Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “It won’t work,” Prime Lektor said with a huff. “The powder of the combined Predeii couldn’t crack one of those things two thousand years ago. Some damned gelled explosive won’t do it, either.”

  Julene stood beside him, looking sullen and uninterested. She waved one of her bronze hands under Prime’s nose. “Four of you together couldn’t kill me, either. Then along came Kresimir and cut off my hands without breaking a sweat.”

  “That’s different,” Prime insisted. “That’s powerful sorcery—the same kind of sorcery that’s involved here. It only proves my point.”

  “And you’ve missed hers entirely,” Taniel said quietly, rolling his eyes, “which is that nothing can be taken for granted.”

  Prime turned on Taniel, sizing him up for a moment in undignified silence. If anything, Taniel himself was living proof of that very statement. Vlora could see Prime swallow a pithy reply, and took more than a little amusement by the fact that Taniel could keep someone like Prime in check. “You think this is going to work?”

  “I have no idea,” Taniel replied. “I can certainly hope.”

  “Hope is worth nothing. We must plan—”

  “We’ve planned,” Vlora finally cut in, “as much as we possibly can. All we need is for you to do your part if the moment calls for it. Can we trust you to do so?”

  Prime drew himself up. “I will do my part.”

  “The same way you stood up to Kresimir after he returned?” Julene scoffed.

  Burt circled around the group and came up to Vlora’s side, giving the others a skeptical look. “You’re sure these are ancient sorcerers?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m sure,” Vlora replied.

  “They’ve been complaining and squabbling like children since the moment I met them.”

  “They’re just like that,” Taniel said, turning his back on Prime and Julene. “The more you get to know the most powerful people in the world, the more you realize they’re just that—powerful people. If it makes you feel any better, Kresimir was worse than either of them.”

  “No,” Burt said. “That does not make me feel better.”

  Flerring continued to scratch her arms, looking more and more perplexed. “It’s going to work,” she repeated, with somewhat less confidence than before. She stared at Prime and Julene while she talked, clearly more uncomfortable with their presence than with even the obelisk she planned on destroying. “We’re going to turn that thing to dust, then we’re going to hightail it out of this city before the Dynize can catch up.”

  Vlora put a hand on Flerring’s shoulder. “Just tell us when to watch.”

  “Just a few more minutes, it looks like,” Flerring said. “My boys are triple-checking the detonators, and we’ll be ready to go.”

  Vlora couldn’t help the thumping of her heart and hoped that her anxiety didn’t show on her face. What if Prime was right? What if it proved impossible to move the stone, and then he fled instead of hiding the stone from the Dynize? If the stone fell into Dynize hands, they would have possession of two of the three. She didn’t know exactly how bad that would be, but there was a dark fear in the pit of her stomach that told her it would be catastrophic.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Flerring suddenly growing very still, staring across the valley, then waving back at someone. “We’re ready,” she announced.

  Prime and Julene immediately ceased their bickering, and the group fell out into a line, watching curiously, until Flerring motioned to them. “You, uh, should probably all get behind those rocks,” she told them.

  “We’re awfully far away,” Taniel said doubtfully.

  Burt was already following Flerring toward some boulders, and Vlora and Olem were right behind her. “Trust me,” Vlora told him. “If Flerring says to duck, then we duck.”

  Within a few moments they were all situated under the cover of a pair of boulders, peeking out cautiously toward the godstone. Vlora turned her attention toward two of Flerring’s assistants, who were still within throwing distance of the stone. They were, she realized, following a long cord down to the outlet of the valley before taking refuge clear around the other side of the rock faces that guarded the entrance to the vale. Vlora took a small hit of powder, watching carefully for a few tense moments before a bright flash suddenly flared from the assistants’ hiding spot.

