The elite of her household dropped to their knees, steel ders of unchers slipping over their right shoulders as the defenders intensified their cover fire. Their cousins teased the Order for being overly reliant on melee. But that was just a facade to inspire the peasants. Every knight and foot soldier trained rigorously with every ranged on avaible. The best received additional gifts.

  The missiles locked on target, exploding in a series ht fshes around the predator in the sky, soon f a single massive orb of devastation that sent out a shockwave that swept several fighters off their feet. Without waiting for the result, the brave Mountain Guard were already bato the fray, hag with their axes, while the missile unchers moved bato their geors to be reloaded. Any sed now, the steel wreckage had to fall to the ground, and then maybe they could…

  Bertruda groaned in pain as the remnants of the axe struck upward, cutting through the joint of her armpit guard. As impossible as it may seem, Amal was very much alive. He let his body go limp, trig Bertruda into assuming his demise, but when the smoke cleared, she saw him grasping Elegance’s bde with one hand, coughing madly, and swinging his broken axe again.

  Strong. She tried to break the ohe boy wasn’t a full match for her, power armor or not, but he refused to let go of Elegance. Energy pulses, fired by a passing rider, hissed against her helmet, and nearby soldiers hacked at the back of her leg, stopping the sword saint’s retreat. Above them, the smoke could parted, letting everyone see a humming energy shield around the airship.

  “I will personally behead every single one of your whelps.” Amal smiled into Bertruda’s face, looking past her to where her knights tried to lead the civilians to the defenders. “The Sky has made me immortal! No fme, no bde, no virus harm my blessed body. I ’t be stopped; I am eternal! I am the cruel and unyielding bane of your miserable nation! And you? You bleed, you suffer, you break, while I move o me and prolong your sufferings. Surrender, and I promise you a death.”

  Bertruda screamed as a ser beam sliced across her back, melting the space between the joints of her shoulder and torso. The armor sent an immediate report, notifying the sword saint that the energy bst had eaten her flesh to the bone. And the damned mae took aim at her again as she fought to push the little shit back…

  “If we die today, you will hold a door open for our entrao the P’s halls.” Bertruda’s voied, amplified by the dynamics of her armor. She issued an order to her troops to retreat, intending to serve as a diversion. “You said nothing could harm you. Liar. If that is so, why do you cough?” The sudden in his eyes told her everything she o know.

  She asked herself what Janine would do and followed the intuition, dropping the bastard onto the ground, ign the tingle of pain in her arm. She cast Elegao the Mountain Guard, mournfully saying her farewells to the trusted friend. May it serve the future sword saint as well as it had served her. Then she rammed a paw into Amal’s mouth, ripping away the remains of his axe. Fear briefly rendered him weak, and she used it to push the axe into his mouth, activating her psma discharges at low output.

  Amal spoke true. Either thanks to a power or by the sheer miracle of his biology, Bertruda failed to so much as break his teeth. But as the broken axe began to melt and overheated steel poured down Amal’s throat, the hordeman thrashed violently, smming his fists into the side of her helmet and theuring to his soldiers to fire at her.

  The idea was simple enough. Each time he entered dust and smoke, Amar would cough. New Breeds could survive oxygen deprivation far lohan Normies, but even they were not invulnerable. By p the metal over his nose and mouth, Bertruda forced him to paniow it was only a matter of time before he ihe liquid and sealed his fate.

  g her fangs from the pain of bullets, hearing the aircraft above turning to take aim, and sensing tremors from the steps of the walkers bearing the ser onry, Bertruda ceded their bout would not be this easy. The attackers were uporying to break her hold on their leader, scratg aing her armor with gunfire and bdes. She heard a ser on powered up. For the sake of the fallen, I will….

  Before she finished her prayer, howling drowned out the sounds of battle. Two armored bodies, almost perfectly matched in size, nded on the walker and tore off its legs with their cws. The driver screamed in terror, pleading for mercy. He was given he shaman and the wolf hag tore him in two a to Bertruda, spshing crimson over her armor as they created an uneven zone of death around her.

