“Is that what you intend to do with her?” Bo asked.
Vlora’s stomach churned. “I’ll deal with her when I have to. Regardless, we won’t know about the true state of the Fatrastan military until we get around the south end of the Ironhook Mountains. The Dynize field armies are our immediate problem, particularly…” She jabbed at one of the spots she’d poked in the dirt. “That one there.” She drew a small horn in the dirt, jutting out from the coast, on which was perched the city of New Adopest. Her last intelligence told her that the city was under siege by a Dynize army. “We’ll lose valuable time if we go out of our way to confront them, but if we don’t, we’ll leave forty thousand infantry at our rear.”
Bo gave the map a cursory glance and leaned back in his camp chair. “Hm.”
It took Vlora a moment to register how little interest he actually had in what she’d just explained, and another to realize why. “You already knew all that, didn’t you?”
“You sound just like him, you know.”
“Who?” she demanded.
Bo rummaged in his pockets until he produced his comically oversized pipe and a match. He didn’t answer until he’d puffed it to life. “Tamas.”
A little tickle went up Vlora’s spine. She snorted the thought away. “I sound like any competent general, you mean?” She gestured at the dirty map. “You already knew all this.”
“Of course.”
“Then why the pit did you make me explain it?”
Bo smirked.
“Well?”
“Just making sure you still have it.”
Vlora was genuinely angry now. She climbed to her feet, leveraging herself up with her sword. “Why the pit wouldn’t I have it? Just because I’m practically an invalid doesn’t mean I can’t think anymore. I lost my sorcery, not my brain!” The last few words tumbled out far louder than she’d meant them to, and she immediately looked around to see who could have heard them. Only Davd was close enough, and he was studiously looking elsewhere.
She knuckled her back, pulling at some half-healed muscle in her arm in the process. Being angry, she decided, hurt like the pit. “Damn you,” she said to Bo.
He shrugged. “I handed an army to a woman who, for the last few weeks, couldn’t even move without help. I needed to be sure I didn’t make a mistake.”
“Thanks for the confidence,” she spat.
Bo’s eyes narrowed, and she saw his mask of indifference split momentarily. “Don’t confuse my brotherly love for you for stupidity. I wouldn’t have handed you this army in the first place if I didn’t think you would be able to lead it.”
“Oh, stop it.” Vlora felt her anger wane. “This army was meant for Taniel. Don’t tell me you weren’t surprised to hear that he didn’t actually want to lead it.”
Bo rolled his eyes and settled back in his chair, puffing steadily on his pipe. The tobacco was pleasant, with a distinct cherry scent—not nearly as harsh as Olem’s cigarettes. Vlora pulled back into herself, nostrils full of smoke, ears filled with the report of artillery, eye on Lower Blackguard, and wondered when Olem would return.
A little after five o’clock, a lone soldier with a plain steel breastplate left the Dynize camp, walking slowly with hands held in the air, shouting something that was lost beneath the din of the bombardment. He collapsed when he reached the Adran lines.
A few minutes later, a messenger approached Vlora. The young woman snapped a salute. “General Flint, ma’am, there’s a Dynize soldier here offering unconditional surrender.”
“A common soldier?” Vlora asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I was told your orders were to accept surrender only from a sergeant or infantryman.”
That ugly thing writhing in her belly almost put words in her mouth, and Vlora had to bite her tongue hard to resist the urge to order the bombardment to go on all night. “Right. I did. Tell Colonel Silvia to cease fire. Order the Third to march down and take possession of Lower Blackguard. I want a full report of the town and the Dynize prisoners by nightfall. Dismissed.”
The messenger had been gone for a few minutes before Bo cleared his throat. “You almost continued the bombardment, didn’t you? I could see it in your eyes.”
“Shut up,” Vlora snapped, getting to her feet. She could feel Bo’s gaze on her back as she slowly made her way back to her tent, retrieving Tamas’s journal before heading to the general-staff headquarters. The pain of making herself walk such a distance was dragging at her by the time she reached the command tent, and she had to straighten her shoulders and adjust her collar before she nodded to Davd to throw the tent flap open.
