

He didn't have time to do anything about it yet. Another blade came for him, and he turned to meet it — and found nothing behind it but a man already stumbling back, weapon dropped, hands raised, done with the fight before it reached him. It happened like that all across the clearing, one after another, faster than Kalsar had let himself hope for. Bodies down. Weapons in the dirt.

What was left of Shell Razor's numbers thinning to a scattered handful backing toward the buildings, none of them willing to close the last few strides that separated them from Xylock or Hexa or the woman putting arrows through anyone who tried. For the first time all night, Kalsar had room to breathe, room to actually look around him rather than simply react to whatever came next. Rebekah lowered her bow half an inch, reading the same shift he was.

"That's most of them."

"Most," Kalsar agreed, low, already turning toward the dark building at the camp's heart, already thinking about how fast he could reach it now that nothing stood between him and trying. He didn't get the chance. The doors of the central building swung open, unhurried, like whoever was behind them had been waiting for the right moment rather than reacting to a fight already half-lost.

Three men stepped out into the firelight — two flanking, one walking a pace ahead of them, spine straight, hands loose at his sides, a man who had never once needed to raise his own voice to be obeyed. Their Kithren followed close at their heels, quiet, unbothered by the chaos around them in a way nothing else in the camp had managed all night.

"GET BEHIND ME!" Andy's voice tore across the battlefield, and every head that could spare the attention turned toward it. His eyes had gone bright, lit from within by whatever the lenses fed him, fixed on the three shapes now clearing the doorway.

"At least one of them is Epic grade."