In Thunder Forged

  Wolfhound veered once more, stepping inside the reach of the Khadoran’s lance. Its right arm flew up and around, clasping the longer weapon between torso and the empty cannon that was the Hunter’s lower arm. For just a moment, the weight dragged the larger ’jack to a halt. Wolfhound began pounding at the thing’s head and chest with its axe, while Shepherd stepped in from behind, pouring bullets and slamming its shield into the giant’s back, right around the quadruple smokestacks.

  The crimson ’jack shuddered, staggered almost to one knee beneath an assault that might just have buckled even its own impossibly heavy plating—and then it rotated its own shield into a horizontal blade and drove it with pile driver strength into Wolfhound’s torso.

  Metal crumpled with a rending scream, sparks flew, and the smaller warjack stumbled, gears grinding in protest . . . And opened just enough space for the Khadoran machine to rear back and strike with its newly freed lance.

  Steel tore, now, rather than folding, and the Hunter collapsed, unable to support its own weight. Wolfhound’s eyes still glowed with internal flame, smoke still pumped from the metal chimney, but it could do little more than lie there and watch as the lance rose high, angled downward like the gods’ own lightning . . .

  It spun away at the last instant to catch Shepherd’s furious charge. The two ’jacks locked together, shield hooked behind shield. Bullets poured from Shepherd’s chain gun into the larger ’jack’s face, until the ammunition finally ran dry. Even then, it continued its attack, jabbing with the barrels again and again, using them as a dull spear. In turn, the Khadoran—unable to bring the lance into play at such close range—punched at Shepherd with the fist wrapped around the weapon’s haft. For a moment they staggered together, teetering like the mast of a sinking ship, but nobody could doubt how this would end. Already the stronger Khadoran machine was gaining control, steering Shepherd where it wanted to go, causing more damage with each punch than the Cygnaran could deliver with four or five.

  Wendell and two of his mechaniks dashed from the cover of the trees, carrying shells for Wolfhound’s cannon. Even if it couldn’t support itself, couldn’t rise, it might be able to aim from the ground—but the odds of them getting there before Shepherd was pulped into scrap looked poor at best.

  Benwynne ordered her troops to take any shot they had, but only a few of the long-gunners responded. For the trenchers, the two machines grappled and spun too swiftly for them to fire without possibly hitting Shepherd. Benwynne raised her own carbine, seeking an opening, dully aware that nothing she did would make any great difference.

  Something flew from the branches of a nearby tree.

  Flapping in the winter haze, it looked at first to be some sort of bat, or perhaps a kite broken loose from its string. Only when portions of it began to flicker blue did Benwynne realize she was staring at Atherton, coat spread, making an apparently suicidal leap from above.

  Just as he began to slow, to arc back toward earth, he fired both pistols straight down. The detonation was immense, leaving a pair of craters in the dirt. Benwynne had known the gunmage could charge his bullets, granting them the kinetic energy of artillery shells. She had not known he could do what came next.

  Somehow, without shattering his arms or ripping the weapons from his hands, he’d allowed the recoil of those supercharged projectiles to push back against the pistols, rather than simply dissipating it as his magics normally did. As though he were a ball struck by a particularly angry child, his fall abruptly transformed into an upward arc, easily tripling the distance of his original leap.

  With an impossibly graceful flip that seemed almost as surprising to him as it was to Benwynne, Atherton rotated in mid-air and landed hard in an awkward crouch behind the wrestling warjacks.

  Or, more accurately and perhaps more importantly, directly behind the Khadoran warjack.

  Terrain even marginally less forgiving might well have broken his ankle; as it was, he clearly limped as he rose and staggered two steps. When he raised his pistols, however, his arms were steady and stable as a dwarven keep.

  Six shots, nigh inaudible compared to the struggles of the metal giants; six cerulean sparks, carving elegant—and sharp, utterly impossible—arcs through the winter haze; six bullets, hypercharged with all the arcane energies the gunmage could muster, plunged into the open barrels of the warjack’s grenade launchers.

