The Guns of Empire

by Django Wexler

  “Then let’s get out of here.”

  “No!” Winter pointed at the now-distant Penitent with her sword. “We’re the only ones who stand a chance against her. We have to stop her here or God knows how many she’ll kill. Alex, are you all right?”

  “Just a little bruised,” Alex said. “What’s the plan?”

  “She’s got ice all over her,” Winter said. “Bobby, I need you to break that off and then try to hold her in place so Alex and I can finish her.”

  “I’ll give it a shot, sir,” Bobby said, hefting her tree branch. “Stay behind me.”

  She cleared a path through the advancing wraiths, Winter and Alex taking care of any that tried to slip around the scythe-like strokes of her tree branch.

  “I didn’t know she was one of us,” Alex said. “I can’t sense her at all.”

  “It’s complicated.” Winter grunted, blocking a strike and cutting the wraith down. “Remind me to explain when we have a minute.”

  The wraiths thinned out quickly, no new ones rising to replace those they cut down. She wants us to come back and fight, Winter thought. Soon enough they broke into the clear and were back among the snow-caked bodies of the Girls’ Own sentries, where the Penitent stood sheathed in her transparent armor.

  “Ah, you’ve brought a new friend,” the woman said. Snow swirled around her, condensing into another fan of ice knives. “Splendid.”

  “Let Bobby go first,” Winter hissed. “She’s hard to hurt.”

  Bobby charged, and the ice knives lanced out. One of them buried itself in her gut and the other opened a cut on her shoulder, but she absorbed the impacts with barely a grunt. Winter ducked and started running, circling to Bobby’s left as Alex dodged to the right. The Penitent frowned, more snow forming long, thin blades on both of her gauntlets. Bobby swung the tree branch against the woman’s ribs, and it struck with enough force that the wood exploded into flying splinters. Concentric rings of cracks shot through the ice armor as it fractured.

  “Now, that is more like it!” the woman roared. She slashed down with her swords, and Bobby slipped aside. Before the Penitent could turn, Alex’s lances of darkness slammed into her, aiming for the side where Bobby’s blow had landed. A piece of ice the size of a dinner plate flew off amid a spray of powder.

  The Penitent snarled, and snow coiled around her. Bobby reached out and grabbed one of the woman’s swords, slicking the blade with red where it cut into her hand. She pulled the Penitent forward and rammed an elbow into the woman’s gut with a sound like a box full of crockery breaking. Chunks and lumps of ice fell away, but the Penitent brought her other sword around, impaling Bobby near the collarbone. Instead of trying to break free, Bobby stepped closer, her hand closing on the Penitent’s shoulder.

  A patch of the armor was completely gone, Winter could see. Bobby and the Penitent stumbled, turning slowly. Snow rose all around them, more wraiths forming, ready to hack Bobby to pieces.

  “Alex!” Winter shouted. “The stomach! Hit her now!”

  “Bobby’s in the way!” Alex said.

  “Do it!” Bobby screamed.

  Twin needles of darkness stabbed out. They struck Bobby in the small of the back, slicing clean through her flesh as though it wasn’t there to stab into the belly of the Penitent. The armor on the woman’s back cracked and exploded outward in a spray of ice. For a moment everything was still—Bobby and the Penitent locked together, impaled on two spears of pure night.

  A fragment of ice fell away, letting the Penitent’s long black hair flop free. Her wraiths slumped, falling apart into mist and snow, as her armor dropped away from her piece by piece. The blade impaling Bobby snapped as the masked woman’s knees buckled. She ended up on her back in the snow, arms outstretched, with Bobby lying spread-eagled on top of her.

  “Bobby!” Winter sprinted as best she could through the snow, and Alex came in from the other direction. Winter went to her knees in a spray of white, rolling Bobby off the Penitent. Her uniform was caked with snow and blood-soaked around the holes in her stomach and shoulder, but she was smiling.

  “Alex?” Bobby said. Blood flecked her lips and discolored her teeth.

  “Y-yeah?” Alex said.

