“We’re leaving the city?” Jenn asked. There was a peculiar quality to her voice that drew each of their gazes. She stiffened beneath them, but held Liam’s gaze without wavering.
“Did… did you want to stay?” Liam asked, incredulous. He gestured half-heartedly at the devastation around them. “Why?”
“No,” Jenn admitted. “I don’t want to stay. But the people here, the militia, Tobias’ men… there are going to be lots of injured. I thought you would want to stay and help, at least for a little while.”
“They won’t stay injured for long if the Occs take the city,” Julie warned.
Jenn looked at her then, and Liam could see her scowl beginning to form. He raised a placating hand before either of them could risk offending the other.
“Let’s focus on one thing at a time,” he said, doing his best to sound firm yet gentle. “Maybe the Occs will regroup now that the, um, Zhe…”
“Zhengfu Zhe!” Kathryn supplied helpfully, without accent. She beamed at him, obviously satisfied with her contribution.
“—the airship is destroyed,” Liam concluded. “Maybe they’ll pull back.”
The silence that answered him was not one of agreement, as evidenced by the expressions of the women around him. But no one contradicted him either. Instead, they merely offered half-hearted nods. Wincing, Julie stretched a bit before accepting Morgan from Nora’s arms and leaning weakly on the younger woman’s shoulder.
They departed slowly, Liam assuming the head of their makeshift formation and advancing a dozen or so paces as a ward against potential ambushes. Unsurprisingly, they’d gone less than a block before Kathryn caught up to him, slipping her hand into his and grinning up at him. He returned her smile, albeit in a tired sort of fashion, then stooped a bit toward her.
“Kat, I’ve got a job for you,” he said, barely louder than a whisper.
Her eyes widened and she nodded, face straining toward him.
“I want you to stay with Julie and Nora,” he said. As expected, the young woman’s eagerness vanished at once. Unabated, he continued. “This is important. If the Occs find us—hell, if anyone starts shooting—I want you to get them to safety. Protect them. Understood?”
Kathryn’s smile did not reappear, but she nodded nevertheless.
“Then, I want you to move as fast as you can. I’ll draw their attention and you hit them where they least expect it. Fast and strong, okay?”
A bit of Kathryn’s trademark smirk returned at that, curling the corner of her mouth on one side. She squeezed his hand, briefly, and then released it.
“Fast and strong,” she agreed. Drawing the bloodstained knife from her pocket, she spun it comfortably on her palm and veered away from him, back toward Julie and Nora where they brought up the rear.
Liam watched her go for a second, then returned his gaze to the dust-strewn stretch of road before him. He’d gone barely a dozen paces when Jenn materialized at his side, taking the opposite hand from the one Kathryn had. He jumped slightly, surprised by her sudden appearance and she laughed under her breath.
“That was nicely done,” she murmured. “You’re getting better at handling her.”
He eyed her a moment, then squeezed her hand once and let it fall.
“I thought you said she was dangerous,” he said.
“I did. And she is,” Jenn said, unapologetic. “But that was out there. She’s dangerous when we need to be quiet and subtle. Here, with everything going on, we could use a little dangerous.”
Liam snorted. “Glad you approve.”
“I didn’t say that,” Jenn countered, her voice growing even quieter. “This feels risky, Liam.”
“I thought you wanted to stay?”
“I do. And you’re right, the Occs will pull back to regroup.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Jenn stopped in her tracks, only for the span of a single step, but the brief hesitation was enough to draw Liam’s gaze. She frowned at him and shrugged to readjust the thin, battered pieces of her armor that remained. Then, her expression unchanged, she nodded in the direction of their destination. Even from many blocks away, the crumbling, still-smoking remains of the city wall could be seen over the single-story rooftops of the buildings nearest it.
“Where exactly do you think they’re planning to regroup?” she asked.
