Chapter 313 - The Akanan Advance

Meztaca grit his teeth, feeling the strain of the connection between himself and the zephyr falcon he’d just released. His eyes were squeezed shut so he could see better. Another flash of vision passed his eyes.

Shiny big, the falcon was thinking, and yeah, Meztaca had to agree: it was a shiny big.

He opened his eyes and wiped his brow. “Right, the mole’s chewed the roots and the gardener is coming. Signal the others!”

“Send the signal!” his apprentice echoed, calling up at the crow’s nest.

There was a tube strapped to the mast with a simple set of glyphs on it. The man up there mashed the glyph and a lone red flare careened up into the sky, blazing bright. The dozen Tlaxhuacan ships scattered about this part of the ocean were all close enough they should be able to see it. They’d been lucky the skies had stayed clear.

The first scribe—Meztaca still couldn’t pronounce his name, something about Friian syllables just did him in—whispered, “Do we have stone moles aboard the ship?”

“What? No, it’s a saying. You know, like ‘pollen’s come down and everyone’s sneezing.’ Or ‘leaves are full of holes.’”

Meztaca’s apprentice rolled his eyes—the nerve of the boy! “The Akanan fleet has finally figured us out.”

“Ohhh. Well, that does explain the retreat signal.”

Up in the crow’s nest, the lookout was peering through a lens spell. As the crew bustled about, he called down, “Signal confirmed! Response flares are flying!”

Meztaca nodded. It was too far to sail back to Tlaxhuaco, so they’d be sailing northeast and hoping to hit the Baracuel coast before Akanan cutters hit them. Their own ship’s sails remained bundled on the masts, though.

“Aren’t we leaving too?” the first scribe said.

The crew were all at their posts, ready to start rigging the sails, but they hadn’t yet.

“Soon. One more message,” Meztaca said, tapping a scroll in a case by his belt. “Needs to go on an eastbound bird. This one’s special.”

***

Elias clutched his rifle close to his chest and wondered, not for the first time, what in the five hells he was doing on a battlefield. When he’d learned of a new Prophet—one who was properly Akanan!—and then Baracuel had assassinated Prime Minister Kinsman, he’d felt the same patriotism as his fellow countrymen. The papers had been full of the terrible things happening in Baracuel and Persama, and it seemed like only fools and subversives weren’t signing up.

When they’d come from the hastily erected training camps, Elias had left with both an accolade for marksmanship and one for being the fastest in his group to swap out a cracked conduit crystal in his glyph rifle. Marching onto the transport ships with the cheering crowds had made his soul soar.

When he’d been on the decks as they crossed the Rift Sea, marveling at the might of the Akanan fleet around them, he’d felt invincible. When those airship dreadnoughts had lifted into the sky, he’d felt elation and pride like no other. Akana had built that!

Now, he was sorely wishing he’d gone to arcanist school, purely for a shape stone spell. The trench is never deep enough, he thought as another explosion went off some hundred meters away. Dry sand trickled on top of his head. He’d heard it said that the northernmost front was where the least fighting was. If that was true, he dreaded the idea of ever being deployed to the central front.

The one arcanist their squad did have was exhausted, and the company’s two shield engines had run out of foss a day ago. The rest of the squad was sitting in the same trench. Occasionally, a rifle would crack nearby. Elias hadn’t the slightest clue if it was one of them firing at the enemy or one of the enemy taking shots at them.

Philia, the arcanist, sheathed her remote voice wand and turned to the group. “Lieutenant says we need to advance,” she said. “Or the company to our south has an exposed flank. Diviners say resistance ahead of us should be light. We take that position, while the rest of our company takes the other three.”

Another rifle shot from somewhere.

“Well then someone needs to suppress that damn position,” Catherine said. She was the only one of the soldiers who’d actually had combat experience before this campaign.

“I told them that, and they said they have to ration the artillery shells. We’ll get one volley, and that’s the signal to advance.”

“Ration the…! Listen, I used to work at one of those factories. There’d be damn warehouses full of the things! And that was before the war,” one of the soldiers said. Elias didn’t remember his name because he’d just been sent over from a different company that had been split up after taking too many casualties.

Another explosion went off. Elias risked taking a peek over the lip of the trench. He couldn’t see a damn thing, but when Cyrus had started scouting their advance, he’d been picked off. His corpse was still lying about fifty meters east of their position.

“Well what about reinforcements?” someone asked.

“They’re needed in the central front. Listen, I’m just relaying what command told me. Squads four, seven, and nine are about to advance with us on that enemy position, so we’ll have supporting fire.”

“Balls. Where?” someone else asked.

“Taking cover like the rest of us, obviously,” Catherine said. “What’s the timetable?”

Philia shook her head. “No fixed timetable. Should happen in… about a half-hour.”