  “That . . .” She coughed, spraying blood, and closed her eyes. “That didn’t hurt as much as I expected.” The breath went out of her in a long, steamy puff.

  “She’ll be all right,” Winter said, with more confidence then she felt. Please, please let her be all right. “She survived when a Redeemer nearly cut her in half. It just sometimes takes a while.”

  “I . . .” Alex’s eyes were round as saucers. “Fuck. What do we do? Can we help her?”

  “We need to get her back to camp. It’s probably better if she’s somewhere warm.”

  “You stay with her,” Alex said. “I’ll get help.”

  There was a nasty, wet sound. It took Winter a moment to realize that the Penitent was laughing. Winter shuffled to her side and jerked the black mask up, obsidian clicking under her fingers. The face beneath was disappointingly ordinary, a pretty, pale woman with ice-blue eyes. Her lips and cheeks were already stained with blood.

  “Serves me . . . right,” the Penitent muttered, then choked another laugh. “Dragging things out too long. Always knew it would get me.”

  “You’re going to die,” Winter told her.

  “Really?” The woman coughed again, spraying red. “Could have . . . fooled me.”

  “I just want you to know, before you do, that we’re going to take your fucking Church apart stone by stone.” Winter gritted her teeth. “Those women you killed, those rabble, are each worth a hundred of your goddamned monsters. Your pontifex is going to beg for mercy.”

  The Penitent laughed again, wet and bubbling. Her eyes fixed on Winter, disconcertingly calm.

  “Good luck doing all that,” she said with a gasp, “without . . . your precious . . . general . . .”

  The woman’s eyes closed. Winter looked down at her uncertainly, then back at Alex and Bobby.

  “It might be a bluff,” Winter said.

  “Go,” Alex said. “Make sure. I’ll stay with her until help gets here.”

  Winter nodded and took off at a run.

  —

  RAESINIA

  Raesinia had never seen Marcus so agitated when there wasn’t actually shooting going on. He paced the length of her tent, turned, and retraced his steps, ignoring the meal on the table.

  “Horses are the real problem,” he said. “With the army in tents, we could cut rations, at least for a while. But we don’t have enough fodder to go around, and with everything snowed under, we’re not getting any more except from the depots. We need the horses to haul the wagons from the depots to get the fodder to feed the horses! We’re using everything we have, and it’s still not enough. The weakest are dying already. The more we lose, the harder it’ll be to keep up the convoys.

  “We’ve got fevers and coughs spreading fast, and probably flux to follow. The white riders are pouncing on anyone that leaves the camp, and yesterday some idiot chopped a hole in the river ice because he wanted a bath! We’re running out of deadwood to burn, and green wood won’t dry fast enough. Every general is telling me his men are raising hell. We can’t stay here. Much longer and the whole army will fall apart.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Raesinia said. “I’ve seen it.” She’d made a few tours of the camp, trying to keep up morale.

  “He hasn’t,” Marcus said. “He hasn’t come down off his hill for days.”

  “You’ve tried to tell him this, I assume?” Raesinia said.

  Marcus nodded wearily. “He just insists that the weather will change in time. He’s calculated it, somehow. Something about how much power a demon can have.” Marcus looked over his shoulder. “Ordinarily, I try not to meddle in the . . . strange side of things. J
anus knows what he’s doing. And I don’t pretend to be able to understand what he’s talking about, but it feels wrong. Like wishful thinking.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?”

  “What can I do?” Marcus ran a hand through his hair. “Sit here and hope he’s right. Hope the weather changes before we get mass desertions or have to start eating each other. It won’t be the first miracle he’s pulled out of his hat.”

  Raesinia let out an inward sigh. Even now, staring disaster in the face, Marcus couldn’t conceive of a world where he disobeyed Janus. If the First Consul ordered his troops to stand and die to the last man, Marcus would be the final one to fall.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Raesinia said. “We know he’s not likely to listen to me.”

  “That’s what I came to talk to you about,” Marcus said. His voice was grim. “You’re not going to like this, I know, but please listen to me. I think you should go back, at least to Polkhaiz.”

  He can’t be serious. “How will it look if the queen abandons the army?”