  The flash whipped along the ground with astonishing speed, following the cord up toward the godstone. It sped across the valley, then up the path. The explosions were nothing like the eruption of gunpowder. Instead of a boom followed by inky smoke, there was an ear-shattering crack. As Flerring had warned, there were seven distinct explosions. They happened so closely to one another that even Vlora’s sorcery-enhanced senses could barely tell them apart. Dust was sent in every direction, allowing Vlora to follow the force of the explosion across the valley as rocks scattered and leaves were blown off trees. She grabbed Olem and pulled him down with her, hiding behind the boulder while the entire side of the valley was peppered with stones thrown over a half mile away. A rock the size of her head struck just a few yards behind them, smoking from the blast.

  “Holy shit,” Burt said.

  Vlora lifted her head to peer through the haze, trying to see what had happened to the godstone. As the air began to clear, she felt her heart fall. “Nothing happened,” she said.

  Beside her, Taniel was also squinting toward the godstone. He shook his head and suddenly lifted himself up and over the boulder, taking off at a run. Vlora was about to let him go when she saw what he must have seen—something had happened. Without a word to the others, she took off after him.

  The whole group was gathered around the stone within ten minutes. Vlora walked around and around it, unable to stop grinning like an idiot.

  The obelisk had been shattered into three distinct pieces. The smallest was the cap—a pyramid-shaped stone around four feet in diameter. The rest of the stone had broken in half, lengthwise, and the pieces now rested with about a two-inch gap between them.

  Flerring slapped her hand victoriously on the capstone. “Ancient sorcery, meet modern science.”

  Prime Lektor stood back about twenty paces, staring at the godstone with a mix of fascination and horror, as if expecting the stone to reassemble itself at any moment. He seemed at a loss for words until Flerring spoke, to which he replied, “It’s not exactly dust.”

  “It cracked along the seams,” Flerring said, tracing her fingers along the break between the two halves of the main obelisk. “Just as planned. There were two deep grooves cut along fault lines in the rock, and we focused most of the explosion there.” She tapped a section of the capstone where a large area of writing had been replaced by a spiraling fracture, much like glass in a window that had been shattered without falling from the pane. “It’s true, all that oil should have turned this thing to dust. But considering how you were talking about that sorcery, I think we did pretty good.”

  Slowly, Vlora felt her smile fade. She took a step toward the stone and gently laid a hand on the surface. She felt a pulse, like the beating of a heart, touching her from the Else. It was an unpleasant feeling and she immediately wanted to wipe her hand off and leave this place at once. She forced calm. “I can still sense the sorcery of the thing.”

  “So can I,” Prime Lektor said.

  Taniel and Julene both confirmed it.

  “It’s faded,” Taniel said to Flerring’s annoyed expression, “but it’s definitely still there. Do you think whoever built this thing planned for the possibility of it being broken?”

  Vlora expected Prime to look smug, but the old sorcerer seemed baffled more than anything else. “It’s possible,” he said, “but they made it so strong that they must have thought it would survive anything. I doubt a god could crack it.”

  “Not even Kresimir could have conceived of a man-made force as strong as blasting oil,” Julene said with a hint of wonder in her voice. She tapped her right stub against the capstone, examining it with a
clinical approach. “Normally, when an object has been enchanted, substantial damage to it will unravel the enchantment. It may be that …” She trailed off. “Ah, I see.”

  “What is it?” Vlora demanded. Her anxiety was back, and she had gone from disappointment to elation and back again so quickly in the last quarter of an hour that she just wanted to know what the pit was going on.

  Julene turned and smiled smugly at Prime. “Do you see it?” she asked.

  With some reservation, Prime shook his head.

  “Those fault lines in the stone are also fault lines in the sorcery. We couldn’t see it, not when it was full strength. They must have bound the sorcery to the very grain of the rock. Helps make it stronger, but it also makes it vulnerable. The sorcery holding the whole thing together is like an outer layer. We broke through that with the blasting oil, leaving three distinct pieces of enchanted rock.”

  “So instead of having to deal with one godstone, we’re dealing with three?” Burt asked flatly.

