“You might want to back off a ways, Sir Ehren,” Bernard said. He brandished the arrow. “I’m not entirely sure this thing won’t explode the second I release the string.”

Ehren swallowed and took a couple of steps back. “I... see.”

“Bit more,” Bernard said.

Ehren walked twenty feet, to the far side of the citadel’s balcony.

“Suppose it’ll have to do,” Bernard said. He set the arrow to the great bow’s string, faced the vordbulk, and waited.

“That’s... a long shot,” Ehren noted. “Three hundred yards?”

“Range isn’t a problem,” said Bernard through his stiffened jaw. “Angle is a bit odd, though.”

“Ahem, yes,” Ehren said. “But honestly, sir... there must be some other way for you to... Your Excellency, it’s one arrow. What could you possibly think it will do?”

The vordbulk’s vast flanks expanded as it drew in a breath.

Bernard drew the black bow, and its staves groaned like the mast of a ship in high winds. Muscles knotted in his shoulders, back, and arms, and again his teeth clenched, and his face turned red with effort. There was a faint trembling in the earth as Bernard pulled the arrow back to his ear. The grain of the black bow writhed and quivered, even as it was bent, and Ehren realized that the Count was putting an enormous amount of earthcrafting into bending the bow and would be using even more woodcrafting to straighten its staves, to impart all the power he could to the missile. When he released the string with a short cry of effort, the reaction of the bow nearly took him from his feet. There was a thundercrack in the air before him, and the arrow leapt into the night so swiftly that Ehren would not have been able to follow it had not the morning light gleamed on the steel head.

The vordbulk opened its mouth to roar again, just as the arrow angled upward, into the creature’s vast maw. The roar went on for a moment, then there was a flash of light, a whumping sound, and a burst of smoke and little licks of fire that poured from the vordbulk’s mouth. It stopped in its tracks and roared again, this time at a higher pitch, and a veritable fountain of green-brown vord blood spewed from its mouth and fell to the earth in a disgusting miniature waterfall.

“Hngh,” Bernard said. He sagged visibly, his chest heaving in slow, deep breaths, and he leaned against the railing to stay upright. “Guess... Pentius Pluvus... was right.”

“Eh?” Ehren asked, watching the vordbulk with fascination.