15. The Pig Men #2
I watched because looking away wouldn’t help them and might leave me vulnerable. The screaming lasted too long, wet sounds mixing with squeals of pig-man satisfaction.
When it finally stopped, three more children had fed the crows. Ygritte watched from her hiding spot near the eastern wall, face blank. She didn’t help them. She didn’t help anyone. Six kills now, all of them human, and she was barely breathing hard.
I marked her position and filed the information away.
◇ ◆ ◇
Perrin’s fire trap saved us from the next surge.
He’d been collecting lamp oil from the ruined buildings during the brief respite, filling waterskins with fuel. When four Warren Gutters converged on our position, he didn’t try to fight them. He threw the oil at their feet and lit it with a torch.
Pig fat burned hot and fast. The creatures screamed in voices too human for comfort, thrashing as flames consumed fur and flesh. One made it through the barrier, on fire and dying, and Grit ended its suffering with a blade through the eye.
“That won’t work twice,” I said. “They’re not stupid. They’ll see fire and go around.”
“Doesn’t have to work twice. Just had to work once.”
The fire barrier bought us space to breathe, a wall of flame that the pig men wouldn’t cross. Other teams saw the tactic and started improvising their own barriers .
We weren’t winning, but we weren’t dying as fast anymore.
“Movement at the gate,” Grit reported. “Something different coming through.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The Warren Gutters pulled back with sudden coordination, retreating toward the edges of the killing ground. Not fleeing. Clearing space. Making room for something bigger.
Two figures emerged from the southern gate together, and my blood went cold despite the heat from Perrin’s dying flames.
「Elite threat detected. Swine Hexsower. Corruption magic. Threat: Severe.」
「Elite threat detected. Tuskflayer Boilguard. Enhanced durability. Threat: Severe.」
The Hexsower came first, a bloated pig thing wearing a ritual mask sewn directly into its snout.
Runes carved into its hide glowed with sickly green light, and reality bent around its raised hooves.
Behind it, the Boilguard stood seven feet of diseased muscle held together by infected stitching.
Its flesh bulged with tumors. No weapons, because it didn’t need them.
Those arms ended in claws that could tear through steel.
“What the hell is that?” Maise breathed.
“Magic user and bodyguard. The Hexsower does something bad. The Boilguard makes sure we can’t stop it.”
“How do you know?”
Because I’d fought things like this before, in another life.
“Doesn’t matter. Kill the caster before it finishes whatever it’s doing.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The Hexsower completed its first working, and hell bloomed across the killing ground.
Zones of corruption spread from where it stood, invisible patches of wrongness that I could feel more than see. Children stumbled into them without warning and staggered back, retching, as the magic drained strength from their limbs.
“Area denial,” I realized. “It’s cutting off our movement options.”
The pig men advanced behind the corruption zones, herding survivors toward the center of the killing ground.
“We need to coordinate,” Terra’s voice carried from her position. “If we all hit it at once, maybe we can get through the bodyguard.”
“She’s right,” I said to my team. “This isn’t something we can handle alone.”
I made a decision that went against every instinct telling me to protect my own.
“Everyone who can still fight!” My voice carried across the killing ground. “Focus on the caster! Kill the pig with the mask!”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Terra nodded. “You heard him! Coordinated assault! Maise, take the left flank. My team takes the right. Everyone else, keep the Gutters off us!”
The coalition formed in the crucible of desperation.
◇ ◆ ◇
The assault began badly.
The Boilguard intercepted our first rush. Kasimir led the charge because of course he did, and got swatted aside like a child’s toy. He hit stone hard enough to crack ribs.
“Go around it!” I shouted. “Don’t engage the bodyguard directly! ”
The thing was fast for its size. It caught a branch family boy with a backhand that caved in his skull. Another child got too close and lost an arm to claws that punched through leather like paper. But we weren’t alone anymore.
Maise flanked left with Bethany and the surviving desperate children. They didn’t try to fight the Boilguard. They ran past it, heading for the Hexsower while the bodyguard was focused on the center. Terra’s team mirrored the maneuver on the right, Bren leading despite his injuries.
The Boilguard couldn’t protect in two directions at once.
“Grit!” I pointed toward the Hexsower. “Now!”
He appeared from shadows, twin blades singing. The Hexsower squealed in surprise as steel opened its flank, interrupting whatever spell it was weaving.
The Boilguard roared and charged toward the new threat. Which was exactly what we wanted.
With the bodyguard out of position, we hit the Hexsower from every direction.
Maise’s blade took its arm off at the elbow. Bren’s sword opened its belly. Bethany, the crying girl who wasn’t crying anymore, drove her blade through its ritual mask.
The Hexsower died in pieces, corruption magic dissipating as the life left its ruined body.
The Boilguard screamed, a sound of animal grief. It charged back toward us with murder in its eyes. But we were ready now. We were working together.
“Hamstring it!” Terra commanded. “Don’t try to kill it, just slow it down! ”
Blades flashed from every direction. No single attack did significant damage, but together they accumulated. Cuts to tendons, to joints, to the soft tissue.
The Boilguard stumbled, fell to one knee, rose again, stumbled again. Else, fighting one-handed with her shoulder still bleeding, found its throat with a thrust that shouldn’t have been possible with her injuries.
The Boilguard fell.
The elites were dead.
But the Warren Gutters were still coming.
The pig men pressed their advantage while we were exhausted from the elite fight. They hit the coalition from three sides at once. Children died in the confusion. A branch family boy went down under a cleaver blow. One of Terra’s team caught a spear through the gut. The coalition held, barely.
We’d learned to work together now, covering each other’s flanks, calling out threats. The Warren Gutters killed, but they died faster, caught in crossfires and flanking maneuvers.
“They’re thinning!” Maise shouted. “We’re actually thinning them!”
She was right. The pig men’s numbers were dropping. Whatever intelligence drove them seemed to realize the assault was failing. They pulled back toward the southern gate, retreated in good order, leaving us alone with our dead and our exhaustion.
“Is it over?” Bethany asked, her voice raw from screaming. “Are they done?”
I looked toward the southern gate, where darkness swirled with shapes larger than anything we’d faced yet .
Ygritte had relocated again during the elite fight. She was near the tower now, closer to the observers than to the fighting. The scarred man had moved to the lower window, watching her approach with undisguised interest.
Whatever game she was playing, she was about to win or lose it.
“No,” I said, dragging my attention back to the gate. “I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet.”
Something roared in the tunnel.
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 824 | Age 9
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: Proving Grounds, Killing Ground
「Knight of Swords」 — Flickering
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: Find the one who broke Hel’s claim.
The vessel bleeds and still commands. Pig-men died by coalition. The child who won’t stop fighting learned to let others carry weight. Growth often tastes of swallowed pride.