Into the Storm (18 page)

Rains reached down, took hold of the iron mask, and ripped it from the fallen Menite’s face. It was a woman, and she was bleeding from her ears, having struck the back of her head against the cobblestones hard enough to crack her skull. The apostate stood there, looking down at the dying Menite, not saying a word. Cleasby and Acosta approached. Rains seemed transfixed, but Cleasby saw nothing special about the woman. “Who is this?”

“A vassal of Menoth . . .” Rains muttered, but he didn’t elaborate. “Menoth took her as a slave in life, and now he can have her in death.” He hurled the iron mask to crash against a nearby wall, then turned and walked away.

“What was that about?” Acosta asked. Cleasby had no answer. “It appears the others are mopping up the resistance. The Menites do not strike me as being fond of surrender.” He pointed. “But Sergeant Wilkins has them on the run.”

All that remained of the Menites in the street was a small group fighting a delaying action, buying time for the others to retreat, and Wilkins’ squad was assaulting them. Wilkins had forgone the standard Stormblade-issue buckler in favor of his prized Precursor shield, which he was using to push against the Flameguard’s shields, striking over the top with his glaive. As they neared, Cleasby could hear that Wilkins was loudly praising Morrow and cursing Menoth, which seemed to infuriate the few surviving Temple Flameguard to no end.

By the time they got there the last of the Menites were completely surrounded, though they continued to fight ferociously. Their leader shouted a command, and then Wilkins was engaged in single combat with the officer, while the other surviving Menites tried to reform their shield wall for one last push.

“This is your only chance,” Madigan offered. “Surrender or we will cut you down.”

The officer struggling against Wilkins shouted his defiant response. “We will fight to the last for the Creator’s glory!” His few battered troops cheered. Cleasby and at least twenty other Stormblades approached, but the handful of fanatics seemed excited for their end.

But Madigan was done losing men for the day. “Storm throwers! Light them up!” There were a series of booms and flashes, and then all but the Menite officer were dead. The Stormguard approached and poked at the smoking corpses with their halberds to be sure.

The Menite officer took a few halting steps away from Wilkins. His helmet was missing, revealing a remarkably young, handsome face above the tattered, bloody rags of his uniform. His shield was broken, his spear shorn and useless. He’d been severely burned by their electrical charges and had terrible wounds on all of his limbs, yet somehow he was still standing. The officer looked at Wilkins and snarled when he spied the Morrowan symbol upon his shield. “Your god is weak. Menoth stands with us and cannot be defeated. You will be expelled by the faithful. Every home, every road, every corner: we will be there, waiting to bleed you. You do not know what you’ve done.”

The flutter of a curtain and a quick glimpse of someone at a second-story window across the street caught Cleasby’s eye, and he realized there were still citizens of Sul here. They had not all evacuated. Scanning the buildings, he could see frightened faces risking glimpses out of windows or peeking out from various hiding places. It made him very uncomfortable.

“The faithful will fight. We will never stop fighting, for Menoth compels us, and in death he embraces us. Hierarch Voyle speaks with Menoth’s words and strikes with his fury.” The officer stumbled but braced himself with what remained of his spear. “Repent! Repent and flee before the righteous! It is your only hope.”

Wilkins looked to Madigan. The lieutenant held up one hand, indicating that the sergeant should stay his blade, and then he opened his visor. “I am Lieutenant Madigan of the Cygnaran Army. Tell me who those Knights Exemplar were protecting in that wagon.”

The Menite smiled with red-stained teeth. “One who will bring the fires of purity to burn your evil from this world!”

“Sergeant Wilkins. Do this man a favor and send him to the Creator.”

“Yes, sir.” Wilkins approached cautiously. The wounded young officer pushed his shield into the Cygnaran’s with surprising force. The Menofix on one shield crashed against the Radiance of Morrow on the other. Wilkins struck, quick and clean, and the two devout men wound up eye-to-eye. “Go to your eternal labors, you poor deluded bastard.”

“Nicia, my love
 . . .
”
he whispered. The Menite took a few halting steps back, sank to his knees, lowered his head, and died as if kneeling in prayer.

Wilkins stared at the dead officer for a moment. “If this is the measure of the men we face here, may Morrow preserve us.”

Madigan sighed. “So much for the idea that this invasion would be simple.”

Sixth Platoon’s first contact with the enemy had left them with three dead and six wounded, with two of those severely enough that they needed to be evacuated back to Caspia. Cleasby had lost one man in his squad. When he closed his eyes he could still see Wayne Crispin being smashed beneath the warjack’s flail so hard it had left a crater in the road. They’d almost had to pour Crispin out of his armor. Up until a few days ago he’d been just another name on a clipboard, assigned to the Sixth because he couldn’t control his urge for petty thievery. Then he was Cleasby’s responsibility, and suddenly he was dead. It was a lot to take in, but all Cleasby could feel was numb.

What was more, he knew the Sixth had been held back to a minor position. There had been no reason to run up against so many enemy troops there. This fight had been over an unimportant, strategically insignificant, out-of-the-way market, and the Menites had still fought for every inch. Madigan had sent a runner to Schafer with a report, and other runners had passed through. The word was the same each time. Resistance was far heavier than expected. Serious casualties were being taken all across all of Sul.

They’d been told to hold this block, so they’d set up a defensive position inside the marketplace while they waited for new orders. Cleasby found that the inside of Sul looked a lot like the inside of Caspia—which made sense, as they’d once been the same city—though the huge maze of walls here were painted white, and the newer buildings weren’t quite as chaotically designed. Sul struck him as a bit more orderly.

