Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Dvory straightened, his trembling intensifying. “You’re scared of him?”

  “I am a dragonman. We do not feel fear.” Ji-Orz looked sidelong at Lindet. “But I respect strength.”

  “I will find you, and I will break you,” Dvory said in a low, angry voice.

  Ji-Orz inclined his head slightly. “I’ll see you again, Ben Styke.” Without another word, he was gone through the side door, out the back of the great hall.

  Styke turned his gaze on Dvory, watching the struggle play out across Dvory’s face in much the same way as it played out across that cuirassier commander Ka-poel enthralled last week. He could see the fight in Dvory’s eyes and the sweat on his brow. He squeezed his eyes shut, then wiped the perspiration from his cheeks with the back of his sleeve. He gave a mighty shiver before looking down at Styke with someone else’s eyes.

  “You’ll bleed out soon enough, Styke. No one survives those wounds.”

  Styke still rested on one knee, his head feeling heavy and his eyes tired. The dragonman’s exit seemed to take the strength from his limbs, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and sleep. He touched the bloody stone with one hand and tried to gather his wits before shakily pushing himself back up to his feet. He lifted his knife.

  Dvory swallowed, looking from Styke to Ka-poel. His face took on an almost paternalistic expression. “Child,” he said. “I’ve been calling for you. Why don’t you answer? Kill them for me, and then join me in Landfall. You’ve locked the godstone, but I will unravel it sooner or later. With your help I can end this war quickly. We can put a stop to this bloodshed and unite the continents once more.”

  Ka-poel gestured emphatically.

  “I don’t know what that means. Why do you not speak? Are you mute?”

  Styke lurched forward, grabbing Dvory by the arm as he began to draw his sword. He pressed the tip of his knife to Dvory’s throat. “She called you a prick.”

  Dvory’s lips drew back in a snarl, and suddenly Styke felt himself pushed aside. He staggered away as Ka-poel took his place in front of Dvory. She leaned toward him, searching his eyes as if looking through a looking glass at something far away.

  “My child,” Dvory whispered.

  Ka-poel lifted her long needle and gently drew the tip down Dvory’s cheek, gathering drops of blood as it went. She held it up to the light, and Dvory shifted nervously in front of her. She smiled at the man she saw behind Dvory’s countenance, and thrust her needle into Dvory’s eye.

  The scream that issued from Dvory was not in his own voice.

  Styke staggered toward Ibana, only for Lindet to rush forward, putting her shoulder beneath his arm and helping him the rest of the way. He got to his knees beside Ibana, leaning on one arm. Lindet took his knife and began tearing away strips of a dead traitor’s jacket for bandages.

  Ibana watched her work wordlessly, her eyes eventually traveling to Styke’s face. “The guns have gone quiet,” she muttered.

  “So they have,” Styke replied.

  “You look like shit.”

  “So do you.”

  Styke looked down at the dragonman’s bone knife still stuck between her ribs. “I’ll survive. Will you?”

  “I …” Ibana tried to shift, her face going white. “I don’t think it hit anything vital. But it hurts like pit. We need a surgeon.”

  Lindet paused in her making of bandages. “Get me to the signal towers and I’ll tell my ships that the citadel is ours. You’ll be healed by sorcery by the morning. If you last that long.”

  Ibana stared at the side of Lindet’s face. “I didn’t see it before, but now I don’t know why I didn’t. Your sister.” She snorted. “You have a damned lot of explaining to do, Benjamin.”

  Styke locked eyes with Lindet. He saw, for just a fraction of a second, Lindet’s desire to make sure no one left this room alive but the two of them. He shook his head. She hesitated, then nodded. “Bandage yourselves. I’ll send the signals.”

  Dvory’s screams, in the voice of another, lasted for the rest of the night.

