Blood of Empire

Chapter 23

Vlora patrolled the hastily assembled Adran camp. Per her orders, they were set up in the hills just off the Cape, so close to the Dynize that she could see the light from their campfires flickering against the low cloud cover to her west. Recklessly close. If the terrain had been flat and visibility good, the Dynize would have been able to open fire with their field guns and abuse Vlora’s camp all through the night – but their choice of rough terrain had limited their own options, which Vlora used against them.

The reason for camping so close was clear – it meant that Vlora could force a battle at first light, keeping the sunrise at her back to blind her enemies. Her men would barely have to roll out of bed to start the battle, meaning they’d be as fresh as possible and ready for a day of bloody line fighting and bayonet charges. The lack of space left the Dynize with little room to practice subterfuge or maneuver.

At least, Vlora hoped those were the fears going through her enemy’s minds. The reality, if they had somehow managed to grasp it, was far more ridiculous.

Vlora managed to keep herself upright due to a combination of coffee, catnaps in the saddle, and no small amount of bloodthirsty energy. By all rights she should be on her back in her tent, looking for ten hours of sleep before she dared a major battle. But she didn’t have that kind of luxury, so she turned all of her anger, grief, and hatred into single-minded eagerness. It was time to meet the Dynize in battle – for real this time – and to show them what it meant to fight an Adran army.

Vlora’s camp was laid out in a half-moon shape. To the west were the newcomers – the Dynize reinforcements of some thirty thousand infantry. To her northwest was General Etepali’s field army. Vlora had made a great show of digging in – fortifications on all sides of her camp – but had set the bulk of her engineers on that northwest side. It was the side that she was most worried about.

Her inspection of the Adran camp was swift, beginning just after nightfall and ending at the general-staff tent. She strolled inside, doing everything in her power to look well rested and eager, despite all the pains wracking her body. The tent was packed with officers from colonel to brigadier general, as well as her three powder mages, Nila and Bo, and Brown Bear Burt.

Conversation ceased when she entered. She returned the offered salutes and let her gaze wander around the space for a few moments. Expressions ranged from eager to steely, and it was in the eyes of the latter she could see that some of her senior officers had begun to get an inkling of how furious she really was.

General Sabastenien was closest at hand. “How is everyone holding up?” she asked him.

“Troops? Or officers?”

“Both,” she answered in a voice loud enough to include everyone in the tent in the conversation.

“Troops are good. The Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth have all spent the last few hours resting per your orders. There’s some trepidation over a night attack. No one likes the risk of accidentally bayoneting their friend because they can’t see a damned thing.”

“Of course. And the officers?”

A brief moment of hesitation. “About the same.”

Vlora met the answer with a small smile and took in the room again with her gaze. “I understand that the order of battle tonight is… unorthodox. There will be confusion. There will be friendly fire. If you have questions or reservations, now is the time to voice them.”

A cacophony erupted from the officers. Vlora quieted them with a raised hand and began addressing the questions one at a time – working through preparations, the plan of attack, and all the way through a dozen different contingencies. The questions seemed to be gently geared toward finding out whether Vlora had gone completely insane or not. By the end of it most of the officers seemed satisfied, though not necessarily pleased with the idea of sending four brigades of infantry on a night attack.

Once the questions were over, she dismissed the officers to see to their brigades, leaving her with the Privileged and powder mages. She addressed the mages. “Have the three of you found your vantage points?”

They nodded. Davd avoided her gaze. He hadn’t said a word to her since she shouted him away yesterday. A part of her knew that she should apologize – he was just the bearer of bad news. But her stubborn streak remained firm, her voice clipped and impersonal.

“You’re sure about leaving you without a mage?” Norrine asked doubtfully.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Vlora responded. “I’m staying on the edge of our camp with a bodyguard. I’ll be fine.”

“But you can’t see in the dark without your sorcery,” Norrine pointed out. “You’ll be blind.”

“No more blind than they are,” Vlora countered. “Besides, once things have started, I won’t be issuing commands. This is one battle I need to just point in the right direction and then cut loose.”

“That’s awfully cavalier,” Bo said, looking at his fingernails.

“Can you think of any alternatives?” she asked. She’d briefed them all earlier on Burt’s message and the mysterious artifact the Dynize had recovered from Yellow Creek. They’d all agreed it was imperative to find it and steal it. “If we sit on our thumbs, we risk letting the Dynize get away with that thing.”

“Why can’t we attack in the morning?” Bo drawled.

“Because they’re expecting just that,” Vlora responded. “Did you not hear the entire question-and-answer session I just had with my officers? Or were you dozing off?”

“He was dozing off,” Nila interjected.

Vlora turned her attention on Nila but held her temper in check. She had the type of relationship with Bo that would allow her to be cross with him but stay friends in the morning. Nila, on the other hand, would take it more personally. “I don’t want the two of you participating in the attack.”