  “Not exactly,” Julene continued. She had perked up from her usual disinterest and had even grown excited. “It’s not a godstone now, not nearly. The pieces are nothing compared to the whole. I think that it could be put back together, given time, but—”

  “If we can separate the pieces,” Vlora finished for her. Her mind was already working, pushing through a number of different plans. “Which is the most powerful piece?”

  “I see it now,” Prime finally announced. “ ‘Power’ is the wrong way of thinking about it. The two halves of the main trunk are where the meat of the sorcery is. But the capstone, though weaker, is used to connect them to make the three of them greater than the sum of their parts.”

  “That’s all I need to know.” Vlora turned to Burt, her heart racing. The moment she’d been waiting for—where she could see the next path she needed to take—was finally here. “You told us that you had made plans to take the stone north of the Ironhook Mountains if you could find it. Can you still do that?”

  The question seemed to catch everyone off guard, including Burt. Taniel stepped forward before Burt could respond. “Are you sure about this?” he asked quietly.

  Vlora ignored him. “Can you?” she asked again.

  Burt eyeballed the pieces. “What do you need me to do?”

  “I want you to take the two pieces of the main trunk and take them over the passes. As soon as you’re north of the mountains, separate the two pieces. Send them to the farthest reaches of your territory, or beyond. I don’t really care who ends up with them, as long as they are in two very different places.”

  “This is madness,” Prime interjected. “We can’t trust northern savages with even a fragment of the stone, let alone two-thirds.”

  Burt narrowed his eyes at the word “savages.” “Then come with us, old man. You want to study them so badly, then we’ll take you north with the pieces and you can make sure they’re disposed of or hidden.”

  It was Vlora’s turn to be surprised. “I thought you don’t allow Kressians north of the Ironhook?”

  “Like I told you before, the Dynize have changed everything, and we need to make decisions quickly. Besides, I have the feeling I know what your plan is, and I want insurance.”

  “What do you mean by insurance?” Taniel asked.

  Burt pointed at Prime. “This one can hide the presence of the godstones. If he continues to do that, it’ll give my people plenty of time to pull the two big pieces into the passes and dynamite them behind us. We’ll be long gone before the Dynize Privileged can figure out something is up.”

  Olem, who had remained silent for this entire time, suddenly spoke up, fixing Vlora with a pained expression. “We’re going to take the capstone, aren’t we?”

  “And lead the Dynize on a merry chase,” Vlora confirmed, locking eyes with Taniel. “We take the capstone to the coast, put it on a ship, and we drop it into the deepest part of the ocean. And even if the Dynize happen to catch up with us, they’ll wind up with just a fraction of what they need and no idea where the rest has been taken.”

  Olem considered the idea for a moment, and Vlora could see in his eyes that he thought it was going to get them all killed. He stared at the godstone, looking older than Vlora remembered him, and drawing out a pang of worry from her. “All right,” he said. “But the Dynize are almost upon us. I’ll have our engineers up here in half an hour and we’ll be rumbling out of the town in two. We need to get as far away as we can before nightfall.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Styke crested a hill and tugged gently on his reins, bringing Amrec—and the entire column behind them—to a stop in the middle of the road. He eyed the distant towers of New Starlight for a few moments, then swept his gaze across the rolling hills between his own party and the city-fortress before bringing his looking glass to his eye to get a better look.

  “That’s a lot more crowded than when we passed here five days ago,” Ibana commented. She sat beside Styke, her comments no doubt directed at the army now camped at the base of the curtain wall that cut New Starlight off from the mainland. At a glance, and without a glass, any seasoned campaigner would put the army at fifty thousand men or more. “That’s going to be a problem,” Ibana added. “We can’t break an entire field army, not by ourselves.”

  Styke kept the glass to his eyes, frowning toward the city and sweeping his gaze back and forth across the army camping outside it to make sure that his head wasn’t playing tricks on him. “We may not have to.” He handed Ibana the looking glass and sat back in the saddle, fiddling with his big lancers’ ring.

