15. The Pig Men
The Pig Men
The brief silence after the snoutbacks died felt like mercy. Survivors caught their breaths, checked wounds, and dragged the still-breathing toward whatever cover remained. Bethany helped Maise bind the gash across her ribs with torn cloth.
I used the pause to count what was left.
Maybe fifty children still stood. The desperate who’d clustered at the center had been winnowed to a dozen, reorganized around Maise and Bethany.
Kasimir’s team held their armory with three fighters instead of four.
Terra maintained discipline despite the wounded among her group.
Wain’s branch family team stayed mobile, the scarred-jaw girl keeping watch while others rested.
Erik’s team remained untouched at the keep entrance. Still watching. Still doing nothing.
“How long until sunset?” Perrin asked, appearing beside me with knives freshly wiped.
I checked the sky through gaps in the ruined walls. The sun had barely moved since we entered the fort. “Hours. Many hours.”
“We won’t last hours.”
“Then we adapt.”
Movement at the southern gate drew my attention. Shapes emerged from the darkness, walking upright on cloven hooves.
“Here they come,” Grit said from somewhere I couldn’t see. “The pig men.”
◇ ◆ ◇
Warren Gutters poured through the gate in a tide of corrupted flesh .
「Warren Gutter. Humanoid. Tool-using. Threat: Moderate. Pack tactics increase danger.」
Pig men walking upright, somewhere between animal and human in the worst possible ways.
Their faces were swine snouts stretched over skulls that weren’t quite pig and weren’t quite human.
Hands that ended in hooves somehow gripped weapons: bone clubs stained with old blood, crude cleavers rusted from use, or spears made from sharpened femurs.
They smelled worse than the beasts, like corpses left too long in summer heat, like meat rotting on the bone.
And they were organized.
The grubsnouts had swarmed with animal instinct. The snoutbacks had charged with beast fury. These things spread across the killing ground in formation, covering angles, supporting each other, moving with the coordination of creatures that had fought together before.
“Shield wall at the armory!” Kasimir bellowed, rallying his diminished team.
“Crossfire positions!” Terra commanded, her voice cutting through the chaos.
Commands flew. Children scrambled. The pig men advanced with patient menace.
They weren’t rushing. They were herding.
“They’re intelligent,” I realized aloud. “Actually intelligent. They’re trying to bunch us up.”
“So what do we do?” Maise demanded.
“We don’t bunch up.”
◇ ◆ ◇
Terra appeared at our position during a lull in the pig men’s advance, wheat-colored hair plastered to her face with sweat and blood.
“We need to coordinate,” she said without preamble. “My team can’t hold the storehouse alone against organized attacks.”
“Neither can we.”
“Then we work together.” She met my eyes with the steady gaze of someone who’d already done the math. “I’ve watched you command. You see things before they happen.”
“I’ve had practice.”
“I don’t care where you got it. I care that it works.” She glanced back toward her team, where Bren was trying to keep their wounded fighter conscious. “I’ve got seven left. You’ve got four plus the desperate ones Maise collected. Together that’s enough to hold a real position.”
“What about the others?”
“Kasimir won’t listen to anyone. Erik won’t fight. Wain’s people are mobile, and they’ll survive or they won’t.” She shrugged. “We work with what we have.”
I studied her for a moment. She was younger than me, this body’s age, but she thought like a commander. Like someone who’d learned that sentiment got soldiers killed.
“What happened to make you like this?” The question escaped before I could stop it.
Terra’s expression didn’t change. “My mother commands the eastern garrison. I grew up watching her send men to die for objectives that mattered. She taught me that leadership means choosing who lives and who doesn’t.”
“Hard lessons. ”
“The only kind worth learning.” She extended her hand. “Alliance?”
I took it. “Alliance.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The first clash happened near the granary where Wain’s team had been holding mobile defense.
Three Warren Gutters rushed their position with coordinated strikes.
The scarred-jaw girl met the first one blade to cleaver, the impact ringing across stone.
She was faster than the pig man, better trained, but it was stronger, and the force of its swing drove her back a step.
Wain flanked with a thrust that took the creature through the ribs.
It squealed and turned on him, cleaver descending toward his skull.
The scarred-jaw girl saved his life with a cut that opened the pig man’s throat, but the motion left her exposed.
