The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

“Nell’s dead,” Marcus said. “But Raesinia will be fine. We have to go back and find her.”

  “Fine?” Andy turned on Marcus. “Have you lost your fucking mind? How can you—”

  Marcus slipped between her and George and bent over, putting his mouth by her ear.

  “I will explain everything later, I promise,” he whispered. “Right now you’re just going to have to trust me. Raesinia is alive, and you cannot tell anyone what you just saw.”

  Andy’s hand gripped his shoulder tight, and her voice was a hoarse rasp. “You’re serious? You think she’s alive?”

  “I swear by all the saints and martyrs,” Marcus said.

  Andy pulled back and looked at him, in the shadowy, flickering light. Whatever she saw in his eyes, it was evidently convincing, because she gave a quick, jerky nod and sat down beside one of the oars.

  “Raesinia is alive,” Marcus said, turning back to George. “But we have to get to her before they do. Help me—”

  The night lit up, as though lightning had struck, and a moment later they were blasted by an enormous roar louder than any thunder Marcus had ever heard. A hundred yards beyond the little boat, a column of water rose from the surface of the river, collapsing into a spray of foam.

  Zimona screamed and curled up even tighter. Andy, hands over her ears, mouthed, What the fuck? at Marcus.

  “The siege guns!” Marcus shouted, voice barely audible in his ringing ears. “The water battery is firing at us!”

  “Then let’s get out of here!” George said, grabbing an oar.

  “We have to go back!” Marcus said. “Raesinia—”

  He had a sudden image of her, hands on her hips, staring at him crossly. What did I tell you, Marcus? She brought up one hand and drew a line down her palm. Don’t do anything stupid.

  “Those guns are a bear to aim,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to hit us.”

  “They don’t need to hit us,” George said, giving the oar a pull and sliding across to yank on the other. “Did you see the size of that spout? They’d have us over if they hit within fifty yards!”

  “And there’s still musketeers on the pier,” Andy said, sitting down at the other oar. “He’s right, Marcus.”

  Damn. Marcus took a deep breath. All right. They can do whatever they want to her, and it won’t matter. She told you it won’t matter. As long as they don’t get her out of the city, and Janus wins, we’ll get her back. Sothe can track her down and make sure they don’t try to sneak her off to Elysium.

  Sothe. Marcus groaned aloud. She’s going to have my head on a platter . . .

  * * *

  RAESINIA

  Raesinia awoke.

  Ever since she’d died, this wasn’t something that happened very often. The binding wouldn’t let her sleep, and it took serious injury to her head before she lost consciousness. The last time it had happened, it was because Faro had put a pistol ball through her skull, and she’d awoken upside down in the river, impaled on a rock.

  This time, she was reasonably certain her unconsciousness had to do with the knife the Penitent Damned had shoved into her brain, and she wasn’t sure if the circumstances of her awakening were better or worse. On the positive side, she was out of the river, laid out on a rocky strip at the base of the water battery fortifications. This was surely better than being upside down and impaled.

  On the negative side, the handsome young man dressed in black sitting beside her was almost certainly the same Penitent Damned who’d stabbed her, minus his obsidian facemask. He was watching her with intense interest, and she would have shifted away from him uncomfortably if she hadn’t been more or less dead.

  The binding was hard at work, though. Having rebuilt her brain and restarted her consciousness, it moved on to resealing her skull and knitting up the rents in her throat left by the Penitent’s knife. Once those were closed, it wrapped around her heart and squeezed tight. Her pulse slammed against her chest and through her skull, so hard she thought she would burst, and stuttered a bit before getting back to its regular rhythm. Raesinia coughed, sending up a small spray of water, and drew a ragged breath. Her body tingled all over as the binding got round to fixing all the little bits and pieces that had gone haywire when her heart and lungs gave up the ghost.

  “Remarkable,” the Penitent Damned said. “Five minutes ago, I would have sworn to the pontifex you were dead.”

