Blood of Empire

Chapter 4

Vlora spent the day watching the heavy bombardment of Lower Blackguard. Throughout the morning and afternoon, more gun crews trickled in from the various brigades. They flattened sections of the hillside, brought in their guns and artillery, and joined Colonel Silvia in the relentless attack.

Word must have spread that Vlora had emerged from her tent, because a steady stream of messengers and well-wishing officers had cropped up by noon. She listened to their platitudes and reports, taking them all in with the same cool nod, and sat in her camp chair with her pitted sword across her lap. It felt good to let the sun play on her face after so long cooped up, and the report of the guns gave her a feeling of warmth that bordered on frightening.

The first white flag emerged from Lower Blackguard at about two in the afternoon. Vlora could tell by the lacquered breastplate that it was an officer, and the woman didn’t make it halfway to Vlora’s lines before she fell to a gunshot from one of Vlora’s mages. The second white flag came out an hour later and met the same fate.

Just after that second one died, Vlora spotted Nila picking her way through the camp. The Privileged approached the artillery battery, where she spoke with Silvia and several of the gun crews, but did not add her sorcery to the bombardment. Vlora watched her cautiously, wondering how long it would take for Nila to approach and question her methods.

“You’re shooting their messengers before they can surrender,” a voice noted.

Vlora started and cursed under her breath. She’d been so focused on Nila that she hadn’t heard Bo approach from behind. He had a collapsible camp chair over one shoulder and unfolded it, plopping down beside Vlora and letting out a pleased sigh as he unhooked his false leg and began to fiddle with the ankle mechanism.

“I swear that thing only makes noise when you want it to,” Vlora accused.

Bo smiled but didn’t look up from his leg. “You’re punishing them,” he said with a nod across the valley.

“If you want to call it that, sure,” Vlora responded. She felt suddenly surly, uninterested in listening to any sort of reproach from anyone – even the adopted brother who’d helped save her life. She began preparing for an argument, cataloging Bo’s past atrocities, ready to accuse the Privileged of doing anything and everything for his own ends.

She was surprised when he simply gave a small shrug. “Could be useful. But is it a great idea to shoot messengers under a white flag?”

She opened her mouth, closed it, and felt that ugly anger stir in her belly. “They would do the same to me without hesitation.”

“You’re certain of that?” Bo asked.

“Yes.”

“Ah.” Bo finally worked a bit of grit out of the ankle mechanism of his false leg and hooked it back to his knee. “Then, carry on!”

“I’m glad you approve.”

Bo glanced across the valley, but he had that distant look in his eyes as if he had already moved on to other, more important thoughts. Vlora tried to read anything deeper from his expression but was unsuccessful. She sighed and looked over her shoulder to where Davd sat on the hillside some ten feet behind her – far enough to give her some room but close enough to come quickly if needed. Davd was smoking a cigarette, and Vlora wondered when he had started. She opened her mouth to ask Bo if he’d seen Olem, only to remember that Olem was still gone. His absence caused her to ache as badly as did the rest of her body. She wished he had not left.

“What’s the state of Fatrasta between here and Landfall?” Bo asked.

Vlora pulled her eyes away from the bombardment. “You mean you’ve been here for over a month and you don’t have your spy network in place? I assumed you’d know everything before I did.”

“Don’t be silly. I know most things before you do, not everything. But your soldiers are particularly loyal right now, what with their general sacrificing herself for their comrades and then rising from the ashes. It’s hard to get much out of them.”

Vlora snorted. “That’s reassuring.” She let her gaze linger on a group of Adran privates watching her from a distance of about twenty yards. She couldn’t read their faces, not without a powder trance, but something about them left her unsettled. She tried to put them out of her mind and leaned forward in her chair, using her sword to scratch a bit of bare earth out of the grassland and then drawing in it. “Here’s the coast,” she said, making a line. “Here’s us, and here’s Landfall.” They’d started out at the Crease, about three hundred miles north of Landfall. The army had managed to cover roughly half of that distance while Vlora recuperated.

She stabbed another dot into the ground. “The Adran fleet is shadowing our flank, dealing with any Dynize ships so that nothing lands behind us and making sure we’re well supplied.”

“And the enemy?” Bo asked.

“Field armies here, here, and here,” Vlora answered. “All Dynize. The Fatrastans have been beaten badly, but they’re not out of the fight. Rumor has it they’ve got at least four hundred thousand men fielded down here.” She drew a circle around the area to the northwest of Landfall. “Mostly conscripts. They’re better armed than the Dynize, but they don’t have the discipline or sorcery. Lindet’s a wily one, though, so I won’t count her beat until I see her head on a spike.”

