Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  If he was cautious, he could continue to use Blackhat resources. He could moonlight with Hendres and spend his days tracking down this Dynize informant. Once he found her, he’d have to deal with convincing her to leave. Getting her out of the city—as long as his escape routes were still open—would be the easy part.

  “Right,” he said, returning to Taniel. “I’ll do it. What help can you give me, and what can you tell me about this woman?”

  Taniel produced an envelope and handed it over. “These are the addresses of my personal safe houses. Memorize them and burn the paper. You’ll find money, gold, weapons, food, and a safe place to sleep. Some of them may have been destroyed or compromised during the riots. I don’t know which ones. There are also a handful of names in there—loyal agents of mine who have remained behind. I suggest using them … sparingly, and only in an emergency.”

  “This will help,” Michel said, taking the envelope. “And the woman?”

  “Her name is Mara. I don’t know what she looks like, beyond the fact that she’s Dynize. She’s embedded with the Dynize higher-ups, so reaching her might be difficult.”

  “In what way?”

  “She’s attached to the retinue of one of their ministers. I don’t know which one.”

  “Anything else?”

  Taniel clearly hesitated. “That’s all I know that can help you.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes.”

  Michel knew Taniel well enough to know when he was holding something back. And that he wouldn’t spill the beans if he didn’t want to. “Right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Taniel stood up, adjusting his gloves and cuffs and straightening his jacket. “Be cautious, my friend. If the Blackhats find out what you are, they’ll torture and kill you. The Dynize will do worse.”

  Michel scoffed outwardly, while his stomach twisted in a knot. What could possibly be worse than torture and death?

  Taniel offered a hand, and Michel shook it. Without another word, Taniel picked his way through the ruins of the hotel and disappeared into the street. The warning echoed in Michel’s head, raising goose bumps on his arms. How the pit was he supposed to find this woman, let alone convince her to leave Dynize? He might have to resort to a kidnapping, which posed its own set of problems.

  This was going to get him killed, and he knew it. Taniel probably knew it, too.

  Michel took his time returning to the safe house. He stopped by one of the few remaining coffeehouses in the city and traded a few coins for a pitifully small amount of coffee that didn’t even have ice. He drank it slowly, considering, trying to come up with a plan to accomplish this impossible task Taniel had just asked of him. He would have to widen his operation, recruiting other Blackhats and old contacts—perhaps even risk contacting the remaining Gold Roses that Taniel had warned him about. That would be a last resort, of course, but the option was there.

  Michel finished his coffee. He would have just enough time to reach the safe house before curfew. He’d get a couple hours of rest and then there’d be another night of smuggling families out of the city. He could meditate on the problem during the mission.

  A short time later he walked down the street toward the safe house, tipping his hat to a passing Dynize soldier, who told him, in broken Adran, that the curfew was fifteen minutes away. As he rounded the last corner, he felt his feet slow involuntarily, his senses responding to the long instinct of a spy rather than any particular stimuli. He came to a stop, eyeballing the street, looking for something out of place, and then stepped onto a nearby stoop to continue his examination.

  It took him several seconds to see what his instincts had responded to: Three Dynize soldiers loitered near the entrance of the tenement containing the safe house. Michel focused on them for a moment, trying to decide if their presence was a coincidence, when a movement caught the corner of his eye.

  Another Dynize soldier peeked over the rooftop of the tenement, his face barely visible beneath the morion helm. Michel felt his pulse quicken, and now that he knew what to look for, he quickly spotted the extra soldier at the opposite intersection, and then another lurking in the window of the apartment two doors down from his safe house. Michel’s mouth went dry, his legs twitching with the desire to run.

  The safe house was compromised. Hendres was either dead, captured, or had gone underground. Michel ran through a checklist of items he’d left in the safe house to make sure there was nothing he couldn’t abandon, then cursed himself for a fool. He should have realized earlier; if Taniel could find him, so could the Dynize.

