They moved along the wall quickly and quietly, avoiding noises that might distract them or each other from the sounds of the ogres moving on the other side.

  Tonk’s decision for the ogres to split forces had been a good one. The defenders had three fighters: Cutter, Stone Robot, and Norris. Tiller could hold his own but, in combat, he was little to nothing compared to them. Maeve was unwilling to take part in the fighting and, to be totally fair, was unlikely to make much impact. Grim and Bean had done their job and lurked in the darkness of the wild far beyond the walls.

  Though Stone Robot was better suited to direct combat, the decision was quickly made that he would remain with Cutter. The two were well accustomed to each other and made for an experienced, coordinated team. Norris moved with Tiller. They had two defensive teams to counter what they expected to be two offensive cohorts.

  The ogres were true to Tiller’s description. A lifetime of consuming earthen media had inclined Cutter to expect the ogres to be stupid and headstrong. Every step he took surprised him as he listened to the faint rustling of ogre feet beyond the wall. He thought they would be unable to restrain their animal urge to attack. He still couldn’t shake the expectation that their violent, simple brains could only be restrained so long.

  But the movement continued. The ogre parties seemed to reach each other near the midpoint of the opposite wall from the previous attack. The defenders had little to go on but the shuffling of feet, but there came a moment when Tiller and Norris met Cutter and Stone Robot as each pair tracked the vague sounds of movement from beyond the walls. They spoke not at all, but glances were exchanged. Tiller’s face was tense, strained and frightened. He looked willing and able to take part in the fight, but the creases by his eyes betrayed a desire to be anywhere else. Cutter’s face was a canvas of eagerness and excitement, but not without a garnish of existential dread.

  The sounds of the ogres on the other side of the wall ceased as the defenders sensed the ogre parties meeting each other. The sounds had mostly been heavy feet shuffling quietly. Occasional guttural voices in brief, excited exchanges.

  During the moments when the two ogre parties met, there was a sudden awful silence. Low voices grumbled, and the defenders steeled themselves. Planning was afoot beyond the wall. The ogres had traced the entire perimeter, seen the best and worst the earthen walls had to offer.

  Then, suddenly, there were scrabbling feet. Tiller looked to Cutter, his voice strained but a bare whisper. “They’re splitting up again.”

  Cutter whispered back, his expression grim. “I don’t like the way this is going one bit.”

  Tiller was urgent as he hissed, “What do we do?”

  “We need to spread out. They know that if even a couple of them get in here then everything will change. If we have to fight them mano a mano without the wall to give us an advantage it will tie us down. Then more of them can get over. There’s too many of them, and even if most of them aren’t fighters, they’re still big bastards and there’s too many of them.”

  Tiller swallowed hard. He didn’t want to face ogres alone. He was aware that Gronk had been a fighter, but it had taken all of them to bring him down. He thought of his family. He focused on what he had been building. He needed gold—so much gold—to afford the fare to take him back to them. This was his farm. He’d built it from nothing and felt the momentum of his work building. With the revenues he could make from produce, and the new soil from the composter, he knew things would accelerate from here. He was absolutely terrified at the prospect of facing an ogre, any ogre, on his own. But if he needed to face death and monsters to get home, then so be it.

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  The defenders spread out across the walls, where defenses were lower and more vulnerable.

  It wasn’t minutes but mere moments before the hulking green figures began to climb over.

  They came from every angle.

  Tiller was about fifteen meters from Stone Robot when the dark shape hurled itself against the wall. He had the barest instant to react. The wall was so much lower here that the ogre could gain the interior of the defenses much more quickly than at their earlier attack point. Even as Tiller rushed forward, bearing his shovel like a spear, the ogre had not just heaved its chest onto the top of the wall but had managed to swing one knee over as well.

  Tiller thrust with the shovel. His sigil glowed and the edge of the shovel glimmered with unnatural potency. He felt the impact of the connection in his shoulder as the blade of the shovel struck home. A beastly roar erupted from the ogre as he felt the meaty connection. There was a cool misting of blood on his face and then the heavy impact of the ogre falling to the far side of the wall.

  He had no moment to relax. No sooner had he heard the ogre fall away than he realized another form was climbing the wall to his right. Stone Robot was swinging tomahawks at hands that clambered at the walls before him. Tiller had no choice but to move to engage the attack, moving further from Stone Robot. It unnerved him to do so, to create a wider section of undefended wall between them.

  When he reached the next attacker, the ogre was kneeling on the wall, moments away from climbing down. A huge rage-filled face, a landscape of furrowed brow and protruding tusks, bellowed at him. Tiller thrust with the shovel, but the ogre parried with a spiked club. Tiller couldn’t see the ogre’s band, didn’t know if he faced farmer or warrior. The skill of the parry frightened him.

  His shovel arrowed up again, gleaming and strangely deadly. The club fell again, knocking it aside. The ogre seized the moment, swinging down. Panic lit up Tiller’s heart. The creature was almost over the wall, feet dangling, club raised. If it made it to the interior he might be able to fight it off, but he knew he would be removed from the defense. His chest tightened and he felt a chill. If he couldn’t defend his section, then they would be doomed. If he was locked in combat with this monster, assuming he could hold him off at all, then it would only be a matter of time before there would be more of them inside, climbing over the portion of the wall he couldn’t pay attention to.

  Even as he teetered, he saw another figure filling the gap between him and Stone Robot.

  Tiller roared, reaching for the last drops of his earth sigil. It had been exhausted, or so close to exhausted as not to matter. But he reached down and felt a speck of something. He drew on it. The ogre before him was dropping, falling into his side of the wall, feet nearly touching the ground.

  “FUUUUCK YOUUU!” Tiller screamed.

  The earth beneath the ogre’s feet surged upward like a fist. At the same moment his peripheral vision showed him that another beast had gained the interior, sliding down the wall between him and Stone Robot. Tiller could only pay attention to the monster before him.

  The earth erupted, a wide pillar punching up from the depths. The ogre before him, all rage and bared teeth, faltered. Surprise flashed across his face. Then the pillar was impacting him, driving him up and away. There was a loud and terrible snap as a bone broke somewhere in the behemoth’s body.

  Tiller had a fraction of time to feel relief, even achievement. The ogre was cast upward, screaming, and back over the wall. His earth sigil pulsed in a way he had never seen before. The color shifted there and, if he had had more time, he would have understood that it had leveled up. But he didn’t have time.

  A concussive force hit him in the side and he found himself sprawling on the ground. The ogre that had climbed the wall between him and Stone Robot was upon him. He reeled on the ground, his body convulsing in pain. He stabbed blindly with his shovel, desperate to protect himself, animal instincts taking over.

  But there he was. The ogre. The face was a picture of violent satisfaction. It raised its sledgehammer, the same hammer that had struck Tiller and sent him rasping to the dirt.

  Tiller jabbed with his shovel but he was too weak, too desperately hurt to do anything but annoy the monstrous figure above him.

  The ogre raised the sledge, a dark laugh rumbling out of it.

  “NOW YOU DIE, HOO-MAN!”