“Is that what you intend to do with her?” Bo asked.

Vlora’s stomach churned. “I’ll deal with her when I have to. Regardless, we won’t know about the true state of the Fatrastan military until we get around the south end of the Ironhook Mountains. The Dynize field armies are our immediate problem, particularly…” She jabbed at one of the spots she’d poked in the dirt. “That one there.” She drew a small horn in the dirt, jutting out from the coast, on which was perched the city of New Adopest. Her last intelligence told her that the city was under siege by a Dynize army. “We’ll lose valuable time if we go out of our way to confront them, but if we don’t, we’ll leave forty thousand infantry at our rear.”

Bo gave the map a cursory glance and leaned back in his camp chair. “Hm.”

It took Vlora a moment to register how little interest he actually had in what she’d just explained, and another to realize why. “You already knew all that, didn’t you?”

“You sound just like him, you know.”

“Who?” she demanded.

Bo rummaged in his pockets until he produced his comically oversized pipe and a match. He didn’t answer until he’d puffed it to life. “Tamas.”

A little tickle went up Vlora’s spine. She snorted the thought away. “I sound like any competent general, you mean?” She gestured at the dirty map. “You already knew all this.”

“Of course.”

“Then why the pit did you make me explain it?”

Bo smirked.

“Well?”

“Just making sure you still have it.”

Vlora was genuinely angry now. She climbed to her feet, leveraging herself up with her sword. “Why the pit wouldn’t I have it? Just because I’m practically an invalid doesn’t mean I can’t think anymore. I lost my sorcery, not my brain!” The last few words tumbled out far louder than she’d meant them to, and she immediately looked around to see who could have heard them. Only Davd was close enough, and he was studiously looking elsewhere.

She knuckled her back, pulling at some half-healed muscle in her arm in the process. Being angry, she decided, hurt like the pit. “Damn you,” she said to Bo.

He shrugged. “I handed an army to a woman who, for the last few weeks, couldn’t even move without help. I needed to be sure I didn’t make a mistake.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” she spat.

Bo’s eyes narrowed, and she saw his mask of indifference split momentarily. “Don’t confuse my brotherly love for you for stupidity. I wouldn’t have handed you this army in the first place if I didn’t think you would be able to lead it.”

“Oh, stop it.” Vlora felt her anger wane. “This army was meant for Taniel. Don’t tell me you weren’t surprised to hear that he didn’t actually want to lead it.”

Bo rolled his eyes and settled back in his chair, puffing steadily on his pipe. The tobacco was pleasant, with a distinct cherry scent – not nearly as harsh as Olem’s cigarettes. Vlora pulled back into herself, nostrils full of smoke, ears filled with the report of artillery, eye on Lower Blackguard, and wondered when Olem would return.

A little after five o’clock, a lone soldier with a plain steel breastplate left the Dynize camp, walking slowly with hands held in the air, shouting something that was lost beneath the din of the bombardment. He collapsed when he reached the Adran lines.

A few minutes later, a messenger approached Vlora. The young woman snapped a salute. “General Flint, ma’am, there’s a Dynize soldier here offering unconditional surrender.”

“A common soldier?” Vlora asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I was told your orders were to accept surrender only from a sergeant or infantryman.”

That ugly thing writhing in her belly almost put words in her mouth, and Vlora had to bite her tongue hard to resist the urge to order the bombardment to go on all night. “Right. I did. Tell Colonel Silvia to cease fire. Order the Third to march down and take possession of Lower Blackguard. I want a full report of the town and the Dynize prisoners by nightfall. Dismissed.”

The messenger had been gone for a few minutes before Bo cleared his throat. “You almost continued the bombardment, didn’t you? I could see it in your eyes.”

“Shut up,” Vlora snapped, getting to her feet. She could feel Bo’s gaze on her back as she slowly made her way back to her tent, retrieving Tamas’s journal before heading to the general-staff headquarters. The pain of making herself walk such a distance was dragging at her by the time she reached the command tent, and she had to straighten her shoulders and adjust her collar before she nodded to Davd to throw the tent flap open.

As she stepped inside, the chatter of discussion died within moments. All eyes turned toward her. The big tent was full of officers and their aides – brigadier generals, colonels, majors. Most of them had already swung by earlier in the day to offer their platitudes, but they still seemed shocked to see her here.

