“Ready!” Kirk shouted, peering from a half-ruined cover on the bridge. A burst from his shardgun forced the approag raiders to duto cover.

  Kaisa decided it was funny. Her brother stammered whealked to her directly, but in the heat of battle, animosity between her and her family was taking a backseat, and they worked together, saving lives where they could. The st of the APCs sped past Kirk, their engines r, from an underground tunnel opened by the miners. Holes as covered their sides, their anti-personnel rotating auto-ons long since destroyed, and terrified civilians huddled clether ihe vehicles.

  The packs had repeated this dance for over a day, sending voys to safety and waiting for the teis to patch what they could, then providing cover for the returning vehicles, trying to push back the hordemen as the APCs returned underground to receive maintenand more civilians to carry over. The Horde closed in, seg their siege perimeter, and their squads fired on the voys from a distance. Several APCs had been dowheir wreckage still smoking on the cratered road.

  Burrees, wrecked cars, and corpses littered the entrao the bridge leading into the woods. The Horde had not used their excellent heavy artillery to smash aance for fear of destroying the structure they had fought so long for, but Kaisa’s ears picked up the loud g and stomping of advang walkers. Precise and powerful ser ons had already left their mark on her pack, and she wao have nothing to do with them in the open field anymore.

  “Got it!” Her finger pressed a remote, and a mushroom grew at the undergrourance, sealing it for hours. Militia and miners led thousands ees through the underground tunnels as the Wolfkireated, surrendering this side to the Horde.

  The retreat was in full swing.

  Guttural ands barked through the chaos of bat, and a crest of explosions tossed tons of crete into the air. Electric currents danced over the destroyed surface, fired in arcs by the hordemen’s analog of mine clearaoons. Shots nded against APVs, widening the cracks and sending two spinning. Sensing exposed prey and a shift itle, the enemy leaders sent their horde on another charge to cim their prize.

  Unfortunately for them, their oppos were Wolfkins. Grenades whistled over Kaisa’s head, and she somersaulted backward, abandoning the front line. Heh. hought I’d ever be the first to break from a fight. She graciously nded o the first stuck APd grabbed it as it was about to tip over the edge. The servomotors whined as she pushed herself to the limit and pulled the vehicle bato the bridge.

  “Thank you, Miss!” She bli wide-eyed crimson eyes peering at her through the gash.

  “Do you want to lose those blinkers?! Step away from the breach, dolt!” Kaisa snapped, and the boy’s parents drew him away. “I mean, don’t mention it, thanks, little squirt.” She readied her grenade uncher, guarding the vehicle. “You two really don’t know how to fight?” she asked without a hint of sarcasm.

  “Never held a gun in my life,” said the mother.

  “Cool! Safe journeys,” Kaisa told her, a bato the fray, firing at the approag group of hordemen.

  The grenade flew in an ard nded on them just as they stepped into the first of the prepared pitfalls. Their heavy ptes saved the idiots from getting skewered upoig sharpened rebars, but the shockwave from the explosion and the shrap unleashed spttered the hapless idiots against the wall, shattering their visors and sending splinters into their faces, blinding and crippling if not killing them.

  Strange. Kaisa’s paws reloaded the uncher, her voice giving orders to Eled and her own pack, guiding them along the retreat, and her mind g to the woman’s words. What was it like to live a life where you never had to lift a on or train how to kill? Clearly not the most effit way to live. She decided, nding a grenade on anroup and sending men and women flying down the chasm. But also kind of cute. I wish we had a ce… Familiar screaming filled the air, and she snapped out of her fantasies.

  For the many to live in peace, the few had to serve.

  “Stay alert, people; riders ining!” Kaisa warned. “Indiary rounds, fast!”

  As ohe soldiers in the front row dropped to their knees and repced their ammunition. Grenade unchers fired deadly munitions as the first hoverbikes pierced the smoke, approag the group and firing their pulse rifles. A Wolfkin died as an energy ball impaled her between the eyes. Another fall on the ground, hissing and pressing paws to the missing temporomandibur joint. More bodies dropped, gasping for air, their chests full of holes.

