Page 44 of Winds of Death (War of the Alliance #4)

Chapter

Twenty-Four

P ip watched as the train eased away from the station, gaining speed as it curved onto the track that would take it under the Hydalla River and into Tarenhiel.

She hugged her arms over her stomach. A part of her already missed her dacha and muka. They’d had so little time to catch up after not seeing each other for months.

And yet she gusted out a breath of relief that her parents were safely on their way, headed away from the dangers of living in an active war zone.

Especially with whatever was happening on the front lines.

Even as her parents had said their final farewells and climbed onto the train, Pip could taste the storm of magic building only a few miles away, her skin prickling with it.

No sooner had her parents’ train pulled away than another one screeched to a halt at one of the other stations, the one for unloading heavy equipment.

Instead of large guns or crates, this train was made up of flatbeds, each one holding a large, armored vehicle with an artillery gun pointed out the front.

A contingent of dwarves and Escarlish military personnel met the train. This must be the shipment of dwarven vehicles she’d heard her Detmuk cousins discussing.

As she turned to Mak, that distant magical storm exploded, a wave of magical blowback sweeping over Fort Defense with such force that Pip staggered. She stumbled into Mak, who steadied her with a hand on her shoulder even though he was swaying on his feet too.

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe from the lashing pressure. Then Mak pounded her back, and she gasped in a breath. “What was that?”

Mak shook his head, gave a cough, and set out in the direction of the tram platform. “I don’t know. But it can’t be good.”

The two of them climbed onto the tram, and it shuddered its way up the side of the bluff toward the hangar. Pip slid into a seat, her gaze fixed ahead. If something bad was going down, she needed to get back to her flyboys.

“Pip…” With a strangely taut note to his voice, Mak was bent over as he peered out the windows on the left side of the tram as it rose above the rooftops of the buildings by the river.

Pip crossed the nearly empty tram car to join Mak peeking out the windows on that side. For a moment, she didn’t see what had caused that worried tone in her brother’s voice.

Then she realized that was exactly what was wrong. It wasn’t what she could see but what she couldn’t see.

The Wall—the crackling blue wall of power that had dominated the horizon for as long as she’d been at Fort Defense—was gone.

No, not entirely gone. She could see a blue glow on the horizon where the Wall still rose out of the Hydalla River along the Tarenhieli-Mongavarian border.

But the whole Escarlish-Mongavarian border for as far as she could see from the mouth of the Chibo River to the Whitehurst Mountains rising in the distance was empty and unprotected.

As the tram rose higher, the muddy expanse of what had once been a river came into view, an indistinct smudge of brown where once there had been glittering water.

“What’s going on?” She breathed the question, not really expecting an answer.

Mak just shook his head as the tram pulled into the station at the top of the bluff.

As soon as the tram doors opened, the two of them dashed off the tram and raced for the hangar.

Fieran groaned as he blinked awake. His shoulder hurt, a spot on the back of his head ached, and there was a strange ringing in his ears.

Cold stone pressed against his back and his shoulder. When he blinked again, he struggled to bring his eyes into focus.

He lay on his side on the half bridge, his back pressed against the low wall rising on one side. The bridge ended in mid-air, hanging a few feet over the empty mud of what had once been the Chibo River.

The Wall was gone. As was Dacha.

“Dacha?” Fieran shoved onto his elbow, then into a sitting position. His head swam for a moment, and when he touched the aching spot on his head, his fingers came away smeared with blood. He must have hit his head when the exploding magic had flung him backwards.

Now that he was sitting up, he could see the smoking wreckage of those vehicles, the machines blown apart. The Mongavarians who had accompanied the vehicles lay prone on the ground, dead or knocked out.

But where was Dacha?

Fieran used the low wall at the edge of the bridge to push himself to his feet. He let just a hint of his magic flow through his veins, steadying him, as he half-ran, half-stumbled across the bridge and peered over the far side.

Dacha lay on the riverbed, unmoving, his silver-blond hair splayed across the mud.

No. No .

“Dacha!” Fieran flung himself over the side of the bridge, landing in the mud with a squelch.

He sank all the way to his ankles in the muck of what had once been the silty, plant-filled bottom of the shallow river.

Slipping and sliding, he scrambled to Dacha’s side, falling into his knees in the mud.

