Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “And I, mine,” Olem agreed. “But I’ve got my own men among them. I’ll keep things sorted as best as I can. Did you know Styke is openly recruiting from the Blackhats to fill out the ranks of his lancers?”

  Vlora snorted. “With success?”

  “More than I expected. He’s making them renounce their loyalty to the Lady Chancellor before they can sign on. The Blackhats are damned angry she abandoned so many of them without orders. He’s got over a hundred already.”

  “And may Adom help any spies he catches,” Vlora said. She hesitated, her eyes on a string of horsemen riding single file along the other side of the river. They were a company of hers, wearing their tall dragoon helmets and crimson uniforms with blue trim, straight swords and carbines lashed to the saddles. “Did I make a mistake giving Styke command of my cavalry?”

  “I don’t think so,” Olem replied.

  “You hesitated.”

  “Did I?”

  Vlora clasped her hands behind her back to keep from fiddling with her lapels. “Lindet told me he’s an uncontrollable monster.”

  “I get the feeling,” Olem responded, dropping his cigarette butt and crushing it beneath the heel of his boot, “that Lindet’s version of the truth is whatever is convenient at the time. Besides, right now he’s our monster.”

  “Again, that’s not reassuring.” Vlora tried to get a rein on her thoughts. They were unfocused, scattered, and the sheer number of uncertainties running through her head was enough to drive her mad. There was so much to attend to within her own army—Blackhat stragglers, the city garrison, the Mad Lancers, and the core of the brigade of mercenaries she brought with her from Adro. She had over five thousand picked men, many of them wounded, half a world away from their homes, without an employer. A desperate bark of a laugh escaped her lips, and Olem shot her a worried glance.

  “You all right?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I’m fine,” she said reassuringly. “There’s just … a lot to take in.”

  “You know these refugees aren’t your responsibility,” Olem said, not for the first time.

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Why?”

  Vlora tried to find a satisfactory answer. She wondered what Field Marshal Tamas would have done in such a situation, and realized that he would have marched to the nearest unoccupied city and booked passage home for his troops the moment his contract became null. But she was not Tamas. Besides, there were more reasons to stay in this land than a quarter of a million refugees. “Because,” she finally answered, “no one else will do it.”

  “The men are beginning to wonder where their next stack of krana will come from.”

  Another of a thousand worries. A little bitter part of her wanted to tell the men that they should be more concerned about getting out of Fatrasta alive than their next payment, but she couldn’t be too hard on them. They were mercenaries, after all. “Give them promissory notes against my own holdings.”

  “I already did.”

  “Without asking me?”

  Olem gave her a small smile and dug in his pocket for a pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers. “I figured you’d give the order at some point. But not even you can pay them indefinitely.”

  “I’ll figure out something.” Vlora waved him off as if she wasn’t concerned, but it was a worry that kept her up at night. A thought suddenly hit her and she squinted down into the camp. “You know, I haven’t seen Taniel or Ka-poel for a while. Where the pit are they?”

  “They remained in the city when we left.”

  Vlora scowled. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “I did, actually. Twice. You assured me both times that you’d heard every word I was saying.”

  “I lied.” Vlora felt a sudden stab of despair. Despite their rocky history, Taniel was a reassuring man to have around, and not just because he was a one-man army. “Why would they stay in the city? Are they gathering intelligence?”

  Olem shrugged, then hesitated before saying, “I know you and Taniel have known each other a long time. But don’t forget that those two have their own agenda.”

  It was not a reminder Vlora needed—or wanted. Taniel was more than an old lover; he was an adopted sibling and a childhood friend. Instinct told her to trust him, but years of military and political training reminded her that shared history was a long time ago. So much had changed.

  With everything going on right now, his disappearance was the least of her worries. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, wondering how long it had been since she’d had a proper bath. Setting aside her discomfort, she said, “I need information.”

  “Well, we might have something.” Olem pointed toward a uniformed messenger hurrying his way up the hill toward them.

