They came through the darkness, hulking bodies moving swiftly through the dark.

  Reader’s and Cutter’s faces both turned skyward, panicked. In unison they cried, “WHERE?”

  They couldn’t see the assault approaching. The expectation had been for the ogres to charge directly across the white. Reader’s wedge-shaped platform had been positioned with this expectation in mind. They were poorly arranged to see the ogres coming… FROM THE LEFT!

  Cutter cursed, “The left, shit!” He leaned over the wall, peering into the darkness. There he saw the bulky shapes streaming toward them.

  Reader yelled to him, “Quick! We’ve got to turn it!”

  Cutter leapt down from the wall and to Reader’s mounded wedge. The wedge was very broad, its width modified for this purpose. He moved quickly, his thick arms working to move the crude frame, angling toward the left.

  Reader stood by him, not interfering. Before coming to Scape he had not been a weedy man, he knew this. He might not have been Hulk Hogan or Cutter, but he hadn’t been so small and slender and slight. Here, in this world and this body, he knew that the most he could hope to achieve by lending a hand would be to hinder the big fighter.

  Cutter grunted, “Gotta get this done and get over there!”

  Reader said, “Yes, yes. Quick.” Then he looked about and roared, “POD! Where are you?”

  Cutter laid the frame down, leapt back to the wall to glance at the approaching mob. They were still well out in the white but growing closer rapidly. He dashed back to the frame and adjusted it slightly. Then to Reader he flashed that savage grin of his, “See you on the other side, man!”

  Reader swallowed hard. “I hope so.”

  Cutter’s teeth were blazing white in the darkness. “I know so. Give ’em hell.”

  Then he was gone.

  Reader found himself standing. It was quiet, much too quiet. He’d expected roaring and shouting, a barbarian horde announcing itself. Again he shouted, “POD!” He moved quickly. Near the wedge were the floating logs. These were easy for him to guide to the frame. He’d prepared each of the six logs in the hours of waiting. He had little confidence in the weaves he’d attached to them, but the levitation was working fine. With gentle touches he had the first lined up on the frame.

  Suddenly there was a huffing and panting beside him. Reader looked down and saw Pod. In the darkness he couldn’t see the rheumy eyes or reddened nose, but he could clearly smell the liquor.

  “You’re drunk?”

  Pod waved a hand, “No. I is not. I just settled my nerves a little. And I don’t want to die sober.”

  Even Reader’s mild manner wilted under this. He wanted to rebuke the little leprechaun, but time and action were more precious in that moment. “Quick, to the wall. I need a spotter.”

  Pod waved at him, hobbling over to the wall. “Yeah, yeah. Like we practiced.”

  Pod struggled to climb the wall. His stature alone made the task a challenge, but with the current state of his coordination the task had become no easier. Gasping with exasperation, Reader sprinted to him and shoved him up.

  “OY! That’s rude, that is! The vertically challenged take offense to being treated like—”

  Reader spoke over him, “Later! We can talk about all sorts of shit later! Now tell me if I’m on target.”

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  For all his apathy, Pod’s life was on the line. He glanced over the wall toward the dark figures, then back to Reader’s apparatus.

  “A touch that way. Yeah, bit more. No, that’s too much. Act-shooly… we wanna lead ’em a bit, I s’pose… fire her off!”

  Reader waited for no more instruction. He touched his staff to the weave and held his breath. Fire erupted in the center of the weave. The flames pulsed and then surged. This would provide the energy for the weave to convert into kinetic. With a thrum, the log surged forward, climbing the ramp. Reader closed his eyes. This was the part he had been most concerned about, whether the shooting log would clear the wall.

  “Oy! SHIT!” Pod roared, swinging out of the way as the log passed not all that close to him.

  Behind the log was a long string of golden weave. It was like a spool of twine or fine glimmering rope to Reader’s eyes. He watched it reeling out as the log sped across the white beyond the wall. He cried, “Pod! You’ve gotta tell me when!”

  Pod shooed him, “I know, I know! Hold on!”

