The Crimson Campaign

by Brian McClellan

  Tamas felt a great dread in the pit of his stomach. His heart thundered in his ears, and he paused for a moment to gather his nerve. Charging into a brigade of Kez was easier than this.

  He took his hand off his sword and pushed the closet door open.

  “Hello, Halley,” he said.

  When Adamat arrived at the headquarters of the Noble Warriors of Labor, Ricard wasn’t there. In fact, no one was there but the porter and the bartender, and the latter poured Adamat a glass of Gurlish beer from a chilled cask and directed him to wait in the foyer.

  Adamat elected to let himself into Ricard’s study.

  He waited for almost three hours, growing more and more nervous as he watched the light begin to wane and darkness fall over the Adsea, before the sound of the doors in the foyer bursting open brought him to his feet.

  Adamat went to the door of Ricard’s office and nudged it open with his toe. Through the crack, he could see Ricard striding through the foyer, tossing his coat angrily on the floor. The union boss’s thinning hair was standing straight off his head, and his white shirt was wet with sweat. “Get me a drink!” he yelled. Fell trailed behind him, along with a half-dozen other assistants.

  No sign of Lord Claremonte’s men. Adamat stepped out of Ricard’s office, feeling a little sheepish about his suspicions.

  Ricard strode past him into the office and threw himself into his desk chair.

  “We’re buggered, Adamat,” he said.

  Instead of asking why he’d been left waiting for three hours, Adamat said, “Why?”

  “The Brudania-Gurla Trading Company has invaded our country.”

  “What did you find out?” Adamat asked.

  The porter brought Ricard a bottle of dark whiskey and a glass. Ricard threw the glass in the fireplace, where it exploded in a tinkle of shiny shards, then grabbed the bottle and pulled out the stopper, downing a quarter of the bottle in several long swallows.

  Adamat yanked it from his fingers. “You getting shit-faced isn’t going to help anyone.”

  “You don’t understand,” Ricard said. “Claremonte’s coming, and he’s bringing everything he has with him.” Adamat could see in Ricard’s eyes that he wasn’t just angry or flustered; he was scared. Adamat had never seen his old friend like this. There was real fear in his eyes.

  “Has Brudania invaded?” Adamat asked.

  “Pit if I know. Not a damn shot was fired. No one even tried to stop me when I went up to the locks to ask questions. Claremonte just bribed every union member on the canal and brought his fleet over. Simple as that. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Adamat blanched. “How could they possibly be here that quickly?”

  Ricard pointed out the window, though it didn’t even face the direction of the canal. “We built the canal to bring goods over the mountains quickly. It can support the draft of Claremonte’s merchantmen, and the Ad River has been deepened the entire way down. The union has spent the last five years replacing every bridge on the Ad just so that we can do exactly what Claremonte is doing now. Nothing can stop him.”

  “Surely there’s something.”

  “I’ve spent every minute since I returned trying to come up with an option. I wasted an hour talking to blacksmiths to see if we could build an immense chain fast enough to stop him, but it can’t be done.”

  Ricard looked like a drowning man who couldn’t quite reach the rope being lowered to him. His face was flushed, and Adamat now noticed that his pants were torn up one leg at the calf.

  “You’re bleeding,” Adamat said.

  Ricard looked at his leg and gave a sigh. He made no motion to staunch the wound.

  Fell came into the room. Her hair was back, her uniform tidy. Not an eyelash out of place.

  “He’s bleeding,” Adamat told her.

  She knelt by Ricard’s side and exposed the wound, tying it up.

  “Anything?” Ricard asked her.

  “We’re still working on it.”

  “We have to organize a defense,” Adamat said.

  Ricard hiccuped. He reached toward the whiskey bottle. “There’s no time.”

  “There’s police,” Adamat said, pulling the bottle out of Ricard’s reach. “Some soldiers. Call on the people. You have the newspapers. Use them.”

  “A militia,” Ricard said, sitting up, his ears perking like a dog’s.

