I fully intended to kill him. This was not about winning or pushing, this was full-blooded, cold, calculated murder. Apart from the weight of numbers, Buffalo had too many Griidlords. Both their direct strength and the advantage of all of those Footfields was too much for Boston to endure.

  I swept at him. I had done my research, knew his level—32. Could I have imagined a time when level 32 would seem so unthreatening?

  His sword came up to parry my first CUT. He was fast and skilled and very much in control. Still, his arm sagged as our blades smashed together.

  The yard around me was a field of slaughter. Knights charged from sheds, the best of our shock troops exploded from every corner and recess. The Buffalo men were completely unprepared, out of formation, some of them even unarmed as they had been preparing to ravage the silos.

  Crassus kept moving back from me. I pursued with calm coolness, keeping down the growing hunger I had to just win, to just dominate him. He defended with desperation, suring CUT with all of his might to counter each of my attacks. I pressed on him with ease, each strike almost casual, as I let the fight develop. The one thing that could defeat me was myself, and I would not overcommit and fall for a trap. I would dissect him carefully and then move on.

  “How?” he roared, attempting a counter.

  I parried it aside, my sword so much brighter in its molten blood hues. I did not answer.

  He grunted as I clipped a shoulder, smoke springing and sizzling. “A spy? Who would betray us? Dammit, Butcher!”

  I raised an eyebrow. Butcher. I liked the sound of it coming from an enemy.

  A Buffalo man charged me, spear raised. I stepped back, POWER painting him in slow motion. When the thrust passed me my sword flashed in an upward arc and he was in two pieces. Crassus had leapt further back. He was weighing his options—I could see the gears turning. I would be doing the same. He faced an opponent far too powerful to stand against. But to flee would be to abandon his men. With no Griidlord to lead them, no Footfield to speed them, they would be destroyed. Already they were fleeing the field, the momentum of the ambush breaking them.

  I heard my voice and it was terrible. Awesome and terrible. “You won’t be leaving here today, Crassus. This yard is your grave.”

  “YOU WON’T TAKE ME!” he snarled, still wavering on that edge between attack and escape.

  I surged to him, sword spearing. He deflected. We danced, fire erupting at each clash. I had the better of him now, everything contained. I needed to get to Olaf and support him. This was becoming just a formality.

  My sword spun, raking his arm. I chopped back down with sword-fist as he staggered. The blow put him on his knees. Immediately he started to surge to his feet but I spun, twirling my sword, and slicing down. The blazing magma of my blade passed through his neck and he was dead.

  I paused, waiting for the level. None came. I supposed I had finally passed the point where defeating a single Griidlord in the thirties could account for a whole level.

  I surveyed the field. We were the masters here. The Buffalo men were breaking left and right. Already throngs of them poured into the fields to escape the death trap we had made of the town. It would do them little good. Horses and infantry awaited them in long formations.

  I leapt to the roof of a smaller building, an office possibly. It was magic to be so strong, to glide like that. I landed easily and sprinted the length of the building, reaching the end and kicking off to sail across the street. Below me was the press of bodies, the reek of blood and shit, the screams of fear and panic.

  As I ran I saw a cluster of Buffalo men, elites of their own, forming up. They could become the nucleus of a renewed effort at organization. I paused long enough to forbid it. It was a matter of moments, CUT and BEAM shredding them. I had put them in a box in my mind. They were not men, they were pests, weeds to be mown. So I mowed.

  When I reached Olaf I stopped.

  Snowfang had been the other Griidlord deployed here. What a difference the intel made. Enki could tell us who came and where, even relaying snippets of their plans. They might have had more Griidlords than we, true. But we could play the type game to our heart’s content.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Snowfang was level 32. Olaf had type advantage over the Buffalo suit, but I had come with haste to back him up. It seemed my haste might have been better spent in the streets.

  Olaf was crushing the Buffalo suit. His shield was a sledge, smashing through Snowfang’s defences. Snowfang was pedalling back. A veteran of long Fallings, the older man could not find his balance long enough to so much as feint back at the hulking Boston Shield. What was Olaf’s level now? I realized I could not confess to knowing. Had he updated me on his status in the war council? It was lost to me if he had. Had he crossed beyond level 20?

