“Fine. Then I’m coming with you.” Mak jogged at her side as they slowed to navigate between the tent platforms and line of trees.
“I’m the one with the ability to fend off bombs and gunfire.” She didn’t add “not you” or otherwise denigrate his magic. But plant magic wielded with dwarven crafting wasn’t going to help on a battlefield. Her magic would. She probably would have been sent out on the battlefield long before now if she hadn’t been such a skilled mechanic.
“Two mechanics will be better than one.” Mak’s tone lowered, softened from that belligerently overprotective edge. “You might need an extra pair of hands and a strong back.”
“All right.” She wouldn’t fight him on this. As much as she didn’t like knowing that both of them could be killed, the squeezing eased in her chest at having her brother beside her. She’d just have to protect both of them with her magic.
They crested the small rise overlooking headquarters. Gray smoke rose from one of the distant buildings—the Escarlish officer quarters, if she guessed right—but the other buildings appeared relatively undamaged. Beyond the bluff, clouds of gas filled the air, though it hung in the lower lying areas rather than spreading to the flatlands on the bluff.
With a blazing crackle of power, Fieran’s magic spread across the sky, the power of it prickling against Pip’s skin and through her magical senses. She risked only the briefest peek upward at his aeroplane, a gray-green dot wreathed in blue bolts, before she charged down the ridge, Mak at her side.
Down below, the area around headquarters teemed. Trucks roared up to the headquarters building, only to skid away a moment later. Men on horseback dodged through the fray, delivering messages to headquarters before speeding away again with new orders. A team of trolls with ice magic worked to suppress the fire in the Escarlish officer quarters.
Pip and Mak dove into the crowd by the doors of the headquarters building, shoving their way past the various runners, corporals, aides, adjutants, and other assorted personnel until they stood at the entrance to the central command room.
An MP barred their way with a hand, but Pip could still see past him into the space. A huge table held several maps and charts with a layout of Fort Defense and the surrounding area currently taking prominence. The distant sounds of ringing telephones came from somewhere farther along the sprawling buildings, and a woman in a green uniform shirt and skirt hurried inside and handed a piece of paper to one of the men standing around the table.
The man glanced at it, then moved something on the chart depicting the whole Escarlish-Mongavarian border, even as he said something about troop movements and attacks. The Wall must be down along the whole border, meaning this invasion wasn’t isolated to Fort Defense. Escarland was fending off attacks in multiple places.
No sooner had the woman left than two women and an older man hurried in, all of them carrying slips of paper. One said something about the dwarven delivery having arrived.
General Julien Ardon—Fieran’s uncle—was only one of the huddle of green-, blue-, and gray-uniformed men packed around the table. He was running a hand over his beard—likely absently—as he took in the sprawl of the ongoing battles.
“Excuse me.” A young man shoved past them to get into the room. Only once he was past did Pip recognize him as Fieran’s cousin Myles, begrimed and smelling of smoke. Even his red sash had burn marks scorched into it. He marched up to General Ardon. “The fire has been contained.”
The message brought the general’s head up, and he nodded to Myles before his gaze swept past him to land on Pip and Mak, still hovering just outside of the doorway.
After speaking in a low tone to the general next to him, General Ardon strode in their direction. “Which one of you is the mechanic Fieran was sending?”
She would have wondered how the general guessed, but both of them wore green, grease-stained coveralls, and she was clutching a giant wrench.
“We both are,” Mak replied before Pip could explain the situation.
General Ardon nodded, as if he wasn’t going to question being promised one mechanic but being sent two. “I’ve sent instructions to the dwarven commander. A squad should be assembling as we speak.”
Dwarves. Something both uncoiled and yet touched off inside her at the same time. If she had to go into battle, she should march with her dwarven countrymen and women.
General Ardon didn’t wait for her or Mak to respond. He gestured to Myles. “Lt. Kinsley, please escort the mechanics there. Then see what you can do to hurry along the unloading of the shipment of dwarven vehicles.”
“Yes, sir.” Myles spun. Once he was in the corridor, out of sight of all the generals, he grinned at Pip, then at Mak. “Daring of Fieran to send his girlfriend. All right, come along. I have a truck.”
Pip let Mak and Myles go first so that the two of them could plow an opening through the milling tangle of bodies mobbing the building.
As soon as they were free, Myles jogged to one of the small open-topped vehicles parked nearby, still idling.
He hopped into the driver’s seat, and Pip claimed the back seat so that Mak could have the passenger seat with more leg room.
Pip gripped the side and braced herself as Myles worked the gear shift and sent the vehicle lurching down the road, his speed curtailed by all the other vehicles, horses, and running men clogging the zigzagging road from the bluff down to Little Aldon.
The smoke from more burning fires filled the air with an acrid taste that lodged in the back of Pip’s throat. At least the chemical gas attacks didn’t seem to have been directed here, though she had her gas mask clipped to her belt.
Dwarves and more Escarlish soldiers and personnel milled about as they fought the fires or dug into the rubble.
Pip swallowed, looking away from the sight. It was all too familiar from the bombing of Bridgetown or cleaning up Dar Goranth after the battle there.
On the flat flood plain between the bluff and the Hydalla River on the far side of Little Aldon, several large army trucks assembled, the back benches already packed with dwarven warriors, clad in armor and bristling with weapons. More dwarves waited in line to clamber onto the final truck.
Myles halted their truck a few yards away and swiveled in his seat. “Best of luck on your mission. I look forward to having a proper family chat, once this war is over and Fieran brings you around to the formal Escarlish events.”
