Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist/Hagane no RenkinJutsushi belongs to Arakawa-san. I just borrow the characters from time to time and hope that I don't break them… too much.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE—He who Sups with the Devil…
(… should carry his own poisons.)
"Major." The voice was low, barely more than a whisper, and the touch of a calloused hand on his shoulder was light. Nonetheless, it set off a maelstrom in his mind, klaxons blaring and sentries shouting, warning lights flashing. An electric jolt of adrenaline surged through his veins. His muscles tensed, his eyes snapped open, and Hawkeye blinked her surprise at his sudden return to wakefulness.
He met her gaze. Tiredness etched lines into her face, narrowed her mouth, but the hand on his shoulder wasn't tightened into a grip of barely contained urgency, nor were her eyes sharp with alarm. Over her shoulder, shrouded in the deep shadows and greys of pre-dawn, one of her sergeants was rousing a few others.
Not an emergency then, his brain decided, and promptly reminded him that catnapping in a wheat field with only a scratchy wool blanket as protection from the cool night was not restful. His thoughts slowed to a crawl, and his mind found itself sopping wet with the weight of fatigue, flooding the klaxons still blaring there and drowning the sentries.
He groaned, squashed the urge to tug the wool blanket over his head and go back to sleep. The deep ache in his neck and ports—only made that much worse by the damp that had gnawed its way into his uniform over the course of the night—wouldn't let him get any more rest, anyway. A yawn bubbled up from his throat, and he tried to hide it while he yanked a few blades of grass from his hair and regathered it into a ponytail.
She passed him a cloth stuffed with jerky, and directed his eyes to the nearby town with a nod of her head.
"They lit the signal beacon," she muttered. "It's been perhaps two minutes."
That certainly ignited the adrenaline in his veins again. He scanned Pontecuti's sleepy silhouette and quickly caught sight of the gas lantern sitting in a window of the hotel's uppermost floor. It looked innocent enough—something that could have easily been lit by an early-rising guest or an overeager innkeeper—but the message was clear. One of their sentries had spotted movement.
He stuffed the jerky into his mouth, washed it down with a swig of water from the canteen at his hip. The meager meal sat heavy in his stomach, but he tried to ignore it, just as he tried to ignore the misgivings and doubts that barbed into the underside of his skull. There were so many variables, so many unknowns… what if it didn't work? Was the risk to his soldiers and the townspeople rational?
No. Fucking stop it, Elric.
He stoppered the canteen, clipped it back onto his belt, shook his head to send those thoughts flying. He'd already made his choice; he was going to have to see it through.
He tore his gaze away from the light in the window, scanned the fields and the forest beyond as though he could see the other teams crouched amongst the pallid, dewy stalks and hidden high in the twisting branches of trees. Two platoons—more than a quarter of the soldiers who'd come with him from the Passage Command—were hidden out here, hunched against the damp and the cold, gnawing on strips of jerky and ignoring fatigue while they watched and waited.
The soldiers around him shifted, rolling their shoulders and stretching tight limbs. Someone chewed on an unlit cigarette. Someone else muffled a cough within the folds of their own wool blanket. The faintest touches of sunlight crept up around them, lengthening shadows and adding a streak of pink to the clouds drifting overhead.
They were the same squad of veterans who'd followed him and Hawkeye deep into the Sibillini hills all those months ago, when the Passage Command was being shelled by Aerugonian mortar teams. Now, they kept their heads low, eyes squinting in the scant light as they peered between the stalks of wheat, searching for anything that might give away an enemy's movement. They looked about as tired as he felt, but their gazes missed nothing.
"I don't see anything," the soldier to his left muttered. "Maybe it's a false alarm?"
Maybe the soldiers hadn't even made it out of the Command. Maybe his communication with Mustang had been intercepted. Maybe—
Shut up. He shoved that pernicious little voice into the darkest, smallest corner he could find, swallowed a growl, pulled his silver watch from his breast pocket. Just after five o'clock in the morning; still well within the timeframe he'd hashed out with the bastard.
"Not likely," he told the other man, and thank fuck that his voice didn't betray the black thoughts trying to escape their moldy little prison. "Stay sharp."