“No timetable? Who’s the bloody lieutenant in charge of this nonsense?”

“Probably some soldier who just got the epaulets a month ago,” grumbled another woman.

Elias looked up and down the trench. Logically, he knew there were a lot more Akanans than Persaman and Zhighuan heretics, but in their little cradle of sand, it sure didn’t feel like it.

“Can we get a squad shield?”

Philia boggled at the man. “Do you have any idea how many spells I’ve cast today? You’re lucky I’m not getting auric distortions! Keep your damn head down, that’s your shield.”

Catherine took a deep breath. “Okay, it seems nice and safe to stay here, but if we don’t put pressure on the enemy, that’s just going to give them time to locate this trench and shell it. And if we don’t support the rest of the company, we’ll find ourselves whittled down. Best thing is to keep low and hit the sand if there’s fire, then wait until the other teams are putting pressure on to resume the advance.”

“Divination indicates only a few defenders,” Philia repeated.

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There was grumbling in the trench.

Then they sat and waited. Elias had never suspected when he’d joined just how much sitting and waiting there would be in war. Occasionally someone would peek out and fire towards the enemy position—Elias still couldn’t tell exactly where they were—and then duck back down.

A sound like a thunderclap erupted nearby. Elias’s ears rang. For a moment, nobody moved.

Someone asked a question. Elias couldn’t make it out, though he could guess. He peeked over the lip of the trench again. There was a spot a few hundred meters away where a fire was raging. Smoke was drifting their way, but the winds were quickly spreading it into a thin haze.

Another person spoke, probably Catherine, shouting at them to do something, though again his ears were ringing.

Catherine was the first one over the lip of the trench, sending down a little cascade of sand as she scrambled over. Elias cursed himself as he followed, but the time to attack was after the artillery barrage when dust and smoke obscured their advance. He just wished they had a shield engine. Or a spellcart. Or a sorcerer whose mana wasn’t out. Hells, even a helmet would be nice, though on second thought, having a magnetic detonation spell cause your own helmet to pop your skull open like a pomegranate didn’t sound all that great.

Elias threw his rifle up and heaved himself over the lip, joining the rest of the squad as they moved forward. To the north, he could see more of the company moving up too, though to the south, a hill obscured the rest of the group. He kept his body low as he moved, looking for the enemy ahead.

The loud crack of gunfire sent him to the ground. The rest of the squad had also thrown themselves into the sand, but then to the north, he saw one of the soldiers there fall backward. Whoever was up ahead was looking at the other squad, not them. He scrambled back to his feet, only to feel something sting his arm. He gaped at the hole in his sleeve for a moment before realizing that rifles were also aiming at his position, and he hit the ground again.

His heart was pounding out of control, and his hands were shaking too much to hold his rifle properly. God above, he thought. Even an inch to the left and he’d have a bullet through the arm. With no priests nearby, it may well have been fatal.

Swallowing hard, Elias tried to bring himself under control. The rest of his squad had also hit the sand. Catherine was crawling forward, but no one else was moving. They needed to get the enemy to take cover. But he still couldn’t see them.

Tracing over the rock outcroppings around them, it looked like there was no one in front of them. Someone has to be there. They shot my damn arm!

There was rifle fire aimed at one of the rock outcroppings in front of them. Bullets were kicking up sand as they impacted the rock—but not in one spot.

An illusion! he realized. Taking careful aim, Elias propped up his rifle on the mound of sand in front of him, using the steady earth to compensate for his frayed nerves. He aimed right at the center of the illusion, then fired.

Elias squinted. Since he didn’t see an impact, he figured he must have hit the target, though it was hard to say. The illusion could be covering a larger firing slit, or the holes might be minuscule.

More gunfire. Elias squeezed his eyes shut and prayed as he reloaded. There was a scream to his left. The man whose name he didn’t remember had been hit. He was cursing and shouting in pain. Elias took aim and fired again. All the gunfire was keeping him deaf. Someone was shouting, but his vision had tunneled—there was just him and that damn spit of rock with the illusion over it.

He fired again and again then realized that he was running low on cartridges. The man who’d been hit had stopped screaming and was still. Someone else wasn’t moving, and Elias could see blood soaking into the sand. He finished reloading and blinked sweat from his eyes. The damn sun felt closer here.

Fire from the artillery hit was still burning, the smoke now everywhere, though not thick enough to give proper cover like it was supposed to. As it scraped up against the rock outcropping with the hidden bunker in it, though, Elias saw the smoke swirling and moving. It was drifting in to something, and the only thing it could be drifting into was a firing hole. He thought he could just make out where.

Elias fired.

This time, he heard swearing, but it was in what he was pretty sure was Adamic.

He reloaded and fired again, aiming for that same spot. “I’ve got a bead on one of the firing holes!” he shouted.

