Sins of Empire

Chapter 64

Vlora stood in the prow of a longboat as it did a circuit through the water surrounding Fort Nied. The slow strokes of the rowers left barely any wake behind them yet still managed to stir corpses to the top of the water, their bloated forms facedown, bobbing gently, their teal uniforms stained by the blood still seeping from their bodies. Somewhere off her port side the water suddenly exploded in movement as sharks emerged to fight over a corpse. Riflemen behind her stood, took aim, and shot into the water. The foaming frenzy increased for several seconds and then died down to leave the bay placid, gentle waves lapping bodies toward the shore.

Vlora’s own body was a collection of aches, sharp pains, and developing bruises. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be trampled, and dug in her pocket for a powder charge, pinching just the slightest bit off the top and snorting it from between her fingers. The stitches in the shrapnel wound in her leg stopped throbbing.

“It’s a complete waste,” a voice said behind her.

“I disagree,” a second voice responded. “We can rebuild this wall without lessening the structural integrity of the fort.”

“Are you mad? We don’t have access to the kind of sorcery that made this fort as strong as it was. I say we level the whole thing and bring in the best stonemasons money can buy. We’ll build something better. With modern techniques we don’t even need sorcery to make the walls nearly impervious to straight shot.”

“You’ve been reading too much of that idiot Yaddel,” the second voice said. “Modern construction is incredible, but it can’t beat sorcery.”

“Yaddel is a visionary!”

“Yaddel is a quack.”

Vlora eyed the walls of Fort Nied, noting three complete breaches and at least fifteen spots of heavy damage. No doubt the engineers behind her saw more damage with their experienced eye. She gave a soft sigh at their arguing and tuned it out, glancing over the bay as some thirty or more longboats just like hers traversed the waters, fishing out corpses with hooks and nets, riflemen shooting every shark that surfaced.

Beyond the bay, well past the range of her few remaining cannons and the flotsam of what used to be their flotilla, the rest of the Dynize fleet sat at anchor, swarming with sailors making repairs. She counted just eight capital ships and two times that number in support frigates.

Since the Dynize army had finally routed last night, she hadn’t heard a word from Ka-sedial. No white flags. No suit for peace. Not even a request to barter for the dead and wounded. The Dynize fleet simply waited, and Vlora didn’t mind admitting to herself that their silence was unnerving.

She tried to forget it, at least for the moment. She and her men had won a damned hard battle last night, and she allowed a smile to creep onto her face. The melancholy that gripped her now would be gone in a few days’ time, and her head would be back to the logistics of running an army – providing food, shelter, and pay, and bringing their numbers back to a full brigade.

She scowled at the Landfall docks and the smoke still rising from several destroyed ships. Only a few remained untouched by the fires, while dozens were a complete loss, no doubt representing the imminent bankruptcy of several shipping companies. Fortunately, none of that was her problem.

Vlora’s absent-minded inspection of the fort and environs suddenly focused on a body washed up on the shore not far from the causeway that attached Fort Nied to the mainland. She turned to her rowers. “Over there,” she ordered.

“But ma’am,” an engineer said, “we’re not done with our inspection of the fort.”

“You can finish after you drop me off,” Vlora said. “I want a full report by the end of the evening – one from each of you.” Conscious of the sharks prowling beneath the layer of flotsam and bodies, she waited until the longboat had reached the shallows, then she leapt into the water. She waded ashore and fell on her knees beside a body.

It belonged to an enormous man with a dark, soaked beard, colorful clothes, and the thick tatters of a bearskin still clinging to his shoulders. His face was pale as death, his chest still.

“Damn it, Vallencian,” Vlora muttered, feeling the first real pang of horror that had struck her through the sea of bodies. “You were about the only decent person in this whole damned city.” She called to a nearby squad from the garrison that was sorting corpses by uniform on the rocky beach. A sergeant with a squat, ugly face and shaved head waddled over, hooked spear thrown over his shoulder.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“This is one of mine,” she said. “I want him put in the morgue with the other Riflejack officers.”

The sergeant scowled appraisingly at the body. “Right you are, ma’am, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea to put him in the morgue.”

“Why not?”

The sergeant produced a mirror from his pocket and knelt down, thrusting the mirror up in front of Vallencian’s nose. A thin film of fog appeared. “Because he’s not dead.”

Vlora felt a wave of relief sweep over her. Finally, some good news. “He’s half-drowned. Get me a surgeon. Go!”

The sergeant scurried off, and Vlora bent over Vallencian, searching his chest for the barest hint of movement. If she held very still, and squinted, she could see it. “Crashed one of your ships into the Dynize and then managed to swim all the way back against the tide. You’re a damned workhorse, you know that?”