  Reader waited. It felt interminable. He was sure the drunken leprechaun had missed the lesson. But he could see nothing and subdued the urge to pull the thread. To Reader it was long seconds he waited. In truth, it might have been two.

  Pod roared, “NOW!”

  Reader pulled the thread by snagging it with his staff. This was perhaps the second most anxious moment. If he was wrong in his understanding of the weave then all that he might have produced was a battering ram that would most likely sail, burning, off into the white without hitting anything.

  But it worked.

  He processed the light first, an instant before the other sensations. The flames that roared on the back of the log flashed and he could see the halo of light surge over the wall. Then the vibration through the ground and the air, the crude rattle of the explosion. He had designed the weave to divert the kinetic and heat energy back into the log. He had only been vaguely hopeful that it would really work. But it worked. And boy, did it.

  He couldn’t see the explosion, but the cries and screams of the ogres beyond the wall were confirmation enough.

  Reader yelled, “What’s happening?”

  Pod hooted, “We fucking got ’em! That’s what’s happening!”

  Reader’s eyes widened with hope. “All of them?”

  Pod’s laugh was bitter. “No. Not nearly.”

  Reader was hesitant as he dragged the next log into place. “How many are there?”

  In the wake of the explosion, the shouts and cries that had been long expected had finally become apparent. Ogre voices shrieked in rage and pain beyond the wall. Pod seemed to consider for a second. “Uh… how many eggs is in a dozen?”

  Reader faltered in his work, looking back slack-jawed. “Twelve… Pod… twelve…”

  Pod nodded, “’Bout that many then. We ready for show two? Cause they’re hitting the wall.”

  Cutter hooted with glee as the explosion lit them up. If nothing else, the fragments of burning log illuminated the area, showing the forms clearly. A quick scan counted fourteen ogres. It wasn’t the absolute worst-case scenario in terms of numbers, but it was far from the best. Two of the ogres seemed to be down, several more were beating at burning embers that had embedded in them.

  The others rushed forward, the silence ended, roaring at the top of their lungs.

  Beside him, Norris spoke with disgust, “Oh, I do say… that’s rather uncouth…”

  Cutter followed his gaze. He recognized Tonk in the midst of the bigger ogres, racing for the wall. In one hand he held a hatchet. In the other a pole with what looked like an ogre’s head embedded at the end.

  Cutter said, “Christ. What’s that? Or who’s that, I guess.”

  Norris licked his lips nervously. “I do believe, my dear boy, that we behold the cranial remains of Cronk at the end of that spear.”

  Cutter did a double take. “Tonk has Cronk’s head on the… but isn’t he… he’s…”

  Norris nodded sadly. “His father. Oh, my good man, it’s a sorrowful day when family slays family.”

  Cutter shuddered. He had no time to imagine the fallout. The plume of smoke could not have meant good things, he’d known that. But the idea that these ogres had murdered their patriarch, their father and leader, made him feel a whole lot better about the reality that they had actually murdered Cronk and that this raid could be interpreted by some as a justified action.

  He had less than no time to really appreciate these thoughts. “Shit, Norris! Here they come!”

  The wall shook beneath him as a huge body collided with it. A moment later a massive green hand was clutching the edge of the wall right in front of him. His glaive flashed and the hand was gone, a couple of gory fingers toppling away, a shriek echoing up. The wall shook again and again as bodies struck. Tiller’s curses echoed from the near left, the clang of shovel on ogre skull ringing in the darkness.

  Norris was a blur of motion. One dagger raked and lashed, cutting at hands and stabbing at arms. At intervals his hands would blur and small knives would spin into the darkness, almost always producing a deep-voiced roar of pain. Cutter was no lesser. His glaive blurred and in moments his portion of the wall was vacated by the attackers.

  He laughed maniacally at the sky. “YOU BASTARDS MIGHT HAVE THE NUMBERS, BUT WE’VE GOT THE FIGHTERS!”

  An instant later his enthusiasm was dulled by the booming call of the yak.

  “Shit…”