The wardens split up, driving in opposite directions to their assigned positions. The Ashion army had dug trenches into the ground some distance from the outer wall, with heavy artillery positioned by each one. The trenches had been abandoned when the warning sirens started up. The Ashion army couldn’t afford to lose its soldiers to revenants and spores and had pulled everyone back inside the walls. If this war was being fought with only the living, the trenches wouldn’t have been abandoned, and the wardens wouldn’t be out there fighting to keep Cosian safe.
“The wall defense will cut through the horde from a distance. We’re to handle those that break through,” Enmei said after they reached their position outside the wall.
The poison in the grenades would incapacitate the revenants, keeping them unmoving long enough for the wardens to gather the bodies for dozens of pyres. The chemical concoction had been brewed by the remaining alchemists on the Warden’s Island and put into production on an expedited notice for use in the poison fields while the war raged. They were far more potent than what the army could produce. Cleansing the poison fields afterward was going to be the work of a generation once the war was won.
If it was won.
“And the airships?” Soren asked. Before Enmei could speak, a fast-moving shadow passed over them, the wide expanse of it causing him to look up. An Ashion airship flew overhead, gaining altitude, followed by another and then another.
“They’ll try to keep Daijal’s from bombing the city.”
They parked their velocycles on the ground near a trench. Neither of them jumped into the trench itself, instead setting up behind it. The crates were taken off the velocycles and the shoulder-mounted grenade launcher assembled with a speed that spoke of Enmei having done this plenty of times before.
Soren flipped open the lid of the crate that held the poison grenades in padded compartments. He picked one up and loaded it into the rear metal tube of the launcher, listening as the gears clicked into place with sharp sounds. Enmei stayed kneeling, fingers resting against the body of it, near the switch and buttons that would launch the grenade.
In the distance, coming closer, was the horde of revenants.
“Ready on the wall!” someone bellowed above a few minutes later.
“Ready below!” Enmei, Soren, and other wardens ranged down the way shouted back.
Seconds later, the sound of Zip guns going off above filled the air, the heavyrat-tat-tatof the rapidly fired bullets loud in Soren’s ears. The revenants at the front of the oncoming horde were torn to pieces by the bullets and fell. The ones behind marched over the ruined bodies, some of which still tried to crawl forward, before they, too, fell beneath the onslaught of bullets.
Those on the wall knew not to aim so close to the trenches, which meant when the inevitable happened and revenants lurched forward past that invisible line, Enmei and the other wardens acted. The flare of light and smoke from the grenade launching smelled like hot metal. Soren couldn’t follow its trajectory, but he saw when it hit. The explosion of dirt and body parts was obvious, as was the way the revenants within the blast radius all abruptly fell to the ground, the poison from the grenade incapacitating them.
Soren reached for another grenade and loaded it with grim determination, never taking his eyes off the horde of revenants that just kept coming.
Four
SOREN
Soren finally left the wall and returned to the estate Caris called home late in the afternoon. The drive through Cosian this time around went much slower, his way impeded by new damage done from dropped bombs. Damaged gas lamp lights meant the city had to cut off the flow of gas in certain areas while rescue crews dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings, looking for survivors.
Only two airships had managed to break through the Ashion defense, but they’d dropped a dozen bombs between them in the city’s outer neighborhoods before being harried off by ground-to-air defenses and eventually shot down. If there were any survivors of those crashes out in the wilds of the Eastern Basin, Soren hoped the bodies burned before they rose as revenants.
His fellow wardens had nearly been overrun at the end, sections of their defense having to pull back and use their grappling crossbows to get hauled out of reach of the walking dead. The poison grenades had gone off closer than any of them would’ve liked, requiring the need for alchemist intervention starting tomorrow before some of the trenches could be manned again. The outer wall remained intact, which was the only positive.
The damage he passed was difficult to observe, knowing the death count would rise. But it was the Ashion people moving about with grim determination—either directly helping with the search and rescue efforts, pitching in to start clearing debris, or feeding those working—that caught Soren’s attention. The resolve he could see and hear in those he passed was proof that Daijal hadn’t broken them, but how long they could hold out was anyone’s guess.
He braked to a stop at an intersection beyond the second inner wall, staring past the makeshift peacekeeper barrier that had been set up to block civilian traffic from the debris of several collapsed buildings. Bodies were laid out in the street under makeshift funeral shrouds consisting of torn sheets. A star priest moved from one body to the next, providing rites to the dead to see them onward to the stars.
Another velocycle drew up beside his. Enmei’s attention was on the dead, a frown tugging at his lips. “The Ashion army needs better air support.”
“Isn’t there an E’ridian airship in the airfield?” Soren asked, thinking of Blaine and Honovi.
“They were in the air, but one war airship won’t win a fight against half a squadron.”
Soren looked away from Enmei, returning his attention to the efforts of the living. “How long before Ashionens burn their dead?”
“An aerial attack last autumn destroyed one of the city’s crematoriums on the western side. It’s only half rebuilt, delayed because of the winter storms. The other one is in the southeast side of the city. The dead will burn tonight, for however long it takes. Mourning will take longer.”
It seemed senseless, all these innocent lives lost, simply because Eimarille wanted to rule past the borders she had been given. Soren raised a hand, pressing his fingers over the outline of the vow tucked beneath his shirt, a quiet discomfort eating away at his thoughts.
“Ashion won’t win as they are, will they?” he asked quietly.
Enmei twisted his velocycle’s handlebars, revving the engine. “No, I don’t think so.”
The other warden drove off to wherever he stayed in Cosian. Soren watched the survivors work a little longer before leaving, not wanting anyone to recognize him. He drove back toward the center of the city at a slow speed, mindful of the abandoned vehicles and the people working to put their city back to rights again.
