Sins of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  The mighty doors lay broken just inside walls that had been breached in a dozen places by artillery. Most of the towers were nothing but smoldering remains, and the shelled motte had been reduced to splinters. Smoke rose over the fort, billowing a thousand feet high into the hot, humid afternoon sky.

  The aftermath of a battle rarely elicited horror within her. No career soldier could view battle after battle with horror and keep her sanity for very long but for Vlora there was always a sort of melancholy there, masking the shock. It tugged at the back of her mind and stifled the urge to celebrate a fight well won.

  Vlora tasted the familiar tang of smoke on her tongue and spit into the mud, watching soldiers in their crimson and blue jackets as they drifted in and out of the haze. The men cleared away the dead, inventoried the weapons, set up surgeries, and counted the prisoners. It was done quickly, efficiently, without looting, rape, or murder, and for that Vlora felt a flash of pride. But her eyes lingered on the bodies, wondering what the final tally would be on both sides of the conflict.

  Vlora worked her way through what remained of the gatehouse, stepping over the shattered timber that had once been the fort doors, pausing to let two soldiers pass with a stretcher held between them. She sucked nervously on her teeth as she got her first view of the trading town inside the fort. Some of the buildings had escaped the shelling, but the rest had fared little better than the motte.

  Frontier forts were built to have modern weapons and light artillery on the inside, with Palo arrows and outdated muskets on the outside. Not the other way around.

  Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a soldier creeping out from a half-ruined building, a small box under one arm. She tilted her head, feeling more bemused than angry, and struggled to remember his name. “Private Dobri!” she finally called out.

  The soldier, a little man with an oversize nose and long fingers, leapt a foot into the air. He whirled toward Vlora, attempting to hide the box behind his back.

  “Ma’am!” he said, snapping a salute and managing to drop the box. A few cups and a load of silverware spilled onto the street.

  Vlora eyed him for a long moment, letting him stew in his discomfort. “You looking for the owner of that fine silver, Dobri?”

  Dobri’s eyes widened. He held the salute, eyes forward, and Vlora could make out just the slightest tremble. She approached him sidelong, ignoring the silver, and did a quick circuit around him. He wore the same uniform as her, a blood-red jacket and pants with dark blue stripes and cuffs. It had gold buttons and a brass pin at the lapel of muskets crossed behind a shako—the symbol of the Riflejack Mercenary Company. The uniform was dusty, with soot stains on his trousers and arms. He opened his mouth, closed it, then gave a defeated sigh. “No, Lady Flint. I was stealing it.”

  “Well,” Vlora said. “At least you remembered how little I like a liar.” She considered the situation for a few moments. The battle had been short but fierce, and Dobri had been one of the first of her soldiers through the walls once their artillery had battered down the gates. He was a brave soldier, if light-fingered. “Give the silver to the quartermaster for inventory, then tell Colonel Olem you volunteer for latrine duty for the next three weeks. I wouldn’t suggest telling him why, unless you want to end up in front of a firing squad.”

  “Yes, Lady Flint.”

  “The Riflejacks do not steal,” Vlora said. “We’re mercenaries, not thieves. Dismissed.”

  She watched Dobri gather the silver and then scramble toward the quartermaster’s tent outside the fort walls. She wondered if she should have made an example of him—she did have the moniker “Flint” to uphold, after all. But the men had been on the frontier for almost a year. Sympathy and discipline needed to be handed out equally, or she’d wind up with a mutiny on her hands.

  “General Flint!”

  She turned, finding a young sergeant approaching from the direction of the demolished motte. “Sergeant Padnir, what can I help you with?”

  The sergeant saluted. “Colonel Olem’s asking for your presence, ma’am. He says it’s urgent.”

  Vlora scowled. Padnir was pale, despite the heat, and had a nervous look in his eyes. He was a levelheaded man in his late twenties, just a few years younger than her, one of the many soldiers under her command to be forged during the Adran-Kez War. Something must have gone wrong for him to get so worked up. “Of course. Just making my rounds. I’ll come immediately.”

