The boat didn’t even have a name.

Loumbard, the squat, surly tradesman who captained it, had never bothered to come up with one. So far as he, his crew, and his customers were concerned, it was just “Loumbard’s boat.”

Even beyond being nameless, Loumbard’s boat had little to distinguish it. It was worn and rickety without crossing the line into dilapidated; large enough to accommodate most reasonable cargo without reaching gargantuan; powerful enough without boasting a particularly intricate steam engine or fancy paddlewheel.

There had been, in fact, one and only one factor to recommend the craft over any of the others. When Benwynne, Wendell, and the bulk of squad five had stormed up to Leryn’s docks, demanding that someone carry them and their warjack down the Oldwick River, coming as near to Riversmet as possible without drawing Khadoran artillery down on their heads, Loumbard had been the only captain who had both agreed to their terms, and been ready to ship out immediately.

Well, almost immediately. Chalerynne’s petulance, and the diplomatic paperwork associated with it, had cost them additional hours they couldn’t spare.

Nor had their transport come cheaply. The bank notes Benwynne turned over to Loumbard—drawn from the same accounts that had provided the payment for di Meryse, funds secretly arranged weeks before by Cygnar’s government—could have purchased the boat outright, with change expected. Given the risks they were asking the crew to take, however, to say nothing of the urgency, the sergeant hadn’t argued.

It was a solid plan; no reason it should fail. Traveling under steam and on the currents of the Oldwick, they should be many hours and many leagues ahead of Vorona and her team, just waiting for the signal to deploy. Knowing what should be, however, wasn’t remotely the same as knowing what was.

Now, Benwynne stood on deck, leaning out over a banister that groaned various complaints about holding her weight. Ignoring the crew shifting and scuttling behind her, she stared into the flashing lights painting the sky to the south and west, trying to summon up that signal by sheer force of will.

Or, barring that, sheer force of burning, frustrated impatience.

“You’ve been awfully quiet the past day or two.”

She couldn’t even be bothered to look at the figure who’d appeared at the rail beside her. “Seems to me we’ve had this conversation before, Master Sergeant. I don’t know that I care to repeat it.”

Wendell apparently chose to ignore the less-than-subtle hint to drop it. He tugged his coat a bit tighter over his shoulders—to protect against the cold, or against the words to come? “You need to stop flagellating yourself over all this, Ben.”

Now she did turn his way, and it was all she could do not to land a right hook to his chin. “Oh, do I, Master Sergeant? And which part should I be most proud of, then? Losing most of my people on the way here? Letting Vorona get away? Or just my own idiocy, in needing you to suggest we use a riverboat to get ahead of her?”

“You’ve lost soldiers before. It’s never hit you like—”

“Not over half the squad on one damn mission!”

Wendell, too, straightened, took a step until they were almost nose to nose. “You want to take a swing at me, Sergeant? You go right ahead, if that’ll snap you out of this!”

“Snap—?!”

“Yes, we’ve lost a lot! Yes, it’s a new experience for you, and Morrow knows how it must feel! It’s torn me ragged, and I’m not in command.”

“At the moment,” Benwynne interjected, bitter as rotting horseradish.

“And if you feel the need to punish yourself, or resign, or jump off a bridge, or whatever, I can’t stop you. But you do it after we get home! Godsdamn it, Ben, the squad needs you! Best way to convince them this is hopeless is to let them see that you think it’s hopeless! So keep it together!”

What sounded, initially, like the boat running up on the rocks was, she realized, the popping of her clenched knuckles. “I shouldn’t need you to tell me that,” she admitted.

“You’ve never suffered like this,” he conceded. “Of course it’s going to weigh on you. But you can’t afford to bend under it, Ben. We can’t afford for you to bend.”

She leaned out over the water once more. “I’ll keep it in mind, Master Sergeant.” Then, as though it tasted off and she was spitting it out before it sickened her, “Thank you.”

“Ben,” he said hesitantly, “about Bainsmarket . . . Uh, right.” Wendell actually retreated a step beneath her glare. “Not the best time. Later will do.” He didn’t quite run back to the hatch, but it neither did he quite not run.

Benwynne returned to examining the distant conflagration—shots and detonations from the siege of Riversmet, almost as violent as those within her own soul—and waited intently for Gaust’s signal.

