Chương 49: Assault On The Plains

The first beast through the field edge was a wolf — dark wood under packed moss, four bundles of twisting roots for legs, leaves peeling back from the head to show green teeth. Then a second. A third. They stalked toward the village.

"Duskmaws." Alexandra glanced at Apple.

"I'll be in the back." The old woman was already moving.

"Be careful." The leading Duskmaw growled. The other two barked. The lead one came straight at her. The other two split wide. Alexandra stepped into the lunge, inside the bite, and drew the sickle across the side of its neck. The blade caught on wood and she had to pull hard to free it. Dark sap ran down the moss. The Duskmaw landed, turned, and she was already moving, her feet landing in the uneven field without her having to look down. The two flanking ones hadn't committed yet.

A subtle shift in weight, the outside left one lowering its front roots, and she sidestepped right. The lunge crossed empty air. She opened a cut along its flank on the way past. The third one barked and held its ground. She kept moving. Stopping was the wrong answer with three of them. The leftmost one was about to feint. It started to lunge. She didn't bite. The beast stopped. The lead one came back with its jaw wide open.

She caught the bite on the flat of the sickle, turned it, stamped her heel down on the root nearest her foot before it found her ankle. She was breathing hard. She'd read about Duskmaws once, in a passage Louis had flagged in his field book. Iron rank at birth, Bronze by the time they uprooted themselves and moved. Pack hunters. Territorial but not stupid, they didn't commit until they had an angle. Alexandra frowned, and took a step to the side to avoid a leg-roots strike.

Far behind her, in the village, someone screamed. A man's voice shouted words she couldn't make out. Metal rang against wood. The bell struck twice more, then stopped. The lead Duskmaw's head turned toward the sound for half a second. She didn't have half a second to spare either. Three of them were in front of her and she didn't know how many were in the village. She needed to end this fast. Pushed by her new skills, she ran toward the lead Duskmaw. The beast moved to the side, but she'd been expecting it.

She turned, and hooked her sickle straight into its mouth. The dog yelped as the tip of her blade sank into its flesh. Then, like it was a hook, she pulled her sickle back. The belly of her sickle severed the mouth into two, sending the beast to the ground. Without wasting a beat, she threw herself to the side, rolled on the ground, and narrowly avoided the chomp of the next Duskmaw's fangs. She breathed. Hard. Alexandra stood up. The sound of battle coming from the village was intensifying.

She refocused on her opponents. The first was lying in a puddle of sap. The second one circled left. The third held back. She went for the circling one, feinted high, dropped low, drove the sickle up under the jaw. It collapsed sideways, roots curling inward. The third one bolted. Not at her. Away, back toward the plains, the way they'd come. She watched it go for one second, then turned and ran. The village road was narrow between the stone houses.

She passed a broken cart, a dead Duskmaw with a pitchfork through its flank, a door hanging off its frame. Voices ahead, two or three. A bark. She came around the corner into a square. Three villagers in the square. Two men with woodcutting axes, a woman with a long knife, working together, keeping the five Duskmaws from splitting them apart. Alexandra's feet slowed without her deciding to slow them. One of the Duskmaws had a flower growing from the top of its skull.

A single stem, straight and tall, the bloom open wide, petals the color of fresh blood. The villagers were shouting. One of the men took a root to the shin and staggered. She didn't move. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. The flower was wrong. It was too red. Too still. While the beast beneath it lunged and snapped and circled, the bloom didn't tremble. Not once.

"Hey!" The woman in the square was looking at her.

"Stop fucking staring and help us." Alexandra snapped out of it, and moved.

"The hell is this flower?"

"That's the Yshant's true blessing. Something reserved to a few chosen puppets," a man grunted, pushing the beast in question away with a swipe of his axe.

"Makes that dog a rank higher than it should be."

"Silver." She took the initiative and ran for a beast that was about to lunge at the other man. The Duskmaw saw her coming and pulled back. The fight turned into a standoff.

"Hurry. We need to help the others." The man who'd spoken first spat a bloody gob.

"That blessed fucker is too thick. I can't cut through its wood." Alexandra bit her lip. If only she'd gotten the herbicide from Maret. But it was too late for regrets.

"Let's kill the others first." They moved with the practiced efficiency of people who'd lived in the plains all their lives. Not as outnumbered, they could finally strike without worrying about being flancked by another beast. Axes cleaved through leaves and roots. So much so that Alexandra only killed one Duskmaw, leaving only the blessed one alive. The two men tried cutting it down. It dodged, and jumped on the roof of the closest house.

