Blood of Empire

Chapter 47

Despite everything that had happened – the Midnight Massacre, the arrival of the special envoy, the loss of her sorcery, and her own deeply disruptive emotional swings – Vlora felt herself nervous with excitement. She stood in the stirrups against the protests of her aching body to watch the horizon, and every time the army stopped, she would consult her maps.

They were nearing the Hadshaw River. She recognized this territory now, the flat plains replaced by gentle, rolling hills, with the shadowy specter of the Ironhook Mountains to their west and the true foothills to their north. She and Taniel had swept through here a few months ago on their mad dash to Yellow Creek. All of that felt like a dream now, and it saddened her to remember the sorcery in her veins like lightning, pushing both of them on long after their horses dropped from exhaustion and they were forced to trade with the locals for new ones.

Burt’s arrival at her side in the middle of the afternoon was sudden, if not unexpected. He rode up to her as she examined the horizon, a cigar clamped between his teeth, and studiously examined the same horizon until she lowered her looking glass.

“You know,” he said in greeting, “I recognized you pretty early back at Yellow Creek. I’ve been to Adro and I’ve heard the stories and read the newspapers. But damn me if I’m not a little impressed.”

Vlora turned to him in confusion. “Oh?”

He gestured to the column marching past them. “A real-life Adran field army. As a kid who grew up reading everything he could about Field Marshal Tamas, this tickles the pit out of me.”

“I’ve always thought it much like any other field army,” Vlora said offhandedly, though even as she spoke, she knew she was lying.

“Nah.” Burt waved her off. “I’ve seen field armies. Fatrastans, Kez, Deliv. I’ve even seen the Dynize now. But there’s something different about Adran soldiers. A higher step, a more efficient march and camp. Did you know that on average an Adran army marches roughly three miles farther in a day than the next fastest army in the world?”

Vlora pursed her lips. She was sure she’d heard that somewhere. “Tamas’s reforms during the Gurlish Wars,” she told him. “We were already very good before he came along – we had to be, being the smallest nation in the Nine. But once he was field marshal, everything changed. He gutted the officer corps and began promoting by merit. He started using the Privileged cabal less in his campaigns. Speed and organization replaced the old system bent on gaining glory for noble officers.”

“It shows.” Burt nodded, ashing his cigar. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that we’ve made contact with my irregulars.”

Vlora’s head came up. “We’re that close?”

“Just a few miles from the river,” he confirmed. “My boys are hurting, I’ve got to admit. They’ve kept the Dynize pinned down at the river, but the Dynize outnumber them significantly, and it’s beginning to show. I’m headed to their camp now to get the lay of the land.”

“I’m going with you,” Vlora said, the words leaving her mouth before she’d even considered them. She swore inwardly. She couldn’t make such rash decisions anymore. She needed to be thoughtful, cautious. What if this was a trap? What if the Dynize counterattacked while she was with Burt? “If that’s all right,” she added. “I’ll need to give a few orders and gather a bodyguard.”

“Of course,” Burt said, raising both eyebrows. “We’d be honored to have you.”

“Give me thirty minutes,” she said, turning and riding down the column.

She found General Sabastenien and Bo together on the side of the road, smoking their pipes while they stared off to the south. “Does every damn person in this army smoke something?” she asked as she approached.

“Ma’am.” Sabastenien greeted her with a nod. Bo raised one hand and furiously puffed up a cloud.

“You’re just the two I’m looking for. Anything to report on this business with the Dynize and Palo?”

“Nothing much new,” Sabastenien said unhappily. “There doesn’t seem to be a sorcerous aspect to the kidnapping – simply racial. The Dynize are grabbing all the Palo and sending them to the river. From there we can only assume they’re sending them downriver on keelboats.”

“They’d have to be going by the hundreds.”

“Thousands, more like,” Bo interjected.

“Forced labor?”

“I’m not so sure anymore,” Bo said, holding something out to Vlora. It was a yellowed handbill, decorated with a pair of freckled hands and the words DYNIZE AND PALO: COUSINS UNITED.

Vlora snorted in disbelief. “They’re kidnapping them to turn them into allies?”

“It certainly seems that way,” Sabastenien said. “Of course, we have no idea if all of these promises of equality actually mean anything. But if they do, the Dynize are clearly consolidating what they think of as their people. It could be for labor, for conscription, for census taking… pretty much anything.”

“But why kill the Kressians?”

“Purifying?” Bo suggested. “There was more than one shah during the Gurlish Wars who killed every Kressian that crossed her path. She believed that she had to cleanse the continent before her chosen gods could return again.”

Vlora shivered. “That is terrifying.”

