Ehren ripped a sleeve from his shirt and used it to swiftly wrap his teamster’s leg after the man had received a badly bleeding wound. More men had fallen. The screams of terrified children rang shrilly in the air. Ehren took up the broken haft of a spear and used it as a club, striking out at heads and eyes, though he knew the weapon would be useless for anything but a mild deterrent. The vord seized the wagon next to his own and dragged it out of the circle, opening a gap in the frail defensive formation. Ehren screamed in fear and protest, as a detached, calm portion of his mind noted that once the vord were inside the circle, the rest of his life would be numbered in seconds.

And the ground began to shake.

A bestial, massive bellow rose from a basso rumble to a whistling shriek. Ehren whipped his head around in time to see a large black gargant crash into the vord attacking the circled wagons. The beast was a monster, even for its breed, the top of its hunched back standing at least twelve feet above the ground. Its stocky, rather squat body was vaguely reminiscent of its cousin, the common badger, though its thick neck and broad head clearly distinguished it from the far smaller beast, especially when one considered the three-foot tusks thrusting forward and curving slightly up from the gargant’s jaw.

This particular beast was a battle-scarred old brute, with the white seams of hair indicating the presence of scars upon the beast’s flesh—a veteran brawler. The swiftest of the vord scattered from the gargant’s path. The slower or less lucky vord did not get clear in time, and the gargant’s hammering paws and sheer mass smashed them to a disgusting, gelatinous paste.

Seated atop the gargant’s enormous back was the largest Marat Ehren had ever seen. His broad shoulders were so heavily sloped with muscle that it almost seemed a deformity. A faded red Aleran tunic looked as though the sleeves had been cut away from it to make room for arms thicker than Ehren’s thighs, and a heavy, braided plait of the same material bound his long hair back from his face. In his right hand he carried a long-handled cudgel, and as Ehren watched, the Marat leaned far over the side of the gargant, clutching a braided leather rope to keep from falling, bracing his feet on the gargant’s flanks like a man climbing down a cliff face on a line. The club swept through the air in a graceful arc, and quite literally knocked a mantis warrior’s head from its chitin-armored shoulders.