***

“Bloody godsdamn snow!” Atherton cursed. Or at least, that’s what Atherton meant to curse. He wasn’t sure how much of it was intelligible, given how violently his teeth chattered. “We’re royally buggered here, aren’t we?”

“I told you, relax!” The vehemence in Dignity’s voice was quite strong enough to make relaxing pretty much impossible. “We’ll pick the trail back up. We know where they’re going.”

“So you said an hour ago.”

For a day and a half, the two of them—along with Ledeson and a couple more of Bracewell’s soldiers—had tracked Vorona and her escorts through the blanket of powder covering Leryn’s soil. They slept only a few hours at a stretch, lest the enemy get too far ahead. They struggled to maintain the proper distance, neither falling back nor drawing close enough to attract attention. They remained constantly alert for ambush or any attempt to double back.

It was enough to put even the iron-nerved spy on edge. So when flurries thickened into curtains, and gusts into the gale of a genuine blizzard; when the weather leeched not only heat but color from their skin even through jackets and coats; when the surface of white before them filled itself in, obliterating the footprints . . . tempers had frayed down to their last dangling threads.

“I told you we should have stuck closer to them!” Atherton reminded her, not even remotely for the first time.

“And I told you to shut up already! Seems we’re both bound for disappointment.”

Morrow alone knew how things might have deteriorated after that, had Ledeson not appeared abruptly before them, parting the snowy curtain like an actor ready for his final bow. “Storm’s clearing up ahead,” he reported.

“There!” Dignity crowed, her tone and her sneer as unprofessional as Atherton had ever seen them. “See?”

“Any sign of the enemy?” The gunmage asked.

“No, sir. Not a trace.”

“There,” he said to the spy. “See?” Then, before she could explode, “Now what do we do?”

“Now we go find them.”

“Just like that, then?”

“Just like that.”

As Dignity had said, they knew where Vorona was headed. Once they’d cleared the fringes of the storm and passed into an ever-lightening morass of haze, a few minutes of scouting were sufficient to recover the trail. The tracks appeared at the edges of the storm, as though the Khadorans had fallen along with the snow itself, several dozen yards to the north.

And led them straight to the ashen remains of a tiny hamlet, some few hundred yards beyond that.

It wasn’t the first they’d come across; probably wouldn’t be the last. Like the warjacks they resembled, the Man-O-War suits couldn’t function long without coal. And for the Khadorans, here in the open lands between Leryn and Riversmet, there was really only one way to acquire it.

Atherton had given up trying to count the dead after the second such raid.

“You were right,” he admitted, trying both to be graceful and to distract them all from the newest scene of carnage. “Good show.”

Except Dignity wasn’t even looking at the tiny ravaged village. So why the hell did her forehead crease, her lips turn downward?

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Her response was a low mutter, barely heard.

“What was that?”

“The tracks are wrong.” She knelt, leaving divots in the quilt of white, for a closer examination.

Atherton examined them, then Dignity; back to the tracks, and back to his companion once more. “I don’t follow.”

“I can’t put my finger on it,” she admitted, rising and brushing slush and powder from her knees. “But something’s off. We need to hurry.”

So they did, passing through and amongst sporadic trees—far too widespread to constitute a forest, but rather occasional features of an otherwise barren winter vista—until Dignity stiffened, fists and jaws clenching tight enough to crush granite.

“They’ve split up,” she hissed in response to Atherton’s questioning glance.

“What?!”

“The soldiers’ tracks are shallower than the Man-O-Wars’.”

“Of course they are! You know how heavy those—?”

“I mean more than they should be, you blithering idiot! They’re older, had more time to fill in!

“Plus, they’re farther apart—moving at a faster pace. They’ve gone ahead, left the Man-O-War contingent to follow.”

“So what the hell do we do?”

“Send the signal.”

“The Reds might hear—”

“Just do it!”

Atherton grunted, drew, and fired. A flat crack sounded over the landscape, refusing to echo in the emptiness. The shot flew high, far higher than it had any right, and soared northward in a gentle arc.

“Now get a move on,” Dignity ordered, breaking into a run, “and hope to all the gods that we can catch them before they reach Riversmet.”

***

“Suggestions?”

Dignity scowled, shivering. “Working on it.”

The Cygnarans lay in a snowdrift, staring over the lip at the Man-O-War quartet. Though they were scarcely more than reddish shapes in the mist, still they projected a sense of menace, of weight; somehow more real than the fuzzy world around them.

