Sins of Empire

Chapter 49

“What’s her name?”

Styke stood beside a dirt path in the center of a small town in the marshes north of Landfall, slowly stroking his thumb along the nose of the horse at his side. His attention was drawn to the south, head raised to watch for anyone heading this way from the city. Celine sat in the saddle astride the horse, gently running her fingers through his mane.

“She is a he,” Styke said, glancing over his shoulder at Celine. She nodded at the correction, as if she’d been right all along. “He’s a gelding, and I haven’t named him yet.”

“What kind is he?”

Styke glanced sidelong at the horse, continuing to run his thumb down the center of his nose. “Mix-breed. He’s definitely a Brudanian draft horse, but…” He considered it a moment, running his hand down the length of the horse’s back, enjoying the coarse feel of hair beneath his fingers. It had been too long since he’d last ridden. He’d squeezed the reins so hard they had left an impression on his palm, and his inner thighs chafed like a bitch after just a couple of miles. But they were both good kinds of hurts.

Pain that reminded him he was a free man.

“His hindquarters are a bit sleeker than a regular draft horse,” he said. “Look at the coloring. The black with a little brown mottle on the neck, with the white on his rump, is pretty rare. You find that on Gurlish racing horses.”

“My dad bet on a Gurlish racing horse once,” Celine said.

“How did that go?”

“Lost a few hundred krana. Said betting was for fools and threw his hat in the Hadshaw.”

Styke snorted. “Everyone has to learn sometime.” He ran his hand down the horse’s neck again, enjoying the feel. Lady Flint’s stablemaster said this was the biggest beast he had, and about the orneriest, but after a little heart-to-heart in the stables Styke felt like they had come to an understanding. He wasn’t as big as Deshner, nor as strong, but he had some spirit. “Do you want to name him?”

“How about Precious?” Celine said.

“Absolutely not.”

“Juggernaut!”

“Where the pit did you learn a word like that?”

“From…”

“Your dad,” Styke finished for her. “Right, right. Regular ol’ genius, wasn’t he? How about we call him Amrec.”

“Amrec is a boy’s name.”

“And Amrec is a boy.” Styke leaned back to look at the gelding’s hindquarters. “Or at least he used to be.” He patted Amrec on the nose, fishing in his pocket for a carrot he’d grabbed from a merchant as he left town. “You like that, Amrec?” Amrec nearly took his fingers off taking the carrot, and Styke jerked down on the bridle gently. “None of that, hear me?”

He turned away from Celine and Amrec, looking back toward Landfall. They were a couple of miles out, and the plateau rose above the floodplains, hazy in the afternoon heat, while flies buzzed quietly around Amrec’s swishing tail. Styke had picked one of the few rises in this area so he had a pretty good view of the road. He waited, watching, wondering.

Ibana had gone to tell the Mad Lancers that they had a new command, and that they wouldn’t be tearing up the Blackhats – at least, not just yet. A little voice in the back of Styke’s head whispered that he no longer had it. That the lancers would give up in anger and go home; that they weren’t interested in his command, and just wanted to go out for blood.

He wouldn’t blame them if they did. The Blackhats hadn’t just beaten him; they’d broken the homes and businesses and, in some cases, bones of almost all the Mad Lancers veterans. Styke’s body and the bones had been mended by Privileged sorcery. The rest was gone – ten years of trying to make something out of themselves, all down the drain because Styke had dared to leave the labor camp.

He wondered, if he’d known what he would ruin for the rest of them, whether he would have taken Tampo’s offer.

Yes, he decided. He definitely would have. “No one else’s suffering is ever as acute as your own,” he muttered.

“What?” Celine asked.

“Nothing. Here.” He reached in his pocket for his last carrot. “Feed this to Amrec. Talk to him.”

“Will it make us friends?”

“Food, in my experience, is one of the few things that can cement a good friendship between strangers.”

He watched a small group of riders leave the Landfall suburbs and head north along his path. He waited until he could clearly make them out as Blackhats before he took Amrec by the reins and led him around to the far side of the little village, hoping the patrol would pass through without stopping.

If the rest of the lancers backed out, would Ibana still follow him? She still seemed like her old self. But ten years was a long time, and she’d been furious after they left Lady Flint’s. She’d cursed and yelled before storming off, and only a shout over her shoulder had given him any indication of where to expect her and the rest of the lancers to join him.

And now he was here. He had a girl, a horse, and the hope that a bunch of rowdy old veterans still thought of him as good enough to follow. By the position of the sun it was past seven in the evening. The others should have been here an hour ago. As it was, they’d have to ride well into the night to reach Jedwar and collect Flint’s cavalry.

He kicked at a clump of dirt glumly, then put a hand on Amrec’s flank – more to calm himself than the horse. Amrec suddenly stirred, snorting, and Styke reached for his knife and looked toward movement at the corner of his vision.

He let himself relax. It was just a Palo woman.

