The Guns of Empire

by Django Wexler

  “Thank you,” Winter said to Red, blinking back tears.

  “She would have done the same for me,” Red muttered, staring down at the slack young face.

  There was no question of burying the bodies, so they left them under a mound of snow and rocks instead. The white riders were piled up beside them, stripped naked, their furs and leathers parceled out to the surviving soldiers. The women looked monstrous, wrapped in so many layers they could hardly walk, army-issue blankets mixed with rough furs and cured hide. The dead enemy had no mounts and very little food, which made Winter sure this had been a suicide mission, intended to buy time.

  “They broke off farther up,” Farah said in a flat voice. “Circled back behind the rocks, well clear of the trail, so we wouldn’t spot them.”

  “It was well planned,” Winter said in a consoling tone. “I didn’t see a thing until they started shooting.”

  “I had a nasty feeling,” Farah said. “I should have said something.”

  Red snorted. “I don’t think there’s anything in this Beast-damned country that I have a good feeling about.”

  They set off again, twenty now instead of twenty-five, with fewer than sixty horses. Some animals had been injured or killed by arrows, but more had simply run off beyond the soldiers’ ability to track them down. On this side of the river, the forest was mostly pines, and the canopy had kept the snow on the ground light. They made good time, halting in the shelter of a boulder as the sun sank below the horizon.

  To Winter’s surprise, no one asked any questions. There was just a general movement away from Bobby and Alex, leaving the pair of them to eat their meager rations alone. Winter went over to them when her own meal was done, settling into the snow.

  “Seems like a poor way to repay you,” Winter said.

  Alex shrugged. “People don’t like what they don’t understand.”

  “I don’t blame them,” Bobby said. “I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me before I got caught up in all this.”

  Alex glanced at her. “You weren’t born with your power?”

  “No.” Bobby shook her head. “I don’t think I even technically have a demon. Feor explained it to me. It’s called . . . ‘Granted power’ was her best translation?”

  “Who’s Feor?” Alex seemed genuinely curious. “And how . . . ?” She trailed off, looking at Winter. “Sorry. If it’s a secret, I understand.”

  “I don’t see the harm,” Winter said. “Bobby, do you want to tell the story?”

  “You’d better,” Bobby said, biting down hard on a stale cracker of hardtack. “I was unconscious for most of it.”

  Winter let her mind drift back, and she explained. How she and Bobby had found Feor on a battlefield in Khandar, and how the young priestess had offered to help Bobby after she’d been badly wounded. The subsequent discovery that the spell’s effect healed wounds she took, and her gradually increasing strength.

  Alex frowned. “So you never recited the name of a demon?”

  “No,” Bobby said. “Feor says they’re spells, not demons, but I didn’t recite anything. She did. She granted me her power. I think she knows something else about what’s happening to me, but she wouldn’t say the last time we met. I haven’t been back to see her in a while.” Bobby looked over at Winter. “Speaking of which, General, aren’t we about due for some leave?”

  “You’re welcome to apply through the appropriate channels,” Winter said, smiling. “But I seem to recall you had some just after year’s end, and you spent the whole time in bed with Marsh.”

  “That hardly counts as leave,” Bobby muttered. “I didn’t get a whole lot of rest.” Then, when Winter laughed and Alex grinned, she said, “As long as we’re telling stories, is it true? About you and Cyte?”

  Winter flushed. “Does everyone know about that already?”

  “Rumors travel quickly in an army camp,” Bobby said. “I take it it is true, then?”

  “I mean . . . we’re . . .” Winter sighed. “I don’t know what we are.”

  “Fucking?” Bobby said.

  Winter raised an eyebrow. “I remember when you couldn’t talk about that without blushing.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Bobby said airily. “I’ve been in the wars.”

  “So is being one of the only men in a women’s regiment as good a deal as it sounds?” Alex said.

  Winter’s brow creased in confusion. Then she got it, just as Bobby started laughing. I’d forgotten that there was one person along who doesn’t know. Winter laughed as well, one hand covering her mouth.

