Reach the bridge. Ganbaatar pushed himself back onto his shaking legs, his head aching from the explosion that had toppled him. See the world, they said. Join the glorious conquest; serve the deity. Rubbish. He had seen how a shell reduced four experienced riders to a bloody mix of smelly meat and metal, and he was no longer sure why he had joined the Horde. The bridge. The survival is there. There we can fight.

  He limped toward the destination, across the field full of devastation. Death rained down from the walls, death was coming from the ranks of the defenders, and death waited for him behind if he chickened out and ran. He, a Pureblood, shrieked like a common bondsman after two of his friends lost their heads to sniper fire. Blisters covered his legs and armpits, turning every march into a never-ending torture, and still Mad Hatter had refused to give them any respite, and Iron Lord and Brood Lord obeyed her every whim.

  Smoke, pale and red, covered the vast field, making it difficult to navigate despite the aid of his HUD. At least a dozen hordemen lost themselves in it, their minds shell-shocked, and fell to their deaths in the cleft cut by the demigods. The storm continued for an hour, and four times the Gilded Horde swept to the gates and was repulsed, retreating and returning in a tide.

  Iron Lord wasn’t a coward. Ganbaatar gave the man that much. He accompanied them on every charge, his give reaping dozens, his cannons massacring more, but when his protective field burst under concentrated fire, the man had to rejoin the main force and order another assault.

  Remnants of shattered war machines littered the ruined field outside the city, providing a modicum of cover as well as a deadly trap and moat of sorts. Ganbaatar’s cousin, who had roped him into this endeavor, had disappeared after a generator exploded, engulfing the woman while they crept through the metal maze. Occasionally, he noticed the wounded and eagerly reported back, hardly believing his eyes as the priests evacuated them.

  A shield carrier pushed its bulk through the steel forest, and hundreds clung to its underside. Ganbaatar joined them, only to be thrown aside as the humming field popped under intense bombardment, shells riddling the vehicle full of holes. He got up, found his weapon, and helped another hordeman.

  Scary. So scary. I want to go home. The insistent thought pulsed in his head; he longed to see his family, even that arrogant bastard of a brother, but he stubbornly headed for Houstad. There was no retreating; treads and legs of his allies would trample him underfoot. Ganbaatar teared up as the leading tank ahead exploded, dousing four soldiers, including the one he helped, abze. Join the raid! Become a warrior! Bring food and concubines to the cn! Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it! He cursed himself for listening to his cousin. What if he had been born with a spark of the divine? He had always had a knack for craftsmanship, and artisans were never short of orders in the steppes. Sky almighty, even his hobby of making musical instruments brought him a steady income.

  Survive. Don’t want to die. There was a certain music here: deafening tank bsts, the wail of falling shells, the roar of rockets and human screams. The cacophony drowned many commands. But the bridge loomed ahead, enticing the hordemen with its retive safety from the batteries’ thinning scything. Get there. Win the battle and return home. A pox on his mother’s curses, a spit on his cousin’s dream, he’ll never let any delusions make him a conqueror again. He never even beat sves at home; why did he give up his trade?

  He tried to help another fallen Pureblood. Only the woman’s upper body was lifted; her legs and waist remained on the ground, and the insides spilled out. Ganbaatar vomited inside his helmet and ventured on, shaking once as a bullet ricocheted off his pauldron. The initial front line had been filled by the bondsmen and low-ranked Purebloods like him, but as the battle raged on, Malformed, Dirtybloods, and the core of the Purebloods joined in. Tremors from the north rocked the ground, and pilrs of va spurted around the distant mountain range as if the pnet itself bled, convulsing from the demons cshing at its core. Scared. Dad, Mom, brothers, sisters, I am so scared. Save me, take me away. An enemy soldier emerged from the trench, taking aim at the advancing hordeman. Please.

