Molino studied the route I had marked.
"Yes," he said.
Several of Wendt's officers shifted around the table.
The professor placed two fingers on the map and traced the corridor. It was barely twenty meters wide.
"Under ordinary circumstances, no," Molino continued. "Each proximity mine has its own trigger matrix. Each ward and artillery circle was built by a different team, repaired at different times, and altered after every elven incursion. There is no universal counterspell capable of disabling all of them safely."
Thom's metal fingers clicked against his belt.
"But you said you could."
"I can because these formations belong to the Iron Cross."
Molino reached into his robes and placed a dark metal object on the map.
It resembled a seal without a handle. A flattened disk of blackened silver, slightly wider than my palm, with the Iron Cross worked into its center. Fine runes covered the reverse in concentric circles. They were so densely packed that the surface looked rough from a distance.
"This is a Crown command seal," Molino said. "The royal family maintains a small number for emergency control of chartered military installations. Prince Varen possesses one because the Iron Cross answers directly to the Crown."
Wendt stared at the seal.
"I have never seen one."
"We were not intended to," Molino replied. "Its existence is restricted to the royal family."
One of Wendt's officers leaned closer without touching it.
"You can control the entire installation with that?"
"No. Only its defense network."
"Across the entire front?" Thom asked.
"Across Iron Cross positions linked to this installation," Molino said. "No Regular Army or Magical Army formations will respond to it."
He rotated the seal until one edge aligned with the southern passage I had marked.
"I can narrow the suppression. This corridor will become inert from the forward trench to the edge of the elven position. Everything outside it remains active."
"How precise?" Henrik asked.
"Precise enough that you will not die if you follow the route."
"And if we drift?"
"You will enter a live mine field."
Henrik looked at the map again.
"How long?"
Molino's expression remained flat.
"Twenty minutes should be safe. Beyond that, the suppressed arrays will begin attempting to reject the command."
Molino continued. "Once your people cross, I will release the seal. The defenses will reactivate behind you."
"And if the mission fails?" Wendt asked.
"Then I reactivate them immediately."
The command room went quiet.
Wendt's eyes moved toward me.
"The soldiers on the far side would be trapped," he said.
"Yes," Molino replied. "Once the corridor closes, anyone south of the grid remains south of it. Reopening the route would require me to suppress the defenses again. If the elves are already attacking, doing so would expose the bunker."
I looked at the map.
"I expected that."
Wendt's attention settled on me.
I tapped the elven side of the map. "That's why we move fast. The cars carry us across no-man's-land and break the forward position before the elves can organize. Once we reach their line, we destroy the observation posts, kill the direct-casters, and take the ridge."
"And then?"
"Your guys will help us."
Wendt's eyes narrowed.
I slid the map toward him and pointed to the first rise behind the elven trench.
"I need soldiers capable of establishing a defensive position here."
Wendt studied the terrain.
"How many?"
"As many as you can spare without weakening the bunker."
Wendt stood and walked around the table. His finger followed the front line west, then east. He calculated aloud.
"Second squad remains on the western corridor. Fourth holds the Regular Army linkage. First squad is still understrength after the last assault. If I strip the reserve, I lose the ability to reinforce a breach."
He looked at Thom.
"Available bodies?"
"Forty-two fit for combat duty without touching the active trench rotation," Thom said. "Another seventeen on restricted duty. Most of those can carry supplies but not fight."
Wendt returned to the map.
"Thirty," he said. "More than that risks the bunker."
"Thirty will do."
"They will take shovels, picks, sandbags, wire, and whatever timber we can strip from the reserve stores. They will cross after your vehicles and begin digging wherever you point."
He tapped the rise.
"But understand what you are asking for. Thirty soldiers cannot build a fortified position in minutes. You will get at best a trench, a shallow one. If the elves counterattack in force, it won't hold."
"It doesn't need to hold forever."
Wendt looked at me.
"It needs to hold for several days," I continued. "More equipment is coming through Grenzheim. Once the corridor is secured, we can extend the grid."
"If the elves give us several days."
"They won't," I said. "So we'll have to make the first one expensive enough that they reconsider the second."
Wendt's mouth formed its usual line.
Then he turned to Thom.
"Thirty soldiers. Volunteers only. Anyone who crosses understands there may be no route back."
Thom nodded.
"I'll have them ready."
We brought the armored magi-cars into the forward trench under tarps.
The cars were too loud to move under their own power without announcing the operation, so Knights dragged them through the bunker network by hand.
At the last incline, the passage narrowed.
Henrik took the front axle of the first vehicle. I took the other side. We lifted while four Knights pushed from behind, raising the armored car slowly enough that the suspension did not strike the stone.
Above us, the trench waited beneath a gray sky.
Nobody spoke above a whisper.
Human soldiers crouched along the trench walls. Wendt's thirty volunteers had already assembled in the rear communication channel. Packs lay at their feet. Shovel heads had been wrapped in cloth to keep them from knocking against buckles or stone.
The first car reached the trench floor.
Then the second.
Then the third and fourth.
Timber braces lined as ramps. Two Knights lifted the final connecting platform into place, bridging the trench floor to the upper lip. It was a crude slope of planks, packed dirt, and scavenged support beams.
Henrik climbed into the lead car.
Dorn took the second. Britta the third.
The Knights took position beside them.
Two against each armored flank. The remainder crouched directly behind the vehicles. Rail-pistols sat loaded in their off hands. Swords remained sheathed until we closed the distance.
I stood against the right side of Henrik's car.
Mana Breath filled my lungs.