  CHAPTER 69

  Vlora wiped the gore from her sword, teetering on the edge of consciousness before a quick hit of powder brought her back from the edge. She leapt forward, sword in one hand and knife in the other, carving through a platoon of Dynize soldiers who attempted to hold her at the end of their bayonets. Sorcerous speed allowed her to slip through the gap between their blades, her sword flicking precisely. Her body moved mechanically, without the wherewithal for conscious thought, and she couldn’t have said whether it was seconds or hours between the time she’d turned on that platoon and the time the last man hit the dirt.

  Probably seconds. She knew it had been hours since the fight had begun, in the same way a man half-asleep knows when someone is trying to wake him up. Thousands lay dead behind her, littering the road back toward the Crease. Thousands more screamed from their wounds. She forced herself to ignore the savagery of it and press on, looking for the next throat to open with the tip of her sword.

  The little part of her mind still able to function wondered where Taniel had gotten to. Most of the carnage along the road belonged to him—he was an impossible force, cutting a swath through the Dynize column with the same unstoppable power as a cannonball skipping across a battlefield. They were both up in the foothills now, killing their way through a second brigade of soldiers, and she’d lost sight of him at some point in what she thought was just the last few minutes.

  Someone in the distance yelled to open fire, and bullets whizzed over Vlora’s head or struck the dirt around her. One took a chunk out of her shoulder. She barely noticed it through her powder trance, but she reached out toward the sound of firing muskets and detonated the powder she felt in that direction.

  A chorus of screams and a cloud of smoke rose from the ridgetop to her left, and the kickback from detonating all that powder literally knocked her off her feet. Her vision grew dark for a few moments and she wrestled with her mind to keep herself from losing consciousness.

  Without even giving her body clear orders, she was back on her feet and sprinting toward a group of horsemen as they charged foolishly toward her down the road, horses leaping the bodies that Taniel had left in his wake. She reached out to detonate their powder, found none, and instead gathered all her sorcerous strength to leap into their midst with sword swinging. One thrust, midleap, cut the jugular of a dragoon. As she came down, she rammed her knife into the thigh of another dragoon, then landed in a crouch, sword swinging up to remove the leg of a horse that slammed into the ground behind her, rolling and crushing its rider.

  Vlora barked a laugh and heard it tinged with mania. Nothing these assholes could throw at her could take her down. Not a thousand men, not ten thousand. She was soaked in the blood of their companions, coated in powder grime and dirt, her shirt half torn away and her hair a knotted mess of gore. She changed directions, pivoting on one foot to deal with the dragoons who had just ridden past her, and took a step forward.

  At least, she tried to take one step forward. The leg worked, but her foot turned beneath her with a stab of pain that cut through the powder trance to hit her right between the eyes. She grunted, gave a half-hearted scream, and then felt the slashing point of a dragoon’s blade cut savagely across her sword arm. Her fingers numb, the sword flew from her hand, and Vlora dropped to her knees.

  It took her a few moments to assess the situation. During her jump, one of the dragoons must have sliced the tendons of her left foot. She could feel the nerves screaming out in pain through the dull ache of her powder trance. That other dragoon had done the same to her right wrist.

  She laughed again and flipped her knife around in her left hand, attempting to force herself to her one good foot to take the dragoons’ final charge.

  Perhaps a dozen dragoons had made it past her. They turned their horses, swords held at the ready, and watched with uncertainty as she struggled back to her feet. All around her, wounded and terrified soldiers seemed
to stare at her in the same way they might stare at a grenade whose fuse might or might not have failed.

  Vlora detonated the powder of a squad of soldiers approaching from behind her. The act knocked her back to the ground and tore a gasp from her throat. One of the Dynize dragoons dismounted and took a half step toward her. His companions did the same. None of them had any powder on them, which meant that they’d been sent specifically to stop her. Perhaps even to capture her. Vlora reached out, gingerly feeling for every ounce of powder on the infantry within a half mile.

  The sorcerous backlash of such a detonation would kill her. But it would keep her from being taken alive. Mentally, she held a match above that powder and prepared to set it off as her last living act.

  “By the Mighty,” one of the dragoons said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  One of her companions shook his head. “The other one is worse. The general sent all of our dragonmen to stop him, and he cut through them like they were lambs.”

