Sins of Empire

Chapter 58

Styke grunted as his lance smashed through the breastplate of a Dynize soldier and ripped out the back of the soldier’s uniform, dripping blood and gore. He leaned into the lance, trying to drag it free of the soldier’s body, only for the corpse to catch on the belt of another Dynize. Styke let go of the lance with a frustrated shout so that the weight of it wouldn’t knock him out of the saddle.

Beside him, Ibana’s lance took a Dynize musketman through the eye, tearing the side of his head clean off, and then the Dynize front line was under their hooves.

The vanguard of the Mad Lancers spread out on the road, the thunder of their hooves almost drowning out the screams of men and horses at the impact of lances against bayonet-ready muskets. They swept forward, mowing down every Dynize that would not leap out of their way, while the Riflejack cuirassiers came on slowly behind, forming a fan that cleared the sides of the road of anyone who’d managed to escape the lancers’ charge.

Styke drew up on a knoll, trying – but unable – to get a good look at the beach several hundred yards to their left. A thick haze of smoke rose above the sand, and the sound of muskets and carbines exchanging fire drifted over the dunes.

He had a much better view of the road heading toward Landfall, where several regiments of Dynize soldiers had fallen into line and advanced swiftly into withering fire from the garrison.

“Do they even see us?” Ibana asked, reining in beside him.

“They see us,” Styke confirmed, watching as messengers rushed between officers behind the Dynize lines. A few faces glanced back toward him and his lancers. “They just don’t care.”

“We’ve got cavalry coming up behind them, and they don’t have anyone on horseback.” Ibana leapt from her own horse, picking up a Dynize musket and giving it a quick examination. “These bayonets are not long enough to form an effective pike line against us.”

“They’re going to try and break the garrison before we can reach them.”

Ibana stood on her tiptoes to look toward Landfall. “The garrison has gotten reinforcements. They outnumber the Dynize.”

“And I’ll give you ten-to-one that the Dynize troops are far better trained than the Landfall garrison. How thick are those breastplates?”

Ibana knocked the butt of the musket she held against the breastplate of a fallen Dynize, then turned it around and ran the bayonet through his neck. “Thick,” she reported. “The angle on the front gives them a good chance of deflecting a musket ball at anything but close range.”

“Shit.” Styke stood in his stirrups, looking toward the beach. “You notice anything about these assholes?”

“Other than the fact we’re outnumbered?” Ibana asked.

“Yeah, other than that. They don’t give a shit. They’re not running.” He turned his horse around and rode back through the carnage to where he’d left his lance in the chest of a Dynize soldier. He dismounted, ripping his lance free, then climbed back into the saddle and rejoined Ibana. “Give the signal to re-form,” he said, sweeping his eyes across the Dynize they’d just crushed. “We surprised two companies and they didn’t so much as waver.”

“They jumped out of our way,” Ibana said, getting back in her saddle.

“Yeah, but they didn’t break. What kind of infantry doesn’t break in front of a surprise charge by twice their number in enemy cavalry?”

“Stupid ones?” Ibana suggested.

A nearby Riflejack cuirassier looked up from wrapping his blood-soaked arm. “Sir, infantry that doesn’t break wins the day.”

“Not all the time,” Ibana said.

“But enough,” Styke responded. He lifted his nose to the air, breathing in deep of powder smoke, getting hints of Privileged and powder mage sorcery like a vintner might test wine. There was something else beneath the more obvious scents, but it was so subtle that his Knack was at a loss to identify the source.

“That’s the idea,” the cuirassier confirmed. “Riflejacks don’t break. That’s how we win. It was the whole backbone of Field Marshal Tamas’s tactics.”

Styke could still hear fighting on the beach, and realized that the dragoons might have bitten off more than they could chew. Something was off about this Dynize army, and it wasn’t just their sudden appearance. He felt the urgent need to get to Lady Flint and find out what was happening at the rest of the battle.

“All right,” Styke said, “the garrison is on their own. Lancers! Carbines at the ready! Sweep down onto the beach and help our dragoons – once we clear the sand, we charge into the rear of the Dynize and keep going toward Landfall.”

“What do you mean they’re not running?” Vlora demanded.

“I mean they’re not running,” Buden slurred in Kez, next to impossible to understand with his half tongue.

Vlora stood up, looking out over the walls of the fort and tracking a Privileged with the sights of her rifle. He was half a mile out, hands raised as he directed sorcery toward the point of the bay where Olem, the garrison, and the Riflejacks fought to hold the shore against the longboats continuously landing in the shallows. She squeezed her trigger, detonating two extra powder charges with her mind and pushing them behind the bullet, willing it to fly longer and farther than any normal flintlock shot.

The bullet soared in a perfect arc, helped by the nudge of her sorcery, until it slammed into the Privileged’s chest, knocking him into the foaming ocean.

She lowered her rifle and turned her attention toward the point of the bay. “They don’t have anywhere to run,” she said.

“No shit,” Buden replied, thrusting one finger forward in a frustrated motion. “But a beach landing is the pit for anyone. Some of them should be running back into the water out of panic. Do you see a single soul turning around?”

Vlora watched as a longboat disgorged all but a handful of rowers, who immediately began heading back to the distant ships. The soldiers splashed through the shallows, muskets held over their heads, ignoring the continuous fire of Olem’s soldiers with their hold on the beach. They reached dry sand and immediately fell to their knees, producing short, steel shovels from their packs and heaping up fortification in moments.

“They’re not panicking,” Vlora said.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Vlora turned her head toward the ocean, reaching out tentatively with her senses. The Else felt… confused. There were traces of sorcery everywhere from the attacking Privileged, not unlike streamers left behind by rockets. She could also feel the protective sorcery of the fort and… something else. It was subtle, like the barest hint of a foreign spice on a familiar meal.

