by Choi, Bryan
“Ahem,” Aslatiel said, clapping his hands twice. “It’s time to return to matters of war. Everyone eat their fill because tomorrow, we start work in earnest.”
4
“They opened the perimeter wall here,” Aslatiel said. He dabbed at the crumbling, soot-blackened edges of blasted masonry with his fingertips. The hole was as wide as three men standing shoulder to shoulder, and just as tall. “Probably with a horse-drawn cannon firing explosive shells.”
“Only a legion would have those,” Lotte said. “Further proof that the Mandate is being supplied by someone from outside these parts.” She stepped in through the hole, crouched in the dirt, and picked up a scorched brass case. “Rimmed Nagant—brass cases and good powder. Used milligrad to take out the tower watch and punch through the mantlets. Then they had free run of the place.”
“Our foe is more dangerous than I thought,” Aslatiel said. He crunched through the blackened grass and peered into the collapsed remains of one of the classrooms. Above him, Irulan and Hadassah stood watch on the remaining walls. They swept the grassy tundra with the muzzles of their rifles. No threat would sneak up on the squads under their watch.
“I can imagine how events unfolded,” Aslatiel continued. “They rounded up all of the surviving teachers who didn’t escape, along with the students tall enough to meet their eyes, and butchered them all against the walls.” He pointed to where the concrete was riddled with pockmarks and the characteristic muddy color of old, dried blood.
“God,” Taki said. He squatted for a moment to hide the sudden weakness in his knees. Visions of an older massacre started to flash in his mind. Convulsing bodies lined up in a trench to be mummified with quicklime. He shook his head to drive the memories back. This wasn’t the time. Now, he had to be strong. “Why couldn’t they just take more prisoners? Wasn’t that their goal?”
“Because adults and teenagers can fight back,” Aslatiel said. “They want helpless victims, not liabilities.”
“Strange, though,” Taki said. “They wanted to torch the place, so why did they pile up all these books and burn them separately?” He motioned at the charred remains of leather-bound texts in the courtyard.
“Because,” Aslatiel said, “they wanted to make a statement.” He reached into the ash pile and gingerly opened one of the scorched books. It fractured and fell to pieces in his hands. “To these bastards, learning is a sin, so it must be purged with fire.”
“I don’t care much about books, though,” Lotte said, shaking her head. “I want the girls and where the Mandate of Heaven is hiding.”
Elsa emerged into the courtyard through the hole and pointed to the smashed gates nearby. “They loaded the girls onto skid wagons and dusted the tracks. There are ruts nearby on the other side but no trail we can use. These are mountain men we’re dealing with, so if they don’t want to be found, we’re out of luck. I sent Mikhail out there to search. If there’s anything to find, he’ll find it.”
“Mikhail…” Taki rolled the name around his tongue. “The albino fellow…”
“Yes, the albino,” someone said softly behind him.
Taki turned and immediately felt embarrassed. Fahnenjunker Mikhail Zhukov bore the most stereotypically Imperial of names and yet looked nothing like any easterner Taki had ever seen. Mikhail’s features closely resembled those of tribesmen from the southern deserts, save for a complete lack of pigmentation. The man also never raised his voice above a whisper, forcing everyone else to quiet themselves and lean in if they wished to listen to him.
“Oberleutnant,” Mikhail said, ignoring Taki. “The winds have obscured most of the tracks. Still, they couldn’t have gone far, not overburdened and covering their trail.” He drew a dagger and started to scratch a rough map in the dirt. “There are many ancient ruins out here, all abandoned. Any could house an army without the locals knowing. Five of the ruins nearby will allow quick strikes into Lhasa.”
“Aye, thanks, Mikhail,” Aslatiel said. “That narrows our search down considerably. There are eleven of us in total now, including the kadet. We should go out in two-person teams to reconniter each of the ruins.”
“Wait, Imperial,” Lotte said. “None of my people know the area well. The enemy does, however, and is expecting us. We’ll be snuffed out two by two.”
