Abby saluted. Winter let her have a few minutes to choose her soldiers, then pointed again. “Remember, to the apple tree. Ready?”
There were shouts of assent from the Girls’ Own. Three hundred young women in blue coats clutched loaded muskets. Winter eyed the farmhouse, where muzzle flashes still stabbed out toward Sevran’s Royals. “Go!”
She ran, pounding across the soft dirt and crunchy, dead stubble. That many blue-coated figures couldn’t help drawing the attention of the men in the house, and soon enough muskets were flashing in their direction, filling the air with the zip of flying lead. Winter heard the soft thump of balls hitting the earth, and the sharp thock as they found flesh and bone. Beside her, a woman’s head snapped back, and she crumpled to the ground like a broken toy. Someone was screaming, the high-pitched wail of a girl for her mother. Winter’s pulse roared in her ears.
It had looked as if it were only a little way to the fence, but the distance seemed to stretch on forever, telescoping with every step she took. Every window in the wall of the farmhouse blazed with hellish pink fire.
The fence appeared with such shocking suddenness that Winter nearly pitched herself over it. Instead she put her shoulder against it with a thump, feeling it vibrate as dozens of women joined her. The fence was only slats and boards, not much as far as cover went, but worlds better than nothing at all. Across it, the only thing between her and the house was the apple tree, a tall, spindly thing with wide-spreading branches and leaves already yellowing at the edges.
From either side of her came the blast of close-up musketry, and smoke billowed all around. Only twenty yards separated the two sides, and at that distance the fire was murderous. There weren’t enough windows for more than a dozen of the enemy to fire, against several hundred of the Girls’ Own, but they had the advantage of better cover and a safe place to load.
Beside Winter, a stout older woman—one of the Docks people, she vaguely remembered—crawled the last few feet to the fence, musket in her hands. She pushed herself up onto one knee, shouldered the weapon, and aimed, but a Deslandai musket cracked and the woman spun away, clutching a bloody, shattered hand. Winter snatched up her musket and put it to her own shoulder, sighting on a yellow-orange shape. The weapon delivered its well-remembered kick to her shoulder, and she had the satisfaction of seeing the Deslandai drop out of sight with a scream.
More Girls’ Own soldiers were reaching the fence, putting out a steady fire that made the Deslandai reluctant to risk standing at the windows. Glancing over her shoulder, Winter could see bodies sprawled along the path they’d taken, but only a few. Their position was not one that could be maintained for long, though, not with Deslandai reinforcements on the way.
Now, Jane. Smoke was boiling along the fence, filling the space under the apple tree. Now, now, now.
Hoarse shouting rose from the other side of the farmhouse, and Winter caught both men’s and women’s voices raised in battle cries. The sound of firing from that direction suddenly intensified.
“Hold fire unless you’ve got a clear shot!” Winter shouted to her own men. “Abby, your squad, with me! Over the fence!”
Abby gestured, and two dozen women, bayonets already fixed to their muskets, surged to their feet and clambered over the waist-high barrier. Balls zipped around them, thok-thok-thoking in the dry earth. A tall, gangly young woman took one high in the chest and flopped forward over the fence, hanging across it like a sheet set out for drying as her blood gushed across the whitewash. The women who’d remained behind fired at every sight of yellow-orange, and the wood around the windows of the house was rapidly being torn to splinters by misses and ricochets.
Having cleared the fence, Winter led Abby’s squad at a dead run across the open ground under the tree, smoke parting around them like a wake. There was a side door in the center of the farmhouse wall, and she aimed for that, throwing herself flat against the plaster wall. Abby was right behind her, along with another redheaded girl Winter didn’t know who wore sergeant’s pips. The others spread out along the wall, out of sight of the windows.
Winter was thinking quickly. The windows were high and narrow—no getting in that way without being an easy target. That left the door, but they’d be waiting inside.
“First six, into the doorway, but only on my signal,” she said. Balls clattered and cracked all around her, and Jane’s attack in the main yard was well under way. Hopefully, the Deslandai are spread thin. “Next six, wait half a minute, then follow. I don’t want us jammed up in there. Remember, wait till I say!”