They progressed at a leisurely pace, even as compared to their normal lumbering. Even without being able to see their heads move within the helms, or the helms rotate atop the armored trunks, neither Atherton nor Dignity could doubt that they scanned in all directions, serving as rear guard for their comrades who had gone on ahead.

“We can’t attack,” Ledeson chimed in from behind, as if they’d even have considered such a thing. “They’d slaughter us.”

“Right,” Atherton said with a grim smile. “They outnumber us four to five.”

“Cute,” Dignity said, “but not helpful.”

“Look,” the gunmage continued, “the idea of leaving an enemy at my back makes me painfully clench all sorts of things, but all we really have to do is get past them, right? They’re slow enough that we can keep ahead of them, at least long enough to do whatever needs doing with Vorona and the Winter Guard.”

“Right, but if we try circling around, we may lose—”

“Just be ready to move,” he repeated.

“What?”

“Quietly.”

“What?!”

Atherton drew both pepperbox pistols, and had to swallow a braying guffaw as Dignity’s eyes bulged until they threatened to pop like soap bubbles. “Are you insane?” she demanded. “You’ll draw them right to—”

The tail end of her protest suffocated and died, buried beneath twin blasts. Her hands twitched toward her waist, seemingly of their own accord, and Atherton wondered briefly whether her first shot would be trained on the enemy, or on a target substantially closer.

Perhaps it was fortunate for him, then, that she never had cause to make that choice. The armored soldiers started at the sound of the gunshots, halting and peering about for an enemy they couldn’t see. As Atherton had hoped, the flat sound of the open plain, combined with the muffling weight of their massive steel helmets, made it impossible to determine with any certainty from where the shots had come.

An instant later, the bullets—tiny warhorses, ridden and steered by the gunmage’s sorceries—slammed into one of the red-armored warriors from the opposite direction.

All four reacted as swiftly as their metal suits would allow, turning their backs on Atherton’s actual position. Two immediately advanced, axes held high, while the other pair lobbed grenades from massive launchers, utterly obliterating an inoffensive pine.

“Go!” he hissed.

Ledeson had already vanished. The other soldiers and Dignity followed with a bit less skill—although, in the spy’s case, only a tiny bit less—and then Atherton brought up the rear, watching for any sign that the enemy had seen through his trick.

He himself turned out to be the least stealthy of the lot, and still they’d crossed beyond the Man-O-War squad and out of sight while the enemy hunted desperately for a nonexistent target.

“That wasn’t bad,” Dignity admitted, once they’d stopped for breath around the base of another lonely tree, a half mile on.

“I try,” Atherton said, quickly reloading the empty barrels. “They’re eventually going to find our tracks, though, unless that storm meanders this way. And if they’re carrying any more of those damn flares, they can signal that someone’s gotten past them. We need to catch Vorona up before then.”

“There’s another reason we need to hurry, sir,” Ledeson added.

He couldn’t have timed his pronouncement better. In perfect punctuation, a blast of artillery sounded from far to the west, nowhere near—but near enough.

They—and Vorona—were finally approaching the siege of Riversmet.

***

The thunder roared, sharp, constant, the fury of weapons rather than weather. The unseen sky grew bright, reflecting the all-consuming glory of lightning and fire. Almost too viscous to breathe, the air was smoke, ozone, spent powder . . .

Blood. Enough blood, he was sure, to melt away the winter snows and fertilize an early spring.

Initially, Atherton could see none of it, and that was somehow worse. Every eddy in the flurries was an onrushing Khadoran soldier; every shadow housed a towering crimson warjack. And every scream, carried to them by the shifting winds, was the voice of his own soul, crying out in exhausted terror.

And then, as they reached the perfect vantage atop the crown of a modest hill, the fading haze drifted apart in what seemed a conscious, deliberate show of melodrama.

And the gunmage had to change his mind: Seeing was worse.

Thick gray air cast a feverish, dreamlike pall over the entire vista. The pockmarked walls of Riversmet—perhaps nothing special when compared to Leryn’s own, but imposing all the same—seemed unreal, more painted stage prop than genuine city. An array of multi-hued seas ebbed and flowed, beating against those walls or against one another, and Atherton found it difficult to convince himself that these were thousands of men and women in armor and uniforms, blending into abstract blots.