The soldier nodded once, surveyed the gently waving fields and the forest's deep shadows then said an unintelligible something to the woman on his opposing side. She mumbled a few words in return and resettled her grip on her rifle.
Hawkeye took a few crouched steps and settled herself close enough to him that the hem of her cavalry skirt brushed against his knee. He could hardly hear her above the tumble of the Tevere at their backs and the sibilant murmur of the wind that brushed across the fields. "Edward, is it possible that the General wasn't able to create a clear path out of the Command?"
"The plan all along was for them to get out in the dark," he muttered back. "Since our people are more familiar with the area, the idea is that it'll give them an advantage, since only the Aerugonian's chimaeras should have any decent night vision."
Not an answer either way, but he couldn't admit that she could very well be right.
"Travelling in the dark would slow them down," she agreed after a moment's hesitation. "They wouldn't be able to use any form of light, and it's nearly impossible for moonlight to cut through the trees."
"Caddock's sentries must've seen something, though," he added, "and it's well within the timeframe."
She nodded, shuffled back to the little plot of land that held a second rifle and a box of ammunition. The man to her right asked a low question, and she answered with a shake of the head.
Time stretched out the tension until it was brittle as glass. The wind continued to blow, and waves cascaded across the fields. The sky at their backs took on an orange hue. The trees that blanketed the hills before them began to shed their inky blacks.
His eyes turned to the lantern up in the hotel. What had the sentries seen? Had it been a false alarm after all?
But it still pierced the meek morning light. There must be movement within the forest that they just couldn't make out.
Then, without warning, blurs of colour separated themselves from the foliage.
Hawkeye pressed the butt of her rifle into her shoulder, swung the barrel around to take aim, lowered her eye to her scope. The other soldiers grabbed for the own weapons and followed suit. Someone cursed. Edward drew his pistol from its holster—using his alchemy more than necessary just wasn't an option right now, it couldn't be, with so many things still depending on his ability to transmute—
Forms clothed in tattered blue, streaked with black soot and bloody red war paint, tumbled out from the forest's main roadway. Two, five, twenty bodies, feet dragging against the earth in their exhaustion, pistols and rifles clutched in weak grasps. One of them leaned heavily on his comrade as he limped forward; another soldier carried his squadmate over his shoulders, staggering under her weight. Even in the grey semi-light, Edward could tell their faces were drawn and pale.
Up in hotel's window, the lantern bobbed up and down a few times—move faster. The soldiers hesitated for a flash of a moment, exchanged glances. Then, as one, they broke into a staggering run. He balled his free hand into a fist, watched them stumble up the hillock and disappear behind the perimeter wall, let out a shaky breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. On Hawkeye's other side, a soldier lowered his weapon and made a few marks in an open notebook.
More movement, and more Amestrian soldiers broke from the forest's cover, their own wide eyes darting wildly across the fields and catching on the bobbing lantern that urged them to move faster, faster, faster. They broke into a run, disappeared behind the perimeter wall to join the others. More figures scratched into the notebook.
Then another group, smaller this time, and then what looked to be most of a company… The forest behind them was silent, eerily so, and Edward kept his eyes trained on its dark edges as more and more bodies broke free from the skeletal grasp far-reaching pines and towering oaks.
Everything was going smoothly, and his stomach turned itself over at that thought. There was no reason for things to go this smoothly—not when chimaeras and enemy troops should be snapping at the retreating soldiers' heels, harrying them, picking them off and dragging them into shallow graves.
The thunder of hooves broke through the whisper of the winds and the murmur of the Tevere, and a phalanx of horses emerged, some carrying two cavalrymen on their backs, others riderless. The whites of the horses' eyes were showing, nostrils flaring, froth rimming their mouths. One of the horses, already limping from a wound to the shoulder, stumbled and fell to the ground with a scream. Its rider went flying, rolled when he hit the ground, stumbled to his feet. Another rider stopped and hauled him up behind them. A moment's hesitation, then the echo of a single gunshot echoed through the air.
The animal stopped screaming.
