He yanked open the travel compartment again and removed his double-lensed spyglass. Tipping it out of the case, Soren pushed his goggles up and placed the spyglass over his nose, adjusting the lenses with one hand. The figures came into magnified view, blurry at first, before sharpening into the rotten bodies of revenants.
Soren dropped the spyglass back into the case, dumped it into the travel compartment, then hauled Vanya off the velocycle. “Get inside the way station.”
“What are you—” Vanya began, annoyance bleeding through his tone.
“Revenants,” Soren cut in, shoving Vanya toward the building. “Get inside and tell the clerk to close the storm shutters and bar the door. Don’t open it again until you hear from me.”
Vanya stared at him for a couple of seconds before wrenching his gaze toward the road and the threat coming their way. “I can burn them if you let me.”
Soren raised an eyebrow. “This close to a way station and all its fuel? I thought you wanted to hide, princeling? Starfire won’t help you with that.”
Vanya glared at him. “What will you do, then?”
“My job.”
He stared the Imperial crown prince down until Vanya turned on his heels and walked into the way station. Seconds after the door shut behind Vanya, he could see the clerk in the window, frantically cranking a lever. Metal screeched as the storm shutters unfolded on the outside of the window and lowered over the glass. They locked from the inside, because no one in their right mind stepped beyond solid walls amidst the threat of revenants.
Wardens weren’t generally regarded as sane by the general population in any country, but that had never stopped Soren from meeting a threat head-on. He climbed onto his velocycle and left a trail of exhaust and dust behind when he pulled out of the way station and onto the road.
Soren scanned the immediate area, not seeing anything in the fields on either side of the road, but that wasn’t to say more revenants weren’t out there, waiting. A pity the way station lacked a warden resupply station. He’d have to watch his bullets.
Soren slowed his velocycle to a crawl before finally braking to a stop. He locked the brakes and kicked the stand down but kept the engine running. Then he reached for the shotgun where it was mounted on the frame and pulled it free.
Undoing the slide lock on the short barrel, Soren checked the cartridge count. The gears turned and locked when he slid the cover back into place. Leaving his velocycle behind, Soren walked down the center of the road, keeping the revenants in sight, short-barreled shotgun heavy in his hands. When he was a good few meters from his ride, Soren stopped and planted his feet, allowing the revenants to come to him.
They moved with the slowness of the newly risen, which made them easier to put down. What remained of their flesh was bloated in places. One revenant was missing most of its arms, the limbs most likely scavenged by a wild animal. Their robes were messy, bloody things, but even beneath the filth, Soren could see the clothing wasn’t as well-made as Vanya’s.
They’d been no one of note, though he knew they were probably missed by someone. Their names would never be carved onto a memory wall in a columbarium, but at least Soren could put them to rest.
Soren braced the stock against his shoulder and sighted down the barrel at the walking dead. He pulled the handguard back, and the first round found its home in the smaller revenant’s head, entering through the chewed-off nose and out the back in a spray of sludgy brain matter. The revenant went down and didn’t get back up.
The empty cartridge was ejected and a new one chambered as Soren pushed the handguard forward along the barrel. The lingering revenant screamed in that hideous way they had—like a wild thing caught in a trap, incapable of freeing itself. Soren aimed at the second one and fired, slug finding its home in the revenant’s neck. The head flopped forward as the body collapsed.
Soren lowered his shotgun and scanned the area, on high alert for any hint of movement. Nothing in the immediate area appeared to be a threat anymore, not with the revenants taken down by poisoned shotgun slugs. He retreated to his velocycle, retrieving his spyglass so he could confirm the plains around the way station were empty of revenants. No movement met his eyes, and after a few minutes, Soren put the spyglass away.
This wassupposedto be cleansed land, according to his map. He’d been taking the back roads—which weren’t so much roads as open ground—with Vanya because they should have been safe. But the revenants from before at the train wreck and the ones today had to come from somewhere, and that bog was not where it should have been.
What Soren wanted to do was a grid search, figure out if another bog or fen had cropped up in this area of the plains. But he had an Imperial crown prince who he was responsible for at the moment that took priority. Soren knew if he left Vanya alone, the prince wouldn’t send a telegram for help; he’d probably walk to Bellingham on his own.
The mere idea of that was enough to make Soren’s stomach twist.
He put his shotgun away in its holster on the velocycle and went to drag the bodies of the revenants off the road. He took them far enough into the prairie grass that no one could see them from the road. He unsheathed his short sword, not bothering with activating the poison, and chopped off the revenants’ heads. He’d burn the bodies in a bit, but first he needed to let Vanya know they were in the clear.
For now.
Soren rode back to the way station and parked his velocycle beneath the canopy. When he made it to the door, he banged his fist on it. “It’s me. Open up.”
The sound of a dead bolt unlocking reached his ears, and then the heavy door was pulled open by Vanya, the clerk behind him pointing a long-barreled shotgun at the entrance. Soren arched an eyebrow, taking in the clerk’s steady hands.
“Revenants are down and off the road. I need to burn them.” Soren looked at Vanya. “We’re staying here tonight.”
Before the prince could protest, the clerk thumbed the safety on his shotgun and let the barrel rest against his shoulder. “I won’t charge you for a room.”
Soren nodded his thanks. “How long has it been since you saw revenants around here?”
“I wasn’t assigned to this way station during winter, but the record books don’t have any entries about that. This is the first appearance since I started here during Fourth Month.”
Soren filed that information away. Perhaps the revenants were typical stragglers, incapable of surviving in the wilderness and dying because of it. But the horde that had run after the train had numbered almost two dozen, and that was more than was typically found in cleansed land these days.