  “What’s going to happen to Vordan if the queen and the First Consul freeze to death in the middle of Murnsk?” He looked guilty at just voicing the thought out loud. “It won’t come to that. Janus has always come through before. But . . . just in case. I’d give you a strong cavalry escort; the white riders won’t dare attack.”

  “I’m not leaving, Marcus,” Raesinia said. She took a deep breath. Now or never. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  He sighed, and Raesinia hesitated for a moment. He needs to know about Dorsay’s offer, the deal to remove Janus in exchange for peace. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he wouldn’t consider it. He might even think of me as a traitor. Somehow that would be worst of all.

  In the moment of silence, something shifted inside her skull, the strange pressure that meant another demon-host was near. Raesinia’s expertise was limited, but the sense was strong this time and very close by.

  “Where’s Winter?” she said. She was the only demon-host likely to visit the command tent. Her captain, Bobby, barely registered to Raesinia’s sense, and Alex was still carefully watched. Unless she’s a Penitent after all . . .

  “What?” Marcus frowned. “The Second Division is camped about a mile east, near the edge of the woods. She’s with them, unless something’s happened.”

  The sense of pressure increased. Raesinia turned her head, feeling it slide around the inside of her skull. “Someone’s here. A demon, and I don’t think it’s one of ours.”

  “Penitent,” Marcus spat. He grabbed his sword belt from the table.

  Certain that he was about to order her to stay put, Raesinia darted past him and out into the snow. Her tent was on the slope of a hill by the banks of the Kovria, with the heights occupied by Janus’ command tent and personal quarters. Slightly downslope were the smaller tents used by her servants and attendants.

  “Sothe!” Raesinia shouted.

  The assassin appeared, so suddenly and noiselessly that Raesinia would have sworn she’d materialized from thin air. “Your Majesty?”

  “Trouble.” The pressure was coming from the direction of Janus’ tents. “Penitents.”

  “Raes!” Marcus said, blundering out through the tent flap. “You should—”

  Raesinia started to run, ignoring him. Sothe fell in beside her, making better progress through the snow with her longer legs.

  “This is well inside the picket lines,” Sothe said. “Are you certain?”

  “I can feel it,” Raesinia said. “There. No, there!”

  She pointed to where the hill ended in a steep scree slope down to the river. The water was invisible, a flat expanse of snow-covered ice, but a section of it was bulging. As they watched, it exploded in a spray of white, and a humanoid figure burst out and began crunching up the hillside.

  “Under the ice,” Sothe said. “Clever, assuming you can survive in freezing-cold water.”

  “We’re under attack!” Raesinia shouted, gesturing wildly. “Over there!”

  The half dozen Colonials on guard outside Janus’ tent looked at her quizzically. It took them a moment to realize that it was the queen running frantically through the snow toward them, gesturing like a madwoman. When they’d got that, a further moment was required before they understood what she was saying. The man closest to the slope turned, following her pointing finger, and looked over the edge. He gave a shout, and a moment later the Penitent was on top of him, swinging a roundhouse punch into the side of his head that hit like a blow from a sledgehammer. He dropped, abruptly limp, and the Penitent turned to the second guard.

  Now that Raesinia had gotten a good look at the attacker, she could see that something very strange was going on. It was clearly a woman, a squat, powerful figure in dark leather not dissimilar from Sothe’s fighting gear. Her face was covered in a black obsidian mask. But her body was distorted, limbs thickened and bulging, as though there were a layer of something thick and viscous under her skin.

  As Raesinia watched, the effect vanished, the woman’s muscles writhing like snakes in a sack as they returned to something like normal. The Penitent raised her hands, and something gleamed—a mass of steel needles, no bigger than toothpicks, held between her clenched fingers.

  The second guard thrust at her with his bayoneted musket. The Penitent turned, letting the blade scrape along her side, scoring her leathers but not drawing blood. Her hand darted out and brushed by the Colonial’s neck, leaving something stuck there. One of the needles, except that in the moment it left the Penitent’s hand it had turned a sickly, malevolent green.

