by Eric Asher
The man looked surprised. He looked at Furi’s hand on his arm and then back to her face. “Midstream, of course. Same place they always are.”
Alice felt sick. Mordair had his people convinced the warlords were rising against them and were sheltering in Midstream. They’d roll through the city and burn it down as their king commanded, and feel great about doing it.
Furi frowned as the man walked away. “Warlords? They’re going to kill the warlords too.” She ran a hand through her hair, her lips almost curling into a snarl. “And Ballern is helping them?”
“I have to tell Jacob and the others. They need to know what’s coming.”
“Alice, we don’t even know what’s coming.”
“We know why they’re coming, though. They think Midstream is a dire threat. They’re doing to burn it to the ground and leave nothing behind.”
“You don’t know that.”
Alice turned on Furi, anger rising. “You didn’t see what they did to Ancora. You didn’t see the bodies. You didn’t see an entire city crushed into the earth.”
Furi blinked rapidly, and Alice didn’t miss the tears at the corners of her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Alice said, squeezing Furi’s arm. “It’s going to be bad. Please, I’ve trusted you about Jakon and Kura. Trust me in this.”
“I don’t want it to be true.”
Alice gave her a weak smile. “Neither do I.”
They were almost to the small line of vendor tents and shacks beneath the gnarled and twisted trees of the Red Woods when they heard it. A handful of phrases that all meant the same thing. Chatter spread through the landing area and the stalls. A battle was starting. The lines were moving out. Fel was finally going to put down their desert rivals once and for all.
But the battle cries curdled her blood.
“All glory to the king!”
“His righteous fury will cleanse the world of the unworthy!”
“Glory to Fel before all!”
Alice’s heart pounded in her chest.
Midstream.
Jacob.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Mordair stood upon the great wall of Fel. The edges of the ramparts had been broken away into jagged stones over countless years and battles. And an arsenal tower had collapsed during the Deadlands War. But it had never been repaired. Instead, it remained as a symbol of Fel’s persistence. A reminder that they would always persevere.
A handful of barges drifted down the river in the distance, carrying the resupplies he knew his armored crawlers and soldiers would need. His people might have been convinced Midstream would be an easy target, weakened as it was by the warlords, but Mordair knew better. They’d meet resistance there. Archibald was no fool. He’d know Mordair would have to come for Bollwerk, and the easiest path without Dauschen and Ancora under Fel’s rule would be through Midstream.
He had a moment of regret for the failed gambit in Ancora. It would have been easy to reinforce the mountain passes of that city and force Bollwerk to divide their attention. But his brother’s failures would not be the end of his own ambitions.
“The battalion is moving, My King, split between the north front and the west, as you requested. Have you reconsidered the plan of attack?”
Mordair turned to face one of his most trusted generals, a woman who had come to be known as the Red Hand. “No. Sacrifice the west so we can drive Midstream into ruin from the north. One company of crawlers will be adequate. Lessons must be learned.”
“Of course, my king.” The Red Hand bowed and took her leave, the gold epaulets of her gray wartime uniform catching the morning sun.
The question burning at the back of Mordair’s mind was a simple one. Would the apprentice of Charles von Atlier prove the equal of his mentor? The idea sent a thrill down his spine. It might be too late to recruit the boy to their own ranks, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have his uses.
The battle for Midstream would determine much. Should the desert princess manage to turn his forces away, he had little doubt Midstream’s allies would come to Fel. But the armaments of Fel were not insignificant. He could protect his city. Or he could leverage an invasion to the favor of his allies in the west.
There were many options to explore. But one thing Gregory Mordair was sure of, blood would be spilled. And there was never a bad time for blood.
* * *
Gladys studied the maps of the desert around Midstream. Their scouts had found a large group of Fel’s soldiers closing from the north. Excitement had almost won out over worry because she knew they were as ready as they could be. The traps were buried, and a handful of airships drifted near the outskirts of town.
