The zero-hour had arrived over Rustgate Outpost.
The gale winds suddenly dropped to an eerie, dead stillness, as if the frozen mountain itself were holding its breath.
Dense sheets of arctic mist hung suspended in the black night, glittering with millions of hovering ice needles.
Along the three-hundred-foot narrow high walkway of the northern wooden wall, eighty settlers stood shoulder to shoulder in the bitter cold.
Not a single torch burned along the breastworks.
Only the pale, unearthly soft glow of the snowdrifts lit the weathered faces of the defenders.
The air smelled of cold pine resin, animal fat grease, and the sharp bitter-salt tang of wet lime plaster.
Giles Croft walked slowly down the central narrow high walkway. He held his brass land-mapper’s slate and a tuned spring scale.
At every firing station, he performed his final pre-engagement system check.
He checked the arrow bundles resting beneath the oiled leather tarpaulins.
Twenty bodkins with chisel tips, ten broadheads, five pitch flares per archer.
He checked the water levels in the overhead gravity water chutes.
The pool tanks were full to the brim with pre-heated water, padded by double layers of sheep fat and straw mats.
He checked the two heavy swivel twisting force giant crossbows on the north and east castle walls.
The hardened spring-steel dogs were engaged solid on the ratchet wheels, the layered ash limbs bowed under eighteen hundred pounds of tension.
Beside the north giant crossbow, Borin and Douglas stood ready with heavy iron pry-bars and spare chisel bolts.
“Cross ring greased and spinning freely, Lord Giles,” Douglas reported in a low, steady voice.
“Height side locked at four degrees.”
Millicent Croft and Rowena walked down the narrow high walkway behind the archers, carrying lidded wooden hampers.
At each station, Millicent handed out warm animal fat cakes and dried apple slices wrapped in butcher paper.
“Eat them now, lads,” Millicent instructed briskly.
“Keep your core calories high.
House Croft has checked every pound of food in the cellar.
We have enough grain and salted fish to outlast this entire winter twice over.
No man fights with fear in his belly tonight.”
The archers took the food with quiet nods, chewing the rich animal fat cakes with relish.
Their hands were steady, their shoulders loose inside their woolen coats.
Beside the central gatehouse, Caleb leaned against his heavy broadaxe, a calm, feral grin stretching across his bearded face.
“Look at the Lord Master builder,” Caleb murmured to Bram in a low, admiring rumble.
“Not a tremor in his fingers. Not even shivering in his boots.
He’s checking his pencil marks like a clerk inspecting a grain shipment.
He isn’t worried about five hundred monsters.
He’s just counting the minutes until their funeral.”
“He built the earth to swallow them,” Bram replied. He tightened his grip on his heavy ash spear.
“A man who can make boiling steam out of river water and white stone has no need to fear wolves.”
Giles stopped at the central gatehouse platform, checking the release gearwork for the main burning lime powder steam water gate.
Beneath the gatehouse floor planks sat Sluice Box A—a heavy timber hopper containing four tons of unhydrated calcium oxide boulders.
Above it hung the gravity water chute from the upper pool. It held four thousand gallons of scalding water heated by the kitchen chimney pipe ducts.
Giles checked the trip-lever and the lead balance weights.
“Four thousand gallons of boiling water released into four tons of burning lime powder will generate twenty-five sea-weights of steam pressure within six seconds,” Giles murmured, inspecting the brass discharge nozzles set into the gate transom.
“The exothermic heat shock will fracture crystal-clear ice armor at a rate of four hundred feet per second.
If the Alpha attempts to breach the main gate, it will step into a fiery volcano bowl.”
At the east corner angle, Sister Teresa stood beside her brass slurry lance. Her hands raised in was silent prayer toward the dark northern bluffs.
“The Lord is our foundation and our castle,” Teresa chanted in a rhythmic whisper.
“He has laid the corner stone in righteousness!
We shall not be moved.”
Giles stepped up onto the north castle wall platform. There, Captain Kenneth Drake stood beside the swivel giant crossbow.
Kenneth looked down at Giles’s slate, his breath pluming thick in the still air.
“All systems working, Lord Giles?” Kenneth asked quietly.
“solid strength across all wooden wall panels is one hundred percent,” Giles reported in his calm, cold and exact flat voice.
“Ammunition reserves stand at fourteen hundred arrows, one hundred heavy giant crossbow bolts, and twelve armed aimed mines.
Commissary stores hold eighty days of food buffer.
Colonist stress indicators show zero percent mental break risk.
In short, the defensive installation is performing entirely within design specifications.
We’re ready to process this mob wave.”
Kenneth blinked, letting out a soft, incredulous chuckle.
“Process a mob wave. You sound like a miller waiting for a cart of rye grain, my lord.”
“The logistics are entirely comparable,” Giles replied without a trace of humor.
“A horde of five hundred beasts represents about forty tons of hostile organic biomass moving along a constrained topographic hall.
By applying appropriate moving pushback, friction traps, and exothermic chemical shock, we will reduce that biomass to usable salvage in under thirty minutes.
It’s an exercise in resource processing.”
