The Grays advanced in response, stepping forward with each crash of spear on shield. Slowly at first, but as Cade’s pitiful numbers became apparent, their tempo increased.

Now, Cade could see the dark globes of their eyes, and see their slitted mouths open as they screeched their fury. Twenty steps away. Ten.

“Get down!” Cade bellowed.

He dropped to his knees, even as he ignited the second and third cannons, each trailing fuses that hung from the cart’s front. The powder-encrusted twine flared and sparked. Cade stared as the flame traveled up and into the cart, his back turned to the enemy. Around him, the Romans fell to the floor, calling prayers to their gods.

He cursed the slow travel of the fire, expecting a blade to stab home at any second. Instead, he heard the Grays’ song stop, and the clatter of weapons being dropped. He turned to see the Grays nearest pushing back, screeching at those from behind who could not see what was about to happen.

But it was too late for them. Too late for all of them.

He put his fingers in his ears.

Cade’s world erupted in smoke, the force of the explosion rippling above him and throwing him forward. For the second time in as many minutes, Cade stumbled through smoke and sputtering flames.

The haze cleared faster than the others, for the cannons were smaller. But the devastation they had wreaked was far greater than he could ever have imagined.

The smaller cannons had been packed with scraps of metal taken from the Sulphur Queen, sharpened upon the coarse stone of Jomsborg’s walls and packed inside the black cylinders from base to tip.

In the explosion, the metal had come flying out, an oversized shotgun blast that had funneled through the tunnel, ricocheting off the walls and into the crowd of enemies beyond.

He hurled his torch down the tunnel, and choked in horror at the devastation he had wrought.

It was a charnel house. Blood, blue and caustic, coated the walls. Grays lay dead and dying, packing the tunnel in a gory mess. It was a wall of bodies, and those that had survived the mincer were dragging themselves back to the safety of the tunnel depths.

“Attack!” Cade roared, drawing his sword and staggering forward.

There were living among the dead. Wounded beyond belief, such that Cade felt little guilt as he stabbed and stabbed again, aiming through the gaps in their helmets, gritting his teeth as the blade scraped through bone and sinew.

It was a mercy, he told himself. That, and the fact that every Gray needed to die. There was no room for pity here. Only the butchery of all-out war.

Around him, the Romans followed suit, finishing the bloody business alongside his contenders. They shouted with joy. With pride. He did not begrudge them their feelings, even as he choked back his own sobs of horror and relief. It was a heady mixture, one he hardly understood.