Page 1 of Winds of Death (War of the Alliance #4)

Chapter

One

C apt. Fieran Laesornysh lay strapped to a stretcher as the train rattled its way across the Escarlish countryside.

All around him, men moaned and cried out.

Stretchers were attached to the walls of the train car in stacks three high.

He couldn’t see how far to each side of him the stretchers ran, but they must fill the train car from one side to the other.

Or nearly so. A few of the spaces across the way from him were empty.

But Pip sat on the floor at his side, holding his hand. Throughout the whole trip as he slept and woke and slept again, she’d been there.

Fieran tried his best to keep his grip on her hand gentle, despite the ache spreading through him. It wasn’t up to pain level, much less intense agony just yet, but it would get there before too long. Especially with all this jostling.

But the dangers of morphine use were better understood now than they had been years ago. The elven healers would do their best to make sure he didn’t become addicted, but he’d rather he didn’t rely on it more than necessary.

A nurse halted next to Fieran’s tier, checking on the two men on stretchers above him. Both of them seemed to still be unconscious so the nurse moved on to Fieran. She checked his pulse. “How is your pain?”

“Manageable.” Fieran squashed the temptation to let his magic flood through his veins.

As much as his magic might fortify him, it would also burn through the last of the morphine and healing magic all the faster.

Not to mention make it that much harder for the elf healer in Aldon to banish the pain.

The nurse pressed her mouth into a tight line as she jotted a note on a clipboard. “Then if you can manage, we are almost to Aldon. It would be best to wait on any more medication until an elven healer has seen you.”

As he’d suspected.

Fieran nodded, doing his best not to wince as he breathed through the growing pain.

The nurse turned to Pip. “Miss, since we’re nearing Aldon, I’m going to have to ask you to step back into the passenger car. You’ll be disembarking separately from the wounded.”

Pip nodded and gave Fieran’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll stop at the hospital when I can.”

Then she was pulling her fingers free and pushing to her feet. She gave him one last pat on the shoulder before she disappeared from his view, her footsteps echoing on the wooden floor of the train car.

He shouldn’t feel such a sense of loss. He’d see her again. He wasn’t sure when, but he would.

Yet it was hard to let her go after holding her hand so tightly for the past few hours. Far harder with so much still unresolved between them. They hadn’t had a moment alone since he’d crashed to continue their interrupted conversation.

And that interrupted kiss.

A stab of guilt joined the pain flaring through him. After everything that had happened, how could he dwell on thoughts of kissing? Merrik had lost his leg because of Fieran’s mistakes.

If Fieran’s propeller hadn’t broken, then he wouldn’t have crashed. Then Merrik wouldn’t have crashed.

After all that, how dare Fieran think about romance?

He wrapped the fingers of his good hand around the pair of swords that lay next to him on the stretcher. A poor substitute for the warmth of her hand but better than nothing.

The train shuddered, giving a whistle as it came into the station.

A few of the others woke at the noise and the change in motion, filling the train car with even more noise as they asked the nurses for water, cried out in pain, or asked where they were and what was going on.

Once the train settled into a halt, men and women wearing basic green coveralls climbed onto the train and began unhooking stretchers from the wall before carrying them out onto the platform.

Fieran could do nothing but tap his fingers as he waited his turn.

He wasn’t used to being this helpless. Right now, he couldn’t walk off this train.

He couldn’t even lift his legs, splinted as they both were all the way to his waist to keep his broken bones from shifting.

One of his arms was pinned in a splint as well, leaving him with one limb he could move.

At least he had all four limbs. Unlike Merrik.

That sourness churned in his stomach again, and he had to restrain his magic from leaping to his fingertips.

Two of the volunteers finally reached him, jostling him as they unhooked his stretcher from the brackets on the wall. They carried him down the aisle of the train car, then worked their way out the small door set in the side that was barely wider than the stretcher.

As he was carried onto the platform, he had to squint at the sunlight slanting through the glass arching over the station. The noise of incoming and departing trains reverberated through the space, punctuated with the hubbub of bustling people, talking and laughing as they went.