***
The gunfire began in earnest as they reached a point five or six blocks from the garrison. The sound of it, close, frequent, and utterly unlike the sporadic outbursts that had plagued the city for hours, was sufficient to make the hair on the back of Liam’s neck stand on end. He crouched in the middle of the street, hunting for any sign that he was the cause or target. When none came, he glanced back and was relieved to see Kathryn had quickly ushered her charges into the relative shelter of a half-crumbled building.
Jenn, on the other hand, had not gone quite so far. Though tucked in the slight depression of a doorway, she stood tall and scanned the street in a manner quite similar to Liam’s. Noticing his gaze, she cast a final look about and dashed to his side.
“It’s ahead of us,” she noted. Her sole remaining vine lay draped over her shoulder, curving upward like a scorpion’s tail.
“Should we split up?” he asked. “We could go on ahead and see who’s shooting.”
Jenn shook her head, her mouth a thin, tense line that left no color in her lips.
“There’s no point,” she said. “Either way, we know there are Occs. It’s better if we stay together. I don’t want to leave Julie unprotected.”
“She’s not—” Liam began to argue, then stopped short. There was no point in splitting hairs. “Fine. I’ll check things out. You stay with her and follow after. Just keep your distance.”
“That sounds like splitting up,” Jenn said. She grinned, just for a split-second, then squeezed his shoulder. “Be careful. We’ll be right behind you.”
Liam didn’t watch her go, though he did wait for the sound of her footsteps to fade somewhat before he straightened and continued onward. He wished Jenn would have agreed to linger back, but there was a certain logic to her advice. It made sense to keep Julie close to the one who could heal her, rather than risk her being stumbled upon, alone and isolated, by retreating Occ soldiers.
But, sensible or not, the nagging worry of Julie’s presence left him anxious and jumpy as he made his way toward the garrison. He paused frequently, peering down alleys and through open windows for signs of any ambushes. Finding none, he continued his slow, terrifying march toward the sound of continued gunfire.
He was still two blocks away when he got his first peek of the garrison. And it was barely a second later when the first bullet caught him in the arm.
Liam yelped, in surprise not pain, and stumbled as he was struck. He glanced around, certain he’d been struck from an unexpected direction. But no, the shot had come from the garrison. Frowning, he threw up his arms and walked toward the structure as quickly as he dared. To his relief, no more shots were fired in his direction, though the gunfire as a whole did not abate.
From the look of the courtyard, the garrison had been emptied of all its furniture. A makeshift barricade of heavy trunks and upturned tables reinforced the symbolic fence that ringed its outer limits. And from behind the hastily assembled wall, dozens of men and rifles could be seen protruding like quills. At the center of the defenses, a smoldering pair of fires sent up thin columns of smoke that quickly dispersed and joined the rest of the cloud that hung thick over everything.
It was difficult to hear anything over the echo of gunfire, but Liam could just make out the sound of a familiar voice, calling loudly over the din.
“Hold your fire, idiots! Hold—no, not you! You lot keep firing! I was talking to—damn it! Over here, son! Liam!”
Liam paused as a section of the perimeter wall shuddered and slid. In the gap, stood Colonel Ryan. Her face was pebbled with mud and flecks of w
hat looked like blood, but she flashed a grim smile as she waved him urgently forward.
Only too happy to comply, Liam hurried toward her and through the temporary gate.
“I’ll be damned,” she exclaimed. “Thought you’d be dead by now.”
“Not quite,” he said. Then, upon noticing the militiamen beginning to restore the wall, he added quickly, “Wait a minute. The others are coming.”
“Others?” the Colonel asked, distractedly. She glanced at him, then turned her attention back to the section of garrison that faced the destroyed city gate.
“The ones with me,” he said quickly, afraid of losing her attention. “Nora, Julie, and—”
“The mother?” she said. Her eyes darted to him and even in that momentary gaze, he could read her reluctance. “We’ll be overrun the second the Occs figure out who’s in charge of them. It isn’t safe here.”
“It isn’t safe anywhere,” Liam snapped before he could help himself.