  “Cook them!” Kaisa roared eagerly, and her soldiers fired, c the entrao the bridge in hellfire.

  They immediately heard screams apanied by bursts from the hoverbikes’ geors. Her theory was correct. After reviewing the records and sulting with Ignacy, Kaisa cluded the hoverbikes sacrificed prote for maneuverability and speed; their riders relied on pulse rifles and grievous bdes to swiftly mow down the opposition. The indiary grenades spread a fmmable liquid desigo damage battlepte alloys, and it now had a stunning effect, driving survivors away in panid detonating energy cells.

  Not every hordemen perished in the fire, and several broke through, straight into a hail of ining shards. One calmly tossed his rifle aside, maneuvered through the projectiles, and closed in on Sheeren, the wolf hag of the te Eled.

  Long bdes nearly caught her at the waist as Kirk jerked the woman back as their sister fired into the hoverbike’s engine, detonating it. The hordeman jumped off it and spun in the air, evading projectiles with uncharacteristic agility. He nded, sweeping their brother off his feet; an elbow dropped their sister face down, and the man’s arm reached for a shardgun, raising it to fire at Kirk.

  Kaisa wao be there, to take a shot for her family. She owed them that and more. But it wasn’t her zone of responsibility, and the wolf hag took over Sheeren’s and, barking orders to grab the injured and keep firing at the hordemen.

  She wasn’t alo was a rather difficult lesson to learn, and a cry of exultatio her lips at a kick that sent the shardgun spinning skyward. Rage and hatred still tugged at her heartstrings, reminding the wolf hag of the monster she was, and she indulged that impulse, stomping blindingly fast on the hoverbike approag her troops. Its nose scratched the ground, her paw closed in on the rider’s head, tearing it off, and theossed the stupid toy and it blew away from the front. Strong. Strohan anyone here. The desire to rend a throbbed in her mind, g that she alone had the strength to turuation around.

  But she had grown aced to relying on and cooperating with others.

  Sheeren closed in on the raider, paw against hand, and the raider punched her in the head, rog the wolf hag and utilizing all the agility his lighter armranted him. Sheeren tilted back, one leg off the ground, her paw still glued to his right hand, and the man ed his left arm around her shoulder, preparing to sm the wolfkin to the ground. A sudden pain under his shoulder bde stopped him as the wolf hag cwed at him, and he broke the grip, retreating in vain as the jaws closed on his visor, biting through it and taking his nose.

  A single leg moved the wolf hag back upright from a horizontal position, fast enough so that she would be able to deliver a bone-shattering kick with another over the hordeman’s elbow, crumbling the softer prote. Sheeren shared her te grandmother’s personality, occasionally bursting into fits of unyielding rage, but she took her fighting style from her older mother, bining pnning and skill rather than trying to overwhelm her oppo.

  The hordeman’s w hand moved to a pistol on his belt and twitched as the previously kicked shardgun fell into the wolf hag’s paws, and she fired thrice to topple the enemy, then tossed it to Kaisa’s brother.

  “Thanks,” Sheeren growled, her cws slipping from the paw as the shocked Kirk shook it. “Name’s Sheeren.”

  “K-Kirk. At your service, Wolf Hag!” He gnervously as the cws snapped in front of his wisti and right to catch the dim sunlight shining through the surrounding smoke.

  “Don’t scratch my brother!” Kaisa’s brother stood and fired in the smoke. “It was my fault, not his…”

  “Shhhh,” their sister pced a paw on his shoulder and gred at Kaisa. “It’s not that.”

  “But… What? Oh…”

  “Stop talking and worry about your hides, idiots!” Kaisa roared from the opposite side of the bridge, f them to duck behind a rubble. “I ’t kill everyone myself! So do your part!”

  “Yes, Wolf Hag!”

  Lucky devil, eh? Best of luck to you, Kirk. Her kicks hurt. Her ribs still pulsed a little after their domination match for supremacy. Sheeren was too quirky for her taste. One sed, she was full of grief, ready to push ahead and die, and after losing shamelessly, she joihe pnning as if nothing had happened. If she breaks your heart, I’ll break her.

