The Autumn Republic

Chapter 35

Tamas sat brooding in a cloth folding chair in front of the tent his soldiers had set up for him to take his lunch.

His last report from Olem arrived twenty-four hours ago, letting him know that they were going into Brude’s Hideaway to hunt the Gurlish magebreaker and his Kez cavalry. Tamas couldn’t help but glance to the northwest, wondering why Olem hadn’t sent his morning report. Two a day, Tamas had ordered. It was vital that he be kept abreast of the situation on the western plains if he was to proceed against the Kez armies to his south.

The messenger’s horse may have thrown a shoe, or he might have been sent off a few hours late. Tamas chewed on the inside of his cheek. Olem may have been defeated in battle, for all he knew. Whether it was a portent of ill or not, he didn’t like the lag in communication.

“Olem!” he shouted.

“Olem’s not here, sir.” Andriya, one of Tamas’s powder mages, appeared from inside his tent. He was a tall man with scraggly blond hair and a pockmarked face.

“Bloody pit.” Tamas rubbed at his temples. “How many times is that?”

“Seventeen in the last four days.”

“Sorry. Habit, I suppose. Damn bodyguard has been with me less than a year and I’m already doing that.”

Andriya picked at his teeth with one fingernail and turned to spit. “Funny, sir, but when Cenka died and you got Olem to replace him, you never confused the two.”

“Surely I must have.”

Andriya shrugged. “Maybe. That’s fine, I never liked Cenka anyway.”

“You don’t like anyone.”

“I liked Erika,” Andriya said after a moment of introspection.

“My late wife saved you from the hangman’s noose in Kez. I certainly hope you liked her.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Andriya said. “She had a certain” – he made a rolling motion with one hand – “something about her.”

“I know,” Tamas said quietly.

If Andriya noticed Tamas’s discomfort, he didn’t show it. He leaned on his rifle and began to pick at his nails again. “Messenger coming in, sir.”

Tamas stood up and stretched, trying not to look too eager. Had Olem’s man finally arrived? Tamas needed to know what was going on at his flank. He couldn’t meet the Kez infantry in battle with that Gurlish Wolf at his heels.

Tamas’s heart fell. The messenger coming in was not one of Olem’s. He was an outrider, a scout with the Second Brigade, keeping track of the Kez movements to the south. Someone was following the scout. As they drew closer, Tamas could see it was a woman in a gray woolen dress and a tan apron. Tamas knew that uniform. It was the clothing given to camp followers in the Kez army.

The scout said something to the woman and she stopped a ways off while the scout approached. He saluted. “Sir. Found this woman early this morning making her way toward our camp. She said she has news, and it’s urgent.”

“And you brought her to me?” Did chain of command mean nothing in this army anymore?

“She wouldn’t talk to anyone else. She had the right passwords.”

“Passwords?”

“I’m one of your spies, you daft man,” the woman said in Kez, her voice husky, her tone impatient.

Andriya let out a laugh. Tamas silenced him with a glance and looked at his other bodyguards. Andriya seemed to be the only one present who spoke Kez, other than Tamas himself. The rest hadn’t understood her. “Let her through.”

The woman approached. She looked about thirty, with raven hair, brown eyes, and hollow cheeks – she could have fit in anywhere in the Kez countryside. Her dress was well kept but covered in stains, her knees and elbows caked with mud, likely from crouching in the long grasses on her flight from the Kez camp.

“Would you like to clean up?”

“No time, but I could damn well use a drink.” Her switch to Adran was so flawless that Tamas wondered if he’d imagined her speaking Kez a moment ago.

“Get her some water,” he told Andriya.

“Wine.”

Tamas rolled his eyes but nodded. “All right. I didn’t know we had any spies left in the Kez army.”

“There are few enough,” she said. “There was a purge about seven weeks ago. Like someone gave them a Kresimir-damned list of names. It was pure luck that I didn’t get nabbed as well. I haven’t been able to use any of our normal channels to send reports – you’ve gotten nothing from me for weeks and for that I’m sorry.”

Tamas put his hands behind his back and gave a sharp nod. “Glad you made it out alive.” Inside, he was seething. General Hilanska, no doubt. When this whole thing was over, he was going to drop Hilanska into the deepest part of the Adsea and see how long he could swim with that one arm. “What’s so urgent that you had to leave your cover?”

The woman took an offered wineskin from Andriya and drained half of it before answering. “Aside from the intelligence I haven’t been able to pass on for the last month? I slept with General Fulicote last night. You know who he is?”

Tamas nodded. One of Ipille’s many infantry commanders. As far as Kez command went, he was a decent commander. He’d commanded a brigade in the Gurlish Wars twenty years ago.