Winter got nods or grunts of assent. She edged beside the door and lifted her borrowed musket, butt first. Back still to the wall, she swung it inward as hard as she could, slamming the wooden butt against the door right above the latch. The farm door, never designed to stand that kind of abuse, gave way with a crash, and Winter snatched her arm out of the way. Just in time—at least three men inside fired, balls whining past the tips of her fingers.
“Go!” Winter shouted. “Before they can reload!” And hope none of them held their shots.
One had. One of Abby’s soldiers leapt into the doorway, and another musket cracked from inside, catching her in the belly and sending a spurt of blood and gore out the small of her back. She crumpled with a moan, and the woman next to her leaned into the doorway and fired. Someone inside screamed. Abby went next, stepping over the writhing woman. Her sergeant stayed beside her, and Winter followed.
She had time only for brief impressions. There was a single hallway, leading to a T-junction with a larger hall that went from the back to front of the house. Doorways led in both directions, to what had been a kitchen and a dining room, and Abby’s soldiers burst through them. More shots and more screams followed, along with the clash of steel on steel.
Two Deslandai came around the corner from the back of the house, bayonetted muskets in hand. Smoke still trickled from the barrels, and they gaped at the sight of the Vordanai women. One of them clawed at his belt, where Winter saw he had a pistol. At this range, he could hardly miss, so she didn’t give him a chance to fire—she charged, tossing her own spent musket aside and clawing the sword from her belt. The Deslandai boy raised his bayonet to spit her, but at the last moment Winter twisted adroitly aside and let the momentum of her run carry her blade into his ribs. He folded up, gurgling, and she jerked the weapon free.
The other Deslandai backpedaled rapidly into the corridor. Winter waved at the hall behind her, where more of Abby’s squad were coming in. “After them! With me!”
She turned the corner without waiting to see if they followed. A musket cracked, and wood exploded from the ceiling over her head. Another Deslandai, a young man with a downy beard and wide, terrified eyes, stared at her through the cloud of powder smoke from his missed shot. Winter crossed the distance between them in three strides, batted his bayonet away, and sank her sword in his throat.
Abby, coming up rapidly behind her, shouted a warning. Winter looked to her right as the young man crumpled, and found another door leading into a room full of yellow-orange uniforms. There were three of them, two more carrying muskets and an officer, gold epaulets gleaming, in the act of drawing his sword.
Abby’s musket cracked, deafening in the tight space, and one of the soldiers spun away. She charged at the other, and he parried crosswise with his own weapon. Her momentum drove them against the wall of the room, grappling and struggling for the locked muskets. It gave the officer a golden opportunity to plunge his sword into Abby’s guts from behind, so Winter stepped forward with a slash that forced him to back off, raising his guard. He dropped into a fighting stance, weight low, eyes confident.
Winter had never been much of a duelist. It wasn’t a skill that came up in the thick of battle, where opportunities to match skills against a comparably armed opponent were uncommon. Now, doing exactly that, she ventured another thrust at the Deslandai officer and watched h
im effortlessly flick her blade away and riposte with a strike that she avoided only by dancing clumsily backward. It came to her that she was going to die, right here, in the next few seconds. She could see by the officer’s eyes that he knew it, too.
The red-haired sergeant rounded the doorway, bayonetted musket in hand, paused a moment, then went after the enemy officer. He swept her thrust away, then turned and parried a cut from Winter, shouting what had to be Hamveltai obscenities. Winter gestured at the sergeant to move right, spreading out to get through the officer’s guard, and the woman nodded.
Whoever their enemy was, he was an experienced fighter. Rather than wait to be surrounded, he rushed at Winter, sword cutting downward in a desperate two-handed blow. When the sergeant thrust her bayonet at his back, he sidestepped, pulling his blade back from Winter’s parry and leaving her stumbling and overbalanced. Before she could step back, he lashed out with the hilt, a vicious short jab that drove the heavy metal pommel into her temple.