  Raesinia coughed again, then managed to rasp, “You get used to it.”

  “I imagine,” he said. “I have read about the Eternal Warrior, of course, but I have never been privileged to see it work. Does the time it takes to repair you depend on the degree of the injury?”

  “Usually,” Raesinia said, then remembered that she didn’t owe this man any answers. He smiled at her silence, and looked out at the river, where the Rosnik had been.

  “I must admit,” he said, “it was a bold plan. Not a good plan, but I can’t fault your courage. Although I suppose in your case that doesn’t really apply, does it?”

  “The plan seems to have worked fine,” Raesinia said. “Aside from me getting left behind.”

  “Really?” The Penitent looked puzzled. “I’d assumed you intended to extract the Thousand Names before sinking the boat, though I admit I don’t understand how.”

  “They all thought the same way,” Raesinia said. “But I realized we didn’t need to steal the Names back, just keep you from getting away with them. A few weeks on the bottom of the river won’t hurt them any, and once Janus crushes Maurisk he can fish them out again.”

  Getting to see the look on his face, Raesinia thought, was almost worth getting stabbed in the head.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  WINTER

  Just after dawn, they ran into the first hint of resistance. Three Patriot Guards, hiding behind an abandoned wagon, jumped out from cover, fired an ineffective shot or two, then ran for it.

  “Well,” Winter said, watching from Edgar’s back, “that answers that question.”

  They’d camped the night before at the edge of the noisome swamp called the Bottoms, only a few miles from the edge of Vordan City proper. If there had been a hill, a man standing atop it could have seen the lights of the Island, but there were no hills in the Bottoms, only bits of ground that were nominally above water. The Green Road, which they’d been following north, ran along a raised causeway here to keep it out of the mud.

  The army was still well outside the formal boundaries of the city, but the first shacks had already started to appear. The Bottoms had always been a place for castoffs, those too destitute, crippled, or mad to survive even in the slums of Newtown. They drifted here, eking a meager existence from the marsh and living in tumbledown huts made of scrap and sod. By and large, they hadn’t turned out to welcome the Army of the East. Winter suspected these were people used to hiding at the first sight of armed men, whatever banner they were flying.

  Janus had sent riders, the evening before, bearing his terms to the Directory. The Army of the East would remain outside the city if the Directory officially dissolved itself and returned power to the Deputies-General and the queen, to whom Janus would submit himself for judgment. No answer had been forthcoming, so as soon as there was enough light to see, Winter had taken the Girls’ Own forward along the causeway. That the Patriot Guard were shooting at them, however ineffectually, more or less decided the issue.

  She let out a long breath, staring up the road in the gray light. Jane was up ahead, somewhere, in the midst of a city of frightened people caught in the midst of the clash of armies. It had been more than a century since the capital had suffered invasion.

  “Send a messenger to Janus,” she said to Cyte, who waited patiently at her side. “Tell him the Patriots seem to be planning to resist, and I’m going to push ahead until I run into something solid.”

  “Sir.” Cyte saluted. S
omething about the occasion seemed to encourage formality.

  The Third Regiment was lined up behind her, the Girls’ Own in the lead and Royals in the rear. Winter studied the faces she could see, and found no hesitation there. The women in the front ranks looked eager. For a good portion of them, this was their home, and they were here to retake it.

  “Abby?” Winter said.

  “Sir!” Abby stepped forward from the front ranks of the Girls’ Own.

  “Go ahead and move up the causeway. Loose order, and stop as soon as you find anything serious.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Abby turned and began shouting orders. The lead companies of the Girls’ Own fell out from their neat ranks into a rough skirmish formation and started up the road at a jog. Winter turned Edgar about and rode past them until she was level with the Royals, where Sevran saluted crisply.

  “Once they’ve cleared the road ahead, move up, but stay in column.” There wasn’t room for a wider formation, not until they’d cleared the marshes. “You’re the reserve, so keep back and be ready to pass skirmishers if they counterattack.”

