AT THE D’YER WALL

Alton swung a sword at the creature with his right hand, and a torch with his left, the flame flaring in a long arc.

“Keep those fires burning!” he shouted at his soldiers, and barely missed being disemboweled by one of the creatures.

They had come at dusk, scrambling over the repairwork of the wall’s breach, agile as squirrels, as large as shepherd dogs, and bearing quills like a porcupine. Unlike porcupines, they were not content to amble along on their own business. These fought with rabid tenacity, using sharp fangs and claws. They did not like the light, so the soldiers of the breach had built bonfires and bore torches and lanterns to push them back. The creatures cast hideous, bristled shadows against the wall, the fever dreams of Mornhavon the Black brought to life.

The torch hissed as Alton pushed it into the face of the creature. It reared and hesitated, and he thrust his sword into its belly and slashed. Steaming entrails spilled out. In the defenders’ favor, the creatures appeared to be rather dull-witted.

He glanced around camp. Soldiers fought and shouted. Some lay on the ground injured and moaning. No few had quills stuck in them. Captain Wallace fought with his legs bristling after wading into a cluster of the creatures to help one of his overwhelmed warriors. It had to hurt.

Mister Whiskers, one of the wall encampment’s resident gryphons, screeched as he leaped onto a creature, his tawny flank golden in the firelight. Part catamount and part raptor—except when he chose to present himself as a house cat—he had the best ensemble of predatory tools to shred the creature to bits—talons, claws, beak.

Alton braced himself as another of the monsters hurtled out of the dark straight at him. For all their ferocity, they made no roars or growls, but grunted and chuffed with the occasional squeal. This one’s beady green eyes flickered in the light of his torch. He tried to jump aside to avoid its charge, but it deftly turned with him. Once again he employed the torch, but the creature kept coming on. He hacked with his saber, but the quilled hide might as well have been armor. The blade bounced right off. The difficulty was getting at the underbelly where there were no quills, which meant provoking the beasts into rising onto their haunches and facing fangs and claws.

It snapped at his leg and he jumped back. Instead of wearing himself out by uselessly hammering on it, he waited. Waited for it to spring forward, jaw agape, and when it did, he rammed his sword right down its gullet. The creature pushed itself up the blade to reach Alton, but stopped at the guard, before finally slumping and sliding back off onto the ground, dead. Alton withdrew his sword, and backed away, then wiped the mucusy slobber and blood off the blade onto the ground.

When he looked up to see where he could help, he discovered the fighting had quieted significantly. He directed the menders to aid the wounded, and knelt by the side of a young soldier clearly beyond help. He bled from a torn throat.

“Easy,” Alton said softly, not sure if the soldier heard him. “You’re not alone. Easy, now.”

He continued to comfort the soldier and stayed by his side until the light was gone from his eyes. It was the hardest part of this business, losing people like this, and he knew it was only going to get worse. Afterward, he rose to find Captain Wallace standing beside him, his legs still full of quills.

“You need to see the menders, Captain,” he said.

“I will. Just letting the severely wounded get seen to first.” He gazed at the dead soldier and shook his head. “If not for that gryphon, we’d be a lot worse off.”

Alton glanced at Whiskers who tore into the gut of one of the creatures and tugged out entrails, purring happily as he fed. It was Whiskers who had given the encampment the warning it was about to be attacked. The human guards at the breach had been overrun before they could sound the alarm. It was indeed lucky Whiskers had come with him to the encampment for his usual inspection of the wall. He wondered if there was a way to convince him to stay and keep watch, but with a brood of gryphlings to help care for, Alton was doubtful. When the gryphlings were old enough, however?

The captain, he noticed, was shivering. “You need to get to the menders,” he said. “Now.”

Wallace nodded and limped away.

Alton caught sight of Corporal Manning and called to her.

“Sir?” she asked.

“I think we should make another bonfire right in front of the breach. Maybe burn the corpses of these creatures. Think you could organize a crew to do that?”

“I’ll see to it at once.”

The light would be, he thought, a deterrent against more creatures crossing over, and with so many of the wall’s people wounded, help with keeping the breach guarded.

“Take extra care in the handling of the corpses,” he told her. “Their quills, and even their blood, could be poisonous.”

As the corporal set off to attend to the dead creatures, Whiskers took flight with a hunk of meat clenched in his talons, undoubtedly destined for his mate, Midnight, and the gryphlings in Tower of the Heavens. Since the feeding of the young had begun, the tower smelled of rot, and he was constantly cleaning out bits of bone and hide of the various prey animals that were brought in. In one case, he’d found an entire rack of deer antlers. He hung that over the tower’s hearth.

He glanced around at the carnage. There’d been a couple dozen of the beasts, and all were slain. He was unsure of the human casualties, but saw the bodies of at least two others nearby.

When he was satisfied the encampment’s dead were being cared for and a more than adequate pyre prepared for the corpses of the creatures, he set off for the dining hall, which had been turned into a makeshift house of mending. Smells of herbal concoctions competed with that of blood and the stew they’d had for supper. Leese and her assistants were tending bites and clawings, and pulling quills out of the defenders. No one else appeared to have died in the attack. He found Captain Wallace laid out on a table, a blanket drawn to his chest, seemingly deeply asleep with a pile of quills beside him.

Leese left what she had been doing to join him. “We put the captain out,” she said. “He was just too full of quills and it was easier on everyone when it came to removing them.”

Alton could imagine. He was more relieved than ever that he’d made it through the attack unscathed. “Poison in the bites or quills?” He knew Blackveil Forest and its predilection for poisonous flora and fauna well.

“Not that we can yet tell,” she replied, “though we are taking precautions to treat the wounds as if they have been poisoned.”

“Good.” Leese had been, Alton thought, stationed at the wall long enough to know the ways of the forest.

“Is it my imagination,” she said, “or are these incursions growing in frequency?”

“You are not mistaken,” he replied quietly. The forest had become more restless of late, more awake, or at least that was the consensus of those who guarded the breach, and Alton’s own observations.

“And we’re not going to get more help, are we?” Leese asked, just as quietly.

Alton shook his head. D’Yerian forces had been mustered northward to join the king’s army, and additional Sacoridian regulars certainly would not be sent down. They were needed for whatever moves the king was planning to make against Second Empire.

“What are we going to do?” Leese asked.

He looked down at her as she absently wound a bandage into a roll. “What we have been doing, and hope those gryphlings mature quickly and cooperate.” He’d also be sending more reports to the king, imploring him to provide more troops. If there was a concerted invasion, the encampment would offer no impediment. He picked up one of the quills that had been stuck in Captain Wallace. It was as long as his forearm with little barbs that made it stick in the flesh of victims. “Do you need these for any reason?”

She shook her head and raised a questioning eyebrow. He smiled in return. He’d write a report about the incursion for the king. Perhaps including a bundle of quills with it would help bring the seriousness of the situation to the forefront of his mind.

If not? Well, then he and the others would continue to face whatever the forest sent their way on their own. It was all they could do.