She caught the pureborn by the belt as he squirmed free of the anathema, and, launching herself after him like one of the swifter fish pursuing a fly darting above the river’s surface, she bellyflopped back down atop him. He had a dagger or something, shanked her in the chest and gut, but then she was level with his wracked face, looking at him eye to eye… and then she did for him as she’d done for the anathema.
His skull was harder than the first man’s. Portolés’s was harder. After the second headbutt his knife stopped poking her, and after the fourth his eyes crossed, his split nose warm against her crown as she brought it down again. And again. And again. She only stopped when a sharp boot caught her in the armpit and rolled her off him, quickly delivering a series of kicks to her stab-riddled stomach. The last anathema…
Blinking the stinging blood out of her eyes, Portolés stared up at her assassin. The anathema reached up and pulled down her mask, revealing a face scarred with pits from where they must have scoured away her fur or scales.
“Safe roads guide you to her breast,” said the sister. She raised her weapon, the silver crescent winking, and Portolés tried to prepare herself for whatever awaited her on the other side of the ax. Despite everything she thought she believed, she was scared. So much for taking her alive.
The anathema yipped and stumbled back. Portolés squinted at the small arrow that had appeared in her assailant’s shoulder. Fast as the anathema had faltered, she dashed forward, out of Portolés’s sight—the tall, dying grass in which she lay on her back veiled everything but the reddening sky. Night was falling, and jackals would be out on the buttes soon. She thought she heard a crossbow twang, but couldn’t be sure. It was quiet, save for her wheezing breaths. She willed herself to sit up, but when she tried the hot slits in her side, stomach, and chest pulsed wetly, her arm shuddered, and she collapsed back down. The battle haze was lifting, and the angels of suffering were planting their kisses all across her body. What a terrible way to die…
She felt herself drifting off, and forced herself to think of Kypck. It was how she kept herself awake when she was exhausted on watch. Guilt and shame has a way of perking one up. All those ignorant people, cut down for no reason they could ken, screaming as they were sent to their judgment. Portolés giving the order as sedately as if she were overseeing drills on a parade ground. Using her maul, a relic of the Burnished Chain and symbol of her devotion to a greater good, to bash in the skulls of the five wide-eyed, shaking Azgarothians who refused to follow her command. Not killing a single villager herself, as though that kept her clean, instead of making her just as bad as Colonel Hjortt.
Boots crunched the gritty track of the road beside her, and she focused on Hjortt, his face bubbling like the wax of a freshly lit candle in the confessionals, his ringlets flashing up like burning scrolls. She thought of Queen Indsorith, her long hair waving like a pennant in the winds that forever lash the Crown of Diadem. Maybe Portolés had done some good in the end. Maybe she’d done enough. Maybe. A living shadow fell over her, the devil of death blotting out the sky, the promise of salvation…
“Well, well, well,” Heretic said, leaning over her. “You look in a bad way, sister.”
“I’ll bleed out if you don’t tie me.” Portolés found the words pouring out of her in a rush, despite how sluggish her tongue felt. “On the mule, there’s a bag for this, this… a bag of bandages, a pot of ointment. Smelling salts. You’ve got to pack me, pack my wounds, got to…”
“I know where it is,” said Heretic. He looked remarkably hale for a man who had squared off against an anathema.
“The last one, the anathema, she’ll be back…”
“I see that happen and I’ll convert,” said Heretic, directing the crossbow in his arms down at Portolés. “Now I know why your pope outlawed these things. Gotta be evil, if it lets a common sinner like me take down the Chain’s holy monsters.”
“You fought… good, Heretic. Better than I believed.”
“Fought? Lady, I ran for it, soon as that witchborn came after me! Led her on a hunt, and fast as I am, she soon gave up and doubled back. I figured she’d get a horse and catch me for sure, so I cut back, too, along the edge of the bluff. None too soon for your benefit, neither!”
“And now?” Portolés swallowed blood, staring up at the crossbow. “Listen to me, Heretic—I know you want to know why.”
“Why?”
“Why this. Why I took you, what we’ve been doing, where we’re going. Why this fight. Why everything.”