  Even without any ordnance in the spent weapons, the effects were impressive. The machine staggered, rocked by a sequence of internal detonations, its vaunted armor now quite useless. It swiftly grew impossible to tell whether the thick and choking plumes came from the smokestacks, the grenade launchers, or various other gaps and crevices. Still it fought, but slower, weaker, less stable than before. Shepherd tore free of its grip and pounded away with its shield rather than risking further damage to the chain gun-turned-bludgeon.

  Benwynne raced around the mechanical duel, skidding to a halt beside the fallen Wolfhound. Wendell and his assistants had barely managed to leverage the ’jack over far enough to access the arm-cannon’s ammunition cylinder. One of the younger mechaniks was prying a shell out of the padded crate that they had dragged over when Atherton appeared, looming over his shoulder.

  “One minute . . .”

  Favoring his left foot and wincing with every step, he all but fell into Wendell, yanking a narrow chisel and a hammer from the older man’s tool belt. Then, muttering under his breath, he knelt beside the shell, scratching and tapping at the brass casing.

  “You want to speed this up?” Wendell snapped. “You hurt that thing bad, but I still don’t think Shepherd can—”

  “Shut up.” Then, through gritted teeth and over the cling-clang of tools, “Sir.”

  Seconds stretched into infinity. The sounds of the battle grew somehow more urgent without drawing any nearer.

  “There.” Atherton fell back on his haunches, shoulders slumped. His breath came in ragged gasps. The shell was now shallowly etched with quick, haphazard glyphs, and shone with the same azure glow, if perhaps a bit dimmer, as the gunmage’s own runebullets. “I can’t do that again any time soon. Hell, I’m not even sure it worked this time. So make it count.”

  Through sheer muscle and determination, Benwynne, Wendell, and the mechaniks helped Wolfhound prop itself up on its left arm. Servos whined, hissed, threatened to give; the upper half of the ’jack trembled, even as the lower failed to so much as twitch. Yet the tenacious machine succeeded, if only through a beat or two of Benwynne’s fluttering heart, in holding the cannon steady.

  Magic and metal blasted through the damaged Khadoran warjack, peeling armor like the rind of ripened fruit. It spasmed one final time, spitting sparks and jets of oils, before it finally, finally toppled. The entire forest, or so it felt to those nearby, rocked with the impact.

  And then . . . silence. Not utter or absolute; flames crackled, gun barrels creaked as they cooled, soldiers groaned in pain, wind shook hands with leaves and branches. As compared to a moment earlier, however, it was no less than the hush of the grave.

  A quick examination of the Khadoran corpses offered no sign as to which of them had served as marshal for the lumbering mechanical beast. Or perhaps its controller had been among the escapees.

  Either way, Benwynne supposed, it didn’t matter much.

  Moving almost as mechanically as the ’jacks themselves, the sergeant turned to the nearest mechanik. “Casualty reports,” she ordered in a monotone. “Soon as possible.”

  A quick salute, and he was off, gathering what remained of the fifth squad.

  “Wolfhound?” Benwynne asked.

  “Can’t walk.” Wendell had gone beyond chewing at his lip; he seemed to be working, now, on his beard. “Can’t stand. Half the pistons and actuators in his lower torso are either crushed or split.”

  After all the death and loss of the past hour, the notion of abandoning Wolfhound—machine or no—was more than Benwynne could bear. “Maybe the wagon . . . ?”

&nb
sp; The other mechanik shook her head. “We wouldn’t be able to carry enough coal to keep Shepherd going. I don’t think we have any—”

  “Wait a minute!” The sergeant and the others actually recoiled, startled by Wendell’s sudden outburst. With a spurt of energy that exhausted Benwynne just to look at, he sprang to his feet and ran to the fallen Khadoran warjack.

  “Don’t just stand there!” he called back. “Help me put it out!”

  Not quite understanding, a handful of soldiers gathered around, dumping snow on the glowing embers and flickering flames that showed through the rents in the crimson armor. Even Shepherd assisted, using its shield as a great scoop.

  By the time they were done, she’d puzzled out what her chief mechanik was thinking. “Can you do it?”

