Blood Ties

  “I almost wish it were,” I said. “Because then the stakes would be so much less than they are right now. But I think you’re a smart man, Captain, and I think you know when you’re hearing the truth and when you’re not. Truth always has a more positive ring to it.”

  “There is something to that. Also”—and he glanced toward Page—“I am well aware of the involvement you had with the battle of Bowerstone, Miss. I happened to be standing in the back of the court when you presented your stands on certain issues in opposition to Reaver’s. You were most impressive.”

  “Thank you, Captain—?”

  “Thorpe,” he said with a slight bow. “Captain Thorpe.”

  Page eyed him up and down. “Can’t say I understand why an obvious military man of your breeding is working with a rotter of a warlord like Droogan.”

  “Can’t say I’m entirely pleased with the actions of the individual sitting on the throne in Bowerstone,” replied Thorpe. “Sometimes you just decide to opt for the lesser of two evils. But considering recent events, perhaps I could have made better choices.”

  “Perhaps you could have.”

  “All right, all right,” I interrupted, suddenly feeling a bit impatient with this newly blooming mutual-appreciation society. “Can we please stay focused on the impending fight for our lives?”

  Thorpe cast me a casual glance, then shifted his attention back to Page. “Is he always this jumpy?” he asked.

  “You have no idea. Now listen, I have a plan to deal with these creatures—”

  I knew she was going to fill him in on the suicidal notion of blowing them to hell with all the grenades, so I didn’t have to stand around and listen to it again. Instead, I turned away and quickly followed the citizenry to the armory, where the soldiers were leading them. The citizens looked relieved once they saw me there, and I quickly took charge, however unofficially it might have been, of overseeing the distribution of weapons into the hands of the eager citizenry.

  Trevor leaned in toward me, and growled, “If just one of these bastards so much as looks at me funny, I’m going to authorize my men to gun them all down. And if this so-called threat of yours fails to materialize . . .”

  “You should be so lucky,” I said.

  I walked among them, matching the weaponry up as best I could with the people who wanted to wield them. There were some children as well, goggle-eyed, clearly scared, not grabbing weapons but instead asking if everything was going to be all right. The adults were busy assuring them that yes, absolutely, of course it was all going to be all right. After all, Ben Finn was here, so how could it not be all right? I saw no reason to start listing all the ways that my presence could wind up with things most definitely not being all right.

  I found refuge for the youngest children in a wine cellar at the tavern. We shuttered them in there and warned them not to emerge until one of the adults came for them. The notion of the Half-breeds finding them there was a horrific one, but we had done all we could to ensure their safety. Now it was just a matter of doing everything we could to make sure it wouldn’t come to that.

  Emerging from the tavern, I heard the familiar voice of the gnome speaking from directly above me. “Did I hurt your wee feelings?” he asked.

  I didn’t even bother to look his way. Instead, I kept walking. Seconds later, he was by my side, matching my stride and puffing out his chest so that he would be presenting an air of self-importance that I figured was intended to mock me. At that moment I didn’t care in the slightest. “What’s the matter, Finn?” he said. “Can’t take a joke?”

  “You deliberately lied to me. You set me up in hopes that I’d come riding in, and they’d kill me on the spot.”

  “I knew they wouldn’t.”

  “You knew no such thing.”

  He shrugged. “I figured if they killed you, good for me, and if they didn’t kill you, then good for you, and there’d certainly be plenty of opportunity later for you to be killed.”

  I turned on him, and said, “Have you considered the possibility that just once, just once, it might be nice to actually try and befriend a human instead of treating us all like the enemy?”

  “There are two kinds of humans,” said the gnome. “The kind who’s killed gnomes . . . and the kind who hasn’t killed gnomes yet.”

  “Get away from me,” I said, then returned to my original path.

  “Finn!”

  I stopped. The gnome addressing me by name was an unusual enough moment that it caught my attention. I turned and stared down at him.

  The gnome glared, and said, “I didn’t like that I was starting to like you.”

  I tilted my head. “What?”

  “I’ve being hating humans for more lifetimes than you can count. Hating pissants like yourself. It’s become . . . comfortable. A comfortable way of thinking, hating the lot of you. But you were making me uncomfortable. So I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get back to being what a gnome is all about.”

  “And how’d that work out for you? Not so well as you would have liked? You could apologize, you know, if you’re actually feeling guilty.”

  He glared at me. “Drop dead,” he said.

  I walked away then. I was actually fairly sure that he would ignore me and follow me to the parapets, shouting insults the whole way. But when I glanced behind me moments later, he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Finn!” came a sharp voice that I instantly recognized as Thorpe’s. His beard seemed to be pointing directly at me as if it had taken up some sort of personal issue with me. As he drew near, he lowered his voice, and said, “Page informed me of your plan.”

  “My plan?”

  “Trying to draw the creatures into the square. Blow the hell out of them.”

  “Okay, first of all—”

  He didn’t give me a chance to explain that it was purely Page’s idea, and I did not endorse it at all. “I think you’re not thinking big enough. I’m having my men seed the area with packets of gunpowder to create an even bigger explosion. Right now I’m having my aide inform the rest of the defenders that, if we’re not able to stop the monsters from getting in, then we should try to herd them to the center.”