If George’s calculations were right, they only had an hour before the first wave of soldiers reached them. It wasn’t the troops that concerned her. It was the companies of crawlers, armored against most anything Midstream could throw at them.
But the traps were something new. And she’d seen them penetrate steel with her own eyes. Still, she worried they would be no match for a battalion of crawlers.
Gladys looked up from the map spread across her table when the rhythmic bursts of static filled the room. She made her way over to the bookshelf and the hidden panel that concealed their transmitter.
“Fireworm,” she said, finally using a code name, like George and Archibald had insisted on.
“This is Dragonwing,” Alice said. “Near the Red Woods, crawlers are headed your way.”
“The Red Woods? No. Scouts found them in the north, not the west.”
“They may not have been scouting far enough west. I can see the dust clouds two miles ahead of us. They’re moving fast. A full company, I’d say. At least twelve.”
Gladys cursed and clicked the transmitter. “Thank you. We’ll be ready.” But would they? Gladys wondered. The thrill of one force walking into their traps from the north vanished entirely as she realized the threat had evolved.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Be safe.”
“Dragonwing out.”
Gladys slid the transmitter back into its concealed compartment and returned to the maps. They only had a few hundred soldiers in Midstream. With the clippers circling above, they had some air cover, but if Jacob was wrong about those traps, Midstream was going to fall.
Gladys slammed her palm onto the table and hurried out to the front lines. She needed to find Jacob. She needed George. And Midstream needed them all.
* * *
“Jacob,” Gladys called when she reached one of the A-frame steel plates Jacob had raised with the Titan Mech. She frowned at the trap still in the Titan Mech’s hand. “I thought we’d buried all of those?”
Jacob smiled down at her. “Except this one. Helena thought we could leave it in the hand for a larger range of targeting. I think it’s actually a great idea. I was also thinking we could miniaturize it to be installed on airships.”
Gladys first question was how in the world was he going to fire it, but she shook her head to focus on the problem at hand. “We have crawlers coming in from the west.”
“The west is fortified. Both sides of the river have traps buried, and the wind has been high enough today you can’t tell where the sand was disturbed.”
Gladys blinked. “Then, how will we be able to tell where the traps are?”
Jacob opened his mouth like he was going to answer and then frowned. His eyes lit up a moment later. “The reloading levers! The magnets are strong enough to pull them through the sand, so you can use them like a dowsing rod.”
“A dowsing rod?” Gladys muttered. “Dowsing rods don’t work!”
Jacob shrugged. “Okay, bad example, but you get the idea.”
Gladys jumped when a hand touched her shoulder. She spun, relieved to find George and Helena.
“Do you know how many, Princess?” George asked.
“Alice said it’s a full company.”
“Alice?” Jacob asked, shutting down the arm a
nd hopping from the treads to the sand. “How does she know about a company of crawlers?”
“She already left Ballern,” Gladys said. “They were in the Red Woods when I talked to her.”
Helena frowned. “Fel has forces stationed there. Is she behind their lines?”
“She has to be,” Gladys said. “She said she could see the dust cloud from the crawlers.”
“Then they are moving quickly,” George said. “A crawler would need speed to generate a cloud, and if it was large enough for her to mention it, time is not on our side. Helena, position our troops behind the A-frames and the temporary walls you and Jacob helped design. Signal the clippers to all draw closer to the city except for two. Keep them forward as scouts.”
Helena nodded and ran back into the city proper.
George’s switch in demeanor, from his casual tone to a commanding one, sent a frisson of fear down Gladys’s spine. He only sounded like that when things were bad. And now she worried just how bad off they really were.
George turned to Jacob. “Alice is safe. Safer than we are right now. Rest easy knowing that. You are welcome to join us on the front or shelter in the city.”
Jacob shook his head. “I’m staying with you. And if anything gets close enough, I’m going to test out Helena’s idea with the arm.”