  “Yes.” Adamat felt his heart begin to race. “This city is not indefensible. There’s a million people here. Use the newspapers. You remember the crowd at Elections Square when Tamas put Manhouch’s head in a basket. There’s the will. The manpower. People will rise up to defend their homes.”

  Ricard leapt to his feet, knocking Fell back on her ass. “Fell,” he said, helping her up. “Draft a letter. Inform the newspapers. I want the front page first thing in the morning. Tell them every home in Adopest is to have a newspaper by sunup. I want the presses working all night! Get me the union bosses. I want everyone involved. We’ll do it. We’ll defend this city!”

  Adamat felt a smile spread over his face. This was the Ricard he knew.

  Ricard snatched him by the hand. “Adamat, thank you. I knew you had it in you. Whatever I’m paying you, double it.”

  “You aren’t…” Adamat said, but Ricard was already racing out of his office. Adamat stood there for a moment, dumbfounded. Ricard shouted to his footmen and assistants, giving orders like a line commander. He was in full swing now, and he wouldn’t stop until he’d organized a defense of the city.

  The office was suddenly quiet and cold, and Adamat looked around for a glass to pour himself some whiskey. Finding none, he took a sip from the bottle.

  “Sir,” Fell said, breaking the silence.

  “Hmm?”

  She stood with her hands behind her back, chin up. “I never apologized, sir. I want to do that now.”

  “For what?” Adamat felt his anger stir. He knew for what: for almost getting his wife killed. For not containing Lord Vetas like she said she would.

  “Lord Vetas,” she said. “He got the best of me. I should have taken more men.”

  Adamat fought down his anger, forced himself to remain calm. Another swig of whiskey helped. “He was good at what he did. He got the best of me far too many times.” As he said the words, he felt something shift in the back of his mind. He frowned.

  “Sir?” Fell asked when he’d been silent for several moments.

  He held up a hand for quiet. He needed to think. Vetas had gotten the better of him on many occasions. All evidence said that he was a genius planner with no heart for remorse and no hesitation considering lives lost.

  “Is he dead?” Adamat asked.

  “Vetas? Yes. He died two weeks ago. Bo got rid of the body.”

  “And where is Bo?”

  “He’s disappeared,” Fell said. “Ricard even offered him a job, but he wouldn’t take it.”

  Adamat smoothed the front of his jacket. He’d told Bo about his reservations over Vetas. That perhaps Vetas hadn’t told them the entire truth, or even led them astray. He even…

  “Damn!” Adamat said. “Vetas. He knew everything. He got the better of us one last time. Not even Bo could get it out of him.”

  “How do you know?” Fell asked.

  “The pier.” Adamat shook his head. She wouldn’t know what he was talking about. “I asked Vetas for a way to track down my boy, and he sent me to the slavers that Josep was sold to. He told me who to ask for, and the passwords to use. But he gave me the wrong password! The slavers attacked me. I barely got out with my life, and I was so intent on getting Josep back that it didn’t occur to me until now.”

  Adamat slumped against the wall. There was nothing he could do about it now. Vetas was dead. There’d be no reckoning, no confrontation. What little advantage Adamat thought they may have gained over Claremonte was gone – if that wasn’t made apparent enough by Claremonte’s sailing his fleet over the Charwood Pile Mountains.

  “What inf
ormation did you get from Vetas?” Adamat asked.

  Fell frowned. “Reports. His master’s plans.”

  “What plans?”

  “Campaign plans for the ministerial election. His platform for reformation within the city.”

  “They’re all trash,” Adamat said.

  “But there was good information there. We found other hideouts. More of his men in the city.”

  “He wants us to think we have some kind of advantage. We don’t. Everything we learned from Vetas is suspect.”

  Adamat took his hat from the peg beside the door and gathered his cane. He felt so very tired.

  “What are you doing?” Fell asked.

  Their only hope was Ricard’s ability to rouse the city. Otherwise it would be in Claremonte’s hands by tomorrow night.

  “Going home. I’m going home to my wife. I’ll see you at the north gate of the city tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER

  38

  Midway Keep was a historical monument, a castle of vanity built not for comfort or even defense but to look imposing. Its walls were tall but easily scaled, the indefensible number of entrances brimming with fortifications. The keep towered over the Addown River and menaced the main highway. To the peasants it may have been breathtaking.