  She followed the sergeant down the street, turning onto the main thoroughfare of the town. She paused once to examine the line of prisoners, all kneeling on the side of the road, a handful of soldiers guarding them. Every one of them was a Palo—Fatrastan natives with bright red hair and pale freckled skin. At a glance she could tell that they were villagers, not warriors.

  This particular group had seized Fort Samnan, declaring that the fort was on their land and forbidding the Fatrastan government from passing through the area. They’d killed a few dozen settlers and torched some farmhouses, but not much else. It was fairly mild as far as insurrections went.

  The Fatrastan government had responded by sending Vlora and the Riflejack Mercenary Company to put down the rebels. It wasn’t the first time Vlora had put down an insurrection on the frontier—the Fatrastans paid well, after all—and she didn’t think it would be the last.

  A few of the faces glanced up at her, staring vacantly. Some of them glared, a few cursed in Palo as she walked past. She ignored them.

  She didn’t like fighting the Palo, who tended to be passionate, underfunded, and out-armed. That meant a lot of guerrilla warfare, with leaders like the elusive Red Hand causing disproportionate damage to any Fatrastan army with the bad luck to get singled out. Pitched battles—like the siege of Fort Samnan—turned into a damned slaughter in the other direction.

  As far as Vlora saw it, the poor fools had a point. This was their land. They’d been here since the Dynize left this place almost a thousand years ago, long before the Kressians came over from the Nine and started colonizing Fatrasta. Unfortunately for them, the Palo couldn’t afford to hire the Riflejacks, while the Fatrastan government could.

  Vlora left the prisoners behind and found Colonel Olem just a few moments later, on the opposite side of the destroyed motte. At forty-five, the colonel was beginning to show his age, streaks of gray creeping into his sandy beard. Vlora thought it made him look distinguished. He wore the same red and blue uniform as his comrades with only the single silver star at his lapel, opposite the crossed muskets and shako, to mark his rank. An unlit cigarette hung out of one corner of his mouth.

  “Colonel,” Vlora said.

  “Flint,” Olem responded without looking up. Technically, he was Vlora’s second officer. In reality, they were both retired generals of the Adran Army and co-owners of the Riflejack Mercenary Company, putting them on equal footing. He preferred the formality of just being “Colonel” Olem, but she deferred to his judgment just as often as he did to hers.

  Olem sat back on his haunches, hands on his knees, looking perplexed.

  The corpse of an old Palo man lay stretched out before him. The body was bent, with freckled skin as wrinkled as a prune, and still bleeding from multiple gunshot and bayonet wounds. At least two dozen bodies in Riflejack uniforms lay scattered around the corpse. Throats and stomachs had been slashed. A pair of rifles had been snapped clean in two.

  “What happened here?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Olem said. He stood up and struck a match on his belt, shielding the flame from the breeze. He lit his cigarette, puffing moodily as he eyed the corpse of the old man at their feet.

  Vlora gazed at the bodies of her soldiers. She named them silently in her head—Forlin, Jad, Wellans. The list went on. They were all privates, and she didn’t know any of them well, but they were still her men. “Who’s this son of a bitch?” she asked, gesturing at the Palo corpse.

  “No idea.”

  “Did he do this?”

&
nbsp; “Seems so,” Olem said. “We already dragged off fifteen wounded.”

  Vlora chewed on that information for a moment, trying to catch up. It didn’t make any sense. Palo tended to be scrappy fighters, but they dropped like anyone else against trained soldiers with bayonets fixed. “How did”—she did a quick count—“a single old man inflict almost forty casualties on the best damned infantry on the continent?”

  “That,” Olem said, “is a really good question.”

  “And …?” She gave him a long, annoyed look. It was one that sent most of her men scrambling. Olem, as usual, seemed unaffected.

  “The boys say he moved too fast for the eye to follow. Like …” Olem paused, meeting her eyes. “Like a powder mage.”

  Vlora reached out with her sorcerous senses, probing into the Else. As a powder mage she could feel every powder charge and horn within hundreds of yards, each of them showing up in her mind’s eye like points on a map. She focused on the body. The old man didn’t have an ounce of powder on him, but she could sense a sort of subtle sorcery around him the likes of which she’d never felt. Further examination gave her a headache, and she closed her third eye.