Black stars flashed behind Winter’s eyes, and she stumbled away, legs suddenly wobbling underneath her. The officer spun to engage the sergeant, who tried to slash at him with her bayonet and cut nothing but air. He extended his front leg in a textbook lunge and spitted her through the belly. The sergeant dropped her musket and closed her hands around blade where it had gone in, making mewling, gasping sounds. The Deslandai pulled the weapon free, and she sank to the floor, curled around a spreading bloodstain.
The officer whipped his sword around, sending a line of hot red blood across the floor, and turned back to Winter. He stepped forward, and Winter realized her own sword was lying on the floor, fallen from nerveless fingers. Blackness nibbled the corners of her visions, and her head pulsed with agony with every heartbeat. She wondered if he’d cracked her skull.
The man regarded her curiously, then looked back to the sergeant and shook his head.
“You Vordanai,” he said, speaking with a heavy accent. “I never kill a woman before.”
He sighed, and raised his sword. Before it could fall, there was movement in the doorway, and the man’s head turned. Winter got a glimpse of a blue uniform, and then Bobby stepped into the room.
“Winter!” she shouted, looking around. The Deslandai officer stepped into his swing, a heavy sideways cut at head level. Bobby looked up, far too late to bring her musket up to parry, and brought her left hand up into the path of the blade.
Her fingers closed around the steel. Winter, watching as though in a dream, saw blood well where the edge bit into Bobby’s palm, but she effortlessly brought the stroke to a halt. Before the startled officer could react, Bobby jerked the sword forward, tearing it from his grip. A twist of her fingers folded the thick metal in half as though it were made of paper.
The Deslandai could only stare, muttering something Winter didn’t understanding. Bobby dropped her musket and swung her fist square into the man’s face, and there was a crunch like someone smashing a sack of raw eggs. The officer was slammed against the wall, his head spraying blood across the wood where it struck, his face a red ruin. He sank down, slowly, and did not move again.
Winter blinked. Everything was moving slowly now, so slowly. She watched Bobby pick up her sword and run to where Abby was struggling with the other soldier, cutting the Deslandai down from behind. Then she blinked, and when her eyes opened, Bobby’s face filled her vision. Her voice clanged in Winter’s ears, as though they were underwater.
“. . . all right? Sir? Are you all right?”
“I’m . . .” Winter wanted to say that she was fine, but the effort of speaking was apparently the last straw. The darkness that had been marshaling its forces in the corners of her eyes surged up again, with a pain like her skull being split open. Falling into unconsciousness was a welcome relief.
Chapter Nine
MARCUS
Marcus spent the rest of the day after his trip to Exchange Central looking over his shoulder, and went to sleep in the full expectation of being awoken by the news that Twin Turrets was under siege. All through the next day Lieutenant Uhlan and his Mierantai maintained a high alert, and Marcus insisted Raesinia remain inside, no matter how eager she was to deliver their stolen book to Cora.
He passed the time by putting his new recruits through their paces. Ranker Feiss, whose first name turned out to be Hayver, went through the manual of arms with a stiff-armed precision that spoke of time spent on the drill field but little else. Andy—Marcus still had a hard time thinking of her as “Ranker Dracht”—was much smoother, working the musket and ramrod with a fluidity that spoke of real experience, and the missing fingers on her right hand seemed to make little difference. There was nowhere on the grounds safe to fire live balls, but she claimed to be a decent shot, and watching her work, he was prepared to believe it. Even Uhlan, as taciturn as all Mierantai seemed to be, gave a grunt of approval.
The following day, when no official retribution for their theft materialized, Marcus relaxed sufficiently to be convinced that a trip to Mrs. Felda’s to deliver the books to Cora wasn’t too great a risk. Raesinia, straining at the leash to depart, stomped up and down the front hall while Marcus spoke to Uhlan and arranged an escort. Before he was finished, the front door opened, and the young Mierantai ranker who had the watch appeared.