Gladys looked to George, and then past him. On the horizon was the first sign of a dust storm, only Gladys didn’t think it was a storm at all.
George followed her gaze and handed her a telescope.
She raised it to her eye, finding a line of shadows, bulkier and taller than they had any right to be. When she thought of crawlers, she thought of the open-air transports of Bollwerk. But this was something different. It was hard to guess their size, but they were taller, armored, and moving faster than she could have imagined.
“I see ten of them. They’re huge.” She handed the scope back to George.
He cursed and let Jacob take a look.
Gladys shivered when the tinker frowned and glanced at the trap in the Titan Mech’s hand.
Jacob scratched the back of his head. “I have no idea how thick their armor is, but I’m confident in the traps.”
“We are better protected to the north,” George said. “They may only need to sacrifice a few crawlers to break our lines.” He took a slow breath. “Remain confident around our soldiers. They have enough worry, and we don’t need to show doubt. Come.”
* * *
Jacob had more plans to execute than the traps alone. In the shadow of the easternmost A-frame bunker, he cracked open a crate, revealing a series of Bangers. He removed the top tray, passing it to George. Below that waited compound bombs from Bollwerk. Accelerant lined the large shells, and an explosive ring within.
He’d changed his original design some, and Frederick had executed the changes with precision. These had been etched with lines like a grid, the metal thinning between the plates. It would encourage the bombs to create more shrapnel and hopefully cause more damage than the originals.
Jacob sighed and tested the hinges of a few. There was no use for these other than killing, and he knew it. He could tell himself the Titan Mech arms would work to help rebuild, would save lives over time. But he had no illusions about what the modified bombs would do.
Gladys dropped a bundle of long, gray metal launchers beside him. Each looked something like a mixture of a crossbow and a harpoon gun, not unlike what he and Alice used to launch bombs from the Skysworn’s deck.
She wiped a line of sweat from her forehead. “They’re almost here.”
“Are you sure you want to be on the front?” Jacob whispered.
Gladys offered a smile. “If I ask my people to fight for me, then I must fight for them.” She passed a launcher to Helena. “You heard Jacob. Don’t throw these by hand and get behind a barrier if you do have to fire them.”
The A-frames gave them a reasonable barrier, and Helena had the idea to place them in such a way that the crawlers would be funneled toward the thickest clusters of traps. Jacob had thought it was brilliant, and George said as much.
Then all they had to do was wait. It had started slowly, a distant roar and the clatter of treads that were a bit too loose. The sound had grown as the crawlers approached, until a peek around the barriers showed Jacob just what had come for Midstream.
Each was at least eight feet tall and broad as a street in the Lowlands. That he hadn’t planned for. With enough distance between the treads, they could drive past a trap without triggering it. But that’s why they’d staggered them, he reminded himself.
The first crawler reached the dry riverbed, too far to the north to trigger a trap, but not too far from the Tail Sword that had been sleeping just below the surface. It erupted from the sands, claws spread wide as it screeched. The crawler tried to veer away; even armored, the driver understood the danger of a threatened Tail Sword. And Jacob had never seen one as large as what waited in the sands.
Sparks sprayed the landscape as a claw cut the tread like it had been fabric and not metal. The dark chitin gleamed in the rising sun, a blinding torch as the Tail Sword’s stinger slammed through the roof of the crawler. Jacob didn’t take his eyes off the unfolding scene as two other crawlers changed course to close on the creature.
It was a pointless effort. The first crawler was nothing but blood and torn metal by the time they reached the Tail Sword. Turrets fired, bursts of flame sending cannonballs to slam into the Tail Sword. The beast screeched at them, scuttled forward, and then retreated to the east. Down the center of the riverbed.
Jacob thought it was pure luck the Tail Sword had kept to the middle of the dry river, but then he remembered the creatures preferred the low ground.