  Sevran saluted again, and turned to his tasks. The sun had cleared the eastern horizon, and the low mist of the marshes was beginning to burn off. Winter could see the blue-coated women of the Girls’ Own, up ahead, still moving briskly. No firing yet.

  The approach to Vordan City presented a series of challenges, and the central question was where the Patriot Guard planned to make their stand. The Green Road passed through the Bottoms along a causeway, an earth-and-stone roadbed built several feet higher than the surrounding marshes to protect it from the occasional inundations of the Vor. It was wide enough for two wagons to pass each other, which was barely room for a single-company front. A barricade here, especially with artillery to defend, would be a nightmare to storm from the road, and Winter had been expecting to see one emerge from the mists as the sun rose.

  Janus had planned for this, of course. Fitz Warus’ Colonials were advancing up the Old Road, to the east, straight toward the Cut that divided Newtown from Oldtown. It didn’t offer the advantages of a direct approach to the Island, and risked getting bogged down in the maze of Newtown tenements, but if Winter’s Third Regiment got stuck, Fitz would be able to come to her assistance and outflank the defenders. Farther west, Give-Em-Hell’s cavalry were taking the long way around, circling the marshes to come up the River Road.

  They can’t be strong everywhere. Sooner or later, given the numbers, Janus’ army would take the city. As he’d emphasized to his commanders, though, sooner was a good deal better than later. The longer the battle went on, the more damage they’d cause to the city. And if the Patriots were able to drag things out into a serious siege, it was possible that other army units might arrive, more loyal to the Directory than Zarout and Braes had been.

  With Cyte and Bobby at her side, Winter rode forward near the tail of the Girls’ Own’s extended formation, close enough to see what was going on without getting into musket shot of any enemies. Behind her, the Royals advanced in step to the sound of their drummers.

  For a half hour, they advanced like this, women occasionally running up to report that the causeway remained clear to their front. Winter kept a cautious pace, but the complete absence of resistance meant that they made good time nonetheless.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Cyte said, riding beside Winter. “The causeway is a strong position. They ought to be making the most of it.”

  “Maybe they’re worried about getting cut off.” Winter shrugged. “Or maybe they’re just stupid.”

  Cyte grinned. “Farus the Fourth said his favorite prayer was ‘God grant me stupid enemies.’”

  “I can see the city,” Bobby said, pointing.

  It was true. The rising sun had burned away the mist, and the buildings of the South Bank were slowly coming into view. The brutally regular tenement towers of Newtown loomed over the smaller buildings around them off to the right, a monument to Gerhardt Alcor’s failed vision of a perfectly rational city. Directly ahead, the smaller, older shops and warehouses of the Docks were a confused jumble of slate roofs and protruding chimneys, with smaller, meaner dwellings clustering at the edge of the marshes like barnacles clinging to the hull of a ship.

  Far beyond, picked out by the gleam of sunlight on gold, Winter could see the twin spires of the Sworn Cathedral topped by their double circles. Off to one side, the black spike of the Vendre was like a wedge cut out of the sky.

  “Coming up on the Lower Market,” Winter said.

  She’d gotten a passing familiarity with this part of the city during the time she lived with Jane’s Leatherbacks, and a few hours with the maps had refreshed her memory. The Market was at the intersection of the Green Road and Wall Street, a broad open dirt square where farmers from the south sold their goods to city merchants. The causeway ended at the southern end of the irregular open space, opening out onto the streets of the city. Winter rode off the elevated highway with a sense of relief. One obstacle down, and nobody’s died yet.

  “Sir!” A young woman ran up and saluted. “Barricade ahead!”

  Well, luck can’t last forever.

  * * *

  The barricade sheltered the top half of the Lower Market, north of Wall Street, where it would be difficult to outflank from either direction. It was mostly made of wagons and carriage, turned on their sides and buttressed with crates and barrels. Musket barrels poked through gaps and loopholes, like the spikes on a strange-looking porcupine. The Girls’ Own had halted out of range, and Winter noted approvingly that Abby had already stationed companies to watch the roads to the east and west. They might try to jump us while we’re engaged here.

