None of them noticed Taniel.
They seemed agitated about something. Pointing and gesturing, all of them watching the battlefield through their looking glasses. Hilanska shouted for the artillery to be moved back.
Moved back? That was tantamount to conceding ground. Why would they…?
Taniel saw it now. Movement among the Kez lines. Whole companies coming up just behind their artillery. An assault. The Kez intended to push them back this day.
Taniel narrowed his eyes. There were huge men among those companies. Giant, twisted forms.
Taniel didn’t know if these were regular Wardens, or the new kind made from powder mages, like the kind that had attacked him in Adopest.
Either way, this would go poorly for the Adran army.
Taniel noted that the Adran artillery was staggered every couple hundred feet. The artillery out front could be pulled back while those beside kept firing. This was planned. Perhaps this was what they’d been doing the last ten days. It made sense, if they knew they were going to lose the front line anyway.
Taniel didn’t like it.
He left Ka-poel and headed down the hillock to join the officers, approaching General Hilanska.
“Sir, what’s going on?”
The general gave Taniel a dismissive glance, then a second, longer stare. “We’re pulling back, son.”
“That’s foolish, sir. We have the high ground. We can hold.”
General Ket brought her horse around behind Taniel, looking him up and down. He wondered if she remembered him. He must look different after four years.
“Are you questioning your betters, Captain?” General Ket asked.
“It’s a stupid tactic, ma’am. It assumes loss.”
“Captain, you’ll earn yourself a demotion without an instant apology.”
Another general, a blond man with a stiff bearing, added, “I’d imagine this is why he’s still a captain.”
General Hilanska held up his remaining arm. “Calm down, Ket. You don’t recognize our boy here, do you? Taniel Two-Shot, hero of the Fatrastan War for Independence. I’m glad to see you among the living.”
“General.” Taniel dipped his head. Tamas had told him a tale or two when he was a boy about what kind of man Hilanska was – loyal, passionate. The best kind of companion to have with you on the line. He was fat and and old now, but Taniel imagined him to be the same kind of person.
“I don’t care who he is,” Ket said. “No one disregards rank in this army and gets away with it.”
“Tamas —” Hilanska began.
“Tamas is dead,” Ket said. “It’s not his army anymore. If you’d —”
The argument was cut off by a messenger.
“Sirs, the enemy is advancing.”
Ket spurred her mount down the embankment toward the front, shouting orders.
Hilanska’s stallion pranced to one side as if in excitement. “Get my artillery out of there!” He looked down at Taniel. “I wouldn’t go down there,” he said. “They’ve got a new kind of Warden. Smaller. Smarter. Faster. Never seen anything like it. ‘Black Wardens,’ we’ve been calling them.”
“They’ve been turning powder mages into Wardens,” Taniel said. “They sent two to kill me in Adopest.”
“Glad to see they failed. Powder-mage Wardens. How is that even possible?” Hilanska gave him a weighing gaze. “All right, Captain. Go down there and hold that line and I’ll move my artillery back.”
Taniel returned to Ka-poel at the top of the hillock. She was making progress on her doll.
“The Kez are attacking,” Taniel said. “I’m going to fight.” Why was he telling her? Was she going to stop him? Go with him?
She didn’t answer him, so he grabbed his kit and headed down toward the front. Ka-poel would be safer back here out of the melee, he decided. But would he? Ever since Shouldercrown, he had wondered who was protecting who.
The Kez soldiers were already on their way, marching to the steady sound of the snare drums. Trumpets were sounding in the Adran camp, and more men rushed toward the front.
Taniel paused and scanned the approaching Kez. None of the Kez Privileged were advancing, but… there.
The Wardens in their black bowler caps and black jackets came through marching Kez infantry like dogs running out ahead of the pack. They practically flew across the empty field. Some carried small swords, others long pikes. They howled like animals, an eerie sound that lifted above the cannon fire and the snares and trumpets and made Taniel shudder.
Taniel dropped to one knee and sighted along his rifle. One breath. Two. Fire.
