Hope's End: A Powder Mage Short Story

by Brian McClellan

  When she arrived the two guards outside the general’s tent looked pensive and tight-lipped. One of them announced her, and then she was nodded through.

  She ducked inside, the protest on her lips dying as she surveyed the room.

  The general’s desk had been overturned, the floor and wall of the tent covered in ink, papers, and scattered gunpowder. The mighty oak table that had held his two-hundred year old map was cracked down the middle and an iron candelabra that had been perched on his desk was a snake of twisted metal.

  General Tamas sat on a chair in the corner—the only unbroken piece of furniture in the tent—with his legs crossed, surveying the destruction with a sour look.

  “Sir?” Verundish asked.

  He looked up for a moment, then back to his desk. That desk was huge. It took four men to carry it, no doubt, and at least two to turn it over. Yet Tamas was alone.

  The general stood up, clasping his hands behind his back.

  “Captain,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I’ve just finished a conversation with Privileged Zakary, the royal cabal’s new beadle.”

  It was no secret that the royal cabal and Tamas were kept from each other’s throats only by the king himself, but Zakary’s visit didn’t explain the broken table.

  “Did he do this, sir?” Verundish said. She felt anger at the indignity of it. No one came to Tamas’ tent and disrespected him like this. He was a general. Her general!

  “What?” Tamas seemed genuinely puzzled for a moment, following her gaze to the mess. “Oh. No, that was after he left. Someone will come and clean it up soon. Zakary stopped by to let me know that no Privileged would participate in the Hope’s End during the attack on Darjah tonight. They’ll provide distant support only.”

  Verundish felt her breath catch in her throat. No Privileged? None at all? A Hope’s End was always accompanied by a Privileged—usually someone young and stupid, or incredibly ambitious—but a Privileged nonetheless. Without a Privileged of their own, the Hope’s End would have no counter to the Gurlish sorcery that would be flung at them from atop the walls.

  Verundish forced a ragged breath in and out. She was going to die tonight. No question about it. This was what she wanted. But to know so baldly that her death would be in vain...

  “Furthermore,” Tamas continued, “Field Marshal Beravich has forbidden me from taking part in the attack. I usually sit back about a mile, with the artillery, and shoot the enemy Privileged when they show themselves against the Hope’s End. But it seems I’m being denied even that.”

  Tamas’ nostrils flared, and his voice rose as he spoke. “Bloody idiots just want to see me flounder. They throw away lives—good lives—just to spite me! The damned dogs. If I could kill every Privileged in Adro, I’d do it this instant.”

  Verundish’s heart beat faster and she felt fear. Not for herself. No, her life was forfeit. But General Tamas was one of the few officers in the army that genuinely seemed to care for his men. He commanded loyalty from every rank, and he had seen to it that soldiers in his command could rise through the ranks by merit.

  If the royal cabal ever heard him speak like this they would kill him in an instant, even if he did have the king’s favor.

  She waited for a few moments for him to continue. “Sir?”

  Tamas shook his head. “Captain, the point of a Hope’s End is to capture a fortress by surprise. It doesn’t work often, but it has worked. But not without a Privileged. Without a Privileged I’ll just be sending a company of men to their deaths. Guaranteed failure. But I have my orders.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re all right with that?”

  “I’ll follow orders, sir.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to back out, captain.”

  “I’ll lead the charge, sir.”

  Tamas’ eyes narrowed at her. “Why?”

  Because if the Gurlish don’t kill me, I’ll have to do it myself. “I’d rather not say, sir.”

  “Even if I order you?”

  Verundish stiffened. “You’ve always respected the privacy of your men, sir.”

  “Yes. I have.” Tamas turned to survey the mess that used to be his desk and map table and gave a long sigh. “You’re dismissed, captain. The Hope’s End will gather at dusk and attack at midnight. If you have not yet put your affairs in order, do so now.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Verundish paused in the tent opening and turned back to General Tamas.

  “Sir?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Could you grant me a request, sir?”

  “If it’s within reason.”

  “Make sure my husband doesn’t get my pension. Make sure it goes to my daughter.”

  Tamas considered this a moment, then nodded. “Sign a letter to that end, and leave it with my secretary. I’ll be sure it’s done.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The company that would make up the Hope’s End gathered as the sun set over the western edge of the desert.

  It was a sad group. Half of them were malcontents—men and women who might end up on the gallows or spend years in prison if they hadn’t volunteered. The other half were ambitious young soldiers, stupid or desperate enough to hope that they might survive the night and see a promotion upon capture of the fortress.

  Verundish wondered whether any of them had received the same chance at reprieve that she had.

  General Tamas was there when they gathered. He watched them all with hands clasped behind his back, small sword at his side and pistol at his belt. His face was stony and unreadable, but when Privileged Zakary passed by not long after, the torchlight revealed the open hostility with which Tamas regarded the Privileged.

  Two hours before midnight, a Kresim priest prayed for the group’s success, and the men were allowed to say goodbye to their friends and comrades.

  Constaire found Verundish among the crowd. He wore his full uniform and carried a musket in one hand, with his sword buckled to his belt.

