The hired blades of Caravan-Master Voss were not conscripted slaves. They were the Iron-Oath Company of West-Reach. Hardened veterans who had slaughtered their way across three kingdoms.
Seeing their hounds butchered in the choke-point, the hired blades didn’t panic. They dropped into a disciplined shield-wall. They locked their heavy iron tower shields edge-to-edge across the narrow chimney pipe. Behind the linked iron wall, six repeating hand-giant crossbows snapped into battery, their steel cranks winding with the rhythmic, clockwork click of heavy-duty executioners.
“Cover the breach!” the mercenary sergeant bellowed, his voice muffled behind an iron visor. “Nonstop fire! Punch through the meat until you hit bone! Flank them through the upper grate!”
A hail of heavy iron quarrels slammed into the carcass of the dead hound. The heavy bone and dense rawhide absorbed the first volley, but under the relentless percussion of twelve bolts every five seconds, the barricade was rapidly crumbling into shredded flesh and splintered ribs.
Ren knelt behind the stone pillar. His mind ran at the total limit of multi-tasking capacity.
His main manifest—Nomad Ren—was bleeding from his shoulder, his flint knife notched from bone impacts. The physical pressure in the narrow channel was overwhelming. everyone could feel the sulfur gas, blood, and the acrid smell of burnt hair. If they pulled back now, the hired blades would break through the choke and shoot the fleeing refugees in the back as they tried to climb the upright chimney ahead.