As she stepped inside, the chatter of discussion died within moments. All eyes turned toward her. The big tent was full of officers and their aides—brigadier generals, colonels, majors. Most of them had already swung by earlier in the day to offer their platitudes, but they still seemed shocked to see her here.
“Good afternoon,” she said softly. She looked around to see if the commander of the Third was present, and was glad when he wasn’t. She wanted him to oversee the surrender of the Dynize camp personally. “I know many of you are waiting for orders,” she continued, “and that you’re all curious what we’re doing on foreign soil in the middle of a war that isn’t ours.
“Rumors may have reached you about the artifact of great power that the Dynize possess and that the Fatrastans wish to steal back. The rumors are true. I have seen the artifact myself, and we are in possession of the capstone of its counterpart. A third artifact is still unaccounted for. According to our intelligence, if the Dynize leader is able to possess all three of these so-called godstones, he will have the sorcerous ability to make himself or his emperor into a new god.
“I will tell you right now: We are not here to win a war for either the Dynize or the Fatrastans. We are here to take the Landfall godstone from our enemies and destroy it, after which we will withdraw and these sons of bitches can kill each other to their hearts’ content. Understood?”
There was a round of nods. One of the colonels in the back raised a hand. Vlora ignored it.
“Thank you all for coming so far on the word—and krana—of Magus Borbador.” She allowed herself a smirk, and gave a moment for the few chuckles to die down. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to lead you all in battle once again. The Dynize in Lower Blackguard have surrendered. We’re finished here, and I’m simply waiting on my scouts before I plot our next move. I’d like to review the troops in an hour, if you please. That is all.”
Vlora ignored a storm of questions as she cut through the middle of the room and searched for a seat in the far corner, where she sank down in relief and opened Tamas’s journal, reading with ears deaf to the rest of the world. Only when a messenger approached, informing her that the troops were assembled, did she close the journal and return to her feet, limping along with the book tucked under her arm.
She stepped outside and her breath immediately caught in her throat.
The valley below the command tent was filled with soldiers standing at attention in perfect, still silence. Nearly forty thousand sets of eyes stared directly at her, unblinking, unwavering. She couldn’t help but wonder what Bo had promised these men and women to get them to come all the way across the ocean and leap into a war, and whether her reputation had swayed any of them to come.
She dismissed the thought immediately. Bo must have promised them a fortune. He certainly had the money.
Distantly, a voice called out, “Field Army, salute!”
There was booming answer of “Hut!” and the snap of forty thousand arms. Vlora watched in awe, trying to remember if she’d ever been in command of so many troops at once.
“Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” Bo asked, emerging from behind the command tent.
Vlora managed a nod.
“You know, technically you should be addressed as Field Marshal.”
Vlora considered it. She fought momentarily with her terrible subconscious, which rat
her liked the sound of Field Marshal Flint. “‘General’ will do for now,” she told Bo. She stepped past him, walking the few dozen paces to where the general staff stood assembled nearby. She was barely able to tear her eyes off the army before her as she approached, and a line from Tamas’s journal struck her.
With an Adran Field Army, he’d written during the Gurlish Wars, if it was stripped of buffoons and properly supplied, I could conquer the world.
She thought, for that moment, that she felt the thrill that must have compelled him to such a conjecture. “My friends,” she finally said to the general staff, “my voice is not up to a speech, but please pass on to your soldiers that this is the finest army I’ve ever seen.” She lifted her head just as a rider crested the top of the hill. The rider paused, clearly taken by what he saw, but Vlora lifted an arm and waved him closer.
It was one of her scouts. The man swung from his horse by the command tent and approached with a sort of reverence, saluting Vlora and then the general staff. “What news?” Vlora asked. “Speak up so the generals can hear you.”
“I come from the southeast,” the scout reported. “With word from New Adopest.”