“No shit. You lot should head north. Most of the Occs are here, so you might be able to break through one of the other gates. If you’re lucky, you can—”
“Nora and Julie took down the airship!” Liam interrupted, drawing looks from not only the Colonel but many of the men nearest them. “Please. We can help.”
Glaring at him, though not in a particularly hostile fashion, the woman huffed and threw up her arms.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Then tell them to hurry the fuck up. We need all the help we can get.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It wasn’t long before the others arrived. In fact, Liam had only just stepped through the gate to go looking for them when Jenn appeared at the end of the narrow street he’d traveled. Fortunately, this time, no one shot at the unexpected newcomer.
There was no need for debate or conversation. Without so much as a word of prompting, Julie squeezed past Liam’s side, patted his shoulder appreciatively, and took her eldest child from Nora’s arms. From there, she vanished into the garrison itself, passing out of sight, and for the moment, worry.
It was only when Nora made to follow her that Liam intervened.
“Nora,” he called, loudly enough to make himself heard over the continued gunfire. She paused, turning to look at him, and from her expression, it was obvious that she knew what he was about to ask.
“Okay,” she said, though her voice quavered more than a little. “How can I help?”
It was not a rhetorical question. Looking around, Liam could immediately see that the Colonel’s words had not been inaccurate. There were barely more than fifty militiamen clustered tightly inside the garrison’s walls and less than two-thirds of those looked to be in any fit state for fighting. All but a few of those that remained lined the forward wall that bore the brunt of the Occ attack. The half-dozen others, like the one that had shot him, nervously warded rest of the garrison’s perimeter, while a lone, harried-looking medic roamed amid the thirty or so casualties offering whatever paltry aid he could.
The Occs, on the other hand, seemed content to take their time. From the slight gaps and irregular edge of the wall, Liam could see dozens tucked among the many surrounding buildings and slums. Most of these seemed content to wait, emerging only rarely to fire off a shot or two, or doing so en masse whenever another ragtag bunch of survivors returning from the city’s depths arrived to scramble out through the city’s perforated wall. This irregular warfare made it almost impossible to calculate their true numbers, though Liam guessed they were at least equal to the surviving militiamen. Worse still, their scattered shelter made them infinitely less exposed than the crouching defenders lined almost shoulder to shoulder inside the garrison.
The one saving grace to the whole, miserable affair was that it made his reply to Nora’s question a simple conclusion to reach.
“Okay,” he said, dropping to one knee. “Here’s what we’ll do.”
Nora, Jenn, and Kathryn knelt likewise around him. Doing so brought them close, so close their faces nearly touched, but it was the only way in which he could speak without shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Nora, you and Jenn will target the Occs, just like the airship. Use anything you can. We don’t want anything left standing for the Occs to hide behind. Kathryn, you come with me. I’m going to heal as many people as I can and I need you to keep me bleeding.”
While Nora and Jenn had merely nodded in response to his instructions, Kathryn scowled at hers.
“Not kill Occs?” she complained.
Despite himself, Liam chuckled.
“Not yet,” he said. “Right now, I need your help. But once the Occs figure out what’s going on, they’re going to get desperate. So, if anyone gets injured, especially Jenn or Nora, I want you to bring them to me. I’ll keep healing them until this is over.” He exhaled shakily. “One way or another. Any questions?”
There were none.
Liam roamed the yard without stooping, much to the dismay of several militiamen along the walls. They called out to him, gesturing urgently for him to take cover. This noise subsided just as quickly as it began, as the better informed among them quickly shared their knowledge of Liam’s enhancement. This knowledge was passed on just as effectively to the Occs themselves, though it took nearly a dozen bullets for them to discover his relative immunity to their weapons. They ceased to fire at him, thereafter, and returned their deadly gaze to the garrison’s defenders.
