Chapter 35
The Gravit Mountains were no longer Disciple territory but Geos', hard-fought ground taken through countless battles and near-endless sacrifice. Gone were the Turrets that kept the Shields at bay. The traps of old were far behind, with more created and abandoned during the march north. The two Fronts now extended from coast to coast, crossing the lower reaches of the Gravit Mountains where the grass thickened until it met the Moenian Forest.
But war is a slow beast, particularly when one side has only a slender advantage, and the Second Invasion reminded the people of Geos how quickly their work could be undone. Towers, great wooden structures that could be quickly disassembled when the ground ahead was no longer contested, were erected across the continent. They acted as bastions and lookouts, ensuring no Disciple could approach without being seen, and that scouts and Shields could be monitored safely.
Contegon Mark Protect, a former Academy teacher who would have been Rested but for the war, raced back to her tower and roared, “Light it up!”
The Shield manning the tower ignited the tower's firework. Bright tubes shot into the air and burst in a brilliant sapphire display, telling other towers they needed assistance.
Contegon Protect turned back to the thick forest wall. Her cadre were dead after the Disciples had ambushed them and cut them down in the crossfire. Of the eleven she'd had with her, only one escaped, and Frame was slowly crawling up the incline, screaming for help, her legs useless after a bullet to the spine. The Contegon's honour screamed at her to help, but the Disciples wanted her at risk like that. The only way to beat their callousness was with her own.
“Forgive me, Sol, and accept Frame into you if she does not survive,” she whispered.
A hail of bullets punctuated her prayer. She threw herself behind some sandbags, a genius idea from the Artificers. Protect was grateful for their ingenuity as she huddled down, holding her arms and legs in to her chest. The Shield above her, she knew, did the same. Because, in theory, they only had to wait for back-up after firing the firework.
Protect listened for thudding footsteps or whirring joints as she cowered. Usually, birds chirped from Moenian Forest in the day, but the gunfire had frightened them away. That should help her pick out the Disciples, but the silence pressed in on her, gripped her by the shoulders, shook her. Her breath felt like shouting, and her heart battered itself senseless against her ribs.
She shouldn't be out here. Younger Contegons were desperate to take her place: Lun, she'd trained many of them, and had enjoyed doing so as a stay-at-home. But comfort and simplicity weren’t in Sol’s plans for her, not with Geos' need for experienced fighters.
Protect acquiesced as best she could whilst huddling. “Sol, please keep us safe to achieve your plan.”
If someone was listening, it wasn't Sol. When she lowered her hands, the familiar stamp and whirr of Disciple movement pierced the calm. The horrors had broken cover, knowing this tower was ripe for assault. They would not create a permanent hole in the Front – the towers zig-zagged across the land, two deep, to ensure that would not happen – but it would drain Geos' resources, deprive her of more soldiers.
Attrition, that was the word senior Shields used: this was a war of attrition now. And Geos' faith in Sol would have to endure if they were to win.
Protect jumped as the Disciples peppered the sandbag walls. Loosed sand flowed down onto Protect from the tower. The Contegon covered her head, screwed her eyes shut, and tried to remain calm.
Then the Disciples played their war music, a strange new tactic of blaring guttural and atonal noises with a constant beat, like barely-controlled chaos. It was supposed to unnerve, to be associated with failure, and it succeeded: Protect couldn't help but think of the death she had witnessed whilst that song played, the Shields ripped apart by vicious claws and raking bullets.
“Contegon Protect?” the Shield on the tower called down over this din.
“Call me Mark.”
“Mark! My name is Hex. I want to seek absolution.”
“Now?”
Another hail of bullets came at them. With incredible precision, the Disciples all shot at the same points of their cover, tearing through the sandbags.
“Can you think of a better time?” the Shield asked over the soft hiss of falling sand.
Protect supposed she couldn't blame him. “What sins have you committed?”
“Most of them.”
“Care to be specific?”
“I... I stole from other Shields. When they were dead. I sell their jewellery to our Merchants.”
