The Autumn Republic

Chapter 13

Kresimir – or rather the doll used to control him – couldn’t be moved yet.

Taniel had been fighting a growing panic all night. He hadn’t slept. He’d barely eaten. The arrival of morning had only deepened his anxiety.

“We have to go,” Taniel said.

Ka-poel shook her head adamantly. She crouched over a casket made of sticks and dried grass. It was a box, no bigger than a soldier’s kit, meant to contain a god.

“They’ll be here by midday,” Taniel said.

Ka-poel didn’t respond. She’d finished the casket only a few hours ago. Every moment since had been spent painting thin, perfectly straight lines on the outside using a horsehair brush she’d produced from within her rucksack. She used her blood for ink and it dried as a surprisingly bright crimson, not at all the dark rust of dried blood.

The whole thing made Taniel uneasy – more so than usual.

“Half a company of Adran infantry armed with air rifles are camped less than two miles away,” he said. “They’re climbing from their tents now and breaking camp, ready to continue their search. They’ll find us by midday, if we’re lucky. We can’t possibly fight that many. They’ll kill us both and then free Kresimir. We have to go.”

Ka-poel didn’t seem to agree with him. She kept painting, her hand steady and slow, as if she’d not heard a word.

Taniel touched her shoulder. “Pole…”

She whirled suddenly, throwing the brush across the cave and leaping to her feet. He found himself retreating from her advance. Her face was twisted into a scowl and her fists were clenched at her sides. She backed him up against the very edge of the cave and leaned toward him, managing to loom even though she was so much smaller than he. She tapped her hand against her chest, then the side of her head, and made a negative motion. She repeated the series of gestures two more times and then pointed to the casket.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Taniel noticed for the first time that her hair and shirt were soaked with sweat. Her shoulders shook. Unshed tears shone in the corners of her eyes, and Taniel finally realized how much this was taking out of her. He knew that Bone-eyes could create enchantments. They had made enchanted bullets called redstripes for the colonists in Fatrasta, and Ka-poel had even done it once for him – though he’d never witnessed the process. This must be like that.

He glanced at the casket and remembered the thin line of red that encircled the bullets and gave redstripes their names.

Of course. This was exactly like redstripes. She had to use her own blood in the enchantments.

Was that what she had done the other day when she wiped her blood on his cheeks? Enchanted him? How much energy did this take? He saw her again with new eyes, saw the depth of her exhaustion and how her eyes seemed sunken and her cheeks hollow. Her clothes hung off her as if on a tailor’s mannequin.

She was killing herself to keep Kresimir from breaking free, and yet she still used some of her power on him.

Ka-poel returned to her project, silent as always.

Taniel collected two knives and a bayonet that he’d taken from the Adran soldiers the other day. He regretted not stealing an air rifle. He could have at least used it as a pike with a bayonet on the end, but in his arrogance he’d broken them all in the Adran camp.

He kissed Ka-poel on the cheek, trying not to be put off by the way she turned away from him, and then left the cave behind, heading up and over the ridge and then following it to the east toward the Adran camp.

It didn’t take him longer than an hour to spot the advance elements of the company of Adran infantry. Six of them worked their way up the canyon slowly, cautiously, their rifles clutched in both hands and their eyes on the ridgelines high above them on either side.

He took up a position about three hundred yards above the floor of the canyon and hunkered down to wait.

The vanguard turned out to be fifty paces ahead of the rest of the company. The company was forced to advance in single file and, unlike the vanguard, they weren’t apprising themselves of their surroundings. They were fresh and overconfident. Some of the men joked, their chipper voices bouncing off the canyon walls. Taniel had hoped that his display to the squad the other day would make them more cautious, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

After all, they were only hunting one man and this was broad daylight.

Taniel knew he couldn’t fight all eighty of them. He didn’t stand a chance.

He waited until the entire company was within sight, strung out as they were along the canyon floor, and the center of the company was directly below his position. Then he lashed out with one foot at the log beside him and dashed out of the way as twenty tons of rubble immediately began to thunder down the canyon walls.

He couldn’t win, but he would damn well take as many of them to the Pit with him as possible.

The canyon echoed with the screams of the dying and the yells of the survivors as the thunder finally subsided in the wake of Taniel’s avalanche.

The sound made Taniel sick. He hadn’t wanted to kill his own countrymen. These men had friends and family. Children and wives and husbands. He might have fought beside some of them. He might have trained beside them.