  Looking at them through the lenses of her knights, Bertruda relutly aowledged a kind of beauty in their primal fury. The two ood in pce even for a sed, fighting not like soldiers but like a force of nature. A cw tore away a jaw from a hordeman, and the Wolfkin was already gone, spreading age several paces away and biting off an arm. Barely b to kill, they preferred to maim, so the screams of the wounded filled the air, f the foes to advance over the still-living bodies of their allies. Cruelty unbridled. But when someone aimed a on at the Ice Fang student… They killed. A paw mercilessly closed on the hordeman’s face, crumpling it. Bertruda reized the duo. Janine’s daughters.

  “Bitches!” a voice thundered across the battlefield, louder than the roars ing from hundreds of throats. “I told you to use ranged ons! Shaman, if you are afraid that a shardgun will dirty your pretty fingers, stay in the rear, where males belong! We are the Wolf Tribe, not some backwoods ice boys swinging swords like lunatics! We are soldiers!”

  Bertruda smiled, receiving not just the video feed of her own troops but also the lenses of the Wolf Tribe. The and els of two groups joined, exging data. Hundreds of Wolfkins filled the roofs, pushed from the alleys, firing their merciless shardguns into the enemy ranks. A few gave spped the hunters on the bacingly, praising their sniper rifles, and charged on, firing and killing, throwing acid grenades, and filling the main street with the wailing of the dead and dying.

  “And, as soldiers, when you kill…” The biggest figure in a long fur cloak appeared on a rooftop.

  Warlord Martyshkina smiled through the narrow opening in her helmet, spinning her revolvers. Desigo fit the paws of a warlord, these instruments of destru were devices of the me, crafted and tailored to pensate for the ck of artifact arms. Their recoil was great enough to demolish a wall after one shot, but Martyshkina’s steady paws never missed. She fired, all twelve shots nding on the flying aircraft.

  The energy shield bubbled into reality and burst, uo hahe ining impacts. The bullets formed gaping yawns in the ship’s sides and its engines, and crimson flowers bloomed over the frame of the steel leviathan. Where dedicated missiles had failed, Martyshkina’s mighty revolvers easily pierced.

  “…you gotta do it in a civilized manner! See?!” The warlord roared, reloading her ons. “Civilization! Progress! Booze… Wait, I mean… Melee is for suckers, bitches! Save our allies! I am far too curious why our cousins ignored us to let them perish! Murder! Maim! More!”

  “Murder! Maim! More!” The Wolfkied her roar, pursuing the retreating foes.

  Amal’s skin paled at the sight of his forces esg, and his pupils colpsed into dots at the horror ing him. The raider pouhe side of Bertruda’s armor with his palms, begging for mercy. She gave him none, keeping the molteal in liquid form in his mouth and pinning him down firmly. And soon he gasped.

  ****

  There was a method to her leadership. Martyshkina had learhe value of restraining chaos from the pits soon after she first met Janine. Every cub had fought for a share of food and milk, but it was Jani who had pointed out that their booty was barely enough to make up for the torn skin hanging loose from their wounds. The two girls had thought long and hard and had e to a brilliant clusion.

  They had domihe smaller girls and males and formed their own pack, sharing the spoils and making sure that no oarved. Sure, there were grumblings iving food to the males, but if there was ohing that uhe youth of the Wolf Tribe, it was the ce to spite the humorless bitches, as the cubs called the shamans, and not be punished for it.

  Martyshkina adhered to this rule her entire life. She feigupidity to prompt her wolf hags to speak up out of for the lower ranks, pointing out errors in their ideas to help them groraising them when they surprised her. Fake stupidity also served to motivate the wolf hags to learn and accept ools of murder, for no one waheir pack to be weak. She threw insults around to invite lower ranks to challenge her and be promoted instead of sitting on their asses out of loyalty. Nothing so motivated a female to improve as the desire to avenge an insult.