“What makes you think I give a shit, so long as I’m free?” Heretic seemed delirious. “Free, with horses and loot and the open road in all directions! Why, sister, would I care about your songs?”
“Because you’re a heretic,” said Portolés, shivering in the cold, wet grass. “And being curious is how good folk become heretics in the first place.”
“You think you know me, huh?” Heretic pulled the trigger on the crossbow, the bolt thudding into the corpse of the pureborn beside her. “You think ’cause you read my tract you’ve got me pegged? Tell you what, sister—say right here and now you hate the Fallen Mother, that you love the Deceiver, and I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me.”
“I hate the Fallen Mother,” said Portolés through gritted teeth. It wasn’t the voicing of heresy that disturbed her, for without belief words are nothing; it was Heretic’s utter stupidity. If he actually wanted to hear anything, he’d better stop wasting time. “I love the Deceiver. Now stanch these before I bleed out.”
“Sure.” Heretic suddenly seemed chastened. “Of course, right. Hold on, hold on.”
He returned with the chains she had bound him with instead of bandages. He kept apologizing, his hands shaking as he secured the bonds. She didn’t struggle, and he didn’t look her in the eye. Only when her broken wrist was manacled to her bloody one did he fetch the barber’s bag. After that he followed her instructions adequately. When he was done he propped her up on the body of the pureborn monk and returned to the horses. He came back atop her bay, wearing the soiled robes of one of the anathemas.
“All right then, sister,” he said, his voice quavering. He had probably never killed anyone before, to be so shaken up about it. He made the sign of the Chain, offering her a loony smile as he did. “I’d say we’re even now. Don’t wait up for me.”
Then he was gone, leaving Portolés with a pureborn for a pillow and the bloody heavens for a blanket. She deserved this, she knew, but the Empire didn’t deserve to have Zosia wage war upon it for the crimes of an overly obedient war nun and her rogue colonel. She prayed then not for herself, but for the Star, that she might recover just long enough to complete her quest. The color bled from the sky, her words slurred, and her prayers trailed off. She might have died, or maybe it was just sleep, she could hardly tell the difference as she closed her eyes and fell under, into the First Dark.
CHAPTER
13
Purna looked right smart in her horned wolf hood, Maroto had to fess. Choi had helped her rig it up proper from the smallest hide, so the four horns jutted out from the girl’s head in imitation of the weirdborn, and the horned wolf’s limp snout hung down between Purna’s eyes. Diggelby and Hassan had split the other hides into matching mantles, and Din made a crude tiara from the teeth. Neither Maroto nor Choi had taken trophies from their encounter with the horned wolves, other than a clutch of new scars. The wounds they’d picked up from the confused Imperial recon squad on their way down from the pass were scratches in comparison, and would like as not leave little lasting reminder of their barmy dash to the enemy encampment. Thinking back on all his wild days with Zosia and her Villains, here at last was a deed to match those adventures of old, and surpass a good many of them. Whatever Imperials had made it through the night would have songs to last down through the ages, ballads to commemorate the time a gaggle of rebels led a pack of horned wolves crashing down onto their regiment…
For his part, the only ditty Maroto was s
inging was “Give Me a Cot, a Bottle, and Four Whores.” As they ought to be given a hero’s welcome back at the camp of General Ji-hyeon, it seemed one of his songs was going to come true, for a change. There was nothing like returning to camp with all of the people you left with, and good information to boot.
For as many miles of hard ground Maroto and his scouts had covered over the preceding weeks, the Cobalt Company hadn’t progressed much—after Myura they’d gone up into the Kutumban mountains to throw the Imperials off their trail and spent a few weeks resting their army in the Secret City of the Snow Leopard. When they left the kind nuns of that mountain sanctuary the Cobalts had meant to come crashing down on Azgaroth, but then the regiment from that self-important province unexpectedly appeared on the horizon to intercept them. The Cobalts had been obliged to cross the Bridge of Grails and double back east rather than risk tangling with a larger force that held the high ground. If only the general had known her valiant scouts were wrecking the shit out of that very Azgarothian regiment, she could have had the Cobalts come up from behind and hit ’em while they were still pulling wolf teeth out of their arses, but that was war for you—the best tactics oft revealed themselves in a moment of desperation, rather than coming in early enough to let you get your ducks in a row.