He willed the bullet on through the sky, burning the smallest bit of powder to keep it in the air. He focused on one of the Black Wardens. The bullet took only two or three seconds to bridge the space and…
He missed.
Taniel couldn’t believe it. He was far behind the line, steady as a rock, with no distractions. How could he miss?
He reloaded his rifle. The Wardens were coming fast. Once they reached the Adran line they’d cause untold chaos. Taniel lined up another shot and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet tore through a Warden’s eye, laying the creature out on the ground. None of the Warden’s companions seemed to notice. One even snagged the small sword out of the still-twitching hand, barely slowing his charge.
There was no way Taniel was going to be able to stop any more. He had… what? Another two shots before the Wardens reached the earthworks that marked the Adran line?
Taniel drew the bayonet from his kit and unwrapped it, fitting the ring tightly around the end of his rifle. He stood, ready to charge, pausing only to scratch a mark in the butt of his rifle with an old nail he kept in his pocket. He thought suddenly of Ka-poel and wondered if he should have left her alone.
He joined the flood of Adran infantry heading to the front, elbowing and shoving his way through. They weren’t moving fast enough.
A call went out to hold the line. Taniel wasn’t going to be there in time for the initial shock. His legs pumped beneath him, covering ground three times faster than any of the others. He felt a snarl rise to his throat.
“Aim! Fire!” a nearby officer yelled.
A plume of smoke rose from the front of the Adran line. Many of the Wardens staggered. Some of them fell. Not nearly enough.
There was one section along the Adran earthworks that rose higher than the others. Taniel could see that several officers had taken the high ground. It was precisely where the Wardens would head. They’d leave the flat ground to the regular infantry and go straight for the strongest spots.
Even as the thought went through Taniel’s head, he saw several of the Wardens change direction to run straight for the highest earthworks. One of the big brutes outstripped them all. He had several dark spots on his coat and his body twitched as more musket shots hit him, but nothing could take him down. He raised his sword and flew up the side of the earthworks, leaping over the top.
Taniel slammed into him in midair. The impact tore the air from his lungs, and they were both flung back over the earthworks, rolling down the side. He felt strong hands on his chest and was thrown off the Warden. He hit the ground and rolled to his feet to find the Warden already thrusting a small sword at his face.
Taniel parried with his bayonet and then thrust. The blade slid into the Warden almost up to the barrel, but seemed to have as much effect as the musket shots had.
The Warden threw itself backward, off of Taniel’s bayonet and out of range of another stab.
Taniel whirled as another Warden came at him from the side. Taniel ducked and thrust, putting the tip of his bayonet into the tender spot below the creature’s chin. He had to let go of his rifle and leap to one side to avoid the thrust of the first Warden’s sword. Taniel drew his own short sword and waited for the attack.
The Warden paused to throw a whole powder charge into his mouth. He gnashed at the powder with blackened teeth and spit the paper on the ground.
Taniel had never been all that good with a short sword. He was fast and competent, but if this creature had any amount of training, he’d cut right through Taniel.
Taniel caught one thrust and pushed the Warden’s sword to one side. The Warden bridged the gap with his other fist. Taniel was ready for it.
He caught the Warden’s fist and slammed his forehead against the Warden’s nose. He could feel the bone move back into the creature’s brain. That alone should have killed it, but Taniel still felt struggle in the Warden’s muscles. Taniel stepped back and slashed across the Warden’s throat. It gurgled and collapsed, clinging to life, but it wouldn’t be any more of a problem.
Taniel could feel the Warden’s black, sticky blood all across his face.
“Oi!” Someone called from the earthworks above him. “They’re coming!”
Taniel realized with a start that the rest of the Kez army was almost upon him. He snatched his rifle and scrambled up the earthworks, kicking dirt and swearing. The Warden had made it look easy. It most certainly wasn’t.
Several hands helped pull Taniel to the relative safety of the earthworks, then thumped him on the back.
