The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 103: Volume 4: Chapter 95 — The Mirror

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Volume 4: Chapter 95 — The Mirror The gate had never been meant to stand open at night. It gaped now like a pulled tooth, iron teeth raised, hinges shuddering every time another formation pounded through. The air beyond tasted of stone, lamp-smoke, fear. Yara crossed the threshold at a walk, not a run. Running was for people who weren’t sure the world would move when they told it to. Harry walked to the right of Yara. Sam stayed at her left shoulder, forced to angle his bulk sideways to clear the arch, plates scraping faintly against stone. Graveclaw and Stonehide shouldered past the jamb with low rumbles, Shadowfang slipping through behind, lighter armor letting him flow where the others had to shove. Inside Eldania, the streets were already a war. Bruno’s voice carried over the chaos, hoarse and steady. “First line HOLD! Wolves, with me! Petra—left avenue. Salt, Whistle, take the right flanking lane. Corvin, keep them knitted!” Corvin didn’t bark orders. He didn’t have to. He padded three strides ahead, chainmail fused into his shoulders and ribs, catching the first firelight from within the city. His head flicked once toward a narrow side street. Petra broke off with two wolves at her back, charging left without a sound. Another flick, another subvocal growl. Salt and Whistle veered right, a tight two-beast wedge diving into a gap between houses. The pack moved like a single thought wearing fourteen bodies. Yara felt the Gem approve. Good pattern. Many teeth. One bite. The garrison had started badly. The first squads they hit were the ones already on duty near the gate, half-formed in panic between “go reinforce the palace” and “hold the breach.” Some obeyed shouted officers and tried to form ranks across the first intersection. Others looked over their shoulders toward the inner city, where the ground was shaking, and a pale shape loomed against the sky beyond the roofs. The slug was now in the crater, somewhere in the palace district. Lodged in the hole it had torn through the courtyard. Yara couldn't see it directly from here, too many buildings between, but she could feel it through the stone: a slow, nauseating throb that had nothing to do with marching feet. Each time it shifted, more ground collapsed beneath its weight. Weaver's sparrows on the higher roofs sent flashes through Yara's head: the slug lodged in the crater, but parts of its bulk reaching, extending over the edges like a pale tide trying to escape. A glimpse of translucent flesh crushing a balcony as it shifted. A spray of masonry. Guards fleeing along a terrace as the slug's bulk sheared the corner off a tower like wet bread, then retracted back into the pit. “Front rank, shields!” Bruno roared. Regulars slammed into place across the street, shields locking together. Enhanced filled the gaps, heavier, harder to move. Behind them, Sam crouched enough to put his head just above the line, a living rampart of scales and plate. The first garrison volley hit them a heartbeat later—short-swords, pikes, a handful of crossbow bolts, all thrown in haste rather than coordinated. “Push,” Yara said. She didn’t shout. Her voice carried anyway. The line moved. Regulars advanced in half-steps, shields grinding forward. Enhanced drove in small wedges, shoving aside any man who broke formation. Above them, Petra and her small detachment crashed into the enemy’s left flank, ripping a hole through their spears. Salt and Whistle hit the right at almost the same moment, the she-wolf low and fast, the big dog heavier, snapping shields out of position. “Back line FIRE!” Bruno called. Archers loosed past the shoulders of the front rank, arrows hissing into the broken pockets Petra and the others had opened. Corvin flowed along the back edge of the melee, adjusting positions with tiny nudges of shoulder and haunch, turning disorder into a precise tearing. Yara watched the shape of it, not the blood. This was what Corvin had been built for. This was what Bruno had been sharpened