After all, they were only hunting one man and this was broad daylight.
Taniel knew he couldn’t fight all eighty of them. He didn’t stand a chance.
He waited until the entire company was within sight, strung out as they were along the canyon floor, and the center of the company was directly below his position. Then he lashed out with one foot at the log beside him and dashed out of the way as twenty tons of rubble immediately began to thunder down the canyon walls.
He couldn’t win, but he would damn well take as many of them to the Pit with him as possible.
The canyon echoed with the screams of the dying and the yells of the survivors as the thunder finally subsided in the wake of Taniel’s avalanche.
The sound made Taniel sick. He hadn’t wanted to kill his own countrymen. These men had friends and family. Children and wives and husbands. He might have fought beside some of them. He might have trained beside them.
It was no different from killing any enemy, he reminded himself. This was war. He had to kill or be killed.
Taniel stealthily stuck his head out from his hiding place to examine his handiwork.
The avalanche had cut the Adran company in half. At least ten of them had been buried by the falling rocks and another dozen or so wounded. A captain was pinned to the floor of the canyon by a boulder on his leg, and Taniel could hear his howls of pain. A lieutenant stood above him, directing a simultaneous defense-and-rescue mission. The infantry had scattered to whatever cover they could find, and now everyone had their eyes on the canyon’s walls.
They began to dig out their wounded, and when it became apparent that an attack was not imminent, two squads continued their journey up the canyon.
This was good news and bad news. The good news was that he’d split their forces. The bad news was that those two squads were heading toward Ka-poel’s cave.
He set off at a run just beneath the ridgeline, where he could be plainly seen by the soldiers below. A shout of alarm followed him a moment later and he heard the soft pop of air rifles. The distance was far too great for them to actually hit him, but he ducked behind a boulder anyway and took a moment to look back.
The lieutenant pointed toward him, shouting after the two squads. The two squad sergeants conferred, and then one squad headed straight up the steep incline toward Taniel while the other set about looking for a goat path or some other way to flank him.
Taniel had their attention now, and that’s what mattered.
He led the two squads on a chase along the ridgeline for over a mile. Of the twenty-four men, only three kept up with his pace, outstripping their comrades in their attempt to catch up. After all, they only had to get close enough for a shot with an air rifle to bring Taniel down. Hilanska must have offered a reward for his head. Soldiers normally weren’t this zealous.
The thought hardened Taniel’s heart against his reluctance to kill more of his countrymen. These men would gun him down without hesitation. They were hunting him like a dog.
He risked a dash across open ground, flinching at the pop of air rifles and the sound of bullets skipping off of the stone behind him. They were still just out of range, but a lucky shot aimed high might wound him. He leapt a fissure and continued on for some thirty paces before the ground gave way to rockier terrain and he leapt back into cover.
Out of sight of the squad, he doubled back, running in a crouch beneath the lip of a boulder until he was inside the fissure that he’d jumped only moments ago.
Taniel wondered what his father would say if he saw any of his own men being led into such an obvious trap.
Probably that the damned fools deserved to die.
The first pursuer leapt the fissure only a few moments after Taniel was in position. As the second set of legs flew overhead, he reached up and grabbed a boot, yanking down. The man dropped his air rifle with a clatter and landed face-first on the lip of the fissure, leaving a smear of blood behind.
The third of the group skidded to a stop and knelt beside his comrade. Taniel made a running leap and grabbed this one by the front of his jacket, dragging him back into the fissure. The soldier let out a strangled scream before Taniel silenced him by slamming his face repeatedly against the rocks. He snatched the air rifle from the dead man’s hands and checked it for damage.
Air rifles were notoriously more unreliable than conventional muskets and rifles. The mechanisms broke easily and the air reserves leaked. This one seemed sound, and Taniel checked the chamber and shouldered the butt.
“Glouster?” The first pursuer had noticed his companion’s absence and turned. “Glouster, are you all right? Allier looks like he’s hurt bad. Pit, Glouster, say something!”
Taniel felt a pang at the panic in the young man’s voice. The fear must be setting in, overrunning his adrenaline. He’d be wondering if his eyes had tricked him. Hadn’t Taniel disappeared into the rocks ahead? How could he possibly be in that dark fissure?
The infantryman came into view, his rifle shouldered, squinting into the fissure.
Taniel shot him in the chest.
He took spare ammunition and air reserves from the dead infantrymen and followed his hidden path back to the rocks. The rest of the squad would catch up any moment, and they wouldn’t be as stupid as their comrades.
He ambushed two more infantrymen in the rocks, and then three more after them, using their bulky kits and unwieldy bayoneted rifles against them in the close confines of the rock formations.
He shot another with his captured air rifle just a few moments later, but the damned mechanism broke before he could fire another round, and he was forced to flee, with the remainder of the two squads hot on his heels.
They stayed in a tight formation now, not letting themselves be led on by his tricks.