Thornbury had gone right to work scrounging whatever supplies he could from the stalls. Cleasby wasn’t sure if that was technically considered looting, but he noted it along with the other infractions just in case.

MacKay and his Stormclad warjack were back. The old mechanik was trying to accomplish a quick field repair, hammering out dents and replacing a few leaking hoses. His armor looked a bit different than the rest of the unit’s; Madigan had said he needed to fit into a suit, but he’d never specified MacKay couldn’t modify the armor in order to contain his extra girth. The mechanik also wore a leather apron full of tools and a backpack full of miscellaneous parts, so he appeared to be the bulkiest man present.

The Stormclad’s fresh coat of paint and new banner had lasted all of one day into the invasion, and already the warjack looked beat to hell again. Despite rolling around in a burning house, it had utterly demolished the enemy warjack. Cleasby had found out later that the Protectorate machine had been a Templar, a design with a reputation as an infantry-shredding monstrosity. They’d been lucky to have their Stormclad to counter it.

The clash had spawned an odd rumor about their warjack. A few of the men insisted that when the Stormclad had come out of the burning building it had been carrying the Templar’s severed head, which it had then presented to MacKay. It sounded far-fetched, but the Templar’s scorched metal head
was
sitting there on MacKay’s improvised work bench . . .

“Hey! You, big man!” MacKay shouted at Corporal Pangborn. “Come over here and help me for a minute. I need some muscle.”

Pangborn approached. It was striking how somebody so physically powerful made a habit of moving so cautiously. “What do you need?”

“I need some help with this ’jack. I’ve seen you fixing up the Barn, so I know you’re not afraid of hard work.”

“Well, I’m not really good at much. I tend to break things when I don’t mean to.”

“Son, this is a
war
jack, not a flower-arranging ’jack. I need some brute force. Take this here hammer, take that there armor plate, and beat those sodding dents out. Go!”

“Are you sure?” Pangborn eyed the Stormclad. Still active, its boilers barely running, it turned its head slightly to study the big man threatening it with a hammer. “It won’t get mad?”

“Ah, its fine.” MacKay shook a finger sternly at the Stormclad and pointed to Pangborn. “No smash! Be good!”

Pangborn took up the hammer and gently tapped at the dent. The Stormclad looked at him quizzically but didn’t react.

“Ach, boy! No! Hit it like you mean it. If I needed some effeminate, thin-wristed debutante, I’d have called for Thorny.”

“I’m right over here!” Thornbury exclaimed from the other side of a tent. “I can hear you.”

“Whatever . . . Shut up and find me some more coal,” MacKay said impatiently. “Sometimes you need an aristocrat, but most times you need a farmer to get stuff done. A proper mechanik ain’t comfortable unless he’s got dirt under his nails. Didn’t you say you had an old laborjack on your farmstead you kept running?”

Pangborn nodded. “Sure, but it wasn’t like this. That thing was old and dumb. This fella is . . . well, kinda scary.”

“Same general principles. Only this one’s built for killing instead of plowing. Tell you what. You seem mechanikally inclined. I’ll teach you the fundamentals of how to command a warjack, then if he gets uppity, you’ll know how to control him. Now, hit it like he owes you money!”

Pangborn did. The Stormclad didn’t seem to mind. So then Pangborn went to work and the market filled with the sound of hammering metal. MacKay nodded approvingly.

Enoch Rains entered their temporary encampment. “Cleasby, you’re needed.”

“Is the perimeter secure? Are the Protectorate forces coming back already?”

“I don’t know. Madigan wants to show us something on the other side of the square. Come on.” He led them away from the others and deeper into the market. Rains was still limping from being run over by the horse. Cleasby knew the feeling. He didn’t dare take his armor off to see, but the way his arms and legs felt, he was covered in bruises, and his head ached from when the Templar’s shield had crashed into him. When he had removed his helmet he’d been surprised to see it had a huge dent in it and all the paint on one side had been scraped off by skidding across the cobblestones on his face.

Things were still awkward between the two of them, as it was for most of the men with Rains, though Cleasby had seen no indication the former Menite was anything other than a loyal citizen of Cygnar. “It’s been quite the day already,” Cleasby said, trying to make conversation as they crossed the square.

“For you?” Rains looked around. “My mother used to shop in this market. I remember walking down that very street with her. I played here. All of us children would take up our imaginary swords and fight each other, declaring ourselves mighty warriors for Menoth. The unlucky ones had to play the villains—Cygnar, of course.” He laughed bitterly. “Oh, how we would beat on them.”

“I’m sure you never dreamed you would invade your own city.”

“It is . . .
odd.
But we’re not invaders, we’re liberators. By the way, thank you for helping with that Exemplar.”

“It was my duty. Though I think Acosta’s brutal demonstration was simply to prove some odd point.” He probably should have dropped it there, but scholars are by nature curious people. “Why did you go after a squad of Exemplar on horseback by yourself, anyway?”

“I wasn’t going after them. I—” Rains grimaced. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. It was stupid.”

“You said in your own briefings on the Protectorate forces that the Exemplars are deadly and not to be underestimated.” Cleasby stopped walking. “Wait . . . It was the woman in the mask. You called her a vassal, a vassal of Menoth. You were after her, weren’t you? Why?”

“Vassals are vital to the war effort, so we should target them whenever possible.” Rains kept walking in an obvious attempt to avoid the conversation. “They are arcanists.”

“What matter of magic do they have? What makes them so important?”