"Drinks down. Now," Radeon shouted.

The old men, their wives, even the children stared at him. What did drinking have to do with any of this?

Radeon did not keep it a secret. He rose on the bison's wings, hovered above one of the caches, and snatched it.

"Hold it," Radeon said. "I've got a plan."

Radeon pried a crate open and took a bottle. Cloth followed. Qi sparked, and fire woke hungry and bright.

He hurled the crude incendiary into the nearest moth.

Flame took it fast. The creature's dry hair fed the blaze, turning it into a writhing torch that screamed through every mouth on its body.

Other gu turned at once, their nature betraying them. They drifted closer, drawn by fire like prayer.

For a breath, it worked. Only a few tens, though. Wind rushed through and tore the flame away in strips.

The blaze thinned, then broke. The moths shook off what little heat remained and moved again, hunger returning as if it had never left.

Radeon watched the failure and frowned.

"Hand over all the alcohol." Radeon demanded.

Crates of moonshine waited where the miners had stacked them.

Radeon seized two at a time, hauled them up, and rode the bison back toward the chasm. Near its edge lay what he needed.

A cart half tipped in gravel, piled with spare clothes and sacks of dry grain. Perfect tinder.

Radeon smashed the bottles inside the crates until glass crackled.

He soaked the cart in the spill, wood drinking greedily. A flick of heated qi touched the wet boards.

Blue flame caught first. Then orange surged through it, and the whole carriage bloomed into a bright, roaring torch.

The moth horrors turned as one. Hundreds drifted toward the fire, drawn by instinct stronger than caution.

Radeon found another cart and repeated it, then another. Luck gave him only six that would burn right.

When he flew back to the rear, one moth had already pushed through the line.

A miner stepped forward anyway, drunk enough to be brave enough to be foolish.

He swung at the creature's eyes. The blade bit halfway in.

Dark blood gushed. The man laughed, then roared with victory.

Then terror stole the breath from everyone watching. His skin began to change.

It shifted as if something inside him had been waiting for permission. The miner's grin faltered.

His mouth opened to scream. H burst into a red mist.

Something smaller crawled out of it, wrong and new.

A moth with a man's legs and an insect's body, twitching as it found its balance.

Radeon came in at once. Needles flashed. One punched through its eye before it could look around.

Steel followed. His sword chopped the head into pieces and still he did not trust it.

Insects lived on after beheading. A thing born from a man and moth might do worse.

He dragged the carcass away from the line and kept cutting. Piercing. Splitting.

He drained the corpse with Devour Arts until it turned brittle, dead in every way that mattered.

Still he did not swallow. Not this. Radeon clenched and forced what remained of the man's essence into a small crystal.

Then he tossed it up and fired a round.

Body. Mind. Soul. All shattered in the air, leaving nothing behind that could crawl back into the world.

"Don't die to these creatures. They learn," Radeon boomed.

The crowd's eagerness went out like a torch dipped in water.

Radeon shoved Fay up onto one of the carriages and took in the scene.

The miners had prepared well. Heavy draft bucks stood harnessed and ready, antlers wrapped and padded.

They had been kept for this kind of day, the kind no one admitted would come until it did.

It still was not enough. Another moth horror already closed on the far right flank where the line had stretched thin.

Radeon started to move, then felt the bison nudge Fay again and again, anxious, snorting, trying to push her behind it like a calf.

Fear made the beast stupid. Radeon brought the sheath down hard across its head.

The bison snapped its gaze up at him, wide and wet, offended and frightened all at once.

"Don't do anything stupid. If Fay's in trouble..." He hooked a fist in the back of her robe and yanked. "You pull her here. Got it?"

The bison lowered its head and gave a slow nod, as if it understood at last.

Radeon dashed for the far right flank. His feet landed light, springing from carriage to carriage.

Men on the wagons held their breaths as he passed, eyes tracking him like a thrown blade.

Then his sword began to glow. Radeon vanished. A thin line of metal glimmered beneath the moth.

The creature shuddered. Its legs came away clean, and it slid sideways into the tide of moths behind it.

The miners did what they could. Arrows flew, but the shafts only lodged, skittered off, or sank in.

Severed legs crawled back, reconnecting with obscene ease as if the damage were a lie.

"Close it up. Fifty to a file. That's the limit." Radeon commanded.

The miners organized themselves fast. They knew Radeon could not split himself a dozen ways at once.

They put the fastest bucks at the front, harnessed to the lead wagons to pull the line forward.

The older men stayed near the does and the younger deer, guarding the soft parts of the flock with hard faces and shaking hands.

The formation tightened. Gaps closed. Panic turned into a rough discipline.

Radeon and Fay moved along the wagons, jumping from carriage to carriage as the wheels rattled beneath them.

Fay lit crates when she needed to, using the alcohol with care. She did not waste it.

She threw fire only when a large cluster of moths pressed too close, when the swarm thickened enough that flame could buy real distance.

Radeon held the line itself. He defended the carts, cutting down anything that tried to get close to the wagons.

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