Chapter 40: Iron-Core

The dark line of the forest exploded.

Hundreds of starving beasts poured out from between the trees. Driven completely mad by the winter cold and extreme hunger, they moved with the frantic desperation of pure instinct. Massive mountain hounds, giant snow cats with glowing eyes, and heavily muscled dire wolves formed a chaotic, sprinting wave across the snow-covered valley.

They caught the scent of the humans hiding behind the wooden walls, and they simply charged in a straight line toward the village.

Jack watched from the elevated castle grounds. His hands rested on the back of the wooden ballista. The massive siege weapon was already locked and loaded, a bolt sitting perfectly in the groove.

Down in the valley, the front of the beast horde—mostly the smaller, starving hounds—reached the perimeter.

They hit the hidden caltrops.

The snow had completely covered the twisted spikes of iron Barnaby had forged. The moment the leading hounds slammed their paws into the snow, the iron pierced straight through their footpads.

Horrific shrieks of pain shattered the night. The front line of the horde tumbled forward, their momentum completely broken as their legs gave out. But the beasts behind them did not stop. The larger dire wolves simply trampled over the injured hounds, pushing forward blindly toward the wooden palisade.

They reached the edge of the deep trench.

A dire wolf could jump incredibly far on flat ground, but they were running blindly through the dark. Dozens of the leading beasts simply ran straight off the edge of the pit. They plummeted into the darkness and slammed directly onto the sharpened pine logs Giles and the men had buried at the bottom.

The sounds of flesh tearing and wood snapping echoed up to the walls.

“Hold steady!” Giles roared from one of the elevated firing platforms built on the inside of the palisade wall. The village militia was standing safely behind the thick wooden logs, looking down into the darkness. “Let the spikes do the work!”

The strategy was working perfectly. The initial charge was completely shattered by the terrain alone.

But the Beast Tide was massive, and the older dire wolves approaching from the rear heard the screams of their packmates in the pit. They skidded to a halt in the snow, realizing they could not jump the gap.

Then, they smelled the concentrated scent of the humans standing on the platforms near the front gate. They spotted the wide wooden ramp that bridged the trench.

Giles had originally wanted to pull the ramp up to completely isolate the village, but Jack had strictly forbidden it. Leaving the wooden bridge intact was a deliberate tactic. It created a perfect, irresistible funnel for the starving animals. The ramp led directly to Barnaby’s iron-reinforced wooden gate, which was securely locked from the inside.

The horde immediately changed its tactics. Instead of a wide wave, they funneled together. A massive, tightly packed cluster of beasts began sprinting directly up the wooden ramp, intending to smash through the gate by sheer numbers.

Up on the castle grounds, Jack lined up his shot. The ballista was positioned perfectly to aim straight down at the center of the wooden ramp.

He pulled the release lever.

THWACK.

The bolt shot down into the darkness with terrifying speed. It slammed into the tightly packed group of dire wolves charging up the ramp. The sheer force of the massive projectile tore straight through the skull of the leading beast, shattered the ribs of the second, and pinned a third completely to the thick wooden planks of the ramp.

The cluster of beasts broke apart in sudden panic as their packmates were instantly killed.

“Grim,” Jack commanded mentally. “Turn the crank. Bones, load.”

The skeletal wolf obediently clamped its jaws onto the handle of the ballista and began walking in a circle, effortlessly drawing the sinew back until it locked. The tall skeleton, Bones, picked up a fresh bolt and slotted it into the groove.

It was a perfect, mindless assembly line.

A logical part of Jack’s brain knew that sending his powerful, tireless undead down into the valley to fight the beasts directly would be incredibly effective. But he also knew it was completely impossible. Skeletons possessed absolutely no combat instincts. If Jack sent Bones, Rusty, Dusty and Grim into a chaotic melee against hundreds of unpredictable animals, he would have to manually direct every single movement. He would have to think, ‘Swing sword left, step back, bite the throat, duck’ for each individual unit simultaneously.

Doing that in a high-speed battle would completely fry his brain in less than ten seconds. That was why Jack kept them up here on artillery duty. Turning a crank and dropping a bolt into a slot were simple, repetitive tasks that required almost zero mental focus, leaving Jack’s mind clear to aim and fire the weapon.

Jack pulled the lever again. Another bolt shredded a group of mountain hounds trying to push past the dead wolves on the ramp.

Down at the gatehouse, the surviving beasts realized they couldn’t break the iron-reinforced doors. A few massive snow cats, using their sharp claws, began trying to scale the vertical wooden logs of the palisade wall, completely ignoring the locked gate.

“Now! Pour it!” Old Miller shout.

Up on the flat, sturdy roof of the gatehouse watchtower, a group of older boys tipped the iron kettles forward.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

A waterfall of boiling, liquid pine sap poured over the edge. It splashed directly onto the climbing snow cats and the wolves pressing against the base of the wall.

The result was devastating. The sticky, boiling pitch clung instantly to their fur and skin. It could not be shaken off. The burned beasts screamed in absolute agony, falling backward off the wall and thrashing violently in the snow as the hot sap cooked them alive.

For an hour, the defenses held flawlessly. Jack fired the ballista into large groups on the ramp, the moat claimed the blind runners, and the older children poured the sap on the climbers. The human militia didn’t even have to swing a weapon.

But the beast tide seemed entirely endless.

Slowly, the situation began to deteriorate. Down in the trench, the trap was becoming a liability. So many beasts had fallen onto the spikes that the pit was completely filling up with dead bodies. The fresh dire wolves charging out of the forest no longer fell onto sharp wood; they landed safely on the corpses of their packmates.

Using the growing pile of bodies as a fleshy ramp, the living beasts were getting higher and higher. Soon, they would be able to leap directly over the ten-foot palisade and land inside the village.

Jack gripped his cane tightly. He had to act. He couldn’t shoot the ballista into the trench.

He closed his eyes and pushed his mental focus past the safety of the castle grounds, sending his mana reaching out over the village walls and directly down into the bloody mud of the ramp and the trench.