  A bullet struck the soldier’s helmet, splitting it open. The ruined facepte exposed two wide eyes that mirrored Ganbaatar’s own expression. It took him a second to understand that he had fired first. The insanity of it confused the young man; he had wanted to ask that boy if he too was interested in crafting when the soldier raised his rifle and the training took over. Ganbaatar’s cleaver crushed into the soldier’s neck, failing to penetrate cords and fibers, but the force of his blow broke the boy’s neck. My sixteenth kill today. His mouth twisted, and the young man stifled a psychotic giggle at the understanding that his unnamed enemy probably had a family to feed as well.

  All distinctions between Purebloods, Dirtybloods, bondsmen, and Malformed disappeared on this battlefield. They were comrades, helping each other and trying to kill their counterparts on the opposite side. Madness. What sense does that make? Don’t think. War is hell. Break through the gate. Win. Enter the city. Be safe. Then wage no war ever again. He joined the flow of hordemen, scared shitless over the possibility of getting maimed and paralyzed. Who would feed him then? What would be the point of living?

  Explosions covered the ruined road leading to the bridge’s ridge, and he pushed through it, feeling every shockwave reverberating in his poor bones. A Malformed ahead of him toppled; a spiked mace broke his neck. The Recimers met them at the base of the bridge, Normies and Abnormals. Forced out of their trenches, their bunkers, dots, and pillboxes leveled, the defenders formed makeshift barricades, piling on dead bodies, and fired from that disgusting cover. The Abnormals leapt over the wall of corpses, stifling the thunderous charge head-on.

  Ganbaatar coughed blood after a bullet pierced his chest pte and tore off a nipple. He raised his left hand and fired the wrist-mounted autocannon, hearing the whine of the weapon’s three barrels. His rounds knocked two defenders back, their visors repced by gaping holes. I won’t die or become disabled! He advanced, wreathed in fmes of incendiary grenades and sparks from bullets notching his armor. A blend of human body and machinery tried to bar his path, but a Malformed tackled her, and he cleaved through her pistons of the legs, firing into the head until the soldier dropped dead. He nearly took another soldier’s head with a horizontal ssh, stopping after she dropped her weapon.

  Her blue, tired eyes, sharing the same deep fear as his, saved her. One and the same. Ganbaatar ughed madly, kicked the fool aside to retive safety, and walked on. People were simir everywhere. Everyone wanted to live! But he must prevail.

  The bridge had been reduced to little more than a pile of rubble in the previous onsughts, and Ganbaatar cmbered over the rocks, cutting his way through the defenders, heart pounding. A burst of machine gun fire flew overhead, liquidating the faces of two Purebloods, and the next burst rumbled over Ganbaatar’s shoulder, destroying the emblem of honor given to him by Iron Lord Khan himself. A group of Abnormals and Normies, led by a man wielding a mace and a rifle. The hordemen crashed into them, and the young man faced the mace flying at his face. He had seen that bastard bashing heads before.

  He would’ve liked to say that he was brave and skilled, but in actuality he wet himself and rgely unintentionally blocked the spiked mace with his cleaver, saving his visor. He rammed his shoulder into the man, smming his back into a rail and bending it. A battle raged around them; men and women shot and stabbed; cws, pincers, and talons sshed and stabbed; hands, tendrils, and other appendages crumbled and choked; and Ganbaatar barely recognized any of them. Walkers activated thrusters and took flight, joining the Abnormals blessed with gifts in attacking the upper levels.

  Alone. Everyone I knew died.

  He caught the rifle, breaking it, and the Recimer twisted out of his hold, stepping on the side of Ganbaatar’s knee, buckling the entire leg. The mace nded briefly on a gash in his armor, and the hordeman stumbled in pain as the spikes scraped against his ribs. He raised his cleaver quickly enough to block the following hammering and save his head.

  I can’t die! My family is waiting for me! Panic turned to adrenaline, and he let go of the ruined rifle, standing through the hail of blows, matching each blow. He headbutted, shattering his own visor and the enemy’s helmet. The sound of the bastard’s nose breaking was music to his ears. The young man shuddered, hearing the tear of his own armor. A golden cwed gauntlet had covered the Recimer’s hand. I still haven’t gifted Toragana that neckce I made! It was a simple, yet beautiful chain, a silver chain holding a locket inid with jade to accentuate her sweet eyes. He didn’t wait for another swing of the gauntlet, rammed his fingers into the gray eyes and stabbed the man in the chest, twisting to rupture the lung.

