“Everything all right?” her uncle asked, peeking his head out from around the priest’s door at the back of the hall.
She looked back over Axerian’s shoulder, meeting her uncle’s eyes. “Stay here in the chapel, uncle. Please. Stay inside until this is over. Keep yourself safe.”
He looked taken aback for a moment, then gave her a warm smile.
“I will, child,” he said. “But look to yourself as well, for my sake. And may the Gods watch over you both.”
57
ERRIS
High Command
Southgate District, New Sarresant
Sir, the enemy column should be moving down Canopy Street.” One of her aides pointed over the table to a line of red figures representing the enemy soldiers.
As he was speaking another aide pushed a different figure, a miniature field cannon, atop the Basilica in the Gardens, and two more moved red figures into place behind them to mark that they had entered the city walls. Scouts’ reports delivered by hand flew through the chamber, a complement to the battlefield updates provided by her Need. The new way was faster, more accurate, but try as she might she couldn’t be everywhere at once. So far her line had repelled the Gandsmen’s advances into the city, setting traps in narrow alleys to suggest their objective was attrition, and a strong line from the Gardens to the Riverways, rather than a focused defense of the bridges on the eastern flank. Every hour bought her fresh reserves, and the enemy seemed to be prodding her, moving slowly, giving her the precious time she needed. A minor swing in her favor, but the battle was far from decided yet.
“I’m giving orders to the Nineteenth to execute the ambush on Canopy Street now,” she said. “We’ll need binders to hold the enemy’s advance in the meantime. Bring the Third Division’s company forward, here,” she said, pointing. “Send a courier on foot.”
Crisp replies in the affirmative, and her attention was already back to the table in front of her. If the 19th’s ambush worked they could flank around and threaten the Gand artillery placements, a distraction easily worth an hour or more by itself. And an awful risk. The 19th had the right flank—she gambled on the enemy believing that position too critical to abandon for the sake of an ambush. Mentally she made a note for backup plans in either case: If the attack was successful, the 11th would deploy behind them, bolstered by the binders from 3rd Division, with more than enough firepower to screen the brunt of the Gand vanguard while Royens’s soldiers seized the heights. If they failed, the 11th would be there to pincer any attempt by the enemy to make for the river to the east.
Good enough.
She tethered Need, connecting with the foot-lieutenant second to Regiment-Major Amarond’s 19th Infantry.
“High Commander, sir,” a hard voice whispered beside her. “Bloody fine to see you.”
Her vision came into focus, surrounded by wood paneling and heavy linen curtains, velvet furniture and portraits hung on the walls. Blue uniforms packed into the back side of the room, two dozen men shying away from the windowpane, their number spiraling out into the stairwell behind. Every one of them as silent as the grave.
They were inside a residence, overlooking Canopy Street mere minutes before the enemy marched down its length, if her earlier reports and orders were any indicator.
“Damn fine work, Major,” she said in a soft voice. “The whole regiment is hidden like this?”
“Yes, sir. In townhouses up and down the street. Those bastards won’t know what hit them.”
“How did you manage it? You were deployed along the river not half an hour ago.”
“Ah, yes, sir,” the major said. “I expected you’d order us to position for an ambush, so I took the initiative, sir.”
She suppressed a laugh even as frustration bloomed in the back of her mind. This was the legacy of a long chain of idiot commanders. Major Amarond had been right this time, but he’d also magnified her risk. With the right flank exposed for this amount of time …
No. No time to worry over it now.
“Very good, Major. Your men are in position to attack as soon as you see the Gand column reach the end of the street. We have reports they have overextended here, and you can expect few enemy reinforcements if you hit them hard and fast.”
“Yes, sir,” Amarond said with a grim smile.
“Gods be with you and your men,” she said, and released Need.
