They started with catapults, just like last time. Last time they had been effective at keeping the Imperials on their heels, at least, even if they hadn’t opened any breaches.

 

Well, except one.

 

This time…

 

The first stone never reached the wall.

 

Marcus watched it rise from the nearest catapult in a clean, graceful arc, a dark blot against the pale afternoon sky, aimed for a spot just above the bailey.

 

Then the stone shuddered and, before Marcus could register what had happened, it careened back toward them.

 

A murmur swept the Stormcloak lines, the sound starting low and spreading fast—confused, disbelieving, edged with the first sharp touch of fear.

 

Marcus leaned forward despite himself. His fingers tightened on the bow stave, knuckles whitening beneath his gloves.

 

The stone struck the catapult it had just left head‑on with the sound of a thunderclap, exploding wood and iron outward in a spray of splinters and shattered beams. Men vanished beneath it—some crushed outright, others flung aside limp and boneless. The arm snapped clean off, spinning end over end before burying itself in the mud fifty paces away.

 

For a moment, no one spoke. Then someone screamed.

 

The officers shouted for order. Someone laughed—a high, hysterical sound Marcus didn’t recognize until he realized it was coming from a boy not old enough to have a beard. The crew of the next catapult hesitated, hands hovering over the winch ropes, eyes fixed on the sky.

 

Jaunty’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and furious. “Launch! Again! Don’t you stand there gawking like milk-drinkers!”

 

The second stone flew. It made it nearly to the wall. For an instant—a treacherous instant—hope flared. Marcus felt it stir in his chest before he could kill it.

 

Then the stone jerked sideways, as if slugged by an invisible giant, and whipped back along a different path, slamming down square into the flank of another catapult that hadn’t even finished cranking its arm.

 

That one folded like kindling.

 

Men scattered this time, diving and scrambling away from the engines. No one needed to be told twice.

 

“This isn’t…” someone near him muttered. “This isn’t right.”

 

Marcus didn’t answer. He didn’t trust his voice.

 

By the third launch, no one stood close anymore. The engineers worked at arm’s length now, throwing the release and running the instant the stone left the sling. Even so, it didn’t save them. One rock reversed itself so suddenly it struck the crew before they could even turn, bowling through them in a wet, terrible line.

 

Another stone sailed high—far too high—and Marcus thought for one mad second it might clear whatever this magic was altogether.

 

It froze at the apex of its arc, then reversed course as neatly as if guided. The catapult beneath it vanished in a roar of splintering beams and screaming men.

 

Not all the rocks hit catapults. Some few missed, but those were even worse – they took out soldiers by the dozens. By the time the seventh engine was reduced to scattered timbers, the field between the Stormcloaks and Whiterun’s walls looked less like a battlefield and more like a butcher’s yard. Broken machines lay half-buried in churned mud. Bodies lay where they’d fallen, twisted at impossible angles, crimson staining the pale stones hauled all the way from the mountains.

 

Of the original twelve catapults, only five remained—and no one would go near them.

 

That was when the rumors began to spread in earnest. Marcus heard it first as a whisper passed down the archer line.

 

“It’s her.”

 

“Who?”

 

“The she-devil. The one from Korvanjund.”

 

Marcus felt his stomach tighten.

 

He’d heard those stories too. Everyone had. The stories had grown with time, of course. Now she had been a lone figure moving like a storm itself—routing veteran troops, shattering shields, leaving the dead piled ankle-deep in her wake. Some said she’d torn stone from the ruins with her bare hands. Others swore she’d bent the air, turned arrows aside, made men choke on their own swords.

 

Most of it had sounded like frightened nonsense.

 

Most.

 

“That’s not one person,” Marcus said quietly, though he wasn’t sure who he was arguing with—himself, or the spreading panic. “It can’t be.”

 

Even as he said it, the proof showed itself – two stones launched nearly together, one from the far right engine, one from closer to the center. Both reached the walls at different angles.

 

Both came back.

 

No single mage could do that. Marcus knew little about magic, but from what he knew, he was pretty certain no single mage could do any of this. They had to have teams of battlemages up there.

 

Still…when he squinted through the smoke and distance, he thought he saw movement atop the walls. A figure running; too far to make out details, only the sense of speed, of purpose. A flicker against the pale stone before vanishing behind a tower.

 

If that was her…

 

He swallowed hard.

 

Jaunty had stopped shouting by then. He stood rigid in the churned mud, helmet askew, face red and furious beneath his beard. His hands were fists, shaking at his sides.

 

“This isn’t a siege anymore,” Bent said grimly beside Marcus. The Nord’s voice was steady, but his eyes were dark. “It’s slaughter.”