She was less than five feet tall, a slight thing with fiery hair, her skin spotted with the ashen freckles of her people. Her hair was cut short, just below the ears, and she wore a black duster that almost touched the ground when she walked. Her hands were lost in the sleeves, her face shaded by a matching, floppy-brimmed hat. Below the duster she wore weathered buckskins similar to those worn by Palo on the frontier.

Styke took a deep breath, deciding to just ignore her until she went away, when something pricked his senses.

He smelled rotten flesh and tasted copper on his tongue, but knew immediately neither of those senses came from this world. It was his Knack, warning him that there was sorcery nearby. Potent sorcery, belonging to a bone-eye.

Styke shifted warily, keeping his eyes on the Palo as she approached. He’d always found it hard to judge the age of Palo women, but she looked like she was in her late twenties or early thirties. She walked toward him slowly, calmly, her eyes sleepy and a half smile on her lips.

“Who is that?” Celine asked.

Styke shook his head. “Can I help you?” he asked in Palo.

The woman stopped about six feet away, her lips pursed, head tilting from side to side as she studied Styke. He felt tiny pinpricks along his skin, the smell of rotten flesh growing stronger. She removed her hands from her pockets and showed him that they were empty.

A Palo bone-eye. Fancy that. What could she possibly want with him? He gave her his best scowl. “Nothing here for you,” he said. “Best move along.”

She rolled the sleeves of her duster up, then went through a complex series of gestures. Styke found them almost impossible to follow, and he just shook his head at her and made a shooing motion with one hand. She snorted, then pointed at herself, then at him, and Styke inhaled suddenly, his nostrils flaring, as he remembered a Palo girl he met in the swamps back during the war. She was small, smelled of blood and sorcery, and she hadn’t been able to talk.

She’d been accompanying Taniel Two-shot at the time and, if Flint was right, still was.

He took a step back, hand going instinctively to touch Amrec’s neck. The big horse nipped at his ear, then bumped him with its nose. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Styke asked. “Taniel’s girl. I remember you from Planth. Ka-poel.”

Her smile widened.

Styke let out a shaky breath. Sorcery had never frightened him particularly. What unnerved him back at Planth, and here now, was Ka-poel’s confidence. She held herself like someone seven feet tall, head high, shoulders squared, daring the world to try its worst. “What do you want?” he asked.

Ka-poel remained silent, studying him, then Celine, and finally Amrec.

“Did Taniel get my note?” Styke asked. “I guess I left it for Tampo, but the two of them are the same, aren’t they?”

She stuck her bottom lip out, nodding as if impressed, spreading her hands toward him. Very good. She mimed writing, then reading, and pointed at him again with a nod.

“So he did get it.”

Another nod.

“So he knows I quit? I appreciate what he did for me, but I’ve got other obligations now. If we cross paths again, I’ll try to do him right, but for now…”

Ka-poel snorted. She folded her arms and shifted her stance, putting her weight on her back foot. It almost made Styke laugh, but he could still smell the rotting flesh of her sorcery.

“I suppose you think that’s not good enough?” he asked.

She gave him a look that was less than impressed, then made a flat-handed gesture that he didn’t quite understand. She reached into her duster pocket and removed an envelope, crossing the space between them to hand it over. Styke eyed her warily, breaking the seal with his thumb, then running his eyes across the writing. It was written in Adran, and said, You still owe me a favor. I intend on collecting it. – T

Styke handed the letter over his shoulder. “Put this in my saddlebags,” he told Celine. Taniel still expected something, but seemed willing to hold on to that debt until later. “What’s his game?” Styke asked Ka-poel. “He’s playing long, isn’t he? Huh. Never mind that. What’s your game?”

Ka-poel gave him a cocky smile, chest rising and falling in a silent chuckle. Styke rubbed his nose, not enjoying the smell of her sorcery at all. She pointed at him, then at her palm, then at herself, lips moving silently. Styke didn’t like the implication.

“What the pit is that supposed to mean?”

She pointed over his shoulder, and it took him a moment to realize she was pointing at the note he’d just handed to Celine.

“Are you saying I owe you a favor?”

She mimed shooting a pistol at him.

Part of him wanted to wring her neck, then boot her down the road. The other part, the part dedicated wholly to self-preservation, said that would be a very bad idea. “You’re a funny little thing, you know that?”

She grinned and mouthed the words I know. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and, in a quick move, ran a knife across her left thumb. Styke shied away, but she was quicker than he’d expected and stepped over to him in a flash, reaching up on her tiptoes to smear the rising well of crimson across his forehead. He grabbed her by the shoulder, shoving her away, using the other hand to wipe at his forehead. She danced out of his reach, and he looked at the blood now on his hand and his face.

“What the pit was that for?” he demanded. “I don’t like sorcery, girl, and I won’t stand for –” His words were arrested by the sound of hoofbeats, and Styke took Amrec by the bridle, head tilted to listen to the approach of the riders. Blackhats? Or Mad Lancers?

Ka-poel gave him one last smile and slipped around the corner of the building. He considered going after her but had no interest in running headfirst into a group of Blackhats. Instead he hunkered in the shade of the building and rubbed at his forehead, trying to get all the blood off. He listened to the hoofbeats grow louder, and waited for them to pass him by.

