Page 49 of Winds of Death (War of the Alliance #4)

“Tanks?” Pip wiggled to try to find a spot where Mak’s elbow didn’t dig into her ribs.

“Large metal vehicles. Kind of like rolling land battleships.” Uncle Thortrad gestured, as if he was struggling to figure out how to describe them.

“Oh, I see. We saw the train arrive after seeing our parents off.” Pip shared a look with Mak. Those tanks must have been secretly in development by the dwarves. Neither of them had seen them on their last visit to Detmuk Mountain.

The Escarlish driver clambered in and turned on the truck’s engine.

“Masks on, everyone.” Uncle Thortrad pulled a gas mask from his belt, struggling to get the mask over his hair and large beard.

Smooshed between her cousin and brother as she was, Pip struggled to reach her gas mask, much less get it on. Draenelynn and Mak also squirmed in their seats, trying to reach their masks, and the three of them were a tangle of elbows for a few minutes until they all got their masks free.

The Escarlish driver pulled his mask on easily, as if he were far more practiced at it. With his short hair and lack of beard, he had an easier time of it than the dwarven warrior.

Pip grimaced as she pulled the canvas over her head.

The eye sockets were bulky, falling lower on her face than they should so that she had to keep adjusting the mask to see.

When she breathed in, she tasted the scent of charcoal in the back of her throat as the air was filtered through a layer of charcoal and moss enhanced with elven magic.

Both Mak and Draenelynn struggled to get their beards stuffed inside the mask.

Within a few minutes, an order was shouted from driver to driver, and the trucks rumbled forward, away from the safety of Little Aldon, headed toward the roiling smoke, haze of gas, and booming artillery guns.

Pip gripped her head-bashing wrench between her knees and tried not to throw up as the truck lurched and jolted. She was really doing this. Going into battle.

Pip marched at the center of the formation of dwarves as she held a magic shield around them, her heart hammering in time with the tromping of boots on the soft Mongavarian soil.

She was in Mongavaria, the muddy expanse of what had once been a river behind her, the line of fighting before them.

An artillery shell whistled over the battle lines before it smashed into her shield, exploding in a starburst of flames and shrapnel.

She gritted her teeth and held her shield firm.

Beside her, the draft horses they’d requisitioned from an artillery unit once they’d reached the front snorted and tossed their heads. Mak made soothing noises as he reached up to stroke their necks, keeping a tight grip on their lead ropes.

Uncle Thortrad halted the formation and turned back to her, his face no longer hidden by the gas mask. Once they’d been past the section of the front lines hit with the gas attacks, all of them had taken off their gas masks to better see for fighting. “What’s our heading?”

Why was he looking at her, as if she was the one calling the shots? Pip swallowed, glancing from Uncle Thortrad to Mak. Neither of them gave her any indication of what she should do.

She scanned the long, seething mass of men ahead of them. Prince Rhohen’s icy, crackling magic filled the sky and spread all down the line, reinforced with ice, stone, and plant magic from King Rharreth and the other troll and elf warriors.

Aeroplanes whizzed and twirled overhead. Most of the ones nearest the raging battle were those of Flight A. She recognized the aeroplanes—and the artwork—even from that distance.

Several of them seemed to be circling something on the ground below, as if marking a spot.

“That way.” Pip pointed to where one of the Flight A aeroplanes circled nearly directly ahead of them.

Uncle Thortrad shouted orders, and the dwarves shifted, forming a wedge with their shields locked and their axes raised. Uncle Thortrad called out a rhythm, and the squad of dwarves marched forward at double time, setting up a deep chant, punctuated by the pounding of their boots.

Pip matched their pace, her skin prickling as magic built around them.

As they neared the battle, dwarven magic spread before them, similar to her shield in that it was a shield like iron. But this magic was powered by the crafting, chanting rhythm of the dwarves around her, humming with the active power being funneled into it.

She mingled her shield with theirs, as she had with the dwarves in the battle for Dar Goranth.

Trolls filled the battlefield ahead of them, and as they neared, one of the trolls at the rear glanced over his shoulder. When he turned back to the fight, he was shouting orders, though the fighting men and women ahead of him didn’t seem to hear.

Not that it mattered. The dwarves reached forward with their magic, then shoved the fighting trolls with the magical shield, carving an aisle to march through.

The rhythm of the chanting and pounding boots changed as the dwarves launched from double time into a charge. Even then, they stayed in rhythm, holding their magic.

Pip found herself yelling as she charged forward, gripping her wrench. She wasn’t even sure why she was yelling. Just that it seemed like the right thing to do.

She tried not to look too closely at the bodies strewn on the ground, even as she had to look to avoid stepping on them. Her stomach churned, but as long as she kept yelling, she wasn’t tempted to vomit.