Edward bit his cheek. The riders kicked their mounts into a gallop, and the remaining animals' hooves dug into the soft dirt as they dashed up the hillock and out of sight.
Another gunshot cracked in the distance, bouncing off of black trunks and startling roosted birds into flight. They shrieked and cried as more shots rang out, one after the other. Edward swallowed a litany of curses and shifted on his feet. The soldiers around him resettled their grips on their weapons. He did the same.
The snipers he'd hidden there must have spotted the dirty beige uniforms of the Aerugonians.
A covered transport roared as it barreled through the trees and broke into view, its canvas roof torn and pocked with the spray of gunfire, a web of cracks spidering across its front windows. The dirty, pale faces of soldiers peeked out from the ruined canvas, and the muzzles of rifles and pistols bumped and jostled as their owners gripped them with white knuckles.
Two more transports followed the first, and squads of exhausted men jogged between their hoods and tailgates, half shielded from incoming fire. In the rearmost vehicle, rifles barked, bullets buried themselves into trees and bodies, and a company of horses sporting beige-clad soldiers bore down on them.
Then Hawkeye's rifle flashed, and the noise of it damn well near deafened his right ear. An enemy soldier fell from his steed, a bloody rose blooming across his chest. The other sharpshooters picked their own targets; four more bodies fell, a pained shout rang through the air, someone clutched a bleeding leg. Hawkeye took aim again, and the cough of her rifle was joined by the machine guns on the town's perimeter wall.
The foreign soldiers' alarmed shouts rang out above the chattering of the guns. Dirt bloomed and sprayed at their feet, delicate skin dimpled beneath the deluge of bullets, blood fountained a ruby red against the pale hues of the sky.
Edward gritted his teeth and refused to look away. This had been his idea; he had to see this damned thing through.
The trucks and soldiers cleared the field. The man at Hawkeye's right shoulder marked down the new additions, and supplied his figures when Edward nodded to the book lying against the damp earth. About eleven hundred had scurried past them and disappeared behind the wall.
The muddled groups of foot soldiers and cavalrymen steadied into a trickle, then a stream, of stained blue wool and of faces dripping blood and smeared with dirt. Too many of them sported cloth wrapped haphazardly around arms and legs, covered over single eyes, clutched against the holes where healthy limbs should have filled. Too many had arms wrapped around the waists and shoulders of wounded squadmates, half-dragging them along. Too many gritted their teeth against the pain of wounds that left fine trails in the earth behind them.
Another wave of Aerugonian horsemen burst from the forest, weapons aimed and eyes narrowed as their mounts bore down on the trembling shoulders of the Amestrians. The attacking men spread out as though they could corral their targets, to turn them back to be crushed against what would surely be a writhing horror of southern solders or to stall them enough to be slaughtered like pigs.
Shots rang out, the chattering of machine gun fire joined in, and a few half-panicked commands snapped from the lips of a single mounted Aerugonian. Only half of the horsemen made it back to the cover of the forest. Foiled again, his mind whispered to him, eyes following the horses as they disappeared. His pistol felt heavy in his hand, and the stars lining his epaulets felt far too heavy. The bark of rifles from within the forest was dying away, a cold, detached part of his brain noted. Were the snipers stationed there running low on ammunition? Had they been found and killed?
It didn't matter. Didn't fucking matter right now. All that mattered was that the platoon stationed there could no longer be counted on to disorient the enemy troops.
He scrubbed at his face, tried to ignore the icy coldness that swept through his mind. That meant… that meant the Aerugonians attacks would be more coordinated, that the men scattered throughout the fields and dotted along the perimeter wall would be at a greater risk, that he'd have to decide whether or not to risk setting off his traps early.
A score of transports roared along the road, and the crackling of breaking bones and dying screams from those not quite dead yet were carried away by the gentle winds. The sun was starting to rise properly now, and it kissed against the bright terracotta tiles that adorned Pontecuti's roofs. The steeple became a brilliant beacon, and the bloodied, exhausted Amestrian soldiers continued to make their way towards the thing as though it held their salvation. The acrid scent of gunpowder and copper hovered around them, strong enough that the winds couldn't carry it away like it had the moans and cries of enemy soldiers.