She looked down at the table, to the right flank along the Verrain River. Only the Old Bridge stood in the north, with the ruined slums of the Maw past its far bank. If Amarond had been moving his people into place for the last half hour that meant the bridge had been damn near vacant and her right flank along with it. In fact, looking at it now with fresh eyes, the bridge looked to be the far likelier target for her to have set up an ambush: a plum position left undefended for a considerable length of time. Quite possible the sheer obviousness of such a trap was the reason the enemy had taken the risk of overextending into the southern Gardens, believing her to have committed her forces elsewhere. A stroke of luck. Gods knew she would need a few of those today.
“I need eyes here,” she said, pointing to the Old Bridge. “Do we have any fresh reports?”
“Yes, sir,” an aide replied. “Fifteen minutes past; the placements on the map reflect that report, sir.”
Very good. She looked it over again. Very good indeed. The enemy was nowhere close to the northern approach, a half league away with soldiers intended to reinforce the units they’d marched down into the southern Gardens. The very units Amarond would be carving to pieces shortly.
She made her way across the room, weaving through the couriers, officers, and aides as they rushed through the chamber, offering hasty salutes she had no time to return. The cartographers had produced paper maps detailing the western flank of the Gardens in lieu of having time to properly paint one of her tables. A sea of light blue and green figures, representing d’Agarre’s ragtag militia and the nightmarish fighters of the tribesmen. Gods be praised that they seemed content to hold the Gardens, or perhaps that d’Agarre was good for his word before he’d stormed out of high command. If those reports were accurate, the tribesmen seemed to be held down by d’Agarre and his militia, confined in place for the last hour or more.
“How accurate are these troop counts and placements?” she said, looking over the positions of each figure.
“Our best guesses, sir,” one of them replied. “The scouts still can’t get near it.”
Impossible to fight a battle blind. Without accurate reports her hands might as well be tied to her boots. If d’Agarre couldn’t deliver on his promise, if the tribesmen broke loose and rounded on her flanks, there would be havoc from Southgate to the front lines.
At least she had Marie. She’d have some warning if the lines began to break.
Time to check in on it now, while Major Amarond executed his ambush. She found Need, reaching out for Marie, and stepped into chaos.
Shouts, and stinging smoke. A rough hand shoved her, and she staggered into the path of another man, charging through her as if she weren’t there. Her feet tangled together, and she fell, scraping Marie’s forearms on cobbled stone. Roiling fear churned in Marie’s belly, though the Need connection seemed to insulate her from the worst of it.
She coughed, and blinked until the scene cleared. Militiamen, fleeing with no semblance of order or discipline. Street clothes and cloaks, running from the city, climbing the outer wall, though entire sections were knocked down not ten paces from where they scrambled over the stone.
She was in the Gardens, but not where her aides had placed the light blue figurines, along the border with Southgate. This was the northern part of the district, near the outer wall. Whatever company Marie had joined herself to must have broken, taken by a panic fierce enough to scatter them halfway across the city.
The same fear spread in her mind. Not for the militia’s sake, or Marie’s; if these men and women had broken, there might well be nothing left on her
west flank. She’d been a fool to trust d’Agarre. With luck she could redeploy. If the Gods smiled on her, there might be time, before—
“Am’i nar il cha.” A man’s voice cut through the smoke. “Corenna s’an chak. Ti ok’rai.”
She rose, pushing up from the ground. The speaker stood at an opening in the wall. No militiaman, nor even a citizen of the colonies. A tall man, bare-chested and bronze-skinned, though she could no more than half-discern it through the layers of black and red paint in swirling designs from beneath his eyes to his forearms, chest, and back.
A moment later she saw the woman at his side, a bronze-skinned, thin-set figure in a brown wrap of furs and sewn hide.
Tribesfolk. The source of the breaches in the barrier.
“Ki na, luki a’il cha,” the woman said, pointing at her, at Marie. “Sa ni’cor, na iral ok’rai.”
Hatred surged, and she burned their faces in her mind, preparing to release the Need binding. Marie would have to run, and she wouldn’t wager a husk of week-old bread for her chances. But if her vessel died, it would be for New Sarresant. It fell to Erris to see she died for victory.