Aslatiel frowned. “But what else can we do within reason?”
Taki tapped him on the arm. “How about the smugglers from Nathu La? The rector mentioned them, remember? They might know where their rebel customers are. We may even catch them meeting with the enemy if we’re lucky.”
Aslatiel looked at Lotte and then at Taki. “Well, Natalis, it sounds as good as any other idea. Are you agreeable to this, Captain?”
“I am,” Lotte said. “Natalis, work with the Imperials who know the area and devise a raid. I want it by midwatch tomorrow.”
“Yes, Captain!” Taki puffed with pride and tried not to show it. This was the first time Lotte had asked him to plan a battle since his promotion. It would be a test of not only his reputation but also hers in the eyes of their new allies. And if I succeed, then…well, I have no idea how to climb the Imperial ladder, do I?
“I’ll help, too,” Enilna said. “You know, get you all tea and carry stuff. Whatever you want, Taki!”
“Er, thanks,” Taki said. When did you get so familiar with me? I’m an officer, you know.
A trio of horses rounded the bend near where Taki crouched. He had hidden behind a boulder alongside the trail at the bottom of Nathu La for hours. He unconsciously gripped his flare launcher tight as the hoofbeats thudded closer. Mikhail’s hand came to rest on his shoulder.
“Just the scouts,” Mikhail said. “Let them pass.”
Taki swallowed on a dry throat and nodded. Undue tension would cause mistakes, and mistakes would spook the smuggling caravan and cause his plan to fail. The hoofbeats slowed and then stopped. Taki fought the urge to peek around the boulder.
Keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry, he asked, “What’s going on?”
“Silence. They can tell something’s amiss,” Mikhail said. He drew his pistol and pushed the slide back a finger’s width to check for a chambered cartridge. Brass glinted reassuringly, and he slowly eased the round back into battery.
Taki nodded and clasped a hand near his chest to still himself. If the scouts discovered them or Elsa on the other side of the road, the trap was finished. Lotte’s reputation would suffer, and they would not be regarded as equals. He would be disgraced and unworthy of his promotion. Strange, he thought. Compared to regicide, the prospect of failing his new task stung more.
A mare drew up on the opposite side and stopped. She neighed in protest while her rider tightened the reins. Taki took a deep breath as it started to step toward the boulder. The new armor he wore irritated his neck, further adding to his discomfort; it was rigid in the wrong places and flexible where he would have preferred a harder touch. He wasn’t so sure he could fight in it, which was a growing problem right now.
Voices from farther away stopped the rider’s advance. Though Taki could not understand the words, he knew what impatience sounded like. The horse trotted away, leaving dust in its wake.
Taki exhaled through a grin. “That was too close.”
Mikhail gave a single nod. By now, Taki was used to the man’s reticence. Initially, it had been awkward working with the Imperials instead of his own squad. Elsa seemed to lack inhibition; Mikhail simply didn’t speak until spoken to, and even then only when necessary. There was also a palpable tension between the two that wasn’t animosity but something else Taki couldn’t identify.
A low rumbling in the distance broke into his thoughts. Approaching quickly was the dust cloud of a caravan. He brought out Draco’s spyglass and peered through it. “It’s them. Four light horse in the vanguard. Three wagons and a large carriage trailing. Probably twenty-five or thirty men riding with an unknown number in the wagons. Two kataphracts bringing up the rear.”
Elsa started gibbering, or at least that’s what it sounded like to Taki. The plan they’d worked out was that she’d get close enough to sniff out the telltale signs of weapons and armor and then signal the rest to act. Her disguise had been chosen after extreme deliberation—someone worth neither consideration nor the expenditure of effort to kill.
The leader scrunched his face and tried to spit on her. Elsa whirled away, laughing and jabbering to herself. Another rider huffed in annoyance and leveled a rifle at Elsa. An ax head had been grafted on near its muzzle. The leader put his hand out.
Not worth a bullet, thank goodness, Taki thought.
“Get ready,” Mikhail said.
