Sylvia gave him one short, stiff nod.
No words came with it. Still, the anger coming back into her eyes was enough: she expected him to do his job. Revan had no plans to die in this frozen wasteland, so he turned and jumped out through the hole in the carriage wall.
Landing on the hard ground made his whole body complain.
His ribs and thighs ached. Half-healed cuts burned across his back. He was nowhere near full strength. Almost two weeks had passed since the Elixir of Vitality forced his body to regenerate nonstop for four minutes, yet he still hadn't recovered. On top of that, the beating in the Undergallows four nights ago was still in his bones. Elara had closed the wounds, but his Aura flow was still cracked and unstable. Every muscle felt like a bowstring pulled too tight.
'No speed today. If I try to go fast, my muscles will tear before anyone even touches me.'
So he would have to fight carefully, like a surgeon with a scalpel.
The Ashenmoor Corridor had turned into a slaughterhouse. Around the wreck, the surviving Vespera guards had formed a half circle. Their short carbines kept firing at the black-armored attackers coming down the ridge. Gunpowder and blood filled the air.
A stray bullet flew toward his head. Revan leaned slightly and flicked his sword up.
Clink.
Black steel cut the bullet in half in midair. Both pieces flew past his ears. Timing did all the work.
'Don't waste a single heartbeat.'
He moved through the chaos at a steady pace and kept track of every enemy. At the front, Dain was cutting through armor and bone with single swings of his broadsword. A few yards away, Cassian was crushing throats with his white-gloved hands and looked bored while doing it.
'The front will hold.'
Then he saw the smaller group.
Seven attackers had split off from the main assault and were running low through the gray haze. They ignored the VIP carriage and headed for the sealed cargo car at the back. Two of them were carrying big hexagonal breaching charges.
Shouting a warning would waste time, so Revan went after them himself.
Their leader, the one giving hand signals to the others, raised a rifle. Before he could pull the trigger, Revan was already in front of him. One step, one short swing. The man's throat was open before he even saw Revan move.
Revan turned to the second one before the first hit the ground.
That one stabbed at him with a heavy bayonet. With a twist of his hips, Revan let the blade brush past his coat. Then he used the man's own momentum to guide his sword into the slit of the visor.
One breath. Two bodies.
Without using speed, he read what each enemy was about to do and moved his blade the shortest possible distance. To the guards watching, it looked like the attackers were running onto his sword by themselves.
A third saboteur came at him with a spear. Even the parry shook Revan's tired arm all the way up. These men were well trained. Since the spearman attacked with fast thrusts, Revan stepped back twice and watched the rhythm. When the spear was fully extended, he hit the shaft near the tip and drove the point into the frozen dirt.
That left the man's guard wide open. Revan's blade cut across his neck.
Behind the rear carriages, the other four ran and scattered out of reach, dragging the charges with them.
Still breathing hard, Revan crouched next to the leader's body. Under the man's breastplate was a flat packet wrapped in oilskin and sealed with black wax. Without opening it, he shoved it inside his coat.
'Later. If there is a later.'
***
Three seconds was all the rest he got.
Across the battlefield came a sharp two-tone whistle. Revan frowned. Normal mercenaries would have panicked after losing an elite squad that fast. These men just changed tactics, like soldiers following orders. This was a paramilitary group, organized and well paid.
From the ridge behind the rear carriages, a new squad came down. Fifteen men. One look at their formation chilled him.
Six of them knelt in a staggered line with long rifles. Behind the shooters, the other nine advanced in a tight wall with heavy armor, halberds, trench swords, and tower shields. Ranged fire covering heavy infantry. Textbook tactics.
"Concentrated fire! Pin him down!"
'Wow, I'm flattered. I should start charging for VIP treatment.'
Muzzle flashes lit up the ridge.
Blocking a volley would have broken his wrists. So Revan dropped and rolled across the frozen ground while bullets tore up the dirt and sparked off the train's wheels. He threw himself behind the spearman's body and used its iron breastplate as cover.
Thud. Thud. CRACK.