“Your eyes,” the man said in a half-broken version of the Sarresant tongue, gesturing to help her understand. “Spirits sent you. A sign, for we to follow.”
What was this? She reached her feet, and neither the tribesman nor the woman made a move to attack. Instead they strode forward, the man with his arms wide, in a slight bow, a posture of peace.
“I am Erris d’Arrent,” she said. “High Commander of the Army of New Sarresant.”
“Erys de Aru,” the man replied, then gestured to himself. “Arak’Jur, dhakai dan Sinari o’na chai.” He said it slowly, then pointed to the woman. “Corenna, ana’i bat dan Ranasi o’na chai.”
“Why have you entered New Sarresant?” she asked.
“Madness,” the man replied. “My people, driven here, by a woman, Llanara a’il cha kapan. We find her. Kill. Then our people leave in peace. You show us. Show us where.”
She frowned. They had to mean the strange woman she’d seen at the barrier, and again on the western flank. The woman in white with her face painted red. Could it be so simple, to kill her and have done with it? She had no notion of what the tribesfolk’s magic could do. Perhaps the strange woman was the source, and clear enough neither this tribesman nor the woman at his side feared the madness roiling on the western flank.
“You kill her—the woman in red—and the madness ends?” she asked.
The man nodded, fervor in his eyes. A terrifying sight, made all the worse by children’s stories of the wild men and women native to the New World. But all the better for her if they were terrible. She wasn’t fool enough to leave a loaded musket lying on the ground, whatever its source.
“You’ll find her to the south,” Erris said. “Near the district boundary, though I can’t be sure the precise—”
Resolve flared in Marie’s belly, strong enough to feel it through her Need.
She stopped mid-sentence.
“You know where the woman is?” she asked, and the feeling flared again. The man gave a questioning look. Certainty glowed like an ember in Marie’s belly, alongside a hunger for vengeance.
“This woman will guide you,” she said, taking care to speak slowly for their benefit as much as Marie’s. “Follow her, and Gods send you do what you came to do.”
58
SARINE
Old Bridge
Riverways District, New Sarresant
She’d made it halfway across the bridge when she saw the soldiers. Blue coats running through the streets of the Riverways toward the riverbank.
Her first reaction was pride. Strange.
Seeing troops on the streets of her city, she might have expected anger, fear, worry. Instead she found pride, pride on behalf of the fighting men and women of Sarresant. There was a connection there, a debt paid in the courage of soldiers willing to stand up and fight against their common enemies. No Gandsmen in sight, and she expected to feel a swelling of hate for those, for the invaders who had come to threaten her home. The thundercracks of cannon fire prevailed in the distance, promising the Gandsmen were close at hand. She was near enough now to smell the smoke that had risen like a storm cloud to hover above the Gardens.
Watching the blue coats approach in the distance made her step lighter, against all odds. She had stood alone, or near enough, against the specter of d’Agarre’s madness for so long that the sight of dozens, hundreds perhaps, of brothers and sisters in arms eased a burden from her shoulders, a burden she hadn’t known was there.
It took another moment before she realized the soldiers were breaking, fleeing toward the bridge. Scattered by fear, just as the militiamen had been, and the nobles, and the sailors in the Harbor a lifetime ago.
Her instincts took over, and she raced forward. “Zi,” she cried out, “I need Green.”
He gave it, color flaring at the corners of her vision. She felt a tableau of emotion—terror, uncertainty, shame, disbelief—and smothered the fear, urging as many as she could reach toward calm.
She flew toward them in a rush, covering ground with the aid of a Body tether she had slid into place by reflex. “Zi, where is the kaas-mage? If these men were scattered by Yellow—”
This wasn’t Yellow.
The first ranks of soldiers flowed around her, shock written on their faces. They darted glances at each other, at her, over their shoulders at whatever had broken their line. A few slowed their pace as they moved past her, giving her questioning looks as if they couldn’t quite understand why they had stopped running.
“What’s going on ahead?” she asked a handful of them. “How many enemy soldiers?”