“Then you know he’s a teetotaler, like you. Well, last night he was piss drunk.”

“Why?”

“Ipille has ordered the entire Grand Army to make a stand at the mouth of Surkov’s Alley.”

“So? That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable order.”

“So?” the woman retorted, before draining the rest of the wineskin. “So Ipille doesn’t think he can win. He’s been with the army for the last two months and now he’s turning tail and running back to Kez. General Fulicote and all the rest have been ordered on what they know is a suicide mission. Ipille told them that any man who runs from the battle will be caught and publicly flayed.”

“Do you have proof of this?”

The woman removed a letter from her bodice and smoothed it against her skirt before handing it to Tamas. It bore the royal seal of the Kez king, hastily broken by a clumsy thumb. Tamas opened the letter and skimmed the contents. Ipille was ordering his men to make a stand, but the final threat at the end allowed Tamas to read between the lines, just as General Fulicote and this spy had done: the Kez army wasn’t meant as anything more than cannon fodder to slow down Tamas and the Deliv.

Tamas returned to his chair, deep in thought. “What could he possibly gain by this?” he muttered.

“The Kez have all been asking the same thing of you since you attacked after the parley.”

Tamas was up on his feet again. “That was Ipille. He broke that parley.”

“That’s not what his officers think. I’ve managed to spend the night with four senior Kez officers since then and not a single one of them thinks Ipille actually broke the parley. They’re convinced that you and the Deliv fabricated the whole thing so you could push into Kez and try to dethrone Ipille.”

“I would do no such thing.” Tamas shook his head. Why was he explaining himself to a spy? A niggle of doubt had entered his mind. If Ipille hadn’t launched the attack on his men during the parley in order to kidnap Ka-poel, then who had?

He didn’t have time to wonder. If Ipille was fleeing and throwing his whole army away, that meant he had some kind of plan. Whether he meant to force Ka-poel to awaken Kresimir or he planned to retreat to his capital and spend the winter raising levies and trying to forge alliances among the Nine, it didn’t matter. Tamas needed to end this quickly.

“Report to General Arbor, he’ll see that you get somewhere to rest,” he said over his shoulder. “Andriya, get my horse!” He ran into his tent and sorted through his maps until he found one of southern Adro.

Thirty minutes later he strode into Sulem’s command tent. The Deliv king was surrounded by half a dozen members of his royal cabal and five of his generals. “We need to speak,” Tamas said.

Sulem shushed the angry mutters of his generals and cabal with a raised hand. “Everyone out,” he said.

They were alone within moments. “Do you read Kez?” Tamas asked.

“Yes.”

Tamas handed him Ipille’s orders to his general. Sulem read the letter twice and examined the seal. “May I have my Privileged check the authenticity?”

“By all means.”

“Vivia!” Sulem called. The caramel-skinned Privileged arrived a moment later and took the letter with a few words of instruction before disappearing.

Tamas began to pace the tent, his mind racing. Royal seals always had the faint touch of sorcery to them, much like a ward. It allowed generals in the field to check for authenticity. Tamas had been able to sense it himself, but Sulem needed to be convinced as well.

“These are the words of a desperate man,” Sulem said. “You should be pleased.”

“He’s trying to buy time. He knows that we won’t advance into Kez while the snows fall.”

“So what if he does? My armies have by now ravaged the Amber Expanse. They shall retreat to Alvation for the winter and sharpen their bayonets. Come spring we will crush whatever resistance the Kez have left.”

Tamas paused in his pacing. He still did not want to explain to Sulem about Kresimir and Ka-poel. Nor did he think that Sulem cared much for the fact that a Brudanian army held Adopest. “He may be able to forge alliances. If Starland or Novi decides to enter the war on their side, this war will last for ages.”

“Novi wouldn’t dare,” Sulem said with a wave of his hand.

One flap of the tent parted as Vivia returned. She handed Sulem the letter. “It’s Ipille’s,” she said, and slipped back out the way she had come.

Tamas advanced to the table in the middle of Sulem’s tent and pushed several maps and correspondence out of the way, laying his own map of southern Adro down and rubbing it smooth. “I will not allow this war to last any longer.”

“You have a plan?” Sulem approached the table curiously.

“The Kez will likely gather here and prepare for our approach,” Tamas said, pointing to the northern entrance to Surkov’s Alley. “They’re less than half a day ahead of us. I propose that we march double-time into the night tonight and all day tomorrow and catch them unawares.”

The Kez king frowned at that. “You mean to stop them before they can secure a defensive position at Surkov’s Alley?”

Tamas smiled. “I mean to do much more than that.”