Inside the War Room, Bilal was staring at the maps. His eyes were bloodshot, surrounded by deep, bruised circles of exhaustion. He had not slept in three days.
The enemy was building a massive wooden siege tower just out of trebuchet range. If it reached the walls, the city would fall.
"I will lead the vanguard tonight," Bilal muttered, his voice raspy and mechanical. "We will use the Greek Fire. We will butcher the engineers. I will take their heads."
He was speaking like a monster. The morality he had preached for twenty years was gone, replaced entirely by the cold, brutal math of survival. He was willing to become the Devil to save his family.
Runa watched him from the doorway. She was thirty-three years old. She saw her father—the man who had carried her through the snow—shaking with fatigue, his soul eroding with every kill order he signed.
"If he does this tonight," Runa thought, "he will never come back. The Giant will die, and only the Butcher will remain."
Runa walked over to the table. She carried a wooden cup of hot, steaming tea, thick with honey.
"Drink, Father," Runa said softly. "The snow is deep. You need the warmth before the raid."
Bilal nodded absently, his eyes glued to the map. He took the cup and drank it down in three long gulps.
Ten minutes later, the lines on the map began to blur. Bilal's massive legs felt like lead. He looked up at Runa, his vision swimming. He recognized the heavy, sweet aftertaste on his tongue.
Poppy sap. Opium.
"Runa..." Bilal slurred, his 105kg frame swaying as he tried to stand. "What... what did you do?"
Runa caught him as he collapsed, easing his massive body into the heavy wooden chair. She knelt before him, tears shining in her fierce, ice-blue eyes.
"You have given enough of your soul for us, Father," Runa whispered, kissing his heavy, calloused hand. "You are the builder. Let me be the killer. I will carry this sin for you."
Bilal tried to speak, to command her to stop, but the drug dragged him down into a dark, heavy void.
That night, it was not the Giant who led the slaughter. It was the Wolf Queen.
Runa led fifty men into the blinding snowstorm. It was not a glorious battle. It was a horrific, ugly massacre in the dark. Men slipped in the freezing mud, choking on their own blood. Runa fought with a short-sword, feeling the hot spray of blood across her face, butchering the Swedish engineers as they begged for mercy.
She burned the siege tower. She saved the city. But as she stood in the freezing mud, surrounded by mutilated corpses, she knew a part of her own humanity had been left in the snow forever.