  “It won’t be useful,” Vlora responded, annoyed. “It’s going to be some asshole city commissioner trying to hassle me for supplies he thinks we’re hoarding from the refugees. Again.”

  “I bet it’s something important.”

  “I bet it’s not.”

  “I’ll bet you that spare pouch of tobacco you keep in the left cuff of your jacket,” Olem said.

  “Deal,” Vlora said, watching the messenger approach. It was a young woman with a private’s insignia on her lapel, and she saluted smartly as she came to a stop.

  “Ma’am,” the messenger said, “I’ve got word from Captain Davd.”

  Vlora shot Olem a look. “Is it important?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He said he’s spotted a Dynize pursuit force.”

  Vlora took a deep, shaky breath as a wave of trepidation swept through her. This would mean a battle. It would mean men dead and the lives of all these refugees at stake. But at least she could finally see her enemy.

  She dug into her sleeve and pulled out her pouch of emergency tobacco, handing it to Olem without looking at him. Smug bastard. “Take me to Captain Davd.”

  The Hadshaw River Valley was heavily trafficked, the old-growth forests that had once sprawled across this part of Fatrasta logged into extinction over the last couple hundred years. The land was rocky and unforgiving, very unlike the floodplains closer to the city or the plantations to the west. Farmsteads dotted the hilly landscape, surrounded by walls built from the stones the farmers dug from their fields.

  The occasional rocky precipice was topped by a stand of scraggly honey locusts, and it was in such a vantage point that she found two of her soldiers hunkered on their knees between the boulders.

  Captain Davd was in his early twenties, with black hair and a soft, beardless face. He tapped powder-stained fingernails against the stock of an ancient blunderbuss and nodded as Vlora crept up beside him.

  His companion was an older woman with graying, dirty-blond hair. Norrine lay with her head against a stone, her rifle propped on a branch, sighting along it as she watched some target only she could see.

  Anyone else might find it odd to discover two captains out on a scouting mission, but Vlora took it in stride. Like her, they were both powder mages. By ingesting a bit of black powder, they could run faster, see farther, and hear better than any normal soldier. It made them ideal scouts for an army on the run. She had taken a page out of her mentor’s book and given powder mages under her command a middling rank and an auxiliary role. They answered only to her.

  In addition to scouting, they could also use their sorcery to fire a musket or rifle over fantastic distances, picking off the most difficult targets.

  “Norrine has an officer in her sights,” Davd said in an excited whisper. “Say the word, and they’ll be down a ranking metalhead.”

  Vlora snorted. Her men had begun to refer to Dynize soldiers as “metalheads” because of the conical helmets they wore. She laid a hand gently on Norrine’s shoulder. “How about you fill me in on what’s going on before you start killing people.”

  Davd looked crestfallen. Norrine gave Vlora a thumbs-up and kept her bead on her target.

  “Well?” Vlora urged Davd.

>   Davd shifted to make room for Vlora to hunker down between him and Norrine in the rocky crag. She crawled up beside them, looking over the edge of their vantage point, and fished a powder charge from her breast pocket. She cut through the paper with her thumbnail and held it to her right nostril, snorting gently.

  Her senses flared, giving her an immediate high as sounds, colors, and smells all became brighter. The world came into focus, and she squinted down the length of the Hadshaw River Highway toward a small party of soldiers in the distance. The powder trance allowed her to see details as if she were a mere fifty yards away, and she took quick stock of the enemy. Long experience at this sort of thing gave her an estimate of five hundred or so soldiers, at about two miles distance. They wore the silver breastplates and bright blue uniforms of the Dynize soldiery. About half of them rode horses, which was new to Vlora—the Dynize who had attacked Landfall had no calvary.

  The troop was on the move, the horses trotting while the soldiers marched double time. Every so often they were joined by a rider coming over the ridge from the east or fording the river from the west. Messages were exchanged, and then a dispatch was sent south.

  “It’s a vanguard,” Vlora concluded.

  “Making regular reports,” Davd added. “I’m willing to bet they’re no more than a couple of miles ahead of the main army. They’re probing, checking the lay of the land and trying to draw out our rear guard.”

