Legionnaire

I would have been lying if I said moving into the pass did not worry me.

Not panic.

Not fear that locked my feet.

Just the old ugly awareness that came when the ground stopped being ground and started being angles, cover, dead space, and places something could kill you from.

I caught myself checking every ridge and broken shelf like I expected the Taliban to pop out from behind the rocks.

Wrong world.

Same feeling.

Isolde noticed.

Of course she did.

“You watch the high ground well,” she said.

I kept my eyes moving. “Old habit.”

“A useful one.”

I did not answer right away.

Useful was one word for it. There were other words too. Words that fit better at three in the morning when sleep went bad and my brain decided to replay things no one had asked to see again.

But here, walking into a pass held by monsters that threw stones from above, useful was probably the only word that mattered.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

We moved up the pass.

Marching would have been too strong a word. The command walked in loose ranks, spaced enough that one falling rock would not take half of them, but close enough that no one was alone. Kael stayed forward, shifting people with short gestures and quiet orders. Isolde moved near the front-center, close enough to matter if her magic was needed.

I stayed with her.

The road narrowed as it climbed. Dirt turned to broken stone. The wind thinned out between the shelves and came back in sharper bursts. Every sound seemed to bounce strangely off the rock.

It was not long before the signs from the patrol attack came into view.

Small splatters of blood marked the ground in dark, drying spots. A few drops trailed back toward camp where the wounded had been carried out. Stones lay scattered across the pass, some no bigger than a fist, others large enough to break bone even through armor. Chips of fresh rock showed pale against the darker road where they had struck and shattered.

Farther ahead, the dead pine lay half across the cut, branches broken, trunk scraped raw where it had bounced down from above.

But there were no cragbacks.

No movement above us.

No pale shapes watching from the ledges.

No rocks coming down.

Just the aftermath of the patrol getting hit and the ugly quiet that came after violence moved on.

I was not going to lie to myself. The idea of an aggressive, armor-plated gorilla scared the hell out of me.

Not in the way a kid was scared of monsters under the bed.

In the practical way a man got scared when someone described a thing strong enough to rip him apart and smart enough to use terrain.

I had seen people hurt. I had seen people die. I had seen what happened when muscle, metal, bad luck, and bad angles met human bodies.

This was different only because the thing doing it wore its armor under its skin and lived on cliffs.

I thought of those people back home who went into the woods looking for Bigfoot and always figured they were out of their minds. First of all, if it was fake, they were wasting their lives. Second, if it was real, what exactly was the plan when they found an eight-foot mountain of muscle that had no interest in being discovered?

Smile for the camera?

Ask it nicely to stand still?

Fuck all of that.

Now take that idea, make it meaner, plate it in natural armor, teach it to throw rocks from high ground, and put half a dozen of them above a narrow road.

No, thank you.

The command kept moving.

Slow.

Careful.

Not timid.

Kael was ahead, reading the bend and the stone above it. Isolde moved with steady purpose beside me, her eyes never staying in one place for long. I kept close like she had ordered and kept watching the ridges.

By then the sun had climbed high enough to put hard light across the upper shelves. It had to be near noon, though the pass made time feel strange. Shadows sat deep under the ledges while the stone above them burned pale and bright.

A scout appeared around the bend ahead of us at a run.

Not panicked.

Running because the message mattered.

Kael saw him first and lifted one hand.

The command slowed.

The scout came down the road fast, boots slipping once on loose stone before he caught himself. His face was tight, his breathing hard.

“Cragbacks,” he said. “About half a dozen in the cut.”

He looked past Kael toward Isolde.

“And more on the cliff above us.”

The scout had barely finished speaking when the first one came around the bend.

Then the second.

Then the rest.

Six cragbacks poured into the cut on all fours, moving faster than anything that size had a right to move.

They were not gorillas.

Not exactly.

That was just the closest word my brain had for the shape of them. Long arms. Heavy shoulders. Shorter rear legs driving under them with ugly power. Their bodies sat low when they ran, knuckles and curled claws striking stone hard enough to chip it. Each impact had weight behind it. Not the slap of paws. Not the scramble of animals.