Ahead, an Alliance aeroplane swooped down, machine guns chattering, as the pilot strafed the mass of enemy soldiers. It roared back higher into the sky nearly as quickly as it had come.

The lead dwarves smashed into the front line of enemy soldiers, tossing aside soldiers even as machine gun fire pinged off the magical shield around them.

Pip’s stomach heaved at the sights. The sounds. The smells.

The dwarven rush slowed as they fought their way through the lines. Pip pressed close to the warmth of one of the draft horses, resting a hand on the horse’s shoulder.

As she stepped around one of the bodies lying on the ground, the man, dressed in a blue Mongavarian uniform, began getting up, his hand closing on his gun with its bayonet.

Pip shrieked and whacked the man with her wrench. He collapsed back to the ground.

Had she just…was he…

“Mak…” She froze, staring at the man, at the wrench in her hands. She’d always joked about a head-bashing wrench. But she’d never experienced what it actually felt like to bash a head with a wrench.

She was shaking, her stomach rising into her throat. She couldn’t do this. She had to get out of here. Had to escape. It was too much. Too loud. Too much blood.

Then Mak was there, wrapping an arm around her and tugging her to his chest, even as he kept a grip on the horses’ leads. “I got you. Just keep your shield up.”

Her shield. Pip squeezed her eyes shut and poured more magic into her shield.

Mak led her forward, and she tottered next to him, stumbling over the uneven ground. But she didn’t open her eyes more than a peek or two to check on her shield.

Then she sensed it. A strange magic brushing against her shield. It was just a trace of it, not enough to pose a threat.

The hulk of a metal machine lay a few yards away, similar to the dwarven tanks she’d seen but more rudimentary. Huge drag marks carved into the ground while the team of six horses hooked to it were sweat-slicked and breathing hard, too tired to even stir at the fighting going around them.

The dwarves set up a wedge-shaped shield of warriors and magic around the machine, keeping the Mongavarians at bay. They marched in place, knocking the flats of their axes or swords against their shields to maintain the rhythm and the magic held strong before them.

Machine gun bullets pinged off the iron shield. Mongavarian soldiers tried to bayonet it or shoot it, only for their blades or bullets to bounce off.

Pip stepped out of Mak’s grip and dashed the last few feet to the hulking thing on the tractor treads. How were they going to get this thing out of here? If those six horses were already exhausted, there was no way the two they’d brought would be able to haul it the other way.

She clambered up the side of the huge vehicle, balancing on the tread as she peered at the machine mounted within.

The actual machine itself was about the size of a large aeroplane engine. Wires connected it to the engine powering the wheels. But she didn’t need the whole engine. Just the magical part of this machine.

The wiring and inner workings were still smoking, and this close the acrid scent of burnt-out metal filled her nose. The center machinery was melted and warped in on itself.

“What do you think?” Mak halted behind her.

“I think I can disconnect the machine so we can haul it out of here without taking all of this.” She patted the armored side. “But I’m concerned that the inner workings are so fried.”

“Let’s just grab this one, then see if we can snag a second one.” Mak climbed up beside her. “But we need to hurry.”

Right. With the shield of dwarven magic, her magic, and the dwarves themselves between her and danger, it was too easy to forget that they were rather exposed, a spearhead into the Mongavarian lines. If the Alliance army retreated, they’d find themselves cut off.

Aeroplanes circled overhead, the elves of Flight A preventing Mongavarian aeroplanes from dropping bombs onto her head.

Still mentally holding her shield, Pip swept her magic over the machine, melting through any mounting brackets or wires holding the machine inside the metal shielding box.

It wasn’t pretty, and she could only hope she wasn’t leaving something important behind, buried deeper within the engine or frame of the tank.

Once it was free, Mak called over a few of the rear guard of dwarves, and together he and the others levered the heavy machine up and out.

Pip sliced off a section of the metal armor with her magic. Within a few minutes, she and Mak had the machine secured to the piece of metal, which she formed into a sled. Now that it had been removed from the rest of the vehicle, only one horse was needed to pull it.

As soon as the horse was hitched to the sled, Mak shouted to Uncle Thortrad in dwarvish, “We got it.”

“Fall back.” Uncle Thortrad also called in dwarvish, not looking over his shoulder.

Together, the dwarves took one step back, then another, their shield still steady around them as they kept up their steady rhythm even in retreat.

Within moments, the dwarven squad was back behind the Alliance line. Uncle Thortrad sent two of the dwarves off with the horse and machine before he turned to Pip. “Where to next?”

Pip scanned the sky and the lines again. She found the next circling Alliance aeroplane pointing the way toward another one of those machines. “There. Let’s go after that one.”

She adjusted her grip on her wrench, swallowed, and faced the horror of battle again.