Upon making it to the East Gate, Mark was met with what looked like an endless horde of monsters throwing themselves at the gate. Many of the monsters were slamming against the gate, causing parts of it to fall apart, while the guards and hunter parties were doing their best to kill off what they could.
"What the actual fuck is happening today . . ."
In the distance, behind the horde of monsters, Mark could see some large wargs herding the monsters toward the gate.
'No, wait, are those just giant wolves?'
It was unmistakable, though initially difficult to tell due to the distance. The fur was sleek and short, not long and matted. And it was grey in color instead of black, which seemed to suck out the surrounding light. These were animals, not monsters.
'Wait, a second . . . why does it seem like there are sparks coming off of their fur . . . ?"
Just as this thought entered his mind, a bolt of electricity struck his shoulder, too fast for him to do anything about. It caused his muscles to spasm briefly, but he recovered quickly and ducked behind a part of the gate to assess the damage.
His shoulder looked fine except for a burnt spot in the warg pelt that made up the bulk of his leather armor on his upper body.
'It looks like that lightning was directed by the studs in the leather . . . but that felt like a warning shot instead of an actual attack. What is up with that sparky wolf?'
The tide of monsters gave him no time to think. He had to act, and he had to do it now. The fighters of the village were already suffering because of his incompetence.
The monsters were still throwing themselves at the wood and stone in a mindless tide. Horned things slammed into the planks until they bled from the impact. Smaller, faster beasts scrambled up the gaps wherever arrow fire had thinned the crush. Guards hacked and stabbed from above. A couple of hunter parties were already falling back inside the wall, dragging wounded with them and trying not to get pulled out of formation.
A section of the gate shuddered as something huge hit it. A brace beam cracked with a sharp report, and one of the supports split down the grain.
"We cannot hold much longer," someone shouted above him.
Mark ground his teeth.
He had not run across half the city to stand here and watch it fail.
He slid away from the little bit of cover he had, then pushed into the gap where the monsters were trying to force their way through the broken timbers. His spear moved first. The point punched through the throat of a boar headed brute that had just shoved its tusks through. He yanked the weapon back, stepped in, and drove the butt into the jaw of another beast, knocking it off the splintered wood and back into its own kind.
"Hold the brace," he snapped at the nearest guard without looking. "I am going out."
"Out where?" the man blurted. "You will be surrounded."
"Out there," Mark said. "Where this is coming from."
He did not wait for an answer.
The gate was already half wrecked. There were gaps big enough for monsters to squeeze through and men to die in. He simply made use of what the enemy had already provided, ducking through one of the breaks while the guards focused on holding the rest shut.
On the other side, the smell hit harder. Blood and wet fur and old rot. Monster stench.
He shoved forward.
The spear let him keep some space, the alloy shaft moving in quick, jolting thrusts. Anything that tried to bite the point died first. A lunging, four-armed beast took the blade in the chest. A dog-sized crawler lost a leg, then its head. He used the corpses as stepping stones, boots finding purchase on flesh as often as mud.
Teeth scraped on his greaves more than once. Claws raked his armor. The warg pelt smoked slightly where another stray spark or minor bolt skimmed off the metal studs, but nothing landed clean. Not like that first one.
Little by little, the pressure of bodies eased. The densest part of the crush remained at the gate, more interested in the walls and the noise than in one man cutting a path away from them.
He broke through to the open killing ground in front of the gate.
The wolves were waiting there.
Up close, they were even worse.
Their eyes locked onto him, not onto the crowd of monsters in front. One peeled away to the right, pacing sideways, cutting off his best angle to circle. Another shifted left. The biggest one stayed in the center, watching him with a stare that felt almost human.
Sparks crawled over their fur again, brighter now.
Mark took two more slow steps, spear ready, eyes locked on the lead wolf.
That was when it hit him. Not physically at first, but in his gut.
A weight settled in his stomach. The feeling of being watched from above, from very far away. The tiny hairs on his neck stood up. Every part of him that had ever swung a hammer near a lightning rod screamed the same word.
