“How is Macarius?” Janine inquired as a ser beam of her rifle ended another rider before he could run down Elzada and Ignacy.

  Bogdan jumped on them, gave them both a sma the head f to do maintenan the damaged prostheti the open, and dragged the wounded wolf hag and his brother to the retive safety of the wall. He groaned jokingly, receiving a light sma his snout. Though Elzada held ba reition of her mistake, her blow still threw Bogdan’s head back. He bared his neck, but the wolf hag ighe offer.

  Jaook a few breaths, ving herself that her daughters were fine. She o split her own pack; Marty’s own force would be urength otherwise, and Impatient One and Anissa were among the stro fighters avaible. Both were smart, fierce, loyal, and level-headed. Her princesses will be fihey must be.

  “Unscious, Warlord Janine!” a knight-captain replied, stepping to stand beside her and leveling his gun sword. The first bullet shattered a hordeman’s pauldron, and the sed drew a small geyser of red from the exposed body. The rider cursed at his uselessly dangling arm and holstered his pulse rifle, esg into the streets. “Our lord has suffered no life-threatening wounds; just give him several mio recuperate, and we will…”

  “ it,” Janine barked. “ig up civilians and leaving.”

  Half of her vision disappeared, repced by the map and inis and requests from their allies. Wolf hags were to hahe calls for aid, and the warlord focused on the overall situation, guiding the Recimers out of the town.

  “But there are still people here!” the knight-captain argued. “Soldiers and civilians alike! If we leave now…”

  “They will suffer. Possibly die,” Janine replied calmly. “I am not without eyes, kin. Open yours as well and look. We have civilians on our paill certainly die when the enemy unleashes the full force of their artillery on us. ushed the enemy bad damaged their and structure. And it is still not enough. Gaze into the walls’ cracks. you see the h their feet? you hear the roar of thousands of approag engines? Do you uand what will happen to those under our prote if we fall? It is time to cut our losses and run.” She snapped her jaws before his helmet, sileng the protests. “Enough. I am the senior officer here. The shame and guilt are mine and mine alohe honor of the Order remains intact. We will withdraw.”

  “It’s not about honor, Warlord.” The knight-captain saluted. “There is a pain in our souls. A shame for the lives we fail by retreating and a desire for vengeance.”

  “Hold onto it,” Janine advised the Ice Fang. “Never fet or five this day; let the memories of those who died today sustain you and sharpen your focus in the days ahead. Survive, Captain. Soon the Blessed Mother will learn of the invasion, and we will retur retribution.”

  Janine despised herself. This wasn’t a simple disgust or dissatisfa of her own inadequacy like she had experienced in her youth. It was eveer thared that had tormented her when she had been irritated at Ignacy for his fear in his youth. No, she wao use the Taleteller’s bde to ritualistically cerate her body and then pry her ribcage open, dragging every rib backward to form wings of extinct eagles. The knight-captain had nothing to do with it, and she wasn’t even angry that she had to expin herself to a male instead of biting him into submission.

  Her heart, hardened after over a tury of war, strained uhe burden of leadership and the y of sacrifig civilians. Never. Never had she imagined herself in such a situation. Always, Janine had found a way, a path, to tip the scales, be it through a reckless charge or a sneaky ambush.

  Where is Ravager? Where is the Blessed Mother? Where is Devourer? Outsider? Dragena? Alpha? Zero? Or the Dynast? Why did she have to be the oo make this call? Why was her brain pnning the most optimal retreat route and not callio advand die with honor? Where was First, and why wasn’t he responding to her summons? She would even obey his and. Why… why must she be the logical one here when cubs were dying iown? If ever there was a time to let emotions rule, it was now!

  There was no response, no answer, save for the words of the Ice Fangs and the Provincial Army’s units Army that had joihem. Officers firmed their orders and preparations for the safe retreat were set.

  Please, Spirits, if there is any justi the world… Let me die painfully for what I have dooday. Janine did not dare to lie. She wasn’t forced. There tion to die honorably here, to let civilians escape uhe prote of the surviving Army troops. Some would even make it to Houstad. It would be better thaing cubs die. Inflispeakable agony upon my body so that my soul may be redeemed.

  “Sister…” whispered the apparition of Terrific, but Janine ig, fog on an urge.

  She faced the southeast, and her keen eyes spotted a rge plex, more like a small fortress outside of the main wall. A military hospital belonging to the Order. The attackers ig, wary of the mihat had cost them troops. Sword Saint Leonidas, his elite soldiers, and sages were supposed to evacuate medical personnel by any means, culling the mortally wounded soldiers and taking the rest along.

  Only… None of it happened. Acc to the report on Janine’s HUD, the precious doctors were still inside, calling for immediate assistahe lights were shining, and there was no sign of Leonidas, nor was he replying to any calls. Perhaps in their panic, after the first shells nded on their walls, the facility began broadcasting pleas for help on an open el.

  A el that anyone could hear. The Horde included. There was no way those bastards would pass up a ce to capture fresh sves of such quality.

  “Where is Sword Saint Leonidas?” Jaensed, reloading her rifle.

