The Crimson Campaign

by Brian McClellan

  “What else do you know?”

  “I barely spoke twenty words with the guy,” Roja said. His words were coming out in broken gasps as he sputtered through his tears. “Don’t know anything else!”

  Adamat struck Roja on the back of the head. He sagged, but he was not unconscious. Adamat lifted him by his belt and shoved his face down into the muck. He lifted him again and pushed. Roja flailed, his legs kicking hard as he tried to breathe through the piss and shit. Adamat grabbed the boxer by the ankles and pushed down, jamming Roja in the hole.

  Adamat turned and walked out of the outhouse. He couldn’t think through his fury. He was going to destroy Vetas for putting his wife and children through this.

  Oldrich and his men stood by, watching Roja drown in filth. One of them looked ill in the dim lantern light. Another was nodding in approval. The night was quiet now, and Adamat could hear the steady chirp of crickets in the forest.

  “Aren’t you going to ask him more questions?” Oldrich said.

  “He said himself, he doesn’t know anything else.” Adamat felt his stomach turn and he looked back at Roja’s kicking legs. The mental image of Roja forcing himself on Faye almost stopped Adamat, and then he said to Oldrich, “Pull him out before he dies. Then ship him to the deepest coal mine you can find on the Mountainwatch.”

  Adamat swore to do worse to Vetas when he caught him.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Field Marshal Tamas stood above Budwiel’s southern gate and surveyed the Kez army. This wall marked the southernmost point of Adro. If he tossed a stone in front of him, it would land on Kez soil, perhaps rolling down the slope of the Great Northern Road until it reached the Kez pickets on the edge of their army.

  The Gates of Wasal, a pair of five-hundred-foot-tall cliffs, rose to either side of him, divided by thousands of years of flowing water coming out of the Adsea, cutting through Surkov’s Alley, and feeding the grain fields of the Amber Expanse in northern Kez.

  The Kez army had left the smoldering ruins of South Pike Mountain only three weeks ago. Official reports estimated the number of men in the army that had besieged Shouldercrown as two hundred thousand soldiers, accompanied by camp followers that swelled that number to almost three-quarters of a million.

  His scouts told him that the total number was over a million now.

  A small part of Tamas cowered at such a number. The world had not seen an army of that size since the wars of the Bleakening over fourteen hundred years ago. And here it was at his doorstep, trying to take his country from him.

  Tamas could recognize a new soldier on the walls by how loud they gasped upon seeing the Kez army. He could smell the fear of his own men. The anticipation. The dread. This was not Shouldercrown, a fortress easily held by a few companies of soldiers. This was Budwiel, a trading city of some hundred thousand people. The walls were in disrepair, the gates too numerous and too wide.

  Tamas did not let that fear show on his own face. He didn’t dare. He buried his tactical concerns; the terror he felt that his only son lay in Adopest deep in a coma; the pain that still ached in his leg despite the healing powers of a god. Nothing showed on his countenance but contempt for the audacity of the Kez commanders.

  Steady footfalls sounded on the stone stairs behind him, and Tamas was joined by General Hilanska, the commander of Budwiel’s artillery and the Second Brigade.

  Hilanska was an extremely portly man of about forty years old, a widower of ten years, and a veteran of the Gurlish Campaigns. He was missing his left arm at the shoulder, taken clean off by a cannonball thirty years ago when Hilanska was not yet a captain. He had never let his arm nor his weight affect his performance on a battlefield, and for that alone he had Tamas’s respect. Never mind that his gun crews could knock the head off a charging cavalryman at eight hundred yards.

  Among Tamas’s General Staff, most of whom had been chosen for their skill and not their personalities, Hilanska was the closest thing Tamas had to a friend.

  “Been watching them gather there for weeks and it still doesn’t cease to impress me,” Hilanska said.

  “Their numbers?” Tamas asked.

  Hilanska leaned over the edge of the wall and spit. “Their discipline.” He removed his looking glass from his belt and slid it open with a well-practiced jerk of his one hand, then held it up to his eye. “All those damned paper-white tents lined up as far as the eye can see. Looks like a model.”