Elsa grasped the end of the cloth wrapping around her bundle and whipped it forward at the men. It unfurled in the air, revealing a brace of flash bombs that hurtled toward the center of the vanguard. Elsa wheeled around, clapped her hands over her ears, and dove away. Before she hit the ground, the world exploded into a storm of light.
“It’s them!” Taki bellowed as he spun out from behind the boulder and fired his flare pistol in the air. A burning arc of bright red lanced up into the sky. Mikhail raced past him, opening fire with a self-loading carbine. Smugglers tumbled like cut wheat before they could raise their muskets. When his magazine was empty, Mikhail drew his longsword, charged forward, and plunged the blade into a spearman’s chest.
Taki raced over to Elsa, blasted the nearest rider at full force with a sutra, and shot another off of his horse. Hoofbeats made him twist to face a rider trying to thresh him with a flail. Before Taki could raise his pistol, a load of shot turned his attacker’s face inside out. He saw Elsa work the lever of her own longarm and blast the remaining horseman in the thigh. The rider screamed and grasped at the bloody stump of his leg before being dragged to death by his panicking mount.
“Thanks,” Taki grunted. He braced his spell arm and sent another blast of concussive wind into a charging smuggler swinging a poleaxe.
Elsa loaded her last shells. “Where’s our backup?”
“I told them to wait for the right moment.”
“This isn’t?”
The two backed slowly away. In front of them were at least fifty angry men who advanced with spears and muskets leveled.
“No, this isn’t,” Taki said.
“And when will it be just right?”
“Wait for it.”
“Oy, no wonder you’re still a virgin,” Elsa said.
“Look,” Taki said, “they’re easier for her to kill when bunched up.”
Before the report hit their eardrums, a column of five men jerked forward with gore spewing from their chests. The bodies had barely hit the ground when another line toppled and fell, followed by the booming noise of a sniper’s rifle. The mob of smugglers quavered and then broke and ran.
“See? Dassa’s the best godrotting shot in the world,” Taki said. “I’d stake my life on her.”
“Charge!” Lotte hurtled over the ridge nearby, flanked by her companions. She deflected a thrown axe with her shield and took her attacker’s head off in return. Draco whirled around with his fighting iron; the weighted end bashed an enemy’s forearm to shreds and ripped the jaw off of another. Karma deflected a mass of spearheads away with a burst of prana and threw one of his spatha into a smuggler’s neck. With a flick of his wrist, he retrieved the blade via a thin chain attached to the pommel.
“The flanks!” Aslatiel said to Lucatiel and Irulan. The women shouted and threw themselves into the fray. Aslatiel parried a spear thrust with his blade, pirouetted, and slashed his opponent’s throat open. With flick of his wrist, steel opened another smuggler’s chest. “Shpejtspate, stay close,” he said.
Enilna grasped the hilt of her rapier with a sweaty palm and spun to face a charging fighter. He held a spiked cudgel above his head and swung it down at her head. She thrust. The cudgel fell to the ground, and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. Her rapier was buried in her enemy’s chest, right under his solar plexus. She stared at the sight for a moment before twisting her wrist to wrench the blade free.
Yes, it’s all coming together! We’re going to win this. An unbidden smile worked its way across Taki’s face as he beheld the slaughter.
“Okay, okay. Sorry I doubted you,” Elsa said. “But seriously, try not to give me a heart attack next time.”
Taki nodded. “Yeah, sorry. No surprises from here on out.”
The last carriage in the caravan shattered into flying wooden chunks. A creature sprang to its feet amid the remains, stomped, and let out a guttural, viscera-twisting roar. Though humanoid in shape, it was three times as tall and twice as wide. Metal slabs bashed together into a rough suit of plate creaked in protest as the creature moved and flexed its joints. Through a gap in its helmet, a pair of cloudy yellow eyes flashed angrily at the fighters below.
“No! What the hell is that?” Taki scrambled away from the wreckage with his eyes wide.