It was no different from killing any enemy, he reminded himself. This was war. He had to kill or be killed.

Taniel stealthily stuck his head out from his hiding place to examine his handiwork.

The avalanche had cut the Adran company in half. At least ten of them had been buried by the falling rocks and another dozen or so wounded. A captain was pinned to the floor of the canyon by a boulder on his leg, and Taniel could hear his howls of pain. A lieutenant stood above him, directing a simultaneous defense-and-rescue mission. The infantry had scattered to whatever cover they could find, and now everyone had their eyes on the canyon’s walls.

They began to dig out their wounded, and when it became apparent that an attack was not imminent, two squads continued their journey up the canyon.

This was good news and bad news. The good news was that he’d split their forces. The bad news was that those two squads were heading toward Ka-poel’s cave.

He set off at a run just beneath the ridgeline, where he could be plainly seen by the soldiers below. A shout of alarm followed him a moment later and he heard the soft pop of air rifles. The distance was far too great for them to actually hit him, but he ducked behind a boulder anyway and took a moment to look back.

The lieutenant pointed toward him, shouting after the two squads. The two squad sergeants conferred, and then one squad headed straight up the steep incline toward Taniel while the other set about looking for a goat path or some other way to flank him.

Taniel had their attention now, and that’s what mattered.

He led the two squads on a chase along the ridgeline for over a mile. Of the twenty-four men, only three kept up with his pace, outstripping their comrades in their attempt to catch up. After all, they only had to get close enough for a shot with an air rifle to bring Taniel down. Hilanska must have offered a reward for his head. Soldiers normally weren’t this zealous.

The thought hardened Taniel’s heart against his reluctance to kill more of his countrymen. These men would gun him down without hesitation. They were hunting him like a dog.

He risked a dash across open ground, flinching at the pop of air rifles and the sound of bullets skipping off of the stone behind him. They were still just out of range, but a lucky shot aimed high might wound him. He leapt a fissure and continued on for some thirty paces before the ground gave way to rockier terrain and he leapt back into cover.

Out of sight of the squad, he doubled back, running in a crouch beneath the lip of a boulder until he was inside the fissure that he’d jumped only moments ago.

Taniel wondered what his father would say if he saw any of his own men being led into such an obvious trap.

Probably that the damned fools deserved to die.

The first pursuer leapt the fissure only a few moments after Taniel was in position. As the second set of legs flew overhead, he reached up and grabbed a boot, yanking down. The man dropped his air rifle with a clatter and landed face-first on the lip of the fissure, leaving a smear of blood behind.

The third of the group skidded to a stop and knelt beside his comrade. Taniel made a running leap and grabbed this one by the front of his jacket, dragging him back into the fissure. The soldier let out a strangled scream before Taniel silenced him by slamming his face repeatedly against the rocks. He snatched the air rifle from the dead man’s hands and checked it for damage.

Air rifles were notoriously more unreliable than conventional muskets and rifles. The mechanisms broke easily and the air reserves leaked. This one seemed sound, and Taniel checked the chamber and shouldered the butt.

“Glouster?” The first pursuer had noticed his companion’s absence and turned. “Glouster, are you all right? Allier looks like he’s hurt bad. Pit, Glouster, say something!”

Taniel felt a pang at the panic in the young man’s voice. The fear must be setting in, overrunning his adrenaline. He’d be wondering if his eyes had tricked him. Hadn’t Taniel disappeared into the rocks ahead? How could he possibly be in that dark fissure?

The infantryman came into view, his rifle shouldered, squinting into the fissure.

Taniel shot him in the chest.

He took spare ammunition and air reserves from the dead infantrymen and followed his hidden path back to the rocks. The rest of the squad would catch up any moment, and they wouldn’t be as stupid as their comrades.

He ambushed two more infantrymen in the rocks, and then three more after them, using their bulky kits and unwieldy bayoneted rifles against them in the close confines of the rock formations.

He shot another with his captured air rifle just a few moments later, but the damned mechanism broke before he could fire another round, and he was forced to flee, with the remainder of the two squads hot on his heels.

They stayed in a tight formation now, not letting themselves be led on by his tricks.

