Dreamlander

by K.M. Weiland

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chris saw the green flutter of Tireus’s personal standard down the street, near the skycar station. He looked around. Chaos churned everywhere. Minutes screamed past, maybe even hours. Hard to tell the difference anymore.

  Mactalde had packed the trains with men. They had landed in the streets and tangled with the Laeler soldiers. All through the cobblestone streets, they fought, pistols barking, swords clashing. Even a few hand cannons spewed their fireballs and scattered splinters from demolished houses.

  He hunkered against a demolished shop front and tried to breathe through the smoke. Somewhere along the line, his horse had been shot out from under him, and who knew where Orias and the Rievers had gotten themselves off to.

  Bullets zinged overhead. Cobblestone shards stung his face. He switched his chewser back and forth between his hands, so he could swipe his sweaty palms against his pants. He needed to get to Tireus, needed to find out what the plan was. If there was a plan. . .

  Men ran past, faces black with soot and dirt, uniforms torn and bloodied. They saw him, and they flocked to him. Some stood steadfast and stony-eyed. Some shook with the adrenaline. They were all looking to him. They all wanted him to lead them.

  A young footman stared up at him. “Tell us what to do, sir! We’ll follow you anywhere.” His cheek had been split from the corner of his lip halfway to his ear, and his words burbled through the blood in his mouth.

  Chris’s insides skidded. How many who followed him had died in the last hour? They would have been better off in Glen Arden. They would have been better off had they never seen his face. Didn’t they know they wouldn’t be here now if not for him? He had led them, sure enough. And look where it had gotten all of them.

  He pointed his sword down the street to where the Laelers had established a temporary headquarters. “We’ll join up with the king!” A fireball hit the eaves above them. “Move!”

  He ran, and the men followed him up the street to the station. Overhead, the skycar train wobbled on its cable. Two Koraudian soldiers, high above, hacked at one end of the cables.

  He gritted his teeth and pelted down the street. There was no version of the story in which any of this could end well. Allara had said his duty was to the God of all. He was the One who had ordained the Gifted. He was the One who chose the few. But why choose him? What had he brought to Lael but war and ruin? People were dying all around because of him.

  Sure, he could be a leader. Any fool could lead. But no matter what choices he made, people would suffer. How had he deluded himself into thinking life could be any different here than it had been back in Chicago?

  He reached the station courtyard and found Tireus, on horseback, directing troops.

  Chris reached him and saluted. “It’s too dangerous for you here.”

  “That’s why we’re leaving right now!” Tireus had to shout to be heard above the roar of the hand cannons. “We have to join my daughter and the others in the Cairns!”

  Chris nodded relief and turned. Far away down the skycar cables, another train pulled into the center of the city. His gut seized, and he fumbled for his spyglass. The train stopped at an anchor pole, and when the doors opened, more Koraudian soldiers began to climb down. Instead of a red tabard, one of them wore a leather doublet.

  His pulse quickened. It couldn’t be Mactalde. Why should he follow his troops to Thyra Junction when the glory of Glen Arden was his for the taking?

  But what if it was Mactalde?

  His every breath flooded energy through his body. If that was Mactalde, then here was another chance to end this. That’s what he was here for. He was here to kill Mactalde and right the balance. If he could do that, that was all that mattered.

  “Form up here in the square!” Tireus shouted. “Pass the word, carabineers to the front! I want covering fire laid down immediately. Bring up a horse for the Gifted.”

  Someone thrust reins into Chris’s hand. Without taking his eyes from the fresh wave of disembarking Koraudians he swung aboard. “Mactalde’s here.”

  “What?” Tireus reined his horse around in a clatter of hooves. He stabbed Chris with a commanding look. “You stay here with me. Even if it’s him, you’d never reach him.”

  He gathered his reins and laid his heels to his horse’s sides. “I may never get another chance.”

  “Redston!” Tireus’s mount stumbled. “Stay that horse!”

  Chris galloped through the ranks, and every man turned to follow him.

  He wasn’t going to dance to Mactalde’s tune any longer. He wasn’t going to wait for Mactalde to come to him. There was no master plan here, guaranteeing victory. There was only him against the world, just as it had always been. The thunder of his mount’s galloping hooves burst inside his body like fireworks.

  From out of nowhere, Orias’s big red horse smashed into him and knocked his horse to its knees.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Orias caught up the horse’s reins and dragged him away from the charge. “Stop! This is a trap!” Somewhere during the fight, he had cast aside his long coat; he wore a sleeveless jerkin, and steam rose from his skin. Blue blood edged the corner of his mouth. “They’re cutting down the skycars!”