  “What?” Alex said. “I’m missing a joke here, aren’t I? It’s not fair to leave me out, you know.”

  “She’s right,” Winter said, wiping her eyes. “Do you want to tell her, Bobby, or should I?”

  —

  The next morning the snow began.

  It was a light dusting at first, so fine that Winter could only be sure it was falling by holding out her hand and waiting for white flecks to alight on her glove. Farah, eyes red from crying, nonetheless kept to her duty and led the column after the fleeing Penitent’s tracks. She announced that there were only four or five riders now in the enemy company, which Winter hoped meant that the ambush had consumed most of their strength.

  By midday, snow was falling steadily, and the wind had picked up, eating away at the prints and other signs of passage. Farah halted where the trail began a descent into yet another valley, frowning at a stretch of bare rock.

  “I think I’ve still got it,” she said. “But this is getting dicey. Much more of this weather and we’ll lose them.”

  Winter summoned Alex to the front of the column. The girl had been giving her strange looks ever since last night’s revelation, shaking her head in private amusement, and she gave Winter a broad grin.

  “Stay with Farah,” Winter told her. “You two can work together to keep us on track.”

  Farah looked at Alex, mistrust obvious in her face. Winter raised an eyebrow.

  “Is that a problem, Ranker Igniz?”

  “No, sir,” Farah said. “I’m sure Alex’s . . . advice will be useful.”

  The ground was getting worse and worse as they went on. According to Alex, they were getting close to Elysium, and the gentle hills of the river plain were growing more and more rugged as they approached the mountains. The peaks of the Votindri Range were always visible now, stretching off to the north and east. Alex had explained they’d actually gone north of Elysium, so that the fortress-city was now to the southeast. The Penitent seemed to be headed in that direction on a curving path, avoiding a spur of the mountain range that guarded the western approach to the city.

  With every hour that passed, the wind picked up and the snow grew heavier. Before long it shrieked directly into their faces, and the soldiers had to rig strips of blanket across their mouths in order to breathe. Any chance of following the tracks was gone now, and Alex took the lead, directing solely by her sense of the Penitent’s demon.

  Farah, riding alongside Winter, had to lean over and shout to be heard over the gale.

  “Sir! We have to find shelter!”

  Winter shook her head, too cold to speak. It was too cold to breathe, too cold to do anything but keep her eyes on the few feet ahead of her slowly plodding mount.

  “Sir!” Farah gripped her shoulder. “This is a goddamn blizzard! They’ll have to hole up, too, until it passes.”

  Red, a few steps behind, prodded her mount forward. “She’s right, sir. Some of the girls are barely hanging on. We need rest.”

  Rest. Winter couldn’t imagine anything she wanted more. But the Penitent was right there, only a few hours ahead—

  She nodded reluctantly. Farah rode ahead to find Alex, and Red dropped back to signal the rest of the company. With the tracker’s guidance, they found a crevasse, a crack in the
rocky hillside big enough to shelter the company and their animals. Winter was startled by how much warmer it was out of the killing wind, and when Red managed to cobble together a small fire, the first tentative waves of heat brought tears to her eyes. The whole group clustered around it, pressing as close as they dared, bodies tight against one another in a solid mass of coats and furs.

  “How long can this last?” Winter asked Farah, who was pressed in beside her.

  “No idea,” Farah said. “Maggie had more woodslore than I ever did, but this is a blizzard in the middle of spring. It’s not natural.”

  Not natural. That stayed with Winter after the wind died and they got back in the saddle. The words rang through her head when the second storm rolled over them, not more than an hour later, screaming with even more violence than the first. This time Winter was quicker to order the party to seek shelter, but not quick enough. A head count once they were camped in the tenuous cover offered by a thick stand of pines revealed that two soldiers and four horses were missing, separated from the party in the blinding flurries. There was no question of looking for them; Winter could only pray that they’d found their own shelter somewhere.

