Paul woke up. His face was pressed against cold, churned earth. The stink of scorched leather and powder was everywhere. The inside of his mouth tasted like bile and copper. For a second, he could not move.

  Noise hammered all around. The shrieking, metallic clatter of the cooling war-wagon. The roar of panic and confusion from the Hushite lines. Elves shouted above him, the sound coming in pulses, raw and directionless.

  Paul’s body ached. His right arm was streaked with black and red. Blood. Not all of it his. He blinked, tried to sit up. Vision swam, then steadied. The machine was tilted, one wheel sunk deep into the turf, hull still trembling. The hatch hung open.

  Smoke vented out in thick, dirty jets. The air was wet, hot, hard to breathe. Paul gagged, wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, and finally pulled himself upright. He looked back at the tank.

  Gibkin stood next to him, hunched and panting. The elf’s left arm dangled awkwardly, the sleeve split and burned. His face was blank. Numb.

  The ground behind them was torn up, bodies littered across the mud like scraps. Hushite and Baragrudian alike. A few armored forms still twitched. Most didn’t.

  Paul pushed up onto his knees. He spat, wiped again at the mess on his chin, and tried to think.

  They were exposed. The they wouldn’t last long out in the open. The Hushite host was still reeling, but it wouldn’t last. Already, shouts from their officers hacked through the panic, pulling their lines back together.

  Think, idiot, think. If you stay here the next thing to hit will be a pike, or worse.

  “Gibkin,” Paul said, trying to get the words out through spit and blood. “We need to move. Can you walk?”

  Gibkin grunted. “I’m not dead yet.”

  A Hushite arrow thunked into the turf not three feet away. It whipped past so close Paul could feel the wind off it. Another followed, then a third, sticking through the war-wagon’s ruined rear hatch.

  They’re regrouping. They’re regrouping fast.

  Paul lurched to his feet, boots sinking in the wet turf. The first step made his knee buckle, but Gibkin caught him hard under the arm.

  “Don’t stand up just to get your head shot off. We gotta move, boy,” hissed the elf.

  Another arrow tore past. He ducked.

  “Gibkin, can you see anyone else alive?” Paul’s teeth were chattering.

  Gibkin’s face twisted. “Paul, you did’t see what I did. We’re not going back to the tank. There is no one left to save.”

  Paul risked a peek over the tank’s hull. Hushites were streaming back into their lines, their bravest were already re-forming, shields up, javelins bristling. Someone in a red sash was pointing, probably screaming orders. The Baragrudian forces lined and wheeled around to face the regrouping enemy. There was screaming and a terrible sound of sword against sword, metal against flesh.

  “We’re losing…” Gibkin said.

  Paul looked again at the battle. He was right, the Baragrudian line was buckling inward at the center.

  The two hurriedly began to limp back towards the city.

  ***

  Long before they had made it to the gates, the routing Baragrudians had overtaken them and passed by. It was nothing short of a miracle that they were not rode down and slaughtered. It was utter chaos. The city gates loomed ahead, the battered archway dark against the morning sun, and every inch of ground between here and there was crawling with elf soldiers in retreat. Wanihndrê footmen, mail torn and faces streaked with blood, sprinted past. Some screamed, others just ran with their heads down. A few staggered, dragging the wounded behind them, eyes wild.

  Paul barely kept his feet beneath him. Once or twice he stumbled and nearly took Gibkin down with him. The blacksmith only grunted, propping Paul up with his good arm.

  “Don’t look back,” Gibkin said. “Just keep moving. Don’t look back.”

  Paul looked back anyway, because of course he did. The Hushites had already surged forward, trampling the battle’s remains. The war-wagon was still out there, slumped in the furrow it had carved through the enemy lines, smoke pouring from its flanks. There was a swarm of red-sashed elves converging on it now, weapons up, faces shielded. They chopped at the hull, shouting in some guttural, foreign tongue. Paul couldn’t see anyone left alive inside.

  He almost stopped. The urge was strong. He wanted to double back, to try and get them out, but Gibkin’s grip on his shoulder tightened.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “No. It’s done,” Gibkin hissed. “They knew, Paul. They all knew.”

  He forced himself to keep moving.

  The world was a slurry of running feet and shouts, the stink of blood and burned earth. Someone screamed Paul’s name, or maybe just screamed. He barely noticed when he staggered sideways and nearly collided with a pair of wounded guards, both clutching their sides and lurching for the city gates like they thought the gates might vanish at any second.

  Gibkin still had a death grip on his shoulder. Every few steps, the blacksmith cursed under his breath. Paul couldn’t tell if it was because of pain or rage or both.

  “Just a little farther,” Gibkin rasped.

  Paul tried to help, but his own legs were noodles. Each breath was sharp, raw, metal in his lungs. Another arrow zipped past his ear—a black-fletched shaft, ugly and wicked. He hunched, pulling Gibkin lower with him, and together they half-ran, half-crawled the last stretch toward the battered city entrance.

  Somehow, they crossed the threshold. The guards above didn’t bother with questions, just slammed the gates closed behind them with a teeth-rattling clang. The noise of it rang down the street, bouncing from stone to stone until it faded into the general din.

  Inside, chaos. The retreating elves streamed down the main avenue, some still carrying broken weapons, all of them covered in mud, soot, and blood. Paul and Gibkin found themselves swept along in the current, one limping, the other just trying not to get trampled.

