Chapter Fourteen
The Front
Kolakolvia
Illarion Glazkov
Illarion had never heard a man scream before, not truly.
Alkovich was screaming, and it made Illarion want to stab his shovel into his own ears to rupture the eardrums. Anything to stop that sound. The baker’s son was on his knees, one hand holding the remains of his other arm, which had been blown off by Almacian gunfire. His belly had been torn open, his guts spilled everywhere. One of his legs had been shredded. Blood spurted onto the muddy ground, where it mixed with the blood from all the other dead and dying.
Indistinguishable.
Object 74 stepped on him.
The screaming stopped.
An act of mercy. Illarion had seen men die far worse . . . and he’d only been here a day.
The leader of 3rd Platoon—Sotnik Chankov—was driving Object 74. The armored head swiveled back and forth as he made sure all the other Objects under his command were reloaded and had fresh drivers. The crew who were not currently riding in walking magical bunkers were hugging the dirt, because staying low meant you were less likely to get shot. Satisfied they were ready, Chankov’s magnified voice bellowed, “Objects forward!”
Chankov’s command cut through the maelstrom of gunfire and yelling as one of the armored suits of 3rd Platoon rose up and started stomping forward. Immediately the Almacian guns opened up on them with renewed fury. Illarion saw hundreds of blue flashes ripple across the Wall as bullets collided with the golem shields. Noise engulfed the world.
Every instinct told him to run away. To hide. To avoid this madness. Except he kept his eyes on Object 12. His entire purpose in life today was to support that machine and keep it in the fight. As the Object walked, the dismounted crew had to keep up. By crawling preferably, but sometimes that wasn’t possible.
“Heads up, Wallen! We’ve got an obstacle!” shouted Dostoy, and probably unsure if he’d been heard or not, he reached over and shook Illarion’s arm. “Glazkov, clear that before he trips!”
Thankfully the current driver, Sebastian Wallen, had heard Dostoy’s warning, and stopped their Object. Illarion edged forward in the muck, heedless of the filth already covering him. The aura created by the golem’s magic would provide some protection from the incoming fire, but if he moved outside of that, he’d end up like Alkovich.
When Wallen fired 12’s cannon, Illarion was hammered by the sound directly above him. If he lived through today he’d probably be as deaf as he was blind. Fat brass shells fell from the cannon’s ejection port and bounced off Illarion’s back. One stuck and burned his skin before rolling off.
Bracing himself against the right leg of the suit, he reached forward with his shovel and probed the ground ahead. Muddy, but generally solid. There were blue sparks right in front of his face as Almacian bullets bounced off the magic. A thick beam of wood sprouting nails was the only obstacle he could find sufficient to trip their Object, so he hooked one of the many nails with the back edge of his shovel and tugged. It was long and heavy, but Illarion was strong and desperate.
He dragged the board back through the protective barrier, then passed it back to the other members of his crew. A woman he only knew as “Patches” grabbed the board, took a couple of quick readying breaths to move it to the designated debris pile. No resources were allowed to go to waste, and it could potentially trip up an Object if they had to retreat.
Patches sprinted toward their rear where the debris pile lay. She was almost there when a bullet made it through the shield and hit her in the back of the leg. She fell, landing heavily on the board she carried. There had been so many nails in that board. Patches wasn’t moving.
Helping her wasn’t his assignment. He tore his gaze away and redirected it forward.
Ever forward.
A few steps later, he was told to clear another obstacle. A jagged chunk of concrete. Once again he hooked it and pulled. It came sucking out of the mud, and it wasn’t nearly as big or anchored as Dostoy had thought, and Object 12 could have easily kicked it aside, so Illarion had just risked his life for nothing. It wasn’t the first time today and probably wouldn’t be the last.
As 3rd Platoon moved and shot, 2nd Platoon prepared for their push. When 3rd burned out, 2nd would move. When they burned out, 3rd would take their place. The entire morning and afternoon had progressed like this. A grueling advance that happened a step here, another two there. The Wall had barely progressed a hundred yards.
