The wolves came in fast and low, alongside the last of the ghasts, and went for whatever they could hold. They caught Aleksander first and would not let go. Later they caught Ezmerelda. Freyja stepped through each fight as if it were a door, and wherever she stepped, her friends could step free.
Arturi called out how each beast moved before it moved, and slipped away from anything that closed on him.
“I know how they hunt.”Arturi Radanavich
The mohrgs
Then three skeletal things came out of the woods with long tongues trailing from their jaws. Fergus named them at a glance, mohrgs, and named what they could do. The tongue paralyses. Spears and arrows barely mark them.
The company shrugged off the paralysis. Van Richten could not. A tongue caught him, and he stood frozen while a mohrg held him and clawed at him, and for round after round he could not move. He took wounds that should have killed an old man three times over. Altair would not let him die. Every time the doctor fell close to the edge, Altair’s light pulled him back.
Light and wreckage
Altair’s held light was the heart of the fight. It healed whoever stood beside him and burned whatever came close. When he poured it all into one great prayer, a mohrg fell apart in it and the soldiers behind it burned.
Those soldiers were wights: a whole battalion of them, marching out of the dark with long daggers. Aleksander had saved the storm in his spear for the right moment, and this was it. The blades whirled through their ranks, and the battalion broke.
One mohrg was shoved back into a collapsing wagon, and the fire did the rest. Ireena put her rapier away against things that ignored it and fought with her fists. Ezmerelda kicked and tripped with her iron leg. Fergus patched himself up between shots and kept shooting.
Still burning
The company was still on its feet. Van Richten was still alive, and still frozen. The wagons were burning down, but they were not yet ash.
Then the air went cold, and pale shapes began pouring out of the trees: a whole troop of ghosts. Altair’s light was gathering for one more blast. Freyja turned toward the doctor with a word of freedom ready.