The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 51

She pried open the cork, tilted her head back, and drank. The bitter herbal liquid slid down her throat, and the warm, spreading sensation returned along her stomach wall to her extremities. The blackness at the edge of her vision receded slightly, but it was still very close, like a wild beast crouching in the darkness, ready to pounce again at any moment.

She stepped out of the ramparts and stood on the frozen ground directly in front of the position.

Belfast followed behind her, the exhaust of the steam knight's armor sounding exceptionally clear in the night. She still held the chainsaw sword in her hand, the serrated teeth still spinning, but the speed had begun to decrease.

The compressed smokeless coal in the furnace was nearing the end of its burning.

"Belfa," Perfit called her name, his voice carrying a faint fluctuation that only this alchemical doll could detect, "After we break through, if I pass out, don't stop."

Lead everyone in the direction Major Oberstan indicated. That's an order.

Belfast neither nodded nor spoke.

She took only half a step forward and placed her free left hand on Perfit's shoulder.

Perfit gripped both the cane and the Midas stick tightly.

This time, she didn't rely on any amplification arrays, nor did Allen and Morris draw up the array bases for her. She only had herself and two fragments of the Philosopher's Stone.

A crimson light burst forth from between her hands, rapidly spreading along the surface of the frozen ground towards the direction where the zombie horde was most concentrated. Wherever the red light passed, the originally hard frozen ground began to change.

It didn't crack or bulge, but became soft, like calm seawater being stirred by an invisible force, beginning to rise and fall slowly and heavily.

Then the permafrost began to churn.

Instead of cascading to one side, the entire ground resembled a sea in a storm, with the permafrost surface cracking into huge slab-like blocks that collided, rolled, and sank under the motion of the red disc.

The ground beneath the feet of the infected at the front suddenly softened. When they stepped on it, the frozen soil sank up to their knees like a swamp. Then the ground suddenly arched, overturning them to the ground.

The soil swelled up to form a mound, then instantly rolled over, covering the entire row of infected people beneath it, burying them deep in the frozen earth before they could even let out a roar.

The infected people behind them didn't have time to stop and kept rushing forward. Their feet trod on the undulating ground as if they were stepping on a shaking blanket. One after another, they fell down, sank in, and were swept into the ground by the churning mud.

The entire frozen ground in front of her came to life.

Waves of earth rolled forward one after another, each wave engulfing the dense horde of corpses, carrying along rubble and frozen clods of earth with a dull rumble.

The infected people completely lost their footing on this rolling earth, sinking in in large swaths. When the waves of earth churned them up from below, their bodies were already wrapped in mud, and then crushed even deeper when the next wave pressed down.

Black blood gushed from the cracks in the churning earth, only to be quickly covered by new soil.

A passageway was forcibly torn open.

Behind the rolling waves of earth, in an area about several tens of meters wide, the ground solidified again, and the frozen soil was compacted to be harder and flatter than before.

This passage stretched from the front of the fortress all the way to the rear of the zombie horde. The surging waves of earth on both sides were like two high walls that were constantly collapsing and being rebuilt, temporarily keeping the remaining infected outside.

"Now!" Perfit slammed his cane on the ground, his voice hoarse but carrying across the entire position. "Everyone, retreat in squad order! Wagons and artillery in the middle, knights at the rear! No stopping!"

Chertzov pulled the military flag from the top of the ramparts and ran down the stone steps.

The hem of his coat billowed in the wind like a battle flag, intertwining with the real battle flag above his head.

Upon hearing his command, the Ross soldiers on the position scrambled up from behind the firing ports, lifted their wounded comrades and dragged them onto the wagons, while the artillery crew carried the remaining half-box of shells onto the gun carriages. The warhorses were pulled around by their reins, their hooves leaving messy hoofprints in the frozen ground.

Belfast was the first to rush into that passage.

The hydraulic linkages of the Steam Knight armor hummed as she ran, and the chainsaw sword swung horizontally in her hand, slicing several infected individuals that had slipped out from the gaps in the earthen waves on either side in half.

Each step she took left a shallow crater in the freshly compacted frozen ground, and the exhaust whistling from the back of her armor stretched into a long, drawn-out whine in the night.

Ludwig and the flag captain led the knights to cover the rear.

The gray-armored knights planted their shields side by side in the frozen ground at the rear of the column. The sword and rose knights stood between the shields, cutting down the last wave of infected who charged at them, then pulled out the shields and quickly caught up with the convoy that was speeding away.

Cherzov was the last to leave the position. He carried the military flag on his shoulder and looked back every few steps at the small fortress that had been overwhelmed by the infected.

The makeshift wall made of frozen soil still stands, studded with broken earth spikes and embedded corpses, with canteens and bayonets left behind by the soldiers who didn't have time to take them with them behind the firing ports.

The warhorses galloped along the road pulling the artillery carts. The cart wheels rolled over the freshly compacted frozen ground, and the winter clothes and bedding inside the carts rustled and rubbed against each other with each bump.

Perfit was the last to step onto the path.

Her legs began to give way after running a few steps.

The blackness at the edge of my vision surged back, this time even darker than before, converging from the four corners of my vision toward the center, like a door slowly closing.

She heard Belfast stop a few steps ahead of her, her metal feet scraping the ground with a harsh screech, followed by Chernzov's hoarse shout—someone was calling her name, but she couldn't hear it anymore.

The last thing she felt was a pair of metal arms plunging her from the frozen ground through her ribs, her back pressed against a cold breastplate, and the white mist from the exhaust grille hitting her cheeks, warm to the touch.

The sound of the steam core suddenly rose, and Belfast extracted the last bit of calorific value from the compressed anthracite in the furnace.

The steam-powered knight armor accelerated wildly under the starry sky, each step covering an extremely long distance, leaving spiderweb-like cracks on the frozen ground.

The surging waves of earth on both sides of the passage fell silent again after Perfit lost consciousness, and the infected people swallowed underground and the torn permafrost solidified together into an uneven gray hill.

They fled in a sorry state, but even so, they managed to survive.