Today’s mission was to reclaim Trench 302, which had been lost during the last Almacian push. Trench 301 lay behind them, filled with foot soldiers waiting for the order to pull themselves over the edge and charge. But that order wouldn’t come yet. Not until the Wall was nearly to their goal. Until then the infantry waited, safe in their trenches. Right then Illarion really hated them for it.
Some of their Objects had gotten stuck in the mud. Getting them out would have been a nightmare even without the hail of gunfire. Illarion hadn’t been issued a gun. All he had was a shovel. The crew had a few rifles split among them in case the Almacians closed, but their real weapons were hooks, chains, pry bars, wire cutters, and buckets of water. Their purpose was to keep their Object upright and moving inevitably forward.
12’s crew was down two so far. The first had edged too far forward to clear debris—the remains of a barbed wire fence—from their suit’s path and an Almacian sniper had put a round through his eye. From that moment forward, the remaining crew had wordlessly decided Illarion would be the one to clear all debris. The rational part of his mind understood the decision. He was the strongest, had the longest reach, and was the newest. He was expendable.
The Wall was making too much progress. The Almacians had to stop them before the Kolakolvian infantry would be able to charge safely across the field of death. The guns fell silent for a moment, which Chankov used to urge them to take a few more feet. Then a whole line of spiked helmets popped up from the trench ahead. They all fired at once. Then immediately fresh rifles must have been put into their hands, because they shot again. Then another set of rifles. Then another.
It went on, and on. Illarion hadn’t known there was this many rifles or bullets in the whole world. All he and the other dismounts could do was huddle behind the protective shielding and pray it held. All of the Objects stopped walking, holding fast like rocks at the bottom of a waterfall.
All those rifles. To Illarion it wasn’t just a display of firepower, but of wealth. Was Almacia truly that rich? To be able to outfit all their soldiers with rifles was impressive enough, but to give them several? Barely one in three soldiers amongst the Kolakolvian trenchers had rifles. And after seeing how rusty some of those weapons were, he wasn’t even sure how many of them worked.
The right leg of the armored suit felt warm against his back. If the metal was that hot this far down, then the inside—
“Pull me out!” The screaming order from the current driver spurred them all into action. “Now! Get me out of this Sister’s damned suit!”
12 had taken too many hits, absorbed too much energy. Illarion stood up and grabbed the access handles on the suit’s back and yanked them down. He pulled the hatch open and was struck by a wave of heat. Wallen was unbuckling the harness with shaking hands. Illarion hurried and helped, and when the last buckle was undone, he grabbed a handful of sweat-drenched cloth, and hauled Wallen out, dropping him to the ground behind the Object.
Ivan Dostoy, a heavily scarred member of the crew with an eagle tattooed onto his chest scar, threw a bucket of water into the open cavity of the suit, causing an explosion of steam to billow out. Illarion itched to climb into the Object. It called to him, begging to be driven. He reached out, gripped the hatch, and began to pull himself up.
Dostoy pushed Illarion back, then pulled himself in.
Another member of the crew—Illarion didn’t even know the man’s name—started helping Dostoy, all while giving Illarion a disdainful look. Illarion may have passed his test, and thus the army allowed him to drive on the battlefield, but that meant nothing to the vets. He was still junior man on the crew. He was last in the rotation.
The intense Almacian volley had caused too many suits to overheat. Chankov shouted for 3rd Platoon to halt. The Objects of 2nd Platoon immediately began tromping forward, past their stopped brethren, to continue the fight.