“And how does it look?”
“They’re still under siege by the Dynize. They beg for aid from Lindet, but none of the Fatrastan armies have been able to break north. The messengers I met claim that the city won’t last out the week.”
Vlora glanced at the general staff, knowing what must be going through their heads. She’d already told them that they weren’t here to take sides, but Fatrastans were almost entirely Kressian, with an enormous population of emigrated Adrans. Some of the general staff probably had friends or relatives in New Adopest. It had, after all, been settled by their ancestors.
Vlora needed to teach a lesson—a lesson to her officers, to the Fatrastans, and to the Dynize. She raised her voice. “Send orders to the fleet. They’re to brush aside the Dynize sea blockade, but I don’t want them to make contact with the city.”
“And us?” one of the brigadier generals asked.
“Most of these men haven’t seen blood since the Kez Civil War. I don’t want to reach Landfall with rusty troops. Let’s go give them some practice.”
CHAPTER 5
Styke knelt in the thick, clinging underbrush, trying to ignore whatever creature was crawling across the back of his neck, and watched as two squads of Dynize naval infantry splashed through a streambed almost close enough for him to touch. The soldiers seemed alert, watchful, each of them looking in a different direction to cover all approaches while the two leads tracked Styke’s Lancers across mud, water, and rock.
He pressed his back against one of the mighty stone outcroppings that rose sharply from the swamp. Not a sound—not a breath. He was too close. One of the soldiers looked right past him, stabbing a short bayonet into the foliage and missing Styke’s knee by inches. Satisfied, the woman moved on. A few moments later the last soldier paused right beside Styke. He said something in Dynize that Styke couldn’t quite catch, then turned directly toward him and began to undo his trousers.
Styke was willing to put up with all sorts of creeping things for the sake of an ambush. He would not, however, allow a man to piss on him. He grunted, knife flashing up, and slashed the man’s throat before he could say a word. Styke lunged from the underbrush before his first victim had hit the ground. He thrust into the next soldier, cut the throat of a third, and took two steps back before the rest of the squad could turn to face him.
“Now!” he yelled, flinging himself back into the underbrush.
Farther up the stream, twenty carbines fired at once, cutting through the two squads of infantry. Styke listened to the bullets whiz by and crack against the stone mere feet from his head, then counted to ten before he returned to the open.
Only six members of the original two squads remained standing. The Lancers fell upon them, swinging carbines and knives, but to their credit the Dynize infantry did not go down without a fight. Wounded to a man, they closed ranks and returned fire, then brandished their bayonets. Styke waited for them to route and retreat toward him, but not a one of them did.
Within the minute they were overwhelmed, but at least four of Styke’s Lancers had taken wounds, and two of those were on the ground. He joined the group, taking a moment to wipe his blade on the jacket of a fallen Dynize before barking out, “No time to slow down. We’ve got at least six more squads on our heels. Jackal, get the horses. Sunin, see to the wounded. We’ve got to stay ahead of these bastards or this swamp will be the last thing we see.”
As they jumped to follow his orders, Styke let out a piercing whistle. A few moments later both Ka-poel and Celine emerged from the trees farther up the streambed. Celine looked around at the bodies like a child unimpressed by a bunch of broken dolls, while Ka-poel’s study was far cooler, almost academic.
“If one of these is still breathing,” Styke said, “I need him to talk. Can you do that?”
Ka-poel’s hands flashed. Celine translated. I thought you don’t like my methods.
“I don’t. But I’d like to stay alive right now.”
Ka-poel rolled her eyes and headed around the sixteen-or-so fallen Dynize. She checked three of them before finally squatting beside one, a man with the haggard old face of a seasoned veteran. The man’s mouth was full of blood, his teeth clenched tightly, but he grinned defiantly at them as he clutched a length of intestine falling from a gaping stomach wound. Ka-poel dipped her fingers in his blood, then dabbed them on his forehead and cheeks. The soldier’s eyes narrowed, then widened in realization, and he began to shiver violently, clawing at his own stomach as if to hurry his own demise.
