Page 73 of Wings of War

Pip had gone into the Outpost Museum, which had been turned into temporary quarters for the army personnel and the other volunteers to rest after the long night. Hopefully she had managed a few hours of sleep.

Daylight hadn’t made the destruction look any better. If anything, light just made everything worse. He could actually see the rubble. See the mangled, dead bodies laid out in the streets and on the stretchers as they were carried to the temporary morgue. See things so seared into his memory that he wasn’t sure he would be able to sleep, despite the exhaustion weighing so heavily on him that lifting the spoon to his mouth seemed too much work.

Even his magic was a faint crackle inside his chest, though he wasn’t sure if he’d used enough magic to actually deplete his power or if he was simply exhausted from wielding such a quantity of magic. Perhaps a little of both.

It wasn’t just the physical and magical exhaustion, though there was that. He’d been up for over thirty-six hours, broken only by those handful of hours between falling asleep and waking just after midnight due to the attack. The rest of the night had been spent expending his magic, killing hundreds of Mongavarians, then digging through rubble to find both the living and the dead.

So many dead.

Women. Children.

His squadron. His brothers. Several had crashed during the night, and most of those had been from pilot error rather than the Mongavarian guns. A few had survived their crashes, but not all of them. Or even most of them.

So many empty bunks. He didn’t yet know how many untouched glasses of beer would grace the bar when his squadron had a chance to mourn. It was all he could do to focus on those still alive.

Fieran squeezed his eyes shut. It did little good. He could still see the bloody faces of the dead. Taste the acrid smoke on the breeze. Smell the stench of blood and sulfur that hung over the whole city.

A stir of murmurs rose from the base of the hill. Fieran wearily peeled his eyes open.

His dacha stood among the cluster of officers with Uncle Julien and Aunt Vriska at his side. Dacha’s long silver-blond hair hung down his back over his green and brown fighting leathers, his twin swords resting against his back. With the morning sunlight glinting on his armor, he looked like an elven warrior of old stepped from the pages of legends.

Dacha, Uncle Julien, and Aunt Vriska must have arrived on that recent train. Politically, it was a statement of support as top generals of Escarland, Kostaria, and Tarenhiel surveyed the destruction.

Something that had been wound tight in Fieran’s chest eased. The burden of protecting Bridgetown and Fort Linder from another attack no longer rested solely on Fieran’s shoulders.

Dacha glanced up, meeting Fieran’s gaze across the distance. After a low murmur to Uncle Julien, Dacha stepped away, the officers and enlisted men parting for him, giving the famed General Laesornysh space.

Fieran set his bowl aside, not caring if he dumped the soup onto the ground. He shoved to his feet, stumbling down the hill.

He met his Dacha halfway, skidding to a halt, the words already rising out of his choked throat. “I understand now, Dacha. I understand. All of it.”

“Fieran, sason.” Dacha reached out and clasped one of Fieran’s shoulders. With his other hand, he cradled the back of Fieran’s head before briefly resting his forehead against Fieran’s.

That lump in Fieran’s throat grew, and he didn’t care who might be standing around witnessing this moment. While elves were not the most touchy-feely culturally, this particular gesture was one of the few more intimate ones, signifying a great relief and comradeship in the face of great tragedy or struggle.

The gesture lasted only a moment, before Dacha stepped back and dropped his hand to clasp Fieran’s other shoulder. “Today you are Laesornysh.”

As if Fieran needed anything else to shake him today. Dacha didn’t merely mean Fieran had earned the legacy he’d inherited. He was naming Fieran with the elven title Laesornysh, giving it to him in his own right.

More than that, elvish was a subtle language, and Fieran could hear the slight change in inflection. While Dacha had been titled Death on the Wind because he moved like a whirlwind, tearing into all who stood before him, Fieran was Death on the Wind. He was literally a weapon of death carried on the winds.

All Fieran could do was nod, his chest too tight, his throat too strangled, for any other response.

“Come, sason.” Dacha steered Fieran back up the hill, away from the clusters of generals talking of war and flyboys struggling for a wink of sleep before going back up on patrol.

Almost before he knew it, Fieran found himself sitting with his back against the outpost again, his dacha beside him. For long moments, they simply sat there in silence, regarding the destruction laid out before them.

After a moment, Dacha’s gaze dropped to his hands, some of the hardness to his expression cracking. “It is all right to be strong, Fieran, but it is also all right to talk to someone. If you find yourself struggling after the past night, do not hesitate to reach out to someone. If not me or your macha, then there are counselors available. There is no shame in needing help.”

“I know.” Fieran shifted, not looking at his dacha. “I’m all right, Dacha.”

Right now, he thought he was okay. He wasn’t sure how he’d tell if he wasn’t.

Strangely, the admonishment to talk just made him not want to do so. Even though this was his dacha. Even though Dacha would fully understand.

Fieran’s gaze drifted from the blackened rubble to the shriveled remains of one of the airships crashed in the shallows of the Hydalla River, tatters of canvas rising and falling with the rippling eddies.

He’d been prepared to kill when he joined the army. He’d known war would entail death.

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