  The third storm, at dusk, was the worst of all. They’d just climbed out of a depression, and it fell on them when they reached a stretch of bare rock. There was nothing between them and the blasts of wind, powerful enough that Winter’s horse stumbled several times. The light of the sun, never strong, faded further as windblown snow blotted out the sky.

  “We have to turn back,” Winter said to Farah. “If we go back into the trees—”

  “We’ll never make it!” Farah said. She gestured. “Downhill, in this?”

  “Then what? We can’t stay out here!”

  “There’s broken rocks up ahead,” Farah said. “I saw them before the storm hit. We can take cover there.”

  Winter shook her head. “If there’s not room—”

  “It’s the only chance we’ve got!”

  Without waiting for an answer, the tracker kicked her mount back into motion. Winter shouted to Red to pass the word down the line, and followed as best she could.

  Not natural. This didn’t feel like weather anymore. Someone is trying to kill us. If the Priests of the Black could summon snow in spring, perhaps they could call blizzards as well. Especially this close to Elysium. She wondered if the Penitent and her companions were suffering as badly. If she dies in the snow, maybe Janus will be saved, even if we fail.

  The wind had scoured the rocks clean of snow. Several large boulders lay against one another, offering a few cracks wide enough to wiggle through. It wasn’t much in the way of shelter, and there was nothing for the horses, but the last few minutes had persuaded Winter that Farah had been right. Turning back would have been suicidal.

  Sliding off her mount, Winter shoved herself into the largest opening she could find, pressing as far as she could toward the back. More bodies packed in around her, indistinguishable in their thick, snow-covered furs. There was no sound but the howl of the wind. She couldn’t move, except to breathe. Warmed by the press of bodies, her hands and feet began to regain their feeling, thawing with sharp spikes of pain that would have made Winter scream if she’d had the room. And the blizzard went on and on, snow and wind and a deadly intent that she could almost feel.

  At some point she must have fallen asleep. She dreamed of Jane, and Cyte, and both of them together. Janus, bundled up tight against the snow, removing layer after layer of thick furs until there was nothing left but a skeleton. Fire, blessedly warm at first, but rising higher and higher all around her. An old woman’s voice, telling her something she couldn’t understand, calling her by a name that wasn’t her own. Bobby, marble skin spreading across her face, until it was as frozen and lifeless as a statue, with dull, dead eyes.

  The dreams merged with the reality of the precarious shelter and the unending blizzard into a continuous nightmare of waking and sleeping. She heard murmurs in the dark, between the mad shrieks of the wind. Prayers to Karis and all the saints, to family, murmured words for lovers left behind. Winter closed her eyes and thought about Cyte, drifting in and out of sleep. She felt a pressure in her bladder, and pissed herself. Her mouth was so dry she would have done anything for a few sips of water.

  She was finally awoken by sunlight and a slight lessening of the pressure. Winter groaned.

  “Sir?” Bobby’s voice. “Winter? Can you hear me?”

  Winter blinked. Her eyeballs felt as dry and scratchy as cotton.

  “I’m here.” Her voice was a croak. “Need water.”

  “Hold on.”

  An interminable interval passed. The weight that had pressed Winter in place fell away, and the faint gleam of sunlight on rock grew to the brightness of daylight. Winter blinked again and made out a dark shape in the mouth of the tiny cave, hand extended. She took it unsteadily, and Bobby pulled her out and onto her feet. Someone else handed her a canteen, and she drank greedily, guzzling the ice-cold water. When it was gone, she coughed and looked around.

  The sky was empty for the first time in weeks, and the sun shone down brilliantly from a cool, icy blue vault. The rocky hillside was almost clear of snow, except where it had drifted against the rocks in huge piles. There was no wind, though the air was still bracingly cold.

  She could see at least a dozen dead horses, lying where they’d fallen or twisted in death agonies. A couple of living animals stood side by side, dark eyes staring at her as if in accusation. Soldiers, wrapped in their dense layers, stood in stunned silence as though in the aftermath of a battle. Bobby seemed to be the most lively, and Red was rubbing her cheeks and breathing deep. Alex was there, too, and two more rankers Winter didn’t know, but that was all.