“Seems like they know what a bone-eye is capable of,” Styke commented. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that his orders were being carried out. The men had already begun to bring their horses back to the streambed and out of the rocky recess where they’d been hidden.
Ka-poel pressed two fingers against the dying soldier’s throat. The man’s struggles weakened, his eyes glazing over. She nodded.
Styke knelt beside him, looking over the soldier, the coppery scent of Ka-poel’s sorcery in his nostrils. “Can you understand me?” He spoke in Palo, throwing in the few Dynize words he knew.
“Yes,” the soldier responded.
“Good. How many of you are on our tail?”
“Nine squads.”
“How many in a Dynize squad?”
“Eight to ten.” The answers were mechanical, spoken in that Dynize that sounded so much like heavily accented Palo.
“Your orders?”
“Kill you. Capture a few. Find out why you’re dropping such a small group on the homeland.”
“Is your ship continuing in pursuit of ours?”
“Just the escorts. Our ship of the line will return to port to let them know about a possible invasion.”
“Of just twenty men?”
The soldier blinked blankly. “We are very cautious. The homeland is not well defended right now.”
Styke tried to think of any other questions that a common soldier might be able to answer. That last bit was good news, but he knew better than to take the man at his word. It was very unlikely that he actually knew how many soldiers the Dynize had left to garrison their own cities. “Not well defended”—could be relative, considering the size of the Dynize invasion force.
Still, this meant that someone would be told that Styke had put to shore. Whether the Dynize cared enough to come looking was another matter. But they needed to hurry.
“How far behind us are the rest of your comrades?”
Sweat poured down the soldier’s forehead. He was dying, and quickly. Styke wondered how long Ka-poel could keep him alive. “I don’t know. We spread out to entrap you. The others may already be on your flank.”
“Piss and shit.” Styke stood up, raising his head to the sky. “We need to find that road well before nightfall,” he shouted. “Form a line and get
ready to move out. I want to—”
He was cut off by the distant caw of a raven, followed by another, then a long-drawn-out croak. He paused and looked around for Jackal. “Did you hear that?”
Jackal nodded in confusion. “That was Markus’s signal.”
“That the enemy on our left flank has been taken care of,” Styke replied, not bothering to hide his bafflement.
“Yes.”
“By himself?”
“I’m not sure,” Jackal said. “Should I go find him?”
Styke felt his gut twist. Something was wrong here and he couldn’t quite place it. “We need to keep moving. If we’re fine on our left flank, it won’t hurt to get to the road. Markus can catch up with us. Get on your horses,” he told Ka-poel and Celine. Once Celine’s back was turned, he knelt down next to the soldier he’d been interrogating and quickly dispatched him.
“Ben,” Jackal said.
“What is it?” Styke’s eyes fell on Jackal, only to see that the Palo had frozen in place, alert as a dog with its hackles up. Gripping his knife, Styke turned to follow his gaze.
A pair of figures had appeared on a knoll to their right. One of them was Zak, Markus’s brother. The other was familiar, and it made the hair on the back of Styke’s neck stand on end.
It was the dragonman who had walked out at the Battle of Starlight. Ji-Orz. He wore the same naval infantry uniform as the soldiers Styke had just ambushed, and he regarded the entire group of Lancers with an air of appraisal. He and Zak descended the knoll, and though Zak was stiff, he didn’t appear to be under any duress. He swallowed hard when they reached the stream and cleared his throat. “Boss,” he said, “this man says he’s a buddy of yours.”
Styke met Ji-Orz’s gaze and slowly wicked the blood off his knife with two fingers. “Dragonman.”
“Hello, Ben Styke,” Orz said in Adran. “I have come to make a deal.”
“Hold on,” Styke cut him off. “First, how the pit did you get here?” He looked sharply around at the gathered Lancers. He had no doubt that they could deal with the dragonman—but it would be at great cost.
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