  To anyone skilled in warfare it was a joke.

  It had been built some three hundred years ago by a juvenile king who considered himself an architect. To Taniel, it seemed the perfect place to house a mad god.

  Taniel watched the keep from the shadow of a sprawling oak standing solitary in the middle of the Kez army. He could hear the soft sounds of a snoring infantryman nearby. Otherwise, the night was still.

  He checked that last thought when he realized he could also hear Field Marshal Goutlit’s unsteady, terrified breaths. The Kez officer crouched beside him, still smelling faintly of piss, and fidgeted with the collar of his jacket. Taniel watched him out of the corner of his eye. A wrong move here, a suspicious noise, and Taniel was a dead man.

  Of course, he’d be sure to take Goutlit with him.

  “Where’s the servants’ entrance?” Taniel whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  Taniel drew his belt knife.

  “I, uh, think it’s over there. To the right.”

  Taniel pushed the knife back in its sheath. “Is it guarded?”

  Goutlit swallowed hard and eyed Taniel, as if afraid to say he didn’t know.

  A light caught Taniel’s eye, just in the corner of his vision. He crouched a little farther down and watched the keep for several moments. There. He saw a light moving in a high-arched window.

  Goutlit saw it too. He scooted back, pressing himself up against the big oak behind him. Taniel grabbed a handful of Goutlit’s jacket to keep him from moving farther.

  “Where’s Kresimir’s room?” Taniel asked.

  “There,” Goutlit’s voice came out dry and raspy. He lifted a finger. “That tower there, just above the light.”

  A sudden whine cut through the night. It was a low keening that rose sharply into a wail. A low thump accompanied it, and then a human scream that grew louder and louder until Taniel was sure that a banshee was going to come out of the tree above them.

  Just as quickly as it began, the sound was over. Distantly, from the keep, he heard a sound like crashing furniture.

  “What the pit?”

  “Kresimir,” Goutlit said, his voice barely a whisper. “Every night.” Goutlit turned to stare at Taniel. “Every night he’s looking for the eye behind the flintlock.”

  Taniel shivered involuntarily.

  “Every morning they find bodies,” Goutlit said. “Usually just a few, but sometimes as many as a dozen. Prielight Guards, servants. Kresimir’s concubines. Some of them are strangled while others have been burned through by sorcery.”

  “Shut up,” Taniel said. His skin was beginning to crawl. He set his musket against the tree and watched while the light in the keep moved farther and farther away from Kresimir’s tower.

  “You can’t kill him,” Goutlit said.

  “What?” Taniel snapped.

  “That stuff about Kresimir’s bedsheets. Do you think I’m a fool? You’re going to try to finish the job you started on South Pike, aren’t you?”

  Taniel remained silent. There was fear in Goutlit’s voice.

  Goutlit went on, “He can’t be killed. About twenty have tried so far. Assassins from your own army. From the Church, and even one of Ipille’s – though Kresimir doesn’t know that.”

  The Church had tried to have Kresimir killed? Even while their Prielights guarded him? Now, that was interesting. There must be a division within the Kresim Church.

  “No one’s gotten close enough, I’d imagine,” Taniel said.

  “Oh, they have.” Goutlit swallowed hard. “I saw one assassin with my own eyes. A woman. She tried to open his throat. Her knife bent on his skin.”

  Taniel remembered shooting at Julene once, in her cave-lion form. The bullet had simply skimmed off her skin like a smooth stone off of water. And now Taniel was trying to steal from the god who’d managed to nail her to a beam.

  “Not enough force.”

  “He was hit by a cannonball, walking the front. It shattered on him! Killed half a nearby gun crew and a colonel.”

  Goutlit had begun to talk louder. His voice was high-pitched, and he breathed heavily. His whole body began to tremble. Taniel shook him by the front of his jacket. It didn’t seem to help.

  Taniel realized he had a problem. He would need to scale the walls of the keep. Easy enough by himself, but impossible for Goutlit.

