Wrath of Empire

Chapter 12

“The Fatrastans and Dynize have engaged.”

Vlora knelt by a creek and splashed water on her face, cleaning off the grime of the road. She relished the shock of the cold water coming out of the foothills, scrubbing her cheeks, enjoying the moment of respite. She climbed to her feet and dried off with a handkerchief, turning to find the scout standing a few feet behind her. It was late in the afternoon and she knew she would have to give the order to make camp soon, but she wanted her infantry to eke out another mile or two before nightfall.

“What happened?” she asked the scout.

“The Dynize turned to follow us when we left,” the scout reported. “They sent a brigade in our tracks, but the Fatrastans engaged around noon and the brigade was forced to pull back.”

“Full engagement?” Vlora asked hopefully. “Did you see the battle?”

“No, ma’am. Just skirmishing. Last I saw before coming to report was the Dynize consolidating.”

“Very good.” Vlora wiped her hands on her handkerchief and returned it to her pocket, dismissing the scout. She turned her face toward the sun and closed her eyes, listening to the tramp of marching soldiers making their way along the winding road of the foothills just a few hundred yards down the creek. A pair of swallows chased each other overhead.

“That was a clever bit of maneuvering.”

Vlora jumped, her pistol halfway out of her belt before she spotted Taniel sitting just above her on the hillside. He wore his buckskins, matching satchels hanging from his shoulders, and leaned on his Hrusch rifle with a casual air as if he’d been there for an hour. She felt a spike of annoyance, and couldn’t help but think that she wouldn’t be in this mess if not for him. “Don’t sneak up on me.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just don’t do it.” Vlora returned to her horse for her canteens and filled them at the creek. She was suddenly self-conscious, aware of Taniel’s gaze following her. “Did Ka-poel get away fine with the Mad Lancers?”

Taniel spread his legs, laying his rifle across them and checking the flint and pan. “She did. They’re southwest of us right now and riding hard. As far as we know, they’re not being followed.”

This information surprised Vlora. “You can speak with her at a distance?”

“Not exactly.” Taniel looked suddenly uncomfortable. “We can sense each other – feel each other’s pains and attitudes. It’s very rudimentary, but it’s a sort of communication.”

“That sounds convenient.”

“It’s a pain in the ass, actually. If she feels pain a hundred miles from me, there’s nothing I can do about it, and vice versa. It can be comforting, but it can also make me anxious as pit.”

Vlora tried to dredge up some sympathy. There wasn’t much to find, so she walked up the side of the hill and sat down next to him. “Tell me about where we’re going.”

“I don’t know much myself,” Taniel admitted. “All I could find in Lindet’s private archives was a reference to a place called Yellow Creek. As far as I could tell, she’d been working off old Dynize texts to pinpoint the location of the other godstones using translations and some sort of mathematical formula her Privileged had cooked up.”

Vlora felt a sudden weight in her stomach. “You mean this could be a wild-goose chase?”

Taniel lifted his hands defensively. “If I thought it was a wild-goose chase, I wouldn’t have offered to pay you a rather large fortune for your help. Lindet’s not the only one who’s been looking for all three godstones, and the two guesses she’s mapped out for our missing artifacts are in the same area as my own estimates. That can’t be coincidence.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Vlora mulled it over. No use wishing to be somewhere else – the deal was struck, and she and her men were in this for the long haul. “Yellow Creek. The name sounds familiar.”

“It’s a mining town,” Taniel said. “They –”

Vlora cut him off, remembering an article she’d read in the newspaper almost a year ago. “They struck gold there, right? A big-time haul. Thousands of prospectors from all over the world have gathered there.”

“Right.”

“What else?”

“That’s about all I know.” Taniel grimaced. “Well, maybe not all I know.”

“What?” Vlora asked, her eyes narrowing involuntarily. Taniel himself was enough of a surprise and a mystery that she didn’t need anything else. She wanted this job to be as straightforward as possible; track down the godstone, smash anything or anyone who gets in the way, then figure out how to destroy the thing. The moment it was in a thousand pieces she intended to be on a boat back to Adro.

“There’s a complication with Yellow Creek. Technically, the land it’s on is claimed by three different countries.”

“Who?”

“Fatrasta, Brudania, and the Palo Nation.”

Vlora wasn’t surprised about the first two. Lindet had claimed the entire continent for her country and was fighting for the legality of her claim with half a dozen colonial powers who still held some land in Fatrasta. But the other? She tried to search her memories. The Palo were spread out in a thousand tribes over a landmass almost as large as the Nine. The actual nation of Fatrasta claimed the whole continent of the same name, but in reality only controlled pieces on the eastern and southern coasts. There were millions of square miles of dense forest northwest of the Ironhook Mountains that only a few Kressians had ever managed to penetrate.

The Palo Nation was a coalition of those northern tribes, but she’d never heard anything about them beyond conjecture. To Vlora’s knowledge, Lindet’s frontier armies had only ever fought tribes who themselves had opposed the Palo Nation, bringing back rumors of walled cities, farmland, and even organized government. It seemed like a fairy tale back when Vlora was putting down insurrections by tribes still living in huts in the swamps.

“I didn’t know the Palo Nation claimed land. In fact, I don’t know much about them at all.”

