Every iron stroke punched the air, rolled across snow, slipped down chimneys and into cellars, shook mothers awake and set babies crying in waves
Charlotte heard the third clang while she was still in the doorway, one boot laced, the other flapping, her breath a white flag of panic.
"Hector! Hector! HECTOR!"
The name left her lips as a prayer and a curse at once. She saw him—small, soot-smudged, eyes too wide—spill from the gateway with Abraham half-draped across his back. Relief cracked her chest so hard she tasted iron.
She ran, knees punching through drifts, and scooped her boy up even though his boots were still searching for balance.
"Say something, damn you," her voice thick. "Are you cut? Are you hurt? Say something!"
Hector's teeth chattered. "I-I'm just cold, that's all. They're coming in, Mom. Lots." His voice broke on the last word. Charlotte crushed him to her breast, felt the frantic thump of his heart through layers of clothes, and for a second she forgot the world was ending.
Behind her, Kardinal burst from the armoury shed, his rifle slung, beard bristling with frost.
"Listen to me, Charlotte—go inside the cellar NOW! Take as many of the village kids and women as you can. Make sure it's closed well." He didn't wait. He hooked Abraham by the collar, practically threw the boy toward Charlotte, then grabbed Mutt by the scruff and shoved him that direction too. "Take this dumb lizard with you—he's too young for the wall!"
Other fathers and young men were doing the same: dragging children like sacks of potatoes, kissing foreheads rough and quick, then pushing them toward cellars and houses. No one spoke of fear. It lived in the tremor of gloved hands and in the way women tucked stray hairs back under kerchiefs with mechanical precision.
Comotanos—the campaigner whose voice could sand paint—stood atop the crates in the square, blood running from a gash above his eyebrow where a splinter had caught him.
"Positions! Third section to the wall! Second section to the gatehouse! First section, you are reserve! You know the drill—MOVE LIKE YOU'VE GOT A PURPOSE, LADS!"
Men scattered, boots drumming boardwalks. Some were still buttoning coats. One tripped on his scarf, hit the snow, rolled up running. They carried axes and rifles and a few metic that resembled repeaters—clips of brass cartridges.
Charlotte herded the boys, other children, and women through the house door, slammed it shut with her hip, and dragged the iron bar across. The sound was like a coffin lid. She turned, breast heaving, and saw Abraham's mother Maura already crouched beside the hearth, her fingers white-knuckled around a carbine.
Three other women crowded the kitchen: Gerda with her dead husband's pistol, Avina's older sister loading a crossbow, and Milo's mom wrapping extra scarves around toddlers.
The cellar hatch stood open, a black mouth waiting.
Charlotte knelt and framed Hector's face with her hands. "Listen, little man, my sweetheart—you are going downstairs. You will keep the smaller ones quiet, okay? No questions, no hero nonsense. Your job is to breathe slow and remember every cuss word your father ever taught you. Say them inside your head. Can you do that?"
Hector swallowed, nodded. "Of course, Mom. You can rely on me."
Charlotte's eyes teared up. She pressed a vacuum kiss on Hector's forehead and held him against her chest again. "I know you will." She handed him a candle.
Hector's tears glittered, but he blinked them back hard. It was Cevver's memories of his past-life mother surfacing through six-year-old eyes.
Mutt whined, pressed his flank against them, and Charlotte scratched the Rognarr's chin once—gratitude she didn't have time to voice—then shoved them both, along with the other children, toward the stairs.
As she lowered the hatch, her last image was Kardinal's back disappearing into the swirling white. He raised his rifle, calling her name without turning: "Look after Hector, Char! And please stay safe!"
The hatch thudded. Darkness swallowed them. The candle flame Hector brought down was their only source of light.
---
Outside, the world had become a snow globe shaken by a vengeful child.
Wind howled down from the ridge, driving snow powder so fine it stung like sand. Through that veil came the elves—a slow, deliberate tide. White cloaks billowed and gallou ploughed knee-deep furrows, their antlers interlocked like advancing spears. Their numbers weren't precise; human eyes kept losing count at fifty, then seventy, then a hundred. Every time the wind cleared, more appeared, as if the forest itself were giving birth to these fucks.
Kardinal reached the guard tower. Sergeant Morley stood there, spyglass in hand, face grey.
"Well, damn it," Morley said, handing the glass to Kardinal. "See for yourself, Freeman."
What Kardinal saw turned his guts into slush colder than the snow. Rank upon rank: archers, fire-casters, ice-casters. Banners of green for the Avaloria Queen, white for the Storm Callers. He snapped the spyglass shut.
"How long till they reach the walls?"
Morley spat beetroot juice, crimson against snow. "Ten minutes till bow range. Maybe fifteen till they punch a hole you could drive a barn through."
Comotanos stomped up, eyebrows and mustache turned frosty.
