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It might have been an accident of nature, but Rin doubted it. The timing was too abrupt. Someone was hauling that rain down from the heavens.
“He’s here.” She stood up and waved to her officers. “Ready the columns.”
Seconds later, her sentries caught on to what she already knew, and a series of horns resounded across the tombstones.
The Republican Army appeared at the other end of the ravine, fanning out beneath the Red Emperor’s feet.
Rin scanned the front lines with her spyglass until she spotted Nezha marching at the fore. He was dressed in a strange hybrid fashion; his chest was clad in the familiar blue cloth and lamellar plating of the Dragon Army, but his arms and legs were wrapped in some armor made of overlapping metal plates. It looked obstructively heavy. His shoulders, usually so arrogantly squared, seemed to sag.
“What’s that around his wrists?” Kitay asked.
Rin squinted into her spyglass. She could just barely make out golden circlets around both of Nezha’s wrists. They served no function she could discern—they didn’t seem a part of his armor, and she couldn’t imagine how they might be used as weapons.
She shifted the spyglass down. Another pair of golden circlets was visible over his boots. “Did he have those in Arabak?”
“Not that I remember,” Kitay said. “But I remember seeing these odd scars once, right around—”
“He’s seen us,” Rin said abruptly.
Nezha had taken out a spyglass, too. He was looking right back at them.
She was struck by the symmetry of the scene. They could have been a painting—two opposing factions lined under statues that may as well have been their patron gods. Tearza and the Red Emperor, Speerly against conqueror, the newest participants in a centuries-old conflict that had never died, but had only continued to reverberate through history.
Until now. Until one of them ended it, for better or for worse.
Nezha raised a hand.
Rin tensed. Blood roared in her ears; the familiar, addictive rush of adrenaline thrummed through her body.
So this was how it began. No pleasantries, no obligatory attempt at negotiation; just battle. Nezha brought his hand down and his troops began charging down the ravine, feet thundering against the mud.
Rin turned to Commander Miragha. “Send in the turtles.”
Throughout Nikara history, the traditional way to deal with arrow fire had been sending in shielded front lines to absorb the blow. Dozens of guaranteed fatalities bought time for melee combatants to breach the enemy lines. But Rin didn’t have the dozens of warm bodies to spare.
Enter the turtles. These were one of Kitay’s recent inventions. Inspired by the thickly armored turtle boats in the Republican Fleet, he’d designed small cart-mounted vehicles that could survive heavy fire of almost any kind. He hadn’t had the time nor resources to construct anything sophisticated, so he’d cobbled the turtles together from wooden tables, water-soaked cotton quilts, and scavenged plates of Hesperian armor that, combined, kept out most flying projectiles.
One by one they rolled out from behind the tombstones into the ravine. As if on cue, Nezha’s archers launched their opening volleys, and arrows dotted the surfaces of the turtles until they looked like roving hedgehogs.
“They look so stupid,” Rin muttered.
“Shut up,” Kitay said. “They’re working.”
Republican missiles landed two lucky hits, launching turtles into the air like spinning balls of fire. Undaunted, the other armored vehicles barreled forward. A symphony of whistling sounds filled the air as the Southern Army returned the Republic’s fire. This was largely for show—most of their projectiles skidded ineffectively off the Republic’s metal shields—but the volleys forced the Republican artillery to duck, creating a reprieve for the advancing turtles. Venka’s contingent, stationed with long-distance crossbows on a protruding ledge near the middle of the ravine, landed the most hits, picking off Nezha’s cannon operators with well-placed bolts.
Over the din of the rain, Rin could just barely make out a distinct, low rumble echoing across the ravine. She bent low, placed her hand to the shuddering ground, and smiled.
Dulin was right on time.
They’d determined during training that he couldn’t summon earthquakes outside a ten-yard radius, which meant he couldn’t meaningfully affect fighting conditions inside the ravine unless they threw him into the melee. Rin couldn’t keep him there for long. The turtles weren’t invincible—half had been reduced to smoldering wrecks, obliterated by a concentrated round of missiles.
But Dulin didn’t need to last the entire battle. He only needed to take out the Republic’s upper-level artillery stations. He was so close now, even as his marked turtle vehicle stuttered to a halt, barraged by bolts and arrows.
Come on.
The cliffs began to vibrate. Rin tilted her spyglass up at the artillery stations. Stones slid like powder off the cliffside, cascading over one line of crossbows. The ledge shifted and collapsed, sending Republican troops tumbling dozens of feet into the ravine.
Nearly there, just finish it . . .
A rocket exploded right in front of Dulin’s turtle, flipping the vehicle backward into the air.
Rin let out a wordless screech.
Kitay seized her arm. “It’s fine, he’s fine, look—”
He was right. The cliffs were still quaking, the artillery stations buried in rubble beneath. Dulin was still alive, still channeling the Tortoise. Three armored vehicles clustered protectively around the wreck of Dulin’s turtle, shielding it from the next barrage of bullets. Through her spyglass, Rin saw Dulin climb out from beneath the overturned craft and limp toward the nearest turtle. Soldiers popped out of the hatch to drag him into the armored belly. Then the cart reversed course and started retreating back behind Rin’s waiting infantry.
Nezha’s troops didn’t pursue him. Like everyone else, Nezha was preoccupied with the melee inside the ravine, which—as predicted—had now turned into an utter clusterfuck. No one could aim properly under the rain. Arrows forced off course by the weather buried themselves uselessly in the dirt or ricocheted off the ravine walls. Occasionally someone managed to keep a flame alight long enough to light a fuse, but the battlefield was now too muddled to land a clear hit. Cannonballs, mortar shells, and fire rockets hurtled haphazardly into allies and enemies alike. The silver lining was that Nezha’s wheeled arquebuses had become useless, bogged down in thick mud, their range limited only to the midsection of the ravine.
The remaining four turtles continued their advance toward him, followed by a press of the Southern Army’s infantry. They wouldn’t get far. Nezha’s front line was armed with halberds, extended straight outward in an impaling welcome.
But the turtles weren’t intended to breach the lines. They only needed to get close enough to toss their pipe bombs. Each squadron had set out with a lit coal shielded inside an iron tin. Ten feet from Nezha’s front lines, they lit the bomb fuses and tossed them out the carts’ top hatches.
Several seconds passed. Rin tensed. Then Nezha’s front lines blew apart like ripped paper, and Rin’s infantry surged through.
The battle had now turned into a conventional bloodbath. Swords, halberds, and shields clashed in a frenetic crush of bodies. It should have been a massacre—Nezha’s troops were better trained and better armed—but the rain and mud had made it impossible for anyone to see, which allowed Rin’s peasant infantry to last much longer than they should have.