The volunteers set Fieran’s stretcher down in the row they were creating along the platform before they left to retrieve the next man.

To one side, the brick wall of the station showed a large clock with its hands pointing at the late afternoon hour.

On the other side, military police guarded a temporary barrier that divided this part of the station from the rest of it, even from the front part of the train where the few civilians and able-bodied military personnel on leave were disembarking.

A woman dressed in a white shirt and the tan bicycle bloomers that were all the rage in Escarland, her long red hair in a braid down her back, moved between the various men and women on stretchers.

She paused by each wounded man, crouching in a lady-like fashion as she spoke to them, smiling as she did.

The men lit up, their injuries temporarily forgotten in the warmth of meeting their princess.

Mama. Fieran released a breath. Perhaps it was silly—childish—to feel better knowing his mama was there, but he did.

As she stood, she turned, and her gaze landed on Fieran. For one heartbeat, her smile vanished into a look of utter devastation as she swayed backward.

Then she blinked, and the smile returned to her face, so bright and natural even Fieran couldn’t tell how much was genuine and how much was her mask.

In that moment, he understood his mama’s strength. She might not fight on the front lines like Dacha, despite having the ability to wield his magic. But she had a core of iron to face the consequences of war with a smile.

She took the time to speak to a few more of the wounded before she reached Fieran. As she lowered herself into that graceful, princess crouch, her smile widened, her tone light. “I knew one of you would return home to me on a stretcher. I just expected it would be your dacha.”

Fieran smiled in return, his voice as light as hers, despite the pain aching in his limbs and the choking lump filling his throat. “You know how accident-prone I am.”

“Makes me wonder why you chose such an accident-prone part of the army.” Mama shook her head, her smile never wavering.

Her gaze dropped to the swords beside him, a twist almost like bemusement curving her smile, before she flagged down a pair of the volunteers.

“Take this one to my truck, please. The front seat.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The volunteers bowed before they bent to pick up his stretcher.

Mama stood as he was picked up, giving his shoulder one last pat before she moved on to the next injured man.

Fieran was carried out of a pair of wooden double doors guarded by more MPs, the noise of the train station changing to the noise of the bustling city of Aldon.

Outside along the back alley, various trucks waited in a line.

Some were the green, army-style vehicles.

Others were farm trucks with open beds that had temporary canvas coverings rigged over them.

Still more were delivery trucks like the familiar AMPC truck, which waited third in line.

Perhaps these vehicles had been pressed into service, or their drivers had volunteered their use for transporting the wounded.

At the truck with the AMPC logo emblazoned on the side, the volunteer at Fieran’s head opened the double doors and set Fieran down on the floor of the cargo bed. The other volunteer shoved at Fieran’s feet, and he and his stretcher slid over the wooden floor.

Where the stretcher normally would have hit the end of the cargo compartment, he instead was shoved through a hatch now connecting the rear cargo space with the front cab.

Usually, this cab had a passenger seat as well as a small bench seat in the back where Fieran and his siblings had often crammed.

Now, the passenger seat and the bench seat had been removed, and the stretcher rested on a board that had been bolted to the seat brackets to keep the stretcher flat.

Fieran found himself lying on his back with his head near the dashboard. His feet were sticking somewhere into the cargo area at the rear. Others would likely be loaded into the back with the stretchers set on brackets bolted to the wall, much like the train.

He was left alone for a while, and he closed his eyes to somewhat rest while he listened to the sounds of bustle and the occasional louder noises as someone was loaded into the back by his feet.

The truck’s windows were open, letting in the occasional breath of a breeze along with a few buzzing flies.

At least this alley was shaded by the surrounding buildings so that it wasn’t as hot as it could have been.

The driver’s door opened, and Fieran opened his eyes as Mama climbed into the truck and settled into the seat. She sent a smile at him as she flipped the switches, then depressed a lever, cranking the engine on. “Comfortable?”

Not really. The bruises on his back and shoulders ached against the board beneath him, and his bones throbbed with each vibration the engine sent through the vehicle. His pain would only get worse once the truck set off across the cobbled roads that wound through the city.