A crashing boom filled the air before any of them could reply, and she saw flames spout above a building not two blocks west.
“A monster,” one of the soldiers said, looking back with wide eyes even though he had come to a halt. “Don’t go that way if you value your life.”
Another gout of fire shattered the glass of nearby buildings, the air sucking westward in a sickening rush.
She grit her teeth and ran toward it.
One block flew by, and a dozen more pops and crackles sounded up ahead.
“Bring your worst, you chicken-fucking up-jumped rat-mongrel,” a deep voice shouted, loud enough to echo across the walls of nearby buildings. Another bang sent fire rushing around the corner. Still she pressed on, another heartbeat before she rounded the intersection and came face-to-face with the source of the soldiers’ panicked flight.
Mareh’et.
A blast of flame struck in front of the creature’s feet when it tried to step forward, sending it skittering to the side. Standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by pockmarked cobblestone and the blasted-out remnants of nearby buildings, was a man in a captain’s uniform, his eyes burning with fury as he roared obscenities at the Great Cat.
“Come on, you reeking pigshit,” he shouted. “Try me again if you have the nerve.”
She saw the cat had already landed a savage cut on the captain’s leg, his uniform torn and shredded, caked with blood. The beast seemed content to probe forward, provoking blasts of fire when it came too close. Entropy, for the fire, and Life to keep him standing; evidently this captain was a fullbinder. Just as well she hadn’t rushed in. With him tossing fireballs she’d as soon keep her distance.
She tethered strands of Entropy herself, loosing a torrent of caustic air that exploded behind the beast. The creature moved too fast to hit it directly, but it took notice of her, spinning back into a crouch.
The captain’s eyes went wide for a moment before he saw her.
Cornered, the beast sprang forward, evoking another stream of curses as the captain exploded the ground in front of him, sending cobblestone into the air. Except this time she was there, too, setting her own Entropy bindings to cut off its retreat, anticipating mareh’et’s propensity for games of cat-and-mouse. A sizzling b
urst of cat flesh erupted into fire, eliciting a yowling whine from the creature, a growl befitting its massive size. It darted another look between them before springing back, then turned and loped northward in a blinding flash.
“That’s right,” the captain called out, sagging down against his wounded leg. “That’s bloody right.”
She rushed to his side, tethering Body into him as she cradled him toward the ruined cobblestone at his feet. He blinked, fixing his eyes on her. His breath reeked of drink almost as much as his coat, and he winced as he tried to laugh.
“Body, too?” the captain asked. “Where the fuck did you come from, girl?”
“Shh,” she said. “Don’t speak, you’re hurt.”
His eyes went to the tattoos on her hands, the royal marque permitting her bindings by the grace of the King. He scowled.
“Bloody fucking nobles,” he said before his eyes rolled into his head and he passed out in the middle of the street.
The stench of blood and alcohol mixed with sweat proved worse than actually carrying him, restless as he was, hoisted like a newborn babe in her arms. She’d made the mistake of tethering Life along with Body when she’d first hefted him up, nearly dropping him when the acrid smell made its way onto her tongue through amplified senses, thick enough to taste bile and twice as strong as whatever drink the captain had been favoring that morning.
He’d started to come to three blocks to the south, murmuring something about lambskin and fresh grapes. She’d figured it wise to avoid the routed troops to the east and the sounds of cannon fire to the west. That left south for the likeliest place to find friendly soldiers, fool as she was for trying to save the captain’s life. It had certainly been a damned sight easier to carry him before he decided to start moaning and turning in her arms.
She turned down Canopy Street, the long avenue leading toward Southgate and the Market, and nearly choked again at the sight of whatever battle had been fought here. Bodies piled up in the entryways of the shops and townhouses lining the street, far too many blue coats for every red, as if the Sarresant soldiers had been shut up inside the buildings and butchered when they tried to come out. The street reeked with the smell of powder, guttering flames still burning in storefront windows and shattered glass strewn across the cobblestone. So many dead, with the quiet of a graveyard hanging in the air despite the sounds of fighting nearby.
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