Throughout and between those seas, towering above the tumultuous surface, were giants of cerulean and gold, titans of crimson and steel. The smaller, swifter Cygnaran ’jacks bounded around their larger counterparts, seeking to overcome strength with speed and strategy. From such a distance, they were mere toys, marionettes; Atherton caught himself hunting for strings.

It was fake, all of it, a cheap façade over the face of the world. All of it but the fire. The explosions, the conflagrations that scorched the sky, the smoke that threatened to strangle the sun—those he could never imagine to be unreal.

A dull pain blossomed in Atherton’s side, drawing an unwilling hiss from between his lips. “What the hell?!”

“Pay attention.” Dignity, who had just elbowed him in the ribs, pointed across the expanse of drifts and rolling hills, shorter than the one on which they stood. “We have trouble.”

Roughly a third of the way between the Cygnarans and the outermost fringes of the siege, Vorona and her Winter Guard comrades plunged ahead as fast as the clinging slush allowed.

Beyond, spreading from the battle’s edges like a growing infection, rolled a contingent of Khador’s so-called assault kommandos. That they were splitting off from the main forces, risking discovery by the Cygnaran units scattered around the perimeter, and heading this way . . . They could only have been dispatched to meet up with Vorona and her prize.

“If they link up before we can reach them . . .” Atherton warned. Dignity was already moving ahead, Ledeson and the others on her heels, but the gunmage hesitated. There might just be a quicker way . . .

The Llaelese defenders had plenty of Cygnaran allies within Riversmet itself, but multiple divisions of King Leto’s army had also approached from the south, pinching many of the Khadoran forces between themselves and the bastion. Tactically, it was an overwhelming position—or it would have been, had the Khadorans not outnumbered and outgunned the Cygnarans multiple times over. As things stood now, despite the Cygnarans’ strategic advantage, it was anyone’s guess how this particular battle might turn out—or when Khadoran reinforcements might appear over the horizon.

What it all meant for Atherton personally, however, was that a Cygnaran unit of infantry and long-gunners held position relatively nearby, on the battle’s fringe.

And that the oncoming kommandos were attempting, with all stealth, to circle around that unit in order to reach Vorona. They could have tried to fight their way through, probably even made it, but not without tipping off their enemy that this tiny band of Winter Guard was somehow significant.

Atherton raised a pistol, aimed at the Cygnarans, and fired.

Again the bullet flew unnaturally far, struck with unnatural force. It impacted behind the rearmost soldiers, showering them with earth. It did them no real damage, but it absolutely got their attention.

From his vantage point, the gunmage saw the kommandos freeze, holding position just out of the Cygnarans’ sights, crouched behind trees or drifts of snow. Now that the Cygnarans were actively searching that way, however, it could only be a matter of moments before the Khadorans were discovered.

This particular unit would not be coming to Vorona’s aid any time soon.

Dignity gawped back at Atherton in various states of disbelief—though the spy was also clearly struggling to keep from snickering. The corporal, however, kept his attentions firmly fixed on Vorona’s team, who had quickened their pace yet again.

“Something wrong?” Only when Dignity asked did Atherton realize he’d been mumbling aloud.

“Don’t interrupt. Even for me, this takes some calculation.” Still, only seconds later, he stopped to reload the single empty barrel. “All right. Go.”

“‘Go’? Go where?”

The gunmage was abruptly grateful that the chapping on his wind-battered cheeks effectively hid his blush. He only then realized that he hadn’t actually explained the plan he’d just concocted.

“Are you sure?” she asked him, once he’d sheepishly done so. “You’ll be on your own until we can—”

“Go, before they’re too far ahead or some other unit comes out to reinforce them.”

Dignity, Ledeson, and the others faded away, forgotten memories in the haze, and Atherton began to mutter once more. “One-hundred . . . ninety-nine . . . ninety-eight . . .”

They flew by so quickly. Had the others gotten into position? Should he give them some extra . . . ?

“Seventy-three . . . seventy-two . . .”

No. They’d all heard the plan; he’d do them no favors by altering it now.

“Forty-eight . . . forty-seven . . .”

Vorona and the other Khadorans had now passed the halfway point between his position and the outermost reaches of the siege—and, potentially, escape into Khadoran ranks.

“Fifteen . . . fourteen . . .”

Angles, arcane formulae, and velocities ran through his head. Arcs, graphs, trajectories, all inked themselves over the world, drawn across his vision in lines of cobalt blue. As though planning to shoot the clouds themselves from their flight, he aimed both pistols skyward.

