THE BONE AND THE ANVIL - The Blended Arrow

The wind up on the upper ledge of the m

The wind up on the upper ledge of the monolith tasted like wet ashes and burnt hair.Kian crouched behind a jagged hump of granite, his fingers locked around the ash-wood grip of his cracked shortbow.

Below him, the

Scrub-Heath was a writhing gray soup of panic.

Brocke and his retreating squad had smashed straight into a blind gully between two juniper banks, their boots sliding out from under them in the frozen clay.And leading the pack down the slope was the alpha

Scag-Beast—a hulking, armored nightmare the size of an ox, its black crystalline plates radiating a sickly, unstable blue pulse.”Kian!”Orlo’s roar echoed up from the base of the pillar.

The southern giant was standing broadside in the path, his bare, scarred chest heaving, his massive hands gripping the rusted handle of his heavy logging saw.

He wasn’t running.

He couldn’t run; his short, thick legs weren’t built for flight, only for standing in the dirt until something broke.”Kian, you skinny bastard!” Orlo bellowed, spitting a wad of red phlegm into the sleet. “If you’re going to shoot, do it before it steps on my toes!”The alpha beast didn’t even slow down.

It lowered its massive, square head, the razor-sharp bone spikes along its spine clacking together like iron knives.

It didn’t see

Orlo as an obstacle; it saw him as a twig to be snapped.Kian didn’t hesitate.

He pulled an arrow from his belt—not one of his own crude, mismatched shafts, but one of

Garth’s poacher arrows with the lopsided, hand-trimmed turkey fletching.His ribs screamed, a hot, stabbing pain reminding him of

Cormac’s stitches, but he forced his shoulders down, drawing the hemp string back to his jaw.The wind wants the arrow to go wide,

Garth’s voice echoed in his memory.

You don’t aim where the target is.

You aim where the wind tells you.The alpha beast lunged, its massive front paws tearing four-inch trenches into the frozen mud as it launched its three-ton bulk straight at

Orlo.Kian didn’t aim at the beast’s chest.

The black crystalline plates there were thick enough to turn a ballista bolt.

He aimed six feet to the left of the charging monster, out into the howling crosswind sweeping across the gully, and released.Twang.The lopsided fletching caught the gale instantly.The arrow wobbled, dipped its nose, and then—violently, impossibly—hooked hard to the right in a sweeping, graceful arc, riding the thermal draft straight down into the creature’s face.Thunk.The iron tip didn’t hit the armor.

It drove straight into the alpha’s primary left eye—the large, milky orb glowing with raw

Crux energy.The beast shrieked.

It wasn’t an animal cry; it was the sickening, high-pitched squeal of hot iron plunging into cold water.

The alpha’s momentum carried it off balance, its massive shoulder smashing violently into the granite wall of the gully.

A shower of grey sparks flew as its crystalline carapace ground against the stone.”Now, you mountain ox!” Kian screamed down from the ledge.Orlo didn’t need the prompt.With a roar that shook the frost off the juniper branches, the southern giant stepped directly into the blind spot of the beast’s ruined eye.

He hoisted the heavy, rusted logging saw over his right shoulder, his copper muscles bunching until the veins stood out like thick blue ropes across his throat.”For the southern crags!” Orlo bellowed.He brought the saw down in a vicious, unrefined overhead chop.

The jagged, rusted teeth didn’t just strike the beast’s neck; they found the soft, unarmored seam right beneath the creature’s heavy skull plate where the spine met the shoulder.CRACK-SHRRR-K.The sound of tearing bone and grinding iron echoed across the whole ridge.Orlo’s weight and raw, ungodly strength drove the rusted teeth four inches deep into the beast’s neck.

Black, smoking blood—thick and glowing with a faint, radioactive blue luminescence—burst from the wound in a thick geyser, splashing across

Orlo’s face and bare chest like boiling oil.The alpha beast shuddered once, its massive legs kicking out a final spasm of black mud, and then collapsed sideways, its three-ton bulk crushing a juniper bush into flat kindling.Orlo stood over it, panting heavily, his arms hanging limp, covered from the elbows down in glowing blue gore.

He wiped a hand across his ruined face, leaving a streak of dark ichor across his flat nose.”Not… not bad for a southern ox,” Orlo wheezed, grinning through his blood-stained teeth.”Orlo!” Kian’s voice dropped an octave, tight with sudden, ice-cold dread. “Orlo, look up!”The southern giant blinked, wiping the glowing blue sludge from his eyes, and looked past the carcass of the dead alpha.Out of the grey, swirling fog of the upper ridge, the shadows were multiplying.One.

A dozen.More than a dozen massive, armored shapes were stepping over the crest of the crags, their multi-faceted blue eyes glaring down into the gully with cold, hungry intelligence.

The alpha’s death hadn’t scared them; it had drawn the pack.”Kian,” Orlo muttered, his chest still heaving as he dropped the bloody logging saw into the mud.

His voice lost its bravado, dropping into a flat, heavy realization. “I think we’re going to need a bigger saw.”