Bo arched an eyebrow.

“It’ll be too chaotic,” Vlora explained. “It’s already going to be bad enough without slinging sorcery around. No, when the signal goes off, I want you to help Colonel Silvia with the lights.”

“You’re going to use us as a couple of giant lanterns?” Nila asked flatly.

“No. I’m also going to put you in the northwest corner of the camp. You’re going to be there when General Etepali counterattacks.”

“When?”

“When,” Vlora confirmed. “I’m not just expecting her to slam into us from the flank, I’m counting on it. You’re going to make sure she gets a face full of shit when she does it.”

“And the other Privileged?” Bo asked.

Vlora jerked her thumb at her powder mages. “They’ll be dead before they can bring their real strength to bear on us.”

The group reluctantly agreed to Vlora’s orders, and she sent them scattering out after her officers. Vlora found herself alone for the first time in days and sank down into one of the chairs in the general-staff tent, rubbing her eyes. Every fiber of her being throbbed with pain and exhaustion. Each time she moved a limb, she could practically hear it screaming in protest. She’d pushed herself plenty harder before, but never without the benefit of her sorcery.

She steeled her resolve. She had no choice. She could not allow anything as petty as human weakness to slow her down.

She closed her eyes briefly, thinking of Olem. She wondered where he’d gone. What he was thinking. Had it been so easy for him to cut loose from her? Had she hurt him so badly? She wished he was here so that she could apologize to him. She wondered if he’d accept the apology – or if there was nothing she could say or do to make things better.

She remained in black contemplations until a messenger arrived to tell her it was time.

The night was tinged with just a sliver of moonlight peeking through the clouds. It wasn’t ideal – a full moon on a cloudless night would have made it easier for her soldiers to keep from shooting one another in the attack – but she intended to use that confusion against the enemy. She allowed a messenger to guide her to the edge of camp while her eyes adjusted to the dark, where she found thousands of her soldiers kneeling quietly. The only sounds were the whispered orders of officers and the creak of leather gear and rattle of the occasional rifle.

If there were any nearby Dynize scouts, they would be mighty suspicious. But her powder mages had already swept the region between her camp and the enemy, putting spies and picketmen to the knife.

Some time passed, and Vlora’s eyes grew more accustomed to the night. A messenger moved cautiously up a broken trail to her position. “General Flint?” a voice asked.

“Here.”

“Everyone has reported in, ma’am.”

“Officers have hooded lanterns and pocket watches?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The messenger thrust one of each into Vlora’s hands. The lantern was covered, betraying only the smallest bit of light in the cracks of its construction. She held the pocket watch up to it. Almost one in the morning. She kept her eyes glued to the hands of the watch, counting down the minutes, then the seconds.

The watch had barely struck one-ten when hushed orders rippled off to either side of her, spreading across the front. A whisper of cloth and jangle of gear followed as the group set off. Vlora stood in the darkness, watching the glint of steel in the moonlight and the occasional glow of an officer’s lantern descend slowly over the ridgeline and then down into the first of two steep, narrow valleys that separated her camp from the Dynize.

Her blood hammered in her ears with the anticipation of it all, and the bleakness of her earlier thoughts felt like an itch that covered her body. She needed action to scratch that itch. But she’d done her part – made the plans, given the orders – and now had nothing to do but wait.

“Pit be damned,” she whispered to her small bodyguard of ten infantry. “I’m not sitting back here for this. Let’s go kill some tin-heads.” She was moving before she’d finished talking, scrambling up and over the ridge while her bodyguard struggled to keep up. She joined the infantry moving down into the first ravine. She moved mechanically, not allowing herself to acknowledge the aches and pains. She was halfway to the top of that third ridge when she realized how bad of an idea this was.

But she had gone too far. She was going in with her soldiers.

They reached the top of that ridge. Vlora almost tripped over a body, throat slit from ear to ear looking like a great black grin in the sallow moonlight. It was a Dynize sentry. She left the corpse behind and lifted her eyes to the Dynize camp.

It was still, but not silent. Soldiers and camp followers moved about in the shadows of their campfires, taking a piss or mending uniforms by firelight or just restless on the day before the battle. She was close enough to hear snores. Someone sang softly nearby. All around her, Adran soldiers crouched at the ready, breath held as they waited practically on top of the enemy.

She felt a momentary pang. This wasn’t going to be a battle. There was no honor or justice in this.

That pang was cut off by a heavy thumping sound. Another followed it, and then another, too close together to count. The air was filled with a distant squeal that grew steadily louder until suddenly a blossom of red light erupted above their heads. It was joined by another, and another, until the sky was full of flares.

A nearby sergeant, a woman’s voice, bellowed in Adran, “Like pigs in a pen, boys. Charge!”

Vlora drew her sword and allowed herself to be swept forward by the sudden rush of the infantry.