Page 80 of Storm to Victory
A few of the common people peered out of windows, the curtains fluttering back into place, as they passed by.
Near the center of town, some of the shop windows were broken, and a military vehicle had been shoved into an alley, its paint blackened from a fire. There were a few darker brown spots on the sidewalk that could only be dried blood.
Something bad had gone down here. Fieran clamped his mouth shut to keep from asking Dacha what he thought.
At the far side of town, the guards didn’t stop them, but instead lifted the bar out of their way. The accommodating guard at the other end must have radioed ahead.
Once they were rolling down the road at a good clip and well away from town, Fieran released a breath and glanced at Dacha. “That went well.”
“Yes.” Dacha tapped his fingers on the door handle next to him, his knees bouncing.
“And riots?” If Fieran hadn’t been busy driving, he might have been jittery as well.
“It seems the Mongavarian people no longer support the war.” Dacha gestured over his shoulder in the direction of the town. “At least, those in that town do not.”
“That’s good for the Alliance, right?” Fieran glanced from the road to Dacha and back. “They will be much more ready to surrender if the people are rioting instead of rallying in the face of the invasion and increased bombings.”
“Perhaps.” Dacha gave a small shrug. “We do not know if the riots are a localized thing or something that is occurring across a larger part of Mongavaria. But it will likely make our task harder.”
“It will?” Fieran could only see good things if Mongavaria was on the brink of falling apart.
“Yes.” Dacha’s drumming fingers clenched into a fist. “We were fortunate back there. The Mongavarian government will increase scrutiny and restrict movements. We might not be able to pass as easily next time.”
No, they wouldn’t. Fieran flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. No matter how hard it was, he would do whatever it took to reach Pip.
They’d parkedthe truck inside an abandoned barn next to the bombed-out farmhouse only a mile away from a Mongavarian factory town. The town itself had some damage—collapsed walls and shattered bricks—but the factories themselves were untouched.
Sitting on a hay bale in the barn’s loft, Fieran chewed on a piece of stringy smoked beef and glanced through a hole in the wall, keeping watch while Dacha and Aaruk settled onto their bedrolls for the night.
Fieran’s gaze landed on the blackened remains of the farmhouse once again.
Had a family been inside when the bomb had fallen? Had the grieving man left his farm, unwilling to stay after losing a wife and children? Or had the whole family been killed in one swift blow, and that was why it was now abandoned?
At the beginning of this war, Fieran had been so horrified when Mongavaria targeted civilians at Bridgetown.
And yet here the Alliance was, killing civilians. Everyone knew bombs weren’t accurate. Yet the deaths were considered an acceptable loss to fight the war. By this point, the Alliance had probably killed far more civilians than Mongavaria had at Bridgetown.
Fieran wasn’t the only one who had lost his innocent optimism to this war. The whole of the Alliance had lost its innocence. They were now ruthless and bloodied and prepared to cross lines they’d never imagined crossing before.
Fieran hadn’t escorted the bombing mission that had destroyed this farmhouse. If he had, the factory would have been far more damaged.
But he had still escorted plenty of bombing raids. He likely had the blood of civilians on his hands as surely as he did soldiers’, and he’d carry that for the rest of his life.
Yet he’d seen what Mongavaria had done to the ogres. They’d been keeping them in cages like animals, experimenting on them, killing them as they stole their magic. Those horrors had to be stopped.
Still, he mourned the horrors that were committed in order to stop other horrors. War was awful. Death was awful, even when it happened to an enemy.
Outside, the darkness closed in deeper around the barn. Crickets chirped so loudly in the grass and from the hay that Fieran wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to hear anything above the racket.
Aaruk had the pallet inside the truck, but Dacha had laid out his bedroll on some of the relatively clean hay that had fallen to the barn’s floor. He’d fallen asleep, but now he shifted restlessly, his face twisting as if he were in pain. He made a muffled cry as he curled his arms over his head.
Fieran pushed off the hay bale. Dacha had slept restlessly the night before as well, but he’d woken before Fieran had gotten to him.
Fieran climbed down the ladder, grimacing as the movement tugged on his wound. At the barn floor, he pressed a hand over the gash as he limped his way to where Dacha lay.
Dacha thrashed again, his cry louder this time.
Fieran knelt on one knee and reached out a hand. “Da—”