Kenneth stared at Giles for a long moment, then smiled. A wide, ferocious grin that showed his crooked teeth.
“Then let’s begin the harvest.”
At the western castle wall, Kroll was inspecting the shields of his veteran hired blades.
Each man carried a heavy box-shaped tall body-shield of layered pine, covered in boiled rawhide and edged with forged iron rims.
“Plant the iron ground-spikes deep into the narrow high walkway timbers,” Kroll ordered his squad in a rough bark.
“When their vanguard leaps against the breastwork, I want a wall of solid pine waiting for them.
Keep your short-swords in your belts until they hit the ditch.
Nobody breaks formation to chase a straggler.”
Kroll looked up as Giles walked past, giving a crisp mercenary salute with his gauntlet.
“The boys are steady, Lord Baron,” Kroll grunted.
“We fought the mountain raiders at Ostrander’s Pass with less than half this gear.
We’ve got ditches, giant crossbows, hot tea, and solid walls.
We’ll hold this ridge until spring if you tell us to.”
“Holding until spring is unnecessary,” Giles replied in his even flat voice.
“We will conclude this working engagement in less than twenty-five minutes.
Maintain defensive discipline and don’t waste ammunition on targets beyond eighty yards.”
Kenneth walked along the narrow high walkway. His voice carried in a low, ringing rhythm to every man and woman on the line.
“Listen to me, men of Rustgate!” Kenneth spoke, not shouting, but with iron weight.
“Back in the capital, they call us broken exiles, beggars, ditch-diggers.
They think we crawled out here to die in the frost.
Look at this wall! Look at these ditches!
You dug this clay with your own blood and sweat.
You forged this iron with your own hands.
We have a Master builder who measures victory down to the inch and feeds your bellies with hot animal fat.
When the horn sounds, no man gives ground!
We break them against this timber!”
A low, deep-throated murmur of agreement swept the line, sixty gauntleted fists banging against the hemlock breastworks.
Beside Kenneth, Dan the archer adjusted his leather wrist guard, glancing down into the ditch where the hidden ward-pads lay buried.
“My father used to say you can’t kill winter with an arrow,” Dan muttered under his breath.
“He said the mountain always takes its tithe of blood.”
Kenneth placed a heavy, iron-shod gauntlet on the youth’s shoulder, squeezing firmly.
“Your father never had a Master builder who calculates friction angles and casts iron bearings out of swamp mud, lad,” Kenneth said in a low, steady growl.
“Tonight, we aren’t paying a tithe.
Tonight, we take the mountain’s pelt.”
Kenneth returned to the north castle wall. He pointed his ten-foot measuring rod toward the edge of the cleared buffer hall.
Out across the white expanse of snow, two hundred and fifty yards distant, the darkness began to burn.
First one pair of cold sapphire eyes appeared at the tree line.
Then ten.
Then fifty.
Then hundreds.
Over five hundred pairs of glowing, pale blue eyes blazed in a solid wall of fire across the entire width of the northern ridge.
The frostblight wolves didn’t bark or whine.
They stood in total, terrifying discipline, their heavy crystal-clear coats glistening under the stars like armor plates of azure ice.
At the center of the formation, the massive Frost Alpha stepped onto a low granite outcropping.
The seven-foot monstrosity threw its horned head back toward the iron sky.
A sound like tearing metal and shattering glaciers tore from its throat. An ancient war screech that set the very bedrock of the valley shaking.
If propelled by a single clockwork trigger. Then, five hundred beasts lowered their shoulders and leaped forward in a timed together, charging wedge.
Their heavy paws tore up chunks of frozen snow as they sped up down the greased sled skidway.
Ten miles per hour.
Fifteen miles per hour.
Twenty-four miles per hour.
The downhill slope and the packed snow hall funneled their massed driving force directly toward the throat of Sector Three.
Through the icy air, the details of the advancing vanguard became terrifyingly clear.
These were not ordinary timber wolves.
These were ancient frostblight abominations, each beast weighing six hundred pounds, with crystal-clear ice horns protruding from their skulls and azure rime encrusting their shoulders like barded plate armor.
Their breath hissed in freezing clouds that drifted over their backs.
They loped with terrifying clockwork exact timing, their heavy claws biting into the packed snow.
Two hundred yards.
One hundred and eighty yards.
The ground-shaking rumble of their massed charge shook through the wooden wall logs, rattling the arrow tips in the quivers.
Down on the narrow high walkway, Kenneth Drake raised his iron-shod measuring rod high above his head.
“Archers!” Kenneth bellowed, his voice echoing off the wooden wall like a bronze trumpet.
“Nock your bodkins!
Hold fire until the lead beast crosses the white painted marker!
Stand firm for Rustgate.”
Along the castle walls, eighty ash bows drew back all at once.
The hemp strings creaked under thirty tons of combined draw weight.
Giles Croft pulled his brass stopwatch from his waistcoat pocket, clicking the release crown with a steady thumb.
“Vanguard closing at thirty-five feet per second,” Giles murmured, his eyes tracking the charging wedge.
“Eighteen seconds to the counterscarp lip.
Hold the line.”