Snow drifted through the yard in uneven veils, carried by the wind that whistled between broken stone arches. Blood had already melted patches of white into a dull red slush, and the ground bore the scars of steel and fire.
Men stood shoulder to shoulder, boots sinking into the half-frozen muck, spears braced, shields locked. Their breaths clouded together in the bitter air, a single fog rising and falling with the rhythm of survival.
Commander Dave moved among them in silence, his spear point trailing slightly toward the ground...not out of weariness, but thought. He had seen many battles, had cut down more foes than he could number, and yet something in this unsettled him.
The puppets should have been pressing harder by now, overwhelming through sheer weight. But they weren't. Not exactly.
They were changing.
At first, their movements had been predictable...the mindless surging tide, their only advantage lying in their numbers and their indifference to pain. But now, the way they spread through the yard was… measured. The citizen puppets still came forward, crude weapons raised, but no longer in unbroken waves. There was spacing to them, gaps left deliberately, as if unseen hands were arranging them on a board.
Dave's eyes narrowed. His men cut them down easily enough, steel through cloth and bone, but even as bodies fell, the line never broke. Each gap closed immediately, not with panicked shuffling, but with unnerving precision.
The silence of it was worse than any war cry. No screams, no shouts...just the crunch of boots and the wet, tearing sound of steel through flesh.
He stabbed cleanly through a puppet's neck and withdrew, flicking the darkened blood from the spearpoint. The body crumpled and lay still. No twitch, no aftershock of movement. Only when the spine or the neck gave way did the things stay down for good. His men had noticed the same, and by now they were striking true at the throats without needing to be told.
"Commander," Robert, one of his lieutenants, murmured between blows, "they're not rushing blind anymore. It's like they're..."
"...being directed," Dave finished flatly. His voice was quiet, but it carried to the men nearest him, steady as stone.
A puppet lunged at him then... taller, broad-shouldered, perhaps once a mason by trade. Its eyes were glassy, its mouth half-open, a smear of frost across its beard.
Dave stepped aside, turned the shaft of his spear, and thrust upward. The point pierced under the jaw, snapping through the vertebrae at the base of the skull. The puppet sagged instantly. He let the body drop and lifted his gaze again.
They weren't reacting with hesitation. They weren't faltering at the edges. Every move they made was without fear, without pause.
To most soldiers, that should have been their weakness, no instinct of self-preservation.
But now Dave saw the other side: no hesitation also meant no error. A commander could move them like tools, without resistance, without doubt, and they would obey perfectly until destroyed.
A perfect weapon for whoever stood behind them.
He felt the air shift, the weight of the fight pressing down heavier as more of the soldier-puppets appeared in the alleys feeding into the courtyard. A handful, steel at their sides, their postures still bearing the echo of drilled discipline from another life. They walked with a purpose, not shuffling, not wavering.
Dave's gut tightened. This was the true test beginning.
He turned his head slightly. "Simon," he called, not raising his voice more than needed. A younger runner straightened from the line, face pale but eyes sharp.
"Sir."
"Take word to the Baron. Tell him this: the neck is the weakness. Tell him they're adapting. They've shifted from tide to formation. He'll already suspect, but he needs it confirmed."
Simon's jaw twitched. He looked toward the gate, where Baron Edric's banner could barely be glimpsed through the haze of snow and the clash of shields. "The way is clogged, sir. It may take..."
"Minutes," Dave cut in. "No more. You'll reach him. Keep to the alleys, not the main press. If you fall, the message falls with you. Do not fail."
Dave watched him vanish into the mouth of a side alley, a silent prayer on his lips that the message would reach Edric before their position collapsed. Then he turned back to the fray; the boy's fate was now in the hands of the cold gods.
Simon's Run
Snow swallowed him as he darted into the side street. The clash of steel dulled behind him, replaced by the hollow echo of his own boots. He kept low, hugging walls, slipping past broken carts and frozen corpses. Twice he froze as puppets shambled across the far end of an alley, their heads jerking unnaturally as if sniffing for sound. He held his breath until they passed, then moved again.
His lungs burned. His legs ached. But the words hammered in his skull: The neck is the weakness. They're adapting. He repeated them silently, terrified he might forget if he fell. At one corner he stumbled over a body... one of their own, throat torn out. He forced himself not to look at the face. He couldn't afford to. He ran on, snow crunching, heart pounding like a drum.
Back in the yard, the clash before Dave surged. A half-dozen puppets pushed in at once, their ragged blades rising in eerie unison. Dave met the first with a thrust, turned the haft sideways to knock aside a second, then pivoted with calm precision, catching another under the ribs. His men held beside him, not a cry among them, only the rhythm of killing and moving on.
One of his veterans, Hugh, grunted, breath sharp in the cold. "Sir, they're pressing us in formations. See it? Left and right, both flanks, pushing tighter."
Dave's eyes flicked across the yard. He saw it immediately... lines forming, as if some invisible sergeant barked orders they could hear. He had fought against drilled troops before, soldiers who knew discipline, who broke and reformed at command. This was something different. These things didn't think. They didn't question. They didn't break under fear. Every adjustment, every angled press, came with inhuman speed.
It was almost flawless.
Almost.
"They want us boxed," Dave said lowly. "Keep the centre alive. Strike outward when they overextend. Do not chase."
His men obeyed without hesitation, tightening their formation. Where the puppets pressed inward, Dave's line thrust outward, short, brutal strikes to the neck, each kill opening a sliver of space to breathe. The snow grew red beneath their boots. The air stank of iron and smoke.
But for every gap cleared, more puppets poured in.
And then… silence, brief but palpable, cut through the yard.
From the main street, the soldier-class emerged in numbers. Dozens at first, then more behind them.
They moved differently from the citizens... not ragged, not half-lost, but in step. Shields raised, swords ready, their boots crunching over snow with the rhythm of a trained march.
Dave felt the weight in his chest.
These were not the butchered masses, not merchants or farmers dragged into death and made tools. These had once been soldiers of Whitehold itself. Men who had drilled in this very yard, who had guarded these very gates. He could see it in the way they carried themselves even now, hollow-eyed and pale: their training had been stolen along with their lives, bound to the will of some unseen master.
He recognized the front-left puppet by the faded insignia on its shield... Sergeant Gerard's shield. He had sparred with the man a hundred times, had learned to account for his old leg injury. Now, the puppet that wore his face moved with a flawless, horrifying grace. The humanity, even the flaws, had been stripped away.
The air grew colder around them, as if the snow itself recoiled.
Dave adjusted his grip on the spear, feeling the worn wood against his gloves, and set his stance. His men did the same, shoulders squared, blades tightened. None of them spoke. None of them needed to.
The tide had shifted again. And now, the true battle was about to begin.