  “Lining up a half-million tents doesn’t make an army disciplined,” Tamas said. “I’ve worked with Kez commanders before. In Gurla. They keep their men in line with fear. It makes for a clean and pretty camp, but when armies clash, there’s no steel in their spine. They break by the third volley.” Not like my men, he thought. Not like the Adran brigades.

  “Hope you’re right,” Hilanska said.

  Tamas watched the Kez sentries make their rounds a half mile away, well in range of Hilanska’s guns, but not worth the ammunition. The main army camped almost two whole miles back; their officers feared Tamas’s powder mages more than they did Hilanska’s guns.

  Tamas gripped the lip of the stone wall and opened his third eye. A wave of dizziness passed over him before he could see clearly into the Else. The world took on a pastel glow. In the distance there were lights, glimmering like the fires of an enemy patrol at night – the glow of Kez Privileged and Wardens. He closed his third eye and rubbed at his temple.

  “You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you?” Hilanska asked.

  “What?”

  “Invading.”

  “Invade?” Tamas scoffed. “I’d have to be mad to launch an attack against an army ten times our size.”

  “You’ve got that look to you, Tamas,” Hilanska said. “Like a dog pulling at its chain. I’ve known you too long. You’ve made no secret that you intend to invade Kez given the opportunity.”

  Tamas eyed those pickets. The Kez army was set so far back it would be almost impossible to catch them unawares. The terrain gave no good cover for a night attack.

  “If I could get the Seventh and Ninth in there with the element of surprise, I could carve through the heart of their army and be back in Budwiel before they knew what hit them,” Tamas said quietly. His heart quickened at the thought. The Kez were not to be underestimated. They had the numbers. They still had a few Privileged, even after the Battle of Shouldercrown.

  But Tamas knew what his best brigades were capable of. He knew Kez strategies, and he knew their weaknesses. Kez soldiers were levies from their immense peasant population. Their officers were nobles who’d bought their commissions. Not like his men: patriots, men of steel and iron.

  “A few of my boys did some exploring,” Hilanska said.

  “They did?” Tamas quelled the annoyance of having his thoughts interrupted.

  “You know about Budwiel’s catacombs?”

  Tamas grunted in acknowledgment. The catacombs stretched under the West Pillar, one of the two mountains that made up the Gates of Wasal. They were a mixture of natural and man-made caverns used to house Budwiel’s dead.

  “They’re off limits to soldiers,” Tamas said, unable to keep the reproach from his voice.

  “I’ll deal with my boys, but you might want to hear what they have to say before we have them flogged.”

  “Unless they discovered a Kez spy ring, I doubt it’s relevant.”

  “Better,” Hilanska said. “They found a way for you to get your men into Kez.”

  Tamas felt his heart jump at the possibility. “Take me to them.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Taniel stared at the ceiling only a foot above him, counting each time he swung, side to side, in the hemp-rope hammock, listening to the Gurlish pipes that filled the room with a soft, whistling music.

  He hated that music. It seemed to echo in his ears, all at once too soft to hear well but loud enough to make him grind his molars together. He lost count of the hammock swings somewhere around ten and exhale
d. Warm smoke curled out from between his lips and against the crumbling mortar in the ceiling. He watched the smoke escape the roof of his niche and swirl into the middle of the mala den.

  There were a dozen such niches in the room. Two were occupied. In the two weeks he’d been there, Taniel had yet to see the occupants get up to piss or eat or do anything other than suck on the long-stemmed mala pipes and flag the den’s owner over for a refill.

  He leaned over, his hand reaching for a refill for his own mala pipe. The table next to his hammock held a plate with a few scraps of dark mala, an empty purse, and a pistol. He couldn’t remember where the pistol came from.

  Taniel gathered the bits of mala together into one small, sticky ball and pushed it into the end of his pipe. It lit instantly, and he took a long pull into his lungs.

  “Want more?”

  The den’s owner sidled up to Taniel’s hammock. He was Gurlish, his skin brown but not as dark as a Deliv’s, with a lighter tone under his eyes and on his palms. He was tall, like most Gurlish, and skinny, his back bent from years of leaning into the niches of his mala den to clean them out or light an addict’s pipe. His name was Kin.