  CHAPTER 7

  Vlora stood on the dark slopes of the Hadshaw River Valley with a half-empty skin of watered wine dangling from one hand. She hugged herself, Olem’s jacket thrown over her shoulders, and stared into the darkness. The garment, smelling of Olem’s sweat, cologne, and favorite tobacco, had a comforting effect that allowed her to think about the last few weeks without becoming overwhelmed.

  Two days had passed since what the soldiers had taken to calling the Battle of Windy River. Two days since the Second Dynize Army had been spotted, and two days since a Fatrastan colonel had served her with a warrant of arrest from Lady Chancellor Lindet.

  It was a stupid gesture, of course. Both Vlora and Lindet knew she wasn’t going to accept the warrant and come along quietly. The colonel had given her the papers and returned to his own army, and Vlora suspected that the paper was simple ceremony—something to tell the Fatrastan soldiers that the mercenary defender of Landfall had done something to lose Lindet’s favor.

  Vlora sipped her wine. She’d not slept well for almost a month. Her eyes were tired, her body sagging. She refused to take powder until she actually needed it, forcing her body to accept the fatigue rather than give in to addiction. The last thing she wanted was powder blindness.

  “Are you all right?” a voice asked through the darkness.

  Vlora felt Olem’s hand slip into hers and gave it a little squeeze. He came to stand beside her, wearing the same blood-soaked shirt he’d had on since the battle, an unlit, half-smoked cigarette hanging from his lip. He wore a bandage around his left forearm to protect the stitches of a deep cut he’d received from a Dynize bayonet.

  “Not really,” she answered.

  Olem stared off into the night for a few moments. “Normally, people just lie and say yes when they’re asked that question.”

  Vlora took a half step closer to him and put her head on his shoulder. “They’re burying another forty-three soldiers.” She let her gaze fall to a small gathering of torches about a hundred yards down the side of the valley, where her men threw the last few shovels of dirt on the graves of soldiers who’d given in to their wounds during the course of the day.

  “Still bothers you, does it?” Olem asked.

  She looked up at him, barely able to see his bearded profile in the darkness. “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “I …” He was silent for a few moments. “One of the women they just put in the ground has played cards with me for twelve years. I’m going to miss her. But I’m a soldier, and I can’t stop and think about all the death or I won’t be able to function tomorrow.”

  Vlora shivered, though the air still retained much of the damp heat of the day. “I’ve built up plenty of calluses toward death. But some days …” She lifted her eyes past the burial, over the fires of the Riflejack camp, and across the river to a sea of flickering lights that spread out in the distance on the other side of the river. The Fatrastan Second Field Army had arrived yesterday. It was enormous, over fifty thousand men plus auxiliaries and camp support, and as much as Vlora would like to have taken comfort in their presence, she was all too aware of that warrant of arrest sitting on the table in her tent.

  Olem searched his pockets, giving up after a few moments. He seemed to sense the direction of her gaze. “I’m not entirely pleased,” he said, “that they decided to camp there.”

  “I don’t think we’re meant to be please
d.” For the first time since coming to this damned country, Vlora felt small. Her brigade of mercenaries—just over four thousand left after this last battle, and most of those wounded—was barely a footnote in the eighty thousand or more soldiers assembled within shouting distance here on the banks of the Hadshaw. If she walked up to the ridge, she could see the Dynize camp to the south, watching her and the Fatrastan Army with a caution that their brethren had lacked. She felt as if they were a hammer poised above her, and the Fatrastans were the anvil. “I gave the order releasing the Landfall Garrison and the Blackhat volunteers over to the Fatrastans.”

  “I heard. Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “If we get sandwiched between these two armies, as I suspect we will, five or six thousand men won’t make a difference. Besides, they’re Fatrastan. Having them tell the tale of the Battle of Landfall might gain us some goodwill.”

  “We must have made a good impression, because about a thousand of them have asked to sign on.”

