"Sir Feldwyn, the beasts are approaching. I count at least four."
The report came from the eastern wall and was followed quickly by another, then another, each one revising the count upward. Four became five. And then, moving at the edge of the treeline where the darkness was thickest, the silhouette of the one they had already met that morning. Scorched feathers. That lopsided, dragging gait from the burns along its forearm. Even from this distance and in this light, Brina recognized it.
She turned to the nearest volunteer guard. "Does the village have emergency protocols for something like this?"
The man shook his head. "No sir. The leadership never made any."
Of course they hadn't. Brina filed that away and kept moving.
"Men of Bareborough!" Her voice carried the full length of the eastern wall. "Light every torch and throw them to the perimeter, as far out as you can. The beasts are sensitive to light, use it. Stay within a light source at all times. Bowmen ready your fire bolts. Spears to the front. Oil pots on standby and make every throw count."
The wall came alive. Men shouted to rouse each other, torches were lit and sent arcing out into the dark beyond the wall, landing in the grass and the dirt and casting uneven circles of orange light across the approach. The eastern treeline was illuminated in patches.
The Bearowls did not move.
They stayed at the forest's edge, just beyond the furthest reach of the torchlight, five massive shapes that were visible only when something shifted and the firelight caught the curve of a shoulder or the dull gleam of an eye. They were watching. Waiting. Not retreating, nor were they advancing.
The minutes stretched out. The tension on the wall pulled tighter with every one of them. Men whispered to each other. Some began saying maybe the beasts would not come at all, maybe the light was enough, maybe they would simply turn back into the forest by morning.
Brina did not believe it. She stood at the wall and watched the treeline and felt the wrongness of it. Intelligent creatures. That was what Robert had said. And intelligent creatures with five bodies between them did not line up at a wall and wait unless they were waiting for something specific.
"You two," she said to the nearest guards. "Run the full wall perimeter in opposite directions. Check every side. A d report back to me."
They went. She kept her eyes on the forest.
A few minutes went by after the two runners ran the walls and nothing happened. Then the scream came from the western side of the village before either runner had made it halfway around.
It was not a shout of alarm. It was the sound of someone dying, and it cut through everything else on the wall like a blade through cloth. In the second of silence that followed, Brina understood exactly what she was looking at. The five at the treeline were a distraction. They had held every fighter on the eastern wall, eyes fixed forward, while something else came in from behind. In the periphery of her vision she saw that one of the silhouettes was no longer there.
She clicked her tongue and ran.
She had left fewer than a fifth of their fighters on the other sides. The math was not good. She could already hear more screaming, and then she could smell what she was running toward before she reached it. Blood in the cold air, sharp and copper-thick.
The western plaza was in chaos. People running in every direction, some making a stand with whatever they had grabbed on the way out of their homes, others simply fleeing. And in the middle of it, moving with that horrible low confidence of an animal that has decided it is no longer afraid, was the burned Bearowl. The one from the road. The one she had set on fire that morning.
It had come back for exactly this.
There was something almost personal about it, which under other circumstances Brina might have found interesting. A juvenile, wounded and humiliated, proving something to the others by taking revenge alone. The rest of them had stayed at the treeline. This was its moment and it had claimed it.
The plaza was the right place to fight it. Open ground, room to maneuver, no narrow corridors where the thing could corner someone with no way out. Brina started issuing orders before she had fully stopped running.
"Spears to the front, shields up. Block every exit, every alley, every roofline gap. Torches on all of it, I want nothing in shadow. Bowmen to the back and do not fire until I say so."
The burned Bearowl was ugly in a way that went beyond its injuries. The scorched patches where its feathers had been were raw and dark, and what remained was patchy and uneven, giving it a ragged silhouette that looked wrong from every angle. It moved with the aggression of something in pain that had decided pain was not a reason to stop. Its beak opened and a low churring sound came out that Brina felt more in her chest than heard with her ears.
They closed the ring around it slowly. Shields together, spears angled forward, the torchbearers keeping the light up and in the creature's eyes as best they could. It snapped and lunged at the line twice, and both times the spears held and pushed it back. It was strong and it was fast but it was also cornered, and cornered was exactly where she wanted it.
They tightened the ring.
The beast made one last surge, throwing itself at the spear line with everything it had, and the line buckled but did not break. Three men went down in the impact. The rest were able to hold their ground. The bolts from the back finally flew and they hit at close range where missing a shot was nearly impossible, burying into the creature's neck and shoulder. It thrashed once more, knocked two more people off their feet, and then it was done.
The plaza went quiet except for breathing and someone somewhere beginning to cry.
Twenty dead. More injured than she had time to count yet. Brina stood in the middle of it and did not let herself stop moving, because if she stopped moving she would have to look at the full shape of what tonight had cost and there was still a long night ahead of them.
The four at the eastern treeline were still out there.