  “Well,” she told Olem, “he wasn’t a powder mage. There’s something … sorcerous about him, but I can’t pin it down.”

  “I didn’t feel it,” he responded. He had his own Knack, a minor sorcery that allowed him to go without sleep. But his ability to see into the Else was not as strong as hers.

  Vlora knelt next to the body, giving it a second look without sorcery. The old man’s hair had long since faded from red to white, and his gnarled hands still clutched a pair of polished bone axes. Most Palo dressed for their surroundings—buckskins on the frontier, suits or trousers in the city. This warrior, however, wore thick, dark leathers that didn’t come from any mammal. The skin was ridged, tough to the touch, textured like a snake.

  “You ever seen anybody wear an outfit like this before?”

  “It’s swamp dragon leather,” Olem observed. “I’ve seen satchels and boots, but the stuff is damned expensive. Hard to tan. Nobody wears a whole suit.” He ashed his cigarette. “And I’ve definitely never seen a Palo fight like this. Might be cause for concern.”

  “Maybe,” Vlora said, feeling suddenly shaken. Being stuck in the swamps with the swamp dragons, snakes, bugs, and Palo was bad enough. But out here, the Riflejacks had always been at the top of the food chain. Until now. She ran her fingers over the leather. The stuff appeared to make an effective armor, thick enough to turn a knife or even a bayonet thrust. “It’s like a uniform,” she muttered.

  “Rumors are going to spread,” Olem said. “Should I put a stop to idle talk?”

  “No,” Vlora said. “Let the men gossip. But give them an order. If they see somebody wearing an outfit like this, they’re to form ranks and keep him at the end of their bayonets. And send someone running for me.”

  Olem’s brow wrinkled. “You think you could fight someone capable of cutting through this many infantry?” he asked.

  “No idea. But I’ll be damned if I let some Palo yokel carve through my men like a holiday ham. I can at least put a bullet in his head from thirty paces.”

  “And if there’s more than one?”

  Vlora glared at him.

  “Right,” Olem said, finishing his cigarette and crushing the butt underfoot. “Form line, call for General Flint.”

  Vlora and Olem stood in silence for several minutes, watching as the rest of the corpses were carted off and the fires finally put out by the bucket brigade. Messengers dropped reports off to Olem, and a flagpole was raised above one of the few remaining fort towers. The Fatrastan flag, sunflower yellow with green corners, was run up it along with the smaller, red and blue standard of the Riflejacks.

  Vlora watched as a woman on horseback rode through the shattered fort gate and guided her horse through the crowds and the chaos of the battle cleanup. The woman examined her surroundings with a jaded, casual air, a sneer on her lips for the Palo prisoners on their knees in the street. Vlora didn’t know the woman, but she recognized the yellow uniform well enough—it matched the flag her men had just run up the pole. Fatrastan military.

  The rider came to a stop in front of Vlora and Olem, looking down on them with a fixed scowl. No salute. Not even a hello.

  “You General Flint?” the woman asked.

  “Who wants to know?” Vlora responded.

  “Message from Lady Chancellor Lindet,” the woman said. She pulled an envelope from her jacket and held it out. Olem took it from her, tearing it open with one finger and smoothing the paper against his stomach. The woman turned her horse around without a word and immediately rode back down the street, heading for the fort gate.

  Fatrastan soldiers tended to be arrogant pricks, but Vlora had seldom seen one so rude. She tapped the butt of her pistol. “Would it be terribly unprofessional of me to shoot her hat off?”

  “Yes,” Olem said without looking up from the letter.

  “Damned Fatrastan army needs to show more respect to the people doing their dirty work.”

  “Console yourself with the fact that you make far more money than she does,” Olem said. “Here, you’ll want to see this.”

  Vlora turned her attention to the letter in his hand. “What is it?”

  “Trouble in Landfall,” he said. “We’ve been recalled. We’re to head to the city immediately.”

