Steel bit through the wool of the scout's collar. A single bead of red welled against the blade. "Explain it on your knees," Zbyhneva snarled, shifting her footing. Her bandaged thigh throbbed with white-hot needles, but she leaned into the pain, channeling it into the pommel. The turncoat raised trembling palms. "We swore oaths to the Guard, Zbyh. Together. Under the iron standard!" "You swore them to an embezzler in gilded mail." She stepped closer, her boot pinning his left hand to the stone floor. "Speak before I let Stryh tear the tendons from your ankles. Why poison? Borislav brought half a regiment. He has siege engines on the pass. Why send you through the servant chutes with venom?" Stryh let out a dry, clicking rattle, feathers bristling like chipped slate as the creature hopped onto the man's shoulder, sharp talons resting a hairsbreadth from his jugular. The scout whimpered, pressing his head flat against the frost-rimed flags. "Because he can't win in the open! By the Saints, Zbyh, he’s terrified!" Behind her, Leslav stepped forward from the hearth's glow. His skin looked gray, hollowed out by days without sustenance, yet his voice carried the crack of iron. "Terrified of what? My beast?" "Not the beast," Krystian choked out, spit spraying from his cracked lips. "The Crown Marshal sent auditors to Varna Keep two weeks ago. Borislav falsified the garrisons. He took stipends for three score phantom lancers and lost the southern armory's grain reserve to dice. If you testify before the High Court, Lord Leslav, you don't just clear Zbyhneva—you reveal that Borislav botched the border patrol because he was drunk on spiced mead in a tavern cellar! The King will hang him from the battlements by his heels. Not for murder. For pathetic, sniveling incompetence." A laugh ripped from Zbyhneva—raw, jagged, and entirely devoid of mercy. "A Komtur brought down by ledgers and cheap liquor. And you sold your soul to hide his gambling debts?" She reversed her grip and struck the traitor across the temple with her hilt. The man slumped into an insensible heap. "Tie him to the support pillar," she told Leslav, tossing him a coil of braided hemp. Her hands moved swiftly, dragging the fallen soldier away from the door. "He won't freeze in here. But he won't walk out, either." Leslav took the cord, but when his fingers brushed hers, he shuddered. His pulse hammered through his skin like an erratic drum. "Zbyhneva... the wind changed." A deafening thunder shattered the exterior silence. A catapult stone struck the outer barbican, vibrating through the solid stone beneath their boots. Shouts rose from the perimeter, harsh and ragged against the howling blizzard. "The signal failed," Leslav rasped, leaning heavily against the hearth mantle. His knuckles had turned ivory-white. "He knows his scout was caught." "Then he attacks blind." Zbyhneva grabbed her composite bow from the weapon rack, checking the string's tension with a practiced pluck. "He wants a swift slaughter to bury the shame. Let's make him choke on it." They climbed the spiral stair to the northern rampart, Stryh darting between their feet like a streak of gray flint. The wind outside was a wall of knives. Below, three score men from the Royal Guard's penal division were attempting to haul a wheeled ram across the narrow causeway. At the rear, perched on an armored mare wrapped in dyed wolf pelts, sat Komtur Borislav. Borislav held a brass horn to his mouth. "Bring down the timber!" his voice echoed through the gale. "Drag the traitor out! A gold fortune to whoever brings me her head!" "A fortune?" Zbyhneva notched an arrow fletched with goose feather. "The bastard docked my pay two years ago and now claims his purse overflows." She didn't aim for Borislav. The Komtur stood well out of range, guarded by kite shields. Instead, she studied the approach. The causeway was an ancient feat of masonry, barely four paces wide, flanking a sheer drop into the frozen gorge. And just above the bottleneck hung the ancient drainage cistern—a heavy vat of trapped slope runoff, coated in two feet of solid ice, braced only by weathered pine levers. "Leslav," she called out, wind whipping strands of dark hair into her mouth. "The counterweight chain!" Leslav dragged an iron crowbar from the parapet's debris. His breathing had turned shallow, a terrible rattling wheeze catching in his chest. "I have it!" "On three. One... two... strike!" With a ragged grunt, Leslav jammed the lever home. The locking pawl sheared with a sound like a snapping limb. Zbyhneva released her shaft. The arrow struck the release peg on the secondary catch thirty yards below. The counterweight dropped like a falling star. The entire wooden spillway gave way. Tons of trapped meltwater, crushed shale, and jagged ice slabs broke free, roaring down the chute with the fury of a rockslide. It slammed directly into the center of the charging column. The front rank scrambled in blind panic. Men clad in full plate lost their footing on the greased ice, sliding helplessly over the precipice with desperate shrieks swallowed by the chasm. The heavy battering ram snapped its axletree, slewing sideways and crushing the legs of Borislav's foremost lieutenants. The elite spearline, pride of the southern march, dissolved into an undignified tangle of flailing limbs and mud. Borislav's warhorse reared, dumping the Komtur straight into a drift of half-thawed slurry. He scrambled to his feet, magnificent fur cape soaked in foul mire, his ceremonial helmet knocked askew. From the high parapet, Zbyhneva cupped her hands around her mouth, her voice carrying through the high notch. "Komtur Borislav!" she shouted, each syllable ringing with pure venom. "Did you tell your men they're dying for phantom lancers? Or did you promise them the dice winnings from your cellar?" A chorus of confused murmurs rippled through the remaining soldiers below. Men slowed their advance, turning to look at their dripping, mud-spattered commander. Borislav wiped slime from his eyes, his face mottling dark purple. "Kill her! Kill them both, you fools! Forward!" Nobody moved. The front ranks were already dragging their wounded backwards toward the safety of the lower pass. A savage satisfaction surged through Zbyhneva's blood. For three months she had run through the drifts like a whipped cur. Now, she stood tall against the sky while her persecutor wallowed in the dirt. Then she heard the wet, tearing crunch beside her. She whipped around. "Leslav?" The crowbar clattered across the flags. Leslav had fallen to his knees, his hands clawing at his breastplate. Black veins, thick as cords, pulsed upward across his neck, knotting beneath his jaw. His spine arched with an unnatural, sickening snap. He wasn't simply reverting as he had before in the dark; the hunger, starved by days of restraint and pushed past endurance by the strain, was tearing through his flesh like an erupting furnace. Stryh let out a piercing scream of terror, retreating toward the door with feathers raised high. Leslav's fingernails split, dark horn pushing through the bleeding cuticle beds. His shoulders broadened, muscle fibers tearing and knitting in grotesque surges as the ancient curse reclaimed its prison. The golden hue of his irises vanished, drowned in a terrifying crimson glow that seemed to drink the meager light from the air. "Leslav! Fight it!" Zbyhneva dropped her bow, rushing to him, reaching for his trembling shoulders. "Don't touch me!" his voice was already warping, human agony shredded by a gut-deep, guttural roar of pure predatory famine. He raised a clawed hand, fighting his own body, the tendons straining until they seemed ready to snap, trying to force his arm away from her flesh. "Zbyhneva, run!"

The Siege Within and Without