  “She tires,” the first dragoon said, thrusting a sword toward Vlora. “The other one will, too.”

  The dragoons approached slowly, swords held at the ready. She could see the fear in their eyes—fear tempered by the smell of victory. She waited until one of them had come just outside of sword range and sprang from her knees, knife slashing. The dragoon was able to lunge back out of the way and Vlora stumbled on her useless foot and slipped in the gore of an infantryman, landing face-first on the hard-packed dirt road. She heard someone laugh.

  “She’s done,” a dragoon said.

  “Do you hear something?” another asked.

  “Only screams. Should we try to take her alive?”

  Someone kicked the knife out of Vlora’s hand. She was grasped by the hair, her head jerked backward. She tried to stab the arm with her knife, then remembered it was no longer in her fingers. The feeble thrust of her empty hand was battered away. A foot planted itself in her gut, flipping her onto her back.

  The pain meant very little through her powder trance. She wanted to laugh at them, that mental match still poised above all that powder nearby, but she couldn’t quite summon the energy. I’m dying, she realized. She managed to get to her knees, the single action taking an eternity. Hands in her lap, she stared up at the dragoon who gazed down at her over the point of a sword.

  She wished she could have spent one last night with Olem before she died. She wished that she could tell him once more that she loved him.

  “She’s gone,” the dragoon said, tapping the side of Vlora’s face with his sword. “Look at her eyes. We can take her back to the general, but I doubt she’ll survive the trip.”

  “I’m not so sure. Look at her. She’s cut to ribbons, but she’s still fighting.”

  Vlora wanted to scoff. Other than her hand and foot, she’d barely been scratched. She let her head roll around, looking down at her body, before realizing that it was far from the truth. She’d been shot at least four times. Her shirt didn’t even exist anymore, and her chest and thighs were a patchwork of bloody cuts that she hadn’t even noticed in her bloodlust.

  “Just take her head,” someone said. “No need for the body.”

  The dragoon pointed his sword between Vlora’s eyes, then raised it to one side with both hands. “It seems a pity,” he said.

  Vlora reached out with that mental match, using the last of her strength, only for nothing to happen. She blinked, surprised, then let out a resigned sigh. Her sorcerous well had run completely dry. There was nothing left to give. No final detonation, no blaze of glory. She licked the blood off her lips and tried to smile at her executioner.

  The dragoon frowned. Blood began to run down his face, and it took Vlora several seconds to realize that a perfectly formed icicle had sprouted from his forehead. Odd, that. There’s no ice in Fatrasta in the summer. Icicles rained down, slicing through the remaining dragoons before any of them could raise their swords.

  Am I already dead? she wondered. Is this the final fantasy that my body tells me before I give up the ghost?

  Something strange crept across the ground. At first, she thought it was a wave washing over the road. It certainly looked like a wave, but no water had ever been that shade of blue. A woman strode past her, hair tight in braids over both shoulders, wearing an immaculate crimson dress in the Adran style. She was wreathed in the same blue that washed over the ground, and Vlora realized that they were flames. They washed over and past that woman with a heat that hurt Vlora’s face and barely even sizzled when it touched off the powder of dead infantrymen.

  Dynize soldiers tried to run, but were consumed in moments, their bodies turned to ash where they stood. Vlora fixed her gaze on the woman, wondering who she was, though a part of her brain told her that she knew that figure well. Her eyes fell to the woman’s hands, and the blue flame that sparked from them without gloves.

  “You don’t look so well, sister,” a voice said.

  Vlora tried to turn her head and found that she could not. Someone stepped around her, into her field of vision, and leaned close. Gloved hands touched her face gently, and the countenance of a man in his early thirties with auburn hair and curly sideburns smiled at her grimly.

  “Borbador,” Vlora whispered. “Are you dead, too?”

  “Not last I checked.”

  “You must be. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here to meet me on the other side.”

