Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Burned into the bottom of each barrel was a single rose.

  “These are from Blackhat storage,” Michel said, eyeing the path into the darkness. He looked up at Tenik, then the soldier who’d made the discovery. “Ma’am,” Michel said, “you may have just found Landfall’s number-one enemy of the state. Everyone on your feet! There’s been a change of plans!”

  CHAPTER 62

  Styke found Colonel Willen late the next morning as he rode through the gate of the curtain wall surrounding New Starlight. The camp appeared in much the same order as the night before, with everyone relaxed and playing games to pass the time, but Styke thought he could sense a tension among the men that hadn’t been there before.

  “Styke,” Willen greeted him, riding up and falling in beside Amrec.

  “Willen,” Styke returned with a nod.

  “Where is your Palo man?”

  “Jackal? He’s with my scouts.”

  “Good, good. My sister sent some of her best out last night, and more this morning. General Dvory assures us that the Dynize have abandoned the area, but I think having some of us out there will put the men at ease.” Willen seemed anything but at ease. His jacket was unbuttoned at the collar and he looked like he hadn’t slept well, with hair mussed.

  “Has Dvory emerged?” Styke asked, nodding to the citadel.

  “He has not.” Willen grimaced and shifted in the saddle as he spoke. “Just messages. It seems that Lady Chancellor Lindet’s orders have left the general staff in some confusion. They will remain in deliberation until they have come to a consensus as to what to do next.”

  Styke considered Dvory’s assurances, as well as the lack of communication. He did not trust the bastard before, and he certainly didn’t trust him now—but what could he be playing at? There was a whole field army here, holding a powerful fortress on the tip of the Hammer. He had put the army—who clearly were still loyal Fatrastans—in an excellent defensive position. If Dvory planned betrayal, what could he gain out here?

  “So I can’t talk with him yet?”

  “You can’t,” Willen replied apologetically. “I’m sure that we’ll have some sort of decision by the end of the night. Dvory is a persuasive man—the brigadiers will be lined up behind him before too long.”

  Styke nearly voiced his suspicions that Dvory was planning some kind of treachery, but decided to bite his tongue. Willen was an army man, and Styke doubted that he’d take well to an officer being slandered without evidence. But what evidence was there? Willen seemed nervous about the lack of communication, but he wasn’t falling apart. “Did you ever find out if the Dynize spiked the cannon when they left?”

  “Oh, I did at that. The cannon were not spiked. I’ll confess, that has given me some confusion. It’s the first thing we would do if we abandoned a fort to the enemy.”

  “Yeah,” Styke muttered. “Me too.” Louder, he said, “Are you familiar with this place at all?”

  “Some. I was stationed here for a few months just after the war. My sister pulled some strings to get me transferred to Little Starland.”

  “I don’t suppose you know of any way into the citadel?”

  Willen tapped the side of his chin. “I don’t. But …” He laughed to himself. “Actually, I do. There are a few sea gates out on the breakers. You can only reach them during low tide. The garrison uses them to clean detritus off the breakers and access the lighthouse out past the bay.”

  “Tunnels?”

  “Dark, dangerous, and very wet.”

  “Can they be reached without a long swim?”

  Willen considered this. “Might be. The north sea gate comes out on the mainland, but it’s right into the rocks. Even at low tide, those breakers get hit hard enough to wash a man out to sea.”

  A bell rang high up in the citadel, turning Styke’s head. He searched for the source of the sound, only to find it hidden from him by one of the towers. He breathed in deeply, the scent of the sea filling his nostrils. “Is there a storm coming in?”

  “Might be,” Willen replied.

  “I’m going to check. Thank you for your help.”

  Styke snapped the reins gently, allowing Amrec to carry him away from Willen and toward the northern shore of the Hammer. He kept his eyes on the walls of the citadel as he approached, searching in vain for any sign of life.

