They marched at first light.
The combined force moved toward Bareborough Peaks with a weight and purpose that the original relief column had not carried. This was not an investigation or an evacuation. This was a hunting party, organized and supplied for the specific purpose of killing every Bearowl in that village, and the equipment rolling behind them reflected it. Four portable ballistas, two from each force, hauled on wheeled frames by heavy beasts of burden. Enough arrows, oil, and crossbow bolts to make the previous engagement look like a skirmish.
The challenge, as Adam's briefing had made clear the evening before, was the terrain. Fighting inside a village was fighting at a disadvantage. Buildings gave the beasts angles and cover. The walls limited sight lines. The alleys would funnel the formation into narrow corridors where numbers counted for less and the creatures' size and speed counted for more. The ballistas could not be positioned usefully inside the gate without considerable difficulty.
They needed the beasts in the open. That meant luring them out into the fields.
When Adam called for volunteers to go in and draw them, Brina's hand was already in the air before he had finished the sentence. Her squad looked at her and none of them were surprised, but the speed of it, and the look behind her eyes when she raised it, was something slightly different from the enthusiasm of someone who was eager for a fight. It was focused in the specific way of a person who has been thinking about one thing for a long time and has finally been given the official permission to act on it.
Adam took note of it and said nothing else.
The volunteer team numbered eight in total. They went in wearing nothing but their clothes and what they could carry quickly, no armor of any kind. Speed was the entire point of this assignment. The plan required them to go in, hit the beasts while they were still sleeping off the daylight, and then get back out through the gate and into the open field with the creatures chasing them. Running was the job, and running was the one thing armor actively worked against. Four enraged Bearowls behind you was already a bad situation. Four enraged Bearowls behind you while carrying thirty extra kilograms of steel was just a slower way to die.
Each volunteer carried a bow, a quiver, and two bottles of accelerant strapped to their person. Enough to guarantee a reaction.
Outside the walls the rest of the force was already moving into position. Shields and spears at the front, long pikes extending behind them in support, the formation was four columns thick and braced for something large hitting it at speed. The cavalry, lancers and mounted knights both staged on the flanks out of immediate sight, ready to swing inward and complete the encirclement once the beasts were committed to the charge. A reserve force held back behind the main line to close any gaps that opened. The archers and crossbowmen had taken elevated positions with clear lines to the open ground. The ballista teams had set up further back with elevation and angle both to their advantage.
It was a good plan. But it also required the lure team to not die in the execution of it.
They went in through the gate and did not speak until they were past the first row of buildings.
The village smelled the same as it had the day before. Brina did not let herself look at things she had already catalogued, or else she might waver. She moved to the position she had been assigned, her partner for this was a Don Castilian scout named Zilda, a compact and quick-eyed woman who had not asked unnecessary questions during the briefing and had checked her bottles twice before they left. Brina had decided she liked her on that basis alone.
They found their Bearowl in the position she had marked on the sketch the night before, settled deep into its claimed quarter, sleeping the deep midday sleep of a nocturnal creature that had already eaten recently and had no reason to expect trouble. It was massive even at rest.
Brina strapped a bottle to her arrow, ignited it, and drew.
Across the village the other six volunteers were doing the same.
She released and the arrow crossed the distance before the creature could register anything was wrong. The accelerant spread across its body and caught fire, and the Bearowl came awake burning and disoriented, already swinging its head around for the source of the pain. Around the village the other impacts followed in quick succession, a brief chain of thuds and then the rising noise of creatures waking up in an angry roar, and then Brina was already moving away from their position.
"Hey!" She shouted it at the top of her lungs, already running. "You ugly bastard, over here!"
Zilda added her voice to it without being asked. "Get up you fat prick, come on!"
The creature needed no further invitation.
They ran the route they had memorized, through the debris-laden side street that would slow four hundred kilograms of enraged Bearowl considerably more than it slowed two people on foot, through the gap between the collapsed merchant stall and the stone corner of the granary, and then into the clear run toward the main gate. The heat of the day was already sitting heavy. Brina was soaked through by the time she cleared the gate while they kept running, Zilda was only half a step behind her, the sound of the creature coming through the opening behind them felt enormous and close.
She ran through the shield wall gap and it closed behind her.
"They're here!"
She shouted it for the commanders as she cleared the line and kept moving to get out of the way. The other volunteers were coming through at various points along the formation, some at a full sprint, one limping from an unknown injury but still moving, all of them out and the angry beasts followed them just as they planned.
Adam's voice carried across the whole field.
"Archers, load your arrows. Ballistas ready. Formation, brace and hold for impact."
The Bearowls came through the gate and kept coming. Four of them, burning in patches, the damage to their coats already visible, their noise filling the open ground with something that the soldiers in the front line felt in their chests rather than just their ears.
"Loose!"
The first volley went out. Bolts and arrows both, a mass of them dropping into the approaching creatures, not enough to stop the charge but enough to pepper it, to add more pain to the anger already driving them forward. Two of the four ballista bolts hit clean. The other two raked the beasts but did not bury them deep. The cavalry on both flanks began their charge inward.
The vanguard formation braced for the incoming impact.
The beasts hit the shield wall and the world became very loud and very deadly all at once.
And then the largest one, the one from the square, the one that had not followed the others out, let out a sound from inside the village that cut through everything else. It was not a charge sound. It was something more deliberate than that. A command, if such a thing could be said of a beast.
The four that were already in the field hesitated for just a moment. Just long enough for the soldiers to fix their own formation.
Whatever the large one had understood about this situation, it had understood it faster than the others. The trap was obvious to it now, or had been obvious from the moment the arrows came through the square. It had let the others run out while it stayed behind.
And now it was telling the other Bearowls to stop fighting the way the humans intended them to fight and start fighting the way Bearowls do.
Brina heard its deafening roar from behind the shield line and felt her jaw tighten.
It seemed they had underestimated these creatures. They were smarter than they had planned for. Considerably smarter.