Into the Storm (25 page)

The bastion’s helmeted head seemed too small for the armored shell of his torso. The helmet turned a bit, as if surprised Cleasby had managed to stop that attack.

But then it was
on.

The polearm spun. His buckler absorbed another hit, but the haft came right back around and slammed into his side. Cleasby grimaced, but he countered, lunging forward. The glaive struck the bastion in the stomach, scoring deeply into the steel. It was like hitting a boulder. Even with lightning crackling across his body, it barely moved the man.

Using the blade and the haft as a seamless whole, the bastion demonstrated he was a master of his weapon. Cleasby was more worried about the lethal-looking end, but the bastion quickly demonstrated that both ends were deadly when he swept it along the floor and drove the haft into Cleasby’s shin. The plate bent, but it saved the bone. He grimaced but stayed standing. The storm chamber hummed, and Cleasby triggered the galvanic release without thought, scorching the bastion with a flash of electricity. The mighty warrior shrugged it off and kept coming.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

The polearm rose and fell. Cleasby barely got out of the way as it smashed a hole through the floor. Cleasby used the opportunity to hit the bastion again, cleaving deeply into the man’s armor with his glowing glaive. That had to have hit flesh. He could smell burning hair, but the Protectorate knight showed no weakness. The bastion wrenched his blade free, ripping up several of the decaying boards. Cleasby flailed, grasping for anything, as the floor broke open beneath him. He was falling into the basement! He lost hold of his glaive as he snagged one of the chains.

Panicked, he kicked his feet; there was nothing below him except darkness.

The bastion raised his polearm to finish him off, but then he lurched to the side. Lightning crackled through his body. Thorny had just fired his glaive. Then the bastion stumbled the other way as Wilkins slammed into him with his Precursor shield. More lightning flickered. Wilkins struck true, swinging his blade deep into the bastion’s side.

Undeterred by the blood gushing through the rent in his armor, the bastion swept his polearm along the ground and knocked Wilkins off his feet.

Won’t you die already?

Pointing the polearm at the dangling, helpless Cleasby, the bastion took one step forward, prepared to finish him once and for all. Cleasby pulled himself up desperately, but it was all he could do to hold on. He’d be stabbed and then he’d fall, and he wasn’t sure which one would kill him first.

But the expected pain didn’t come.

The bastion’s lunge was awkward and off balance. The polearm
missed.
The bastion’s helmet twisted again, this time looking down, to where the point of a storm glaive was sticking through the armor of his chest, snapping and popping with energy. Blood burned away as smoke as the blade disappeared, along with most of his heart, and he fell forward, limp. There was a thump as the huge warrior crashed into him, sending Cleasby spinning about wildly on the chain. The bastion tumbled past him totally silent, falling into the hole and disappearing into the basement. There was a terrible crash a moment later.

“Thanks,” Cleasby gasped.

Savio Acosta was standing where the bastion had been. He stepped carefully toward the edge of the hole, testing his weight on the walk so as to not follow the bastion to the basement. Acosta reached out, grabbed the chain, and dragged Cleasby back toward safety.

Cleasby pulled himself up the chain, hand over hand, until he could get back onto the rotting wooden walk. If someone had asked the young scholar a year ago if he’d ever be strong enough to climb a chain while wearing a suit of armor, he would have laughed at them. Once he was relatively safe, he steadied himself against a beam and tried to catch his breath. The bastion had knocked the snot out of him.

Wilkins reached them, limping. “That was a mighty shot, Acosta! Praise Morrow!”

“Morrow had nothing to do with it,” Acosta muttered, low enough that Wilkins wouldn’t hear. “In the thousands of hours I’ve trained with a blade I never once saw your god there.”

“What?” Wilkins asked.

“Nothing,” Acosta answered clearly.

Cleasby glanced around. The Storm Knights were winning. They’d outnumbered the Exemplars, but even so several of their number had fallen and many others had been wounded. Private Dunfield had lost an arm and was frantically searching for it. “Watersford! Calm him down and get a tourniquet on that.” There were still a few Exemplars left, every one of them a deadly fanatic who would never flee, but each one was now being attacked by multiple Storm Knights.

He smelled smoke, then realized the factory had caught fire. Wilkins was ordering several of his men to gather the wounded to move them back to the ’jack entrance. He caught sight of Madigan heading toward the opposite side of the factory. They’d fought and bled for that damned tower, so they weren’t turning back now.

“It’s stuck,” the Storm Knight told him.

Culpin knew they were here. He’d be rushing his alchemical nightmare now. Assuming, of course, that Groller Culpin was even alive.

“Break it down,” Madigan ordered. The men put their shoulders into it. The huge door creaked and dust rained from the ceiling. Headhunter could’ve easily broken through, but they’d been forced to send the Stormclad around the exterior.