“Three . . . two . . .

“One.”

The gunmage emptied the barrels two by two. Between each pair of shots, he lowered the guns a few degrees; reshaped the magic in the runebullets, shifting the balance of unnatural inertia from distance to impact, so that each would fly shorter, hit harder.

He knew that not only his targets, but also the Reds at the rear of the battle raging around Riversmet, might well hear the shots. But a few additional pistol rounds, from such a distance? What possible harm could those do?

All eight of Atherton’s runebullets, their angles and speeds perfectly meshed, landed amidst the Winter Guard escort only fractions of a second apart; and though the power in each varied, even the weakest was a cannon shell unto itself.

Atherton saw it all, heard it all—the blasts, the screams, the raining dirt—and smiled.

A smile that died as swiftly as Atherton’s own targets had, at the coming of a new series of sounds. Thumps. Clangs. Hisses. The heavy, plodding footsteps of heavy, plodding creatures.

From behind.

His fists full of empty pistol, Atherton slowly turned, the hem of his coat slicing a shallow crescent into the snow.

Four soulless visors in four crimson suits of steam-powered armor glared over a bristling array of axes and chain-blades.

That these were almost assuredly not the same Man-O-War troops he’d won past earlier, unless the snowdrifts had slowed the powerful armor far less than it had the Cygnarans, did little to improve the situation.

Godsdamn it, not now! Not here! I’ve got so much more ahead of me . . . I’m supposed to do so much more than this . . .

“Gentlemen.” He hoped, prayed, his voice sounded as insouciant as he intended, that the faint tremor was wholly in his mind.

“Drop the weapons, Cygnaran. Now.” The accent was thicker than the armor plating, and Atherton wasn’t even certain from which Man-O-War it had come, but he understood it all the same.

“Of course.”

Two pepperbox pistols tumbled to the snow . . .

Four pairs of eyes, hidden behind visors, flickered to follow . . .

Atherton dove into a forward roll, leaving a peculiar trench in the white slush. The Man-O-War soldiers started; all had weapons raised, yes, but all had expected him to run. That he would close some of the distance, one man against four soldiers in Man-O-War armor, was enough to stun them, however briefly.

The gunmage came up running. In his right fist he clenched the forgelock he carried at his back—a powerful weapon, yes, but not against armor like this.

The two axe-wielders raised their shields, each of which sported a miniature cannon in its center. The other two, with the chain-swords and grenade launchers, refrained from firing on him; at this range, their ordnance was all but suicidal.

Atherton passed them to one side, so that the nearest shield cannon-wielder blocked any shot the other might take. For a second, he faced not four opponents, but only one.

The forgelock fired first, if only just, but “just” was enough. Guided by an unnatural skill and even less natural sorceries, the bullet hurtled down the center of the cannon’s barrel. The shell within erupted, taking shield, cannon, and arm along with it. Blood and steam spewed, a grotesquely beautiful geyser, and the steel figure toppled.

Glaring defiantly at the other three faceless soldiers, Atherton tossed the forgelock—its own barrel mangled by the runebullet it was never designed to accommodate—aside.

Not even bothering with cannon, now, the remaining axeman advanced on him, the other two following a step behind.

“I’ll expect you to tell people all about how I did that,” the gunmage informed them. This time he knew his voice shook; he could only hope they didn’t notice. “It’s the least you can do.”

Axe-blade rose; chain-swords roared.

Atherton shut his eyes . . .

***

Winter Guard infantry lay scattered, limp and broken toys with which the gods were well and truly done playing. Gaust’s bombardment had been brutal, raining death first in the midst of the formation, then broadening to both sides, so that even those soldiers with the reflexes to dodge one incoming volley had hurled themselves into the path of the next. Half a dozen or more, dead already; most of the remainder injured, or at least dazed, hurled prone by the blasts or by their attempts to escape the blasts.

One man, older and more grizzled than the rest, rose shakily, took three stumbling steps toward Vorona, hand outstretched either to help her stand or to take possession of her satchel. Either way, the opportunity passed him by.

Not unlike a snowman un-melting, Ledeson rose from the white-carpeted earth. A shadow of a nightmare, the commando had closed undetected in the seconds following the deadly torrent. His trench knife danced across the Khadoran officer’s throat, singing a gleeful soprano as it grated on bone.