  “Where the pit do you think you’re going?” Verundish asked.

  “There’s still time,” Constaire replied. “Say the word now, and I will lead the charge.”

  “No.”

  Constaire shook his head. “Please, Verie. Don’t do it.”

  “I have to.”

  “No,” Constaire said. “You don’t.” He held something up for her to see. It was the letter she’d received from her husband three days ago.

  “Give me that,” she hissed, snatching for it. “You have no right to read my private letters.”

  He pulled it away from her grasp. “I had to know why you would do this. I know you don’t love me back, Verie. I knew there had to be a reason for this suicide.”

  She slapped him. She hadn’t meant to, but a moment later he clutched at his cheek and stared at her like a hurt puppy.

  She rubbed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “I deserved that.”

  Yes, he did. “It will be all right,” she said. “I have to do this.”

  “I’ll challenge your husband to a duel.”

  “He’d slaughter you.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “He would. He’s a skilled swordsman. It would take someone like... like General Tamas to defeat him.”

  Constaire fell silent, and Verundish felt compelled to step forward, pulling him into her arms. “Why the pit am I comforting you, idiot?” she asked, feeling his tears on the back of her hands. “I’m the one going to my death.”

  “I’m the one who has to live without you.”

  Verundish shook her head. “Go back to your tent.”

  “No. I’ve volunteered to lead the second wave. If you succeed in taking the breach, I’ll be right behind you. We’ll fight our way through the fortress together.”

  “Pit. You really are a fool.”

  A whisper went through the ranks for the Hope’s End to prepare. Verundish pressed her lips to Constaire’s and then headed towa
rd the front line without looking back.

  General Tamas waited for them by the artillery that would herald their attack. Behind him stood four Privileged, their white gloves etched with crimson runes that caught the dim torchlight. They regarded the Hope’s End with skepticism.

  When the Hope’s End had fallen into ranks, Tamas addressed them.

  “There,” he said, pointing to the fortress a mile behind him, “is our enemy. They sit assured in their towers, drinking to another day of our failure and thanking their heathen god that we don’t have the stomach to set ladders to their walls.”

  “That ends tonight. Tonight, we will open a breach. We will swarm their fortress and put their shah and their Privileged to the sword.”

  The Privileged behind Tamas shifted uncomfortably at the mention of killing their Gurlish counterparts.

  “The fall of Darjah will destroy Gurlish confidence, and we will be one step closer to ending this damned war. And then, my friends, we will all go home.” Tamas seemed weary suddenly, and far older than his forty years. He smiled. “I’m done with this damned dusty land. I’m ready to go home and bounce my boy on my knee, and then take my wife upstairs where I can bounce her on my knee.”

  There was a chuckle among the group.

  “End this siege, lads,” Tamas said. “Get in there and break them once and for all and every one of you, living or dead, will be a hero in the morning.”

  A quiet cheer went up among the company, and Tamas raised his hands for silence. “I’d be there with you if the king allowed me. By Kresimir, I would.”

  That might have been a lie from any other general, but Verundish knew it for truth.

  Tamas continued, “Captain Verundish will take you in. Follow her like you’d follow me.” He stepped away then, and gestured to Verundish.

  Verundish raised her saber above her head. “No lights. Not a word. We move in darkness up below the walls, and wait for the thunder. When the wall falls, charge.” She waited for the nods, then lowered her arm. “Let’s go.”

  Verundish moved across the rugged terrain between the Adran camp and the fortress of Darjah.

  Her path was guided only by a sliver of moonlight, and the stars above her that glittered like the campfires of an army stretched across the sky.

  They had been camped there for months, exchanging artillery fire with the fortress and mounting two assaults and, but for those attacks, the land had been left untouched. Jackals hunted in the long desert grass where hares and foxes had made their homes to hide from Adran soldiers.

  A desert owl hooted somewhere nearby.

  She led her company across several small gullies and then into a ditch that went right up to the base of the fortress wall. She had been told the ditch was a runoff from the fortress wells, a place where the Gurlish bathhouses empties into the desert.

  They hadn’t mentioned that it also carried away human waste.

  One man stopped to retch loudly from the smell, causing the whole company to squat down in the squalor in fear of an alarm. Atop the wall, torches outlined the shape of Gurlish guardsmen. None of them called the alarm and in a low whisper, Verundish ordered her company forward.

  They reached the base of the wall and settled down to wait. Verundish unbuttoned the front of her uniform to get comfortable. No one out here would write her up for lack of discipline.

  She guessed they had about fifteen minutes until it started.

  It wasn’t long until Verundish heard one of her men squirming up the line toward her. She squinted into the blackness of the night, trying to determine who it was.

  “Sir,” he whispered, putting his face near hers. The scent of onions on his breath and the sound of his voice told her that it was Grenatio, a soldier who had been given the option of the Hope’s End or a firing squad after stealing from a local family.

  “What?”

  “Sir, when you said that we wait for the thunder...?”

  “The artillery.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. “That makes sense.” Grenatio wasn’t the brightest, it seemed. “Sir?”

  Verundish suppressed a sigh. “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “That’s natural.”

  “Will it go away?”

