Gwendolyn

Their lieutenant picked a damned inconvenient time to crack her head.

It wasn't really Varnell's fault, but Gwendolyn very deliberately didn't blame Ivan. A man like him was an easy scapegoat; a suspect of choice for orderlies who preferred the appearance of results to actually doing their jobs. Like Inspector Marrel — now stonemason Douglas Raeth — she suspected Ivan was here to get away from some kind of trouble that came from being an easy man to blame.

A bit like her, now that Gwendolyn thought of it.

But she needed someone who could take charge, who could give direction and make smart responses when a surprise like this one happened. And Sergeant Decklan Stroat was in no condition to fill that role. He hid it well, barely winced as he stepped, but one of those creatures had taken a sizeable chuck of flesh out of his thigh, and that kind of pain was a hard thing to focus through. It was more than they deserved that he still stood and fought, but it was less than they needed.

"Steady hands, Roderick," Gwen said as she reloaded. The boy was swinging his weapon as his eyes were pulled by another Gloamtaken falling from three stories up. Three stores, throwing themselves out an ash-bitten window like a corrupt bureau chief in his tower office choosing the easy way out. Except falling from three or four stories — or even the roof of that apartment — didn't kill them.

If their lieutenant hadn't gotten suspicious over their earlier success, it would have gone a lot worse. As it was, though, Gwen didn't think they could hold this position now. And she had sent their best killers into what might be a suicide mission.

And she couldn't make the decisions she needed to while she had to hold the line. She had a knife in her left hand as she reloaded her gun, trying to imitate the captain's technique. Not the big knife that came as part of a soldier's kit, but the largest surgical knife out of her medical bag. And the knife was now so badly covered in the detritus of the long dead, she would not stick it back inside that bag.

For the moment, it was all she could do to keep firing, reloading, and making sure the people around her could do the same.

Another one slipped through their fire, and she let it crash into her, using its own momentum to drive the knife into its chest. The knife bent as the tip was turned aside by a rib, but the flesh parted like thin linen, and the creature toppled past her even before she pulled out the knife.

She shot the next one, reloaded, and managed to shoot another before she had to resort to the knife again. Another one down, another few coming, and they were coming faster despite the speed they fell at. Roderick in particular had seemed to find his calling, covering both Sarina and Fauth with his sword so they could keep to their guns.

The adults around her growing up, orderlies mostly, were fond of saying you never found out who you were until things went wrong. If Roderick lived through this, he'll spend the next decades of his life standing taller than he had before.

Another creature managed to grapple with Ivan before it fell, another one managed to make it close enough for Gwen to use her knife, and another one managed to crash into Decklan's wounded leg. Even if they could keep this up, it would only last until they ran out of ammunition.

And with a tap at the pouch on her belt, Gwen realized that danger was coming with the speed of a runner on the Irondrome. "Fauth," she called out. When he turned to look at her, she pointed back at the town square and stepped out of line.

Fauth followed. "What is it?"

"Run back to the town square," Gwen said. She paused just a moment, looking Fauth hard in the eyes and watched to make sure he understood. "If anyone's there, tell them we need reinforcements. And tell them the Gloamtaken are climbing into the buildings to drop down on us. Make it quick, I'm not sure Mildred will reach the explosives."

Fauth stepped out of line quickly. Perhaps too quickly; his eagerness left a hole in the line that was getting harder and harder to fill. He didn't look back as he ran, and was around the corner quickly enough Gwen only managed one more shot.

Just after she fired, a quick screech like something shattering sounded above her head, and another Gloamtaken fell almost in front of her feet. She crouched down to stab it before the monster could get back up, but paused when the creature didn't move again.

It was already dead. Not only that, it looked like something was attached to its chest. Gwen rolled the creature over, and found someone had tied a small piece of sheet-metal to its chest, and had written on it by scratching letters with a knife.

Door broken. Cannot fix. H & C blocking. M at charges, needs a few minutes. Clearing upper floors.

Gwen wasn't about to mistrust the old shadow's judgment. If Mackaroy thinks they can't plug the doorway, then they couldn't hold this position.

"Lieutenant," she called out to Emily, hoping despite what she knew of hard knocks to the head. "We can't hold much longer. Mildred's at the charges."

"Did Roderick ever go for those extra rounds?" Emily asked

The question frightened Gwen. Their lieutenant must have hit her head fairly hard to have missed that. "He brought back a box, which we've dipped into heavily. We only have a couple of minutes left, way we're burning through it.

"So, the most efficient way of holding them off, is to kick them in the teeth hard enough to make them wonder if they can still chew food," Emily said. Gwen hoped she didn't have to understand how they'd make that happen. And it scared her even more when her lieutenant turned and gave her an disturbingly manic grin. "How's your aim?"

"Decent, why?" Gwen asked.

"Your strange gun focuses the explosion better than a Salamander," Emily explained as she took off her ammo pouch. "The door frame on the right side, see it?"

Gwen nodded. She could see the small doorway, illumined by a pair of lanterns fed with the piped flames of the Spire. "Near side of the frame," Emily said. "That's where I'm going to lob this pouch. You follow behind, and shoot it as soon as I'm clear."

It was mad, but it was the kind of madness that a concussion woudn't inspire. Creative insanity was usually the first victim of a hard knock to the head. "Okay. So how are we getting there?"

"By doing something really stupid," Varnell said. "We use your pouch to clear a path. Drop a half-dozen shots into your pocket, take the pouch off, and hand it to me."

Gwen complied, and set her ammo pouch in Emily's hand. And without any prompt or warning, turned around and lobbed it high over the Gloamtaken.

"Spit and ash," Gwen cursed, putting the gun against her shoulder and her eye down its sights. "Burning ash."

She squeezed the trigger.

