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Chapter 1243: Rescue

Two soldiers broke from cover and fired.

Twin smoke trails reached across the open ground toward the Spider Demon — and Uncle Sang’s throat tightened, watching the trajectories, because the armor on this thing was not decoration. It was engineering. He had understood that the moment he saw the fitted polygons.

He was right.

One grenade struck the plating and ricocheted dead into the dirt. The other caught a front leg squarely and detonated. The Spider Demon tilted forward under the impact and kept walking.

“Shoot the body, you idiot!”

Another man grabbed a box of shells and crawled from the trench without waiting for orders. Uncle Sang let him go. He was watching the demon’s movement instead: the way its limbs swung outward as it walked, rotating the torso in a constant slow arc that kept the armored plating interposed between itself and whatever shot was incoming. The articulation was deliberate. Whoever — or whatever — had designed this creature had studied the way guns aimed.

The next several shots proved the theory. Each time a soldier leveled the launcher, the Spider Demon curled, presenting stone angles instead of the vulnerable abdomen. The rounds skipped off or detonated short.

Mad Demons were already boiling through the gap in the building line behind it.

“Enough!” Uncle Sang’s voice snapped across the noise. “Retreat to the second defensive line. Abandon this area. Prepare the explosives.”

“But —”

“If they take the flank, we’re trapped.” He did not elaborate. “Move.”

The horns went up. Nail’s team fell back toward the port in the sequence they’d drilled. The refugees saw the monster coming and the crowd detonated into shouting. The soldiers on the flanks shoved the lanes back into shape by main force, holding the corridor open.

Behind them, the detonating cord was already connected.

“Captain — ready!”

Uncle Sang watched the Spider Demon navigate the barricades, its limbs crashing through debris with a sound like slow thunder. He had spent a week laying charges under the approach routes. He waited for the geometry to close.

“Just a moment — now.”

The lever fell.

The explosion was less a sound than a physical correction of the world: a force that reorganized the earth beneath the Spider Demon, lifting it, and the same stone armor that had turned every grenade became the weight that broke it on landing. The joints could not survive the torque. When it came down the limbs were gone, the plating scattered, the enormous body collapsed and motionless.

Someone whistled.

Before the echo died, another bang shook the east side of the dock.

A second Spider Demon emerged.

Uncle Sang was glad he had moved when he did. The original position was now a killing ground. If the machine gun squads had still been there — if he had hesitated a single minute longer — there would have been no retreat at all. Now they had a secondary line, four working guns, and a defensible perimeter.

But two Spider Demons. If one more arrived, the dock itself would not hold. And behind him were thousands of refugees packed against the water’s edge. Panic in that crowd would be its own catastrophe.

He was still working through the arithmetic when he heard it.

From the harbor: a sound he had not expected, a sound as out of place here as spring birdsong. Deep, mechanical, absolutely recognizable.

A 152-caliber Longsong Cannon.

There should have been no artillery at the Northernmost Port. Uncle Sang turned.

An iron ship was easing into the dock. The cannon parallel to her main deck was already trained past the defensive line at the street beyond. The name on the hull resolved as she turned broadside.

“That’s the Roland!” a soldier shouted. “Didn’t she leave?”

“Who cares?”

“We have support!”

“Long live the king — kill the filthy monsters!”

Shells arced over the soldiers’ heads and burst in the streets behind the barricade. Eight meters from the trench. Ten. Close enough that sand and earth showered down on the men below. On any other day those soldiers would have been cursing the Artillery Battalion in language that would peel paint. Now every man in the line simply stood in the rain of dirt and loved the sound.

Had Nail not abandoned them at all? Had he shipped the first refugees out, held the Roland in reserve, and waited for this exact moment?

Uncle Sang saw the answer: soldiers below were already guiding refugees up the gangway in files. Nail had anticipated it. He’d known the dock would be contested and had arranged his timing around it.

“Everyone — to the dock.” Uncle Sang raised his voice to carry the full battlement. “In order. One by one. Nobody falls behind. Explosion unit: when the last man is clear, ignite everything remaining.”

The order moved down the line. The trench emptied. The Mark I Machine Guns stayed — too heavy to carry, and the king’s standing orders were unambiguous: soldiers first, weapons second, because soldiers could build new weapons and weapons could not rebuild soldiers.

They filed onto the dock as the demons reached and overran the second defensive line against the last of the gunfire.

Then the remaining charges went.

Thousands of kilograms of explosives sent the forward demons skyward. The percussion hit the harbor like a second wave. A column of smoke and debris climbed into the Red Mist sky and hung there.

The Roland whistled once.

She pulled away from the Northernmost Port at full speed, her wake burning white through the harbor’s dark water, the ruined dock diminishing behind her.

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