The Object to his immediate right—74—stopped, and its crew pulled the doors open. Through the cloud of steam billowing out the back, Chankov calmly hopped out. The man wiped away the sweat streaming down his face, then motioned for someone to replace him. They flung a bucket of water inside to cool it a bit, then the next crew member climbed inside and began putting on the harness. Chankov looked one way down the line, nodded in approval, then looked Illarion’s way. Their officer took in the shorthanded crew, the previous driver on the ground, still moaning in pain, and Chankov shook his head in disgust. He sprinted between the two Objects, even though that meant he was outside the protective aura for a second, and then strode over to kneel next to Wallen. Chankov scooped up a handful of mud and wiped them over the other man’s burned skin.
“These aren’t even going to scar. Pull yourself together.”
“I was frying in there, Sotnik. 12’s been hotter than hell all morning.”
“Yeah, yeah. They’ve burned too many of your crew out today. Where’s Patches?”
Illarion pointed back toward where she was lying in the mud. Probably dead. He didn’t know.
Chankov looked, scowled, swore, then turned to Illarion. “This must be a blessing from the Sisters, farm boy! Your first day on the front, and it looks like you’re going to get to drive your Object after all. You’re next, Glazkov.”
“I’ll be ready, sir!”
“That’s what I like to hear. Next debris run, whoever’s not up in the rotation check her. If she’s alive drag her to cover. Got it?” Once he got some nods, Chankov sprang up and ran back to his crew, grabbed a shovel from one of the men, and immediately began clearing the ground in front of his Object. An artillery shell went off just ahead of 74, pelting its shield with fragments, but Chankov just shouted, “Another glorious day on the Wall!”
The man’s attitude was oddly infectious. In spite of the carnage, in spite of the chaos and blood, Illarion found himself grinning.
While 2nd Platoon took the heat, 3rd prepared to move. Cannons were reloaded. Even as much as clearing debris was terrifying and exhausting, Illarion was glad he hadn’t been given ammo duty. The soldiers tasked with reloading the arm cannons had to drag a sled full of crates filled with the heavy shells along behind the Object. They were more mule than man. Only when Illarion looked their way he realized that the sled was a lot lighter than earlier, down to its final crate, and there were only a few of the giant brass clips left inside.
Would they have to run back to the trench and then come back with more? They’d be far outside the golem shields if that happened. It would be certain death. Surely the army would order a withdrawal once the Wall ran out of ammo? But then again, after the inhumanity he’d seen today, Illarion wasn’t so sure.
2nd Platoon didn’t last long before they ground to a halt. Apparently running out of ammunition was not a problem the Almacians suffered from.
“Objects forward!” Chankov bellowed. Since he was dismounted his voice wasn’t nearly as loud, but the command was repeated by his driver and was echoed down the line.
The Objects churned forward under the relentless gunfire. Illarion again checked the stability of the ground, then pulled back another nail-ridden beam that was planted solid enough to cause a misstep. He handed it to the crew member he didn’t know the name of.
Just like Patches before him, he took a couple quick breaths then sprinted for the debris pile. Illarion held his breath, waiting for a sniper to hit the running form. The crew member threw the wooden beam onto the pile ahead of him, then slid to a stop by the still form of Patches. He flipped her over, pulled the beam off and out of her. He tossed the bloody beam onto the pile and must have discovered that Patches was still alive. Because he calmly picked her up and began running back toward the safety of Trench 301. Splotches of mud fountained up around him as bullets narrowly missed their mark. He jumped down to pass her off to the medics. Surprisingly it was only a moment later that he reappeared, carrying two buckets of water, and started running back.
I’m surrounded by the insane, Illarion thought.
When he turned back to the fight, nothing had changed. The Almacian soldiers were still firing, showing no signs of letting up. Shells screamed out of the sky and exploded around them, hurling piles of dirt. The air around the Objects shimmered in blue mirages. Even though they kept changing drivers, the suits retained much of the heat, so each new driver lasted a shorter amount of time. How much longer could they withstand this madness? Time passed in a haze of confusion and exhaustion as Illarion kept crawling, poking, tugging, and fighting things stuck in the ground. When he looked up from his duty, the enemy trench seemed much closer.