  It was like drowning in a flood. The survivors poured through the streets, shoving and stumbling and swearing in every tongue. Paul barely heard any of it. Only the drumbeat in his ears and the sour taste in his mouth, and somewhere, the voice of Gibkin cursing under his breath.

  They hooked left, caught in the current. Someone slammed into Paul’s shoulder and knocked him spinning nearly into a horse’s legs. Gibkin hauled him upright with a grunt and forced them on. Elves in battered armor lined the alleyways, faces slack from shock or shriveled with pain. Nobody was giving orders. Not really. Just a lot of noise, a lot of bodies moving towards the heart of the city.

  Paul’s vision kept wanting to gray out around the edges. He pushed it back, kept his legs going. That was all that mattered right now.

  A few feet ahead, an elf stumbled and went down. Someone else tripped over him; both were nearly kicked into the gutter by the next stampede of feet. Gibkin snarled and veered, dragging Paul clear. The stink of blood was thick as soup. All around them, elves bled and moaned and pushed onward. A pair of guards tried to form up at a crossroads, got swept aside by the crush.

  Paul didn’t see any nobles, just the wanihndrê. The ordinary elves, the ones who’d always been told to stand and die while someone else got the glory. They sure as hell weren’t glorying in anything now.

  Gibkin barked a laugh.

  “Where are your Detêmri now? Bastards probably ran when the lines started to buckle.”

  Paul wasn't listening. He was too focused on not falling over. He just needed to keep moving.

  They rounded a bend, and for a second Paul thought they were free of the crush. Then a pack of guards rounded the same corner and damn near trampled him. One elbowed past so hard that Paul spun against a wall, vision going white for a second. Gibkin barked at them, swinging his good arm like he was chasing off dogs.

  “Oie! Can’t you see he’s half dead? Move your arses!”

  Some of the elves muttered an apology, but they were gone too fast to care. Paul blinked and tried to catch his balance.

  Ahead there was a little pocket of calm, just past the intersection where the streets widened. Here, the wounded slumped against doorways, and a handful of the braver types thumped each other on the back and tried to look like they hadn’t just run for their lives.

  Gibkin dragged Paul into the narrow gap between two buildings. He half-dropped, half-leaned against the stone, both of them panting.

  Paul let his head lull for a moment. The back of his tongue was sticky with blood.

  “So what now?” Paul finally managed. “Do we just… wait for them to break through?”

  “If the Bastards don’t open the gates for them first,” growled Gibkin. He spat, and blood mixed with phlegm on the ground. “I say we leave. Quick as we can. I know there will be many trying to leave the city while the army outside cleans up and gets themselves together. Come, we want to go now if possible.”

  Paul didn’t rise. He was too tired. Too weak. He was tired of running. Running got him into this mess to begin with.

  He tucked his chin to his chest, pressing his eyes shut. Something was leaking onto his face. Just a trickle from his hairline. Gibkin rattled his shoulder.

  “Paul! Come on, don’t you die on me now. If you’re going to give up let us at least get out first, eh?”

  Paul squinted at him, managed a nod, and let Gibkin drag him upright. The world lurched abominably for a second and he nearly vomited again, but somehow kept it down. There were voices behind them, more screaming, but it sounded farther away now.

  They staggered down a narrow gap between two buildings. Paul braced a hand on cold stone, coughing. Gibkin looked him over, teeth bared.

  “You see, they think the city will hold. No one here’s seen the Hushites up close before,” said Gibkin. “And if you had, you’d know to run faster.”

  Paul almost laughed, though it came out more like a hiss. His ribs hurt.

  “What do we do?” Paul asked, voice barely a rasp. “I don’t, I mean, what’s the point, if they’re going to take the city anyway?”

  Gibkin let out a barking noise. “We get out. We live. That’s what.”

  Paul jerked his arm back. Gibkin nearly fell back.

  “Paul, wha- “

  “No, Wystan is still here, I don’t think he can be moved and even if he could what is the point? We would be running away and I am tired of running. I ran from Aldis, the Magi, now the damn Hushites. Enough.”

  Gibkin just gawked at him for a second. The noise from the street was still boiling, like a flood behind thin boards.

  “So you’d rather die here than bolt for the hills?” The blacksmith spat, actually spat, onto the alley stones. “You mad, kadrêni. Absolutely out of your bleeding mind.”

  “Maybe. Wouldn’t be the first time. Look…” Paul’s breath shook in his chest, and he had to brace his good hand on the cold wall. “If I run, what do I even get? A few days, maybe a week? Then what, Gibkin? There’s nowhere to go. Not while Wystan’s stuck halfway to dead in that cot. Theyre going to want to know how all this new tech is built and they will eventually find out it was because of me. They’ll hunt us to the ends of the world.”

  Gibkin glared, jaw working..

  “So we stand inside, and let ’em cut us down?”

  “No. We do it my way.” Paul exhaled slow, tried not to shudder. “We don’t give them the satisfaction. I want to go down fighting. They want to take the city? Fine, but let’s make it cost them everything. Bleed them for every yard. Make ‘em remember this for a thousand years.”

  There was silence. Gibkin just stared, then a nasty grin split his face. “Well now, that’s a first. No offense Pau

  l but I always thought you would be something of a coward.”

  Paul laughed.