  The little thing wasn’t even large enough to draw blood. The guard backed off, raised his weapon again, and then staggered sideways. He let the musket fall, clutching at where the splinter had been, and then collapsed into the side of the tent, convulsing.

  At the opposite corner of the tent, two more guards raised their muskets. The Penitent twisted, hands flickering as she whipped the tiny needles at them. One ball ricocheted off the frozen ground with a whine, and the other went high. Both soldiers collapsed almost instantly, clawing at wounds too small to see.

  Sothe spun to a halt in a spray of snow, knives appearing in her hands as if by magic. The first whipped end over end and would have struck the Penitent square in the forehead if the woman hadn’t ducked. As she came back up, she swept one hand out, a motion like wiping down a table. Raesinia couldn’t see the steel needles, but Sothe was already moving, throwing herself flat. The assassin rolled and flipped to her feet as the Penitent ducked through the tent flap.

  “Brass Balls of the Beast!” Marcus swore, running after them. “What the hell—”

  “Come on!” Raesinia shouted, sprinting to cover the last few yards to the tent. Sothe was just ahead of her, throwing the tent flap wide and then ducking immediately. Something whined past Raesinia’s ear.

  Janus’ tent was large, but modestly furnished, with only a camp bed, a folding table, and a few trunks. There were two more guards, but one of them was already down, eyes bulging and hands locked around his own throat. The other had drawn a sword, and behind him Janus himself was pulling a long, narrow blade from where it hung beside the bed.

  “Don’t let her cut you!” Raesinia shouted, charging the Penitent. The masked woman turned, hand moving in a blur, and Raesinia felt something bite her shoulder. The vile substance woven into the metal raced along her nerves, turning them into lines of agonizing pain that reached toward her heart.

  But Raesinia was used to pain, and the binding was already at work, surging back along the pathways like the counterattack of a defending army. Raesinia managed a savage grin as she barely slowed her pace, and the Penitent, already turning away, spun back to face her in alarm. Weren’t expecting that, were you?

  Raesinia slammed into the Penitent, putting every ounce of her inadeq
uate weight into the tackle. The woman rocked back on her heels but didn’t fall. Raesinia twisted, grabbing for the woman’s arm and holding on to it with both hands.

  “Sothe!” she screamed.

  There were advantages to a long history of working with someone. Sothe had made the same fast assessment of the enemy and come to the same conclusion. Raesinia held the woman’s arm pinioned, and Sothe flipped another knife, sinking it point-first into the Penitent’s palm. The woman gave a yelp of pain—the first sound Raesinia had heard her make—and launched a spray of needles at Sothe with her other hand. Sothe had already tangled one foot in a discarded blanket, however, and she kicked the cloth into the air as a makeshift shield against the tiny projectiles.

  A shattering bang filled the tent as Marcus fired his pistol. The ball tore a hole in the canvas as the Church assassin ducked, and Marcus swore and drew his sword. The Penitent took a step backward, dragging Raesinia with her, and hurled the last of her needles from her good hand in the direction of Janus and the guard. The Colonial, shielding his commander with his body, took a dozen of the green needles and went down on top of Janus in a thrashing heap. Another knife zipped past, aiming for the Penitent’s other hand and missing by a hair.

  The woman said something in Murnskai that sounded like a curse. She moved fast, bringing her free hand around and jabbing it into Raesinia’s throat. The blow alone would have been painful, but the Penitent’s nails were sharp as razors, and as they pierced her skin Raesinia could feel them pulse with a massive flux of the green venom. Her hands twitched involuntarily, and she fell away from the Penitent’s arm.

  Unencumbered, the woman went for the exit. Marcus swung at her head, but she slipped under it, lithe as a snake, and he had to jump backward to avoid a slash from her clawed hand. Sothe was faster, twisting around to plant a knife in the small of the Penitent’s back. The masked woman stumbled but didn’t fall, bursting out through the tent flap. Sothe followed her a moment later.

  Janus got to his feet, pushing the dead Colonial aside, rapier still in his hand. He whipped it through the air as he gestured after the fleeing Penitent.