The wiry woman from our unit stepped forward with her spear, its rusted head still serviceable enough. She caught the leading creature in the shoulder, the impact knocking it sideways, but the other two were already past.
One went for Dull. He caught it with a backhand swing of the axe that caved in its skull and sent it spinning into the rubble. The second came for me.
It was faster than the others.
I raised my dagger to block and realized, in the space between heartbeats, that the angle was wrong. The creature's bone blade was coming in from below, not above, an uppercut slash that would gut me if I tried to redirect with my current guard.
So I didn't redirect. I stepped into the strike instead.
The bone blade scored a line of fire across my left side, splitting the fabric of my coat and drawing a thin line of blood. But the step put me inside its reach, closer than its blades could operate effectively, and I drove my elbow into its throat.