Ledeson caught the dead man’s blunderbuss and blasted another of the groggy Winter Guardsmen off his feet. Six or seven yards away, a trio of Khadorans had taken what feeble cover they could, lying prone in a shallow depression. From there, they exchanged fire with the other Cygnaran soldiers who, lacking Ledeson’s stealth, had attacked from farther back.

The Winter Guard still held the benefit of numbers, but only marginally, and the chaos and confusion of the Cygnaran strike more than countered that advantage. Bridges of bullets linked the warring sides, and two more Khadorans fell, their furs bleeding until they looked freshly hunted and skinned. Distracted, deafened by the firefight, they never noticed Ledeson moving behind them, carbine in one hand, blood-smeared blade in the other . . .

Vorona, clearly, wasn’t about to wait around to see how it all worked out, especially not with reinforcements almost in sight. She rose from her crouch, one hand steadying the satchel hanging from her shoulder . . .

“Hello again, Vorona.”

“Garland.”

Her voice remained steady as ever, but Dignity was gratified to note the faintest widening of the enemy’s eyes, the brief tic in her cheek.

“Care to drop the bag and leave?” Dignity asked, gesturing with the pistol in her right fist. “I’m willing to extend the offer. Once.”

The Khadoran laughed. “Do you think me so stupid as to still have the documents on me? Knowing that I would be your first target, were you to somehow catch up?”

Both women flinched at the ear-splitting clap of a grenade detonating somewhere uncomfortably close—the Cygnaran unit had at last located the Khadoran kommandos, and reacted accordingly—but neither took her eyes off the other.

“You wouldn’t trust anyone else, certainly no mere soldier, with the formula,” Dignity said. “And you never expected us to catch up.”

Again Dignity read her answer in Vorona’s expressions, indistinct as they might be.

“You’re hurt. You’re exhausted. Drop the bag and go.”

Vorona’s shoulders slumped. “All right. You win.” She closed her fingers around the flap of the satchel, flexed her shoulder so that the loose strap slipped down her arm . . .

And hurled it underhand, like an inverted trebuchet, at Dignity’s head.

Or rather, where Dignity’s head had been. She was ducking aside before the bag left Vorona’s grasp, anticipating just such a maneuver. Still, the hurtling lump of canvas briefly obscured her view, and by the time it cleared, Vorona, too, had her finger on the trigger of a pistol.

Each operative spun while she fired, sliding sideways, plunging into awkward crouches to clear the other’s line of fire. The two guns bellowed with a single voice, the two bullets penetrated empty air rather than flesh and blood.

What Dignity did not expect was for her opponent’s spent forgelock to come hurtling her way immediately after. She swayed aside, easily evading the clumsy missile, but by then Vorona was already on her—Gods, how did she move so fast with that leg?!—her blade flashing.

Dignity, too, became a whirlwind of thrashing limbs, parrying the knife with her own empty pistol. Here she landed a kick, there an open-hand blow, but never with any significant impact; the Khadoran simply rolled with those few strikes she couldn’t avoid.

She felt Vorona’s left hand closing on her forearm in what was surely meant to be a painful, perhaps even bone-breaking joint lock. She yanked herself desperately aside . . .

Directly into a high crescent kick.

The world spun; Dignity was certain that only the clinging snow kept her from being hurled into the overcast skies. Three separate Voronas confronted her, sliding around and overlapping, discourteously refusing to settle down.

And that, too, had been with the injured leg! She could only assume that she’d be down, possibly unconscious, had Vorona been at her peak.

Dignity rolled backward, ignoring the added vertigo as best she could, swallowing her rising gorge.

Vorona kept pace with a single stride, launching another kick meant to catch Dignity off-balance. Again she struck with her wounded leg; presumably she felt it wouldn’t support her weight if she kicked with the other.

Dignity threw out an arm to absorb the blow that might well have cracked ribs. She swore she felt the humerus flex, and her whole body tried to lock up in shock—but the bone held, and Dignity refused to freeze.

Instead she twisted into the kick and brought her other fist down on the injured thigh.

The Khadoran fell back, screaming. Blood roiled from the reopened gash, and the whole limb trembled. It required neither Dignity’s training nor experience to know that leg was about to give out entirely.

Still the woman refused to fall. Still she held the knife steady in her hand.

And while Dignity’s own vision was clearing, the vertigo fading, the ground still trembled. It only gradually dawned on her, to her growing horror, that each tremor was accompanied by a crushing boom.