From overhead, he heard the single caw of a raven.
From his left was a horrible noise, screaming, but magically magnified. Object 08 was twitching spasmodically, mimicking the tortured movements of its driver. Its crew, still at full strength, were frantically trying to yank the thrashing hatch doors open. The screaming stopped abruptly in a way that made Illarion’s skin crawl. 8’s crew finally got the back hatch open, and out tumbled the steaming corpse of its pilot. The body was unrecognizable, covered in extreme burns. The air smelled like burnt pork, making Illarion simultaneously hungry and nauseous.
He went back to work. A moment later he nearly got killed because he was getting too far ahead of the shield. Leaving it caused a visible shimmer, and he ducked right back inside a heartbeat before a cannon shell pulverized the dirt ahead of him.
Dostoy had abruptly stopped moving. Illarion stood, ran around the back, and put his hand on Object 12. It was hot to the touch. Nearly scalding. He pounded on the hatch. “Dostoy! Can you hear me?”
No response.
Chankov called another halt. Up and down the Wall, crews began pulling drivers from the suits. At this distance, he couldn’t make out the health of those being yanked free.
He grabbed the access handles but jerked his hands away with a hiss of pain. The metal felt like it had been resting in a forge. Illarion ripped his shirt off and wrapped it around his hands. The cloth smoldered, but the handles turned easily this time. He flung the hatch wide. The air that came out felt like the blacksmith’s furnace in Ilyushka. “Dostoy!”
Still no response. So he used the back of the Object’s left leg to boost himself into the suit. Illarion climbed in enough to find the man was breathing but unconscious. Like he had with Wallen he got him unbuckled, then he tossed Dostoy out and into the cool mud behind the suit.
A bucket of water went by him. Steam blasted out.
“Get in there,” Wallen yelled. “We have to push forward or we’ll lose our momentum. We’re almost there!”
To his right, Illarion saw Chankov shove the other crew members aside in order to climb back into Object 74 himself. Their officer was already bellowing for the Objects to move forward.
The inside of the suit was so hot it made his brief moments in it during training seem like a winter’s night by comparison.
He turned back just in time to get hit with another bucket of water. That was their last one. Wallen was waving back toward Trench 301 with the empty bucket, and their nameless crew member wasn’t back yet with more.
Illarion hurried and started buckling his legs in. Wallen climbed up and helped with the arms. “Remember your training, kid.”
“Take care of my shovel for me.”
Wallen laughed. Illarion hadn’t been trying to be funny. That shovel had served him well today. He’d become fond of it . . . and the commissar had threatened to have them put against a trench wall and shot if they lost or damaged any of the Tsar’s tools.
“You’ve got this.” Wallen leapt down and closed the hatch. As soon as the suit was sealed, the heat became nearly unbearable.
But his vision cleared.
Before, he’d only been able to see a tiny part of the battlefield. Now he could see everything. Object 12’s giant head turned as Illarion glanced left and right. The Wall wasn’t moving forward in unison as much as he thought, but had become staggered. Their barriers were no longer overlapping. They were closing on the enemy trench, but they were also close to defeat. It was now or never.
On his left arm was the cannon, and he watched as Wallen shoved their last stripper clip into the hopper. Clasped in the Object’s right hand was something officially called an M27 Battlefield Entrenching Device, but all the soldiers in the Wall just called it a halberd, because that’s what it looked like. It was a simple steel bar with a gigantic blade on the end. It looked more like a piece of farm equipment than a weapon.
“Forward! Forward all!” Chankov ordered.
It wouldn’t be enough. The heat in the suit was already nearly too much to bear. The world was marred in blue before him as hundreds of bullets crashed against the suit’s barrier. It was terrifying, and Object 12 flinched along with Illarion.