They did not.

He forgot the blood. The hoofbeats were coming around the outskirts of the village, and it sounded like a lot of them. He pulled his knife, ready to throw himself at the first person to come around the corner, and bit off a yell as the first rider rounded it.

Ibana rode on a white stallion almost as big as Amrec, saddle weighed down with carbines, pistols, and cavalry swords. She was followed by others on horseback – Gamble, Sunin, Jackal – all his officers and then more, falling in as Ibana pulled up in front of him. They kept coming, rank upon rank, spreading out in a fan, until he could no longer count all of them. Well over two hundred cavalry, all heavily armed on stout warhorses and wearing the faded yellow cavalry jackets and black pants they’d been issued at the beginning of the Fatrastan War for Independence.

Sunin’s uniform was too big, Gamble’s too small, but each and every one of them had it. They even had their lances, tied to their saddles and waving yellow streamers in the air. The sight of it overwhelmed him, tears threatening his vision. He sheathed his knife, barely daring to breathe, mouth open like a gawking schoolboy.

Ibana dismounted, fetching a carbine, pistol, and heavy cavalry sword from her saddle and coming over to Styke.

“You came,” Styke said, unable to think of any other words.

Ibana rolled her eyes, thrusting the bundle of weapons into his arms. “Of course I did, you big fool. We all did. You’re Mad Ben Styke, and without you we aren’t the Mad Lancers.”

Styke looked over her shoulder at his old officers, and all the familiar faces gathered behind them. He remembered seeing some of them that night at Sweetwallow, but the memories were hazy and he hadn’t truly believed they’d all come to rescue him. Yet here they were.

The faces stared back at him, expectant, and it took him several moments to realize they were waiting for him to say something. He shook his head and glanced at Ibana, wondering what she told them about their current mission. “We’re not going to fight the Blackhats,” he said, raising his voice.

He was greeted by silence. No mutters. No scowls. Just soldiers waiting for their orders.

“I never much fancied us as mercenaries,” he said. “But the Mad Lancers always rode to protect Fatrasta, and Fatrasta, in case you noticed, doesn’t really want us right now.” Some of the riders exchanged looks, no doubt remembering what they’d lost at the hands of the Blackhats the last few days. “The only one who wants us is Lady Flint. She’s been hired to protect Landfall from that Dynize fleet sitting out beyond the bay. It may come to a scrap. It may not. Regardless, she’s going to pay us, feed us, and kit us up. She’s also dead set on keeping us and the Blackhats from each other’s throats. I’ve made my peace with that, and if any of you have a problem you can talk to me about it, or you can turn around and ride back to Landfall. That’s up to you.”

“We don’t need any protecting from the Blackhats!” someone in the back shouted.

Styke searched for the source of the voice, but couldn’t find it. “Like pit we don’t,” he said. “But I don’t mind having them off our asses long enough for us to become the Mad Lancers again. We’re old, we’re rusty. Pit, I’m healed up a bit but I’m still a damn cripple. I’d rather ride a free man as part of the Landfall garrison than skulk around in the shadows waiting to get overwhelmed. Now, like I said, if you have a problem no one will hold it against you if you go. Ya hear?”

The gathered cavalry responded with a stoic silence. Leather creaked; horses shifted and whinnied. Sunin, looking almost ninety, her hair white and wispy, skin as wrinkled as a prune, leaned over in her saddle and spat a wad of chew into the grass.

“We don’t ride for Lady Flint or Fatrasta,” she said with her northern Fatrastan twang. “We ride for Ben Styke.” The riders behind her nodded sagely, a mutter of approval going up. “If you want us working for Lady Flint, we’ll work for Lady Flint. We’ll follow orders. But don’t think for a moment we’ll forget the state we found you in the other night.”

“That how you all feel?” Styke demanded.

A chorus of “yeah” and “bet we do” rose up over the lancers.

“Because you’re all a bunch of fools,” Styke grumbled. “Always have been.”

“Yeah, but they’re your fools,” Ibana said.

“Suppose so. I guess that settles that.” He thought of Ka-poel, and the crimson welling up from her thumb. He rubbed at his forehead. “Is there blood on my face?” he asked.

“No,” Ibana responded.

Styke glanced down at his hand. There wasn’t any blood there, either. He wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing – Ka-poel, Taniel’s letter. He wondered if perhaps his mind was slipping. “Where’s my banner?”

Ibana returned to her saddlebags, untying a long, oiled leather tube. She removed a bundle of cloth from the tube and, holding one end, let the rest unfurl. The banner was black on yellow with a crimson border, the center dominated by a grinning human skull spit upon a lance. Styke held out his hand, taking the banner for himself, rubbing the rough material between his thumb and forefinger.

“Jackal,” he said. “Your lance.”

He fixed the banner in place and then handed the lance back to Jackal with a nod.

“Bannerman,” Styke said. “Lead us to Jedwar. We have a command to pick up.”