Where… where had they gone, anyway? He glanced over his left shoulder, scanned the trees as they began to take on their usual greens and emeralds, then searched as well he could the hills across from him. No movement, save for the waving stalks and trembling leaves. He turned and blinked a few times as a bloody sunrise danced off the surface of the Tevere. The rolling fields at their backs were just as calm.
Hawkeye had noticed his movements. "They must be planning something," she muttered, "and they have plenty of time to do it. We haven't recovered even ten percent of those stationed at the Passage Command yet—including, it seems, any of the senior staff."
He nodded, tried to ignore Breda's smirk when it flashed across the forefront of his mind, tried to ignore Fuery's wide grins and Falman's self-satisfied smiles. Then there was Airabonita, who'd treated him as though he were any other major, and Fairchild, who nodded to him each morning in the mess hall. And even Mustang—the bastard he was—who'd given him more freedom than any general should have, who'd fucking trusted him without question as he pieced together the only possible, though completely absurd, theory about the Aerugonian's newfound power.
The wind caressed his cheek and plucked at his uniform, and filled his nose with the cloying scent of blood. He squared his shoulders, glared through the waving stalks at the fallen bodies littering the ground before him. They'd chosen to do this—to leave their country and attack the people he knew and cared about. This was on them. This was all their fault, he told himself, and clutched at the idea until his nails cut into his palm.
Fucking southern pigs.
"We can't change our own plans," he told her finally. "We don't have the resources. We'll just have to trust that Mustang hasn't fucked things up on—"
Gunfire coughed out from somewhere along the treeline, and bullets buried into the ground at his knee, or else whizzed past his shoulder. He dropped to the ground. Someone grunted. The soldier to his left collapsed, his eyes staring and wide as a bloody stain crept across his chest. To his right, Hawkeye twisted, took aim. Smoke erupted from the muzzle of her rifle. A body tumbled from its perch in a gnarled oak.
Further away, half-panicked shouts heralded more blue uniforms as they tumbled from the forest and darted toward the town. Some of them paused, pressed rifles to their shoulders or steadied pistols, and the weapons bucked in their hands—
And Edward's heart damn well near stopped in his chest.
Fucking monsters were chasing them, with elongated faces too short to be called muzzles but too long to be noses, fangs and jaws dripping blood, black claws that curved wickedly around shortened fingers. Shaggy not-fur—from coal dark to tawny brown—tumbled down their heads and necks, spread across bare shoulders, tufted at elbows, disappeared beneath pants made of beige wool.
Four of them crouched low as they ran, used their not-forelegs for balance while powerful hindquarters pushed them forward. There was no way the harried, wounded Amestrian soldiers would reach safety in time, and with the Aerugonian snipers picking off his own men—
He slapped his hands together, threw a crackling arrow of white-blue energy into the earth. It lanced forward, searching out for the fine baubles of silica dioxide that he knew he'd find—
The subjects of his search lit up in his mind, one at a time, as he touched them. Flakes of potassium lay in fragile inner phials stoppered and swirling with hydrogen gas, while water flowed around nails and pins and other detritus in the outer glass canisters. He focused his energy on ten of them, honing in on the arrays etched into the inner containers, pressing against the simple circles until they cracked under the pressure.
As far as bombs went, the construction was so simple as to be crude.
That didn't make it any less effective.
Ten blasts echoed along the hills and swept over the town, threw sharp stone and metal shards and bloody limbs and fine dirt high into the air, flattened wheat stalks, tore apart the fencing from nearby pastures. The earth shuddered beneath his ass, knocked some of the fleeing soldiers off their feet. Two of the chimaeras went flying; one landed heavily, disappeared behind a curtain of tall grasses, and did not emerge. The second tumbled back down onto the road, blood staining tawny fur as it dripped from nostrils, ears, a thousand ragged wounds. A pathetic whimper gurgled from between its black lips.
Further along the road, a soldier stopped, spun on his heel. His rifle slammed against his shoulder. Smoke belched from the weapon's muzzle. The whimpering chimaera fell silent.