Hammer blows.

Their fur was pale gray and dirty white, thick in the joints and along the ribs where the armor did not cover them. The rest of them looked like the mountain had grown over their bodies and decided to keep moving. Dark plates covered their backs in uneven layers, overlapping from shoulder to spine like broken shields fused under the skin. More plates wrapped their forearms, their chests, the tops of their skulls.

Not smooth armor.

Natural armor.

Cracked. Ridged. Scarred. Pitted by old cuts and weather. Stone-colored in places, bone-colored in others, with dark seams of hide and fur showing where a blade might maybe find meat if the man holding it lived long enough to try.

Their heads were worse.

Low and blunt, with heavy jaws and small deep-set eyes under shelves of plated brow. Their mouths hung partly open as they ran, showing flat yellow teeth in front and longer tearing teeth behind them. Steam poured from their nostrils in short bursts. Their lips peeled back, not in a snarl like a dog, but in something tighter and uglier.

A warning.

No, a promise of violence.

The largest one hit the inside wall of the cut with one hand, used it to turn without slowing, and came on. Stone broke under its grip. Pebbles sprayed across the road. It dropped back to all fours and drove forward with the others behind it, shoulders rolling, plates grinding faintly against one another with each stride.

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They did not roar.

That made it worse.

They came in almost silent except for breath, impact, and the scrape of armor against stone.

Six armored brutes filling the narrow road.

Six moving walls of muscle and plate.

And above them, somewhere on the cliffs, more waited with rocks.

Kael did not hesitate.

“Shield wall!”

The command changed shape in a heartbeat.

Not clean. Not pretty. Not the parade-ground thing my brain wanted to call a formation.

Fast.

The first two rows locked shields across the narrow road, shoulders dropping, boots grinding into stone. Everyone behind them closed in, not packed tight enough to become one target, but close enough to give weight to the brace.

“Brace!”

The word had barely left Kael’s mouth before the cragbacks hit.

The sound was not like men striking shields.

It was like a wagon team slamming into a gate.

The whole line buckled.

Boots slid. Shields cracked against armor. Someone grunted hard enough that it sounded like the air had been punched out of his lungs. The front rank bent backward under the impact, and for half a second I thought the whole thing would fold.

It held.

Somehow, it held.

Then one of the cragbacks hooked its long fingers over the top of a shield.

The legionnaire behind it tried to pull back.

It did not matter.

The creature ripped the shield sideways like it was tearing cloth. The man’s arm went with it.

Blood sprayed across the stone.

The cragback paid for it.

Three spears drove up beneath its jaw at once, finding the softer place under the plated skull. The points punched deep. The cragback jerked, tried to pull away, and only drove the shafts farther in. Its heavy body crashed forward against the broken part of the line, dragging two men half a step down with it before it died.

No one cheered.

No one had room.

Another cragback came over the corpse, mouth open, plates grinding, one arm swinging low enough to take a man’s legs if it landed. A fighter with a short axe ducked inside the swing and buried the blade into the inside of its forearm. Someone else drove a spear into the back of its knee. The creature dropped just enough for Kael to step in and put his sword through the side of its throat.

The third died worse.

It tried to climb over the shields and got caught halfway, its weight pinning the front rank down. Four blades found the gaps beneath its chest plates. It thrashed hard enough to knock one man flat, then sagged across the wall in a twitching heap of fur, stone, and blood.

For one breath, it looked like the line might hold.

Then the first cragback fell out of the sky.

It came down from the cliff above us without warning, a pale armored shape dropping through the hard noon light. It hit two soldiers near the center-left with a wet, breaking crunch that cut through every other sound.

The road shook under my boots.

Another dropped behind it.

Then another.

They were not jumping like animals leaping for distance.

They were falling on purpose.

Using their own weight as a weapon.

The shield wall had been built to stop what came from the front.

Not what landed in the middle of it.

