Oh poodoo. Ryn tensed even more. No time to change the plan.

The soldiers took a couple of steps into the street. They hadn’t seen their crouching ambushers yet.

“It’s like they wanted to be occupied,” said one. “It’s like...What the—?”

“NOW!” yelled Sagar.

Ryn sprang forwards and made for the nearest soldier. He gripped the hilt of his sword and drew it back, then slammed the pommel into the soldier’s helmet before he could react. It resounded like a clear bell.

“Ow!” The soldier raised his hands to his helmet, but remained standing.

“Kufe!” Ryn swore.

The soldier drew his sword.

Ryn managed to jump back out of the way of the slash. His pulse pounded loudly in his ears. Not again!

A black shape crashed into the soldier, sweeping his legs out from underneath him, then slammed its sword down through the soldier’s neck. The soldier lay still. Vish leapt away as quickly as he had arrived.

Nuthea’s not going to be happy about that.

Someone was shouting in surprise.

Ryn spun. Two other soldiers lay at Sagar’s feet, dead or unconscious. Vish slotted his blade into the visor of another’s helmet, who went down with a muffled scream.

Nuthea’s really not going to be happy about that.

Elrann had her whip coiled around the gauntlet of the final soldier, and he had managed to draw his sword. The two of them stood frozen for a moment sizing each other up.

The soldier swept his helmeted head from side to side, taking them all in.

He drew in a breath, about to shout for help.

Ryn, Vish and Sagar all rushed him.

Ryn got to him first, and this time he hit the front of the soldier’s helmet so hard with the pommel of his sword the man went down.

All the soldiers were down now.

Ryn almost yelled “I got one!” but managed to restrain himself.

“Quickly,” said Sagar. “We got unlucky, and that was noisier than it should have been. We’ve got to strip them of their armour fast before anyone notices.”

They got to work at once, looking around to see if anyone had spotted them. Nobody seemed to have, yet.

Ryn followed Sagar and Cid’s instructions and knelt down next to the soldier he had just knocked out, unfastened the man’s breastplate and leg-guards, and stripped him of his gauntlets. He then set about putting all of these pieces of armour on himself, over the top of his clothes. Lastly he slid off the soldier’s helmet. Underneath he found the smooth face of a young man with a close-shaved head not much older than himself, a blue bruise forming on his forehead. Ryn hoped he had not done the boy any lasting damage.

He slipped the helmet on over his head. The metal was cold against his cheeks, but it fit snugly. The black bucket-like Imperial soldiers’ helmets all had a horizontal view-slit, which now became Ryn’s window on the world.

“Was that entirely necessary, Shadowfinger Vish?” Nuthea chided when the bountyhunter took the helmet off his soldier, revealing a bloody mess which made Ryn flinch and look away.

“I made a judgment, girl,” Vish said to her. “We needed to be quick, so I acted as efficiently as I could in the situation and dispatched the soldier in the quickest way available to me.”

“Hmph,” said Nuthea.

She had managed to wriggle into a breastplate, which from her grimace appeared to be quite uncomfortable, and she looked absolutely ridiculous with the hem of her once-white, torn, bloodstained dress poking out of the bottom of it.

“You’re going to need some trousers, princess,” said Sagar, barely stifling a laugh even in their highly precarious situation.

Cid pulled some off a soldier and gave them to her. Once the trousers and the rest of her armour were on, and her dress tucked in, she looked much more like an Imperial, apart from the small facts of her breastplate sticking out a bit more than normal, her her long golden hair and her feminine facial structure. But she tightened the breastplate, bunched up her hair and shoved it inside a helmet, lip curling in revulsion as she lowered it over her head.

“Urgh, it smells in here,” said Nuthea.

The illusion was more or less complete. Still, hopefully nobody would look too closely..

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Elrann was having similar difficulties. “Where am I meant to put all this?” she complained as she took things one by one out of the pockets of her engineer’s overalls and placed them on the ground. Two pistols. Whip. Spanner. Wrench. Screwdriver. Pocketknife. Goggles. Compass. She seemed to have even more stuffed in there than Cid kept in his healer’s satchel, which he was simply able to sling over a shoulder as usual over the top of his armour.

“Here,” said Cid, pointing at one of the fallen soldiers. “Look. This one has a leather belt with some utility pouches. He must be some sort of Imperial engineer himself.”

“Thanks, pops,” said Elrann, bending down to take the belt and inspect the contents of its pockets. “Hey, there’s some good stuff in here! I could use some of these! And some of mine need replacing.” She set about filling the belt with her stuff and the items from the soldier that she wanted.

“Come on, woman,” hissed Sagar, “we haven’t got all night.”

Once she was done and had strapped the belt around her waist she stood up, and they all surveyed each other, six unlikely companions now disguised as Imperial soldiers. With the helmets on, they just about passed.

Ryn twisted his torso from side to side, testing out the feel of the armour. His head rocked back in surprise. “It’s so light,” he said.

“Flimsy too,” confirmed Cid. “It’s made of alphite—very plentiful in the Morekemian mountains. Light, cheap and easy to pierce. The Empire don’t exactly kit their soldiers out with the finest equipment, or even train them that well. The Emperor takes more of a ‘quantity over quality’ approach to warfare--”

“Enough yammering,” said Sagar, who had rolled up his leather coat and stashed it in his pack. “We need to get going.”