  “We need . . .” Her voice was barely audible, and speaking set off another coughing fit. When it passed, she at least had everyone’s attention, and she continued in a hoarse whisper. “We need to find everybody. All the horses that are left.”

  For a moment there was no response.

  “You heard the general,” Red growled. “Start searching!”

  The extent of the disaster became clear as the morning went on. A few more horses were discovered alive, having found their own shelter, but most were gone, either frozen to death or fallen from the rocks in the blinding wind and snow. The first frozen body of a soldier was unearthed from a snowdrift not long after, pinned underneath her mount when it had collapsed. Another ranker was alive but delirious, racked with fever.

  It was Winter who found Farah. She and another soldier had huddled into a narrow crevice in the rock, not quite deep enough to keep out the freezing wind. They were pressed together for warmth, but when Winter touched Farah’s cheek she found it was as cold as the rocks around it, and her skin was tinged with blue.

  All in all, eight humans and nine horses had survived the night. Winter tried to keep a count of the bodies, but her head was so fuzzy she gave it up as a pointless exercise. If anyone got lost, we certainly can’t search for them now. The patch of ground they were on was clear, but where trees and rocks blocked the wind the snow was several feet deep.

  Supplies, at least, they had in plenty. The survivors made a fire on the bare rock and gorged themselves on hardtack and dried meat from the packs of dead horses, while the live mounts were given as much fodder as they could stomach. Even still, there was more left than the reduced party could carry.

  “Alex,” Winter said after a while. “Can you still feel the Penitent?”

  “Sir.” Red’s voice was quiet but shocked. “You don’t mean to go on?”

  “What else are we supposed to do, Sergeant?” Winter said. She gestured at the sky. Overhead, it was still blue, but an ominous layer of dark clouds had begun to creep in from the east. “We have a respite, but it won’t be a long one.”

  “But . . .” Red looked at the dazed rankers, then bac
k to Winter. “We won’t survive another storm like that, sir.”

  Winter closed her eyes. “Then we’re not going to survive, even if we turn back now. Believe me, freezing to death doesn’t appeal to me any more than it does to you. But if that’s the time we’ve got left, I’d rather use it to accomplish something. If we can save Janus, maybe this will be worth it.”

  This isn’t like me, Winter thought. She’d never been one to give up, not even staring down the barrel of a gun. Flash in the pan. It might happen. She saw the look on Jane’s face as she pulled the trigger, when the pistol wouldn’t fire. Her mind felt like it was wrapped in thick cloth, as though last night had never ended after all, and this was still a dream.

  “I can feel her,” Alex said slowly. “But she’s farther away. She may have made it to Elysium already.”

  Winter slumped. So much for our sacrifice making a difference.

  “Then we go into Elysium,” Bobby said. “That’ll get us out of the cold and keep us on the Penitent’s trail.”

  Winter looked up at her. “Into Elysium?”

  Red snorted. “I’m not sure a city full of Black Priests is an improvement over the blizzard.”

  “It’s a big place,” Bobby said. “There’s got to be ways in that aren’t watched.”

  “It’s not much of a chance,” Winter said.

  “But it’s better than freezing to death,” Bobby said.

  Alex cleared her throat. “I . . . may have an alternative.”

  They all turned to look at her, and she squirmed uncomfortably.

  “There’s a place not far from here,” Alex said, after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s warm, and there’s food. We may be able to get there before the next storm hits.”

  “I feel like there must be a catch,” Winter said.

  “I swore a blood oath never to show anyone how to get there,” Alex said. “They take those pretty seriously. So if I show up with all of you in tow, they might cut my head off.”

  “Suppose they do,” Red said. “What happens to us?”

  Winter shot her a look, but Alex only shrugged. “I have no idea. But . . .” She took a deep breath. “It’s possible they might be able to help us get into Elysium. Bobby’s right. There are ways. If I can convince certain idiots to see reason . . .” She shook her head. “It’s a chance. That’s the best I can do.”