One cragback rose from the bodies beneath it, shoulders rolling, plates scraping, blood already on its forearms. A soldier drove a blade into its side and the point skittered off armor. The creature backhanded him into the rock wall hard enough that his helmet rang like a bell.

The line broke.

Not all at once.

One side tried to hold. Another turned to face the thing behind them. Someone shouted a name. Someone else shouted a warning. A shield went down. A spear snapped. The dead cragback at the front became an obstacle instead of cover.

Kael’s voice cut through the noise.

“Break! Break and kill!”

The wall came apart.

Groups formed out of the broken wall.

Not by order.

By habit.

Two men and a woman closed on the nearest cragback before it could turn fully. One hooked its attention with a short spear while the others struck low, aiming for knees, inner arms, anything that looked less armored than the rest. Farther left, three more circled another one near the cliff wall, giving it space until one of them saw an opening and darted in.

This was what Corvin had meant.

They did not fight like one wall.

They broke apart into pieces that knew how to cut.

It was working.

Barely.

Then a man lunged at one of the cragbacks with a sword. He was fast, and for a second it looked like he had the angle. The blade missed the soft gap under the arm and scraped across plate instead.

The cragback’s arm came around.

It hit him across the chest.

His breastplate folded inward like someone had struck thin tin with a hammer. The blow lifted him off his feet and threw him into the cliff wall hard enough that the sound cut through the rest of the fight.

He hit stone.

Dropped.

Did not get back up.

I saw it.

Logged it.

Kept moving.

There was no room for anything else.

A shadow crossed the light above Isolde.

She saw it before I understood what it was.

Her wand snapped up.

A sigil burned into the air in front of her, bright and sharp, lines folding over each other faster than my eyes could follow. The falling cragback hit the edge of that light and twisted sideways like the world had changed direction underneath it.

It missed the road.

Missed us.

Missed everything.

The creature went over the ledge in a tumbling mass of pale fur and dark plates, struck the slope below, and vanished with a crash that shook loose stone from the cliff.

Isolde’s face tightened from the effort.

Not much.

Enough.

Then the road behind her exploded.

Another cragback landed almost at her back, close enough that chips of stone struck my armor. It came down on all fours, rolled its shoulders, and rose with one long arm already lifting.

Isolde started to turn.

Too slow.

I did not think.

I hit her with my shoulder and drove her sideways.

She was lighter than the armor made her look. Or maybe I hit harder than I meant to. She stumbled clear as the cragback’s arm came down where she had been standing.

I brought my shield up.

Planted my feet.

And burned Anchor.

The sigil caught.

The ground caught with it.

For one impossible heartbeat, the mountain was under my boots and the shield was part of my arm and the arm was part of the ground.

The cragback hit.

Everything became force.

The shield took the blow first.

Then my arm.

Then my shoulder.

Then the rest of me.

The Anchor caught and drove the impact down through my boots into the road, but it did not make me stone. It did not make me stronger. It only gave the force somewhere else to go after it finished trying to break me on the way there.

My knees bent.

The shield slammed back hard enough to crush the rim against my forearm. Pain flashed white from wrist to shoulder. Something in my back locked so tight I thought it might tear loose from the spine.

But I did not move.

The cragback’s arm stopped against the shield.

Not clean.

Not easy.

Stopped.

For half a second, the creature hung there over me, its plated skull low, its breath hot and sour through the gaps in its teeth. Its weight pressed through the shield like a falling wall. The plates along its forearm ground against the metal with a deep scraping sound.

My feet stayed planted.

The road under me cracked.

Isolde moved.

I saw only part of it from behind the shield. A flash of her cloak. Her wand coming up. Lines of pale light cutting the air beside the cragback’s head.

“Release,” she snapped.

I let go of the Anchor.

The force vanished wrong.

My body came back to itself all at once. My shoulder nearly folded. I staggered one step, but Isolde’s sigil struck before the cragback could recover.

It hit the side of the creature’s head with a sound like stone splitting in a fire.

The cragback lurched sideways.

Not dead.