  Taniel reached for his purse, wiggled his fingers around inside before remembering that it was empty. “No money,” he said, his own voice ragged in his ears.

  How long had he been here? Two weeks, Taniel decided after putting his mind to the question. More importantly, how did he get here?

  Not here, the mala den, but here in Adopest. Taniel remembered the fight on top of Kresimir’s palace as Ka-poel destroyed the Kez Cabal, and he remembered pulling the trigger of his rifle and watching a bullet take the god Kresimir in the eye.

  It was all darkness after that until he woke up, covered in sweat, Ka-poel straddling him with fresh blood on her hands. He remembered bodies in the hallway of the hotel – his father’s soldiers with an unfamiliar insignia on their jackets. He’d left the hotel and stumbled here, where he’d hoped to forget.

  Of course, if he still remembered all that, then the mala wasn’t doing its job.

  “Army jacket,” Kin said, fingering his lapel. “Your buttons.”

  Taniel looked down at the jacket he wore. It was Adran-army dark blue, with silver trim and buttons. He’d taken it from the hotel. It wasn’t his – too big. There was a powder mage pin – a silver powder keg – pinned to the lapel. Maybe it was his. Had he lost weight?

  The jacket had been clean two days ago. He remembered that much. Now it was stained with drool, bits of food, and small burns from mala embers. When the pit had he eaten?

  Taniel pulled his belt knife and took one of the buttons in his fingers. He paused. Kin’s daughter walked through the room. She wore a faded white dress, clean despite the squalor of the den. She must have been a few years older than Taniel, but no children clung to her skirts.

  “Do you like my daughter?” Kin asked. “She will dance for you. Two buttons!” He held up two fingers for emphasis. “Much prettier than the Fatrastan witch.”

  Kin’s wife, sitting in the corner and playing the Gurlish pipes, stopped the music long enough to say something to Kin. They exchanged a few words in Gurlish, then Kin turned back to Taniel. “Two buttons!” he reiterated.

  Taniel cut a button loose and put it in Kin’s hand. Dance, eh? Taniel wondered if Kin had a strong enough grasp of Adran for euphemism, or if dance was indeed all she’d do.

  “Maybe later,” Taniel said, settling back in the hammock with a fresh ball of mala the size of a child’s fist. “Ka-poel isn’t a witch. She’s…” He paused, trying to figure out a way to describe her to a Gurlish. His thoughts moved slowly, sluggish from the mala. “All right,” he conceded. “She’s a witch.”

  Taniel topped off his mala pipe. Kin’s daughter was watching him. He returned her open stare with a half-lidded gaze. She was pretty, by some standards. Too tall by far for Taniel, and much too gaunt – most Gurlish were. She stayed there, laundry balanced on her hip, until her father shooed her out.

  How long had it been since he’d had a woman?

  A woman? He laughed, smoke curling out his nose. The laugh ended in a cough and received no more than a curious glance from Kin. No, not a woman. The woman. Vlora. How long had it been? Two and a half years now? Three?

  He sat back up and fished around in his pocket for a powder charge, wondering where Vlora was now. Probably still with Tamas and the rest of the powder cabal.

  Tamas would want Taniel back on the front line.

  To the pit with that. Let Tamas come to Adopest looking for Taniel. The last place he’d look was a mala den.

  There wasn’t a powder charge in Taniel’s pocket. Ka-poel had cleaned him out. He’d not had a smidgen of powder since she brought him out of that goddamned coma. Not even his pistol was loaded. He could go out and get some. Find a barracks, show them his powder-mage pin.

  The very idea of getting out of the hammock made his head spin.

  Ka-poel came down the steps into the mala den just as Taniel was beginning to drift off. He kept his eyes mostly closed, the smoke curling from his lips. She stopped and examined him.

  She was short, her features petite. Her skin was white, with ashen freckles and her red hair was no more than an inch long. He didn’t like it so short, it made her look boyish. No mistaking her for a boy, Taniel thought as she shrugged out of her long black duster. Underneath she wore a white sleeveless shirt, scrounged from who-knew-where, and close-fitting black pants.