Warjacks; warjacks resembling a mountain of steel sprouting from the soil, far nearer than the fringes of the siege. Around them swarmed soldiers, in far greater numbers than the previous team. A second unit of reinforcements had come to retrieve Vorona, and Dignity was out of time.

Vorona sneered and, as best her injury would permit, leapt for the fallen satchel and the prize within.

Dignity dove the other way, and came up clutching a fallen Winter Guard’s blunderbuss.

The weapon roared. Vorona tumbled aside as best she could and vanished, rolling behind a snowdrift. An ugly, uneven smear of blood marked her wake.

Was she alive? Dead? Dignity desperately needed to know, but the mighty ’jacks were raising arm-mounted cannon, the soldiers their blunt-nosed rifles. She even heard the baying of some vicious, ravenous beast from the forefront of the oncoming enemy.

Fighting every burning desire in her roiling soul, she sprinted instead to the satchel. Snagging it without slowing, she slung it over her shoulder and ran, a tide of gray furs and bloodred steel rising rapidly behind.

***

“Unidentified approach, Sergeant!”

It was far, far from the first time they’d heard that call. After making way to display for them the tumult and carnage of the ongoing siege, to show off the rolling multicolored throngs, winter had clamped its fists around them yet again. The flurries were light, but still thick enough to hide behind, and where the snow remained sheer, the less tangible haze was more than happy to fill in the gaps.

This was, in fact, the third such warning raised by the scouts. The first time, it had been a Cygnaran squad, pulling out to regroup and reequip. After a few moments of questioning to ensure that the uniforms weren’t faked or stolen, they’d allowed squad five to continue on their way, assuming they belonged to some local division other than their own.

On the second occasion, things hadn’t been so simple. Khadoran blood and scraps of uniform still clung to everyone’s boots.

Benwynne snapped the carbine to her shoulder, ready to take aim the instant she saw a target. Around her, the few surviving long-gunners did the same, while the trenchers crouched low over rifles or the last pair of surviving chain guns. From behind, she heard grinding as Wolfhound raised axe and cannon.

“Check your sightlines!” Benwynne snapped in reminder. She knew her people were exhausted beyond reason; knew it, because she felt the same. But they couldn’t afford the mistakes exhaustion so often heralded. “Remember, it could be—”

“Garland!” The call came from Private Markham, positioned near Wendell and the ’jack. “Hold fire!”

Damn, the kid’s got good eyes! It took Benwynne another few seconds to be certain, but he was absolutely right. Running like the legions of Cryx were on her heels and their dragon-god circling above, the spy burst from the thickening flurries. When she slid to a halt beside Benwynne, her gasps were ragged and uneven. The satchel swinging from her shoulder nearly pulled her over at the sudden stop.

“Is that . . . ?”

The winded spy could only nod. The sergeant felt something slimy uncoil from around her soul and slither away.

“Peeked . . . on my way . . . just to be sure . . .” Garland wheezed. “It’s in . . .”

Again the forward scouts warned of an approach, again the squad braced, and again it proved unnecessary. Ledeson staggered into view, looking only marginally less exhausted than the spy.

“Are you all that made it?” Benwynne asked softly.

“Renwick took a bullet before we killed most of the Winter Guardsmen.” Though bent and leaning on his knees, Ledeson raised his gaze to meet hers. “The last Red blew himself up with a grenade. Took Sterling and Shaw with him.”

Damn it! Damn, damn, damn . . . “And Gaust?”

“We . . . don’t know, Sergeant.”

“Morrow’s name . . .” How many more of us is this going to take?!

“Sergeant Bracewell,” Garland said, having finally caught her breath, “I’m sorry, but we have to mourn later. There’s a heavy squad just minutes behind me.”

Instantly, Benwynne was all business. “Nature and number?”

“I elected not to hang around and count. But multiple units of assault troops, at least one of which has a bloody drooling war-dog on a chain.

“And two heavy ’jacks bringing up the rear.” Garland shook her head. “It’ll take those longer to reach us, but the others can swarm us under, or at least delay us for the big guns to—”

“Go.”

“What?”

“Head northeast,” the sergeant ordered. Where’s this coming from? Who the hell’s talking? These aren’t my words, are they?

But they were. Benwynne knew what was coming, knew what had to be done—even if she couldn’t admit it, yet, to herself.