  A tank rumbled past him, smashing the damaged barricades, and around Ganbaatar, the soldiers were overwhelming defenders. He sighed, twitching from his wounds and observing how the first tank was closing on the gap leading inside the city. Survived.

  From the above, a great gray figure nded, throwing up bodies and debris with its sheer weight. In one hand it held a ruined wreckage of a walker, corpses of flying abnormals fell in its wake; from its opened jaws dripped blood of the sin; and to her back was fastened a huge axe, more resembling a fang on a stick. The monster kicked, lifting the tank to Ganbaatar’s disbelief. The war machine weighing 200 hundred tons briefly stood upright, and the same leg cerated its underbelly. Then the monster fired its psma rifle thrice into the interior, and a spsh of fmes and a downpour of molten metal mingled with steam briefly hid her.

  The ammunition exploded, tossing soldiers of both sides off their feet. Through the burning carcass, it stepped out, crimson lenses burning, searching for victims and the axe now in hand.

  “Step forth, she who dares! Face your doom!” The devil roared, basking in the hellfire, and proudly raised the axe, pointing it at the hordemen. Unharmed, aside from several notches on the armor. “I shall spill your entrails and dine upon them.” A brave raider closed in on it and was cleaved in two. “Your bones will be dusted by my paws. And your meat…” It bit another soldier with unimaginable speed and closed its jaws on the still struggling body. With a soft crack, a pair of gauntlets fell to the ground as the legs were sucked into the insatiable maw. “…Shall sustain me!”

  The entrance! Ganbaatar panicked. That damned creature had cleared the upper levels, and the intact defense turrets and rows of soldiers began taking aim at the gathered crowd. His comrades shared his concerns and charged the lone figure. The whirlwind of steel and psma met them; the axe parried bullets, swatted aside grenades and rockets, and opened bodies as if they were protected by mere paper. Jaws snapped, snatching limbs, giant legs stomped, breaking bones. Violence incarnate passed through the disorganized ranks, and no one could stand against it. It traversed like a force of nature, hungrily gulping soldiers and spitting out mangled corpses. It clubbed them with its own psma rifle, not bothering to reload, and never stopped ughing.

  A Malformed the size of a truck knuckle-walked to the creature and caught the axe on its boned wrist. The Malformed mewled and gurgled, trying to say something. Acid sludge spewed from the mouths on its shoulders, hissing across the gray surface and melting bodies. The rge fist raised, and the Malformed screamed in its mewling voice, his kneecap destroyed by a cwed foot. The creature freed its axe and lodged it under the square jaw; the edge went into the brain, stealing the light from the fighter’s eyes.

  All in the span of a heartbeat. Two priests swooped from above, pointing their crooked, taloned fingers at the doggie.

  It grunted, withstanding the telekinetic pressure that formed a perfectly round circle of dented reinforced concrete around it, and a tank hurried to fire at the immobilized target. Bursts of gunfire from the defenders’ ranks vaporized both priests, and the doggie sliced through the shell. A single shot from her psma rifle traveled through the tank’s barrel, exploding ammunition and murdering the crew.

  “Will anyone provide me with a decent challenge?” The monster asked. “Or is facing unarmed innocents all you are good for?!”

  I must survive! Sky, watch over me! Ganbaatar joined the desperate charge. They had to remove that thing out of the entrance and inside before they would get mowed down. There was no other way; it was way too te to retreat!

  Mowed down they ended up being. Men, women, mutants, machines—none could pass this war incarnate. The doggie no longer fired, wielding its axe with economic swings, harvesting lives with every move. He had faced her white- and bck-furred kin before, but this shared no hints of the innate ferocity. It calcuted, stepping aside, dodging bsts and missiles, countering with brutal force. The legs woven their own web of death, cwing through the solid ptes with sickening ease. Ganbaatar, daring to believe in the impossible, brought his cleaver to the thing’s back….