Elsa sucked her teeth. “An enslaved monster!” She took aim at it and fired. Her muzzle belched fire and sent a solid lead slug at the juggernaut’s head. It slammed against the helmet and let out an eardrum-piercing clang but did not penetrate.
The beast uncoiled a thick chain looped about its waist and started to swing a large, spiked weight in a circle around its head.
Taki fell to his knees. “We’re fucked,” he gasped. A moment later, he yelped in pain as someone swatted the back of his head.
“Maybe you’ll spread your cheeks easy,” Lucatiel said, “but not the women! Irulan, with me!”
She charged the beast with twin jian sparking. It swept its chain in an arc to try to pulp her, and she threw herself into a slide. Spikes passed a mere hairs’ breadth above her face, and she passed between the creature’s legs. She whirled, roared, and swung her blades at the juggernaut’s heel. Metal crunched and crimson sprayed. The beast let out a howl of pain and collapsed to one knee. It grasped blindly at Lucatiel, but she rolled away and slashed its palms to ribbons.
Irulan threw her rope dart and sank the barb deep into the creature’s neck. She sprinted around it in circles, wrapping loops of fine cord around its body and binding its arms. It struggled to free itself, but this only made the strands cut into exposed flesh. Unbalanced, the juggernaut pitched forward and fell prone. From its throat, a soft, mournful groan cut the air.
Lucatiel alighted on its back, raised her twin steel, and drove them into the base of the beast’s skull. The rheumy yellow eyes widened and then closed for good.
“Now you see why they call her the Prince of Maladies,” Karma said to Taki. He offered a hand, but Taki waved him off and came shakily to his feet. “We never stood a chance against her. She once fought a thousand Ursalan knights by her lonesome. Killed a hundred of them and set the rest to panic. One monster is nothing for the likes of her.”
“What was that thing?” Taki examined it delicately.
“Bipedal manticore,” Karma said. “Used in battle by the warrior tribes of Hunza before they all got Imperialized.”
“I didn’t think you could tame something like that,” Taki said. He glanced over the rest of the road and spat grit. Their fight was over. Bodies lay sprawled in the dirt or slumped against wagons. Bloody-faced smugglers writhed, dusty and in agony, and sent up moaning prayers that the gods ignored.
“You can; it just takes a lot of time and willingness to get your people eaten,” Karma said. He wiped down his blades with a cloth and sheathed them. “We’re dealing with a ruthless bunch,
and wealthy, too.”
“Did we take any alive?” Taki asked, suddenly filled with anxiety. It would all be for naught if they had no one to interrogate.
“We have prisoners!” Lotte shouted from farther away. Taki fell to his knees again, this time in relief.
It was well after sunset by the time the squads entered the gates to Gangtok. The ambush had netted fifteen captives, many of whom were wounded. A combination of pain and resentment made for a slow trudge to the nearest town with a jail and a permanent magistrate’s seat. Much to Taki’s surprise, Aslatiel had warned that it was frowned on to flog prisoners to hasten the march. Thus, what they could have covered in six hours took nearly ten.
“Natalis, you’re first watch,” Lotte said, and handed him the cell keys. Fortunately, the jail was almost empty, and the smugglers could be kept separate from the usual collection of drunks and petty thieves. “The albino from Alfa will relieve you in two bells.”
“Who’s doing the questioning?”
“Mainly that Rana woman, because she knows their tongue. Emreis also volunteered to assist.”
“Our Draco?” Taki raised an eyebrow. “I never took him for the type who enjoyed pulling toenails.”
“Neither did I. I’m not sure whether to be pleased or put off. Von Halcon and I will make sure things don’t become too savage. Again, one of their surprising little rules.”
“Captain, can I speak in confidence?”
“Aye, what’s on your mind?”
“It sounds like treason to say this, but I’m not unhappy at being a part of their army. Do you think I’ve gone over too quickly?”
“No, and it’s not treason to say so. You had little choice in this matter, Natalis. For you to feel glad of it is good fortune indeed. Sometimes, I wish I could trust as easily as you seem to.”