  “Even knowing about the arrest warrant?” Vlora asked. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. Soldiers could be loyal to the death, or they could blow away with the next foul breeze. She expected anyone willing to join a mercenary company to be the latter.

  “They’re mostly Adran expatriates asking to join. Even here, so far away, Adran patriotism has run high since the Adran-Kez War.”

  “I’ll take it, I suppose,” Vlora said reluctantly. “Sign them up and spread them out among the companies. We’ll need to fill out our numbers if we get out of this situation.”

  “And if we don’t get out?”

  “Then they’ll learn firsthand about the risks of being a soldier of fortune.”

  “I see the calluses have grown back already.”

  Vlora gave him a tight smile, though he probably couldn’t see it in the dark. “Have our scouts reported anything from either camp?”

  “Nothing of particular note. The Dynize are probing both sides of the river with quite a lot of caution. So far they haven’t made any move to set up on our flanks. Seems that the Mad Lancer desecrated a few hundred of those Dynize cuirassiers and left the bodies where they’d be found. I have no idea what the Dynize are used to, but that probably turned a few stomachs.”

  “Including mine. One of these days I’m going to have to rein Styke in, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

  “Neither am I.” Olem turned his head toward her. “Is that my jacket?”

  “Yes.”

  He reached into the breast pocket. A matched flared to life a moment later, lighting his cigarette and illuminating a pleased smile. “There’s some communication between us and the Fatrastans, but mostly trade. Our boys are making good use of their camp followers while they have them.”

  “And spending all the money Lindet paid us to defend Landfall. Soldiers have no sense of planning for the future, do they?”

  “If they did, they wouldn’t be soldiers. I say let them enjoy themselves while they can. We might be fighting those Fatrastans soon.”

  Vlora’s stomach clenched, and she instinctively glanced south toward the Dynize camp. Hammer and anvil. The arrival of the Fatrastans had only delayed the inevitable. How much more time did she have to plan until the enemy decided to strike? How long could this standoff last? Hours? Days? Weeks? And when it finally happened, which army would turn on her first? “We could turn them against each other,” she murmured.

  “Eh?”

  “The Dynize and Fatrastans. If they didn’t both want my head, they’d focus entirely on each other. They’d barely even notice us.”

  “We could fake your death,” Olem suggested.

  “I’ve never been good at such crass deception,” Vlora said with a grimace. “Besides, it’s too obvious. We need something more subtle.”

  “Distract them and slip away?”

  Vlora caught sight of a figure walking up the slope toward them, and she thought she recognized the shadowy form. “Perhaps,” she said slowly. The figure stopped some twenty yards away.

  “General? Colonel?” a voice called.

  “Up here,” Vlora responded.

  Olem squinted into the night. “Is that Gustar? I haven’t seen him since the battle.”

  Vlora waited to answer until Gustar had reached them, snapping off a shadowy salute. “Ma’am, sir. Major Gustar reporting in.”

  “Gustar,” Vlora explained to Olem, “was one of just a handful of officers who wasn’t wounded the other day.”

  “Pure luck, ma’am,” Gustar interjected.

  She continued. “Right after the battle, I sent him and a squad of dragoons as far north as they could go in twenty-four hours. I’m glad you made it back in one piece, Major. What can you tell us of the road to the north?”

  Gustar removed his hat, dragging a sleeve across his brow. “The short version, or the long version?”

  “The short, for now.”

  “Very good. I can tell you that the Second Field Army came down the Hadshaw from the Ironhook Mountains via keelboats. They stripped everything on their way—supplies, conscripts, local militias. From what we could discover, every town for a hundred miles in that direction pooled everything they had into the Second Army.”

  “Leaving them defenseless,” Olem said flatly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If only I were the pillaging type,” Vlora murmured. “Go on.”

  “Supposedly there are two more armies on their way down from Thorn Point and Brannon Bay, but with the seas compromised, they could take weeks to arrive. No one knows anything about the armies recalled from the frontier to the northwest.”