  Wendell had scrambled atop the behemoth, peering intently into one of the wounds. “Think so. Not a great fit, not all compatible, and I don’t have the tools, the facilities, or the time to make a halfway decent job of it. But I think I can get him walking, long as that’s about all he’s got to do.”

  Benwynne couldn’t help it; she felt the tiniest smile break through her lingering resentment of his recent actions, his borderline betrayal. “Get on it then, Master Sergeant.”

  She turned away before he could acknowledge either her order or the expression she’d been too slow to hide. I do not have the energy to examine this right now . . .

  And found she’d stepped directly into the path of the mechanik she’d sent to take stock of the squad.

  The news was even grimmer than she’d feared. Not counting her surviving seconds—she clenched a fist until her fingers ached, until the seams of the glove cut into her skin, until the wave of grief for Roland had receded—squad five now constituted a grand total of seven trenchers, three mechaniks, three long-gunners, and two commandos. Or at least, two of them still lived when Atherton had last seen them, but they hadn’t yet returned from the forest foray.

  “Squad”? They almost qualified as a single large unit at this point.

  Wendell and his people ferried pieces back and forth, cannibalizing the fallen enemy to make what repairs they could to Wolfhound. Tools banged, metal clattered, men and women cursed. Shepherd watched over them, its chain gun reloaded, the barrels sawed down a few inches to eliminate the dents, burs, and bends caused by the weapon’s brief career as a bludgeon.

  Benwynne watched none of it, staring instead at a veritable carpet of cloth and armor, flesh and blood. The bodies of everyone she’d lost in the past day, gathered by her remaining soldiers as a final and woefully insufficient mark of respect. Or at least the bodies of all those who’d left a body; half a dozen were absent, Corporal Roland Cadmoore among them. She couldn’t even order them carried along anymore, delivered home for proper burial, not with so many dead and so many essential supplies still to be transported.

  “Corporal Gaust?”

  The gunmage appeared at her call, pistols drawn. “You should step back, Sergeant.”

  She almost asked Why should I bother? but swiftly quashed the thought. No time under these circumstances, and no room in any useful commander, for that sort of self-pity. She took several paces away, waved for everyone else to do the same.

  Atherton fired, and again, until all eight barrels were empty. Each runebullet ripped trees apart at the base or tore them out by the roots, forming a makeshift cairn atop the gathered bodies. No proper burial or cremation, perhaps—the squad lacked the time for the former, expendable fuels that would burn anywhere near hot enough for the latter—but the most respectful gesture they could manage.

  Several of the survivors uttered short prayers to Morrow for the souls of the deceased. Benwynne stood by impassively, aware her presence was essential yet unable to force herself to speak. It would have felt somehow dishonest.

  So she waited, and listened to their prayers, and shivered with a soul-deep chill she feared might never thaw.

  “. . . a pyre for them?” It was Habbershant, hissing a question to Gaust at the rear of the assembly. “I’ve seen gunmages create all sorts of conflagrations, hotter than any wood or oil fire.”

  “Some of the others can. I don’t work with fire.”

  “You don’t . . .”

  “I focused my studies elsewhere, Master Sergeant. Think about it; everything I do is a trick of inertia and momentum. It’s all variations of that core principle. I don’t—”

  “Gentlemen!” Benwynne didn’t need to turn; she heard the both of them jump. She knew they meant no disrespect, that this was how they dealt with their emotions. Still . . . “This is not the time!”

  “Yes, Sergeant!”

  “Sorry, Ben.”

  Her mood lightened finally lightened a bit, later on, as Wolfhound slowly clambered to its feet. The cacophony of rending and grinding made it sound like the warjack was chewing an orchestra, and it staggered worse than a drunken sailor on every third or fifth step, but it was up and moving.

  “Can he keep up?” Benwynne asked Wendell, who was wiping grease, freezing sweat, and a smear or two of blood from his hands with a rag of indeterminate color.

  “I wouldn’t risk rushing him,” the mechanik replied. “But given that we’ve got to keep to a sedate pace if Shepherd’s going to manage the wagon, I think he’ll do fine. It’s not a long-term fix, but it should get us where we’re going—long as he doesn’t have to do any more fighting.”

