Jean-Claude and the six remaining marines sneaked forward as close to the path as they could manage and took up positions behind an irregular row of bushes and boulders. The caravan tromped by, the lead ranks thumping and squishing. They’d chosen the clearest path available to them, farthest from the danger of the woods. Jean-Claude and his crew would have to cross a dozen meters of open ground.

The decoy sedan chairs marched by. The squeak and thump of the armored wagons drew near. Jean-Claude checked his grenade pouch and cocked his pistol.

A gun cracked. Jean-Claude leapt from cover and charged the nearest wagon. The wagon guards turned and raised their guns. Jean-Claude raised his pistol, fired. A guard went down. Pandemonium erupted farther up the line. The caravan guards fired without aiming, a ragged fusillade. One of Jean-Claude’s fellows groaned and fell. And then Jean-Claude was on the enemy, hacking with his cutlass. Steel hit bone. The guard stumbled away, dead or dying. The man riding shotgun brought his weapon around, but a twist-gun shot hit him in the chest and flipped him over backward. The cart driver whipped his hapless team, who struggled to make speed.

A panel on top of the cart flipped up, and with it the blinding light of a shadowpult. A Sanguinaire’s bloodshadow slicked across the ground, but even at the speed of thought, two bullets slammed into the sorcerer before his shadow reached the tree line. The cart panel slammed back down again.

Jean-Claude ran alongside the exhausted human team and hacked at the bonds that held them to the yoke.

“Turn!” he shouted. “Push for your lives!” He threw his own shoulder into the foremost push bar and forced it to the left.

The wagon turned.

“Push!” he shouted.

The driver cracked his whip but he’d lost all control. The wagon continued its turn, and trundled onto the steep downhill slope toward the lake edge.

“Run!” Jean-Claude shouted as soon as the wagon started picking up speed on its own. He leapt out of the way and let the wagon rattle by, bouncing, rocking, and finally splashing into the water up to its axles. The yellowish clouds of poisonous air closed in around it. Both of the other carts had been similarly turned. The second one had flipped over before it reached the water.

The back panels on the upright carts opened and their Sanguinaire cargo came flopping out, splashing into the black oily water, gasping and wheezing as they struggled to shore. The heavy mud clung rather stubbornly to their fine coats and muck filled their expensive boots. The first one fell in the water and his fellows trampled right over him.

Not one of them made it farther than the rocky shore.

The rest of the battle drew to a close. With their marines dispatched, the leaderless aeronauts had no will to fight, and surrendered to a force less than a tenth their number.