Taniel knew he was running out of ground. This ridge went on for a couple of miles before it meandered into one of the thousands of valleys that crisscrossed this mountain range. He needed to be rid of the rest of his pursuers before he doubled back and figured out a way to deal with the remaining infantrymen down in the canyon. There was another fissure along here somewhere that would let him get behind his enemy and…
Taniel swung around a boulder to find himself staring out into the sky. The drop below him must have been more than two hundred feet down a sheer rock face into a barren streambed. He searched about him for another escape route, but there was nothing but bare, vertical rock to be found. A ledge to his right gave way to more such rock and a narrow outcropping that would doubtlessly give them a firing platform.
Somewhere, he’d taken a wrong turn. He was at a dead end.
He looked back around the boulder the way he came. Maybe he had time to get back and find another route before they caught up.
The flash of Adran blues sent him back behind his boulder. He could hear the shouts of his pursuers.
“He went down this path here.”
“Careful on that, no line of sight. He could be hiding anywhere.”
“Cover me from above.”
“All right, you three with me. Try to go around that way, lads.”
Taniel risked a glance to see four soldiers working their way down the goat path he’d followed. They were less than twenty paces away, and would reach him within moments. The other soldiers would find that outcropping sooner or later and he was a dead man.
If this damned air rifle hadn’t broken, he might be able to defend himself at range.
When the first bayonet came within sight around the edge of the boulder, Taniel reached past it to grab the barrel and leveraged his weight against the man holding it. Caught by surprise, the infantryman slid and tumbled several feet and then plummeted the rest of the way down into the gorge, the end of his fall punctuated by the silencing of his scream.
“Bloody pit, he’s right there!”
“Hold it together.”
“He just threw Havin right off the edge! Did you see that? He’s going to…”
Taniel didn’t w
ait to find out what the infantryman thought he was going to do. He rounded the corner, gripping his broken air rifle like a pike, and shoved the bayonet into the talking man’s chest. The man gave a garbled yell and fell, grabbing the kit of the man behind him as he went and sending them both tumbling over the edge.
Taniel and the last soldier stared at each other for a moment before the man brought his air rifle to his shoulder in one quick move and pulled the trigger.
Click.
“They’re so damned unreliable, aren’t they?” Taniel asked.
The man swore and jabbed at Taniel with his bayonet. Taniel danced back to dodge the thrust and found himself slipping. He dropped his own rifle instinctively to grab for purchase and listened with a lump in his throat as his best weapon clattered down into the gorge.
Gravel shifted beneath him as he scrambled backward on his hands and feet as the soldier advanced with his bayonet. Taniel backed around the edge of the boulder and snatched for his knife. It wouldn’t be worth shit against a bayonet, but he had to try. He drew it just as the soldier was rounding the corner. He wouldn’t be able to get to his feet in time. This would be impossible to—
Blood spouted from the soldier’s mouth and beneath it something sprouted from his throat like a plant growing in a field. He teetered on his feet, then was helped in his tumble off the edge by a firm shove by Ka-poel.
She held a bayonet in one hand, clutched by the ring, and her ratty clothes were stained by the blood of far more than that one poor infantryman.
Taniel let out a sigh of relief and his whole body sagged beneath him. She’d saved his life. Again. He climbed to his feet and nodded his thanks, not trusting himself to speak. All this adrenaline, this skirting of death, was far harder to deal with when he was not in a powder trance.
A bullet ricocheted off the boulder just above Ka-poel’s head. Taniel grabbed her by the front of her jacket and pulled her into an embrace, knowing instinctively that the bullet had come from behind him. He caught a glimpse of two soldiers standing on the outcropping that he’d spotted earlier. The second one was lining up his shot. Taniel could do nothing but put his body in between Ka-poel and the bullet and hope the man missed.
FOOM.
The sound left Taniel’s ears ringing. When he managed to pull himself away from Ka-poel, the soldiers weren’t on the outcropping anymore. One of their hats lay on its side where they had just been, and a quick glance showed him two more bodies down in the gorge.
What the pit was that?
The crunch of boots on stone made him cringe. More infantry?
A familiar figure strolled out to the end of the narrow outcropping. He wore ruddy muttonchops and a suit of clothes that, if they hadn’t been so travel-worn and dusty, would probably cost as much as a horse.
Privileged Borbador kicked the infantryman’s hat after its owner and watched it soar down into the gully. He turned to Taniel and waved.
“Hey, Tan. Sorry I’m late,” he called.
CHAPTER
14
Nila was going to die.
She wondered if that certainty had ever crossed her mind before, during any of the events of the last six months. It must have. During her time with the royalists, or as Lord Vetas’s prisoner, or even her first encounter with Bo. There were a dozen or more times that she had stared death in the face.
Yet none of them seemed more certain than now.
Something had been done to buy the Adran army an extra day. She’d seen a messenger rush from General Hilanska’s camp yesterday afternoon, crossing over to the Kez lines, and the anticipated attack had never come. It had given Brigadier Abrax more time to plan and dig in her forces.
And now, with the sun rising over the Adsea, the Kez and Adrans prepared for battle once again. A hundred thousand Kez infantry fell into ranks to the south, their bayonets glittering in the morning sun. To the northeast, General Hilanska’s men were already arrayed and ready for battle. Nila stood near the Wings of Adom command tent, where she could see messengers running to and fro and hear the bark of Abrax’s stern alto.