"Wall guns are loaded. The Rognarr kennels are empty—those beasts are already scrapping in the outer alleys. We got maybe sixty fighters who've seen real blood. Rest are farmers who can hold a rifle if we staple it to their hands." He paused, eyes on Kardinal. "What do you say, Freeman? You know these pointy bastards better than any of us."
Kardinal tried to speak. He wasn't seeing the past; he was watching a future that hadn't happened yet. Charlotte's braid snapping in elven grip. Hector's small boots lifted off the ground by white-cloaked shoulders. Both of them disappearing into a forest that never gave kidnapped people back.
The vision lasted the space of a heartbeat, but it hit like a rifle butt to the chest and left the same purple bruise of certainty. Whatever happened next, it had to happen here, with him between that picture and the gate.
He drew breath that felt like broken glass.
"We bleed them on the approach. Tell the ballista group to concentrate on their casters—break their shields even if it takes every bolt. Lead the Rognarrs to screen the gate gap. Buy time for civilians to clear that ice." He turned to a runner. "And somebody gather the gunpowder barrels from the magazine. If they want Edgawter, they'll pay for every splinter. We'll give them a barbecue party—the main dish will be roasted elves."
Morley grinned without humour. "Now we're talking. That's the Freeman spirit. Also, Freeman—remind me about that beer I owe you. If we survive this."
"Like hell I will!" Kardinal replied.
---
The cellar smelled of soil and wine lees and lamp oil.
Hector placed the guttering candle in clay niches. The single room was crammed with every kid the village could shove through the trap door moments ago. Mothers had bolted it shut above their heads; their boots thudded across floorboards like distant drums.
Abraham sat on an overturned crate, elbows on knees, trying to keep his hands from shaking.
Hector crouched opposite. Mutt wedged between them, lizard chin on Hector's lap, tail curled round Abraham's ankles.
The other littles—Avina, Milo, Gollz, Adrian, plus two toddlers—formed a half-circle, eyes wide, breathing in unison like one frightened animal.
Cevver-Hector broke the silence.
"So, General Abraham—how about you remind the troops how you were gonna wipe the floor with these elves? Rope + trip, was it? Sounded real sophisticated."
Abraham flushed. "No, that was different, you dickhead. They were supposed to walk into the trap, not throw fireballs and ice spears at us."
Gollz snorted. "Buzz saw beats rope every time, bro. You brought string to a mage fight."
Abraham shot him a finger. "I don't see you volunteering a better plan, you braindeads."
Hector leaned in, voice low, teasing. "Come on, commander. You drew stick figures with arrows and everything. Had me convinced you'd single-handedly depopulate the elves."
Abraham exhaled shakily. "Yeah, well, turns out my art skills don't stop exploding arrows. You happy now?"
"I'm overjoyed." Hector grinned. "Just checking the legend's still intact."
Avina elbowed Hector. "Quit it, dork. We all shit ourselves. You just happened to face-plant first."
Hector wiped a fleck of bark off his sleeve. "You're making up stuff. I never fell from Mutt. Upon returning, I literally saved Abraham's ass."
Abraham crossed his arms with a hmpf! "Yeah, well, next time don't save me. I can manage by myself!"
"Well, you're welcome, by the way," said Hector.
Milo, always literal, wiped his glasses. "So what's the actual plan now? Moms said stay quiet, but if they break through, we just… sit here?"
With that question, every child in the cellar went still. Even the toddlers felt the weight of that possibility.
Hector's voice dropped, adult-flat.
"The plan is: we listen. If the hatch opens without the password—" he tapped the pistol tucked inside his coat—"I blast anything that comes down the stairs. You lot scatter behind the barrels. There's a drainage tunnel behind the far wall—old smuggler's route from before the Empire pulled back. Crawl through, follow the slope up, comes out by the creek. Don't stop, don't look back. Clear?"
Heads nodded, eyes bigger than candle flames.
Abraham muttered. "Password's 'door's stuck,' yeah?"
"Correct. Anything else, we assume it's those pointy ears."
Gollz whistled softly. "Great. We're all barely six and seven and already running escape drills. Our childhood's so fucked, Hector."
"Tell me about it," Hector sighed. "I don't wanna die again..."
"What was that, Hector?" Avina asked, curious.
"Mm-what? I don't think I said anything."
Above, boots creaked, pots clattered, women's voices rose and fell—mothers pacing the kitchen, loading spare pieces, praying the walls held. Down here, kids clasped hands, pressed shoulders, and waited for the world to decide whether they got to grow up.
"I wish my dad had one of those lizards. He can't even see in the dark," Hector muttered. He wiped snot from his nose, then shoved the pistol Kardinal gave him under his belt so it stopped digging into his ribs. He'd fired two shots at the elf's arrow—four rounds left in the cylinder. Make them count.