The Cobalts had marched down into the Witchfinder Plains, not a terribly long way north of where they’d started, and still many leagues from Diadem. Maroto was surprised to see that the Cobalt Company had made a proper camp in the high foothills a mere five leagues north of the road that had taken them down from the Kutumbans, rather than making all haste to put more distance between themselves and the Azgarothians. But then the general seemed dead set against following the example Zosia had laid down two decades prior of cutting and running from the Imperials for years on end, whittling away at the Crimson hordes and slowly swelling her rebel ranks as she led them on a wild chase from one end of the Star to the other, and back again. No, after less than a year of rabble-rousing and small victories, General Ji-hyeon was taking the fight straight to the Imperials—no other reason for digging in at this spot unless she meant to greet the pursuing regiments that had harried her through the mountains.
Couldn’t rightly blame her for picking a defensible spot to make a stand, though, since Maroto had finally remembered where he knew Hjortt’s face—and the Fifteenth—from; those were the mad bastards who had kept the original Cobalt Company on the run for well over a year straight, shaving pieces off their rebel army every time they stopped to catch their breath. Hjortt must push his crew like a devil pushing at a mortal’s temptation, sacrificing any goodwill he might have fostered with his soldiers to get them marching early and keep them marching late when the chase was on, all day every day. You simply couldn’t expect a bunch of volunteers and sellswords to put in hours like that, which made the Azgarothians the fastest regiment on the Star.
So yeah, even taking time to recover from their wolf bites, the Azgarothians could probably catch the Cobalts before they reached the Haunted Forest or any other populated region where they could replenish their supplies. That was the problem with being so successful so fast—before you knew it you had more mouths than you could feed, and no teat to stick ’em on. General Ji-hyeon probably hoped to take down a few owlbats with one bow, by leading the Azgarothians into a serious engagement—check another Imperial regiment off her list, and steal their stores when the day was won.
If the day was won. Assuming they hadn’t lost or gained many heads in the Kutumbans, the Cobalt Company had eight thousand pikers, stickers, hackers, and other broke-arse, poorly armored foot; a thousand archers, crossbowers, and gunners; five hundreds chevaleresses, knights, and other folk who could ride worth a damn and had a horse to do it on; another hundred or so weirdborn of various abilities; and three out of the Five Villains. Even if you took into account that Hoartrap was as dread a fucker as he’d ever been, those weren’t great numbers, especially since by all accounts the Church of the Burnished Chain had a few of their own sorcerers, though they called them cardinals instead of witches. Whether or not one of those creeps was with Colonel Hjortt’s company, the two scary robed fuckers who’d gotten the worst of the horned wolf attack in the Imperial camp were definitely weirdborn, so apparently the church had reversed its decision to burn all so-called anathemas since the last time Maroto had encountered the Burnished Chain. Under King Kaldruut those arseholes had wanted to burn everyone, it seemed, the whole bloody Star, presumably as part of some hideous ritual to summon that mother of devils they worshipped or some equal insanity, but maybe they’d figured out it was better to let the Star burn itself, and weirdborn wield torches as well as anyone.
During their reconnaissance, Maroto, Choi, and the nobles—Maroto’s Moochers, as Fennec had dubbed them when they’d set out, despite Maroto’s insistence that they should be called the Dandy Dogs—had counted enough Imperial heads to know the odds were long indeed even without Chain-indentured weirdborn taking part. They had seen the still-sizable remnants of the regiment they had spanked at Myura taking a southern pass through the Kutumbans, and while the Cobalts rested up and planned strategy in the City of the Snow Leopard those Myurans must have looped up to merge with the marching Azgarothians. On their own a few thousand Myuran soldiers wouldn’t have posed much threat, but when Maroto’s Moochers had led the ornery horned wolves through the Imperial camp they’d had an unprecedented peek at the true power of the joint regiments:
Twice as many grunts as the Cobalt Company.