  The bell, he realized, had awakened something in him. He couldn’t determine what, but there was a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with his recent uneasiness. No, he felt a certainty—the certainty of a storm on the horizon or the violence of a battle—and with this certainty was a sense that he must act quickly. He forced the feeling down and proceeded to where the citadel met the earth and plummeted down into the ocean. Tying Amrec to a bush, he searched the underbrush until he found a narrow groundskeeper’s trail that led down along the rocky cliff and then skirted the edge of the citadel all the way to the ocean. Fetching his carbine and knife, he headed down the trail.

  It was a difficult walk, but by no means impossible. He passed a narrow bridge leading out to a low gun platform, sitting exposed and empty with three twelve-pound cannons protecting the harbor. He continued on and soon found his boots crunching along the gravelly shoreline. There was a narrow beach here, protected by the breakers, the sound of the ocean crashing against them drowning out anything else he might hear. He followed the beach along the foundation stones of the citadel and around one of the towers, then climbed up and over a boulder until he had a plain view of the docks beneath New Starlight.

  The docks were not expansive—large enough, perhaps, for a handful of oceangoing vessels. They were tucked into a beach much like the one Styke had just crossed, protected from the open ocean by a stretch of man-made breakers. On one end of the beach a path led up into the citadel.

  Styke looked for a way to reach the docks. A small boat might do it, if he could find one. Willen had been right about the ocean, though, and it was clear that even a strong swimmer would get dashed against the breakers at the base of the citadel. He eyed those breakers, following them along the course of the steep shoreline until he spotted a grate about fifty yards from his current vantage point.

  The sea gate that Willen had told him about.

  Styke was about to climb down to the breakers when something caught his eye. There was a ship coming in quickly, sailing in from the west. Styke squinted into the wind and was shocked to see that it flew the sunflower yellow of the Fatrastan flag. Settling back onto the boulder, he watched it come closer.

  It was only when the ship was almost to the docks that he spotted more on the horizon. Ten, twenty. Maybe even more. There were frigates, transports, and ships of the line, all of Kressian design. He leaned forward, enthralled, wishing he had his looking glass with him. He had thought that the Dynize owned this coast, and as the lead ship came up to dock and dropped anchor, he tried to figure out how a fleet this size could materialize on the other side of the continent from Landfall.

  There was a scrape of metal on stone, and Styke looked around sharply, searching for the source of the sound. He thought he heard voices on the wind, but when he could not find them, he turned his attention back to the ship coming in to dock. The minutes slowly ticked by and the wind picked up, the sky growing darker despite sundown being several hours away. Men scrambled through the rigging of the ship, rolling the sails, and a plank was rolled out.

  Styke was just about to turn around and leave when he saw a familiar figure appear on deck.

  Lindet.

  “Oi!” he shouted, waving both arms. There was no response, and no one on the ship seemed to notice, his voice buried by the sound of the waves on the breakers. He looked once more for a way to the docks and didn’t find one. Irritated, he hurried down from his boulder and across the hidden beach to the groundskeeper’s path.

  Lindet was here. No wonder Dvory and the Third had been in a hurry. This was some kind of damned rendezvous. All those ships out there—that was probably all
that was left of the Fatrastan fleet. They’d picked up Lindet from the coast off Redstone and brought her down here to meet with the Third, where she could take command and sweep the Hammer clear of Dynize, just as Willen had said.

  Styke almost laughed at himself for being such a fool. Dvory’s secrecy was damned well explained away by this: Lindet didn’t want anyone to know that she was taking the fight to the Dynize personally until she was on hand. He tried to figure out how this changed his own plans. The moment she discovered his presence, she would attempt to commandeer the Mad Lancers. If she found out about Ka-poel, that would … well, Styke wasn’t going to let her find out about Ka-poel.

  He was about halfway up the path when he passed the narrow bridge leading to the gun platform, and froze in place at the sight of some fifteen men—having appeared from seemingly thin air—working over the guns. They cleaned the barrels, brought ammunition up from a cache in the floor, and pointed to the distant ships. It wasn’t the men themselves that startled him so much as their appearance.

