Sins of Empire

Chapter 63

Vlora used her sorcery to ignite a tiny bit of powder almost a mile away. It detonated, and chain reaction was almost instantaneous as the rest of the powder in the ship of the line’s magazine went up with it, tearing the ship in half and hurling the entire mast so far through the air that it almost struck dry land.

The kickback was also instantaneous. Vlora felt it deep in her bones, the force of the explosion like a wine barrel knocking her down a flight of stairs. She nearly fell from her perch on the edge of the wall, fingers gripping the stone with all the strength she could manage. Her head pounded, the wound in her leg, a graze on her shoulder, and a dozen other scrapes and bruises threatening to break through her powder trance as she was overwhelmed with the sensations thrown at her from every direction.

A hook suddenly clattered over the wall immediately beside her, and she spared a glance to find a longboat at the base of the fort, a Dynize infantryman already a quarter of the way up the rope by the time she could pull her knife and cut it. There was a startled scream, then a splash, and three Riflejacks suddenly joined her position and fired down into the longboat while grappling hooks continued to be flung over the wall.

The same was happening all up and down the wall. For almost half an hour the Dynize had tried to gain purchase. The fort was surrounded by corpses and the wreckage of longboats, but more persisted in their attempts. Over on the land, Olem’s men had been driven all the way back to the causeway, where they had now dug in, refusing to budge, fighting in fierce hand-to-hand with the Dynize.

“Colonel coming in!” a voice yelled.

Vlora forced herself off the ramparts, barely able to hold her own weight on the railing as she made her way down into the muster yard. The main gate was opened briefly and Olem staggered in, supported on either side by a pair of privates. His face was covered in blood, his jacket was gone, and one arm was in a sling. She hurried over to him, grabbing him around the neck and pulling him into an embrace.

“Report,” she whispered.

“Still alive,” he grunted. “I left Major Supin in command with orders to hold the causeway at all costs. Pit, I need a cigarette. Whole bloody tobacco pouch is soaked with Dynize blood.”

“At least it’s not your own,” Vlora said, choking back a sudden, unbidden sob. She wasn’t sure where it came from – fear of seeing him like this, or joy that he seemed to be in better shape than he looked.

“No,” Olem replied, “my blood ruined my rolling papers.” He took his arms off the privates and waved them away, testing one foot tentatively before limping over to a bench along the inner wall and sagging into it. Vlora sat down beside him, allowing herself a moment’s rest.

“You look as bad as I feel,” she said.

Olem looked up sharply. “Those ships out there. That was you?”

Vlora nodded.

Olem suddenly turned, grasping her by the face and forcing her to look him in the eye. He studied her for several moments before letting go. “You’re in shock,” he said.

“I’m fine,” she tried to assure him. Distantly, she was aware that he was probably right. Detonating so much powder had consequences, even for someone experienced like her. “Okay, maybe I’m not fine.”

“Don’t do that again,” he warned. “The kickback could kill you.”

“You know,” she said, trying to give her voice a joking tone, “I’m the powder mage here.”

“And, when you were thinking more clearly, you told me in no uncertain terms not to let you pull this kind of shit. An entire magazine going up is no joke.”

Vlora turned away, wishing he didn’t worry so much. This was the time for fighting, not concern. Regrets could be had later. “I’m still alive,” she said. “And I wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t need the help. How’s it going out there?” She flinched as a Dynize cannonball tore through the northeastern wall, sending bits of masonry and bodies flying. Within moments there were Dynize at the breach, but the Riflejacks beat them to it, filling the space with a wall of bayonets.

“Not great,” Olem said. “The Riflejacks are holding together, but the garrison has taken a massive pounding. They’re wavering, and I don’t blame them. The bloody Dynize should have conceded the fight an hour ago, but they just keep coming.”

Vlora watched as a Dynize threw himself over the wall, musket in hand, only to be pincushioned by Riflejack bayonets. “It’s sorcery,” she said.

“You’re certain?”

“It has to be. No one is that brave, or that stupid – no one. Norrine said she hasn’t seen a single Dynize turn and run. I think it’s the bone-eye.”

“Have you been able to find him?”

“Believe me, I’ve tried. Ka-sedial’s ship is three miles out. Taniel could make that shot. I can’t.”

Olem grimaced. “Well, we don’t have Taniel. Is Ka-sedial working alone?”

“I’ve sensed a few other bone-eyes. Managed to kill two. Still looking for the third. Unless we break the will of these bastards, they’re going to overrun us.”

“They don’t have much left,” Olem said hopefully. “Half their fleet is at the bottom of the ocean or on its way, and there aren’t many longboats left in the water.”

“All they have to do is overrun us,” Vlora said. “And they’re real damned close.”

Another Dynize managed to gain the top of the wall. Vlora’s heart leapt in her throat as she realized this wasn’t a normal foot soldier, but a leather-clad dragonman. He was a big, brutish man with a long, delicate-looking white sword, and he cut through several Riflejacks before Vlora could even reach for her pistol. By the time she had it out and loaded, the dragonman had gone down beneath a hail of close-range rifle fire, but he’d done more damage than twenty Dynize soldiers.