The second Warren Gutter drove its spear through her shoulder. She screamed, a sound of pain and fury, and cut the spear shaft with her return stroke. The pig man died a second later, but the damage was done.
“Fall back to Terra’s position!” Wain shouted, grabbing the girl before she collapsed.
Smart. The teams were starting to merge, combining strength instead of dying in isolation.
◇ ◆ ◇
Ygritte killed her fifth victim during the chaos.
A boy from Wain’s retreating group, slower than the others, limped from a wound taken during the snoutback charge. He was trying to reach the coalition forming around Terra’s storehouse. He didn’t make it .
Ygritte’s blade found his spine from a shadow he never thought to check. He dropped, paralyzed, and she stepped over his body without breaking stride. The Warren Gutters descended on him while he was still breathing.
From the tower, the scarred man watched. He moved to a better vantage point, and his attention hadn’t left Ygritte since the first wave. When she killed the paralyzed boy, he nodded once.
Approval.
I filed that away too. Whoever he was, he was interested in Ygritte’s particular brand of survival. That was either very good for her or very bad for everyone else.
◇ ◆ ◇
A Warren Gutter broke toward our position while I was watching the broader battle.
I heard it before I saw it: the wet slap of hooves on blood-soaked stone.
I pivoted to face it, blade coming up in a guard that felt like instinct.
The pig man’s cleaver descended toward my skull.
I caught it on my crossguard, the impact singing up my arms hard enough to rattle teeth.
The creature’s strength was massive, meat and muscle packed onto a frame built for violence.
“Danarre!” Maise’s voice was distant through the ringing in my ears.
I couldn’t answer. The pig man pressed its advantage, forcing me back step by step. Each blow rattled my bones.
I’d fought stronger enemies than this. I’d killed things that made this pig man look like a child’s toy.
But I’d fought them in a body that had decades of training, muscles forged by forty years of war.
This body was nine years old. Strong for its age, fast for its training, but still a child’s body facing adult strength.
The pig man’s cleaver found a gap in my guard. Pain exploded across my left arm, a deep cut that opened flesh to the bone. Blood sprayed, bright red against gray stone.
「Wound sustained. Left arm compromised. Combat effectiveness reduced.」
The Knight Brand flared between my shoulder blades, responding to the damage. Heat surged through my chest, burning away the shock.
The pig man raised its cleaver for the killing stroke.
Maise’s blade took its head from behind.
◇ ◆ ◇
“Are you alive?” She panted, blood splattered across her face. “Please tell me you’re alive.”
“Alive.” I pressed my good hand against the wound, feeling blood pulse between my fingers. “Cut’s deep, but I can still fight.”
“You can barely stand.”
She wasn’t wrong. The world swayed around me, blood loss already making itself felt. But standing and fighting were different things.
“Perrin!” Maise shouted. “Binding cloth, now!”
He appeared from somewhere with strips torn from a dead child’s shirt.
“Hold still,” Perrin muttered, wrapping the wound with quick, efficient motions. “This is bad. You need Morrigan’s healing.”
“She won’t come down until the trial ends. Bind it tight enough to hold and I’ll manage. ”
The binding bit into damaged flesh, pain flaring hot and immediate. The Knight Brand pulsed in response, heat spreading down my arm. Not healing, but something else. Numbing. Sharpening. Making the pain less important than staying alive.
“Can you hold a sword?” Maise asked.
I tested my grip. The fingers responded, sluggish but functional. “I can hold one. Swinging might be optimistic.”
“Then let me and Grit take point. You coordinate from close range.”
Close range. Still fighting, still in the thick of it, but letting others absorb the heaviest blows while I recovered enough to swing properly.
The rage that flooded through me had nothing to do with pride. It was about watching my team carry weight that should have been mine. It was about this child’s body failing me when I needed it most. It was about a body too small for what its owner knew how to do.
The Wolves died because I couldn’t protect them. Seventy-two men and women who trusted me to bring them home, and I buried them in foreign soil because I wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t good enough.
I needed to be stronger.
I needed to break through this wall.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “But the moment I can swing properly, I’m back on point.”
“Deal.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The bear trap team died while we were regrouping .
They never recovered from their cousin’s wound, never managed to find defensible ground after Ygritte picked off their best fighter. The Warren Gutters found them huddled near the northern wall. The pig men didn’t make it quick.