"I don't think killing an elf would be much of a great deal, don't you think that too, Blla?"
Above, the first ballista thudded through the floorboards. Dust drifted down like grey snow. Mutt let out a low, confused whuff, but he stayed as a living shield between the boys and whatever might come down the stairs.
Every impact afterward seemed to travel straight into the children's ribs.
Between shots came the deeper, uglier sound of Rognarrs roaring—reptile thunder that rattled jars on shelves.
Charlotte sat apart, carbine across her knees, eyes fixed on the kitchen stair—not the hatch. Each clang of the bell twisted her features a notch tighter.
Maura whispered, "Have you taught your boy to shoot yet?"
Charlotte answered: "I know this might sound crazy—he's six. But he was practicing with his dad every day. His aim is better than his father's. That's good enough for a day like this." Her thumb caressed the hammer. In her mind, she rehearsed the steps: half-cock, paper ball, ram, cap, full-cock. Aim for the centre of the chest—same place she'd put a rabid animal down.
---
OUTSIDE – SAME MOMENT
An elf raised his bow. Crystal shaft humming. Released.
The arrow struck the lead Rognarr dead centre, then exploded in a bloom of white fire that flash-boiled snow. The beast didn't even slow—scales blackened, skin split, red blood steaming. It kept walking. The elf's smile died. The Rognarr simply closed the distance, jaws opened, bit once—hard, the way you snap a biscuit. Head and body arrived on the snow in two separate places.
Then it got messy.
The Rognarrs fanned out, tails whipping arcs of powdered snow. Where scale met elf shield, sparks jumped like grinding steel. A gallou lowered its rack and charged. A Rognarr met it chest to chest, both animals skidding, claws furrowing. Antler tips snapped on the Rognarr's foreclaws; raked the gallou's shoulder, stripping hide in long wet sheets. Red blood poured. The rider tried to bring his bow across. The Rognarr hooked the man's cloak, lifted, slammed him sideways into a pine hard enough to shake cones loose like hail.
For a minute, the ditch was a butcher's floor—steam, red blood, cracked crystal, the wet slap of meat on meat. Humans on the wall watched in stunned silence.
An elf woman in a Storm Caller's cloak drove her staff into the glassed ground. Veins of frost spider-webbed outward, locking Rognarr paws in cuffs of ice. Beasts toppled, skidding on their snouts. Fire-casters followed with sheets of pale flame that didn't cook the scales but boiled the eyes inside the sockets. Two Rognarrs reared, blind, and thrashed into their own handlers.
The line wavered.
Gallou surged through the gaps—thirty of them, riders standing in stirrups, compound bows drawn. They didn't aim at the wall. They vaulted the ditch on momentum alone and thundered straight for the gate.
The ice Hector's deflected arrow had created still held the portcullis half-frozen, half-lowered. The gallou didn't slow. They hit the wooden gates beside it, shoulders crashing, antlers digging. Timbers splintered. The frozen mechanism groaned, cracked, gave way. The portcullis screeched upward, jammed at an angle, and the first riders poured through.
---
INSIDE THE HOUSE – KITCHEN
Charlotte and the women were in the kitchen when the gallou shoulder smashed through the wall beside the barred door. The table skidded across the floor and slammed into Charlotte's hip. Splinters flew like hornets.
Maura fired first, her pistol barking a hole through the gallou's neck. Red mist painted the ceiling. The beast dropped, but the rider came with it—boots hitting the floorboards hard. He rose with a short sword already swinging. Gerda caught the blade on the stock of her dead husband's rifle; wood split, but the strike stopped. She drove the bayonet up under the elf's ribs. He folded with a sound like wet laundry hitting stone.
Avina's sister loosed a crossbow bolt that took a second rider in the thigh. He screamed, tried to pull the shaft free. Charlotte stepped in close, pressed the carbine muzzle to his chest, and fired. The recoil jumped through her arms like a live thing.
Another elf came through the gap. This one carried no blade. He raised a palm, and the air in front of it rippled. The women felt the push—a wall of cold that shoved them backward. Maura hit the stove, breath whoofing out. The elf turned his hand toward the cellar hatch. The wood began to frost, runes crawling like white ants.
Charlotte knew: if that hatch froze solid, the kids would be rats in a barrel.
She brought the carbine up, but the elf's shield flared. The bullet sparked off, useless.
Downstairs, Hector heard the shots. Heard his mother screaming curses. Felt the temperature drop through the floorboards. He looked at Abraham, at the other kids, at the toddlers. Then at Mutt.
He climbed the stairs, pistol in one hand. The candle guttered out behind him; darkness swallowed the cellar. Mutt followed, shoulders filling the narrow stair.