Bullets slammed into the dead man. Revan felt every hit in his bruised ribs. He took a shallow breath and made himself think.
'Six shooters, forty yards away, spread out so I can't take them in a line. Nine heavy fighters, twenty yards and closing. When the rifles reload, the wall will charge. Stay pinned, and they flank me. Run, and the rifles shred me.'
Somehow, he had to break their timing.
The Dead Zone made full-body enhancement impossible, because its pressure squeezed his chest and punished anything he pushed outward. Instead, he sent a thin thread of Aura into his calves and right shoulder only. It felt like forcing boiling water through a frozen pipe.
"Advance!"
The gunfire stopped while six rifles reloaded. One and a half seconds.
That was his chance.
He kicked the corpse across the frost toward the shield wall to trip them up, then ran the other way, low and zigzagging so the rifles couldn't aim at him. One bullet tore through his coat and cut deep into his left shoulder. Somehow he barely felt it. After four days of beatings, his idea of pain had changed.
Here, his Shadow Storage was useless, because it ran on mana constructs. Because he had expected that, he had sewn hidden pockets and small leather sheaths into the inside of his coat the night before they left. Now his left hand came out of them holding four black kunai.
Still running, he threw them with a snap of the wrist he had practiced for years. The blades disappeared into the gray.
Forty yards away, the rifle line fell apart. One kunai went into the first shooter's throat. Another punched through the eyepiece of the man next to him. The third hit a rifleman in the shoulder and made him drop his gun. Even the fourth, which bounced off a helmet, ruined that man's aim.
No more covering fire came.
But Revan's momentum had carried him right into the path of the nine.
They roared and broke formation to surround him. From the right, a halberd came down to cut him in half. On the left, a trench sword stabbed up at his stomach.
He dropped into a slide on the frost, knees bent so far that his back almost touched the ground. The halberd passed just above his nose. Before the man could recover from the swing, Revan slammed his pommel up into the man's kneecap and felt it break.
Down went the big man, screaming. Revan used his falling body as a step to jump into the middle of their formation.
Surrounded like this, speed didn't matter anymore. All he had left were angles and leverage, so he would have to be ruthless.
One of the swordsmen stabbed at his side. Revan knocked the blade aside with the flat of his sword, stepped in, grabbed the man's wrist, and twisted until the man's sword went into the thigh of another fighter charging from behind. That one screamed and dropped his guard. With a backhand swing, Revan cut his head off. Moments later, the disarmed swordsman took the pommel to his temple.
Six left standing.
By now they understood their mistake. In a tight circle, their long weapons kept getting in each other's way. One man with one good sword could hide behind their own bodies.
"Spread out! Surround him!"
"Too late."
A shield hit Revan in the ribs. He kept going anyway and slipped inside the closest man's reach. His crossguard jammed under the man's chin. With his free hand on the back of the helmet, he twisted. The snap was loud enough to hear over the fighting.
He shoved the body into two others. Before they could recover, he stabbed through the gap under one breastplate, cut across an open throat, then kicked a knee and drove his blade down into the falling man's neck.
Blood soaked into the gray frost.
The last two backed away, their eyes wide with terror behind their visors. Neither of them wanted any more of this. Both dropped their weapons and ran for the ridge.
Revan let them go, because he had nothing left to chase them with.
His legs started shaking as the Aura bursts caught up with him. He leaned on his sword like a cane to stay standing. Somewhere at the front of the train, Dain and Cassian were still fighting.
'If I don't get overtime pay for this, I'm quitting.'
After spitting blood onto the frost, he pulled his sword out of the frozen mud, planning to drag himself back to the wrecked dining car.
As the ringing in his ears faded, a low vibration came up through the soles of his boots. Deep and steady, like a giant heartbeat, it came from the very end of the train.
Slowly, Revan turned his head.
The sealing rune on the cargo car's iron doors had woken up. Its lines of dried blood were pulsing with a sick red light. From inside the steel box came the slow, heavy sound of claws scraping metal.
Scritch. Scritch. SCRATCH.
His shoulders dropped as he stared at the shaking doors.
"Oh, fuck me."