Chapter 46: Breaking Point

The deep winter did not die quietly. It threw one final tantrum.

The heavy snowfall that had blanketed the valley for weeks suddenly stopped. Then, the temperature plummeted so rapidly that the very air seemed to crackle.

Down in the village, the sudden freeze was terrifying. The thick trunks of the pine trees in the nearby forest let out loud, echoing cracks like musket fire as the sap frozen deep inside their bark expanded and snapped the wood.

Giles was in the center of the village square, his breath turning into thick white clouds the second it left his mouth. He was wearing his heaviest dire-wolf fur coat, but he was still shivering violently.

“Check the gate hinges!” Giles roared to the militia, his voice muffled by the wool scarf wrapped around his face. “Make sure the iron isn’t frozen to the wood! Knock the ice loose!”

The men hurried to obey. They struck the iron hinges of the main gate with the wooden handles of their boar spears, shattering the ice that had formed over the metal.

Up on the flat roof of the wooden gatehouse, a group of older children were working frantically. They had three large iron kettles suspended over small, contained coal fires. Inside the kettles, the thick pine sap was bubbling. The intense cold was constantly trying to harden the pitch, forcing the children to stir it continuously with wooden poles to keep it in a liquid state.

Standing just below them, on the wooden walkway near the barred gate, was Elias.

The villagers stomped their feet and rubbed their gloves together to keep the blood flowing to their fingers. Elias, however, stood perfectly still. His dark traveler’s cloak fluttered wildly in the biting wind, but he did not shiver. His hands rested lightly on the pommel of his ancestral sword.

Giles walked past the gatehouse and gave the “Wanderer” an approving nod. The carpenter assumed the mercenary was simply using some advanced technique to ignore the cold. It was comforting to have a hardened veteran standing on the front line.

High above the village, Jack stood in his castle.

The dense energy of his new Iron Core radiated a steady, comfortable heat from the center of his chest, pushing the worst of the freezing chill away from his skin.

He leaned on his cane with one hand. His other hand rested firmly on the release lever of the primary ballista.

Standing immediately to his left was Grim. To Jack’s right stood Bones, wearing his iron armor and holding a lethal bolt.

Jack looked down at the village. His defenses were as perfect as humanly possible. The palisade was solid. The dry moat was deep and filled with wooden spikes. The caltrops were hidden in the snow. They even had artillery on both levels now.

Down on one of the newly built wooden watchtowers inside the village, Barnaby the blacksmith was making final adjustments to the second ballista. It was slightly smaller than Jack’s, built entirely from the melted-down scrap iron of the dead bandits. Three sturdy militiamen stood beside Barnaby, ready to help him haul the heavy iron cranks backward.

They were ready for a pack of starving wolves.

Then, the horn blew.

The young militiaman stationed at the highest point of the gatehouse blew the horn with everything he had. The deep, mournful sound echoed across the frozen valley.

“Movement!” the boy screamed, pointing a shaking finger toward the tree line.

Jack tightened his grip on the release lever. He squinted into the blinding white expanse of the snowfields.

The dark line of the forest began to shake. Whole trees shuddered violently, dumping massive loads of snow from their branches.

But there was no frantic, chaotic sprinting. There was no wave of skinny hounds yapping and tripping over each other.

Instead, a line of massive, dark shapes emerged from the trees.

Jack’s eyes widened slightly.

These were not the scavengers from the lower mountain slopes. The extreme, sudden freeze had finally penetrated the highest, deepest caves of the mountain peaks. It had driven out the true kings of the mountain.

The apex predators of the mountains had arrived.

At the front of the line were snow boars. They were not the size of standard wild pigs. These beasts were easily the size of draft horses, covered in thick white fur. Massive, curved tusks jutted from their lower jaws, looking like yellowed iron plows.

Running silently beside them were elite dire wolves. These were not the desperate pack members; these were the alphas. They were heavily scarred, incredibly muscular, and moved with a coordinated precision.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

And walking heavily behind the boars and wolves were the mountain bears. They stood easily ten feet tall at the shoulder. Their fur was a dark, grizzled gray, so thick and dense it looked like natural armor. Every time one of the bears took a step, the loose snow shuddered around its massive paws.

“By the gods,” Giles whispered down in the village, his grip slipping slightly on his boar spear.

The sheer size of the beasts completely changed the battlefield.

The frontline of giant snow boars lowered their massive heads and charged. They hit the hidden caltrop field perfectly.

But the trap failed.

The iron spikes had been designed to pierce the soft paws of hounds and regular wolves. When a snow boar slammed its hardened, split hooves down onto the snow, the immense weight simply crushed the crude iron caltrops straight down into the frozen dirt. The boars didn’t even break their stride. They trampled the field flat, creating a safe, packed path for the wolves and bears running behind them.

“They are past the spikes!” Giles roared. “Brace for the trench!”

The giant boars reached the edge of the deep moat. Blinded by rage and the push of the pack behind them, the front line of boars tumbled directly over the edge.

They plummeted into the deep pit and slammed onto the sharpened stakes at the bottom. The thick wooden stakes pierced their bellies, and the massive beasts let out horrific squeals of agony that shook the air.

Under normal circumstances, the trench would have broken the siege completely.

But the boars were simply too large. It only took a dozen of the massive beasts falling into the pit to completely fill a section of the trench from the dirt floor all the way up to the edge.

The deep moat was instantly neutralized.

The mountain bears did not hesitate. Showing a terrifying level of intelligence, the massive predators walked directly up to the edge of the trench and stepped onto the groaning, bleeding bodies of the trapped boars. Using the pile of massive flesh as a bridge, the bears casually walked right over the trench and stepped onto the solid ground directly in front of the wooden palisade.

“Fire!” Barnaby bellowed from the village watchtower.