Ahead, just a few steps, was another old section of barbed wire fencing. He pushed the suit forward, praying to the Sister of Nature that he wouldn’t fall over. The suit felt nimble to Illarion, and he briefly wondered why so much effort was spent clearing debris, when he could just easily step over them instead. He’d spent hours doing this sort of thing today, so he knew that mess would take Wallen and the crew far too long to clear with the wire cutters, so instead he stabbed his halberd’s mighty plow blade into the ground, then released his fingers so the Object would let go. Then he bent the Object at the waist and reached down its open hand. His real arm briefly sizzled as bare skin pressed against exposed metal.
He drove 12’s fingers deep into the mud. As he made a fist with this real hand, 12 mimicked the motion. And when he straightened with a fist full of barbwire, the Object effortlessly ripped up several yards of fencing and dirt. Without even really thinking about it, he hoisted it back and flung the mud-encrusted mass of wire and wood at the Almacian soldiers in the trench ahead of him. There was a pause in the gunfire as his improvised weapon crashed through them. For a moment, their firing rhythm was broken.
Chankov immediately shouted, “Press before they recover!”
Illarion retrieved his halberd then surged forward. The suit felt completely under his control. And the brief respite in incoming fire almost seemed like it was giving his Object a chance to cool. The golem magic didn’t just help his vision, but also his hearing, and now that he was inside he could hear Chankov muttering under his breath about how they were almost there, and the other drivers’ cursing.
Under all that, Illarion swore he could hear whispers . . . but from whom, he wasn’t sure.
“All Objects, open fire!” Chankov roared. “Pour it on!”
You didn’t aim an Object’s cannon, so much as point. Illarion lifted his left arm toward the trench and Object 12 obediently followed. Three of his fingers and his thumb went through a ring that corresponded to the Object’s digits, but his trigger finger was free to fire the cannon.
The real noise began.
The cannon spat fire into the trench, chewing part of it into oblivion.
This next part was complicated. Illarion had to pull his fingers from the rings in order to reach up with his real arm to pull back the bolt on the underside of the cannon. Outside, the spent shell was extracted and tossed into the mud, and when he rammed the bolt back forward, a new shell was stripped from the brass clip and shoved into the chamber. It required a lot of strength and made Illarion’s already sore bicep ache, but it made a very satisfying sound.
He swept the cannon from side to side trying to cover as much of the trench edge as possible as he walked forward. The Objects were so tall that even from this angle he could now see down into the enemy trench. The Almacians had spikes on top of their helmet, and as soon as he saw one of those, he fired.
BOOM! Cha-chunk. Another spike. BOOM! Cha-chunk. Pieces of what had been a human being went flying.
The majority of incoming fire had ceased, and the hot air inside the suit seemed to cool. His terror was still there, but it was in the background. Chankov was moving faster, so Illarion matched him step for step. Together their guns were a symphony of thunder and fire. They were getting too far ahead of their dismounts, but Chankov had to know what he was doing. They were nearly to the edge of Trench 302, shoulder to shoulder.
There was a new sound from behind them. It took Illarion a moment to realize what it was, because he’d not heard it so far today. Whistles. The infantry were about to charge.
An Almacian popped his head above the edge of the trench and hurled a grenade at the two Objects. The bulb of metal on the end of a stick flipped end over end straight for him, but to Illarion’s perception through the suit, it seemed to move slowly. The explosion wouldn’t do too much to the armor, but it could destabilize the ground beneath causing the Objects to topple. And all through training Spartok had warned them about the dangers of falling over on the battlefield.
Without thinking, Illarion twisted 12 to the side and swung with the flat of his halberd. His weapon smacked the grenade back, directly into the trench. The instant before the explosion turned the throwing Almacian—and his neighbors—into a pink mist, Illarion thought he saw an expression of bewilderment on the man’s face. Had they never seen an Object do that before?
Illarion kept shooting. A group of brave Almacians swarmed him. It was desperate, but if they got onto his suit, they could pop the hatch, and murder the vulnerable driver inside. Illarion swung the halberd and it went through their bodies like a scythe through wheat. It was odd. It should not have felt so effortless to cut a man in half, sending blood and entrails spiraling through the air. Only one soldier made it past the blade, but he thumped that one with his gun arm and his skull popped like a winter melon.