Then it howled, and the red flower pulsed with it, each pulse pushing the petals wider, and the wood along the beast's limbs thickened, the moss splitting at the joints to accommodate it. The first man raised his axe. The Duskmaw came off the roof faster than it had moved all fight. It hit him chest-first and bore him down. The axe slipped out of his hands and landed on the cobblestone with a clang. He got one arm up. The jaws closed on it above the elbow.

Then the beast released him, turned, and ran north between the houses. Alexandra stood over the man. His arm was open to the bone from elbow to wrist, the wound already sheeted with blood, his face turned to the side in the dirt. His chest wasn't moving.

"Renard." The woman's voice was flat and airless. Alexandra's hand found her sickle grip. Her jaw was tight enough to ache.

"Shit."

"It's going for the others," the surviving man said. Nobody answered. The man turned to Alexandra.

"Who are you?"

"Not a good time. Can anyone handle that beast?"

"Maybe the chief. But he left early in the morning. Fuck, we need to gather everyone." Alexandra spared another glance at Renard's body. Her fist clenched on the handle of her sickle.

"Where are they? Lead the way." The woman still hadn't moved. Alexandra put a hand on her shoulder.

"Let's go." She nodded slowly. They moved, the surviving man leading, the woman a step behind Alexandra. The sounds reached them before the houses opened up. Axes, shouting, the crack of wood, the bark of Duskmaws breaking under the metal. The road widened into a second square. A stone house at the far end, shutters closed, door barricaded from outside with a cart. Eight or nine villagers formed a line in front of it, axes and knives in hands, holding a loose half-circle of Duskmaws back.

Durel was on the left end of the line, his dark jacket torn at the shoulder. Apple stood behind the defenders, both hands raised, a faint light passing from her fingers into the back of the man nearest her. Four villagers on the ground. Dead. A dozen Duskmaws with them. The blessed one sat on the roof above the barricaded door, watching.

"Left side," Alexandra said. The three of them hit the Duskmaws from the flank. The beasts closest to them turned, broke formation. The woman drove her long knife into the neck of the nearest one. The man put his axe through the back of another. Alexandra cut through two and stepped over them. Durel saw her first. He grabbed her arm as she reached the line.

"You. Good."

"Glad to see you, too." She turned around, facing the Duskmaws.

"But not that one." She pointed her chin at the blessed Duskmaw, the red flower still pulsing on its head.

"It killed Renard." The woman said. Durel bit his lip.

"Fuck. The kids are inside this house." He pointed behind him.

"We have to hold on until the chief comes back." Alexandra's eyes widened. She felt Apple's eyes land on her back. Combat Sense warned her, and she raised her sickle to catch a root-leg. The root-leg scraped off her blade and she shoved the beast back into the one behind it. The line held but it bent. Three Duskmaws pushed hard at the center and two defenders gave ground, opening a gap.

Alexandra cut across to fill it, drove her sickle into the lead beast's jaw, caught an elbow from the defender beside her as he swung his axe. She ignored it. Durel was shouting to her left, coordinating, his voice steady. The woman with the long knife had moved to the right end of the line and was working, no wasted motion. Apple's light pulsed behind them at intervals. Each time it did, she felt a surge of energy run through her body. The Duskmaws came in rotating waves.

One would lunge, take a cut, fall back, and another took its place before the defender could reset. They were bleeding the line slowly. Alexandra glanced up at the roof between engagements. The blessed one hadn't moved. The red flower turned slowly on its stem, tracking the fight. She killed two more. A third caught her sleeve with its teeth and she punched the flat of her sickle into its mouth until it released. Then, without Alexandra seeing how it happened, one of the defenders bent down on one knee to her left.

The blessed one left the roof. It crossed the distance in two bounds, grabbed the kneeling man by the neck and jumped back to the roof. The line buckled around the gap. Two defenders stumbled back into each other trying to avoid it. Then it released the body. It fell limp, hitting the ground with a thud. Nobody spoke for a moment. The remaining Duskmaws held at the edge of the square, pacing.

"Fuck. James. Fuck." Durel snapped. Alexandra closed her eyes, she could hear her heart pounding in her chest. Her legs were almost moving on their own, taking a step back, then another. She forced herself to stop. Her legs were trembling. Her hands, too. Her eyes snapped open. She raised her hand, and summoned her journal. Sickle Mastery 7 -> 8 Combat Sense 3 -> 5 She snapped it close, and turned to Durel.

"I think I can kill it."

"Then fucking do it! What are you waiting for?"

"You'll need to deal with the rest. And… I'll need to speak with Apple after that."

"Do it, Alexandra," Apple said from behind her.

"If there's a price, I'll do my best to pay it." Alexandra bit her lip. A Bronze rank Gallowbloom had cost her her mana. While this blessed Duskmaw was technically Bronze, too… She sighed.

"I need you to clear a path for me."