“What do we do with them?” said Ryn, nodding towards the floored soldiers.

“Drag them into a corner,” said Sagar, “and hope they wake up later rather than sooner.” He shot Nuthea a passive-aggressive glare.

They dragged the soldiers further into the alley and hid them behind a bench. One of thesoldiers started to murmur something, but Sagar hit him again and he stopped.

“When these guys wake up again, they’ll raise the alarm…” said Sagar.

“By that time we will be gone,” said Nuthea. “It’s worth it for a clear conscience.”

Sagar tutted. “Come on, then,” he said. “We better get out of here before they do wake up.”

The six of them walked briskly, not running as that could attract attention, through the darkness of the sleeping city, trying to look like a group of Imperial soldiers out on patrol. They headed north, where Sirra’s main train station was , finding their way bit by bit from landmarks and key streets that those of them who had been here before remembered.

Elrann knew the city best, having lived here the longest, but Sagar, Cid and even Nuthea all seemed to know or remember parts of it too. Ryn guessed that just left him and Vish. But for all he knew the Shadowfinger had been here before as well, he just wasn’t letting on—not that he ever let on about all that much anyway. Ryn supposed he himself was the least well-travelled of the whole group. Naïve greenhorn pussywillow farmboy, ran Sagar’s words in his mind.

“Stop!” said Sagar when they finally sighted the station, still some way off, as they approached it along one of the smaller streets that ran like veins to this focal hub.

Sirra Main Station was a wide building with a series of pointed roofs and a massive clock-face built into the wall above its many-doored main entrance. It was built out of the same white-grey stone as many of the other old or important buildings in Sirra, but Ryn could see that it was extremely grubby in the light from the streetlamps that lit this sector of the city.

There were more soldiers going in than out, but there was still a steady stream in both directions—though thankfully the ones leaving the station were all heading off down the main road that led away from the station.

“Well this makes things harder,” said Elrann.

“Why are there so many of them?” asked Ryn.

“I don’t know, pup,” said Sagar. “But I’m going to find out. You guys wait here and make sure nobody sees you. I’ll be back in a bit.”

And before anyone could protest, he walked off towards the station.

“He’s very brave,” said Nuthea.

Ryn bit his cheek.

Elrann snorted. “Very dumbass, if you ask me.”

They watched Sagar as he strode towards the station, soon losing him in the crowd as just another black-armoured soldier.

After about ten minutes, from the clock on the front of the station, Ryn knew they were all thinking the same thing. What if he’s been caught? What if he’s not coming back? Ryn also wondered, What if he’s decided to turn us all over to the Empire for gold?

But that wouldn’t make sense. Sagar had a price on his own head, and he seemed too enamoured by the prospect of the rewards Nuthea had promised him for transporting her safely, and possibly by Nuthea herself…

Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea

There it was, firm in Ryn’s mind as he watched the flow of soldiers, keenly aware of the princess’s presence next to him. He wasn’t sure if any of his goals were attainable. But damn him if he wasn’t going to try to attain them anyway.

If the others were wondering if Sagar was going to return too nobody voiced their concern, and the minutes ticked by, marked by the slow movement of the big black hand of Sirra Station’s clock, which crept up higher and higher towards the midnight hour. Apparently everyone was too tense to say anything. They just stood there watching, poised and alert like taut bowstrings.

Then, at last, one of the soldiers emerging from the station entrance turned right out of the stream and started to walk towards their position.

Ryn’s hand went to the hilt of the Imperial sword that now hung at his side.

“Relax!” called the soldier as soon as he was in earshot but close enough not to be heard by anyone else. “It’s me! Don’t look so nervous!”

Ryn exhaled as Sagar drew closer. “I was right,” the skypirate said from inside his helmet. “They’re using Sirra as their transport hub to move troops around. This isn’t just an occupation of Imfis—this is a full-scale invasion of Dokan.”

“By the One…” said Nuthea.

“Well, poodoo,” said Elrann.

Neither Cid nor Vish said anything.

Ryn’s head was too foggy for him to register much of the significance of this. So what if the Empire were invading the whole of Dokan? The only part of it that mattered to him had been burned to the ground. He just wanted to find and kill General Vorr.

“I didn’t even have to ask anyone anything,” Sagar went on. “I just picked it up walking round. They’ve commandeered the trains and they’re running them round the clock to send troops to the various Imfisi borders to prepare to invade the neighbouring nations.”

Nuthea took in a sharp breath.

“They’re also keeping some troops here to use Sirra as their base. It’s a major operation—”

“That’s all well and good,” interrupted Nuthea, “but what are we going to do now we’re here?”

“Calm down, princess; I was getting to that. There’s a train that leaves tonight, soon. At midnight. All we need to do is sneak onto it, but with the amount that’s going on in there it’ll be a piece of cake.”

“Where is it going?” asked Ryn.

“Manolia, of course,” said Sagar. “Your homeland. Or as close to the border as it’ll be able to get.”