Blood of Empire

Chapter 17

The day after General Etepali’s deception, Vlora had turned her entire army around, crossed to the south side of the New Ad, and was marching double-time in pursuit of the slippery Dynize Army. She could feel an energy about her soldiers – a feeling of being cheated out of a battle, an eagerness to match bayonets with the Dynize that she herself shared. Rumors swirled that the Dynize were afraid of Vlora, and that seemed to put the soldiers in good spirits. From the gossip she heard through Bo’s informants in her own army, they considered Landfall – and the godstone – already won.

She knew that the morale of a marching army was a fickle thing, but she also knew better than to squander it while it lasted.

Her own mind dragged, and her body was full of aches and pains that she couldn’t get rid of. She’d learned very quickly that despite her powder blindness, liquor still had very little effect on her senses – it took several bottles of wine to feel even slightly woozy. A small part of her held out hope that this was a sign that the condition was not permanent. A much larger part of her spat with fury that there was nothing to take the edge off her anguish.

She hid all of it behind a carefully constructed mask that allowed her to face her soldiers without tears in her eyes. She turned that mask on Borbador when he approached her late in the afternoon while she watched her men. After two hard days of quick marching they were beginning to flag.

“How are you holding up?” he asked, letting his horse fall in beside hers.

“Alive,” she responded.

“Well, that’s a relief.” He didn’t press the question. “Odd thing to ask, but are you getting proper reports from your officers?”

Vlora shook off her ennui and gave him a sharp glance. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Just curious. Everyone seems to be stepping pretty softly around you.”

“I don’t know,” she said with frustration. “Olem usually acts as a liaison between me and… well, most everyone else.”

“He’s not here.”

“Yes, I know.” She didn’t hold back the anger she felt at the statement. Olem should be here. He was her second-in-command. Her friend and lover. She needed him. “Any other bits of wisdom you care to share with me?”

The venom in her voice washed off Bo like water over a turtle’s shell. “Not wisdom,” he replied. “Just information. You heard the New Adopest mayor has been dogging us since last night?”

“We’re thirty miles from New Adopest.”

“Exactly. He’s been chasing us, trying to get an audience with you.”

“Nobody told me.”

“Would it matter?”

“How?”

“Would you see him?”

Vlora waved off the question. “No.”

“Sure. But you probably should know that sort of thing anyway.” Bo chewed on his lip. “Look, I’m not going to fill in as a liaison for you and everyone else like Olem, but I am going to make sure you get a full report of important things.”

“How is the New Adopest mayor important?”

“He’s the mayor of a major city that your fleet is in the process of sacking.”

“I’m not sacking it. I’m requisitioning from it.”

“Against their will.”

“That’s how requisitioning often works.”

Bo rolled his eyes. “It’s near enough the same thing in their eyes, and don’t pretend like you don’t know it. They were on the edge of capitulating when we arrived. Few stores, ammunition and medical supplies low. We’re taking what little they have left.”

Vlora wrestled with the idea, trying to summon that persistent fury to quash all sympathy. Was she doing the right thing? Winters in Fatrasta were practically balmy compared to Adro, but they were on the cusp of it, which meant a long time until another harvest. Was she leaving those people to starve if the war didn’t break? She hardened her heart, staving off the questions swirling in her mind. She was trying to save the world from another god. Sacrifices must be made.

“Since when did your heart start bleeding?” she shot at Bo.

“This isn’t bleeding-heart shit,” Bo retorted. “This is commanding-officer shit. You need to know these things and consider them with every decision. I’m pretty sure we both learned that from the same person.”

Vlora’s hand went protectively to her saddlebags, where Tamas’s journal was close at hand. “Don’t do that,” she said quietly.

Bo glared hard for a few moments before relenting. “Sorry.”

They rode in silence for some time before Vlora ran a hand through her sweaty hair and called to a messenger. “Word for the fleet,” she told the boy. “Tell them to go light on the requisitioning. Leave the city grain – but take all the munitions we can get our hands on.”

The boy snapped a salute and was off.

