Soren grimaced. “They aren’t.”
Or they weren’t. Who knew what nastiness Eimarille had come up with since the last time he’d seen one of those horrible machines in person?
Soren shoved that thought aside, needing to focus on the threat at hand. Someone had given an order to the gunners not to shoot as the wardens drove into the line of fire toward the revenants. He aimed himself at the revenant wild beast that had attacked the truck he knew Caris was in. Tossing a grenade at it would put the convoy and Caris at risk, but if the blast came from within, it would be less of a threat.
“Let’s get it away from the trucks and feed it a treat,” Soren yelled over the sound of velocycle engines. “I’ll get in close.”
The wardens near him shouted their agreement, falling into a formation that would make it easy for them to weave quickly around the revenants. It was training they’d all gone through as tithes, four of them acting as bait for the hulking corpse doing its best to hunt through metal for the living flesh within.
Mindless but spore-driven, the revenant wild beasts were more difficult to corral and put down than if they’d been human-shaped. Doing such work at night while close to the ongoing battle made it even worse. That didn’t stop Soren from driving forward to cut a U-turn near the revenant wild beast, tearing his poison short sword from its sheath on his back to score the blade over the putrid rotting flesh hanging from the revenant’s rib cage.
Dead as it was, it couldn’t feel pain, but the attack caused its attention to turn from those in the truck to the prey Soren was pretending to be. He revved his velocycle’s engine, driving away from the revenant and enticing it to follow. A fellow warden cut between them to circle around and use their axe to harry the revenant farther away from the convoy.
Soren twisted the handlebars of his velocycle, back wheel skidding out and around as he abruptly changed direction. His teeth clacked together from the abrupt motion, but his hand unerringly found a poison grenade on his bandolier and yanked it free. He waited as the other warden drove the revenant toward him, herding it away from the convoy, shadow and light playing merry havoc with his vision through the night lenses. That massive mouth opened, jaw hanging from ragged tendon and stringy flesh. He pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it into its gaping maw. “Get clear!”
He took his own advice, driving away from the revenant wild beast. Seconds later, it exploded with a muffled, wet sound that sent torn-up pieces of the rotting body flying into the air. Soren didn’t see where any of it landed, thankfully out of range of the mess. Two more explosions rent the air as wardens handled the other revenant wild beasts in the same way.
Soren drove back to the truck where Caris and Blaine sat, pulling up alongside it to gesture at the driver. “Keep moving!”
The truck lurched forward, tires spinning for a moment before gaining traction. The rest of the convoy followed as the wardens took up guard positions again, everyone on edge. Another warden took up the lead, guiding everyone forward over pitted land strewn with jagged metal and spirals of barbed wire lining trenches still in use.
Soren knew the last few weeks had seen utterly brutal fighting around Amari and that the entrenched Daijal army hadn’t given up ground easily. A truck halfway down the line weaved around a cluster of slagged metal that once used to be an automaton and rolled over a hidden mine, the explosion star-bright in the night. He swore, glancing back at the fiery outline of the truck, the soldiers inside it more than likely dead. The explosion would have marked their location, and they had to get clear.
Soren drove to the head of the convoy and signaled for the warden there to halt before signaling the same to the truck behind her. The convoy rumbled to a stop, engines still running, but the soldier cut it when Soren ordered him to.
“We’re still not close to the entrance,” warned Halyna, one of the wardens’ master cartographers.
“And we don’t want the enemy to know where we’re heading. We’ll need to travel the rest of the way by foot through the garrison and dugout trenches,” Soren said.
She didn’t protest, even if a few of the soldiers did as Soren drove down the line, verbally giving out the order for the march. The wardens remained on their velocycles, the two-wheeled vehicles capable of maneuvering in the field the way a four-wheeled vehicle couldn’t.
“We’ll move in groups,” a legionnaire captain said.
Soren looked at Halyna, unable to see her eyes through their brass goggles and the night shadowing them. “Do you have the route?”
“Yes, but it’s within the ranks of our battalions, which means it’s within striking distance of Daijal’s army.”
“We’ll all be within striking distance of Daijal if we don’t get inside the city.” Soren pointed at the legionnaire captain. “Get everyone down into the trench.”
They weren’t clear of the battle, and while no bombs had dropped in their immediate area, Soren knew that could change in an instant. The legionnaires gathered everyone into smaller groups, with wardens assigning themselves as guides. Soren made his way to where Caris, Blaine, and Nathaniel crouched near a truck with several soldiers. He went to a knee beside her and signaled for Halyna to join them.
“What direction do we need to take now?” Soren asked.
“A little more northeast. Scouts reported earlier the area we need to head to is clear of mines,” Halyna said.
“Brilliant. So we only need to worry about bullets and bombs,” Blaine muttered.
“The armies are making themselves a target so we don’t become one. The least we can do for them is move quickly,” Soren said.
“How long will it take?” Caris asked.
“As long as it needs to.”
In the dark, her mouth firmed into a hard line. “Then let’s get moving.”
Soren offered her his hand, the first time he could ever recall reaching out to her, and she took it without hesitation. Caris rose up and followed him with a determination that spoke of the kind of queen she’d be if they could only get her on the starfire throne.
Fighting at night was terrible for everyone. The area between the frontlines and where command sat had felt like a pockmarked grave when passing through it. Now, as they entered the edges of an active battlefield, Soren couldn’t help but think the poison fields and revenants were easier to deal with than the sheer chaos occurring around Amari.
