Sig was on her feet in a heartbeat and began swinging her sword in great two-handed loops. Limbs and heads sprang from bodies, blood jetting in fountains, men and women screaming. Then something else was running at her, something twisted and misshapen, all jutting teeth and hooked talons. She swung at its head but it ducked beneath, raked her with too-long claws as its momentum carried it skidding past her, links in her chainmail shirt shattering, blood welling beneath, then it was twisting on its heels and coming at her again. Sig lunged forwards, sword-tip the focal point of her entire body, like an extension of her, legs, torso, arms all flowing into the lunge. The Feral was coming at her so fast it could not adjust its momentum or trajectory, and so ran onto her sword, skewering itself through its broad chest, Sig’s blade bursting out of its back in an explosion of gore.

She ripped her blade free, heard steel clash and glimpsed Drem blocking an overhead strike with a spear he must have wrestled from one of his attackers, twisting away from another acolyte stabbing at him, another circling to his flank. In two long strides Sig was there, kicking one in the knee, cartilage and bone snapping, and chopping into another’s neck, a spray of blood as she wrenched her sword free.

Drem ducked a wild swing from the last one and buried his spear in the man’s chest, left it there when it snagged on bone and drew his father’s sword with one hand, a short axe in the other.

‘Leave,’ Sig barked at him, ‘that way.’ She jerked her head towards shadows and the wall, in the next heartbeat was running, screaming her fury at a new wave of enemy, a looping swing of her sword scattering them, one ducking low beneath her sword and rising within her guard, too close for her sword. The momentum of her blow opened her right side, left her vulnerable, and she knew there was nothing she could do. The acolyte grinned as he stabbed with a long knife.

There was a wet thud and the acolyte dropped to his knees. Drem ran to it, hacked into its head with his sword, shards of bone erupting. He reached down and pulled his short axe from its chest.

He’s supposed to be leaving, not hacking Kadoshim’s followers into tiny pieces!