Catherine was the one who knew what to do. She got to her feet and ran towards the rocks, then pressed herself up against it. She reached forward, putting her hand directly on the edge of the illusion. It distorted and sparked as little splinters of light fragmented against her natural spell resistance, but didn’t break. She started using big wavy hand motions, signaling to the southern squad, who Elias still couldn’t see.

That’s when an object came out of the bunker.

Catherine heard the crunch of metal on rock as it landed. She had time to turn and see what it was, then the miniature spellbomb went off and she was dead before she hit the ground, torn apart by pure force magic.

Elias stared at her shredded corpse. He belatedly realized the bomb had broken the illusion engine protecting the bunker firing holes too, and now he had a clear shot at them. There were six slits, with several holes below them. He fired at one of the slits, though the bullet cracked against rock. This time, he saw the barrel of a rifle poke out of the hole. His heart hammered as it fired—but the scream came from someone else in his squad. He couldn’t tell who.

Move. I have to move, he told himself. Southern squad was coming around the hill to hit the rear of the bunker, but it was only dumb luck that had kept him from getting shot so far. Elias scrambled to his feet and ran for a small outcropping that could give him proper cover. His breathing was ragged by the time he made it.

North squad was firing now, and Elias could see the southern squad moving around the hill. Their arcanist apparently still had some mana and had a force shield out in front of the group. Elias took a few more shots at the slit as southern squad got around the rear of the bunker and found the entrance.

Elias lowered his rifle and tried to calm his breathing. There were more shots, then screaming in both Adamic and Eskanar. He squeezed his eyes shut as another spellbomb went off. There was more screaming, more shooting. Elias could only whisper prayers to the Ominian. Now that he was behind cover again, he didn’t want to move. Couldn’t move. He only had a few cartridges left, and Saints knew when they’d be getting a resupply.

“Clear!” someone shouted from the bunker. “It’s clear! We got ‘em! Get in here in case they realize they’ve lost the position and send a shell this way!”

Elias looked over to where the man whose name he’d forgotten was. He still wasn’t moving, but he ran to check. No pulse. One of the other men who’d been hit was still moving though. He ran over that way next, ripping out a bandage from his belt.

“God that stings,” the wounded man said as Elias wrapped his leg. The bullet had hit the back of his calf while he was lying prone. Elias helped him limp over to the bunker. By then, a good quarter of the company had gathered inside. Elias’s eyes couldn’t help but linger on the two corpses. A Persaman man and woman. The man was unrecognizable, having been torn to shreds by a spellbomb. The woman was wearing their traditional dress, but she’d strapped some sort of drakeskin leather armor over the chest. It looked ancient, like maybe her great grandmother had worn it back before rifles even existed. There was a discarded rifle off to the side that also looked like it belonged in a museum, a revolver, and—a goddamn sword?

“Can’t believe she got me,” one of the southern squad was saying, clutching an arm that was already bandaged. “Who the hells expects a sword? Came at me like a fucking starving wyvern. You think the false prophet is using mind control on them? Or maybe there’s some necromancy spell that gives ‘em this inhuman bloodlust.”

Two people? Elias thought. Surrender wasn’t exactly an option, not with the Grand Marshal’s “no prisoners” order, but why hadn’t they retreated? He couldn’t look away from the woman’s corpse. There was a pool of blood on the floor, and something about the holes in her chest drew his eye, even though the sight of it made bile rise in his stomach. Had he made one of those holes?

Philia had her remote voice wand out again. “What am I telling the lieutenant? We got all four positions, that’s the good news, but that artillery bombardment was shit. Seven dead, including Cyrus, twelve wounded, total? Is that all?”

“Tell ‘em fifteen wounded, then they’ll send a priest,” someone offered.

“Haven’t heard from the twelfth squad, ‘cause it was their arcanist that got hit, so it’s probably even true,” another said.

Philia frowned. “Priests are in high demand. I’ll see what I can do. Okay, go get the shovels from the last trench and move up our fortifications. At least a few of them got out from the other positions, and these hells-touched sand-fuckers are crazy enough to counter-attack. Move the shield engines up too, just in case we get some more foss besides what was left over here. And then…”

The arcanist kept talking, but Elias stopped listening. It was easy to think of their enemies as inhuman heretics at a distance, but this woman—she just looked so damn normal. Mind control. Gotta be, he decided, even though he was having trouble convincing himself that. But how else had this false prophet convinced all these people to die in order to protect their apocalyptic machine? All that blood for a hundred meters. How long will it take to get to Alatishad?

He sat down in the dust and thought, Ominian protect us. In the distance, there was the boom and rumble of more artillery, and the echo of more gunfire. At least when he slept, the nightmares wouldn’t be as bad as the one he was living.