  Every one of them wore a turquoise uniform, a morion-style helmet, and a smooth breastplate. They had red hair and ashen freckles.

  Styke changed directions in midstep and hurled himself across the bridge. He was among them before they even saw him, his knife flashing, and within the minute, he was coated in their blood and gore. Heart hammering, Styke looked toward the beach, only for his view to be obstructed by the corner of the citadel.

  Goddamn Dvory was a traitor. This was Lindet’s rendezvous, and Dvory had turned it into a death trap.

  Somewhere far above him, there was a flash in one of the citadel towers and then the report of a coastal gun. More followed quickly, and Styke was suddenly all too aware that the Third Army was now sitting at the base of an enemy citadel, whose guns were being manned by Dynize. He wiped the blood from his face and began to run.

  CHAPTER 63

  Vlora rode past a field of the dead and dying, listening as their moans seemed to keep tempo with the clip-clop of her horse’s hooves. Another reckless charge by Dynize dragoons, meant to do nothing more than slow down her column. At a glance, there were no more than a hundred of them—not even close to enough to do any real damage. Their horses had already been either put down or taken, and the Adran dead buried beneath simple stone cairns beside the road. The Dynize—wounded and dead alike—lay where they fell and remained ignored as the Riflejack rear guard marched past them.

  She wondered if anyone had bothered to tell her about this attack. Perhaps. She was exhausted from days of forced march, barely able to sleep even when she did have the time. These attacks had come so frequently that they hardly warranted her attention anymore. They came at night, in the rain, even out in the open as the Dynize general sent his cavalry along every goat path and mining trail he could find to try to flank the Riflejacks—to try to trip them up and force the column to slow, even for fifteen minutes at a time.

  She wanted to dismiss the attacks as a waste of the enemy’s resources, but the truth was they were working. Despite the larger, more cumbersome army, the Dynize infantry remained just three hours behind the Riflejacks. Vlora felt like she could barely breathe.

  Up ahead, her column snaked down through the foothills and onto a relatively flat plain, where the vanguard had pulled off to the side for a few moments’ rest, allowing another company to take the lead of the column. She searched for Olem and was unable to find him.

  The sound of galloping hooves made her turn to find Taniel and Norrine coming up the road from the west, covered in the dust stirred up by Vlora’s infantry. Norrine wore a tired but satisfied smile, and Taniel held his rifle across the saddle horn. He pulled in next to Vlora and tapped on the side of his head. “That’s all of them.”

  “All of who?” she asked.

  “As far as we can tell, we’ve popped every Privileged and bone-eye in the Dynize Army. We’ve also killed half their senior officers.”

  “And yet still they come hard on our heels.” Vlora had meant to say that in her head, but it came out without her even realizing she was speaking.

  Norrine nodded. “They are … persistent.”

  Vlora looked back toward the dead and dying Dynize dragoons from the last ambush, unable to get rid of the weight of dread sitting in the pit of her stomach. “You’ve done well,” she told Norrine. “Go find some chow.”

  Norrine headed up the column, leaving Vlora and Taniel alone by the side of the road. “I don’t like the look on your face,” Taniel said.

  “I don’t like the fact that we can’t gain even an hour on these bastards. They won’t slow down, even with their officers and sorcerers dead.” She gestured to the dead dragoons. “They’re throwing lives in front of us with as little regard as if they were tossing caltrops in a road.”

  “The zeal scares you?”

  “It terrifies me. I have a little voice in the back of my head whispering every few minutes that we’re all going to die on this blasted continent.” She rolled her shoulders, trying to calm herself. “I’m not thrilled with the idea of dying, but there are worse fates. Dying, hunted like a dog … it feels like our campaign through northern Kez during the war all over again. Except this time I’m the one responsible for all these lives.” She looked Taniel in the eye. “I don’t want all these men to die here, Taniel.”

  Taniel’s expression was grim. “You’re doing the best you can.”

