Master blacksmith's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The cook's warning still gnawed at Aldric the next morning. He stood at the barrier and watched Tori clean her blade. "The valley pack is coming," she said. "The survivors carried word. This time they'll send everything. And they won't charge blind like before." She looked at the half-built stone walls. "We're not ready." Aldric knew she was right. His crew could hold a small attack. A full pack, smart and hungry, would break through. He had days, maybe less. Stone walls took weeks. He needed something faster than his claws could build. He remembered a hall in Deadhead with pipes on its roof and steam hissing from its vents. People called the man inside mad. Aldric went anyway. Inside, worktables groaned under gears and coils. An old man in cracked goggles crouched over a spark, his white hair standing straight up. "Don't touch that," Dr. Volta snapped without looking. "It bites." Then he turned, saw the bear's head and clawed hands, and grinned. "Now you, I can work with." "Wolves are coming," Aldric said. "More than my crew can stop. I need a wall that fights back." Volta rubbed his gloved hands. "A wall that fights back." He pulled a lever. Sparks jumped. "I have springs. I have snares. Give me your quarry's edges and I'll make the ground itself angry." He filled a cart with coiled traps and hissing canisters. They worked all day at the quarry. Aldric hauled Volta's iron traps and sank them along the approach. Tori marked the paths wolves would use. The two elf brothers strung tripwires between the traps. The gray-haired one, Aeris, tested a line and nodded. The red-haired one, Lyrian, climbed high to watch the trees. Volta buried canisters that would burst with smoke and noise. Night came. The pack came with it, low and silent, spread wide the way Tori had warned. They did not charge. They crept. The first wolf hit a tripwire. A trap snapped shut on its leg. A canister burst, and smoke and shrieking metal filled the dark. The pack broke into chaos. Wolves stumbled into snares. Arrows found them in the smoke. Tori and Aldric held the gap where the confused ones fled. By dawn, the ground was littered with dead wolves. The crew stood, filthy and gasping, but alive. Not one of them had fallen. Volta laughed and slapped a spent canister. "The ground was angry," he said. Aldric let out a slow breath. The valley pack was broken. The quarry was his. Then Tori knelt by a dead wolf and frowned. "This one's ribs show. They're starving." She looked up. "The same woods your cook feeds you from feed them too. We hunt it bare, and the next pack won't come for the quarry. They'll come for us, and for that farm below. Everything alive out here is hungry now."