Task complete, the soldier turned and made to dash away. He'd barely made it two steps, though, before a chimaera cloaked in coarse black fur was upon him. Claws buried into his back, slashed toward like knives. He twisted with the force of them, fell, let out a silent scream as the chimaera sunk wicked fangs into his throat.
Machine guns peppered the creature with a hail of bullets, and it jerked a few times before slumping to the blood-slickened road. But the soldier still within his grasp didn't move. Simply stared with wide, unseeing eyes at the monster that had killed him.
With a chilling howl, the last remaining chimaera turned tail and ran back toward the forest.
A horde of blue-clad cavalrymen was surging out from beneath the branches and between trunks, though, and too many froze when they caught sight of the beast barreling toward them. A horse screamed as its fell, its flank torn open from a strike from those deadly claws, and its rider could only offer a bloody gurgle as her throat was torn open. Then the chimaera rushed onward, moving on all fours now with powerful, surging movements that would let it clear the fields in just a few more strides—
Instinct made Edward jerk forward, and he buried his flesh hand into the earth to still himself. His muscles trembled under the tension, his mind howled red hot anger. He could catch that bastard. He could! A simple clap of the hands, a transmutation to twist the earth until it flowed into a thick stone cage. That thing had been responsible for the hellhole that'd become of Rivers, for the lifeless crater that remained of Plains, for the surveillance team that had been the first victims, for the trail of pallid faces and sightless eyes that lined the road between here at the Passage Command—
But there were people here, all around him, huddled in the town or still scrabbling desperately in the semi-gloom of the forest, who were relying on him to stick to the fucking plan. He swallowed the primal growl that pressed against his teeth, tamped down on the howling voice that threw itself against the front of his skull.
If he ran off and left the others behind, then a hell of a lot more people would die. Engines screamed and first one, then two, then six transports came into view. A brilliant jet of white-yellow flames shot from nowhere, enveloped the beast as it ran. A single, agonizing shriek—more animal than human—cut through the air.
But then six more of the things leapt out between branches and darted from between trunks, snarling and howling and snapping. One sprang from the thick limb of an oak, landed on the canvas roof of the rearmost transport; claws shredded the thick fabric and the chimaera dropped into the flatbed. Shouts, cries, shots rang out, then the vehicle veered off the road, engine still roaring, careening wildly, tilting madly onto two wheels. Windows shattered and metal screamed is it crashed onto its side. The chimaera, jaws and claws shining red, jumped out from the same tear he'd created, darted off to rejoin his brethren.
Wheels spun uselessly, the engine spluttered and died, the sharp smell of gasoline thickened the air.
The truck was so fucking close to them—no more than a few dozen meters away—so close he could see the mangled faced of the driver, make out the shards of glass embedded in his face and eye… Could there be survivors? Even after the crash and the chimaera's vicious attack, there had to be a few…
His golden eyes found Hawkeye. The woman still had her rifle trained due south, and her eyes hadn't strayed for a moment in her search for more targets hidden among the foliage.
Another burst of white-yellow flame whispered across the fields, and the chimaeras shied away from it, abandoning the dirt road to disappear among the grasses—
He tore his eyes away from Hawkeye, from the truck, from the slack-faced driver and the maybe-survivors. Fuck. Fuck—
—he couldn't risk it. He couldn't. There was too much—too many people—already at stake, and he could hate himself later, when he had the time—
—slammed his hands together, pressed them back against the earth, found the last of the improvised explosives. White-blue energy buried itself into the glass vials. The earth trembled, the air shuddered, and the deafening explosions blossomed in in a dizzying display of pale dust and bloody rain.
Random tid-bits of information:
1. The lantern bobbing up and down—According to an old US military handbook found via Google, a light moving vertically in front of a soldier's body means "increase speed."
2. Potassium in water—I'm pretty sure I exaggerated with how good potassium is at exploding without also poisoning everyone in the area, but the chemistry is still sound; sodium, potassium, and other alkali earth metal are extremely reactive in water. If you want to see some chemistry guys at the University of Nottingham throw potassium in water, search "Periodic Videos" on YouTube. It's entertaining.