The Ashion army captain traveling with them communicated via televox with the rear forces they approached. Their arrival had been expected, and a squad of soldiers were aboveground at the entrance to the rear garrison trench, keeping watch and ready to cover them. Group by group, they climbed down the ladder into the trench, the soldiers below barely acknowledging them.
Soren’s boots hit mud, but it didn’t impede him much from following Halyna. She led them with unerring steps through the trench, moving around barricaded anti-airship guns and other heavy artillery fire bay positions. Spiderlike automatons scuttled along the edges of the trench, the Zip guns welded to their boxy forms firing intermittently at targets they couldn’t see.
Something whistled through the air, and he reached behind him for Caris’ arm, throwing them flat to the muddy ground. “Get down!”
Blaine threw himself over Caris seconds before the bomb hit somewhere behind them and exploded. Soren didn’t see the explosion, but he heard it, his ears ringing from the terrible sound. The ground rumbled with the hit, but nothing tore through the air near them. The screams coming from well behind them told him where it had most likely landed.
Soren shoved himself out of the muck, wiped mud off his face, and thumped Blaine on the shoulder. “Keep moving.”
Between the two of them, they got Caris back on her feet, with everyone in their group marching after Halyna once again. He didn’t know if the bomb had taken out any of the soldiers that had come with them, but it wasn’t something Soren could stop and deal with at the moment. They maneuvered around soldiers on duty, some wounded, some not, some clearly dead but not yet dealt with.
Eventually, they reached the end of the garrison trench, the earth sloping up to the ground above, where an automaton stood guard amidst the pieces of others that had been destroyed by enemy fire. Halyna clambered up the ladder only far enough to get eyes on the ground and orient their position.
“How is it looking?” Soren called up.
“The front-line trenches are taking a beating, but the garrison trenches are holding. We’re in the dugout line and far enough back we shouldn’t be targeted by snipers on the city wall. They have airships to contend with at the moment,” Halyna said.
“And the catacomb entrance?”
Halyna ducked back down and pulled out a map from her belt pouch. Soren waited patiently while she studied the trench lines carefully inked into the grid drawn around Amari. “Quarter of a mile away, according to the map. I’ll check our route.”
She hauled herself back up, pulling a spyglass from the other side of her belt and extending it to full length. The metal was painted black, with no gloss, and hopefully, no one would catch sight of the tiny glass lens she peered through. Soren waited tensely at the bottom of the ladder and didn’t move until Halyna pulled the spyglass away from her face. “I see the landmark. Let’s go.”
Soren’s heart rate didn’t ease at all during the time they left the dugout trench for open ground beneath a night sky full of stars and distant aerial explosions. They ran, crouched low to the ground, other groups following after them. He kept Caris between himself and Blaine, with Blaine insisting on taking the position that would get him shot first if snipers looked their way. The prairie was flat enough they’d stand out, but he hoped the ongoing fighting would continue to be enough of a distraction.
Eventually, they made it to an outcropping of rock half-embedded in the ground. The stone looked as if it had been cut from a quarry and abandoned. Soren wondered how many times it had been passed over by wardens or other travelers. It was near Amari, yes, but nowhere close to a trade road, and travelers rarely left the safety of the roads.
They huddled behind the rock, the stone blocking Amari from view. Blaine kneeled and used his hands to brush aside dirt, fingers digging for something. When he found it, he let out a pleased grunt before pulling a key from a pocket, the chain it was attached to glinting in Soren’s night lenses. He watched as Blaine pried open a tiny metal flap and inserted the key into a depressed hole that was the lock. He turned it, and Soren had to strain his hearing to catch the sound of grinding gears as mechanisms moved below the earth.
“Ready?” Blaine asked.
Halyna had her wand out while Soren held his pistol steady. The rest of the Royal Guards kept their own pistols out and ready to fire. Blaine twisted the key one more degree, and a handle rose from the metal plating, locking into place. Blaine gripped it and braced himself, pulling open the hatch that was only wide enough for one person at a time to pass through. It lay flat against the ground, revealing a dark hole hidden behind the rocks.
Nothing exploded; no one jumped out to attack. All Soren saw was an inky blackness that was their only way inside the capital city. He holstered his pistol and took the handheld gas light that Caris gave him. He stepped closer to the catacomb entrance, clicking the device on to shine a light down into that black hole. The light was too weak to reach far, but Soren saw a ladder and what he thought might be the ground below. He switched it off and handed the device back to Caris. “I’ll go first.”
No one protested, all of them aware that if revenants waited for them out of sight, Soren had the best chance at surviving their attack. Steeling himself, he twisted around and angled his body over the ladder. It creaked from his weight but held fast, and he climbed down into the eerie, quiet dark of the catacombs.
His feet eventually hit the floor, and he cast a bit of starfire to light the immediate area. The space was empty, dust drifting thickly through the air. Tilting his head back, he called out an all clear. One by one, the others climbed their way down to join him, the space nearly suffocating with so many bodies pressed between the narrow walls.
“Which way?” Caris asked, her voice hushed.
“Whatever way we take, you and I will need to keep everyone safe,” Soren said, flicking sparks of starfire away from his fingers in a pointed gesture.
Caris nodded determinedly. “You lead. I’ll follow.”
Soren could only do as she asked.
Seven
CARIS
Caris was glad she wasn’t claustrophobic, but after spending hours in the catacomb tunnel, she could feel the tight space getting to her. Walking beside Soren behind a pair of Royal Guards and Halyna, with Blaine and Nathaniel at her back, only soothed her anxiety a little. All of them except the wardens were in borrowed Daijalan uniforms, having changed clothes once below.
Starfire cast from both herself and Soren danced far ahead of them in a line of fireballs down the tunnel, pushing back the dark. In the time they’d been marching underground, they hadn’t come across any threat, but she knew how quickly that could change. In such tight quarters, with no cover to hide behind, fighting could quickly become a bloody bottleneck.
Halyna had tasked herself with the duty of casting shields if they were attacked. The time she’d buy them would hopefully be enough for Soren and Caris to burn whomever or whatever tried to approach them from farther up ahead. Caris’ stomach clenched at the thought of killing people again, but not defending herself and those with her would result in their annihilation and the ruin of Maricol.
All of those worries pulled at the edges of her thoughts, making it nearly impossible for her curiosity to get the best of her regarding the makeup of the tunnel. The metal paneling and seams were different than anything she’d come across before, and if the situation wasn’t so fraught, she’d love to study the design of it all. It made her wonder about the history of Maricol and the Ages that had come before. Some long-forgotten ancestor must have built the catacombs, but the reason was lost to them now.