  Borbador gently slapped Vlora’s cheek. “Stay with me here, my darling sister. You’re not on the other side yet and I’d really rather you not head there when I’ve just arrived.”

  “You can’t be here,” Vlora protested. “I only sent for you a month ago.”

  “You think you’re the only one who can write a letter? Taniel told me over a year ago that the Dynize intended to invade. I’ve been raising an army. Look, I can tell you about it later. I just need you to stay awake until Nila finishes mopping up a few brigades. It’s going to take the two of us to keep you alive.”

  Vlora felt herself shaking, her powder trance unable to hold off the pain any longer. She trembled and wept, wishing any of this was real, knowing that it was the wishful hopes of a dying mind. “I missed you, Bo. I wish I could really say good-bye to you.”

  “Shush now,” Borbador said, pulling Vlora’s head against his chest. “Your family has come for you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Styke stood at the top of one of the remaining towers of the Starlight citadel, leaning on the stone battlements as he slowly carved a horse from a bit of pine. His left hand still had a twinge from the firing squad despite two rounds of sorcerous healing over the last few months, and the pine slipped in his hand a few times as he worked. He sucked away the blood each time, enjoying the biting feel of the tiny cuts.

  “I’m getting too big for wooden horses,” Celine told him, dangling her feet off the edge of the tower.

  “Who said I’m making it for you?”

  “You always make them for me.”

  Styke held the horse up to the light, then shaved a bit more wood off each of the back legs. “You’re an ungrateful little brat, you know that?”

  Celine swung her legs around and crossed the tower to kiss him on the cheek, before returning to her spot. “You’re getting better with the knife.”

  “Sorcerous healing will do that.”

  “I thought you said practice makes you better?”

  “I used to be quite good at carving things,” Styke answered, blowing wood shavings off the back of his hand. “I had to relearn how to do it with a crippled hand and a dull knife. Come to think of it, having something sharp on hand makes things a lot easier, too.” He took the horse and walked over to Celine, holding it in two fingers and riding it across her shoulder, then holding it in front of her eyes. “What breed is he?”

  “He is a she,” Celine said pointedly. “And she’s a Gurlish draft horse.”

  Styke frowned at the carving. “I was aiming for a Starlish draft, but it does look more like
a Gurlish, doesn’t it?” He set the carving next to her. “How is Margo?”

  “We’re getting used to each other.”

  “That wasn’t an answer.”

  “Good. I like her a lot. She still starts when she hears a gunshot.”

  “She’s a good horse. We’ll train that out of her.”

  Styke paused, hearing the soft sound of footsteps on the stairs behind him, and half turned to watch Lindet emerge on the parapet. She stood straight-backed and formal by the stairs, her face once again unreadably haughty. She raised her chin at Styke, then let her eyes wander to Celine. There was a question there. He ignored it.

  Celine climbed down from the battlements and stared up at Lindet. “You’re the Lady Chancellor?”

  “I am.”

  Styke put one elbow on the parapet and tried not to look interested in where this conversation was about to go.

  “You don’t look very dangerous.”

  “You don’t look very interesting. Yet it seems Ben Styke has taken an interest in you.”

  Celine sniffed, unimpressed. “My da died in the labor camps. Ben protects me. He said he’s made a habit of protecting little girls until they are big enough to protect themselves.”

  Lindet’s eye twitched, and Styke rolled his tongue around his teeth in an effort to suppress a smile. “It seems our secret is out,” Lindet said. “It’s the talk of the entire Third Army. You know how I feel about tongues wagging.”

  “You can’t control everything,” Styke said.

  “I can try.”

  “You can try. But you’ll fail.”

  Lindet sighed, then crossed the tower to stand next to him, looking to the east, along the northern coast of the Hammer. “You’re not worried about your reputation? Mad Ben Styke, brother to the ruler of Fatrasta? You’re no longer a loose cannon, a force of nature. They’ll know that you came from someplace. That your sister is the most powerful woman on the continent. Family connections tend to … dim the perception that others have of your accomplishments.”