"Aim small," Rhoa whispered. Then she squeezed the trigger. A split-second later Old Marjan went flying backwards, a heavy crossbow bolt skewering his left arm and dragging him with it, pinning him to the trunk of the pine tree the villagers had felled.

It didn't slow them down. They kept coming, carrying the log on their shoulders, Old Marjan stumbling right along with them. 

When they first started up the road with the tree, she had shouted at them, warning them. They hadn't heeded anything. Then she wounded several of them, taking out knees and arms and shoulders, and still they kept marching, legs lifting in tandem like some sort of freakish centipede. They shouldn't have been able to move, but they were nearly to the ravine.

"What are you?" Rhoa growled, lowering the crossbow. She had picked off six of the villagers as they brought their pine trunk up the road, but they didn't show any signs of stopping. Now they were preparing to cantilever the thing, pinned Marjan and all, over the dry moat so the rest could reach the wall of the fortress.

Meanwhile, none of the villagers were in the kill square yet, and young Faltes Gaffig and Welson Urchland were down there, holed up behind a spur of rocks, waiting for her to show her face so they could pick her off with their hunting bows.

She needed to get higher. Grabbing a second crossbow, she took the narrow steps up to the roof of the gatehouse at a run, then scuttled forward to one of the merlons between the archer's crenels. Breathing hard, she pressed her back up against sun-warmed stone and began drawing the crossbow string back. She dropped a bolt into the slot, brought the crossbow to her shoulder, then whipped around to stand in the gap of the crenel, focusing the crossbow sights on that spur of rock.

Faltes was the better marksman, so he was first. Rhoa tried not to sob when the bolt plowed him down. She doubted Faltes was in that twisted body, anymore. If he was, he was trying to kill her and everyone else in the fortress. She hauled the other crossbow to her shoulder and switched targets. Alerted to her new position, Welson was drawing his bow, taking aim on her when she fired. A split-second later he flew backward, landing in a crumpled heap several yards from the rocks. He didn't move again, a bolt sticking out of his chest.

Rhoa snatched up both crossbows and ran back down the stairs and out onto the gateway rampart, scooping up the last two quivers of bolts on her way through the gatehouse.

She stopped, slung one of the quivers to the ground, put her back to a merlon, and began rearming the crossbows. 

Her hands paused on the windlass.

The Vanguard had braced the stable doors shut with the poles from the hitching posts and a bench from the lean-to, and was walking backwards away from it. He came to a halt in the middle of the bailey, raised his arms slightly, his fingers drawing invisible symbols in the air. Then he bowed his head and turned his hands palm down. For a moment, nothing happened. Then something stirred the layer of salt dust and straw on the cobblestones at the farthest edges of the courtyard. Whatever it was, it began moving toward him as if he were pulling it in, trickling at first, then becoming a gathering rush, eddying and swirling at his feet, growing stronger, bigger, till it coiled in a faint, glowing sphere around him. 

It was the hum, that ripple of power running through the ground. He was drawing on it, channeling it into himself. 

Rhoa drew in a sharp breath as brilliant scarlet flames suddenly erupted from his hands, racing along the coppery tattoos on his forearms.

None of the stories she had ever heard about the forbidden Vanguard magic had done it justice. It wasn't just a myth they spread to make themselves seem dangerous, it was real, and she was watching it happen right in front of her. 

At that exact moment, the stable doors began splintering outward, bursting open from the inside with a resounding 'crack' that echoed from the fortress walls. The Rotmen had breached the sally port.

The Vanguard lifted his right hand, and a line of that bright red fire sprang up just as the first villager stumbled through the doorway. It was Mother Gaffig, her shrunken body moving in a strange, disjointed way, as though her bones weren't connected. She sank to her knees, a piercing shriek tearing from her throat as the fire dragged her down to the cobblestones.

There was a pause. Several figures appeared in the doorway, milling about, their faces gaunt and nearly unrecognizable. Then, abruptly, they all sprang forward.

The Vanguard bent the red line into a wide circle, trapping three of them, but six more came clambering over their fallen, running on their feet and hands like animals, mouths open, inky spittle trailing down their throats.

Rotmen. They had turned into Rotmen.

Rhoa didn't think. She brought her armed crossbow to her shoulder, sighted on the lead figure lurching toward the Vanguard, and pulled the trigger, then began rearming as fast as she could, her movements numb and efficient even as her fingers shook. She had just shot Tettony's brother through the eye.

The Vanguard glanced quickly over his shoulder at her, then shouted, "How's the wall?"

Crossbow bolt between her teeth, Rhoa turned and looked across the ravine, then swore under her breath and kept cranking away at the windlass. Longstruik had managed to get the log up on one end and the rest of them were maneuvering it to the edge of the gap. They would have it across in a matter of minutes.

In the bailey, the Vanguard made another motion with his hands, gathering red fire between them, then releasing it on the Rotman coming at him, plowing that one to the ground beneath a burning web of Magelines.

Then he drew his sword, whipping it through the air. The blade began to glow, then spark, then it caught, becoming a bright length of fiery steel.

The next Rotman leaped clear of the flames and rose up on its feet, teeth gnashing as it advanced on the Vanguard. It was wearing Boz Ghaffig's green Sheriff's cloak, and it drew a shortsword. The two behind it were armed with axes, a third with a hand scythe; they prowled forward, fanning out into a half- circle.

Rhoa slammed a bolt into the firing slot and hauled the crossbow to her shoulder.

The Vanguard was holding his ground, waiting for them to start the fight.

She squeezed the trigger, and the Rotman in Boz's hunched, misshapen body went sprawling, a bolt through its ribs.

"I can deal with this, Keeper, mind the gate!" The Vanguard shouted, his voice harsh.

With a sharp, "Fine!" Rhoa dropped the nose of the crossbow to the ground and began cranking away at the windlass again.

The two Rotmen with axes – the Farfelter twins, judging by their russet hair – both charged at once, and the Vanguard sidestepped, that flaming sword leaving a smoldering blue trail through the air as he brought it around and down into Morren Farfelter's arm, then spun and slashed Gurren across the back. Both fell, screaming, that blood-red fire twisting over them.

Rhoa slid a bolt into the slot of the crossbow, then turned on her heel and took aim through the archer's crenel next to her. The Rotmen had planted the end of the log on the edge of the ravine. She sighted in on the legs of the woman nearest the drop, and fired.

The woman's knee buckled. She slipped, then toppled backwards into the ravine. There was no scream. The log swayed, but another Rotman took the woman's place.

Rhoa cursed around the shaft of another bolt and pulled the bowstring back.

Inside the fortress, the Vanguard had subdued the Rotman with the scythe blade, but now two more were running at him, one with a thresher's fork, the other with an iron-tipped stave. Rhoa thought she caught movement in the shadowed interior of the stables, and narrowed her eyes, squinting against the wan sunlight and the glow of Magefire.

There was definitely something still in there. Something wearing the deep purple of a First Diviner's robe.

Rhoa's breath froze in her lungs.

There was something different about this Rotman. He wasn't as bent or awkward as the others. He stood straight, his pale, slender hands raised, gliding through elegant figures like he was performing some sort of dance. With every gesture, the Rotmen in front of him moved, stumbling like puppets on strings.

Rokstag wasn't outside. He was inside because he had come up the tunnel. And he was controlling the others.

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than the top of the log struck the outside of the drawbridge.

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