  “I…” The knight-captain bowed his head under her heavy gaze. A ft of the Taleteller’s bde smmed against his helmet, prompting the fool to keep firing. “I know not, Warlord. es have departed to assist him. Sword Saint Macarius didn’t deem it necessary to inform us of the reason for their absehe knight-captain regained his footing, and she caught a hint of annoyan his voice.

  They keep secrets even from their own… Janine dismissed the treacherous thoughts at the back of her mind. The tribe had its own mysteries.

  “Damnation!” Janine spat, weighing her options.

  Abandoning preedical personnel was out of the question; even if the Blessed Mother despised them, these men and women saved lives, including Wolfkins’, and the Order employed some of the best doctors. Their talents and skills had to be preserved.

  “Wolf Hag Elzada.” Jaopped, growing increasingly frustrated at her inability t up data on the Order’s troops on her HUD. She could see through their ocurs, but that was it. Names, ammunition ts, ah status were unavaible to her. Elzada’s armor reported that Ignacy’s repairs partially restored the woman’s artificial leg, but it had suffered a loss of about ten pert in mobility. “Knight-captain. It’s do or die for you. Lead our people and rendezvous forces with Warlord Martyshkina. I have already informed her of our course of a. Do so without fail, or I will torture you endlessly ierlife. Elzada, if I die, Wolf Hag Anissa is to take my pd banish aion of me from the pack forever.”

  Tell my daughters I love them. Janine swallowed these words. Now was not the time. Their mission was dangerous, but far from impossible. A warrior preparing to die was a warrior who had already put one foot in the grave. She was ready to kill to see her children live ahem again.

  At her and, Predaig and Eled issued simir ands to their own wolf hags and joined her. The warlords assembled a group of males and warriors to joiaking the expendable soldiers. Jaapped her own knee, interrupting Ignad Elzada’s warm farewell embrace, and her sons joihe newly formed pack. Everything inside her—memories of their birth, their precious time together, the times she and Colt had read them bedtime stories or teo their wounds after a hard day is—screamed to send them away. But that was not to be. Favoritism was not allowed.

  The two groups parted ways by overloading the geor deep within the Knight’s Academy as a final parting gift to the Horde. For all the teasing and jokes told among the Wolfkins, ohing was undeniable. Their posed and galnt, white-furred brothers and sisters easily kept up pace with the bck-furred. Carrying civilians in their paws, the army raced into the retreat, and small parties were busy pnting mio distract the iable pursuit.

  Janine led her troops to the southern wall, cutting off the Hordemen, attempting to reinforce the blockading troops to the west. The coordinated assault of the divided forces had caught the enemies by surprise; whoever was in charge after the khan’s death had failed to realize just how daring the maneuvers of the state’s New Breeds could be, and the prolonged defense had given them false fidence.

  They died for that arrogance. Eled was the first to nd amidst a rge gathering that had found temporary cover in the ruins of the buildings. Her scythe sshed through everything in its path, and the debris buried her and the nearby Hordemen. A rider hurrying to assist his allies fell apart in two equal halves as Predaig stepped out of the shadoassed him by. Her sword danced, sweeping wide ar the air, and people died. Behind her, Eled roared, breaking free from the rubble in an explosion of violence, her scythe little more than aension of her own cws. The warlord lunged, sshed, and hacked half-madly, pletely fetting to use her wonderful le ons but following the group.

  After them followed the main force led by Janine, driving into the unsteady defensive ranks like a stake plunged into a heart. There was raint in this charge; the Wolfkins matched and exceeded the savagery of the invaders. Arms, riddled full of holes or burned by acid, were gnawed off by merciless jaws, hungrily dev forbidden flesh. A killing field opened before Janine’s eyes, and she eagerly partook of such a feast.

  Her single swing took legs from uhree hordemen, and the flow of the bck-cd bodies stomped the wounded into oblivion. A rifle was shoved through the open mouth of a surprised youth. There was a look of pure horror on his face. Perhaps he had lost his helmet in battle or had simply taken it off to have a nasty cut above his forehead treated. It didn’t matter, because at the touch of a fihe oed and turned his pierced head into a mixture of molten flesh and bohe shot ected the rifle to an officer, and a grenade in his hand dropped under his legs o his arm.

  They pushed through the bst, an avanetal moving too fast for artillery tet. Another sun fshed at their backs, and the Knight’s Academy disappeared, sending a massive shockwave through the ransacked town, shattering windows and colpsing the buildings. There was a loud cheer as the Horde approached the widening crater left in the pce of learning, and Janine smiled. The fools were trating on the wrong thing.

  Each swing of the Taleteller spshed small pools of blood across the hordemen’s visors. Normie, New Breed, or something iween—none of it mattered in the slightest to the warlords and their troops. A hurrie of shrapnel ripped through suits and ended lives; several walkers and hoverbikes exploded, but Janine and her named sisters stepped through the burning fmes, wreaking havo those who tried to retreat from their path.

  Drenched in blood and gore, supported by the warlords’ unhinged ferocity, the pack crushed the enemy resistand pushed toward their goal.