  “Any idea how we’re going to go about doing that?”

  “There’s really only two ways, isn’t there?” he said mirthlessly. “Either we push at them from the perimeters. Or we find something to put in the middle to attract them in.”

  “You realize,” I said slowly, “that Page is willing to provide that attraction for them. And there’s a very good chance that it’ll work. She was brought past them on the way to Reaver’s arena. They have her scent already, so they might well be drawn to her. Of course, you can say the same for me,” I added after a moment’s hesitation. “So either of us can lure them in if that’s what it takes.”

  “Understand that that is merely the backup plan,” Thorpe said firmly. “My men are going to stop these things before they get over the walls.”

  “What we need are vats of boiling oil that we could either pour down on them or even use to slick up the walls.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Thorpe said. “Three problems with that. First, we don’t have enough of either the vats or oil we’d require. Second, oil-filled vats are incredibly heavy, and the parapets don’t look sturdy enough. And third, I’m reasonably sure we don’t have the time. Listen . . .” And he put up a finger to indicate I should be silent.

  I listened.

  There was no attempt at stealth this time. In the distance, I could hear their howling, their snarls, and their fury. They’d arrive within seconds.

  I scrambled up the ladder to the parapets. As I did so, I glanced toward the main gate, where I saw that the soldiers and the people of Blackholm were working together to reinforce it. They were piling whatever barricades they could in front of it since the creatures had breached it so easily during the previous encounter.

  I saw that Page had taken up a position on the wall. She had two rif
les and a box of what I assumed to be additional ammunition at her feet. She was scanning the woods, looking for a target. Quickly, I moved down the parapet toward her, stepping past Russell, who looked up at me for what I could only think was encouragement. He reached up, and I clasped his hand once firmly, a power grip. One of the warlord’s men was alongside him, and he looked at the two of us with just the slightest trace of mirth. “You two want to be alone? Because I’m sure the oncoming monsters won’t mind waiting if—”

  Releasing my grip on Russell’s hand, I said sharply to the soldier, “You watch his back. His father was a great man. He has potential.”

  The soldier glanced at me mirthlessly. “Yeah? That’s what my father said about me. Look how I turned out.” Then he turned to Russell, who was angling his rifle into position. “Pick your targets carefully. Don’t rush. Make every shot count.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Russell.

  I scanned the horizon line. The sun had not yet set. The Half-breeds could have waited for the cover of darkness to make their assault that much more effective. The fact that they apparently weren’t doing so spoke volumes.

  I drew near Page. She was watching the surrounding forest, and yet, apparently, she was aware of my approach without even looking. “Do you see it?”

  “See what?” I wasn’t really thinking about having to listen, because the howls they were making were easy enough to hear.

  “The trees. The trees are shaking. Get ready!” she shouted, raising her voice so that it carried all along the parapet. “Watch the trees! You can track their progress!”

  She was correct. As the Half-breeds moved, they were simply shoving trees out of their way, banging against them, or ricocheting off them. The branches were shaking violently in response, making them easy to follow.

  “Not exactly the most subtle bunch, are they?” she said, casting me a sidelong glance.

  “They were before, actually. On their first attack, they snuck up on us. We didn’t know they were near until they fired arrows at us.”

  “They were armed?”

  “Some of them. That was probably their human aspect, or maybe Reaver’s influence, which caused them to approach us that way.”

  “So the question is,” she said slowly, “does their lack of human control make them less dangerous . . . or more so?”

  “Let’s hope we keep them at enough of a distance to find out.”

  I took up position next to her. Any moment they would be bursting out into the open area between the edge of the forest and the perimeter of the wall.

  In a low voice, I said, “You know, I think that Captain Thorpe fellow likes you . . .”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  “Right.”

  I had my rifle aimed, ready to start firing shots at the oncoming horde. It was going to be seconds at most before I was going to have to contend with the biggest problem still awaiting me: How in the world was I going to be able to distinguish my brother from the rest of the oncoming wave of hostiles? For that matter, even if I was able to, what was my realistic option? Did I shoot to kill? Shoot to wound? They always say that there is no more dangerous creature than a wounded animal. Did I really need to make my brother even more dangerous than he already was?

  Then, with what seemed like a collective roar, the Half-breeds burst into view, and the time for thinking and second-guessing was past.

  I didn’t even bother to try to figure out which one was William. I just started shooting. Page did the same. From all around me, I heard guns blazing, soldiers and citizens shooting as one in defense of what had become, in however unlikely a fashion, a mutual home for them.

  A number of the first wave of Half-breeds went down, then, to my horror, got right back up again. They’d been hit. I could see that they’d been hit. There was blood trailing from their legs, their chests. One had a piece torn away from his scalp and was shoving the freely flowing blood from his eyes. They were slowed, but they weren’t stopped, and there were more of them coming in right behind them and moving even faster.

  “Stay on them!” Page shouted as she reloaded. She wasn’t talking to anyone in particular; it was just the sort of encouragement that embattled people called out to each other.