One of the garrison doctors soon arrived with assistants. He pumped Vallencian’s lungs carefully with glass tubing, then they carried him back toward Fort Nied on a stretcher. Vlora remained out on the beach, telling herself that she should accompany Vallencian until she knew whether he was going to survive, but unwilling to watch him die if it came to that.

The shadows began to grow long, and Vlora smelled the familiar scent of tobacco before she heard the crunch of boots on gravel. She turned to find Olem picking his way gingerly over the rocky terrain, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling.

“Glad to see you’re up and walking,” Vlora said.

“I’m not glad to see you are,” Olem replied. “You should be resting.”

“There’s work to be done.”

“Like standing out here, staring at the bodies?”

Vlora snorted. She wanted to reach out and take Olem by the hand, retire to a hotel room up on the plateau, and spend the next two weeks with him recovering in each other’s arms. “I went with the engineers to examine Nied’s fortifications from the water.”

“And?”

“Doesn’t look great. Any news from the Dynize?”

“Not a peep. I’d hoped you saw some sort of indication that they were ready to talk.”

Vlora turned back toward the ocean. The Dynize ships remained, quietly menacing, as if daring any of the unburned ships in port to make a run for it. “Not that I’ve heard. Do we have casualty reports?”

“Thirty-five hundred wounded, seven hundred dead.”

Vlora perked up. “That’s far better than I expected.”

“It’s only Riflejack numbers,” Olem responded sourly.

“Oh.” Vlora fought the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. That meant that only a few hundred of her soldiers had escaped the battle unharmed. Recovery would be weeks at best, and they’d lose a number of the wounded to disease, infection, or blood loss. “The garrison?”

“The garrison,” Olem said slowly, “was hit hard. They’ve got fewer wounded than us, but about eight thousand dead. They’re not used to this kind of fighting.”

“Nobody is used to this kind of fighting,” Vlora responded, shaking her head. “I’ve never seen anything like it – soldiers that just would not break, no matter how many dead we piled in front of them. I saw Ka-poel a couple of hours ago. She told me that it was definitely blood magic, spread out across half a dozen bone-eyes. The ship Vallencian plowed into must have contained one of the more powerful practitioners, and his death shattered their concentration.”

“At least that’s a mystery solved.”

“I’m not sure I like knowing,” Vlora said. “All my training – pit, all Adran strategy – is based off breaking a less-well-trained enemy. If the enemy will not break, then how do we win?”

“We won yesterday.”

“Barely.”

“Can Ka-poel replicate the Dynize sorcery?”

“She’s powerful enough, that’s for sure. But she’s not formally trained. Everything she can do is self-taught, and she says providing a backbone to ten thousand men is a challenge she’s never even considered before. All her attention right now is focused on the godstone.”

“And?” Olem asked, ashing his cigarette and lowering himself with a groan to the sand beside Vlora.

“And what?” Vlora said with a frustrated shrug. “None of us are Privileged. The two remaining Privileged that the Blackhats left behind don’t want to go near the thing. We don’t know exactly what it is or how it works. I don’t even want to think about it.” She put her head in her hands and rubbed her eyes. “Speaking of the Blackhats…”

“We don’t know where they are,” Olem answered. “I sent out riders. Best guess is Lindet retreated to a safe distance and, once she finds out we’ve won, she’ll return to the city.”

“And bring thousands of angry, armed men with her.” Vlora gritted her teeth, wondering if she was strong enough for a power struggle so soon after the end of this battle. “I’ll kill her before I let her take control of the godstone.”

“Does she know that?”

“I told her as much when I threatened to arrest her.”

“So much for the element of surprise.” Olem flicked a cigarette butt toward the water. “I saw them carrying Vallencian toward the fort. They said he’s still alive.”

“For now,” Vlora responded.

“I’m going to go check on him. Come find me when you decide to stop watching them collect the bodies.”

Vlora helped Olem to his feet, then watched him head back toward Fort Nied, before attempting to collect herself emotionally. Seven hundred men dead. Too many names to memorize, but she’d read through the lists before they were laid to rest. She wondered if they had died hating her for putting them in front of the Dynize.

“They knew the risks. They signed up for the coin,” she told herself. “You didn’t bring a bunch of greenhorns out into the wild. You brought the best damned riflemen in the world, and it’s the only reason most of us are still alive today.”

Somewhere down the beach, members of the garrison had started a driftwood bonfire. Fire for the Dynize dead. Earth for the Riflejacks and garrison. The price of victory.

The price of saving a city of a million people.