She didn’t know if Nezha was fishing for information for his father, or if he was just trying to make small talk. She supposed it didn’t matter. Chaghan’s presence was hardly a secret, especially after Altan’s dramatic rescue outside the east gate. Perhaps because of that, though, the Militia seemed even more spooked by him than they were by the rest of the Cike combined.
Several paces down, Suni lit one of Ramsa’s specialty bombs and hurled it over the barricade.
They ducked back down and plugged up their ears until a now-familiar acrid, sulfuric smell filled their nostrils.
The arrow fire stopped.
“Is that
“Don’t ask,” Rin said. In the temporary lull granted by Ramsa’s dung bomb they moved past the barricade and stormed down the street to reach the next of the five intersections.
“I heard he’s creepy,” Nezha continued. “I heard he’s from the Hinterlands.”
“Qara’s from the Hinterlands, too. So what?”
“So I’ve heard he’s unnatural,” Nezha said.
Rin snorted. “It’s the Cike. We’re
A massive explosion rolled through the air in front of them, followed by a series of bursts of fire.
Altan.
He was leading the charge. His roiling flames, combined with Ramsa’s many fire powder spectacles, created a number of large fires that drastically improved their nighttime visibility.
Altan had broken through to the next intersection. The Nikara continued their surge forward.
“But he can do things that Speerlies can’t,” Nezha said as they pressed on. “They say he can read the future. Shatter minds. My father says that even the Warlords know of him, did you know that? It makes you wonder. If Altan’s got a lieutenant who’s so powerful that he scares the Warlords, why is he sending him away from Khurdalain? What are they planning?”
“I’m not spying on my own division for you,” Rin said.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Nezha said delicately. “I’m just saying you might want to keep an open mind.”
“And you might want to keep your nose out of my division’s matters.”
But Nezha had stopped listening; he stared over Rin’s shoulder at something farther along the wharf, where the first line
of Nikara soldiers was pressing. “What is
Rin craned her neck to see what he was looking at. Then she squinted in confusion.
An odd greenish-yellow fog had begun wending its way over the blockade toward the two division squadrons in front of them.
As if in a dream, the fighting stopped. The foremost squadron ceased moving, lowering their weapons with an almost hypnotic fascination as the cloud reached the wall, paused, gathered itself like a wave, and then ponderously lapped over into the dugouts.
Then the screaming began.
“Retreat,” shouted a squadron officer. “
The Militia reversed direction immediately, commencing a disorganized stampede away from the gas. They abandoned their hard-won stations along the wharf in a frenzy to get away from the gas.
Rin coughed and glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Most of the soldiers who hadn’t escaped the gas lay gasping and twitching on the ground, clawing at their faces as if their own throats were attacking them. Others lay quite still.
An arrowhead lashed across her cheek and embedded itself in the ground before her. The side of her mouth exploded in pain; she cupped a hand against it and continued running. The Federation soldiers were firing from behind the poisonous fog, they were going to pick them off one by one . . .
The forest line loomed up before her. She would be fine once she could take cover behind the foliage. Rin ducked her head and sprinted for the trees. Only a hundred yards . . . fifty . . . twenty . . .
Behind her she heard a strangled cry. She twisted her head to look and tripped over a rock, just as another arrow whistled over her head. Blood streamed from her cheek into her eyes. Rin wiped it furiously off and rolled over flat against the ground.
The source of the cry was Nezha. He was crawling furiously forward, but the gas had caught up to him. He met her eyes through the fog. He might have lifted one hand toward her.
She watched in horror, mouth open in a silent scream, as the gas enveloped him.
Through the gas, she saw forms advancing. Federation soldiers. They wore bulky contraptions over their heads, masks that concealed their necks and faces. They seemed unaffected by the gas.
One of them lifted a bulky gloved hand and pointed where Nezha lay.
Without thinking, Rin took a deep breath of air and rushed into the fog.
It burned her skin as soon as she touched it.
She clenched her teeth and forged ahead through the pain—but she’d hardly gone ten paces when someone grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back out of the gas zone. She struggled furiously to escape their grip.
Altan didn’t let go.