  “You’re still a miracle-worker, Master Sergeant.”

  “I . . . Thank you, Ser—”

  But again she was turning away, shouting orders, getting her men and women ready to march once more. Shepherd tromped toward one of the wagons, now piled not only with coal but with weapons, ammunition, and provisions belonging to soldiers who no longer had need of them. The other wagon was nothing more than a mess of tinder and smoldering coals, obliterated by one of the Khadoran grenades.

  The squad had just completed their preparations, and Benwynne was dithering over what to do about the two tardy commandos, when the problem resolved itself.

  “Sergeant!” Ledeson and his partner, a quiet, muscle-bound bruiser by the name of Reighdly, materialized from the trees. “Sergeant, we’re in trouble.”

  Of course we are.

  “I’m listening, Private.”

  “Winter Guard, Sergeant. We’re late getting back because, well, we saw the Reds retreating through the woods, and we figured someone ought to keep an eye on them.”

  “You should have checked in first. Still, not a bad notion. And?”

  “They’ve regrouped, and they’re coming back this way.” Only then did the short fellow note the savaged metal carcass sprawled on the earth beyond his teammates.

  “Private? You’re going to fill up with snow if you don’t close your mouth.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant! Is that what it looks like?”

  “Used to be.”

  “Well, I guess the Reds figured out that their ’jack didn’t squish you all like it was supposed to. They look like they mean business.”

  “Move it out!” she called over her shoulder. “Now!”

  “There can’t be many of them left,” Atherton said. How did the man keep sneaking up on her like that?! “Not after Shepherd and Rol—” Everyone pretended not to notice the hitch in his voice, or the pause as he wrestled it under control. “Roland’s boys got through with them.”

  “Not that many, sir,” Ledeson agreed. “But—”

  “But a lot more than there are left of us,” Benwynne finished for him.

  The commando nodded, not only his expression but somehow his entire posture grim.

  “So we run.”

  It turned out that “running” was unduly optimistic. Exhausted soldiers, one damaged warjack, the other burdened by a load the squad could not afford to leave behind . . . Their pace could scarcely be dignified with words like “crawl” or “creep,” let alone “run.”

  The forest blurred and faded in the mist, the snow, the fading light of even
ing—but not so utterly that the rear guard failed to spot the shapes moving within those leaf-cast shadows and out into the lowlands beyond.

  “What now?” Private First Class Markham asked, his voice shaking. “If they’re already at the tree line, there’s no way we can outrun—!”

  “We need to delay them,” Atherton said softly.

  Benwynne followed his gaze, then stiffened. “Absolutely not!”

  “Sergeant, we don’t have a choice.”

  “We almost lost Wolfhound back there, I am not going to sacrifice—”

  “Ben . . .” Wendell put a hand on her shoulder; she just as swiftly shrugged it off, barely restraining herself from backhanding him. For all that, the glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes stopped her cold before she could speak.

  “He’s right, Ben, and you know it. Unless you’d rather add the rest of us to the list, instead?”

  “Shit!”

  Every face in the squad swiveled her way, twisted in shock and growing fear.

  Get a grip on yourself, Bracewell! She couldn’t fall apart, not now. Her people needed her.

  “Shepherd?” It’s only a machine. It’s only a machine . . . “Shepherd . . .”

  It cocked its head, meeting her gaze through slits of flickering coal-fire—and Morrow damn her if she wasn’t sure, absolutely sure, that the ’jack understood what was being asked of it.

  Shepherd made a parade-perfect pivot—it couldn’t really have straightened its shoulders in prideful determination; that had to be her imagination, didn’t it?—and began the long march back toward the Winter Guard, gun and shield raised high.

  “We need to keep moving,” Benwynne rasped. She saw Wolfhound stagger over to assume the burden of the wagon; all the while it watched Shepherd fade slowly into the haze. “Or this is all meaningless.”

  Slowly, painfully, exhaustedly, they moved—and every last one of them pretended not to hear, or to flinch, at the sounds of combat erupting far behind.