When Hector pushed the hatch, the cold hit his face like a slap. The elf had his back turned, his shield facing the women. Hector put two rounds into the back of that knee, then one through the elf's ass. The motherfucker screamed. The shield in his hands fell.
Charlotte saw the opportunity. She rushed forward, finishing the job with the butt of the carbine—smashing it on the elf's nose and face repeatedly, bone cracking, red blood on white floorboards. She kept hitting the leg.
"Take this and this and this, you piece of shit! HAAAAAAAAA!!!" BAM BAM BAM.
"Mom, stop—it's dead!" Hector yelled.
Outside: more hooves, more voices. The house was breached.
The women stood among broken furniture and cooling bodies, breath steaming, eyes wild. Kardinal would be coming, but not yet.
Hector looked at his mother—blood on her cheek, not hers. "Look, Mom. We hold here. Mutt and I can take the stair. You and the other ladies cover the windows. If they want the cellar, they go through us first."
Charlotte wanted to argue. Saw the set of his jaw. Nodded instead.
Upstairs, the bell kept clanging. Through the broken wall, a crystal staff began to sing—a low, hungry note that vibrated the boards under their boots. The end had arrived, and a six-year-old boy with a lizard was the only bolt left in the lock.
Through the smoke and drifting plaster dust, a silhouette took shape: tall, thin, white cloak edges fluttering like torn flags. Charlotte's finger tightened on the trigger, the carbine muzzle tracking chest-high, her heart a drum against her ribs.
The figure stepped over the dead gallou and the two elves, boots crunching on shattered crockery. When the haze thinned, she saw the cloak was elf-make—but the shoulders under it were too broad, the walk too heavy.
It was Kardinal.
He burst into the kitchen, rifle dangling useless in one hand, his face a map of every nightmare he'd run through on the way home. He took in the scene in a heartbeat—red on the floorboards, splintered table, women breathing like spent horses, and in the middle of it, his boy with a pistol still raised and a Rognarr standing over him like scaled armour.
For a second, he just stood, mouth open, no air coming out.
Then the sob broke—raw, animal, a sound Hector had never heard from his father before. Kardinal dropped the rifle, crossed the wreckage in three strides, and scooped the boy up, arms shaking so hard Hector's boots drummed against his coat. He buried his face in Hector's neck, breath hot, voice cracked to gravel.
"Oh, my little boy. Thank goodness. I thought I lost you. Thought I lost you—"
Hector let the pistol dangle, small hands patting the broad back, feeling the tremor run right through the man. "Calm dowm dad your beard is stabbing my skin ugh!"
Charlotte stepped close, laid a blood-slick hand on Kardinal's shoulder. "We are okay. Our house is cracked but standing. I'm glad to see you alive, Kardinal."
Kardinal lifted his head. Tears cut clean lines through the soot on his cheeks. He looked at the women—Maura, Gerda, Avina's sister—each marked, each upright, each alive. His chest hitched again, not grief this time, just the aftershock of relief too big for skin.
He set Hector down, ran rough thumbs over the bruises blooming on the boy's cheek, then pulled Charlotte in. The three of them formed a small island of heartbeat amid the ruin.
Outside, the crystal staff began its low, hungry song, vibrating beams in the ceiling. But for one breath, the kitchen held only the sound of a family counting each other real by touch.
Kardinal wiped his face with the heel of his hand, picked up the rifle, and looked at the broken wall where white cloaks still moved beyond the smoke.
Then—a scream rolled in from the ridge. Thousands of throats. Iron hooves. The bass thunder of fresh Rognarrs.
Kardinal's head snapped toward the sound. The crystal staff's hungry song was suddenly drowned by a deeper, mechanical growl—engines and horses coming fast.
Outside the broken wall, Morley was shoved back by a gallou kick. He was wrestling an elf rider still mounted on a bleeding beast. The scout raised a blade to drive it through Morley's collar.
A whoosh cut the air like tearing silk.
A stubby steel tube on a horseman's shoulder belched fire. The rocket punched the elf centre-mass, detonated white-hot.
Rider and gallou exploded into red mist. Burning bones and meat chunks thudded across the snow. Morley rolled clear, his face splashed with gore, and screamed skyward:
"AHAHAHA! TAKE THAT, YOU FAGGOTS!!!"
More tubes appeared along the ridge. Were those rocket launchers?, traded to the Empire last spring for timber rights. The Fort garrison must have brought the whole arsenal.
Rockets streaked down like comets, walking fire through the white-cloaked ranks. Each impact blossomed sun-bright. Gallou and elves pinwheeled through the air, antlers flaming.
Kardinal stared, jaw slack.
"That's the Fort reinforcements," he breathed. "WE ARE SAVED, PEOPLE! WE ARE SAVED!!!"
The crystal siege staff screamed, pulling light into itself, ready to answer the new guns.
To be continued.