  Agony. His eyelids opened beyond limits, tearing the skin. So much pain. He found himself flying in an arc. Everything hurt. He got spttered against the wall, slipping back and leaving a trail of blood. When he hit the ground, he dared to raise his head, freaking out at the wide gash that opened from his groin to his upper chest. Organs pulsed in the wound, and a gush of air added to his pain.

  More tremors, both from the khatun’s duel and from the artillery bombardment, shook the battlefield, and Ganbaatar cried out; his exposed organs jumping up and down with each passing wave. On the crest of the ruined battle, the massacre began in earnest. More howls joined the monster’s, and doggies climbed out from underneath the ruins, from their hiding spots, and swarmed the exposed soldiers. It was a trap. And they walked into it. At least his blisters and exhaustion no longer bothered him. Maybe he could even take a little nap…

  A click of the weapon drew his attention. The soldier he had spared pointed a machine gun at his face.

  “Surrender, yes?” he spoke with a thick accent, barely remembering the words and trembling with every fiber of his being. Only now did he realize he was missing a hand. A cripple. He would become a cripple, a burden to his family, unless he wanted Merchants turn him into a soulless abomination. Toragana would never marry him now.

  The soldier nodded, lowering her weapon to his surprise. He pnned to ask why, when part of the wall, broken by the artillery, came crashing down in an avanche. The heavy chunks buried them both alive, entombing them in the darkness.

  *****

  “Come on, whores’ spawns! Don’t line up; death waits for you all!” Marzena of the Alpha Pack cheered, blood bubbling on her lips.

  The wolf hag’s power armor was a mess. Riddled with bullets, two unexploded shells lodged in it, and a fist-sized hole in her belly. Her intestines dangled, touching her greaves. So irritating. Ideally, she should have retreated and let Maxence’s nannies tend to her wounds, but today she couldn’t care less about surviving. Her pack died. All sixty of them, precious girls and boys whose lives she had fought so hard to spare over the course of this war. The st of them, Scout Justyna, had been torn asunder by a Malformed fifteen minutes ago. What use was a wolf hag without a pack to lead? So this was her go-time.

  Besides, she was fighting in the shadow of the Blessed Mother! When the wall had suffered a breach and the honeycomb of the defensive instaltions crushed down, Alpha took the pce at the widest gap. They fought for hours, turning back the sea of soldiers. The strongest warlord’s cws had torn through hundreds, staining their mound of concrete red. And the Alpha Pack fought alongside her.

  To them, Alpha was more than a warlord. She was a mother, cruel, often merciless; she pushed her troops far and beyond their limits, breaking and mending their souls and bodies. But the results were worth the suffering. Steeled by discipline, carrying the fmes of rage in their hearts, the best pack held, luring in rge swaths of enemies into well-pced ambushes and letting some escape to sow panic as they reformed their vigil, not surrendering a meter. Rather than engage in prolonged melee, they had spiced things up with acid grenades and id mines during brief pauses, howling with glee when the fools stepped into them.

  Outnumbered at least fifteen to one, they denied Houstad the Gilded Horde, never panicking even when communications occasionally went down. Alpha had often faked her own death, teaching every single wolf hag and scout the value of independent thinking and fluid command structure.

  Pity I won’t get those tasty sandwiches again. Marzen giggled, half-crazy from pain, and caught a fatty by the hand. She sank her cws into the woman’s throat, saving a shocked Recimer on the ground.

  A sandwich. Stupid as it was, her pack had almost dragged her to one of the so-called bars selling piss called alcohol in these parts. There she tried one, enjoying the pleasant-to-the-pate mix of bread, meat, cheese, and veggies. She must have been delirious from the blood loss if she had longed for it over her friends and family, but when she picked up a shardgun and fired it, she understood that she was okay with it.

  There was no better reason for a st brawl. It was best defending something, even if it was a small bar serving sandwiches. Her shot tossed down a hordeman, and she added another into his broken visor, just for good measure.