The open space was filling with thick, black smoke, which was pouring out the broken windows. Flames were licking up the walls. It was either break through, retreat, or die. His men looked to him, unsure, but he knew in his heart that he’d earned their faith and forged the Malcontents into a true fighting unit and that they would never question his orders again.

“Damn it. Find a ram.”

Several of the men found a big, stout beam, and they drove that into the door. It heaved outward, revealing just a sliver of daylight, and for the briefest moment a glimpse of some lightly armored deliverers pushing against it on the other side.

There were more of them. They’d be rushing right into another fight. Madigan didn’t know how many casualties they’d taken already, but there would be more. If they pushed on, what else would they face? Was this an elaborate plot or had they simply blundered into the enemy for no good reason? Was this all for nothing?

He thought about what Lord Durham had asked him in the brig.
What happens when there is a bigger problem presented to you?

“Again!” Madigan shouted. The four men holding up the beam got a running start and crashed it into the door, which bulged and cracked. He gained another glimpse to the outside—longer this time, as one of the Menites was temporarily knocked down. He spied a Protectorate warjack waiting behind them before the door was forced closed again.

Will you be so quick to sacrifice your men to solve it?

“Again!”

The door burst open.

Madigan was the first one through the breach.

As soon as he managed to dispatch the final Exemplar in the burning factory, Enoch Rains intended to set out after the rest of his platoon. He’d already sent his squad after Lieutenant Madigan. He simply hadn’t expected a crippled, severely injured Exemplar to put up such a fight, but that was the power of faith.

The Exemplar was weaving, dizzy from a dozen weeping wounds, but one wrong move and the swordsman could still take his life. Behind him flames popped and crackled as they consumed the walls. The heat was so intense that the interior of his armor felt like an oven. He needed to leave now or he’d be cooked like a lamb in a pot.

His opponent lunged, but most of the strength had gone out of him. Rains parried. The Exemplar was slow to lift his sword, so Rains struck him violently in the side of the helm with the pommel. Dazed, the man went to his knees. Rains lifted one leg, put his boot on the Exemplar’s chest, and kicked him back into the fire. The screaming didn’t last very long at all.

CRASH!

Rains didn’t see the ceiling collapse, but he certainly felt it.

A flaming beam struck him in the helmet. A crushing weight put him down, and then the floor was breaking all around him, nails tearing through termite-eaten wood, and Rains was sliding downward in a shower of red sparks. The basement rushed up to meet him.

Everything went black.

Madigan tore through the Protectorate troops like a man possessed. A Menite spun away in a shower of blood. Another was disemboweled by the perfect stroke of his storm glaive. Madigan moved forward, slashing at his foes. The chest of one was opened to the ribs, the head of another removed. When the rest piled on, he triggered the biting burst of electrical energy and sent the deliverers reeling back, burning.

His men charged through the door, spilling into the sunlight, slaughtering Menites. Smoke billowed out around them. They were in a clear area between buildings, and on the other side of the lot was the base of the water tower.

The Protectorate warjack came thumping toward them. It was a light ’jack, armed with a wickedly spiked mace bolted to one hand and with a cannon for its left arm. The cannon was already aimed at them, but the machine’s marshal must have not given the order for it to fire into them. He’d probably hesitated, not wanting to kill his compatriots holding the door. That had been a mistake, because now they were
all
going to die.

“Throwers, fire on the ’jack!” Madigan bellowed. A pair of storm throwers ignited, striking the warjack with two continuous streams of power. “Everyone fire!” Every Stormblade who had followed him through the factory fired simultaneously. A terrible roar exploded around them as the energy of all their storm chambers followed the paths cut through the air by the throwers. The arcs appeared as blinding, instantaneous flashes, and then they were gone.

A single voltaic discharge wouldn’t do much to a warjack, but if you fired a dozen at once, you were bound to get lucky. The ’jack was blackened, shuddering as the voltage coursed through its damaged systems, but it takes a lot of hurt to put down a warjack, even a small one. “Charge!” Madigan yelled.

They fell on the ’jack, hacking at it with their glowing blades. The Protectorate machine swung its mace and a Storm Knight went flying through the air, broken.

As much as his blood roared to jump into the fray, Madigan had a platoon to run and a mission to complete. He surveyed the area. The base of the water tower was in view, but he couldn’t see any Menite forces near it, particularly no strange mystery ’jack. It had to be around the corner. His Stormclad and his Stormguard halberdiers were coming up the exterior of the factory, but there was no time to wait. More coughing Storm Knights came out of the burning factory, Rains’ men by the looks of it, though there was no sign of the apostate himself. Cleasby came out last, covered in blood and missing his helmet. Madigan signaled for them to follow.