  “It will.” When a Privileged scours your bones clean with sorcerous fire.

  There were a few minutes of silence, and Verundish looked up at the top of the wall. Still no alarm. That was a good sign.

  “When will it start, sir?”

  “Soon.”

  “How soon?”

  Bloody pit... “Any minute. Get to your position.”

  The soldier moved his way back down the line, making enough noise to wake Adran soldiers back in their camp.

  And still there was no alarm.

  Verundish looked up at the black stone of the fortress walls and wondered if they would really be able to create a breach. Those walls were ten feet thick, reinforced by Privileged sorcery hundreds of years old. The Adran cannon had been firing on them for months without making so much as a crack.

  The Adran Privileged said they could break the walls tonight. What would happen if they did not fall?

  She heard a low whistle and had turned to shush her men when the first cannonball slammed into the side of the fortress wall above them. The impact made her stumble and she caught herself with one hand against the side of the gully.

  It had begun.

  Cannonballs and artillery shells rocked the fortress and shook the ground, causing the walls of the gully in which the Hope’s End crouched to shiver and slide.

  The physical bombardment was soon joined by the crash of sorcery. Fire lit the night sky, and slivers of ice the size of a carriage blasted into the wall, weakening it further with alternating heat and freezing cold.

  Verundish shielded her face behind the lapel of her jacket against pieces of rock, ice, and iron that ricocheted into their hiding spot.

  Gurlish screams told her that the enemy had sounded the alarm. Men rushed about on top of the wall, waving torches and yelling above the cacophony. One of them leaned over and tossed a torch over the wall, watching it fall to the ground below. It landed not far from the gulley that held the Hope’s End.

  The Gurlish were trying to discover where the attack would come from.

  Verundish knew it wouldn’t take them long to figure it out. When they did, a few dozen musketmen would be able to pick off Verundish’s men with little effort.

  She prayed for the wall to fall.

  She looked back on her men. One of them raised his musket and pointed it toward the men on the wall.

  “Down, fool,” she hissed.

  The report of artillery sounded close by. Verundish cursed their luck, and watched helplessly as a rocket soared into the air above the fortress and burst, lighting the desert as if it were day.

  Her men were outlined by the light, their faces turned grimly upward. Back down the gully to where it widened into the desert floor, she could see a hundred yards off where the second wave—three whole companies—crouched at the ready in case the Hope’s End was successful.

  They were all revealed by the light of the Gurlish flare. And now all would be lost.

  A mighty noise suddenly shook the ground; a groaning as if the very bowels of the pit had opened to release its demons. To Verundish’s surprise, the wall gave way beneath the withering bombardment, bursting inward and scattering Gurlish soldiers.

  “Climb, you bastards!” Verundish screamed, leaping to her feet.

  She scrambled up the gulley and toward the base of the wall, where a mountain of rubble gave her purchase to haul her way up into the breach.

  Cannonballs and sorcery shrieked around her, smashing the breach wider and wider with every strike.

  Cut the bombardment, damn it! Verundish imagined charging into the breach only to be slaughtered by artillery and sorcery from her own camp.

  All at once, the world fell silent. The focused bombardment ceased as the ar
tillerymen adjusted their aim, and then suddenly continued at another point along the wall.

  The breach was clear.

  Verundish tripped, sprawling in the rubble that used to be the fortress wall. Adran soldiers rushed around her and suddenly she was hauled to her feet by her belt, her saber shoved back into her hand.

  She didn’t have time to be embarrassed.

  Gurlish soldiers appeared in the breach, and the first Adrans rushed them with fixed bayonets, the two sides tearing into each other with furious cries.

  “Push!” Verundish cried. They had to secure the breach. They had to create a gap through which the second wave could pour. If they didn’t succeed in that, this would all be for nothing.

  A Gurlish soldier leapt at her, swinging the butt of his musket like a club. She caught the swing with her saber and punched the man in the face, then followed by slicing viciously across his throat.

  The Gurlish had not fixed bayonets. They hadn’t been ready for this attack. As impossible as it seemed, the Hope’s End suddenly had an advantage.

  “Cut through them, boys!” Verundish urged, crossing blades with a Gurlish officer. The man was quicker than she by far. She managed to parry twice before he was past her guard, slicing down her left arm.

  The man sputtered and fell, an Adran bayonet scrambling his bowels. Verundish pushed the corpse away, unable to mutter a thanks before Grenatio moved on. The onion-breathed man turned to shout over his shoulder.

  “You’re right, captain! The fright is gone!”

  They were inside the wall now, fighting for the courtyard. Without fixed bayonets, the Gurlish fell beneath the Adran soldiers like lambs before at the slaughter. Verundish paused to tie off the wound climbing her left arm, trying to wipe away the blood.

  They could win. They really could win. The second wave would follow them through the breach and help secure the courtyard, and then General Tamas would bring the rest of the brigade through.

  Suddenly, Verundish didn’t want to die.

  A flash of light blinded Verundish. She stumbled back, blinking to clear her vision, and watched as Grenatio ran toward her with his body aflame, immolated by Privileged fire. His screams echoed in her head.