  The fruits of her bor proved true here. Even mixed with Wolfkins of another pa irksome y—her wolf hags meticulously pheir advance, cutting off the Gilded Horde’s front liheir explosives brought down buildings and trapped their prey. Scouts used the sewers and underground tuo y ambushes in the rear. Inspired by her example, her dear bitches and whoresons fired from a distance, and that in turn gave a clue to their allies to act the same.

  Martyshkina had to correct her troops only twice today, when a newly promoted scout of the te Zta got too excited in her quest for revenge.

  Zta. Her death saddehe warlord. She didn’t know the woman well, but she was a reliable and loyal soldier with somewhat weird hobbies, and her slow death angered Martyshkina. People died when she was angry.

  “Warlord!” A hunter had barely finished a sentence when she was already near him, putting a paw on the ice boy’s shoulder to keep him calm. Their cousins always tiptoed around the Wolfkins as if they were going to bite them at any opportunity. Which was obvious bullshit. Both parties first had to agree to a dominance duel.

  “Situation?” Martyshkina asked.

  They were standing on the roof, with their backs to a single, miraculously surviving beer billboard. A white bird was flying, ready to snatch a lying of beer. Very apt, and Martyshkina’s throat dried up. She needed a drink.

  The hunter poio the street, where a half-naked man with aviaures was strolling in front of the lined-up priests. The man didn’t seem to care about the fallen aircraft, or that their attack had just been drowned in blood, or that Bertruda was finishing his leader. Broken and rusted forms of the Ice Fang knights y at his legs, and Marty’s eyebrows rose as she saw an Ice Boy rapidly depressing. Fur disappeared, eyes fell deep into the skull, skin was repced by a strange leathery part before it cracked and vanished into motes. Even bourned yellow and colpsed into dust.

  The bird man asked a priest something, and whe an answer, he pointed his fi the priest. A straransparent bubble formed around the holy man, and his whole body twitched i, jerking so rapidly that he was tearing himself. Martyshkina saw the priest’s wrinkled face turn into the perfectly smooth face of an infant and then age again, all in the space of a sed. When the pale white bubble disappeared, a broken, drooling mess fell to the bird man’s legs.

  That’s when the premonition struck a nerve. Martyshkina pushed the hunter back, certain that the bird freak was now aware of her prese wasn’t a power; she’d beeed by the best doctors avaible to the Recmation Army, and they all, in unison, firmed that this phenomenon of hers was reted to her heightened intuition aed from the intense beating she’d taken from Terrifid the subsequent ges in her brain as her body healed.

  She knew when something was about to go down. Whether it was a clever ambush or a sudden strike, no enemy had ever sneaked up on her. And so she aimed and fired both pistols, o the bird freak’s head and the other at a grouo him, calg the trajectory of the debris created by the projectile ahead of time.

  He spun around, pointing a finger, and smiled wickedly as the bullet stopped short of reag him, rapidly aging bato its inal pos. They looked at each other briefly, and his eyes widened in reition, though Martyshkina had never seen the freak before.

  It didn’t matter, as the sed bullet squeezed out the stones from the road a sharp fragments flying with enough force to bury a k of stone in the bare side of his head, damaging the brain. A follow shot stole everything above the neck.

  “Wear a helmet in your life, retard,” Martyshkina ughed, motioning for the priests to pick up their rade and run to the cover of their building, where her pack would meet them.

  She was about to joiruda to get her answers but stopped, somewhat worried that the first bullet she had fired was still in the air, aging backwards. The man was dead; his body y on the ground, and there was no sign eion. Nor was his chest moving. He wasn’t breathing. So what was b her?

  Ravager always taught them to trust their intuition, so Martyshkina called a scout close, grabbed her acid grenades, and threw five at the corpse, bathing it in a caustic cloud. Ba Houstad, Zta had vinced her and Ashbrio apany the two wolf hags to a movie theater that was showing a ssher film. Spitting and cursing, the group had been frothing at the mouth over the sheer stupidity of the protagonists, who simply refused to pick up a hatchet and turn the ever-returning killer into a tasty mush ans after they had khe bastard once again. It was best not to take any ces.