  Scraping of treads against the crete alerted Kaisa as their packs reached the middle of the bridge, entering a narrowed lihat was dredged by a shell in a ret bombardment. Kaisa had spotted this route in advance, and the surrounding wreckage provided a modicum of cover from the burst of gunfire ing from the western side.

  They loaded their wounded onto the stuck transport and pushed it out of the crater. An armored personnel carrier drove out of the smoke, its broad hull silvery and bristling with guns that sang, spewing projectiles that drummed against the Wolfkins’ power armors, throwing her soldiers back. The iy of the streaking bullets khree of her soldiers off the edge in front of her eyes. Cracks spread across her soldier’s suit, and it burst like an eggshell, spilling the body inside.

  “Aim for the ons!” Kaisa snarled, shoving a male into the cover. Iribe’s tradition, this was sidered heresy, as the lives of the males were to be put first so that the females would not be harmed. Also, the value of the wolf hags exceeded that of the humans iransport.

  And she didn’t care. They would get out of here together ahe shamans kiss her ass if they wao pin. Kaisa was sick of letting others die because of her.

  “ETA on our reinforts?” she asked, taking aim and firing at the on. Her grenade exploded o the on, bathing it in searing fme, and the rotating doomsday song stopped with a creak. On her HUD, the is of the soldiers who had fallen into the yon blinked a dark.

  Curses. She hoped they would survive the impad crawl to safety. But the main caliber did too much damage to their armors.

  “Paissa is approag our position; the artillery will be in p two minutes,” Kirk reported.

  “Good! Keep retreating; we’ll see them dead yet!”

  Explosions covered the Horde carrier, several bsts merging inte fireball that engulfed most of the ons and enveloped the mae in an e sphere. Noises of detonating ammuniti out briefly, and then a single, loud, skull-splitting scream silehem as a projectile flew past Kaisa, shearing a k of metal from her pauldron and snapping the arm of a Wolfkin behind her.

  The carrier’s doors opened and a bareheaded woman stepped out, swatting at the ongues of fme with her long sword. Dreadlocks of her short, raven hair dangled in the wind; she easily matched Kaisa i, and the cumbersome bat pte helped her dwarf any wolf hag in width. In her arm was a heavily modified gun, and she squeezed the trigger, writhing in pleasure at the resulting cacophony of noise.

  “Let’s make some widows!” she roared.

  “Widowmaker! Widowmaker!” a battle cry thundered as the carrier disged dozens of soldiers.

  Each wore a full suit of heavy battle armor c them from head to toe. No two were alike. Gold and deep blue paint in bizarre patterns adorhe chest ptes; rubies, diamonds, and jade neckces hung from arms, necks, and even legs. They carried tower shields in one arm and crag m stars in another, eagerly charging at the Wolfkins.

  The two forces collided in aion of violence. Shards ricocheted off shields, gougis in them; m stars smmed into bodies, shattering ptes; cws sshed, shredding steel and flesh. In a whirlwind of battle, Kaisa found Widowmaker and parried a fatal blow aimed at the base of her brother’s neck. Widowmaker whirled, firing at her from cle, and the wolf hag stepped back, striking instinctively and feeling something hot run down her cheek. The helmet saved Kaisa’s life as the bullet bounced off it but still tore a third of it off, exposing the wolf hag’s left eye to the world aing hide.

  “Shit…” Widowmaker g the ruined gun in her hand and tossed it aside. “I liked the toy. Don’t be so gloomy. I merely put us on an equal footing, honey.”

  “Trust me.” That bitch almost killed her brother! Callously, casually, mercilessly! A Kaisa spoke in a reasoone, noting troag hordemeering every twitd movement of the woman before her. Something deeper and more ahan she had ever imagiouched her, frightening the wolf hag to the point of heightening her senses. Usually Kaisa tensed in suents, but now her body was rexed. She dodged the shot. She blocked the strike. Widowmaker wasn’t strohan her. “You don’t want anything I am right now.”

  The Wolfkin with the broken arm was behihere could be reat.

  “I beg to differ.” Widowmaker exhaled, opening her eyes wide. “That look of yours. It’s thrilling!”