“And it could have far-reaching implications. We haven’t heard of anything similar in the big cities yet, but if the Dynize decide to wipe out every Kressian on the continent, they have enough soldiers to begin at any time.”

“Shit,” Vlora swore. “All right, Sabastenien, I want you to take this theory to Delia. Use it as leverage. Not even she’s bitter enough to let Adran expatriates die by the tens of thousands to spite me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And while you’re there, I want you to sit in on her little summits. She has more representatives coming in today to talk, right?”

“She does,” Bo confirmed. “From the other two armies on our tail.”

“Sit in on those,” she repeated to Sabastenien. “Keep notes. Don’t say anything unless Delia seems like she’s about to promise the world.”

Sabastenien nodded sharply.

“Bo, come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“To meet with Burt’s irregulars.”

Sometime in the last week, Burt and Bo had become the closest of friends. It shouldn’t have surprised Vlora at all, but this was the first time she’d seen them together, and she was pleased that the two of them were laughing, joking, and going on at length as they left the main army and headed toward Burt’s irregulars camp. They were even sharing Burt’s cigars.

Vlora was playing this little visit safe. She’d brought Norrine, Davd, Bo, and three hundred of her cavalry with her. If the Dynize managed to get the drop on them, the tin-heads would be in for a pit of a fight.

The trip was not as long as she’d expected, and they were only about three-quarters of a mile off the main highway when Burt’s messenger led them behind an abandoned plantation building and down into a steep, wooded ravine that separated the property between two of the plantations. The ravine looked innocuous from afar, but once they’d descended a narrow mule track, it seemed to open up and revealed a well-worn camp.

They were challenged by a sentry who, once Burt and his guide had been identified, emerged to join them on the mule track. The young woman saluted Burt and regarded Vlora, Bo, and their escort with wide eyes. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were going for help, boss,” she said.

“I’ve always told you the importance of making friends,” Burt replied, gesturing to Vlora with his cigar.

Vlora scowled at the camp. “Where is everyone?”

“They’re keeping the Dynize pinned down,” the sentry reported. “Those buggers have gotten awfully restless the last couple of days.”

Burt swore. “Did they manage to get that damned pedestal out of the river?”

“They did. Last I heard, they’ve got it into a keelboat and are preparing a flotilla to get them going again. Tomm and the lads are trying to sink it.”

As if to emphasize the point, a distant boom reverberated through the ravine. “That would be them,” the sentry said.

“Grenades,” Burt explained. “Some of my irregulars apprenticed with Little Flerring when we were in Yellow Creek. Made some improvements on the standard Adran army explosives. But they still have to get real damn close to use them.” He swore several more times. “There’s only so much we can do as skirmishers. If we’re close enough to use grenades, the Dynize might be able to wipe us out.” He turned his gaze on Vlora, asking an unspoken question.

Vlora froze. She’d sworn to herself not to make any stupid decisions that put her and her men at unnecessary risk. With a whole field army less than a mile or two behind her, she was about to bring overwhelming force down on the Dynize. No need to endanger anyone. But the Palo Nation irregulars were putting their lives on the line to stop the Dynize. She couldn’t just let them all die.

She nodded at Burt, then the sentry. “Lead on. Let’s go give them a bit of relief.”

The sentry led their group down the ravine for several hundred yards before bringing them up the other side and out into the open again. They crossed yet another plantation, rounded a hill, and were suddenly in clear view of the Hadshaw River Valley.

The river was perhaps three hundred yards down the hillside from them, flowing gently through the plantation fields that ran all the way down to its banks. The banks themselves were held by a Dynize brigade, which was camped on either side of the river and held a wide stone bridge that, unless she was mistaken, marked the crossing of the very highway Vlora’s soldiers were marching down at this moment. The river was packed with keelboats, lashed to the bank and to the bridge.

It took her only a moment to spot their target – the largest of the keelboats, loaded with a rectangular stone roughly the size of one of the covered wagons frontiersmen favored for transportation. There was, at this distance, nothing special about the stone. It lacked ornamentation, and though it was the same color as the godstone they’d cracked back up in Yellow Creek, it didn’t give her the same sense of dread. Perhaps, though, that was simply because she had no sorcery.

The keelboat was directly under the stone bridge, which was the epicenter of a sizable engineering project – cranes, counterweights, stabilizing equipment – that had clearly been used to bring the stone out of the water and plop it onto the keelboat.

Even as Vlora took all of this in, she saw Burt’s irregulars engaged in a fierce firefight on the edge of the river. There were only a few hundred of them compared to the thousands of Dynize, but they had managed to push hard and bottle up a decent number of the enemy on the bridge itself. The irregulars fired and reloaded at an astonishing speed, powder smoke rising from their little group as they locked down the reeling Dynize. Occasionally a grenade would burst among the Dynize line, adding to the confusion.

