On the southern line, Nero sneezed.
Hale looked at him immediately. "Are you infected?"
Nero, standing with one boot on the chest of a twitching corrupted beast and his heavy military blade sunk through its throat, looked offended. "I am being discussed."
"You are being reckless."
"That too."
The southern ridge had been ugly for exactly eleven minutes and then started becoming educational.
The first wave of beasts had come from the broken trench line: six large corrupted bodies moving too fast over uneven ground, joints cracking, fungal plates blooming pale along their spines. Normal corrupted beasts. Nothing elegant. Nothing clever. Just rot, hunger, and the old biological insult of things that should have died but hadn't done so politely.
Nero had smiled when he saw them.
Hale, unfortunately, had been near enough to hear it.
"You are not to push past the marked line," Hale had said.
"I know."