Twice as many gunners and bowfolk.
A cavalry to match the Cobalts, and then some.
Add to that the two cavalries of no less than two hundred riders each the scouts had glimpsed at various points on the distant slopes, no doubt coming in to beef up the Azgarothians, and it was shaping up to be a real shitshow in the plains.
Not that Maroto gave a devil’s damn; he’d let Purna have her fun, putting in real time as a bought killer, and now that the stupid part of every war was fast approaching it was time to cut out. He’d been thinking, ever since their run-in with the horned wolves, that adventuring was a lot more fun than he remembered. Sure, he was nine kinds of injured—even before one had been sliced open on a rock, his knees had started complaining about all the fucking hiking—but so long as they laid up somewhere for a while before setting out in earnest he’d be off this stupid crutch. And it might have been his imagination, but he was sure his paunch had shrunk a bit since the Panteran Wastes, so that was as clear a sign as any poison oracle’s prophecy that he was on the right track. Hells, he’d even put it to Choi, see if she might be willing to buy out whatever contract she had with the general—she was as eerie as waking up to seeing your devil sitting on your chest, watching you sleep, the way Crumbsnatcher used to do, but eerie could be good… eerie could be damn appealing, in fact. He’d put in his time with countless lovers of most any and every sort, but he’d never had a weirdborn so far as he’d known…
Wildborn, he reminded himself, not weirdborn. Coming up in the Isles she’d prefer that, no doubt. He wondered if she liked having her horns touched… once the left one healed up, of course. She was almost as bad off as he was, after that tumble down the mountainside, but had sprung back a sight spryer than he’d managed. Impressive as any miracle, the way she’d danced over those mountains, facing monsters without a flinch. Maroto could get behind a woman as good in a pinch as she was. So to speak.
“What are you leering about?” asked Purna as they saluted their way past the innermost ring of sentries, and Maroto checked himself. Some weird—wildborn, wildborn, some wildborn—could peek in a fellow’s mind, they said, and so no more thoughts like that. Not as long as Choi was walking with them, anyway, instead of a mile off on point.
“Wild game,” said Maroto, licking his lips as he watched Choi’s heavy brigandine skirt sway back and forth across the back of her knees as she crested the foothill they climbed. Could hardly tell she had a limp from that horned
wolf. “Hungry, is all.”
“I know, right?” said Purna, following his gaze. “A freebooter can’t live on beans alone. What I’d give to roast that rump…”
“Shut it!” hissed Maroto. “She’ll hear you.”
“Worse things than letting a lass know your intentions,” said Purna. “If you don’t make a move on that, I will.”
“Careful, barbarian,” said Diggelby, coming up between them, Prince cradled in his arms. He had barely put the dog down for so much as a shit ever since they caught up to the cur on the edge of the Imperial camp. “Our Purna’s not the sort to share her supper, even with a starving man.”
“Oh grow up, you two,” said Maroto, his eyes back on that arse… but then Choi glanced back over her shoulder, and Maroto blushed as Purna cackled.
“I’ll report to Ji-hyeon,” said Choi, eyeing them with little amusement. “You can come, or not.”
“Not!” said Din and Hassan in unison from where they took up the rear, and Din added, “Party tonight in our tent, Choi, come by after you’re done.”
“We all have some serious drinking and drugging to catch up on,” said Hassan as they all stopped atop the last hill and could take in the tent city of the Cobalt Company spread halfway up the first serious slope of the Kutumbans, what few grasses that weren’t trampled flat swaying in the balmy lowland breeze. “You most of all, oh tireless leader.”
After a contemplative silence, Choi nodded once, looking almost amused for a change. “Yes. I’ll come.”
“Huzzah!” cried the nobles and Maroto as one, and Purna threw her arm around the broader woman’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze meant to pass for comradely. Maroto knew that move well, had used it a hundred times himself, but smiled to think himself above such things now. This wildborn would surely appreciate a mature, respectful lover far more than some fumbling teenager.
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