Page 23 of Rule of Wolves

“Hold the line!” Adrik shouted. “Let them come to us.”

“For Ravka!” Nikolai yelled.

“For the double eagle!” came the reply, soldiers’ voices raised in solidarity.

Fjerdan troops armed with repeating rifles followed behind the tanks that had made it through the minefield, cutting a swath through the smoke and haze. They were met by Ravkan soldiers fighting side by side with Grisha.

Nikolai knew a king did not belong on the front lines, but he also knew he couldn’t hang back and let others wage this war. His officers were mostly former infantry, grunts who had risen through the ranks and earned the respect of their men. There were the aristocrats too, but Nikolai didn’t trust them in precarious positions. Old men like Duke Keramsov had fought in long-ago wars and could have provided valuable experience, but most had refused the call. Their fighting days were over. They’d built their homes and now they wanted to rest in their beds, tell stories of old victories, and complain about their aches and pains.

“On my command,” he said.

“This is a terrible idea,” moped Adrik.

“I have a surplus of bad ideas,” said Nikolai. “I have to spend them somewhere.”

Tamar touched her hands to her axes. When her bullets were spent, those would have to suffice. She signaled to her Heartrenders. Nadia signaled to her Squallers.

“Forward!” Nikolai shouted.

Then they were moving ahead, plunging into the fray. The Squallers drove back the Fjerdan tanks as the Heartrenders gave them cover. A squad of Inferni used the burning remnants of the tanks to create a wall of flame, another barrier the Fjerdan troops would have to breach.

All of the Ravkan forces wore gas masks specially crafted by Fabrikators to prevent the inhalation of jurda parem. The drug had changed everything, made the Grisha vulnerable in ways they had never been, but they refused to wear those masks as emblems of weakness or fragility. They’d painted them with fangs and curling tongues, gaping mouths. They looked like gargoyles descending onto the field in their combat kefta.

Nikolai stayed low, the rattle of gunfire filling his ears. He squeezed off a shot, another, saw bodies fall. The demon in him sensed the chaos and leaned toward it, hungry for violence. But even if the obisbaya hadn’t purged Nikolai of the thing, it had given him better control. He needed cool strategy now, not a monster with a taste for blood.

Tolya’s hands shot out, his fists closing, and Fjerdan soldiers dropped, their hearts bursting in their chests.

Nikolai almost let himself hope. If tanks and infantry were all the fight Fjerda had to offer, Ravka might stand a chance. But as soon as he saw the hulking machine lumbering onto the field, he knew Fjerda had more horrors in store. This wasn’t a tank. It was a transport. Its huge treads kicked up dirt and mud, the roar of its engine shaking the air as it disgorged smoke into the gray sky. A mine went off beneath one of its huge treads, but the thing just kept coming.

Nikolai looked to the west. Had Zoya succeeded on her mission? Would rescue come?

This is the crossroads. This day would decide if Ravka had a chance or if Fjerda would blow through the border like a cold northern wind. If they failed this test, their enemy would know just how precarious Ravka’s position was, just how strapped for cash, just how weakened. A victory, even a wobbly one, would buy his country some desperately needed time. But that would require reinforcements.

“They’re not coming,” said Tolya.

“They’ll come,” said Nikolai. They have to.

“We gave them everything they needed. Why would they?”

“Because an agreement must mean something, otherwise what are we all doing here?”

A high metal shriek sounded as the transport drew to a halt and its gigantic metal doors opened like the jaws of an ancient monster.

The dust cleared and a line of soldiers advanced from inside the transport. But they wore no uniforms, only ragged clothes, some of them barefoot. Nikolai knew instantly what they were—Grisha, addicted to parem. Their bodies were emaciated and their heads hung like wilted flowers on narrow stalks. But none of that would matter once they were dosed with the drug. He saw the cloud of orange gas puff toward them from spigots somewhere inside the transport. Instantly, they snapped to attention.

This was the moment Nikolai had been dreading, one he had hoped he could prevent.

Three of the dosed Grisha charged forward.

“Get down!” Nikolai yelled. The land before the enemy Grisha rose up in a rippling wave, mines exploded, tanks overturned. Ravkan soldiers were thrown over and buried beneath mountains of mud and rock.

“Squallers!” Nadia called to her troops, and she and Adrik were back on their feet, combining their strength to push rubble and earth aside, freeing their compatriots.

Then Nadia stumbled.

“Amelia!” she cried. The wind she’d summoned faltered. She was staring at one of the dosed Grisha, a slender girl with chestnut hair, dressed in little more than a faded smock, her sticklike legs jammed into heavy boots.

“Saints,” Tamar said on a breath. “She’s a Fabrikator. She vanished from a mission near Chernast.”