  Alpha fought beside her, spshing red with every swing. The strongest warlord didn’t shield herself; bullets and beams of energy failed to even graze her armor. Her fear wave expanded, stilling the hearts of fifteen troopers, and she lunged into the fray. Where she walked, the dead remained and a crowd of former convicts flocked to her side, firing their rotary cannons, and Marzena reluctantly accepted a hand helping her cross a tall boulder.

  Former. Yes, that’s the word. The state might disagree, but to her, these males and females had atoned for whatever crimes they committed. At her command, the colrs dropped from their necks, but none tried to flee, and Alpha said nothing.

  A streak of fme flowed above the advancing forces, crashing into Alpha with the force of a meteorite. The strongest warlord’s feet cws scratched the stones as she tried to stop the fireball while those around her were thrown to the ground. Mighty arms grabbed at the ball, trying to squeeze it as the stones and debris melted and the bodies caught fire. A bckened hand reached out from the orb and grabbed Alpha’s head, shaking it violently from side to side, and then a leg of simir color tried to kick her in the neck.

  The sharpest cws sliced through the limbs, and the fme gathered into a figure resembling a demon from the ancient religious books. Its skin was a dark, cracking bark that held an inferno within; two dim, eyeless holes tracked Alpha’s movements, and its lipless mouth was frozen in an eternal grin. Red, blue, and white tongues of fmes covered the body like regal capes. It reeked of smoke and nothing more.

  “We have a duel to finish, Alpha,” the newcomer said in a crack of wood. Bck talons grew on the tips of his fingers. “If you would be so kind…”

  Alpha simply speared his chest, not bothering to answer. The ruined torso’s legs locked around Alpha, and the fming corpse took flight, smming the resisting warlord into the walls and dousing the exposed corridors with liquid heat. They soon disappeared at the top of the wall, still fighting, despite the constant bombardment.

  “Don’t you dare lose, Mother!” Marzena shouted as the ledges above began dripping molten stone.

  Well, she had gone and done it. The st wolf hag to call Alpha her mother in a drunken stupor had had the skin peeled off her back and then reattached to the bare flesh with cmps, both to hurt and to preserve the fur. But in the face of impending doom, and just to give the warlord an extra incentive to win….

  Eh. Worth it.

  “Split up and retreat to the bastions!” Marzena coughed out the command, baring her fangs at the soldiers and convicts’ hesitation. “That’s an order! You’ll die in vain out in the open!”

  “Don’t bare your fangs on me; you aren’t that scary, ss,” said a former convict, summoning his exact copy from the stones. And then he created another. “We started together; I say we end it together.”

  “It’s not up for debate, dolt! The ground is shaking; their cavalry is coming! Hide, resist, and bite!”

  “What about you, Wolf Hag?” asked a soldier.

  “Done my share of walking, son,” Marzena chuckled, and the rest of her guts fell out. “Go! Have a few drinks in my memory after we kick their asses!”

  The soldiers scattered, helping the wounded, and the stone clones carried away the most grievously injured and helped allies to crawl from under the wreckage. Thumb. Thumb. Items jumped up and down as Marzena walked to the breach, witnessing that what she had said was true in the most literal sense of the word.

  Fuck, I never thought I’d be dying to a bsting cavalry in the age of tanks! She fired once into the oncoming stampede, and Iron Lord’s give spped away the shards, slicing through her head before the first thunder bull even reached her.

  The Horde entered Houstad.

  ****

  “Boss!” Svetaker yanked his bde from a mutant’s twitching head, ignoring the spasming pincers touching his armor. A light push of his foot squeezed the body of a half-dead doggie. A shame. Their kind brought much profit, but that one had a mortal wound. He turned to face a Pureblood climbing to him over the rocks. “Iron Lord Khan ordered us to join Widowmaker and clear the walls of enemies so our main host could enter unopposed. One or two warlords are still prowling around.”

  “And where is he?” He looked at the city, the tingling sensation of the present prey almost tugging at his nostrils. Here. They didn’t escape.

  “On his way to finish what Phaser couldn’t! Besides, he said that our inside agent is acting weird, so he wants to ‘settle the matter before anything happens,’ as he put it.” The Pureblood saluted. “Want me to gather the band?”