“I need to be back up there,” Vlora said, getting to her feet.

Olem grabbed her hand. “You’re not in any shape to do anything but get in the way.”

“Commanders aren’t just there to fight. They’re to be seen.” She limped back toward the stairs, only to come up short at the sound of an inhuman groan that echoed across the bay. The sound sent a shiver down her spine, and she ignored her pain, snorting an extra charge of powder, forcing herself up the stairs to the ramparts. What she saw there took her breath away.

Across the bay, half the ships at port were on fire, smoke billowing high and black into the sky. But that wasn’t what caught her attention. Several of those burning ships were no longer moored, and were actively being pulled out to sea by the departing tide. She rubbed her eyes, uncertain she could trust them as she saw tiny figures running along the decks, untangling rigging, and trying to put out the fires.

“What the…” Vlora stared, openmouthed, as a ship belching black smoke from two sails, with the flames quickly spreading, creaked and groaned in a savage turn, sweeping through the bay waters, coming within spitting distance of the walls of Fort Nied. Its prow crashed through dozens of longboats, forcing the occupants to leap into the water, where they were quickly dragged under by the weight of their armor.

A handful of sailors worked frantically to keep the ship steady, while the familiar figure of Vallencian stood on the aft-castle, legs planted, laughing madly as he fought the wheel.

The merchantman was quickly past the fort, heading at an alarming speed out past the breaker walls. Another merchantman followed suit, then another, while a fourth was quickly abandoned by the sailors trying to keep it under control as the flames grew too perilous. It drifted madly, crashing into breakers.

“What the pit are they doing?” a soldier behind Vlora asked.

Vlora watched, awed, trying to find words. “The Ice Baron is sacrificing his fleet to save this battle.” She remembered his comment about the tide going out, then balled her hands into fists. There was no way he was coming back from this – even if he abandoned ship, he wouldn’t be able to swim back, not against the tide. It was a suicide mission for his ships and him and his sailors, and they had to know it.

The remaining Dynize ships quickly turned their cannons on Vallencian’s merchantmen, but to little effect. The merchantmen were already ablaze, nothing more than floating battering rams, and Vallencian’s ship collided full-on with a ship of the line that had managed to avoid Fort Nied’s guns all afternoon. The sound was terrible, a horrible screech like a hundred demons clawing their way from the pit. Both Dynize and Vallencian’s sailors leapt into the water, abandoning the wreckage as both ships began to sink.

The second of Vallencian’s merchantmen crushed the forecastle of another warship, while the third cut behind yet another Dynize ship, destroying the rudder and crushing the rear windows of the aft-castle.

Fighting seemed to grind to a halt as men from both sides stopped to watch the terrible collisions. Vlora gained the edge of the wall, firing her pistol at an officer in a longboat below her, then shaking her head as she felt something snap within her.

At first she thought it was something physical within her – a bone, or a ligament, or just about anything that could go wrong. When she didn’t feel any pain, she looked around her, searching for the source of that snap. It took her several moments to realize that something had changed.

The Dynize, for the first time all afternoon, suddenly wavered.

It wasn’t immediate. Slowly, like a flame exposed to a gradually stiffer breeze, the Dynize offensive seemed to flutter and flex. Their shouting became uncertain, their momentum stalled. Minutes passed as the fighting grew more desperate and then, across the water where Olem’s troops still barely held the end of the causeway, Vlora saw a Dynize soldier throw down his musket and flee back toward the beach.

He was joined by others and then, like a candle being blown out, the entire Dynize army routed.

The Riflejacks and garrison seemed to get a second wind, redoubling their efforts and giving chase. The Dynize soldiers reached the water, some of them clamoring into the few remaining longboats while others realized the hopelessness of trying to swim away and turned to organize a defensive. It was too late, and Vlora’s men hit them from behind, forcing them back into the ocean.

Vlora watched Dynize soldiers in their heavy breastplates drown by the score, unwilling to comprehend the horror of such a fate. She looked toward the wreckage of Vallencian’s ship, knowing it would be days before she would be able to mount a rescue, and took a deep breath.

Somehow, some way, they had managed to win the day.

Styke drew his carbine one-handed, sighting along it for half a second before pulling the trigger. He was past the puff of smoke a moment later, and accompanied by the crack of a hundred other carbines as the lancers and cuirassiers opened fire on the front line of the Dynize infantry.

The Dynize, falling into a defensive formation, fired back a single volley. Styke felt a bullet slam into the meat of his left shoulder and pushed away the sharp, sudden pain, rotating his arm to make sure it would still work. Behind him horses screamed and fell, and he holstered his carbine without looking back and took his lance in hand, lowering it at the now-reduced Dynize front line.

Amrec leapt a wounded infantryman and Styke lowered his lance, tearing out a Dynize throat with the tip and driving it into the face of the next Dynize. He kept his grip tight, aiming true until the lance was snapped just past the haft. He threw the useless weapon at an infantryman trying to bring his bayonet to bear on Amrec’s chest, then drew his heavy saber, swinging it with enough force to decapitate a Dynize officer.