Hurt.

That was enough.

Two legionnaires closed on it from the right. One drove a short spear into the inside of its thigh. The other hammered an axe into the soft crease below its arm where the plates broke apart for movement. The creature twisted toward them, and Kael came in from the other side.

His blade went under the jaw.

Up.

Hard.

The cragback convulsed. One long arm swept out and caught the axe man across the hip, throwing him down, but the spear stayed buried and Kael did not pull back until the creature’s legs went out from under it.

It crashed to the road in front of me.

I took air through my teeth and forced my shield back up.

My left arm did not want to listen.

It listened anyway.

Isolde stepped beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine for a breath.

“Can you stand?”

“Yes.”

“Can you fight?”

I looked at the cragback corpse, then past it to the rest of the cut.

“Yes.”

She did not waste time asking again.

Another stone came down from above and shattered against the road behind us. Chips rang off armor. Someone cursed. Someone screamed a warning.

Kael’s voice cut through it.

“Do not bunch! Kill what is down! Watch above!”

The command moved in pieces around him.

A pair dragged a wounded man clear by the straps of his armor while another fighter stepped over him to meet a cragback trying to push through the gap. Three more circled one near the left wall, striking and falling back, striking again, never giving it one clean body to seize. One woman ducked under a swinging arm and drove a blade into the back of the creature’s knee. When it dropped, two others were already there.

They did not look heroic.

They looked busy.

That was better.

Isolde raised her wand again.

A sigil snapped into being above the road just as a stone came down from the north ledge. The rock hit the light and kicked sideways, smashing into the cliff wall instead of the men below. The sigil shattered with it. Isolde’s hand dipped, then steadied.

Another cragback jumped from the ledge.

Not at us this time.

At Kael.

He saw it.

So did three others.

Kael moved back instead of trying to meet the fall. The cragback hit the road where he had been and shattered stone beneath its weight. Before it could rise fully, two fighters hit it from opposite sides, blades scraping across plate until one found the gap behind its forearm. Kael stepped in, cut once across the throat, then stepped out before the dying swing could take him.

The cragback fell.

That made four down in the road.

The rest felt it.

I saw the change before I understood it. The ones still standing hesitated. Their heads lifted toward the ledges. A deep rumbling call rolled from above, answered by another from farther up the cut.

The cragbacks on the road began to pull back.

Not fleeing blind.

Withdrawing.

One dragged itself toward the bend with a ruined leg. Another backed away on three limbs, snapping its jaws at anyone who came too close. The last one threw a broken shield at the nearest fighter, turned, and bounded up the slope with terrifying speed, using hands and feet together like the cliff had been built for it.

More stones came from above, but fewer now.

Wild.

Angry.

Covering the retreat.

Kael lifted his sword. “Hold the road! Do not chase!”

The order saved lives.

I could see men wanting to press. Could see the urge in the way they leaned forward, the way blood and momentum pulled at them.

They held.

Isolde stepped past me and sent another sigil up toward the ledge. It did not strike a cragback. It struck the rock face above them. Light flashed through a seam in the stone, and a slab cracked loose with a sound like thunder.

The slab did not fall on them.

It fell between them and us.

A wall of broken stone crashed down across the upper part of the cut, throwing dust and chips into the air. The nearest cragbacks scrambled back from it, climbing higher, away from the road. Their shapes blurred behind dust and ledge-shadow, pale fur and dark plates vanishing into the broken shelves above.

For several breaths, no one moved.

Dust drifted through the cut.

The dead lay where they had fallen.

Ours and theirs.

My arm shook behind the shield, hard enough that I had to lock my elbow against my ribs to hide it. My shoulder burned. My lower back had gone from pain to something colder and deeper.

I kept standing.

Kael walked forward three paces and stopped at the edge of the fallen stone.

He watched the ledges.

Everyone watched with him.

A low rumble sounded high above, farther away now.

Then another.

Retreating.

Isolde lowered her wand.

“Hold,” she said.

The command held.

No one cheered.

No one spoke.