  Slowly, Ibana’s mouth fell open. “Those are Fatrastan flags.”

  “Above the army and the city,” Styke confirmed. “I’m not mad, am I?”

  “Not about this.” Ibana handed the looking glass back. “It’s been five days since we passed here, and we very clearly saw Dynize soldiers manning the wall. Where did that army come from, and how the pit did they take New Starlight without a siege?”

  Styke took off his ring, spat upon it, and polished it against his jacket before returning it to his finger. “I think that’s Dvory and the Third.”

  “I knew we hadn’t seen the last of him,” Ibana grunted.

  “Is this going to make our job easier or harder?” Styke asked, though he thought he already knew the answer.

  “Harder,” Ibana said. She swore, then continued. “If there is a fleet at harbor, Dvory isn’t going to give it to us. But …” She trailed off.

  “But,” Styke picked up, “I’d damn well like to know how he got here so fast. And how he took New Starlight.”

  “Right. Do you want me to send Jackal?”

  Styke felt uneasy. He felt that way a lot these days, dealing with Ka-poel and renegade cuirassiers and assassin dragonmen. But this … this felt different to him and he couldn’t figure out why. The army was flying the flags of the Third. It was a whole field army, with Dvory at the head. He ignored Ibana’s question and asked his own. “You think he sold himself to the Dynize?”

  “Dvory?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a slimy piece of shit, but there’s no way he turned an entire field army. I know dozens of good, loyal soldiers in the Third.”

  Styke chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Get me Jackal. We’re going to take a closer look.”

  Styke and Jackal approached the pickets of the army camped outside of New Starlight and were waved through with only a lingering glance and a curious whisper. They were soon among the tents, riding down the main road that led to the curtain wall and the city-fortress beyond it. Styke kept his eyes and ears open, keeping Amrec at a walk, trying to shake the uneasiness that plagued his thoughts.

  The army was camped at leisure, sprawled and disorganized like an army resting in the spoils of a great victory—though it was clear that there had been no battle to take the city. Soldiers played cards by the cookfires, set up ball fields out by the pickets, and stripped the area of firewood and edibles.
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  “Are the spirits telling you anything about this?” Styke asked Jackal out of the corner of his mouth.

  Jackal looked just as suspicious as Styke, if not more so, and he answered without taking his eyes off the camp. “The spirits are fickle right now. Most of them have fled from Ka-poel’s sorcery, and the ones who haven’t speak in riddles. They’re … not helpful.”

  “What do you make of this?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  Jackal seemed to have nothing else to add, so Styke let him be. Truth be told, he couldn’t add any more himself. The circumstances of the Third Army’s arrival seemed suspicious at best, sinister at worst, yet there was nothing about the camp that spoke to him of sedition or treachery.

  As they neared the curtain wall, he saw a small group of men gathered playing dice on a plank. One of them glanced up, did a double take, then sprang to his feet and jogged toward Styke. He was a thin, dark-skinned Deliv. He looked like he was in his forties, with a touch of gray at his temples and a distinctive scar along his left cheek. “Colonel Ben Styke?” he asked, falling in beside Amrec.

  “That’s me.”

  “Colonel Willen,” the man introduced himself. “I saw you at a distance back near Belltower but I never got the chance to meet you. I’m with the Seventy-Fourth Rifles. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Styke.”

  Styke pulled on the reins and turned to look down at Willen. “Pleasure is mine,” he said slowly. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t place the face. “Mind telling me what’s going on here?”

  “What do you mean?” Willen seemed genuinely perplexed by the question.

  “I mean that five days ago, I rode past New Starlight and saw Dynize flags. I come back this way and the city is held by our side, without any sign of a struggle.”

  “Ah!” Willen’s grin widened. “Well, sir, oddest bit of luck. I’ll tell you, we weren’t all that far behind—we arrived just yesterday morning to find the citadel completely abandoned. No ships in harbor, no spies hiding in the walls. Just an empty husk of a place stripped of supplies.”