their horses to a railing outside a decimated tavern, then marched across the plaza. Old men and women, unable to fight, were loitering in doorways, and some residents prised apart their boarded-up windows to see what was going on outside.
Brynd and Lupus halted next to the bomb.
'What do you think it is, sir?' The young Dragoon stepped back, clearly nervous at the presence of the commander.
The fallen object was writhing back and forth in the snow, with tiny arms flailing. About the size of a human baby, its skin was grey and blighted with scale, and its grim, gargoyle-like face was peering back up at them.
It was a living creature.
Suddenly its legs fizzed into flame and it emitted a high-pitched, manic laugh.
'Get away!' Brynd shouted.
The other two soldiers dived instinctively to one side, while Brynd managed to cover his mouth with his cloak. Just then there was a scream and the ground trembled under a deep explosion, and fragments of stone rattled across the plaza.
Brynd looked up to assess the damage, and felt a small shard of glass had cut his knee. He brushed aside the injury and realized Lupus was standing right next to him, looking stunned. They went back to where the creature had detonated, and saw that the Dragoon was dead. His arms and much of his upper torso had been blown away, and his face was unrecognizable – a consequence, perhaps, of possessing no augmentations.
Brynd staggered away from the corpse, brushing cold sweat from his forehead.
'The hell was that thing?' Lupus muttered, still dazed.
'You held your breath, then.' Brynd adjusted his belt and straightened his sabre. 'I think it was… well, some outlandish grey reptile. A living bomb? Sounds ridiculous. I don't understand how it could just explode.'
'Maybe with those wings, it flew at high speed.'
'That would certainly explain why we can't see where it was launched from.'
'It didn't seem to mind killing itself,' Lupus observed. 'In fact, we both saw it laughing just before it detonated, so perhaps it's not sophisticated technology, just some species we don't yet understand. Which, to my mind, makes our military objectives seem a lot more attainable.'
Brynd nodded at this rare heartening thought.
The other Night Guard soldiers arrived, and Nelum slid off his horse to assess the scene.
Brynd related to the others what had happened.
'Suicide bombs?' Nelum muttered, examining the ground, the corpse, Lupus. 'How can such beings exist?'
'It's not that many stages removed from dying for your own nation, is it?' Lupus observed. 'In fact – the motivation is the same.'
'No, I don't agree!' Nelum snapped. 'It is execrable if you ask me. There is no dignity in it, no honour.'
'We'll have time to assess such things later,' Brynd interrupted, noting the expression on Nelum's face. 'Now, to the front line.'
*
As the Night Guard pushed on towards the front line, commandere issued along the ranks to allow the legendary regiment through. Men in Jamur uniforms were carried back, dead or dying, and Brynold himself not to look.
They stationed themselves behind the Sixth Dragoons, the best part of a hundred men blocking this main thoroughfare leading west into the Scarhouse district. Featureless walls towered on either side, sandstone structures, and here the street was about sixty paces wide.
As the noise level increased, reports were passed to him: so far, an estimated nine or ten thousand Imperial soldiers had been killed. This figure shocked Brynd, as there had never been so many casualties in living memory, especially so early into a conflict. The city had become a trauma factory.
Jamur longbow archers were stationed on rooftops, firing deep towards the harbour and into Scarhouse, while closer to the front there were men with shorter bows, sniper units to pick out individuals from amidst the throng. Many of them glanced down and saluted the Night Guard as they deployed. Brynd knew that the very presence of his warriors brought momentary hope to those around them.
A line of soldiers moved forward, their armour rattling as they shifted into line. This was a time to face the facts. There was only a unit of the Regiment of Foot in front of the Sixth Dragoons, and that formed the line of battle. Buildings had collapsed three streets across to either side, leaving only this gaping avenue into which the aggression of both sides was funnelled.
Brynd gave his unit the orders to secure helms and armour and, through the slits of his visor, he watched the men in front begin to move.
Beami stood at a window overlooking an empty street, a visual echo in her mind of the last time she had seen Lupus. In a wood-panelled room behind her, three other cultists were examining their aggregated relics, deciding how they could best be used. A fire raged in the corner, and one of the others told her to close the window to keep the warmth in. She did as she was asked, reluctantly.
What will become of Lupus? she wondered. Is he already dead?
The thought of him going to war left her quite numb, even though at the very start she had been involved in the fighting. And now it was Lupus's turn to prove himself. Beami was so happy that they had rediscovered their love, even if only for such a short time. They had shared only the briefest of goodbyes at the Citadel gates, very aware of the other soldiers present, but in her mind it had seemed he would certainly return shortly.
Only now… now she wasn't so sure.
'Are you going to help us or what?' one of the cultists called out to her, distracting her from gloomy thoughts.
She moved back to the table with its heap of technology, and focused her attention instead on finding a way to help the city.
*
A row of soldiers moved forward.
They watched as the Sixth Dragoons surged forward in organized lines, closing the gap quickly, then their horses went ramming into a unit of Okun positioned at the far end of the street, leaving nothing in front of the Night Guard now except cobbles and blood and snow.
Brynd looked on grimly as the ranks of Dragoons fought within the narrow urban spaces. Horses were speared, ripped open by the claws of the Okun, riders tumbling on to the ground. They rejoined the fray, on foot, only to be hacked apart again. And all the time, arrows continued raining from above, selectively picking off the enemy.
Soldier after soldier fell. The collapse of their unit was rapid, yet a small core of them burst through the opposite ranks, vanishing out of sight, and all Brynd could do was hope for their survival.
There was a brief pause, as the depleted enemy ranks drew up together. Not a single Jamur soldier stood between them and the Night Guard.
A line of rumel, garbed in dull-grey armour, hesitated at the far end of the street as if they could smell cultist trickery on the Imperial weapons. As Okun joined them, they combined into one line with an alarming symmetry, as if they were separate components from one alien entity.
Brynd wondered at the sentience that united them while the enemy staggered forward, with swords raised, every move in sync.
The Night Guard waited, then Brynd delivered some short, sharp commands, his words reverberating among the empty buildings.
They rode straight for the enemy, eating up the intervening distance, first a hundred yards, sixty, thirty, twenty, Brynd kept speeding towards them, constantly thinking Don't look at the dead, don't look at the dead. They barged into the enemy lines, their horses rearing up and savagely trampling the first row of rumel. Bodies crumpled under the impact; heads exploded on the cobbles, then Brynd slipped off sideways from his saddle, as his horse collapsed on the blood-slick streets. The animal struggled to its feet, skidding desperately on the ice, then bolted away to safety.
Other Night Guard had merged into the mass of bodies and relentless screams filled his ears, and then something scraped against Brynd's arm, ripping his uniform, drawing blood. Confident in his augmentations, Brynd