  “Any firing?” Winter asked Graff, dismounting and hanging Edgar’s reins to a ranker.

  “No, sir.” Graff, squat and bearded as ever, looked more at home at the head of his company of women than the last time Winter had checked in on him. “Looks like they’re sitting tight.”

  “Might be worth trying to talk, then,” Winter said. “Run up a white flag and send someone over. Tell them if they get out of our way, nobody has to get hurt.”

  “Yessir!” Graff turned away. “Sergeant! Get a truce flag ready.”

  While he made the preparation, Winter looked back to Bobby, who was still mounted.

  “Captain Archer’s battery is somewhere behind us,” she said. “Would you ride back and tell him that if he could hurry along a couple of guns, it would be helpful? Tell Sevran to let him pass.” She looked across at the bristling barricade. “Let’s not storm that thing if we can help it.”

  Bobby nodded and reined about. Cyte, also dismounting, returned to Winter’s side as three women set out from the front line toward the irregular mound of vehicles and furnishings, carrying a white flag.

  “You think they’ll give way?” Cyte said quietly.

  “No,” Winter said. “But it doesn’t hurt to ask.”

  The trio of unarmed women walked to within thirty yards of the barricade, and the sergeant cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted while one of the rankers waved the white flag in case the enemy had somehow missed it. There was a moment of silence, then an answering shout from behind the row of wagons. It was too far away for Winter to hear the words, but she caught the tone and let out a sigh. Probably too much to hope for—

  A musket cracked, and then another. Dirt fountained by the sergeant’s feet. She backed up a step, still shouting, and another half dozen shots erupted from the barricade. The ranker carrying the flag sat down heavily, as though a chair had been pulled out from under her, then slumped to one side. The sergeant screamed and collapsed, clutching her knee. The second ranker turned to run, but made it only a few steps before she was struck from behind by two balls at once. A spray of blood and torn flesh erupted from her chest, and she fell heavily, face-first, and lay still.

 
“Bastards!” Graff yelled, raising his sword. Similar cries were going up all down the line of Girls’ Own, and a few women started forward. Winter took a deep breath and shouted as loud as she was able.

  “Steady! Hold the line!”

  A few officers repeated the command. Graff looked up at her, eyes wild with rage. For a moment she thought she was going to have to slap him, or worse, but he mastered himself and added his voice to the chorus.

  “Steady! Steady! Hold!”

  The sergeant was still alive, crawling away from the barricade with a slick of blood trailing from her wounded knee. Dirt erupted by her head as a Patriot on the barricade took a shot at her, and even across the distance Winter could hear laughter. A moment later, another shot ricocheted off a stone near her foot.

  “They’re taking turns.” Graff turned to Winter, his expression pleading. “We have to help her!”

  “They want us to charge.” Winter’s throat was thick. “There’s a rank of soldiers waiting behind that thing ready to fire. They want us to try storming it.”

  “But that’s Sergeant Bells!” Graff said. “She—”

  “It doesn’t matter who it is. We can’t get to her, not without leaving another dozen corpses out there.” She raised her voice again. “Hold the fucking line!”

  Bells had managed to crawl ten yards or so before one of the men on the barricade managed to hit her, raising a spurt of blood instead of a column of dust. Winter let out her breath, only to suck it in again as the sergeant kept moving, pulling herself forward with a dying animal’s tenacity.

  I am going to kill you all, Winter thought, teeth clenching so hard she felt they might shatter as more laughter came from the barricade. Every last fucking one.

  Finally, mercifully, the sergeant shuddered and lay still. The enemy took another couple of shots at her, until the amusement palled. Winter tried to pick out the faces of the men who’d been laughing, but it was too far. She forced herself to swallow, feeling the muscles of her jaw ache where they’d been locked tight.