“Sir?” he said. “Got a note for you. Army boy delivered it.”
“Give it here,” Marcus said. Janus was unlikely to use a regular army courier—messages from Willowbrook came via Mierantai messenger or more circuitous routes—but stranger things had happened.
When Marcus broke the army-blue seal on the single page and unfolded it, however, he found not Janus’ neat handwriting but the blockier script produced by the Preacher.
Colonel d’Ivoire—
Need to speak with you, most urgent matter. Come at once.
By the Grace of God,
Captain S. Vahkerson
“Damn,” Marcus said. Raesinia stepped up beside him and read the note, frowning.
“That’s awfully mysterious of him,” she said. “This is your friend from the artillery, isn’t it?”
Marcus supposed that one did not upbraid the Queen of Vordan for being nosy. “Yes. We call him the Preacher, though not to his face. But it’s not like him to be so circumspect.” The Preacher had more sense than, say, Give-Em-Hell, but a man who spent his life around cannon was unlikely to make subtlety his watchword.
“Are you sure it’s from him?”
“It’s definitely his handwriting,” Marcus said, feeling another burst of paranoia. He examined the seal, which bore the imprint of the Royal Artillery, and didn’t show visible tampering. “I can’t imagine anyone forcing him to write it.”
“Maybe he was worried who else might read it.”
“Maybe. As far as I know, all he’s doing is training new artillery officers.”
Raesinia hummed thoughtfully. “Are you going to go?”
“I should.” He looked down at her and sighed. “Lieutenant Uhlan, would you please escort Raesinia to Oldtown? I’ll take Hayver and Andy to the University.”
“Of course, sir,” the Mierantai officer said.
“And be careful.” It was just barely possible this was some plot to separate the two of them, though that was stretching suspicion a bit far. “Make sure you aren’t followed.”
Uhlan gave him an “I’m not an idiot” look, but forbore to comment. Marcus watched him and three more Mierantai riflemen follow Raesinia outside, then went in search of the two rankers.
“I didn’t know you were friends with Captain Vahkerson, sir,” Hayver said as the carriage rattled along Second Avenue toward the Dregs.
Andy gave him a withering look. “They were captains together in the Khandarai campaign under Janus.”
“And for years beforehand, under Colonel Warus,” Marcus said, only half paying attention to the conversation. He
peered out the carriage window, searching the street behind them for some sign of a tail. It was futile, not just because Marcus’ knowledge of espionage was minimal, but given that their carriage was one of the only horse-drawn vehicles still on the road, a blind man could follow their trail.
Most of the traffic was pedestrian, but not all. The citizens of Vordan’s South Bank, ever resourceful, had begun hitching themselves to light carts and offering rides to the affluent Northsiders. Marcus watched several of these strange vehicles go past, and shook his head. Human adaptability never failed to surprise him; enough time could make even the strangest situation routine. Just look at us in Khandar, before the Redeemers turned everything upside down and the Steel Ghost started raising hell.
He shook his head and looked back at Hayver. “How do you know the Preacher, anyway? Were you in artillery training?”
The boy shook his head. “After the battle, some of the wounded were transferred to the University hospital. Captain Vahkerson would come around to read to us from the Wisdoms.”
Andy rolled her eyes. Marcus, who had sat through a few of the Preacher’s readings, was inclined to agree, but he did his best not to show it.
“What do you think he wants, sir?” Hayver said.
“I have no idea,” Marcus said.
“I bet,” Andy said, “it has something to do with that.”
She pointed out the other window, and Marcus leaned over and looked ahead as the carriage slowed. They had crossed the Dregs and come onto the grounds of the University itself, where the curving cobbled road led across the fields, past the various outbuildings, and up to the walled compound that was the ancient core of the institution. There it passed through the pompously titled Gateway of Wisdom, a tall arch of stone that was another of Farus V’s affectations. The great iron gates were ornamental, bracketed to the wall and never closed to demonstrate that the pathway to wisdom would never be barred—though the faculty had been forced to barricade the gateway at times.
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