“Back to the line!” someone shouted.
Taniel shook his head, resting for a moment on the earthworks barricade. He clutched his rifle to his chest to keep his hands from shaking, and wondered if going over the earthworks like that had been a mistake.
Someone smacked him across the face. He half expected it to be Ka-poel, but when he lifted his eyes, he recognized Major Doravir. She looked furious.
“Do you have a death wish, Captain?” She grabbed him by the collar, shaking him like an errant schoolboy. “Well, do you? No one goes over that embankment without orders. No one!”
“Piss on your orders!”
Taniel shoved her away. He might have put his bayonet through her chest if he’d had any less control over himself.
She stared at him, a cold rage in her eyes. “I’ll see you hanged, Captain.”
“Try it.”
“Load,” came an officer’s call. Taniel took a moment to orient himself. From the high earthworks he could see up and down the jagged line. Wardens were fighting behind the earthworks, clearing out whole groups of men, but the two he’d killed seemed to have tipped things in Adro’s favor in the immediate vicinity. Soldiers bent to reload their rifles, readying for the Kez onslaught.
Taniel turned away from Doravir and stuffed a bullet down his rifle. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her storm away, yelling orders.
“Careful, Captain,” a nearby soldier whispered. “If that one turns her eyes on you, she’ll sleep with you or see you dead. Or both.”
“She can go to the pit, for all I care.”
“She’s General Ket’s sister,” the soldier said. “She does what she wants. But she’s a damned good officer. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Ket’s sister. That’s why he thought he’d seen Ket more recently. The resemblance was strong, even if Doravir had a thinner build. “A damned good officer would let me do my job,” Taniel said. He dropped a second bullet down his rifle and secured it with a scrap of cloth.
The soldier stared at him. “You feeling all right, Captain? You just loaded that twice, and without powder.”
“Ask yourself,” Taniel said with confidence he didn’t feel, “what type of a man would leap the earthworks and go fight two Wardens by himself, then load his rifle without powder.” He licked the powder off his fingers to keep the edge on his powder trance, and set the rifle against his shoulder. He sighted along the barrel. The Kez front line was still some two hundred yards distant. Well out of range of the muskets, while the Adran riflemen would open fire any moment.
Taniel found a pair of officers well back from the line and squeezed the trigger. He floated the two bullets simultaneously, pushing them toward their respective targets.
He caught one of the officers in the chest. The man clutched at the wound and slumped in his saddle, causing panic in his bodyguard. Taniel winced. The other bullet had missed the target. How could he be missing? Had the mala made him lose his edge?
“Kresimir be damned,” the soldier beside him said. “You’re Taniel Two-Shot. Hey” – he tapped the man beside him on the shoulder – “This is Taniel Two-Shot.”
“Yeah,” the other soldier responded, “and I’m a general.”
“He was just down in front of the barricade. Took on four Wardens all by himself.”
“Nah.”
“Saw it with my own eyes.”
“Sure you did.”
Taniel focused on the Kez lines. The rat-tat-tatting of their snares seemed to echo in his brain. He opened his third eye for a moment, watching as the earth was bathed in glowing pastels, splashes of sorcery covering every part of the battlefield.
“You ready to die with us, Two-Shot?” the second soldier asked, breaking Taniel’s concentration. It wasn’t phrased as a threat. Just a question.
“No, not particularly.”
“We’ve been falling back every day. Sometimes twice. Every time the damned Kez advance like this. And each time, we lose three hundred men or more.”
Taniel couldn’t believe that. “Every time?”
The man nodded solemnly.
“Falling back…” Taniel craned his neck. The artillery had been wheeled away by now, back to the next row of trenches and earthen barricades. “Stupid bloody fools. We have to hold. We can’t let them push us back like this. We’re practically hemorrhaging troops.”
“I don’t know what an ‘hemorg’ is, but we’re bleedin’ men something fierce. We can’t hold. We tried, but can’t. Nothing stops those Black Wardens. No matter how many we kill, there seems to be more.”