He and Chankov had broken through. A hole had been punched in the Almacian defense. The other Objects were capitalizing on that, massacring the Almacians in their holes. And then masses of Kolakolvian trenchers ran screaming past them. The infantry who were lucky enough to get issued guns fired them once on the way in, and then leapt down into the trenches, fighting the enemy with bayonets, knives, clubs, and even fists.
Illarion stopped. He could no longer attack downward without endangering the infantry. He couldn’t even shoot at the Almacians who were fleeing to their next trench because he was out of ammunition. He’d not even realized he’d gone through an entire clip.
After ten minutes of brutality, the Almacians broke. Despite all the suffering he’d seen visited on his people today, the sight of the infantry killing wounded and helpless Almacians still made him feel sick. The sounds of their jeers—as if the infantry had done much—made his blood boil.
But it was over.
Trench 302 belonged to Kolakolvia. Chankov’s final order was for the suits to take cover in their new home.
A trench number didn’t represent a single ditch in the ground, it represented several intertwined passages of varying widths and directions. Most of them were only wide enough for a single man to walk down at a time, because the wider the trench, the more likely it was for a shell to land in it, but any trench that had ever belonged to the Kolakolvians had much wider, reinforced spots cut every so often to hide an Object. Illarion spotted one of those and walked 12 carefully down into it.
A moment later the hatch doors behind him opened, and he was pulled from the suit. Illarion’s vision dulled. He felt . . . less . . . than he had before. Diminished. The sounds of the whispers cut off in what he swore was protest.
Then Illarion felt the pain.
His left shoulder and arm felt like they were engulfed by fire. He tried to stand up, to reach over and grab at the wound like an animal, but his crew members held him down, as they dumped buckets of mud onto his arms, shoulder, and chest. That lessened the agony at bit.
A wave of exhaustion hit Illarion with a sucker punch, and he gave up all resistance. He lay there with his crew. Some of them were excited, talking about how they’d never seen an Object move like that, while others just stared off into space, silent.
There was a splash of mud as Chankov sat down heavily next to him. The officer gave him a weary smile. “I knew I liked you, Glazkov. You’re just as crazy as the rest of us. Keep this up and they’ll promote you. Witch’s tits, I may get promoted for this.”
“I just didn’t want to lose . . . ” Illarion was suddenly so weary he could barely speak. “All our progress—all those who died in the advance—would’ve been for nothing if we hadn’t taken this trench.”
Chankov’s expression grew sad for a moment. “It’s only a matter of time before we’re fighting to keep this ground, just like the Almacians did today. We’ve won this trench a dozen times, Glazkov. More than a dozen. Sisters have mercy on us.”
Illarion didn’t know how to respond, so he kept his mouth shut.
With a deep sigh, Chankov stood, then offered his hand to Illarion. Illarion took the offered hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. After the battle that never seemed to end, it seemed remarkably quiet. His whole left side throbbed.
Noticing Illarion’s discomfort, Chankov said, “You are going to have a beautiful set of scars, Glazkov. I think soon I’ll introduce you to The Needle.”
“Do I want to be introduced to The Needle?”
“Maybe not, but you’ve got no choice. You earned honor for the Wall today. I’ll see to it you don’t pay for a drink for the rest of the week.” Then the Sotnik’s face grew serious. “You did well today, kid. You may have saved some lives today. You are a natural in that Object. Better than I was in that same machine.”
Illarion nodded at the compliment, then was struck by what Chankov had said earlier.
“Sir?”
“Yeah?”
“If we get promoted, does that mean we get paid more?”
Chankov laughed, and clapped Illarion hard on his burned shoulder. He winced in pain.
“More pay? Don’t be absurd, Glazkov. Don’t be absurd.”