Mercer's lead scout put the recognition flag up twice and got nothing back off the wall.No flame in the tower basin. No patrol working the ground outside the gate, no head over the parapet, not one man where a man should have been standing. The main gate stood a third open, and the left leaf hung wrong — torn off its upper hinge and resting on its own corner in the dirt."Halt the column," Mercer said.The order went back down the line and the wagons stopped where they were, well short of the walls, out past anything the outpost could have covered from the top of them.Kade came up beside Knox. "We're not driving through that?""No.""There's an open gate right there.""That's why," Knox said.Mercer sent scouts along both faces of the wall and put his veterans in a ring around the wagons. In the lead cart the reinforced case sat strapped down under a tarp, and the core inside it had been pulsing harder for the last hour of road. Knox had stopped counting the beats around midday. Th

"That one." The outpost commander got his good arm up and pointed at the nearest flare. "Whatever else you do, that one."Mercer hadn't put the case down since the flares went up. "Why that one.""Because it's not an outpost. It's a watch fort, twenty men on a good month." Vell had to stop and get his breath before he could keep going, and one of his own men held him upright while he did it. "It sits on the fork. Everything coming back off the two forward positions comes through it to reach the west road.""And if it's gone?""Then anybody pulling back has to come round the south of the ridge." Vell looked at Mercer without any hope in his face at all. "Open ground for six miles. No cover, no water, and they'd be doing it with wounded."Mercer looked east at the other two lights. The far one had burned down to almost nothing."Renn.""Sir.""You stay. Twelve men, both feed wagons, half the medicine." He was already walking. "Get that gate working and get these people fed. If anything

"Whose is the boar?"The yard didn't answer for a second. Then a heavy man near the breach put his hand up like he was in a classroom."Mine. Ostrin.""Is it hurt?""No.""Then it doesn't move." Knox was already looking past him. "Ferrow. How many quills?""None, but they come back in about—""How long?""Two hours. Maybe three.""Then for the next two hours you're not a shooter, you're a spotter. Get on the stair and call what you see, and don't let anybody stand under you." Knox turned. "Who's got the gale hound?""Me." A woman with a bandaged hand. "Sennet.""Can it run?""It's the only thing here that can.""Then it doesn't fight today. It carries words." He kept moving. "You'll go to the watch fort and come back. Nothing written, nothing in a tube, nothing in the air."Somewhere behind him a man said, who is this, and somebody else said the academy one, and Knox let both of those go past him.He had thirty-one people and about six minutes.The squads they'd come in with were gone

Bael looked down into the watercourse one more time."Then we don't need you fighting," he said."No.""We need you standing still with your hands on it while we hold this bowl."Knox looked around the ground they had.The watercourse cut through the middle of the shallow basin and ran west toward Fenn's Rise. The banks were low enough for a hound to clear in one jump and steep enough that anything heavier would have to take one of three easier approaches — the road behind them, the open northern slope, or the narrow break where the watercourse bent south.Thirty-one exhausted soldiers.One captain on a litter.A lame ram.A shield wolf already being asked for more than it had.Half a load of quills.One fast hound Knox did not want anywhere near a fight.And somewhere beyond the scrub, dozens of beasts listening to the thing sitting below them.He started pointing."Ostrin. Boar goes on the road."Ostrin looked down into the bowl. "Across it?""Across it. Don't fight anything that st

The column came over the last rise two hours before dark, and Knox stopped walking.He had thought the ravine was a battle. Below him the ground ran flat for a mile before it broke against the outer works of the central line, and every part of it had something on it. Companies stood in blocks behind their banners, spaced wide enough that a beast falling in one wouldn't take the next one with it. Beyond them the wall of summons went out east to west until the dust ate it — boars, plated cats, things with horns Knox had no name for, all of them facing the same direction and none of them still.Then he saw the traffic.Litters came back along the western track four and six at a time, and while they came, fresh squads went out past them the other way, and neither side looked at the other. A handler walked a blinded stag by the jaw. Somebody had marked the medicine tents with white cloth on poles because there were too many now to find by memory."Close your mouth," Bael said, going by him