  He answered the question for me. As Snowfang flailed, a Buffalo knight rammed for Olaf. He stepped past the attack, titanically big in his Shield suit yet bounding like a boxer. The knight missed and a monstrous fist crushed his chest. Snowfang took the moment to flee, gain separation. I surged to intercept. We needed him dead no less than any other. Olaf was slow in the Shield suit, he could not catch Snowfang. But he turned and extended an open palm to the ground behind him. Light flared in the palm, a concussive eruption filled the air, and Olaf was airborne, as if launched from a cannon.

  A new skill. He had crossed the threshold. So fast. Was it my Synergy skill helping him to grow?

  Olaf slammed into Snowfang and the axe smashed into a long stone wall. He backed up, pressing his back to the stone, every aspect of his posture screaming fear and panic.

  Olaf moved to finish it. I realized a moment too late what was about to happen.

  Snowfang phased, becoming translucent and sliding through the wall.

  A moment later I glimpsed him in the open beyond, another moment and he was wrapped in Footfield, speeding away.

  Damn it.

  Still, it was hard to lament the day too much. All around me our enemies died. They broke in the streets and fled to the fields where they were cordoned by prepared formations and slaughtered like animals.

  Some threw their weapons down, but these too were slaughtered. By my own verdict we would take no prisoners. Too many of the Green Men were filthy animals who abused and stole. It might have been a mark on my soul, but there were too many of them to house and feed if they saw yielding as an option.

  We slaughtered them to a man. It seemed within the bounds of reality that not a man of them, excepting Snowfang and his Footfield, left the battle alive that day.

  We joined them in Albany without resting.

  There things were faring more poorly. Lance had done his job in forcing a brutal pace and brutal ethic in preparing the defences for the second wave. In our absence they had held them at the bridge, but at a cost. We had the advantage of guns. The cannons of Albany, fueled by the Order fields that we controlled on our territory, belched over and over. Snipers and riflemen filled the air below them with lead. The Green Man Griidlords herded the horde like cattle, whipping them to a frenzy with speeches and battle cries, cowing them into obedience with the threat of death.

  Again and again they had charged the bridge. Again and again they had bled and died until they turned back, shredded by shrapnel and broken on the shield walls.

  But they had so many. All it would take was one charge to shake our lines enough. On the narrowness of the bridge the weight of their number meant nothing. If they could so much as find a toehold on the other side then those uncountable masses could pour out and surround the defenders.

  Our force, heavily composed of knights and shock troops, intercepted an amphibious crossing that might have posed a real threat to the defence. We met them as they were forming up, having dismounted their rafts, a mile downstream.

  I had started to feel nothing for mortals when those times came. Olaf fought with the outrage of a man defending his homeland. To him there was a passion in this still. They had come to steal our lands, rape our women, slaughter our men, and enslave our Tower. To me, I needed to forget that these were men, with only one life each to live, as I cut those lives away. Detached, I walked through them, killing with dispassionate calm. It did nothing but cement my aspect as a cold and heartless killer to them. I heard screams of “Butcher” and “Blood Prince” from the ranks of my enemies many times that day.

  When we joined the battle at the bridge the tide was turning.

  Magneblade’s armour was sparking and burning in places. He stood with rabid eagerness, but his condition was far from fully functional. Tara was in better condition, but she was scarred too and dragged a leg when she walked.

  As the Buffalo formations withdrew from the range of our cannons we were told that they had started with a thrust from their Griidlords that morning. They had tried to seize the bridge with an overwhelming attack from their suits. Only the strength of our own suits, the advantage of our cannons, and the sacrifice of too many of our knights had held them long enough.

  In the early fighting a shell from Albany had made a direct hit on Jythorne. It had not killed him, but it had wiped him from the fight. Magneblade, smelling the blood of a Sword, had shot for him like a lightning bolt. The other suits had needed to make a fighting retreat to pull their Sword out with his life.

  After that, they had not risked their Griidlords to our cannon fire.

  Enki came to my ear as I watched the oceans of humanity melt back into the Wilds.

  I sighed.

  I shook my head.