Nikolai had no intention of letting them recover from the first strike. He signaled his forces on the ground, and General Pensky ordered his tank battalion forward, followed by infantry and Grisha, with Adrik at the lead. This was their chance to seize the advantage and force their enemy into a hasty retreat.
“Is it too much to hope that they’ll just pack up and go home?” Nadia asked as Nikolai descended to the field.
“They won’t,” Tolya said, slinging his rifle onto his broad back. “Not with Brum in charge.”
Nikolai believed it. Brum’s political future was tied to the success of this campaign—a brutal and decisive victory that would grant Fjerda most of western Ravka and put the east within their grasp. With enough titanium, Ravka could have simply stood back and fired on the Fjerdan forces until they were too weakened to advance. But they couldn’t build a house from bricks they didn’t have.
Nikolai was more tired and more afraid for his people than he’d ever been, but he could sense the hope in them. The night before, he had walked the camp, talking to his troops and his commanders, stopping to share a drink or play a game of cards. He had tried not to think of how many of them might not survive this battle.
“We’re ready with the second volley?” he asked.
“On your order,” said Nadia.
“And the Starless?”
Tolya bobbed his head toward the east. “They’re encamped on the periphery of the fighting.”
“No engagement?”
“None.”
“Are they armed?”
“Hard to tell,” said Tolya. “For better or worse, they’re people of faith. They’ll fight with fists and sticks if they have to.”
“Maybe someone will shoot the Darkling,” Nadia suggested.
“Then I’ll have to send Jarl Brum a nice thank-you note.” Nikolai didn’t know what the Darkling intended, but the Sun Soldiers would be ready.
Leoni appeared, her purple kefta already thick with dust and soot. “The Fjerdan lines are forming up again.”
“Second volley,” said Nikolai.
She nodded, her face grim, as she and Nadia returned to their positions. Nikolai knew neither of them would forget what they’d witnessed today. They were fighters, soldiers; they’d both seen combat and worse. But this was a different kind of bloodshed, murder at a distance, final and swift. David had warned them it would change everything. Bigger rockets, with longer range, would mean they could fire on much larger targets from afar. Where does it end? Tolya had asked. And Nikolai didn’t know. They couldn’t just push the Fjerdans back today. They had to somehow beat them badly enough to make them question war with Ravka entirely.
“Tolya—”
“No word from Zoya and Genya yet.”
Had they succeeded? His troops were counting on reinforcements from the Grisha and First Army in the south. And he needed to know she was all right.
Shouts rang out down the Ravkan line, and a moment later the second volley of missiles flew, lobbed even farther into the Fjerdan ranks. But this time the Fjerdans were ready. Their tanks rolled over the smoldering bodies of their own troops and their infantry surged forward.
That was it: two volleys, the last of their missiles. In the trenches, he saw Leoni’s troops reloading, but he knew those shells were steel, not titanium, and empty of explosives. If any Fjerdan scouts were watching, Nikolai didn’t want them to know just how vulnerable Ravka was.
Most battles were waged over weeks, long slogs through bullets and blood. But Ravka couldn’t fight that kind of war. They didn’t have the funds, the flyers, the bodies to sacrifice. So this would be their stand. If the Saints were watching, he hoped they were on Ravka’s side. He hoped that they had protected Zoya in the south. He hoped they’d fight beside him now.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Tolya. “Put down that gun.”
Nikolai checked the sights on his rifle. “I can’t very well plunge heroically into battle unarmed.”
“We need you alive to issue commands, not blown apart by Fjerdan repeaters.”
“I have officers to issue commands. This is our last chance to make a real charge. If we lose, Ravka won’t need a king anyway.”
Tolya sighed. “Then I suppose you won’t need bodyguards. We go together.”
As they drew closer to the front lines, the noise was overwhelming, the thunder of tanks and artillery like a hammer to the head. They pushed forward through the ranks, past the injured and those preparing to be called into battle.
“Korol Rezni!” soldiers shouted when they caught sight of him.
King of Scars. He didn’t mind the name so much anymore.
“Who fights beside me?” he called back.
And they bellowed their names in response, falling into step behind him.
Nikolai smelled gunpowder, burning flesh, turned earth—as if the whole field had been dug as a grave. He remembered Halmhend, the bodies spread out before him, the spatter of red on Dominik’s lips as he died. This country gets you in the end, brother. Don’t forget it. Nikolai had promised to do better, to build something new. But in the end, all his inventions and diplomacy had come down to this: a brawl in the dirt.
He was walking, then running, and then he was in the thick of it. Nikolai’s world narrowed to smoke and blood, the sounds of gunfire, the roar of tanks. Figures emerged in flashes, and there was only the briefest moment to tell friend from foe. The Fjerdan helmets helped—a design Nikolai had never seen before but distinct from what the Ravkan soldiers wore. He shot, shot again, reloaded. Someone ran at him from his left—a gray uniform. He yanked the knife from his belt and plunged it into a soft belly. This was a feeling he had been happy to forget, the knowledge that death walked with you, breathing down your neck, guiding your hand but ready to turn the blade on you in the space of a moment.
A bullet grazed his shoulder and he flinched back, lost his footing. Tolya was there, laying down cover as Nikolai righted himself, reloaded, strode forward again. He wouldn’t remember these faces, brief glimpses like ghosts, bodies underfoot, but he knew he would see them in his nightmares.
“Nikolai!” shouted Tolya.
But Nikolai had already heard the beast approaching—the gigantic transporter they’d glimpsed in their first engagement with the Fjerdans, the one that had been full of drugged Grisha. Its huge treads thundered over the earth, metal gears shrieking, the air thick with the stink of burning fuel.
Nikolai had ordered his remaining flyers to keep Fjerda’s air support at bay as best they could, but to watch for the transport. Now he saw them descend, releasing clouds of the Zemeni antidote. But the Squallers who rode atop the vehicles were wearing masks this time. They raised their hands, driving back the haze of antidote in a hard gust that sent the flyers wobbling off course.
“Those masks!” Tolya shouted over the din.
They weren’t ordinary masks, like those worn on the Ravkan side. Nikolai suspected they were being used to keep Fjerda’s Grisha dosed with parem.
The transport’s huge metal mouth opened and another row of sickly Grisha emerged, masks in place. All along the Fjerdan line, soldiers were pushing strange objects into position—big metal disks somewhere between a dish and a bell shape, winter sun gleaming off their curved edges. Nina’s parabolas. Songbird. Suddenly Nikolai understood the strange helmets the Fjerdan soldiers wore.