  The simplest thing would be to just kill the man. He was an enemy, after all. A Kez. Their field marshal.

  Taniel lay a hand on his knife. Goutlit didn’t seem to notice. A quick stroke, silent as can be. It wouldn’t be the first man Taniel had killed, nor the last.

  Then again, this was butchery. Goutlit was his prisoner.

  “Take off your clothes,” Taniel said.

  Goutlit seemed to snap out of whatever fear had been racing through his mind. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Clothes. Off.”

  “I refuse.”

  “This is me saving your life,” Taniel said. “I can either tie you up, to be found in the morning, or I can kill you. Tell me now, but decide quickly.”

  Taniel thought for a moment that Goutlit would cry out. Was this the indignity to break him? Goutlit watched Taniel in silence and then removed his jacket.

  “You can keep your underclothes on,” Taniel said, “but make it quick.” When the field marshal had stripped to his underwear, Taniel motioned with his knife at the tree. “Climb.”

  Goutlit’s eyes widened. “I can’t possibly…”

  Taniel grabbed Goutlit by the back of his neck and shoved him at the trunk of the giant oak. Goutlit scrambled up to the lowest branch awkwardly. Taniel gathered Goutlit’s clothes and followed him up.

  “Keep going.”

  Goutlit was about thirty feet in the air before he clutched a thick branch and absolutely refused to climb farther. His eyes rolled wildly, and Taniel could hear his teeth chatter.

  “I won’t go higher. Kill me now.”

  “This will do.” Taniel fastened Goutlit to the tree branch tightly, using Goutlit’s own belt and pants as restraints. “It’s not comfortable, but you’ll live.”

  Taniel stuffed one of Goutlit’s socks into the field marshal’s mouth.

  He ignored Goutlit’s squeals of protest and began to descend. By the time he reached the ground, he couldn’t even hear the man, and once he’d taken a few dozen steps, Goutlit was all but forgotten.

  Taniel timed the Prielight patrols around the base of the keep and slipped up to the wall after the last patrol had passed. The keep had once had a moat, but that had long ago filled in, leaving only a swampy lowland and a few ponds behind.

  The walls of the keep were easily sixty feet high, and the one leading up to th
e tower that was Taniel’s target couldn’t have been less than a hundred. No small climb.

  He left the musket in some weeds and secured his pistols and dagger before beginning the climb. Immense blocks of granite, half Taniel’s height, were stacked at a slight incline, each one with a lip that gave his fingers a couple inches of room to hold on to. Taniel tested his grip with both hands, then hauled himself up.

  He was halfway up the wall when a Prielight patrol passed under where he’d been. He hung off the wall, breathing quietly and praying they’d not stumble across his musket. A raised voice, even a suspicious glance upward, and he’d be finished. He silently cursed himself for taking the dead guard’s uniform. The Kez military tan stood out against the dark granite of the keep like a beacon.

  The patrol kept moving, and Taniel resumed his climb.

  He reached the top of the wall, just under the parapets. He could hear the steady tread of a patrolling guard just above him, and then another sound. It seemed quiet and distant at first, and then grew louder.

  Taniel pressed himself against the stone, his fingers and arms aching from the climb. What was that sound? He looked down. Far below, another Prielight patrol. Was someone sounding an alarm?

  He let go of the wall with one hand and carefully dipped into his pocket, taking a powder charge between his fingers. He’d make noise if he snorted it, so he crushed the end of the charge and sprinkled it in his mouth.

  That infernal sound would not go away.

  His powder trance intensified and he clung to the wall for a moment of dizziness.

  Taniel almost began to laugh.

  The guard above him was whistling.

  A scream shattered the quiet of the night, nearly making Taniel lose his grip in surprise. It came from one of the windows below him.

  His heart hammering in his ears, Taniel heard the guard on the parapet curse softly to himself, and then the sound of running footsteps as the man went to see what was wrong.

  There was no time to waste. Taniel couldn’t be sure if the scream had been Kresimir, or one of the god’s victims, or even someone raising the alarm on Taniel. He pulled himself up to the parapet and peeked over. No one.