  ****

  Bertruda looked down. Amal was still g at his mouth, trying in vain to pull out the metal clogging his airways and lungs. His eyes were two white globes, his pupils rolled under his eyelids. No air will ever again reach his lungs. Bertruda expected to enjoy the bastard’s suffering, but now she found herself feeling disgust and pity at his desperate attempts to survive.

  Just die already. She faced Martyshkina, who had nded on the destroyed airship, ughing ptuously at the retreating foes. The warlord had briefly left her side after their forces had rejoined aurer, sh praises upon the soldiers and her troops to form up a defensive perimeter. They were in luck; after getting hit hard, the Horde chose to ighem. No doubt those bastards were bringing in heavy vehicles and their own champions, but a reprieve rieve, and they used it to tend to their wounds.

  “What a day! Your soldiers are excellent!” Martyshkina’s ughter stopped abruptly, and her lenses focused oruda. “Whatever your beef is with Janine, you sure fight, Bull-Syer.”

  “There is no beef.” Bertruda bowed gracefully, pressing one paw to her chest and pushing the side of her tattered cape away with the other. “Thank you for the high praise, but it is your troops who have earned our undying gratitude. And the title Bull-Syer belongs to another.”

  “Belonged until you stole it.” Martyshkina nded heavily on the ground and stepped closer. “Listen, I loved the Twins,” she said warmly, and then her voice ged to a low growl, full of barely tained bloodlust. Her helmet closed around the snout, and the warlord spoke on a private el. “For the sake of our blood ties, I will my retribution for your disobedience. Let the big guy ha. But know this. The Wolf Tribe does not fet and rarely fives.” Her cws lightly scratched Bertruda’s helmet. The warlord snatched Elegance from an approag knight-captain, swung it on the air, and ha to the sword saint with a respectable grunt. “They never offered to make us anything. Guess at the end of the day, they viewed us differently. As outsiders.”

  “Or they never had the time,” Bertruda argued. “Those years were hard. The Blessed Mother never gave us any gifts, either.”

  “Was her favor, her hide, her kind word not enough? Were our blood and bodies not enough?” Martyshkina poio where her deceased soldiers were being stripped of their armor, their ammunition already equally shared among the pack.

  The armor was then crudely mounted on soldiers of the Provincial Army who had impnts. Though cumbersome to the point where the soldiers looked like children in adult suits, the battleptes gave them newfound strength and speed to help carry the wounded. Bertruda was about to vomit when a scout unceremoniously sunk her cws into the neck of her dead rade, ripping the head off. The head was then pced in a paext to grenades.

  “Look.” Martyshkina grabbed the back of Bertruda’s head, and she had to nod to stop her Mountain Guard from interfering. “Look what you did. What the stupidity and arrogance of your Order has done. We ’t carry back bodies, so heads will do. This is war, girl! We don’t have time to py in a wounded pride, and the only reason I haven’t murdered you yet and spent time trying to make you uand is because Jahought you had what it takes to be her equal.”

  “She… she did?”

  “Before the duel, yeah. The goof was itg for a ce to test her axe against your spear one day. After that, it was mostly warnings not to skin you alive to avoid tensions.” Martyshkina opened her helmet and spat on the ground.

  Bertruda kept her silence, gesturing for the medic to treat the wounded and not her. It wasn’t disrespect, as she had already uood. They were sisters, and what sister doesn’t fight ue? But a stab in a moment of weakness… I ’t fix it right now. Bertruda shrugged off the guilt ao her troops, giving ands.

  “Collect ammunition from their fallen.” She stared at her dead knights, remembering the cruelty the Horde had inflicted on their noble bodies. “And their heads.”

  “But Sword Saint…” a knight-captain gasped.

  “Do it. Part of them deserves a proper burial,” she said in a steely voice.

  Martyshkina tapped against her helmet, listening to something. Her cloak, undamaged by fmes or bullets, fpped in the wind like a whip when an explosion thundered from the dire of the Knight’s Academy. The ining gale was so great that a sea of fme rolled over the wreckage onto the buildings.

  “Great. Those bastards have found a way to jam us, and without teis or a crawler nearby, we ’t stop them. I do so wish to skin you alive for the troubles, cousin.” Martyshkina’s words on a private el. Then her helmet opened again, and she smiled brightly, patting a passing knight. “Rejoice, everyone! Supreme Warlord Janine…”

  “Don’t joke like that or Warlord Alpha will kill my mom!” Wolf Hag Anissa asked worriedly, and Shaman Impatient One nodded in agreement.

  “Then use shardguime!” Martyshkina hugged both women. “Anyway, Janine has sent us an order. We are to scram while she charges to the military hospital…”

  “What?!” Bertruda cried out. Janine joined Macarius, so why didn’t he brief her?

  “Scram. You know, pick up ys and…”

  “I don’t care for your idiotic jokes, moron!” Bertruda yelled, the barrel of a revolver poi her forehead. “Shoot if you dare, but first listen! They must stay away from the hospital!”

  “Eborate,” Martyshkina demanded. She moved her on aside and fired, killing a hordeman with a rocket uncher who had somehow crept up ohrough the ruins.