She glanced at Bo, who was studying his saddle horn. He’d said his piece. She’d relented a little. Life would go on. “Davd,” she called over her shoulder.

The powder mage left his casual guardsman’s position a few dozen paces behind them and rode up to join them. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Have we heard from Olem?”

Davd went pale. “No, ma’am.”

Vlora scowled at the reaction. “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

Davd looked to Bo, but Bo himself seemed surprised by the answer. “I mean we haven’t heard from Colonel Olem, ma’am.”

“We’ve been in steady contact with the fleet ever since we got onto the Cape. He accompanied the godstone capstone and our wounded weeks ago. But we haven’t heard from him?”

Davd was visibly sweating now. It made no sense. Had something happened to Olem? Were they hiding it from her? The whole thought was inconceivable. “Davd,” she said sharply. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, ma’am. We just haven’t heard from him.”

Bo nudged his horse back, then around to the other side of Davd. “Probably best if you just come out and say whatever it is you have to say,” he said gently.

Davd looked over his shoulder, swallowed, and finally met Vlora’s eyes. He was no coward – she knew that from all the fighting they’d gone through together – but he was still young and he’d always gotten nervous before her moods. He cleared his throat. “Olem dropped the capstone off to our fleet several weeks ago,” he said.

“And?”

“And the wounded.”

Vlora was getting impatient. “And where is he?” she hissed.

“No one knows.” Davd looked away again. “He left his uniforms with his travel chest on one of the ships, took a horse, and disappeared. The last time anyone saw him, he was riding west. They thought he was coming back to join us. We scoured the countryside for him – no sign of him or his horse.”

Vlora couldn’t comprehend what Davd was saying. “He left?” she asked dully.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did he say anything? Tell anyone where he was going?”

“No, ma’am.”

Vlora could see on both Bo’s and Davd’s faces that there was more to the story – Davd because he knew it, and Bo because he’d figured it out. She wanted to lean across and shake answers out of them both, but there was a sudden fear in the pit of her stomach. Did she want those answers? This sounded like Olem had abandoned his commission. He would never. She refused to believe it.

“What happened to Olem?” she asked Davd, trying – and failing – to keep her voice steady.

Davd looked like he wanted to be swallowed up by the earth.

“Does everyone else know?” Vlora demanded. “Is this some joke among the army? Some secret to keep from the general?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then, what is it?”

“I can’t know for sure, ma’am.”

“Guess.”

Davd looked around one more time before he took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “The colonel was furious after the Crease, ma’am. I’ve never seen him so angry. He broke an infantryman’s arm, knocked the teeth out of another. It took eight men to restrain him when he found out that you were back there holding the Crease on your own.”

The sensation in Vlora’s stomach grew more defined. Her heart hammered in her chest.

“The only thing that brought him back to his senses was the arrival of the Adran Army. Bo and Nila swore to him that they’d do everything in their power to save you, but I think the damage had been done by then. He wouldn’t even go with them to help. He just fell into a silent fury. It was scarier than when he was breaking arms. He stuck around just long enough to find out that you’d pull through. Then he took the wounded and the capstone to the fleet.”

Vlora ran through a thousand rationales in her head, trying to stave off the rising panic. “Damage?” she echoed, her own voice sounding ghostly. “What damage was done?”

“You betrayed him, ma’am.” Davd met her eyes this time. He was dead serious.

The only thing Vlora had to curb her panic was fury. She let it loose, let it catch her under the arms and lift her into the air. “Leave,” she whispered.

“You had him attacked and trundled off like a sack of potatoes,” Davd went on, his voice getting stronger. “You’re the woman he loves and you wouldn’t even let him die by your side. It was too much for him. He snapped.”

“You should go now,” Vlora said louder.

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Davd said.

“Get out of my sight!” The words tore themselves from Vlora’s throat, and she found herself standing in her stirrups, sword half-drawn. Davd kneed his horse and leapt forward, tearing off to join the column. She barely noticed him going, staring at the pommel of her sword. She jerked unnecessarily hard on the reins, brought her horse to a stop, and turned away from Bo and the column and anyone else who might be able to see her face.

Olem was gone. How could any of this be worth it anymore?