  “Yes, but we won’t be doing hunting.” He shot, downing a Recimer running to the streets, and pointed at Houstad. “Iron Lord promised me hides, but I had much fighting and too few cheating skins. No longer! Today, we fy those brats.”

  He walked down, both certain that his troops would follow him and not caring about possible betrayal in the slightest. None cheats Svetaker. He broke into a run, closing in on the soldiers trying to man a trench outside the fortifications. A single swing killed all three, and then he fired again, eagerly moving toward his marks.

  ****

  “Let’s make us some widows!” Widowmaker cheered, her sword catching bullets from the air. Soldiers died as she headed up the stairs, cleaving through their bodies. “What, are you pnning to live forever?”

  “No!” her soldiers roared, following.

  This battle was amazing! Tens of thousands on each side and no sign of weakness! Doggies, mutants, Abnormals, powers, machines! Her heart pumped with excitement at the prospect of repaying the debt owed to Mad Hatter. Truth be told, she’d never skipped that battle no matter the debt, even joining the enemy if that would mean being part of something historical.

  Widowmaker didn’t care much about surviving, but she didn’t want to die either, or see her troops wasted. This was her way of life, and she intended to see it through to the end. Her group had approached the breach under the cover of one of the remaining intact shield carriers and broken in, decorating the fortification with the corpses of the Recimers. A boy of about eighteen dropped his rifle, and her bde stopped a millimeter from his ribs.

  “You just had to ruin it! Scurry away.” Widowmaker scowled and proceeded up the stairs. “Such a perfect day to fight and die and…”

  The bulkhead in front of her exploded, opening a view that instantly brightened her mood. Dozens of Recimers took positions in the operator center, firing at them from almost point-bnk range. Her Chainbreakers smmed their shields into the floor, taking the brunt of the gunfire, while the Unbroken fired in the spaces between their shields.

  Unable to wait any longer, she leapt, bouncing off the ceiling, her sword blocking the bullets. Widowmaker nded in the enemy ranks, unafraid of the raging gunfire. A soldier before her gnced down at the cut on his chest, and then his upper part slipped down alongside the armored casing of a terminal behind which he was hiding. Her return blow sliced through a woman’s neck. The khatun continued, enjoying the tingle of bullets passing near her cheeks and the occasional explosions as the Recimers tried to take her with them. Her perception of time slowed, allowing her to pick out the tiniest details.

  To her left, a man turned into water, surviving both her ssh and a hail of bullets. The water spshed across the floor, past her feet, and she felt the figure transform from a moving stream into a solid form. At the sound of the moving trigger, she whirled around and stabbed the man in the heart, enjoying the utter horror on his face as he failed to change form fast enough.

  A wave of heat touched her cheek, and she smelled intense chemical fire, quite different from the prevailing stench of sweat, blood, smoke, released bowels, and sparks permeating the pce. Widowmaker jumped back, saving herself just in time as a wall of fmes rolled down the floor, somehow avoiding incinerating the Recimers. It came from a crack in the ceiling, and a violent kick sent the entire roof crashing down.

  “Up,” a voice growled, and the soldiers scrambled across the ruins. The Unbroken opened fire, but a hiss announced a burst of heat that detonated much of the ammunition in the air. Armored legs emerged from the opening above, calmly descending, and Widowmaker raised her arm in anticipation. “You killed my wolf hag.”

  “I’ve killed many,” Widowmaker admitted.

  “Her name was Arruda. Loyal, smart, kind.” The doggie showed in full, her forehead scraping the debris above her as she stepped down into the room. Mounted fmethrowers on her wrists stained the unleashed white cws red with their fires. “You took her in her prime.”

  “Clearly her prime wasn’t much to brag about, if she died so unremarkably that I don’t even recall her.” Widowmaker cracked her neck. “But I cimed her, and now you’ll belong to me, too. I hope you’ll be more of a sport…”

  “Wrong,” the doggie interrupted her. Arms pierced the wall behind her, rapidly widening the cracks, and more crimson lenses, armored figures, emerged from the dust. Widowmaker beamed. “You are ours. The Tribe pays its debts.”