  Overhead, cables creaked and groaned. One snapped with a report like a gunshot and whipped through the air. The train plummeted several feet before catching on the remaining cables. The Koraudians hanging onto the support pole hacked more furiously.

  From behind, Tireus roared: “Fall back! They’re trying to divide the troops!”

  Row upon row of red uniforms marched through the surrounding streets. They were converging on the station. They would surround Tireus, and he would never escape. Mactalde would chew him into nothing, then spew him back out. Chris’s guts turned to ice.

  “Fall back!” Tireus’s cry wafted through the streets.

  Another cable snapped. The skycar yawed dangerously. Troops in the streets scattered.

  Chris snatched his rein from Orias and spurred into a side street. “Fall back! Retreat!” They had to circle around and get back to the station. “To the king!”

  With a tremendous crack, the last cable snapped. The train’s rear end plunged fifty feet into the street. Cobblestones exploded. Glass cars burst into shards. Like the tail of a destroying beast, the writhing train smashed into buildings on both sides. Men fell beneath the crush. Those who escaped were blocked from the station—and the king.

  Chris rode around another corner, back into view of the station. The contorted train filled the street, obstructing any chance of passage on horseback.

  Koraudian soldiers flooded the station. Tireus’s adjutants flocked around him, and the king drew his pistol and fought at their sides. But they were trapped, all of them. As the Laeler army crumbled, a Koraudian pointed at Tireus in recognition. In seconds, the king’s was the only green tabard in a sea of red.

  Chris flung himself from his horse, snatched up a fallen pistol, and clambered through the wreckage.

  A Koraudian toppled Tireus from his saddle, but the Koraudians around him, cavalry and footmen alike, kept him from hitting the ground. Eager hands reached up to grab a piece of him—arms, legs, hair, clothing. They swallowed him up, and then he reappeared, more or less upright, his hands wrenched behind his back.

  Chris hauled himself up the side of a car, ignoring the bite of broken glass. He pulled the chewser’s trigger, and his shot ripped through a Koraudian’s back. The gun, useless after its single shot, rebounded in his hand, and he threw it aside.

  Orias leapt onto the car and seized his arm. “You can’t fight an entire Koraudian battalion!”

  He tried to yank free, but Orias’s grip tightened.

  From the ground, Raz shouted, “The king’s lost! You can’t get him back this way!”

  He wobbled on the slanted side of the skycar and gasped for air.

  Walk away, walk away—that’s what they were telling him to do. But wasn’t that what he’d al
ready just done? He’d walked away from Tireus, from the men who had pledged allegiance to him, and from the responsibilities he had accepted as the Gifted.

  Just like his father had walked away after the car wreck, he had walked away.

  Shots ripped past, and more glass exploded. He gave in to Orias’s hand on his arm. They leapt back to the street and ran to where the Rievers held the two horses.

  Pitch scrambled up behind Chris and gripped his shoulders. “We can’t save the king now. If we don’t leave, they’ll capture you too!”

  Chris hauled his horse around to gallop away. Every muscle fiber in his body ripped with the movement.

  _________

  By the time Chris and Orias reached the protective front of the Cairns, a murky dusk backlit the clouds. Chris galloped through the only opening in the wall of stones, then he dismounted and tossed his reins to an orderly.

  “Where are you going?” Pitch asked.

  “Allara has to be told what happened back there.” And because he was to blame, she would hear it from his mouth.

  At the base of the hill, a thread of smoke streaked upwards and tossed gold sparks across the sky—the signal for a truce. A long moment later, a squad of Koraudians galloped across the meadow to within earshot of the Cairns. A man in a leather doublet dismounted and motioned for someone behind him to follow. Even without his spyglass, Chris knew it was Mactalde. Behind him, two soldiers stepped from their horses and yanked a third man out of his saddle.

  Tireus.

  Chris stopped short.

  The orange of Allara’s dress flashed. She threw herself against the wall, her face tilted to the man on her right, her neck muscles rigid as she snapped inaudible words.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of Lael. I’ve a proposition for you.” Mactalde’s voice echoed up the face of the hill. “A twist of fate has left your esteemed monarch in my possession. However, I’m quite prepared to return him to your safekeeping.”

  The silence of a hundred people holding their breath covered the hillside.

  The man with whom Allara had been speaking hauled his bulk up onto the cairn. It was Amras Denegar, her uncle. “What are your terms?”

  Mactalde draped his hands over the hilt of his sheathed sword. “All I want is the Gifted.”