The Contegon sneered. Looting was punishable by three years imprisonment... suspended, of course, until after the Disciples were destroyed. Most people caught looting would be dead long before then, so there was no downside to it. Aside from the ire of Sol, which only entered a mind like Hex’s when they were about to meet him.
“Also,” he continued, “I was a coward and left fellow Shields to die during the Turret Scourge: I was at the rear of a march when some Disciples attacked. I ran, never looking back, and then lied about it to avoid punishment. I'm sorry. I'm sor–”
A round of bullets cut him off. Contegon Protect waited for him to continue, but it seemed a lucky shot had ended his confessions.
“Shield Hex, you're forgiven,” she whispered, not seeing a point in withholding absolution.
The Disciples’ whirring approached. Protect reached into her robes and pulled out her Baptism. With Sol's will, she would take one of the bastards down. That would be enough, her duty done. Grinding and clicking, ringing out that disgusting music, the Disciples advanced. They hammered her cover with bullets, taking more and more of it away.
Then there was a streak in the sky, the green glow of an Acolyte. Protect didn't allow herself to be distracted, stayed ready in case the Disciples appeared before this possible saviour. But reinforcements might be on their way. Maybe Sol was looking out for her...
One Disciple burst forward and earned the Baptism for its eagerness: aiming for the head was natural, but it was better to aim for the stomach where the Disciple’s dark magic took root. Protect launched the Baptism with perfect accuracy and was rewarded with the righteous sizzling of its death, but a bullet caught her shoulder before she dropped back into cover. She span and landed heavily on the wound, the pain warning that her collar bone was broken.
Bleeding out, engulfed by pain, she looked up at the blurring sky. It was a glorious day, bright and clear. How cruel, she thought, to die on the cusp of being rescued.
A green burst of energy ruined her view, small at first, but getting bigger. Protect raised an arm to it, feeling light-headed and cold, and something within the mass of light grabbed her hand.
“I've got you, Contegon,” the Acolyte said. There was pain in his voice, a brutal knowing.
The green light, Sol's will and anger, cleared to let Protect see her saviour. She laughed when she saw a tall young man with narrow shoulders and a shorn head: Sol was definitely looking over her to have her rescued by the next Shield-General of the western Front.
Another crowd of bullets came at them, but they bouncing harmlessly away from the power surrounding Snow. He looked away from Protect and grinned. What had been terrifying, threatening, to a Contegon was an amusing challenge to him. Protect shuddered. Sol's wrath was only something to be imagined before: now, most Contegons and Shields had witnessed it first-hand.
The Shield-General-in-training ran forward, his famous medallion spinning. Protect propped herself up to watch him smash the first Disciple to crest the hill. A jet of green fire raked down the monster's form, melting its frame and workings, and it fell, never to rise again.
Now out of Protect's view, she could only hear the Acolyte’s victory, booming impacts and screaming metal. The world span as shock took her, but she counted the impacts to ensured that no Disciples had managed to escape Sol's wrath.
Of course, none did.
The young Acolyte returned after a w
hile with a Field Doctor's kit, presumably taken from the tower. Without speaking, he knelt to cut her Contegon robes and gently prod the bullet wound, testing how bad it was. His testing ignited agony in her.
“I'm sorry, but I'm not skilled enough to treat you,” he said, covering her back up. “The bullet is barely stemming your blood. If I tried to remove it, I'd just make things worse.”
“Then I'm... I'm going to die?”
He shook his head, smiling, then put pressure on her shoulder. Protect screamed, thinking he meant to send her to the one he worked for. But no, as the pain subsided, she realised he was trying to stop the bleeding.
“You won't die, Contegon. I just meant we'll have to wait for the Field Doctors to catch up, you and I. We can share the watch, ensure no more of that filth get past us.”
Protect smiled. “Tell me, sire–”
“You don't need to call me that, not now.”
“Snow, then.”
“That's better.”
“Tell me, why come out here yourself?”
He gave her a fleeting smile, and said, “Because it might be the last time I can.”