 

Jaunty rounded on him. “We’re here now. You don’t pull back because the enemy plays tricks.”

 

“Those aren’t tricks,” Marcus said before he could stop himself.

 

Jaunty’s glare burned into him. “Mind your tongue, archer.”

 

Marcus met his eyes anyway. “Sir… there’s something wrong.”

 

For a long heartbeat, Jaunty looked like he might strike him.

 

Then the fifteenth stone was launched. It came back so fast Marcus barely saw it. It tore through the empty frame of the eighth catapult, splintering it to shreds without killing a soul—no one had been standing within thirty yards by then.

 

The field went very quiet. Jaunty’s jaw worked. His nostrils flared. Then he drew his sword.

 

“Charge!” His voice was hoarse but it rang enough to carry. “All units! We take the walls now!”

 

The horns sounded. Men surged forward with a roar born of desperation more than courage. Shields went up, weapons were raised. The battered remnants of the Stormcloak army ran headlong toward Whiterun’s gates, screaming defiance at walls that had not yet been touched.

 

Marcus and the archers started loosing arrows in a futile attempt to provide cover. Marcus took no joy in the shots—only grim focus. He aimed for battlements, for silhouettes behind crenels, for the flash of Imperial helms. Arrows flew thick as rain, but it was never enough.

 

Boiling oil fell. Stones fell. Arrows from the walls cut the charging lines into bloody, staggering gaps. Men tripped over bodies, slipped in mud slick with gore.

 

 

It was a slaughter. For once, Marcus was glad he had been consigned to the archers – not even his mother could have survived the onslaught.

 

Of course, Melissa would not have followed any such suicidal order – she would have taken the head of whomever gave it then taken the city by herself.

 

Marcus searched the field with frantic eyes, searching for Bent. There—running hard, hammer raised but with no one to swing it at. Gods, Marcus thought. Move. Move faster.

 

Not that there was anywhere to run to.

 

Panic surged. Formations collapsed into screaming knots of men trying to flee arrows that had not finished claiming their due. Marcus’s heart seized.

 

“Dragonslicer!” he shouted, stumbling toward Jaunty’s right hand man. “They’re dying out there!”

 

The old Nord watched through clenched teeth. “I see it.”

 

A body slammed into Bent from the side, knocking him sprawling. For a horrifying second, Marcus thought he’d been crushed. But he moved. Slowly. Painfully. But he moved.

 

Marcus loosed arrow after arrow until his hands shook and his quiver lay empty at his feet. It didn’t matter. The charge broke like a wave against solid rock. Men streamed back, wounded, screaming, crawling. Others never moved at all.

 

Marcus grabbed Dragonslicer’s arm. “Sound the retreat!”

 

Jaunty was already shouting demands—orders to reform, to push again, to hold. His face was wild now, spattered with mud and blood.

 

“If we don’t pull back,” Marcus said, voice breaking despite himself, “there won’t be anyone left.”

 

Dragonslicer looked from the field to Jaunty…then back again.

 

Slowly, reluctantly, he nodded. The horns sounded.

 

What was left of the Stormcloak army stumbled away from Whiterun’s walls, broken and bleeding, carrying the wounded they could reach. No pursuit followed. None was needed.

 

The walls stood untouched.

 

Marcus ran forward, against the retreating tide, and found Bent near the stream at the edge of the field. His sometime lover was conscious, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth, one leg twisted wrong beneath him. Blood soaked his trousers, dark and thick.

 

“Hey,” Bent rasped when he saw Marcus. “Miss me?”

 

Marcus laughed—and then choked on it. “You idiot.”

 

Aides come to them and got Bent onto a litter and back to camp as night fell.

 

Of the ten thousand who had marched that morning, scarcely thirteen hundred answered the roll by dawn. The rest were dead or taken behind Whiterun’s gates—and no one could say which was worse.

 

The camp was eerily quiet. Marcus sat beside Bent’s bed in the tent set aside for the injured, listening to his uneven breathing and the distant sobs of men who would never sleep again the same way.

 

Jaunty still lived. That, more than anything, filled Marcus with a bitter, exhausted anger. He’d seen the commander pacing the perimeter, fuming, muttering about progress and cowardice and stolen victory—as though the day had been stolen from him rather than paid for in blood by thousands of others.

 

Marcus said nothing. He kept his hand wrapped around Bent’s, not caring how it might look, and stayed until the candles burned low and the whispers of the night pressed in close; until grey morning light leaked in.

 

Above them, Whiterun stood silent and unbroken—its stones unmarked, its walls unmarred. And somewhere beyond them, Marcus was certain, the she-devil watched.

 

 

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