“Good afternoon,” she said softly. She looked around to see if the commander of the Third was present, and was glad when he wasn’t. She wanted him to oversee the surrender of the Dynize camp personally. “I know many of you are waiting for orders,” she continued, “and that you’re all curious what we’re doing on foreign soil in the middle of a war that isn’t ours.

“Rumors may have reached you about the artifact of great power that the Dynize possess and that the Fatrastans wish to steal back. The rumors are true. I have seen the artifact myself, and we are in possession of the capstone of its counterpart. A third artifact is still unaccounted for. According to our intelligence, if the Dynize leader is able to possess all three of these so-called godstones, he will have the sorcerous ability to make himself or his emperor into a new god.

“I will tell you right now: We are not here to win a war for either the Dynize or the Fatrastans. We are here to take the Landfall godstone from our enemies and destroy it, after which we will withdraw and these sons of bitches can kill each other to their hearts’ content. Understood?”

There was a round of nods. One of the colonels in the back raised a hand. Vlora ignored it.

“Thank you all for coming so far on the word – and krana – of Magus Borbador.” She allowed herself a smirk, and gave a moment for the few chuckles to die down. “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to lead you all in battle once again. The Dynize in Lower Blackguard have surrendered. We’re finished here, and I’m simply waiting on my scouts before I plot our next move. I’d like to review the troops in an hour, if you please. That is all.”

Vlora ignored a storm of questions as she cut through the middle of the room and searched for a seat in the far corner, where she sank down in relief and opened Tamas’s journal, reading with ears deaf to the rest of the world. Only when a messenger approached, informing her that the troops were assembled, did she close the journal and return to her feet, limping along with the book tucked under her arm.

She stepped outside and her breath immediately caught in her throat.

The valley below the command tent was filled with soldiers standing at attention in perfect, still silence. Nearly forty thousand sets of eyes stared directly at her, unblinking, unwavering. She couldn’t help but wonder what Bo had promised these men and women to get them to come all the way across the ocean and leap into a war, and whether her reputation had swayed any of them to come.

She dismissed the thought immediately. Bo must have promised them a fortune. He certainly had the money.

Distantly, a voice called out, “Field Army, salute!”

There was booming answer of “Hut!” and the snap of forty thousand arms. Vlora watched in awe, trying to remember if she’d ever been in command of so many troops at once.

“Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” Bo asked, emerging from behind the command tent.

Vlora managed a nod.

“You know, technically you should be addressed as Field Marshal.”

Vlora considered it. She fought momentarily with her terrible subconscious, which rather liked the sound of Field Marshal Flint. “ ‘General’ will do for now,” she told Bo. She stepped past him, walking the few dozen paces to where the general staff stood assembled nearby. She was barely able to tear her eyes off the army before her as she approached, and a line from Tamas’s journal struck her.

With an Adran Field Army, he’d written during the Gurlish Wars, if it was stripped of buffoons and properly supplied, I could conquer the world.

She thought, for that moment, that she felt the thrill that must have compelled him to such a conjecture. “My friends,” she finally said to the general staff, “my voice is not up to a speech, but please pass on to your soldiers that this is the finest army I’ve ever seen.” She lifted her head just as a rider crested the top of the hill. The rider paused, clearly taken by what he saw, but Vlora lifted an arm and waved him closer.

It was one of her scouts. The man swung from his horse by the command tent and approached with a sort of reverence, saluting Vlora and then the general staff. “What news?” Vlora asked. “Speak up so the generals can hear you.”

“I come from the southeast,” the scout reported. “With word from New Adopest.”

“And how does it look?”

“They’re still under siege by the Dynize. They beg for aid from Lindet, but none of the Fatrastan armies have been able to break north. The messengers I met claim that the city won’t last out the week.”

Vlora glanced at the general staff, knowing what must be going through their heads. She’d already told them that they weren’t here to take sides, but Fatrastans were almost entirely Kressian, with an enormous population of emigrated Adrans. Some of the general staff probably had friends or relatives in New Adopest. It had, after all, been settled by their ancestors.

Vlora needed to teach a lesson – a lesson to her officers, to the Fatrastans, and to the Dynize. She raised her voice. “Send orders to the fleet. They’re to brush aside the Dynize sea blockade, but I don’t want them to make contact with the city.”

“And us?” one of the brigadier generals asked.

“Most of these men haven’t seen blood since the Kez Civil War. I don’t want to reach Landfall with rusty troops. Let’s go give them some practice.”