  “They’re moving awfully fast for a vanguard.”

  “Huh,” Davd commented. “So they are.”

  Vlora took a shaky breath. Her army—and the refugees they were guarding—were less than five miles from the pursuing Dynize. If the army was traveling as fast as the vanguard, they could force a battle before nightfall. If they took their time, Vlora might have two days to prepare. She wondered whether she should attempt to gain a few more miles before nightfall, pushing the refugees ahead of her, or choose a defensive position immediately. “You two, get me information. I want eyes on the enemy army. I want to know their strength and how fast they’re moving. No guns, and don’t be seen.”

  She crawled out of the thicket of honey locusts and returned to the messenger who’d shown her the way. “We have enemy contact. Have someone prepare my rifles, then go find Major Gustar. He and Colonel Styke have an enemy vanguard to crush.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Ben Styke sat at the crest of a hill, his scarred face turned toward the morning sun, the ground damp and cool beneath him. He leaned against his saddle while his warhorse, Amrec, grazed nearby. The sun warmed Styke’s bones, allowed him to test the limits imposed upon him by old wounds. He squeezed a handful of pebbles to strengthen the tendons in his arm that had once been cut, then healed, by sorcery.

  A little girl, Celine, played on a crumbling dry-stone wall. She skipped from stone to stone, barely seeming to pay her surroundings any mind until one stone slipped out from beneath her and she switched feet deftly, finding purchase before she could fall. She continued down the wall a hundred yards or so and turned around, doubling her speed for the trip back.

  Somewhere over the nearby hills was Lady Vlora Flint—Styke’s new commanding officer—along with her tiny mercenary army and hundreds of thousands of refugees from Landfall. Styke kept his own men away from the column, preferring to flank the refugees and handle the scouting. Refugees weren’t his problem. Killing—when it had to be done—was.

  Styke squeezed the pebbles until a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. He searched the back of his mind for his birthday—one of the many things forgotten after so long in the labor camps—and decided he was just a few months away from his forty-sixth. Almost old enough to be Celine’s grandfather. Certainly old enough to be her real father, if he’d gotten a late start.

  Celine reached the end of the wall nearby and leapt to the grass. She wasn’t wearing shoes, despite having two new pairs, and her jacket and loose trousers were muddy from three weeks on the road. She had a girl’s long hair and a soft face, but her bearing left her mistaken for a boy more times than not. She was at once skittish and confident, the daughter of a thief and toughened by years in the labor camps.

  She grasped Amrec fearlessly by the bridle, stroking his nose. He snorted at her but did not kick her to oblivion as he would anyone else so daring.

  Styke discarded the pebbles and brushed the grit from his hands. The release of pressure on his tendons made him swallow a gasp, and he took a deep breath before calling to Celine.

  “How do you decide which stone to step on?” he asked her.

  Celine seemed surprised by the question. She left Amrec and came over to Styke’s side, throwing herself down against the saddle in the mock exaggeration of a tired soldier. She was, Styke decided, spending too much time with the lancers. Not that that would change any time soon.

  “I just step on whichever one looks secure.”

  “And how do you know which is secure?”

  “I just know,” Celine said with a small shrug.

  “Hmm. Think, girl,” Styke replied. “Think about how you know.”

  Celine opened her mouth, closed it again, and furrowed her brow. “I don’t step on the flat ones. They’re the worst, because they wobble. The ones that are shaped like …” She made a triangle with her hands.

  “Like a wedge?” Styke urged.

  Her face brightened. “Yeah, like a wedge. Those are the strongest, because they rest on two other stones.”

  “Very good.” Styke searched in his saddlebag and found a bag of wrapped caramels that he’d discovered while looting a Blackhat supply depot before leaving Landfall. He placed one in Celine’s hand.

  Celine regarded the sweet seriously before looking up at Styke. “Why does it matter? Didn’t you tell me that instinct is a lancer’s best weapon? That’s what I use to find the stones, isn’t it?”