  “They’ll come down the Tristan River,” Vlora said. “I’m not worried about them. Just what’s north of us.”

  “That’s it,” Gustar said. “If we head northeast, we’re not going to run into anything. There’s no word of the Dynize landing this far north, and everything Lindet has between us and New Adopest is contained in that army across the river.”

  “Excellent,” Vlora said. “You and your men help yourself to a double ration and hit your bunks. You deserve to sleep in tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Another salute, and the major headed back down the hill.

  Vlora waited until he was out of earshot, and said, “Gustar fought in two battles and didn’t blink an eye when I ordered him to ride for forty-eight hours straight. The man deserves a promotion.”

  “Agreed,” Olem said. The tip of his cigarette flared. “Were you going to tell me about this scouting mission?”

  “I …” Vlora wasn’t entirely sure why she hadn’t told Olem. “It didn’t seem important at the time, and we’ve been more than a little busy the last two days. I sent Gustar on a whim. I didn’t expect the path from here to New Adopest to actually be clear.”

  “So we are going to try and slip away, then beeline it to the coast and head for home?”

  “It’s not elegant,” Vlora admitted. “But yes, that’s my backup plan. It may be our best bet of getting out of Fatrasta alive.”

  “If we can give two major armies the slip.”

  “Exactly.” Vlora scowled at the sea of campfires across the river. “Did you ever tell me who’s in command over there?”

  “A woman named Zine Holm.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “She’s a Starlish noblewoman. Fought in the Fatrastan War for Independence as a soldier of fortune, and has been commanding armies against the Palo since.”

  “Competent?”

  “As far as I know, though I think this is the biggest army she’s ever commanded.”

  Vlora considered this for several quiet minutes, working through the various plans in her head and trying to create something coherent enough to actually work. “Get me a meeting with her. Also with the Dynize general, whoever the pit that is.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. No, wait. Tonight. As soon as possible. Tell them it’s urgent, and we’ll meet at a neutral locat
ion.”

  She could practically hear Olem grimace. “I’ll try, but …”

  “Make it happen.” She tugged on the shoulders of his jacket, feeling a real chill for the first time tonight. “I’m going to try to sleep for a couple hours. Wake me up as soon as you’ve set up those meetings.”

  Three hours later, Vlora rode north along the Hadshaw River Highway with Olem and a dozen handpicked bodyguards. She half listened to a corporal droning on about supplies and yesterday’s casualties, sniffing a few granules of powder at a time just to stay awake. Across the river, most of the Fatrastan fires were out and the night was all but silent. Occasionally her sorcery-enhanced senses spotted sentries along either ridge of the river valley—Fatrastan on the west side, and hers on the east.

  They reached a crossroads and small keelboat landing, where a party of equal size awaited them on the dusty shore. Torches flickered in the light breeze, casting shadows on sunflower-yellow uniforms.

  “Did you hear back from the Dynize?” Vlora asked quietly as they dismounted. She kept her eyes on a forty-something-year-old woman in the center of the waiting group, uniform decked out with medals and the black epaulets of a Fatrastan general.

  “I did,” Olem responded. “The Dynize general refuses to see you. He’s convinced it’s a trap, and that you hope to get him alone for an assassination.”

  “He’s smarter than his colleague we met a couple days ago,” Vlora said. “Which is unfortunate. I need to size him up. For now I’ll have to satisfy myself with Holm.” She handed her reins to one of her bodyguards and crossed the distance between her and the Fatrastans without preamble.

  “General Holm.” Vlora held out her hand. “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “General Flint.” Holm took the offered hand, shaking it firmly. She was a stocky woman, broad at the chest with hands as big as a grenadier’s. She had smile lines at the corners of her mouth and friendly eyes that Vlora was more likely to see in a tavern owner. “I’m a big admirer. This is an odd time to meet, but I’m a night owl anyway and I figured you had something important to say.”