“You’ll find a steamboat, captained by a man called Loumbard. Ledeson and . . .” She studied her people, finally settling on the young long-gunner. “Markham. You two are on escort duty.”

“Sergeant—” Markham began, at the same time as Ledeson’s “With all due respect—”

“I’m not asking!”

Both men saluted and took position beside Garland.

“Markham, Loumbard knows you. Have him take you a few miles upstream at full steam. That should buy you whatever time we can’t.”

Garland’s shoulders tensed; Benwynne could see it even through the coat. “What do you mean, ‘that we can’t’?”

“Once you disembark,” she continued, ignoring the question, “you ought to be far enough from the front to cut south and then back around to Merywyn. Getting a boat home from there shouldn’t be difficult.”

“Sergeant—”

“You can’t ask us to—”

“I’m not—”

“You know what’s at stake here.” Her smile looked palpably artificial. It had to—she felt like she was stretching muscles she’d forgotten she had—but she forced it all the same. “It’s been an honor serving with you. Now go.”

Never had she seen three healthy adults move so stiffly, shuffle so reluctantly from sight, scarcely noting where they stepped because they were too busy looking back the way they’d come.

But they went, and if any tears were shed, the trio did Benwynne and the others the courtesy of concealing them until distance and weather swallowed them up.

“You all know what’s at stake here,” she repeated, this time to the tattered, sorry remains of what had so recently been one of Cygnar’s foremost Unorthodox Engagement Teams. “Garland has to get those documents back home. We cannot let the enemy catch her up.

“I’m sorry this falls to us, but we’re going to make the Reds a lot sorrier. I know you’ll make his Majesty, and all Cygnar, proud of you. As you’ve already made me.

“Hop to it!”

Snow fountained as trenchers dug shallow holes—poor cover indeed, but better than none—and jammed chain gun tripods deep into the slush. Wendell’s mechaniks swarmed around Wolfhound, ensuring its joints flexed smoothly, its cannon was clear. At random distances, in random directions, they scattered heavy shells, ensuring the ’jack and its support crew would have immediate access to ammunition.

Benwynne, as well as the remaining long-gunners, sought cover of their own. Most dropped to their bellies behind shallow bulges in the snow or the terrain beneath; several, the sergeant included, crouched in the lee of the sporadic evergreens.

“Ben . . .”

She recognized the voice; hell, she recognized the crunch of his steps. “You probably ought to find a more secure position, Master Sergeant. I don’t think this tree is broad enough to shelter the both of us.”

“We need to talk.”

In the distance, only lightly obscured by the freshly accumulating haze, the world began to bleed. Benwynne knew what she was seeing, long before the crimson smear resolved itself into individual troops.

“This really isn’t the time,” she pointed out.

“I don’t know that we’ll have another. Ben, please. I need you to hear this. What happened in Bainsmarket and Fisherbrook—”

“Don’t.” Benwynne’s palms were sweating, the lining of her gloves soaked despite the cold. So damn many of them . . .

And behind those, beyond the crimson bloom of the oncoming soldiers, loomed larger shapes. Not yet near enough to be clearly seen, not nearly so fast as the charging men, but unmistakable. Had the earth been dry and clear, she might already feel the footsteps; though she knew it was impossible, she swore she smelt the choking smoke of their furnaces.

“Don’t,” she said again, finally facing him—as much so she wouldn’t have to watch the oncoming storm, as for his sake. “Duty can be a . . . demanding liege. I understand. I really do.”

Wendell’s beard crinkled, but his smile was the saddest, Benwynne thought, that she’d ever seen. “But you don’t forgive.”

It was absolutely not a question.

“Master Ser—Wendell . . . I haven’t had time. And it . . .” The Khadorans were near enough, now, to distinguish their cries, and the feral baying of the war-hound, from the background chaos of the larger battle beyond. Perhaps, though the slate-hued daylight made it hard to be sure, even to see their breath on the air. Behind them, the scarlet-steel giants grew ever more solid, stepping from some half-forgotten nightmare into the waking world. “It doesn’t seem that I’m likely to, now.”

Her voice cracked, there at the end. The mechanik began to turn away.

“Wendell . . .” Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached out. “For what it’s worth, I think . . . I would have tried.”

His hand clasped hers: an anchor, a reminder of everything she fought for. His smile was no longer sad.

Sergeant Benwynne Bracewell hefted her carbine, called out her final orders, and opened fire.