Move.
He started to break sideways for a tumbled stone marker a few strides away, legs already committing to the run.
Too late.
The largest wolf stopped pacing. The sparks across its body pulled inward, racing along its pelt in tight, jagged lines. The air around it crackled. Its lips curled back, and it opened its jaws.
Mark saw the world narrow to a straight line between those fangs and his chest.
He tried to throw himself behind the broken pillar.
The lightning arrived first.
There was no sound at first, just sudden white. A straight, solid line of light wrote itself across reality in front of him. For an instant, he could not feel his body at all. There was only that line, the knowledge that it connected his heart to the wolf's mouth, and the flat certainty that this was it.
'So this is how I die. Not at a forge, but in a battle. Fantastic.'
Then something else cut into the path.
A soft cooing sound brushed past his ear. Wrong, gentle, and completely out of place.
The white line shattered.
Mark slammed into the ground behind the half fallen stone, air punching out of his lungs. He lay there, blinking spots out of his vision, waiting for the burn to hit, for nerves to start screaming, for anything that felt like being cooked.
Nothing.
He wiggled his fingers. Toes. Everything responded.
Slowly, carefully, he lifted his head.
There was a bird on his shoulder.
Not an omen bird of legend or a noble sky hunter. Just a bird.
One of its eyes was noticeably bigger than the other, giving it a permanent, confused look. Its feathers looked like they had been stolen from a dozen different species and then glued on by a drunk apprentice. Dirty white next to brown, patches of sickly green, a greasy grey tail, and a couple of random dark blue quills sticking out at odd angles.
It looked like a stupid chicken had made a baby with a zombie parrot and then rolled that baby through a midden heap.
And it was sparking.
Little arcs of electricity crawled along its feathers, hopping from vane to vane, pooling at the tips. Every few seconds the charge seemed to build up too much. The bird puffed up, let out a strangled hiccup, and burped a fat spark that cracked in the air in front of its beak.
Then it cooed again, soft and happy, as if it had not just eaten a killing stroke meant for him.
Mark stared at it.
"What," he said slowly, "the actual fuck are you?"
The bird tilted its head. The bigger eye tried to focus on him, then wandered a little off to the side. After a couple of heartbeats it seemed to lose interest and looked away.
The sound it made next finally clicked in his head.
He had heard that coo before. Dozens of times. In the evenings near his house, when he sat under the elder tree. Up in the branches, hidden where no one could ever get a clear look, something would make that same weird little noise. People joked about a spirit in the tree. Kids threw rocks trying to see it. No one ever had.
Until now.
"You have got to be kidding me," he muttered. "You are the creepy elder tree bird."
The bird hiccuped again and spat out one last spark that popped against the stone by his head. The sparks playing along its feathers slowly faded, leaving only a faint glow at the tips.
It ruffled itself, gave a smug-sounding coo, then hopped off his shoulder. For something that looked that wrecked, its wings worked disgustingly well. It launched into the air with a single strong beat and shot upward in a ragged streak.
It arrowed back toward the village, straight in the direction of the elder tree.
Mark watched it go until it vanished over the wall.
Only when it was gone did he remember the pack of giant lightning wolves that had just tried to erase him.
He pushed up against the broken pillar and peeked around it.
The wolves were staring at him.
The big one's ears were pinned back. The sparks along its fur were gone. It looked less like a hunter lining up a second shot and more like something that had just seen a ghost.
Their gazes flicked from him to the sky where the bird had flown, then back.
Without a sound, the lead wolf turned.
The others followed. The loose line broke and flowed away, grey bodies slipping back over the torn ground and vanishing into the rough terrain beyond bowshot. With their pressure gone, the monsters lost whatever crude direction they had. Some turned on each other. Others fled in random directions.
The siege cracked.
Behind him, he could hear the guards shouting in sudden confusion and relief as the tide started to break.
Mark stayed where he was for a moment, spear still clutched in his hand, heart pounding.
"What," he said one more time, because his brain had not caught up yet, "the actual fuck just happened?"