  Ka-poel touched Taniel’s shoulder. He ignored her. Let her think him asleep, or too deep in a mala haze to notice her. All the better.

  She reached out and squeezed his nose shut with one hand, pushing his mouth closed with the other.

  He jerked up, taking a breath when she let go. “What the pit, Pole? Trying to kill me?”

  She smiled, and it wasn’t the first time under the mala haze that he’d stared into those glass-green eyes with less than proper thoughts. He shook them away. She was his ward. He was her protector. Or was it the other way around? She was the one who’d done the protecting up on South Pike.

  Taniel settled back into the hammock. “What do you want?”

  She held up a thick pad of paper, bound in leather. A sketchbook. To replace the one lost on South Pike Mountain. He felt a pang at that. Sketches from eight years of his life. People he’d known, many of them long dead. Some friends, some enemies. Losing that sketchbook hurt almost as much as losing his genuine Hrusch rifle.

  Almost as much as…

  He pushed the stem of his mala pipe between his teeth and sucked in hard. He shivered as the smoke burned his throat and lungs and seeped into his body, deadening the memories.

  When he reached out for the sketchbook, he saw that his hand was shaking. He snatched it back quickly.

  Ka-poel’s eyes narrowed. She set the sketchbook on his stomach, followed by a pack of charcoal pencils. Finer sketching tools than he’d ever had in Fatrasta. She pointed at them, and mimed him sketching.

  Taniel made his right hand into a fist. He didn’t want her to see him shaking. “I… not now, Pole.”

  She pointed again, more insistently.

  Taniel took another deep breath of mala and closed his eyes. He felt tears roll down his cheeks.

  He felt her take the book and pencils off his chest. Heard the table move. He expected a reproach. A punch. Something. When he opened his eyes again, he saw her bare feet disappearing up the stairs of the mala den and she was gone. He took another deep breath of mala and wiped the tears off his face.

  The room began to fade into the mala haze along with his memories; all the people he’d killed, all the friends he’d seen die. The god he’d seen with his own eyes, and then put down with an ensorcelled bullet. He didn’t want to remember any of that.

  Just another few days in the mala den, then he’d be fine. Back to his old self. He’d report to Tamas and get back to what he was good at: killing Kez.

  Tamas found himself a quarter
mile under a thousand tons of rock just a few hours after leaving Budwiel’s walls. His torch flickered in the darkness, casting light and shadows across the row after row of recessed graves carved into the walls of the caverns. Skulls hung from the ceilings by the hundred in a grisly tribute to the dead, and he wondered if this was what the pathway to the afterlife looked like.

  More fire, he imagined.

  He fought off his initial claustrophobia by reminding himself that these catacombs had been used for a thousand years. They weren’t likely to collapse anytime soon.

  The size of the passageway surprised him. At times the rooms were wide enough to hold hundreds of men. At their narrowest, even a carriage could pass through them without scraping the sides.

  The two artillery men Hilanska had spoken of walked on ahead. They carried their own torches and they talked excitedly, their voices echoing as they passed through the varied chambers. Beside Tamas, his bodyguard Olem kept pace with a hand on his pistol and a suspicious eye on the two soldiers ahead of him. Bringing up the rear were two of Tamas’s best powder mages: Vlora and Andriya.

  “These caverns,” Olem said, running his fingers along the stone walls, “were widened with tools. But look at the ceiling.” He pointed upward. “No tool marks.”

  “They were carved out by water,” Tamas said. “Probably thousands of years ago.” He let his eyes run over the ceiling and then down to the floor. Their path sloped gently downward, punctuated from time to time by steps cut into the floor and worn by the passing of thousands of pilgrims, families, and priests every year. Despite these signs of use, these catacombs were empty of anything living – the priests had suspended burials during the siege, worried that artillery fire might collapse some of the caves.

  Tamas used to play in caverns like these when his father, an apothecary, searched the mountains every summer for rare flowers, mushrooms, and fungus. Some cave systems went incredibly deep into the heart of the mountain. Others ended abruptly, just when things seemed to be getting interesting.