  She wondered at his plans. He wasn’t an Adran, not anymore. He was stronger, faster, and sturdier than any normal human—even any powder mage—and when the Dynize finally trapped the Riflejacks and slaughtered them to the last man, Taniel would no doubt carve his way out and disappear into the hills, heading across the continent to reunite with Ka-poel. Vlora briefly considered grabbing Olem and attempting to run for it.

  But who would she be if she abandoned the soldiers who so willingly sacrificed themselves for her?

  Another thought crept up and touched the back of her mind. She flirted with it for a moment before shoving it to one side, where it waited, insistently, for her to consider it again. “I’ve got to talk with Olem,” she told Taniel. She turned and followed Norrine up the column, riding past the dust-coated soldiers, down out of the foothills, and onto the wide field where the column ground to a halt for a brief rest.

  Beyond the field was something that her maps called Ishtari’s Crease. It was a great upthrusting of rock, as severe as a church’s steeple, that ran north-to-south for about thirty miles. It varied between forty and eighty feet tall, and was occasionally broken by natural fissures or modern clefts blasted out for roadways. Beyond the Crease the land fell steeply down into an old-growth forest, beyond which one could just make out the distant plains that needed to be crossed before reaching the ocean.

  Those plains had haunted her thoughts for days like a waking nightmare. Flat and open, with few defensible positions, the larger Dynize field army would be able to slow and surround the Riflejacks, cutting them to ribbons without the need of either tactical or sorcerous advantages. To outrun them, the Riflejacks needed at least a day’s lead on their enemy. They had mere hours.

  Vlora found Olem in a deep conference with the company’s quartermasters. He spotted Vlora and broke off, coming to her side, where he gave her a tight smile. “We’ve sent the capstone on ahead while the column rests. Our scouts are telling us that we won’t have to worry about being flanked by Dynize cavalry for a while—there isn’t another place to cross the Crease for miles, so they’ll either have to come straight up behind us, or wait until we’re completely through.”

  There was a hint of suggestion in his words. It didn’t take a military genius to see that the Crease was a tactician’s wet dream. The road passed through a rocky divide less than twenty yards across, easily defended by a few hundred men, let alone a few thousand.

  Quietly, so as not to be overheard, she said, “We’re going to die whether we fight them here or out on the plains.”

  “The thought
had crossed my mind,” Olem answered.

  “I’d rather not die at all.”

  “We can attempt to negotiate.”

  Vlora scoffed. “And give them time to catch up with us and maneuver? You remember the negotiation before Windy River.”

  “Things might have changed. We can try to give them the capstone.”

  “Somehow, I’m not sure that will be enough.” Vlora eyed the Crease. In another situation, she might have found it beautiful, in a rugged way. The cracked, broken rock was periodically flushed with green where a group of shrubs or trees had managed to eke out its existence. It wasn’t, she decided, a terrible monument to make one’s gravestone. “If we attempt a last stand here, how long will it take for the Dynize to find another crossing and come around behind us?”

  “A day and a half for their cavalry. Two and a half for infantry.” Olem paused. “There’s the option of leaving a few hundred men to defend the pass. It would easily buy the rest of the army time to get a head start on the plains.”

  Vlora shot Olem a glare. “You think I should ask for suicidal volunteers?”

  “I’m confident we could get enough volunteers to hold the pass.” There was a glint in Olem’s eye that Vlora didn’t like.

  “And I suppose you’d volunteer to lead them?” Olem clenched his jaw, but did not answer. Vlora knew him well enough to see that as a yes. “Out of the question.” She paused. “How long do we plan on resting here?”

  “No more than a half hour, then we’ll send the vanguard through the Crease.”

  “Make it fifteen minutes. We need to talk again in ten, just over that ridge over there.” She pointed to where the road passed through the Crease. “In private.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Vlora took her leave and headed along the column, her eyes searching the faces of her soldiers as they rested on the side of the road, jackets unbuttoned and packs thrown to the ground. The looks of exhaustion as she rode past them made her heart cry out with every salute and respectful “General Flint” that followed her.