The Name He Could Not Keep

The first Skahl-skin clawed through the gatehouse rubble before Oren finished counting the wounded.

Its charred fingers found a gap between the stones and pulled. A second set of hands scraped behind it. The passage they had blocked was opening by inches, and every scrape carried through the Spire’s lower door.

“Bar it,” Oren said.

Vey and two guards shoved a timber brace into place. It had come from a broken stair rail and bent as soon as the creatures struck the other side. The wounded were gathered behind them in the narrow hall, wrapped in coats and blankets. Elora stood among them with a bloodied strip of linen in her hands. She’d been tying it around a man’s forearm.

Kaelen looked at her. She was here. He knew her when she was here.

“Take the wounded farther up,” he said.

“There’s no room above the bell chamber,” Elora answered. “And the stairs are packed.”

A blow hit the door. The brace jumped against its stone brackets. The man Elora had bandaged flinched, then bit down on a cry.

Kaelen’s shoulder throbbed where the gatehouse stone had struck him. He kept his arm at his side and went to the door. Through the narrow gap between the brace and the frame, he could see a hand reaching in, skin flaking like burnt bark.

The horde had found the warmth. All those trapped bodies behind him, each heartbeat bright to things that could feel life through stone.

“Can we hold the door?” Oren asked.

“Until it breaks.”

Oren looked back at the wounded, then at the door. No fuel remained to make a fire here. The old embers were gone. The town had given up its doors and shutters to keep people warm, and the horde had come through the passage anyway.

Vey came to stand beside Kaelen. “They’ll be inside before we move everyone.”

The brace cracked.

Kaelen heard the Pyre-Chime above them, still and cold in the roof-torn chamber. He had rung it three times to keep the north gate standing. Each burst had given the town another day and taken something he could not call back. He had lost the sound of Elora’s laugh, then her voice, then the picture of her face when she was absent.

She stood behind him now. He could see her, so he knew her.

The next toll would go deeper.

“Father,” Elora said. “You have to ring it.”

He turned. She had left the wounded man and come closer, linen still caught around one hand. She looked at him steadily, though the tremor in the cloth showed what she was holding still.