“Dacha, wake up. Don’t be dead.” He pulled his dacha from the mud, even as his dacha’s head lolled, his body limp. “Dacha!”

With shaking hands, Fieran pressed his fingers to the side of Dacha’s neck.

He couldn’t feel a pulse. Not past the pounding of his own pulse beneath his skin. His own heart thundered in his ears, hammering in his chest as if he had a galloping horse lodged behind his ribs.

No. Dacha couldn’t be dead. He simply couldn’t.

Something whipped past Fieran’s face before thwacking into the stone of one of the pillars holding up the half bridge.

His magic reacted, blasting outward around him and Dacha before he’d even registered what it was.

A bullet.

More bullets flared against his shield of magic as they were incinerated. The rumble of gasoline engines and barking of machine guns filled the air past the fading ringing in his ears.

He dragged his gaze away from Dacha and up to the far bank of what had once been the river.

There, a line of men in Mongavarian uniforms jogged forward, carrying their rifles, a dark mass stretching along the river for as far as he could see in either direction.

In between their ranks, more vehicles with those tractor treads rolled forward, except these ones had large artillery guns mounted on top of the metal box instead of magical machines.

Enemy aeroplanes roared overhead before diving downward to strafe the Alliance front lines behind Fieran.

This was an invasion. Mongavaria had taken down the Wall, and now they could roll into Escarland with impunity. The Alliance front lines were dug in, but they weren’t prepared for a major invasion of this scale.

Right now, Fieran was the only one standing in the way.

He glanced down at Dacha, who lay limp and unmoving, his eyes closed. Surely that was a good sign, right? If he were dead, his eyes would be wide and soulless in that way Fieran had seen far too many times since this war began.

There was no time to pick Dacha up and try to move him to the Alliance front lines. With every moment, those vehicles crawled closer, tipping over the edge of the riverbank and plowing through the mud. Even now, the nearest vehicle lowered its huge gun to take aim at Fieran.

The enemy might have more of those machines that had captured Dacha’s magic. Fieran, too, might end up unconscious or dead on the riverbed.

None of that mattered. He would have to make his stand here.

He hadn’t worn his swords that morning. He didn’t even have his army issue rifle since he’d left that back at the hangar. But…

Fieran reached out, his heart hammering again. His fingers closed around the hilt of one of Dacha’s swords, the leather worn to the shape of his dacha’s hands.

He well remembered the first time Dacha had placed the hilt of one of these swords in Fieran’s small hands, Dacha’s far larger hand closing over his fingers to hold the sword steady.

“A sword is a weapon, not a toy, sason.” Dacha had speared Fieran with those silver-blue eyes. “When you draw your sword, you do so with the intent to draw blood. It is not an action to take without thought or honor.”

Fieran drew Dacha’s sword now, nothing but bloody intent filling his heart. He had to roll Dacha to draw the other blade before he eased Dacha back to the ground, making sure his mouth and nose were clear of the mud.

Then Fieran rose to his feet and faced the enemy, a sword in each hand. As he let his magic twine from his hands and down onto the blades, he sensed the weight of all those past warriors and kings who had wielded these swords before him settling on his shoulders and deep within his heart.

He was Laesornysh. Warrior of the magic of the ancient kings, like his dacha before him. He would stand firm, no matter how much blood and death it took.

The vehicle-mounted gun boomed, lobbing its shell in Fieran’s direction.

Fieran lashed out with his magic, grabbing the shell and flinging it back toward the Mongavarian line. Unleashing more of his magic, he shoved it into a storm of crackling bolts filling the space between him and the enemy.

As his magic brushed the smoking remains of those magic-absorbing machines, he could still sense a faint trace of that foreign magic within them. It didn’t tug on his magic as it must have Dacha’s, as if dormant now that the machines were broken.

More of that foreign magic blanketed the gun vehicles rolling toward him. At least this magic was the strange but familiar magic the Mongavarians had used on their aeroplanes, the one that deflected his magic but didn’t otherwise impede it.

A sharp-edged smirk cut across Fieran’s face. He knew exactly how to handle these vehicles.

Reaching deeper into his chest, he blasted his magic outward, stretching it to fill the river from one end to the other. His magic raced over the ground, following the faint traces where the Wall used to be.

As the vehicles rolled forward, he strengthened his magic, gritting his teeth at holding so much power.