Taniel knew he was running out of ground. This ridge went on for a couple of miles before it meandered into one of the thousands of valleys that crisscrossed this mountain range. He needed to be rid of the rest of his pursuers before he doubled back and figured out a way to deal with the remaining infantrymen down in the canyon. There was another fissure along here somewhere that would let him get behind his enemy and…

Taniel swung around a boulder to find himself staring out into the sky. The drop below him must have been more than two hundred feet down a sheer rock face into a barren streambed. He searched about him for another escape route, but there was nothing but bare, vertical rock to be found. A ledge to his right gave way to more such rock and a narrow outcropping that would doubtlessly give them a firing platform.

Somewhere, he’d taken a wrong turn. He was at a dead end.

He looked back around the boulder the way he came. Maybe he had time to get back and find another route before they caught up.

The flash of Adran blues sent him back behind his boulder. He could hear the shouts of his pursuers.

“He went down this path here.”

“Careful on that, no line of sight. He could be hiding anywhere.”

“Cover me from above.”

“All right, you three with me. Try to go around that way, lads.”

Taniel risked a glance to see four soldiers working their way down the goat path he’d followed. They were less than twenty paces away, and would reach him within moments. The other soldiers would find that outcropping sooner or later and he was a dead man.

If this damned air rifle hadn’t broken, he might be able to defend himself at range.

When the first bayonet came within sight around the edge of the boulder, Taniel reached past it to grab the barrel and leveraged his weight against the man holding it. Caught by surprise, the infantryman slid and tumbled several feet and then plummeted the rest of the way down into the gorge, the end of his fall punctuated by the silencing of his scream.

“Bloody pit, he’s right there!”

“Hold it together.”

“He just threw Havin right off the edge! Did you see that? He’s going to…”

Taniel didn’t wait to find out what the infantryman thought he was going to do. He rounded the corner, gripping his broken air rifle like a pike, and shoved the bayonet into the talking man’s chest. The man gave a garbled yell and fell, grabbing the kit of the man behind him as he went and sending them both tumbling over the edge.

Taniel and the last soldier stared at each other for a moment before the man brought his air rifle to his shoulder in one quick move and pulled the trigger.

Click.

“They’re so damned unreliable, aren’t they?” Taniel asked.

The man swore and jabbed at Taniel with his bayonet. Taniel danced back to dodge the thrust and found himself slipping. He dropped his own rifle instinctively to grab for purchase and listened with a lump in his throat as his best weapon clattered down into the gorge.

Gravel shifted beneath him as he scrambled backward on his hands and feet as the soldier advanced with his bayonet. Taniel backed around the edge of the boulder and snatched for his knife. It wouldn’t be worth shit against a bayonet, but he had to try. He drew it just as the soldier was rounding the corner. He wouldn’t be able to get to his feet in time. This would be impossible to–

Blood spouted from the soldier’s mouth and beneath it something sprouted from his throat like a plant growing in a field. He teetered on his feet, then was helped in his tumble off the edge by a firm shove by Ka-poel.

She held a bayonet in one hand, clutched by the ring, and her ratty clothes were stained by the blood of far more than that one poor infantryman.

Taniel let out a sigh of relief and his whole body sagged beneath him. She’d saved his life. Again. He climbed to his feet and nodded his thanks, not trusting himself to speak. All this adrenaline, this skirting of death, was far harder to deal with when he was not in a powder trance.

A bullet ricocheted off the boulder just above Ka-poel’s head. Taniel grabbed her by the front of her jacket and pulled her into an embrace, knowing instinctively that the bullet had come from behind him. He caught a glimpse of two soldiers standing on the outcropping that he’d spotted earlier. The second one was lining up his shot. Taniel could do nothing but put his body in between Ka-poel and the bullet and hope the man missed.

FOOM.

The sound left Taniel’s ears ringing. When he managed to pull himself away from Ka-poel, the soldiers weren’t on the outcropping anymore. One of their hats lay on its side where they had just been, and a quick glance showed him two more bodies down in the gorge.

What the pit was that?

The crunch of boots on stone made him cringe. More infantry?

A familiar figure strolled out to the end of the narrow outcropping. He wore ruddy muttonchops and a suit of clothes that, if they hadn’t been so travel-worn and dusty, would probably cost as much as a horse.

Privileged Borbador kicked the infantryman’s hat after its owner and watched it soar down into the gully. He turned to Taniel and waved.

“Hey, Tan. Sorry I’m late,” he called.