Bright blue light flashed behind the Gloamtaken's front ranks. The flash turned her vision to white. Wind hit her like a train had just rushed by, the brim of her hat flapping up. She ducked down and held her hat down with her hand, blinking her eyes quickly and hoping she could see again. Her sight returned in just a couple of heartbeats, though she could still see the shape of the blast.

"Everyone, into the gap," Emily shouted, rushing ahead with her sword out and her Salamander in her left hand. Gwen was one of the last to follow, steps behind Roderick and Ivan who took the call with a ferocious gusto. Roderick's sword was a blur, looking to make up for a lack of experience with sheer effort. Ivan took risks that would make Gwen nervous, letting them get close enough to grapple and using one as a shield to block the next. Between them, Decklan was a solid, forceful presence, quick without looking panicked — his sword-strikes lacked Valen's astonishing skill, Hendrick's duellist flair, or even the practiced ease most of the Rangers showed with the sword. But he was solid, the fundamentals easy in his hands as he slipped from cuts to thrusts. It was that stability that reminded her, surprisingly, of their platoon's missing sergeant.

And that stability helped carry them after Varnell, who threw herself into the fray with a frightening intensity. She laughed as she cut them down, and by exuberance alone dragged them along behind her.

"Aranhall, the door," Emily bellowed, as she tossed the ammo pouch in the air.

The pouch sailed up, then down before Gwen could track the shot. Which, she realized as she tried guessing where it landed, was exactly what Emily intended. She fired where she thought it landed, and when nothing exploded fired again.

"Keep firing, hit the damn thing," Emily yelled as she fought.

Three shots left. Her next shot might have hit too many Gloamtaken in the way, so she tried in the same spot. Her thoughts were already taking her eyes to the ammo pouches the Tolun sisters carried, when her shot erupted in front of the door, exploding out and flinging dust and shrapnel in a wave that ripped Gloamtaken apart as it threw them away.

There weren't many Gloamtaken left standing after the explosion. Gwen almost pitied the stragglers, as Varnell's platoon cut them apart.

Strangely, Emily herself didn't join in. She stopped just about where the explosion happened, pacing back and forth with her left hand on her chin, gesturing with her sword as she thought to herself. "Pile here, get more bodies, but we have to work fast."

"We drove them back, but we went through a lot of ammo to do it," Gwen said, as she stepped back from the line. "We can't keep that up for very long."

"Wecan," the lieutenant disagreed, as she turned away and reached down to one of the fallen Gloamtaken. Varnell took the dead thing by the arm, and began to drag the creature forward. "But you're going to hate me for what I'm about to tell you to do."

Gwendolyn felt her stomach drop. "You mean to do this?"

Varnell's grin was a savage thing, as she dragged one of the creatures forward and piled it onto a small group lying just ahead of them. "Of all the things I'm willing to do right now, this is one of the least shocking. Pile the bodies on. Even if it only ends up being knee high at first, it'll slow them down. And if we time it right, they add to the barrier as they die."

"Blackened heart of the abyss," Gwen swore, but she shouldered her weapon and gripped one of the dead monsters by the wrist. The Glomtaken was a withered husk of a body, dry and emaciated, and surprisingly light. Pulling it along the cobbles was uncomfortably easy, her stomach barely churned as she dragged it to the pile, where Roderick and Ivan took it and lifted it into some of the others.

More Gloamtaken were coming. Dozens, some climbing back to their feet from only being knocked down by the explosions. Others dashed ahead of the bulk of the horde, which was still pressed again the end of the street. Even as Varnell's platoon scrambled to pile more bodies up, barely managing a line three creatures high, more of the creatures startled scrambling over.

And in a sight as grisly grotesque as anything Gwen had ever seen, the small barrier of dead actually brought those monsters to a halt. They fell as they tried to climb over, and ended up trapped as the creatures behind pressed into them.

The dead, grasping and clawing over their own, to kill the living. The sight wrenched at Gwen, her stomach squeezed, sudden and violent. She turned, and threw up everything she had eaten in the last few hours.

It didn't take long. The invasion didn't allow a lot of time for food, water, or sleep. Vomiting brought with it a wave of fatigue that suddenly felt like trying to carry a backpack full of metal underwater. She felt cold, her arms were too heavy to do more than dangle at her sides, and she very nearly dropped her gun.

It was the Tolun sisters, and Decklan, who joined the fray first. The sisters had sheathed their swords, favouring knives as they drove into the cresting wave of dead, dragging creatures forward onto the pile inn order to stab them in the back. Decklan was more careful, picking his targets and thrusting his sword only as far as he needed to. Roderick and Fauth followed Decklan's lead.

Of everyone, the only other person who hesitated, who looked troubled by what they witnessed, was Ivan, who had fallen to his hands and knees, dry-heaving. She stepped beside him just as he wiped his mouth and looked up. His face was as pale — as drained — as any of the Gloamtaken. "Burn me. I didn't imagine seeing this would hit so hard."

"Suspect it'll hit the rest of them fairly soon," Gwen said. She offered Ivan a bottle of water, and was relieved to see him stand up and drink it. "Let me know if you don't keep that down, might be a sign of something more serious."

"You think I'm sick?" Ivan asked.

"I think you still have a heart, and it's breaking," Gwen replied.

"Again," Ivan spat in disgust, and gulped down some more water. "How much more can the City do to us?"

"I don't know," Gwen said, but she pulled out her knife and took one step past Ivan. Her knife, a surgical device until an hour ago, and now a butcher's tool. As apt a metaphor as any for wondering how much of herself would really survive this invasion.

Gwen looked at the knife in her hand, and advanced on the Gloamtaken climbing over the pile of their own dead. "But I'll see it through," she said, as much a promise to herself as to Ivan.