The distraction Liam had provided, however, was sufficient to allow Jenn and Nora to reach their assigned position without impediment. No sooner had they crouched into place than he turned smartly on his heel and ran to the side of the beleaguered medic.
“Show me the dying!” he shouted over the echoing roar of gunfire. When the man barely glanced at him, Liam seized him by the arm and hauled him up from his current patient.
“Get off!” the man snapped. “Damn it, ‘m busy!”
Liam ignored him. “I can help!” he continued. “Show me the dying! I can save them!”
The medic stared at him, and from his expression, he would have much longer if not for the bullet that caught him in the neck just then. The man fell, dragging Liam down with him. His eyes bulged as he stared up at Liam, his hands clawing at his wounded neck.
“Kat!” he bellowed.
She had followed him in his roaming across the yard, crouching on all fours with the bearing of some feral beast. At his call, she dashed to his side, drew her knife, and plunged it without hesitation through the palm of his outstretched hand.
Liam winced, not from pain, but from the sight of his flesh impaled. He did not indulge the gruesome spectacle long. The moment Kathryn pulled the blade free, he clapped a hand to the medic’s neck, mixing his blood with the man’s own. He waited just long enough to be sure that the man’s wound would heal, then rose and moved on.
“Stay with me,” he said to Kat. Then, to the medic, he added, “When you can stand, show me the dying. I’ll heal them first.”
Kat nodded, then grinned and licked the blood from the flat of her knife.
Liam moved from casualty to casualty, smearing his blood across the gravest wounds he could find. Every so often, as the knife gash in his hand healed, he held it out and Kathryn would repeat her early assistance. For most of those he healed, the improvement was apparent immediately. The color returned to pale faces, groaning subsided, and motionless figures began to stir. The first of these was evening rising to her feet when the first of Nora’s grenades exploded.
From the sudden abatement of Occ fire, it was obvious that the detonation had caught them by surprise. It was not until the second explosion a few seconds later that they seemed to realize the danger. Shouts went up in a familiar, yet incomprehensible language as the Occs began to move, scuttling out from cover and sprinting for the gap in the city wall like fleeing insects. A raucous cry went up from the militiamen at the sight, followed by a barrage of gunfire. Several of the defenders even r
ose to their feet, bellowing out taunts and curses as they fired upon the retreating Occs.
Liam grinned, of course, but did not share in the celebrations. For one, he was far too busy healing the wounded to indulge in such things. For another, some part of him could not accept the notion that the Occs could be driven back by such a paltry counterattack. They had lost their advantage with the destruction of the airship, yes, but as Scott had pointed out, the troops massing at the Tennessee had not been conscripts and amateurs, but regulars.
Unfortunately, his pessimism soon proved correct. After a few minutes of blessed silence, during which he managed to heal all but the most minor injuries of the wounded militiamen, the distant sound of shouted orders began to filter through the smoky air. For a moment, that seemed to be the end of it. But then, like ants spilling from a disturbed hill, the Occs charged back through the broken down section of New Lewville’s wall.
The militia opened fire. In the blink of an eye, a half dozen of the Occs fell before the opening volley, staggering and falling amid the rubble. An explosion caught the next group as Jenn hurled the next of Nora’s grenades. But then, a few at a time, the Occs began to slip through the cracks in the defenses. They vanished amid the handful of remaining homes and huts, sheltering behind them and occasionally peeking out to take potshots at the garrison.
Liam stumbled forward as the first militiaman fell to the Occ counterattack. The man yelled in pain, his cries growing more acute as Kathryn reached him and dragged him indelicately away by an arm. Hurrying forward to minimize the man’s suffering, Liam held out a hand. Kathryn stabbed it almost without looking, then bounded away as another militiaman fell.
Soon, Liam found himself in a strange monotony, moving from casualty to casualty as soon as they occurred. The men and women he healed offered only occasional thanks as their wounds closed, but the relief on their faces when he appeared over them and as their pain vanished was thanks enough.
Feral Empires: Fanning Flames Page 21
