She turned to the desk where Hugh’s breastplate, solid black and reinforced with metal plates waited, and touched it. It felt hard like wood or plastic, not at all how she expected leather would feel.

“Cuir bouilli, reinforced with steel plates,” Hugh said.

“Will it stop a sword?”

“Depends on who is holding it.”

He got up, picked up the armor, and fitted it over himself, pushing his left arm through the opening between the chest and back piece.

“Since you’re here…”

She grimaced at him and buckled the leather belts on his right side, pulling the armor together. “Good?”

“Tighter.”

“Now?”

“Perfect.”

He buckled a sheath on his hip and thrust his sword into the scabbard. Hugh grabbed a length of black fabric from the chair and shook it open with a quick jerk of his hand. A cape edged with fur. He’d worn it when he first came to the castle.

He wrapped it around his shoulders. She took the leather tie away from him, reached for the other side of the cape and pressed it on the two metal studs there. Hugh picked up a helmet from the desk. It was a Roman style helmet with cheek pieces and a crest of black hair. A stylized dog snarled at her from the wide piece of the helmet that would be positioned just above Hugh’s brow. He put the helmet on his head. It didn’t hide that much of his face, but somehow altered it. Two blue eyes stared at her with a focused intensity.

She took a step back. Hugh was a big man, but the cape, the helmet, the armor, it made him look giant.

“You look like a villain in some fantasy pre-Shift movie,” she told him. “Some dread lord about to conquer.”

“Dread lord,” he said. “I like that.”

He would.

“Won’t the cape get in the way?”

“The cape and the helmet are for Aberdine. We don’t have time to play politics. Once I’ve got the town, I’ll take them off when the battle starts.”

Something had been nagging her since the strategy meeting. “What you told me about the ley point made sense at first. But the mrog soldiers don’t hold towns, Hugh. They wipe them out and disappear. Aberdine’s massacre wouldn’t affect our access to the ley point. Why are you really going there?”

“They broke into my castle. They attacked my wife. They attacked a child in our home. The point of having a castle isn’t hiding inside its walls; it’s being worthy of it. It’s being able to control everything around it. They’re growing bolder. They’re taking larger settlements. They’ve got my attention now. They will wish they didn’t.”

In her head she saw him let Raphael’s knife strike him again and again. He was riding into battle. Anything could happen in battle. All he would have to do is not try as hard. To not step out of the way of a sword. To let himself get shot.

She wanted him back.

“Preceptor?”

“Yes?”

Her voice was steady. The words rolled off her tongue. “You like making bargains. Here is one for you. Come back to me alive, and I will stay the night. The whole night.”

Outside the horns screamed and she almost jumped. There was something dark and primitive about the sound. A steady beat rose, thumping like a giant’s heart. The war drums grew louder and louder. She heard horses neighing, the clang of metal, the voices of fighters, all of it mixing with the drums into a terrifying marching hymn. Someone howled like a wolf, in tune with the horns.

She turned to Hugh. He had somehow grown darker, grimmer, scarier, as if he emanated some imperceptible magic. The darkness curled around him, like a willing pet with savage teeth.

“Done,” the Preceptor of the Iron Dogs said.

Hugh walked the line of Aberdine defenders. Men, women, some almost children, others well into retirement. Four hundred and seven people, who volunteered to defend their home. Behind him a line of the Iron Dogs waited and behind them Dugas and his druids chanted in low voices, brewing herbs and powders in their cauldrons. The air smelled of old ways and half-forgotten magic.

He’d sent Felix in first, keeping the rest of the Dogs hidden in the tree line. The scouts scaled the wall with no one the wiser, took the firehose, and rang the bell. The residents of Aberdine lived in a wood filled with magic. The firehouse bell meant running for the safety of the walls, which was exactly what they had done. Then, once they dropped everything and gathered on Main Street, Hugh had pushed the Iron Dogs into a canter.

The guard at the western gate was too focused on the bell. He didn’t see them until it was too late, which didn’t bode well for Aberdine’s chances in a real fight. They thundered inside the wall at a near gallop. Bucky reared in the market square, before an old Dollar General, pawing the ground and screaming. Hugh dropped a power word and the entire town went silent while he pulled a mrog’s head out of his bag and told them what was coming. He was there to defend their town. They had two options: leave or fight. The choice was theirs.

It took less than two hours to round up the die-hards holed up in their houses, but now finally everyone was on their way: two long caravans, one of horse-drawn wagons and enchanted water vehicles heading to the ley point and the other, mostly people on foot and horseback, to Baile Castle. They went armed.

Now he faced a ragged militia. A third of it was too old, a third too young and green, and the remaining third looked ready to bolt. He had to make them count, because Aberdine’s defenses were shit. Of the two ballistae mounted on the walls, the first had rusted through and the second fell apart when they tried to test fire it. There was no time to set up defenses. Warm bodies were all he had.

“An army is coming,” he said. “They’re armored, organized, and trained. They have monsters who serve them like dogs. They don’t want your money, your cows, or your homes. They don’t want what’s yours. They want you. Your bones. Your flesh. Your meat. And they will keep coming back until they get it.”

They listened to him, watching him with haunted eyes.

“This isn’t a fight for your town. This is a fight for survival. Some of you have fought before. Some of you have killed creatures. Some of you have killed people. This will be nothing like you’ve seen before. This will be a slaughter. It will be hard, ugly, and long.”

Directly across from Hugh, a kid about Sam’s age licked his lips nervously.

“You’re scared,” Hugh said. “Fear is good. Use it. There are few things as dangerous as a vicious coward on his home turf. Kill and show your enemy no mercy. If you get an urge to spare one of those bastards, he will kill your friend next to you and run you through with his dying breath. Kill him before he kills you. This is your town. Make them pay for every foot of ground in it.”

The line of shoulders rose slightly, as some of them straightened their backs.

“You will be broken into teams. Each of your teams will get an Iron Dog. These men and women are trained killers. They’ve fought battles like this before and they’ve survived. Obey your Iron Dog. Stay together. Don’t run. Fight dirty, do as you’re told, and you too might survive this.”

He raised his hand and flicked his fingers. The first Iron Dog, Allyson Chambers, peeled from the line. Solid, broad-shouldered, with pale skin and blond hair pulled back from her face.

“You, you, you, you, you and you!” she barked. “With me.”

The first six fighters peeled off and followed her down the street at a run.

Arend Garcia stepped into his place and pointed at a rough looking man twelve defenders down the line. “Everyone up to this man – with me.”

Hugh turned and walked to Dugas. The druid looked up from the cauldron. Sweat sheathed his face. He’d taken his eye patch off, and his bad eye sat like a chunk of moonstone in his tan face.

“How long?” Hugh asked.

“We’re ready now,” the older man said.

“Good. How long will it take to saturate the village?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“And it will stay inside the wall?”

“It will,” Dugas promised. “You’ll get about twenty minutes worth of cover.”

Twenty minutes would have to do. “Be ready to flood us.”