They would have done just that—if not for Nina Zenik’s warning. Hours before dawn, Fjerdan bombs had begun to fall on Ravkan military targets, places where they believed Ravkan flyers were grounded, a munitions factory, a shipyard. There had been nothing Nikolai could do about the shipyard; there simply wasn’t time. But everywhere else, flyers and airships and personnel had been moved to new locations.
And while the Fjerdans were unleashing their bombs, Nikolai’s special soldiers, his Nolniki—Grisha and First Army troops working together—had crept through the darkness of Nezkii and Ulensk, planting anti-tank mines under cover of night, an ugly surprise for an enemy who had believed it would face no resistance. The mines had been carefully mapped. One day Nikolai hoped they could call the Fjerdans friends, and he didn’t want to render all their borderlands useless.
The battlefield was a grim site: smoke and mud, Fjerdan tanks reduced to hunks of still-burning metal. But the mines had slowed the enemy, not stopped them. The tanks that survived the explosions charged ahead.
“Masks on!” He heard the call go down the line from his First Army captains and Second Army commanders. They had every reason to believe those tanks wouldn’t just be firing mortars but shells full of jurda parem, the gas that could kill ordinary men and instantly addict Grisha. “Prepare to engage!”
Nikolai looked to the skies. High above, Ravka’s flyers patrolled the clouds, making sure the Fjerdans couldn’t bomb their forces from the air and taking any opportunity to strafe the Fjerdan lines. Ravka’s flyers were lighter, more agile. If only they had the money for more machines.
“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.