Cool fire spread through my chest and down my arms. Mana Blood pulsed through the other Knights, red pressure passing through veins and into muscle.
Behind us, Wendt's soldiers waited.
Ahead lay no-man's-land.
The ground had been torn apart by centuries of bombardment. Water filled old craters.
Beyond that stood the elven line.
A shallow ditch along a low ridge. Three observation posts. Two shaped-wood towers farther back.
No movement that suggested they had seen the cars.
Molino stood in the trench behind us.
The Crown command seal rested in his left hand. His staff touched the ground in his right. A thin line of mana connected the seal to the defensive lattice beneath our feet.
"Lord Kaspar," he said.
I looked back.
"The suppression will begin when I strike the staff. Follow the white markers. Do not leave the corridor."
Small white strips had been tied to stakes running south through the mine field.
I nodded.
Henrik looked through the slit between the prow and the steering housing.
"Ready."
The word passed down the line.
"Ready."
"Ready."
"Ready."
I drew my rail-pistol.
The polished ironwood settled into my left hand. Three copper balls waited inside the loading channel. My sword remained sheathed at my right hip.
Molino drove the base of his staff into the trench floor.
A web spread across the sky.
Thousands of mana threads rose from the bunker network and unfolded over no-man's-land. Some lines sank into buried mines. Others connected to ward posts, spell batteries, detection crystals, and artillery circles.
The web tightened.
One by one, the formations went dark.
That was the signal.
"GO!"
Four crystal drives ignited.
The magi-cars surged up the ramps.
The added armor had killed their acceleration. Henrik's car climbed slowly at first, front suspension compressed beneath the copper prow. The rear wheels bit into packed dirt, slipped, caught again.
Then the car crested the trench.
The other three followed.
I ran beside the lead vehicle with one shoulder nearly brushing the armor. My boots struck mud, broken stone, then the first strip of marked ground.
The cars crossed no-man's-land.
A hundred and fifty meters.
The elven trench remained quiet.
One hundred and thirty.
No alarm.
I could see figures now.
An elf stood inside the nearest observation post with his back turned. Another leaned against the trench wall.
They were not watching the human line.
Why would they?
One hundred meters.
A head turned.
The elf in the observation post looked north.
For half a second, he did nothing.
Then he shouted.
The cry carried across the ground.
More figures rose from the ditch. An elf lifted one arm, mana gathering without Circle rings or a visible matrix.
We had crossed one-third of the distance when the first spell landed.
The earth erupted behind us.
The blast threw mud and stone over the rear teams. One of Wendt's soldiers stumbled, rolled, and came back up with his shovel still strapped to his pack.
"KEEP MOVING!"
The elves corrected their range.
Blue lightning crossed the field.
It missed Henrik's car by a meter and struck the ground ahead, cutting a smoking line through soil. He turned hard around it. The copper prow swung toward me.
A bolt of flame struck the third car.
Fire spread across its prow in a sheet. The angled copper threw most of it outward. Flames washed over the ground on both sides instead of entering the driver's compartment.
Britta drove through.
Her car emerged with the left panel blackened and one mounting brace glowing red.
The next attack came from the front.
Three narrow lances of ice converged on Henrik's car.
Two missed.
The third hit the prow.
The impact cratered the plate inward and tore one side brace halfway from the wooden frame. The angle deflected the lance upward. It passed over Henrik's head and vanished into the sky.
The car kept moving.
Seventy meters.
The Knights raised their rail-pistols but did not fire.
Too far.
Another explosion struck behind the fourth vehicle.
A soldier screamed.
I looked back once.
One of Wendt's men lay in the mud with blood spreading beneath his thigh. The man behind him caught his harness and dragged him forward without slowing. The rest closed around them.
Sixty meters.
Elves filled the trench now.
A direct-caster raised both hands. Shaped stone flowed upward from the ridge, hardening into a jagged barrier across the marked corridor.
"Henrik!"
"I SEE IT!"
Mana Blood pulsed through his arms.
The lead magi-car struck the barrier.
The copper prow split stone.
The other cars followed through the opening.
Fifty meters.
Rail-pistols came up.
"Hold!"
A bolt of blue-white force struck Voss's car broadside. The right armor panel tore free, spun into the air, and nearly took a Knight's head off as it passed. The vehicle lurched toward the edge of the safe corridor.
The right wheels crossed within half a meter of a live mine.
Dorn rammed the second car into Voss's rear quarter and shoved it back onto the marked path. Wood splintered. Both vehicles continued.
Forty meters.
An elf climbed onto the trench lip.
He thrust one hand forward.
The mud in front of us rose like a wave.
"SPREAD!"
The cars separated as much as the corridor allowed. The earth wave collapsed between the first and second vehicles, clipping Dorn's left prow and throwing two Knights off their feet.
I stepped behind Henrik's armor as mud and stone hammered the copper.
Thirty meters.
I saw their faces.
Twenty meters.
"WEAPONS FREE!" I shouted. "SHOOT TO KILL! NO PRISONERS!"
Eleven rail-pistols rose around the moving shields.
I found the elf who had raised the earth wave.
He was already shaping another spell.
My sights settled between his eyes.
I squeezed.
The rail-pistol cracked in my hand.
For one clean instant, I saw the path.
The sphere struck the elf above the left eye. Bone and gold blood burst from the back of his skull. His spell died before his body hit the trench floor.
The pocket watch vibrated against my chest.
A cry began near the rear of the formation.
One voice.
Then another.
Then every throat behind me took it up.
"GLORY TO THE EMPIRE!"
The shout rolled across the battlefield.