A soldier leaped from the smoking ruin of the first crawler. He froze where he landed, watching the second crawler bounce into the air as it triggered a trap, firing massive bolts into its undercarriage while a plume of sand exploded from beneath the crawler. The vehicle rolled forward in a lazy arc before falling still.
The third crawler clipped the edge of a trap, and Jacob didn’t stop the savage smile spreading across his face as bolts shattered the tread of one side, stranding the crawler. But this crawler wasn’t out of commission entirely. Its turret swiveled, taking aim to Jacob’s right, and fired.
Cannonballs clanged against one of the A-frame barriers, causing it to rise from the sands slightly before slamming back into its original position.
“Good thing we sank those supports deeper,” Helena said.
Jacob nodded. “Look.”
He pointed to the north. A cloud similar to what they’d seen in the west was now bearing down from the north. But the crawlers weren’t alone. A line of airships coasted along above them.
The transmitter hidden in the leather collar of George’s armor burst to life. “Clippers, four destroyers north. In range estimate … ten minutes.”
George clicked the transmitter. “Message received.”
Jacob frowned. Destroyers? Against clippers? That wasn’t likely to end well. He listened as George gave orders for them to come in from above, and he worried those orders would be intercepted. If the Butcher had known about the transmitters, then Mordair surely would too. He took a steadying breath. But for that to be the case, they’d have to find the frequency. That would take time, and George kept the frequency rotating on a schedule.
Another cannonball crashed into their A-frame, bringing Jacob back to the moment. He picked up a launcher and spun the crank, the quiet clicks drawing the thick rubber back and adding tension to the crossbar. He turned the crank until the guidelines on the draw mechanism matched the notches on the stock.
The fourth crawler crossed into the riverbed, passing over the initial traps before crashing into the other side of the bank as it tried to climb the steeper incline. A trap fired into the undercarriage as it hit the sand, puncturing the crawler so thoroughly that the highest armor plate peeled back with a screech.
Jacob
clicked the button on a Banger and slid it into a compound bomb, locking the shell together before dropping it onto his launcher. He’d fired the launcher enough that he had a good sense of range, but the crawler still looked too far out when he leaned outside of their shelter.
But the bomb was primed. He couldn’t stop now.
He raised the nose of the launcher a bit higher and pulled the trigger. The sudden release of tension threatened to pull the launcher out of his hands, and the snap of rubber briefly drowned out most of the noises around him.
The gray orb rose in a graceful arc, and Jacob was worried the shot would be short regardless of his higher aim. But he heard the distant clink when it cracked into the front of the crawler and bounced into the gaping hole the trap had left.
It was the fireball that came first, bowing out the sides of the armored crawler like someone inflating the gas chamber of an airship. But as the light faded, Jacob could see the extra divots all around the plating where shrapnel from the bomb had torn into the armor, and anyone inside it.
A moment later, a second explosion rocked the remains of the crawler, triggering some of the traps in the sand as Jacob suspected whatever incendiaries had been onboard had been triggered. With all four crawlers disabled, George gave the order.
“Attack!”
The soldiers of Midstream flowed out from behind the A-frames, charging down the slopes that would take them to the riverbed. They wouldn’t have long before the next wave arrived. But the Midstream soldiers, under the command of the royal guard, didn’t need much time at all.
Jacob frowned at a small form sprinting through the sand beside George, realizing it was Gladys when she threw open her cloak, revealing knives set into her armor. One of the crawler turrets rotated toward her and George as she flicked two knives through the slit below the barrel.
The machine stilled as George bounded up the broken tread and pulled open the side door. He led with his sword, leaving no chance for surrender or escape. Jacob didn’t miss the blood that stained the steel when the royal guard moved on.
Crawler by crawler, they moved through the sands, dispatching enemy soldiers even as the final crawlers realized what was coming. In the end, the first wave managed to take down two of Midstream’s soldiers with crossbow fire. But George and the others adapted after that, letting their cloaks billow around them, obscuring their bodies.