And a Citizen, bearing a sword that blazed with emerald fire, suddenly streaked from the ground toward the vordbulk. Ehren and Bernard both came to their feet. Both of them recognized the armored, white-haired form of Lord Cereus. The nimbus of light around the old High Lord’s sword grew and grew, until it was almost violently bright. Ehren made himself watch, but just as it seemed the light’s intensity would force him to avert his gaze, High Lord Cereus plunged completely into the vordbulk’s roaring maw.

The vordbulk smashed its jaws shut, and they came together like a pair of city gates closing.

And an instant later, a brilliant green fireball replaced the vordbulk’s head and the spreading shield of bone around it. Fire tore at the torso and legs of the vordbulk, incinerating tons of chitin and muscle in one supremely violent blast.

Incredibly, the vordbulk’s mangled left front leg quivered and began to take another step, as if the limb had no idea that the head had been destroyed—but then the creature sagged to its left. Lord Cereus had, clearly, timed and directed his attack to achieve that very outcome, and the vordbulk toppled like the one before it, falling away from the fortress. It fell in seeming deliberation, because of its sheer size, but the impact when it came crashing down crushed fully grown trees to splinters.

Ehren stared in shock at the fallen vordbulk for a full minute, hardly able to comprehend the incredible courage and sacrifice of the old High Lord. But then, Cereus’s daughter Veradis was behind the walls, employing her considerable talents as a healer, and his grandchildren were in the refugee camp. Of course her father would be willing to lay down his life to protect his sole surviving child and his sons’ orphans; or at least, a man of Cereus’s character would. It was one thing for a man to say he was willing to lay down his life for his child—but quite another for him to actually do it.

Count Calderon exhaled heavily, and breathed, “Thank you, Your Grace.”

Ferocious battle ensued on the northern bluff, between the Wolf tribe and the vord who had been guarding the vordbulk, but it was no longer a hopeless fight for the Wolf, especially with the support of the Horse. Cereus’s brigade of Citizens came flying back into the fortress in a state of total exhaustion.

Bernard looked up from a message brought by a courier and grunted. “That’s it, then. We’re out of firestones, and the rain is keeping the workshop from making any more.”

“We can hold them with steel alone if they don’t bring us any more surprises,” Ehren said.