  Styke considered his answer and glanced down the hill. Far below them, several hundred lancers practiced drills on horseback, riding back and forth across the small valley until it was a muddy cesspit. He listened to the shouts of his officers as they barked corrections and orders. “Instinct is just a word we use to describe all the little bits of information your senses collect and how your brain interprets them. Instincts can be improved.”

  “So, when you make me inter … inter …”

  “Interpret.”

  “Interpret my instincts, you’re exercising my brain? Like what you’re doing with your wrists?”

  Styke grunted, stifling a smirk. “You’re a clever little shit, you know that?”

  “Ibana says that’s why you like me,” Celine responded, sticking her chin in the air.

  “Ibana says a lot of things. Most of them are bullshit.” Styke climbed to his feet, leaning down to tousle Celine’s hair, then turning a critical eye on the lancers training down below. The training lasted hours each day as Ibana whipped old lancers and new recruits alike into shape. Both men and horses had to be trained, and Styke didn’t know of any army on this continent that drilled as hard as the Mad Lancers.

  But that’s part of what made them the best.

  Styke felt an ache deep in his back, in his thighs, and in his shoulders. He took a few breaths and stretched. There was a time when he was just shy of seven feet tall, and not a man in Fatrasta would have looked him in the eye. He was the biggest, strongest, and meanest—a hero of the Fatrastan revolution with a lover in every town between the coasts.

  Now he was a broken man, and though mended by sorcery he was still bent from years in the labor camps, gnarled from wounds left by the firing squad.

  “I’m still Ben Styke,” he whispered to himself. He thought about going down there, participating in the drills. He was out of practice himself, and he’d had Amrec for less than a month. Any warhorse big enough to carry Styke would need plenty of time learning the maneuvers of a lancer battalion. But that could wait. Half the lancers were old comrades, gathered from Landfall before it ended up in the hands of the Dynize. The ot
her half were raw recruits. Best to remain aloof and let Ibana train them on the legend of Mad Ben Styke, rather than see the broken soul he’d become.

  He turned to find Celine staring at the side of his face—at the scar where a bullet had bounced off his cheekbone a decade ago. Celine had grown bold since leaving the labor camps at his side. She was bigger, stronger, responding well to a healthy diet. In ten years she would be a stout woman with fists of iron, and Styke pitied the men who might think her an easy tail to chase.

  “Ibana says not to let you feel sorry for yourself.”

  Styke narrowed his eyes at Celine. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “She says you’re not as strong as you once were, and she catches you staring at your hands all the time. She says self-pity makes you a dog, and she needs you to be a man.”

  What the pit was Ibana doing telling all this to a little girl? Styke’s little girl, particularly. “Ibana needs to shut her bloody mouth.”

  Celine stretched out against Amrec’s saddle and stared up at the sky. “The boys have been telling me stories about you during the war.”

  “Shit.” Styke sighed. As much as he tried to avoid it, Celine had become something of a favorite in the camp. Everyone who’d lost a daughter or a cousin or a sister back during the war took it upon themselves to tell her stories and “raise her up right.” Aloof or not, Styke was going to have to start cracking heads.

  “Did you really kill a Warden with your bare hands?”

  Styke snorted. “I told you that story.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t believe it before. I thought you were making stuff up. My da used to make stuff up all the time so his friends thought he was tough. But Jackal said you did kill a Warden. Did you?”

  “I did. Broke his back, then cut his throat.”

  Celine nodded seriously, as if this were the response she expected. “Then Ibana’s right. You shouldn’t pity yourself. You’re too strong to pity yourself.”

  “Okay,” Styke said, pushing her off his saddle with one toe. “That’s it. I’m not letting you spend time with Ibana anymore. Or Jackal. Or Sunin. I don’t need everyone thinking they can heal me. I’m fine.” His final insistence rang a little too forceful, even to his ears. “That was over ten years ago. You weren’t even a twinkle in your daddy’s eye back then. I’m not strong enough to kill a Warden anymore. People change. That’s the nature of life.”