  Wave after wave of ammunition rained down upon the oncoming Half-breeds. Meanwhile, I heard them slamming against the gate; they were trying to crash their way in through it, just as before. This time, though, we had been ready for them, and the reinforcements of the gate, as hasty as they had been, appeared to be holding steady.

  Again and again we blasted away, and again and again we managed to knock back more of the Half-breeds. They couldn’t get any traction on the wall the way they had before because there were so many more people with small-arms experience firing away at them. We were managing to beat them back, and the bodies of Half-breeds were starting to pile up. They were able to take more punishment than any human foe could, but bullets were starting to find their hearts or their brains, and that was putting paid to them as quickly as it would a human being.

  I heard concerted howls, barking, but it didn’t come across to me as if they were making random sounds. Instead, it sounded as if orders were being relayed.

  Suddenly, they started peeling away, dropping from the walls and darting this way and that as if they had abruptly lost their taste for combat.

  “It can’t be that easy,” said Page, “it just can’t be.” Yet the way she was saying it carried the implication that she was indeed hoping it in fact could be. The problem was that I didn’t think it likely either.

  My head whipped around toward the gate, and suddenly I realized the one thing that we had overlooked.

  The positioning of the parapets enabled us to shoot straight down at our assailants as they approached us.

  But there were no walkways across the tops of the main entrance. To put them there would have impeded the ability of the main gate to fully swing wide.

  “They’re going to come over the top of the gate!” I shouted, and started running along the perimeter of the walls. “Reposition! Get over there!”

  And suddenly the men who were already on station on the parapets that came closest to the gate were shouting, “They’re here! They’re all here!”

  They started firing like mad, but I knew even before I got there that it wasn’t going to be enough.

  I could see it in my mind’s eye without even having to witness it in real life. The Half-breeds moving en masse, like a great sea of ants, crawling like one great gray shaggy carpet up the gate, sinking their claws into the wood. Our defenders would be able to shoot at them, yes, but only at angles. The creatures at the edges would provide natural cover for the ones toward the middle. It would mean that the entire middle of the swarm would be well protected and able to reach the top before anyone could stop them.

  Page was right behind me, then she shoved me aside and was in front of me, moving faster than I would have thought possible. Impressively, she was reloading her rifle as she went. Even I couldn’t reload on the run. She was so dexterous of fingers that I had to think she missed out on her calling; she would have made a very credible cutpurse.

  Just as we drew within range, it was too late. The Half-breeds came up and over the gate, roaring their defiance as they dropped down upon the soldiers and townspeople who had been attempting to maintain the blockade. The fact that the gate wasn’t opening was no longer a help to us. The gate wasn’t keeping the Half-breeds out; instead, the sturdy barricades were serving to keep us in with them.

  We fired again and again, but accurately targeting the Half-breeds became a hideous problem as they poured over the gate and descended into the midst of the populace. We couldn’t shoot at the Half-breeds without hitting our own people.

  It was now hand-to-hand below us. The soldiers, the citizens who served as soldiers, and even complete civilians—I spotted a man who poured drinks at the local tavern and a woman who I knew to be the schoolteacher—had swords in their hands and
were fighting side by side with the soldiers of the warlord. Blood covered soldier and citizen alike, and still the Half-breeds were attacking.

  Soldiers from the parapets were spilling down the stairs that led to the ground below to aid the others in their fight. Page was a few feet ahead of me, and she was shouting, “Once I’m down there, you drive them toward me! Even over all the bloodshed, they’ll pick up my scent!”

  “I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself!” I yelled right back at her.

  “This isn’t up to you! It’s up to—!”

  And suddenly my brother vaulted over the wall, landing squarely between Page and me. While the others had chosen to focus their attentions on the main gate, William had made his own way around and, during the distraction, had come right up the east wall, and none had been the wiser.

  Page saw him, turned, and brought her pistol right up to his face. She pulled the trigger.

  It clicked hollowly. Misfire. We simply had to start carrying a better class of weapons.

  Her sword was already in her other hand and she started to bring it around, but too slowly, far too slowly in the face of the animal speed that William possessed. He lunged in before the thrust, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her off her feet.

  “William!” I screamed. “Not her! Face me!”

  William spun and slammed her against the interior of the wall. It shuddered from the impact her skull made against it. Her eyes rolled up, and William released her. She slid down and lay on the walkway of the parapet, unmoving, her head slumped to one side.

  He came right at me. I brought my pistol around and fired. Any other opponent would have been a dead man, but William moved with speed that was beyond human, beyond even balverine. He twisted around, dodged the bullet, then leaped through the remaining distance between us. Before I could fire again, he batted aside my pistol. It flew from my hand and off the parapet.

  My rifle, Vanessa, was still slung over my back, my sword in its scabbard.

  I grabbed for the sword, cleared it from the scabbard halfway, then William was upon me. He slammed into me, drove me backwards, knocking me off my feet. I fell heavily, and William pressed his advantage, landing atop me, snarling into my face, the foul stench of his animal breath washing over me with such force that I thought that alone was going to kill me.