  Vlora’s first thought was to do a little dance. Landfall might be hot and fetid, but at least it was a modern city. She could have a real meal, go to the theater, and even take a bath. No more of this damned swamp or—she glanced at the body of the little old man that was only now being removed—its dragon-skin-wearing Palo.

  Her relief, however, was quickly squashed by a creeping suspicion. “What kind of trouble?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t say.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” Vlora chewed on her bottom lip. “Finish the cleanup,” she said, “and send the prisoners to Planth with a regiment of our boys. Tell everyone else we’re leaving at first light.”

  Vlora waited by the Tristan River while her men boarded the waiting keelboats that had been sent to retrieve them. Heading downriver by keelboat would get them to Landfall in just a few days, but she wondered what could be so urgent that they needed to be recalled in such a manner. It made her nervous, but she put that in the back of her mind and turned to the box in her lap.

  It was an old hat box, something she’d had since she was a teenager, and it was filled with letters from a former lover now long dead and gone. Taniel Two-shot had been a childhood friend, an adopted brother, even her fiancé at one point, but he’d also been a hero of the Fatrastan Revolution. Eleven years ago he’d fought for Fatrastan independence from the Kez through these very swamps, creeping through the channels with his musket, killing Privileged sorcerers and officers.

  They were both Adrans, foreigners to this place, and the experiences Taniel wrote to her about had become a wealth of information for her own career in mercenary work on this blasted continent.

  “They’ve sent us enough keelboats for the infantry only,” a voice suddenly said.

  Vlora jumped, reaching to hide the letters, but stopped herself. It was only Olem, and there were no secrets between them. “And what do we do with our dragoons and cuirassiers?”

  Olem crushed the butt of his cigarette under his boot, peering at the letters in her lap. “I’ll have Major Gustar bring them along. It’ll take them about a week longer to arrive in Landfall, so let’s hope we don’t need them sooner. Are those Taniel’s letters?”

  “Yes,” she said, flipping through them absently. The loss of her cavalry, even for a week, was an irritating prospect. “Looking to see if he ever mentioned any crazy Palo warriors wearing swamp dragon leathers.”

  “Seems like something that would have stood out,” Olem said. He sat down beside her in the grass, watching as a new keelboat pulled up to load more soldiers. Behind the
m, Fort Samnan still smoldered.

  Vlora felt a pang of nostalgia. The letters were a constant reminder of a past life—for both her and Olem. “I would have thought so, but I wanted to check anyway.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Olem agreed. “The Palo liked him, didn’t they?”

  “He’s still a damned legend, even after all this time,” Vlora said, hoping she didn’t sound too sour. Every mention of Taniel put her on edge. Their history had been a … turbulent one.

  “Do you think he would have fought for Fatrastan independence if he had known the Fatrastans would go on to treat the Palo like that?” Olem asked, jerking his head toward Fort Samnan.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Vlora had some qualms about what she did for a living. But mercenary work couldn’t always be choosy. “He got into that war to kill Kez. Came out of it …” Vlora’s eyes narrowed involuntarily as she remembered the redheaded companion Taniel had brought back from his travels. “Well.” She snapped the hat box shut. “Nothing useful in here, not regarding that Palo warrior anyway.” She got to her feet and offered Olem a hand. “Let’s go to Landfall.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Michel Bravis sat at the back of an empty pub, nursing a warm beer at six o’clock in the morning. Outside he could hear the local teamsters already at work hauling cotton and grain down to the docks, cursing the heat with every other breath. He wondered if there was a single person who actually liked summer in Landfall, but decided such a thing would be an affront against every god that ever existed.

  He had spent most of his life in Landfall. He’d grown into a man during the revolution, worked the docks conning merchants and tourists during the reconstruction, and now as he approached thirty he served in the Lady Chancellor’s secret police—or, as they were more widely known, the Blackhats. I would think, he thought to himself bitterly, that I would have learned to head north for the summers.

  He took a long sip of beer, checking his pocket watch. Eleven minutes past. Mornings, summer, and people being late. A perfect trifecta to put him in a foul mood.