“You’re awfully calm,” Taniel said.
“Something peaceful about that, I think. Knowing you’re going to die. That lad over on your other side —”
Taniel took a glance. The kid next to him didn’t seem old enough to shave. His hands shook so hard his musket was swaying from side to side.
“ – that lad doesn’t have the same opinion I do.”
“It’s just the jitters,” Taniel said. “We all get them.” Taniel glanced at the Kez. A hundred and fifty yards. He reloaded his rifle, lifted it to his shoulder, and fired.
“Not you,” the first soldier said. “I heard you put a round in a Privileged’s eye for your first kill.”
“That I did. But I learned to shoot from Field Marshal Tamas himself.” He paused. “They teach you to shoot at targets,” he said to the young man beside him. “It’s different when you realize there’s a man on the other end, shooting back at you. I was sitting two miles away. I had surprise on my side. But, lad, you take a deep breath and pull that trigger. Fire straight and true, because you might not get another shot.”
“Lad,” Taniel had said. The boy was no more than five years his junior.
Taniel loaded his rifle while he spoke, set, and fired. Another officer dropped.
The boy looked at Taniel. His hands hadn’t stopped shaking.
“I don’t think your pep talk helped much,” the first soldier said.
“Quiet down on the line!” That was Major Doravir. She had her sword raised above her head, a pistol in the other hand. “Aim!”
The Kez were almost in musket range. There were thousands of them. Rank upon rank upon rank. Taniel could see now why it was impossible to hold the line. He remembered the Battle of South Pike and how they’d almost lost the bastion a dozen times. They’d been guarding a pass from an enchanted bulwark only a hundred paces wide. Here, with nothing but earthworks between them and the Kez, it would be next to impossible to hold.
“Fire!”
The front line and much of the second of the Kez offensive fell beneath the volley. The Adran infantry began to reload.
Before a second volley could be fired, the Kez lines came to a stop. The new front line dropped to their knees and lined up their shots before firin
g.
Taniel threw himself behind the safety of the earthworks. He pulled the young soldier down with him and listened to the volley, and then the thwap of musket balls ricocheting off the dirt. The young soldier struggled to get back up. Taniel held him down.
“Line fire,” Taniel said. “They’ll fire that shot, then the next before they charge. You wait…”
The second volley sounded. Taniel counted to three before he let the boy back up and came up himself, ready to fire.
The Kez charged with a mighty roar, their bayonets leveled.
“Fire at will!” came the call.
Taniel took a deep breath of the smoke from the powder. It made his head buzz, his blood pump faster. His hands weren’t shaking from mala withdrawal anymore. His body had found something so much better. He poured a bit of powder onto the back of his hand and snorted.
The Kez reached the bottom of the earthworks and began the steep climb. Taniel rose up high enough to fire down at them, when he spotted a Privileged about a hundred yards away with her hands twitching up sorcery. Taniel adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger.
The woman went down in a spray of blood, clutching at her throat.
Kez infantry poured over the earthworks like a flood breaching a levy. Taniel thrust his bayonet into a man’s stomach, cracked another soldier across the face with the butt of his rifle. He leapt onto the rise to keep them from coming over, swinging and stabbing.
He barely heard the call for retreat.
“Hold!” he screamed, knocking a grenadier off the earthworks with his rifle stock. “We can hold!”
The young soldier who had been beside him went down with a bayonet through his chest. Taniel leapt off the bulwark to his aid, skewering the Kez infantryman like a side of beef.
The boy might die from a wound like that. It had gone straight between his ribs – likely through a lung. If so, he’d drown in his own blood.
But Taniel couldn’t leave him there. The Adran soldiers were retreating.
“Hold! Hold, you bloody bastards!”
Taniel was almost alone on the earthworks. The boy lay at Taniel’s feet. The first soldier he’d spoken to lay against the rear of the earthworks, dead eyes fixed blindly on the sky. Major Doravir was gone.
The Crimson Campaign Page 14