He spurred Amrec forward, unwilling to give up his momentum, and plowed through the front eight rows of infantry until he was among the Dynize who had not yet been ordered to lower their weapons. The Dynize scrambled to defend themselves, officers shouting and swearing while they attempted to halt the vicious charge.

Styke hazarded a glance over his shoulder. Jackal was still right behind him, along with the Riflejack bannerman, but Ibana and a huge number of his remaining lancers had disappeared in the chaos. He gritted his teeth and bent from his saddle, slashing beneath the arm of an infantryman, then waved his sword. “Forward, you dogs!” he roared. “Forward!”

His cavalry continued to plow onward. Styke caught sight of a Dynize Privileged, white gloves raised above his head, a scarf wrapped around his face to protect his nose from the powder smoke. Styke angled Amrec toward the Privileged, determined to run him down before he could do any real damage, only to watch him tumble from his saddle with a bullet wound through his chest.

Two-shot, it seemed, was still hard at work.

Styke forced his way through the press, Amrec leaping and kicking with the nimbleness of a Gurlish racing horse. They plowed through three more lines and then suddenly he was free, riding across open farmland behind the Dynize position. He pulled Amrec around and watched as a few hundred of his cavalry managed to extricate themselves from the tangle.

He spared a glance in either direction, satisfied to see the flash of fire and lightning, along with the bloom of powder smoke, as the Blackhats and their Privileged tore into the Dynize flanks. The strategy, it seemed, had worked. The Dynize attention was split between both cavalry and skirmishers, and they didn’t appear to have any Privileged left to answer those accompanying the Blackhats.

Styke counted to forty to allow enough of his cavalry to emerge from the Dynize ranks before waving his sword over his head. “Form up!” he bellowed, and spurred Amrec back into the fray before the Dynize officers could turn their lines around to face him.

He rode roughshod through the confused Dynize columns as they attempted to fight both riders and the sorcery on their flanks. Halfway through he spotted Ibana, jacket bloody with a broken lance in one hand and a smallsword in the other, having formed up several dozen unhorsed cavalry into a loose circle, which was in danger of being overrun by the Dynize. Styke led his remaining cavalry straight to them.

A Dynize bayonet caught Styke on the thigh just as he reached Ibana’s men. The pain came quick and hot, and he snatched the musket out of the startled soldier’s hands and swung it around, cracking it across the man’s head with enough force to break the stock. Another bayonet was thrust toward his face, barely missing his eye, and then a musket stock, swung like club, slammed into his cheek. He reeled back, seeing stars, and swung his saber blindly.

Lightning struck so close that it almost turned Styke and Amrec into a pillar of ash. Fire followed it a moment later in a column as thick as a man, crashing down from the heavens, zigzagging its way through the Dynize ranks. Infantry cooked instantly in their armor, and Styke’s nostrils were filled with the smell of burned flesh and hair. As suddenly as he’d been close to overwhelmed, the field around him was empty of enemies.

He wheeled Amrec around, looking wildly. The Blackhats, their numbers greatly reduced, had managed to make it all the way around the Dynize flank and come up behind them. One of their Privileged was bleeding from a gunshot wound, but the fingers of them both continued to twitch and gesture, raining death among the Dynize. The fire and lightning spread outward from Styke’s position in the center, bringing ruin to the entirety of the Dynize infantry with startling speed.

Styke slid from his saddle, watching the Privileged work, and limped over to Ibana. She knelt by the side of a Riflejack whom Styke did not recognize, holding the man’s hand as he writhed in pain. The better part of the Riflejack’s left arm had been taken off by an enemy sword, and the rest would have to be amputated.

Styke looked around at the carnage, wondering if he would be sick from the sudden feeling of elation that rose within his chest. The smell of the dead, the wind in his hair, the blood on his steel: It made him feel vibrant and alive like nothing in the world had ever done for him. He thought about the guards at the labor camp and all the men he’d allowed to beat and belittle him just to try to reach parole.

“I shouldn’t have stayed,” he said, breathing deeply of the smell of sorcery and burned corpses. “I should have fought my way out years ago.”

“What are you going on about?” Ibana demanded.

Styke lifted his chin to the chaos, watching as Taniel Two-shot, no longer on horseback, used a bayoneted rifle to tear through a whole company of Dynize infantry on his own. It reminded him of the grace with which Lady Flint fought, though somehow quicker and more terrifying. “If you can’t break them,” he said.

“Grind their bones to dust beneath your hooves,” Ibana finished, not lifting her eyes from the wounded Riflejack. “Did we win?”

Between the Blackhat Privileged, the remaining cavalry, and Taniel, they were mopping up the last of the Dynize. It was a stark reminder of just how quickly sorcery changed the tide of battle, and how easily it could have been Styke’s bones turned to ash from a Dynize Privileged, if not for Two-shot to even the odds.

“Yeah,” he said, drawing his knife and kneeling down beside the Riflejack and sizing up the arm that needed to be amputated. “Bite down on your belt, son. This is gonna hurt, but it’ll be a cleaner cut. We won.”