She didn’t know what it was, and that lack of knowledge terrified her.

There was a sudden clamor in the muster yard below, and a few moments later a familiar form appeared on the top of the wall, shaking off the two privates trying to tell him to keep his head down. Vlora didn’t think anything could have made her smile in the middle of this, but somehow the sight of Vallencian did.

“Good afternoon, Lady Flint!” the Ice Baron boomed above the cannon fire.

“Vallencian, I don’t think this is a good time.”

He pulled himself up, standing well above the protection of the fort’s walls, eyes a little wild from the cannon fire but too proud to admit it. “Nonsense! Lady Flint, I wanted to personally tell you that I’ve forgiven you for what you did to Mama Palo.”

Vlora closed her eyes, resisting the urge to order her men to drag him bodily down into the safety of the fort. “Thank you, Vallencian,” she said through gritted teeth. “I truly appreciate it. We are, however, fighting a battle here.”

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Vallencian said, flinching as a cannonball smashed into the base of the fort a few dozen yards away and sent shattered bits of iron flying. A rifleman dropped his weapon, clutching his throat as he tried to scream through a mouthful of blood.

“It’s bad, Vallencian,” Vlora said firmly. “And it’s not safe. You should leave. Now.”

Vallencian suddenly lurched toward her, grabbing her by the shoulders. “I have misjudged you, Lady Flint. I was evacuating my people from the city when I saw the uniforms of your men down here, manning the guns, and I could not leave you behind. Tell me what I can do to help with the defense.”

“Nothing,” Vlora said, waving him off desperately. She didn’t have time for this. “Get out of here. Get your people to safety. I think we can hold the beaches, but I don’t know how persistent the Dynize are going to be.”

“The tide is going out,” Vallencian noted.

“So?”

“So, that means that the longboats will have a harder time reaching shore.”

“Small gifts,” Vlora responded. Tide or no, the Dynize were still gaining ground.

“They have a beachhead,” Buden said, garbling the last word so badly she almost didn’t understand him.

“Vallencian, you are a good man. The best thing you can do is help evacuate your people and get safely out of the city. Get him out of here!” Vlora ordered her soldiers, who pulled Vallencian forcefully from the wall amid a torrent of protests. She couldn’t spare Vallencian another thought. Buden was right. The point of the bay was covered in corpses floating in the shallows, more than she could count, but the Dynize seemed impervious to the deaths of their friends. They continued to leap from their longboats and now had a short fortification of sand a hundred yards long from which to return fire on Olem’s troops.

“Buden,” she said, “take one of the guns. Give Olem some support.” She looked over her shoulder, eyes searching the smoldering wreckage on the eastern face of the plateau. “Where are our reinforcements?” she murmured. “Where are Lindet’s Blackhats? We need everything we can get down here.”

She continued to shoot at the Dynize Privileged, forced to get more creative with each shot as they formed hardened barriers of air to protect themselves. She overshot one Privileged, then angled the bullet down with the force of her mind, giving herself a headache in the process. Another she strengthened with half a kit’s worth of powder, using brute strength to punch through the sorcerous shield, the Privileged, and four men behind him.

The roar of a cannon, much louder than normal, snapped her head around. Buden stood beside one of the big fort guns, steadying himself against one of the gunner crew, eyes narrowed and focused on the point of the bay. Vlora tracked the curve of the cannonball with her advanced senses, feeling the power that Buden had put behind it, and watched as it curved violently around the Dynize sand fortifications and then skipped along the ground, bowling through at least fifty men crouched just out of the waterline.

The Dynize scrambled to search for the source of the cannon fire, but even that didn’t seem to deter them. More men landed and charged forward to take the places of their dead comrades.

“They should have run forever ago!” a nearby major shouted above the din, his looking glass focused on the point of the bay. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Why won’t they break?”

Vlora shook her head and reloaded her rifle as a messenger reached the top of the fort wall and sprinted straight toward her.

“What news from Olem?” Vlora asked.

The messenger was pale, and for a moment Vlora feared the worst. But he gasped for breath and then said quickly, “I’m not sure about the colonel, ma’am. I just came from the capitol building!”

“Good! Where’s our damned supplies and reinforcements?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the pit is that supposed to mean?” Vlora asked, snatching him by the collar of his jacket. “Where’s the Blackhats Lindet promised me?”

“There’s no one!”

Vlora released her grip, staggering back, and the messenger continued. “I’ve looked everywhere. The capitol building is all but abandoned, and I haven’t seen a single Blackhat except from a distance. It’s like they were never even there.”

Vlora blinked in disbelief, feeling shell-shocked. Cannons roared around her, sorcery sputtering above the fort, her nostrils so thick with powder smoke that she thought the trance might overwhelm her. But none of that affected her like this news. Lindet had run. She’d sent Vlora down here to fight the Dynize, and she’d fled without so much as a warning.

“We’ve been betrayed,” she whispered.

“What was that, ma’am?”

She grabbed the messenger by the shirt again, pulling him close to shout in his ear. “Colonel Olem is on the point of the bay. Tell him Lindet has betrayed us and the Blackhats won’t be providing relief.” She looked over the wall, seeing longboats rounding the breakers just a few hundred yards away. They’d reach the fort within minutes, or land and flank Olem.

“What do we do?” the messenger asked, a note of panic in his voice.

Vlora pushed him back, hating herself for fighting the urge to order a retreat. This wasn’t her fight. These weren’t her people or her city. “We do what we’ve been paid to do. We protect the city. Tell Olem… Tell him to hold the point of the bay.”