The Wings of Adom and the three brigades of Adran soldiers that Ket had handed over would be crushed between the two enemy armies.
There wasn’t even any place to run.
Rumors swirled among the Wings of Adom. A captain claimed that they’d seen one of Field Marshal Tamas’s powder mages. An infantryman claimed that Deliv had entered the war and were sending reinforcements, but that they were still weeks away. Another said that this was all a ruse by Hilanska and that once the Kez forces advanced, Hilanska’s army would swing around and hit them in the flank.
Soldiers would say anything to keep up morale, it seemed.
Even if all of those things were the case, they would still be crushed by the Kez. There were just too many of them. Their army could swallow the entirety of the Wings of Adom mercenary company five times over and still have room for more. The Wings’ infantry—impressively—kept up a professional front, but she could see the panic in the eyes of the rank-and-file soldiers and their officers.
They would all be dead by morning.
“Ma’am,” a voice said at Nila’s elbow, startling her.
She regained her composure and turned to the young lieutenant. He couldn’t have been much older than Nila and he wore his black hair slicked back under his bicorne and tied in a bow behind his head. He favored her with a nervous smile.
“Yes?”
“Brigadier Abrax has requested your presence.”
Nila frowned over toward Abrax. The brigadier had exited her tent and was standing just thirty paces off, staring balefully at the Kez army. Why hadn’t she just come over herself? “Of course.”
Nila joined Abrax in front of the command tent. “You wished to see me, ma’am?”
“Is it still a secret that you’re a Privileged?”
Nila blinked back at her. “I… well, I assume so. Bo said that I was still too green for my aura to show in the Else, so the enemy Knacked or Privileged shouldn’t know I’m here.”
“The enemy has no Privileged. Or,” Abrax corrected herself, “the ones they do have amount to very little. None of the mountain throwers of the royal cabal.” She turned to Nila suddenly. “Have you told anyone?”
“No.”
“Keep it that way. You’re to be our trump card.”
Nila couldn’t help but laugh at that. She stifled it as best she could, but it still leaked out as a giggle.
“Something funny, Privileged?”
Privileged. Being addressed as such sent a shiver down Nila’s spine, sobering her instantly. “It’s just that I’m only a trainee. I’ve barely learned to look into the Else, let alone command the elements. I won’t be any help at all in a fight.”
“You can’t do any sorcery?” Abrax sounded skeptical.
“I can light my hand on fire. But only when I get very startled or angry.”
Abrax turned away, looking slightly disgusted. “We have some Privileged, but they’re very weak. They won’t do much more damage than a well-placed field gun and they’re far more fragile. Borbador told me you were powerful. I’d hoped you’d be of some help.”
Bo had said that to Abrax? Why on earth? Nila was untrained, and Bo knew that better than anyone.
“I’m sorry,” Nila ventured.
“I didn’t realize you were that green. Stay back with the baggage. You’ll do nothing but get underfoot near the front. And whatever you do, don’t attempt any sorcery. You’ll likely kill everyone around you. It’s unfortunate your bloody master abandoned us. He might have tipped this in our favor.” Abrax strode away without another word, barking orders.
Nila stared after her, indignation warring with a sense of helplessness. Bo had abandoned her. She knew just enough to know that maybe, with a few months more training, she could have defended herself. But she couldn’t be of any use here. She was no better than the rest of the camp followers—part of the luggage. She was back to being wi
th the laundresses and all the rest.
Abrax could go to the pit. If—when—the Kez broke the line, Nila would fight. She didn’t care if she took the whole baggage train with her.
The baggage and camp were about a quarter of a mile behind the front line. The area had been fortified with hastily dug entrenchments and was guarded by a brigade of Wings of Adom mercenaries stretched out—to Nila’s eye—over far too much ground.
The camp followers had been ordered to stay behind when the Wings had marched to General Ket’s aid, but even so there had to be several thousand people with the baggage, essential personnel such as wagoners, quartermasters, and the like.
“Shouldn’t you be near the front?”
Nila turned to find Inspector Adamat sitting on the ground nearby, looking older and wearier than he had just a few days before.
“Abrax sent me back here. I don’t have enough training to be useful.”
“Ah. I suppose that’s true enough.” He smiled as if to soften the comment. “I’m too old to be of any use.”
“I’ve seen infantrymen with ten years or more on you.”
“I haven’t held a rifle in line since drills at the academy. I’m more likely to stick my bayonet into the man beside me than I am to be of any use up there.”
Nila wondered if that were the case. She knew that Adamat had led the charge against Lord Vetas’s men. He was more than capable. Perhaps he’d used his age as a pretense to avoid the front. Nila wouldn’t have blamed him. Courage, Bo had told her, was overrated.
Adamat certainly didn’t look frightened. Just tired. He stared at his feet for a few moments, then raised his head. “They don’t have enough men back here to guard the rear.”
“I was told an entire brigade.”
“The Kez will flank us to the west while General Hilanska hits us from the northeast. I predict this position will be overrun by”—he glanced at his pocket watch—“one o’clock. If we’re lucky, we’ll be killed outright.” He fingered his cane as if he were wondering how much of a fight he had left in him.
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