Even with their momentum, the irregulars couldn’t hope to reach the bridge. The Dynize were on the back foot, but they had the strength in numbers. Vlora reined in, took a deep breath of the powder smoke on the wind, and snapped off orders.

“Captain,” she barked to the commander of her bodyguard, “take your dragoons and relieve the irregulars. Burt, pull your men out of there. My soldiers will provide covering fire.”

“That keelboat is starting to move under the bridge,” Burt warned. “If it gets moving, there’s no stopping it.”

“It’s not going anywhere. Go!” Vlora’s dragoons responded immediately, galloping down the hill at full speed while drawing their carbines. Burt urged his own horse after them. “Do we need to get you closer to sink that keelboat?” Vlora asked Bo.

Bo wiggled his fingers like a father about to show his child a trick, then slipped on both of his gloves, tugging at the hems theatrically. “Not even a little. And I’ll do better than sink it.”

For the faintest breath of a moment, Vlora thought that she felt something. It might have been a cold breeze, or it might have been muscle memory from watching so much sorcery, but when Bo’s fingers began to twitch, she could have sworn that a tickle went up between her shoulder blades. She drew out her looking glass and turned it on the keelboat.

“Do you have orders for us?” Norrine asked. Both she and Davd had dismounted and prepared their rifles.

“Wait,” Vlora said, watching carefully. Almost a minute passed, and she ignored the shouting of her dragoons and the sudden pop of carbine fire as they reached the irregulars. The keelboat emerged from beneath the bridge, but instead of gaining momentum, it began to slow again. Within seconds it had stopped entirely, and the Dynize soldiers on board frantically pushed and shoved with their poles to try to get it moving again. It took her another moment to see the band of ice forming around the base of the keelboat. The ice began to spread, locking the keelboat in place. “All right,” she told Norrine, “ignore their officers. Clear that keelboat of life. I want the three of you to keep it locked up.”

It was almost fifteen minutes before Burt returned with his irregulars and Vlora’s dragoons. The former were badly mauled, hauling as many wounded and dead along with them as they had still walking. The latter had suffered light casualties, but their blood was obviously up as their captain requested permission to continue his skirmish with the Dynize.

“Denied,” Vlora replied, listening to Davd’s rifle bark. A Dynize soldier attempting to board the big keelboat tumbled into the water. The Dynize brigade had crossed over to this side of the river and finally drawn up into lines. They waffled on the bank, as if undecided on whether they should charge Vlora’s small group or remain to defend their ward. Vlora rummaged in her saddlebags until she found a white handkerchief, and handed it over to the captain. “Put this on the end of your sword. I want you to let the enemy general know that I will give him generous terms to surrender if he orders his men to throw down their muskets immediately.”

Vlora sat back and waited while the captain headed back down the hill with a few companions. A group emerged from the Dynize lines, and the two envoys began their meeting.

While she waited, the head of Vlora’s army crested the road directly behind her. She was soon joined by General Sabastenien and Nila. Sabastenien snapped a sharp salute. “We heard fighting and brought the cavalry, ma’am.”

“Well done.” She gestured to the meeting below them. “Hopefully they won’t be necessary, but…”

She trailed off as the meeting adjourned, far quicker than she would have expected. The captain returned with his report.

“They won’t surrender.”

“They saw that we have more cavalry alone than they have soldiers?”

“They did. The general…”

“Doesn’t trust me?” Vlora guessed.

“Not exactly,” the captain replied. “I got the impression that he’s more scared of whoever is giving him orders back in Landfall than he is of you.”

“Damned fools,” Vlora muttered. “All right. We do this the hard way. Nila, burn out the front lines. Don’t let your fire hit the keelboats, I want those intact. Sabastenien, I want you to ride down whatever hasn’t burned. Send a thousand dragoons downriver to find a ford. I want them to flank the Dynize and kill or capture everyone who tries to run.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Nila tugged at the cuff of her sleeves, frowning down toward the enemy. “You don’t want me to give them a warning shot?”

“They’ve had their warning. The Dynize general is more scared of Ka-Sedial than he is of dying by our hand. Besides, I want that stone secured by nightfall. We’ve got three enemy field armies coming up behind us and I don’t want anything left of this rabble by the time we put our back to the river. Nothing left to do but get to it. Oh, and Sabastenien?”

“Yes?”

“If they throw down their weapons, I want them spared.”

“Better for our own morale,” he agreed, switching the reins from one hand to the other and drawing his sword and calling out to his officers. The column of cavalry began to split up, forming into groups and spreading out across the valley. Vlora forced herself to turn and watch the coming battle.