“No one does,” Taniel said, kicking at a clod of dirt with his heel. “Which makes them dangerous. Last I heard, they were contesting gold claims in the Ironhook Mountains. I’m not actually sure what that means, though.”

“So we might reach Yellow Creek and find a Palo army waiting for us?”

“I’m guessing we’re more likely to find the town being harassed by a skirmishing party. Either way, we should be ready for violence.”

Vlora pursed her lips. “I suppose that’s my job, anyway.” She considered the facts for a few moments, realizing how little she knew. “I don’t want to march into contested territory without scouting it first.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Taniel said. “But if you want to make camp and scout out Yellow Creek, you can’t take long.”

“Why not?”

“Because at some point, Lindet is going to find out what we’re up to and send a whole field army to come bury us.”

“Or,” Vlora mused, “the Dynize will crush Lindet’s troops and try to figure out where we went.”

“Either one.”

Vlora got to her feet, dusting off her trousers. “It’s settled, then.”

She had the brief satisfaction of seeing Taniel surprised as she got on her horse. “What is?” he asked.

“We have to get moving. I’m going to find Olem.”

Olem was at the rear of the army, riding along behind the last few carts of provisions in the long and winding column. He wore a thoughtful expression, leaning back in his saddle with a hand gently patting his horse’s flank as he hummed a tune.

“I just sent someone to find you,” he said by way of greeting.

Vlora waited by the road and then nudged her horse up next to his, letting them walk together. “Anything important?” she asked.

“Another of our rear scouts just reported in. The Dynize and Fatrastan field armies skirmished all afternoon, but it looks like they’ve made camp on either side of the river and are content to feel each other out – for now.”

“That could be ideal for us.”

“Could be,” Olem agreed. “Both armies have a handful of scouts following us. They want to know where we’re headed.”

That was decidedly not ideal. They couldn’t hide a whole army, of course, not even up in the Ironhook foothills, but she’d hoped to make a clean break that would keep their location a mystery for at least a few weeks. “How many horses did we keep for ourselves?”

“Sixty dragoons,” Olem said. “Everyone else went with Styke.”

Vlora chewed on the number, watching as Taniel rode over a nearby hill and joined them. “Leave twenty of them behind to set some ambushes,” she told Olem. “Scare off the scouts or delay them; just buy us a little more time until they figure out where we’re heading. I don’t want either the Fatrastans or Dynize following us to Yellow Creek.”

“Will do.”

“With any luck, the two armies will be so tied up with each other that we’re an afterthought. At least for now.” She glanced at Taniel, who’d hung his rifle from his saddle and pulled out a sketchbook. He began to sketch quickly, his eyes on the hillside to their left, expertly dashing bits of charcoal against the paper along with the cadence of his horse’s gait. “We have a problem,” she said to Olem.

“Which is?”

“We know nothing about what we’re walking into.”

“Yellow Creek?” Olem produced a prerolled cigarette from his pocket and offered it to Vlora, then to Taniel. They both shook their heads. He shrugged and lit it for himself. “It’s a gold-rush town. I’ve got nothing more than that.”

“That’s what Taniel said, too,” Vlora said, jerking her thumb at Taniel, who’d covered half the page of his sketchbook in charcoal markings in less than a minute. “But that doesn’t really help us.”

“What do you propose?” Olem asked.

Vlora hesitated. “You’re not going to like this.”

“You want to go ahead and scout it yourself, don’t you?” Olem ashed his cigarette and scowled at Vlora. “I definitely won’t like that.”

“We can’t just ride in at the head of an army. At best the locals will send runners to all the closest cities asking for help, thinking we’re trying to move in on their claims. At worst, we’ll run into a stubborn militia and won’t even be able to get into the town without bloodshed.”

Olem fixed her with a long, steady gaze. “And sending me with a squad isn’t an option?”

“Even in plain clothes, you’ll stand out,” Vlora replied. “A squad of soldiers always looks like a squad of soldiers, even when dressing down.”

Taniel suddenly put away his charcoal, flipping the leather cover over his sketchbook before she could see what he’d been drawing. He looked from Vlora to Olem, then said, “There isn’t anything in Yellow Creek that Vlora and I can’t handle.”

“I don’t remember inviting you,” Vlora said, turning to Taniel.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?” Taniel asked.

“An obelisk seeped in sorcery and covered in Dynize writing.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“We have no idea if the godstones all look the same,” Taniel said. “Until Michel told me about the one outside Landfall, I thought I was looking for an artifact the size of a pair of saddlebags. We still might be. Besides, my senses are more highly tuned than yours. If we get within a hundred yards or so of the godstone, I should be able to find it.”

Vlora and Olem exchanged a glance. “Give us a minute,” she told Taniel. She pulled gently on her reins, coming to a stop while Olem did the same. They waited for almost a minute as the column marched on, until they wouldn’t be overheard even by Taniel’s powder-mage senses.

“Do you trust him?” Olem asked.

It was a question Vlora had been mulling over for weeks. “I trust him to not get me killed.”

“And beyond that?”

“I have no idea,” she confessed. “I’m still not even sure what he is. Bo told me he’s become something more than just a powder mage – he’s transcended into something new.” She considered Borbador – her and Taniel’s mutual adopted brother – wishing briefly that he was riding alongside her. He would know what to make of Taniel.

Olem took a drag on his cigarette. “That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence. You should at least take our mages with you.”

“And leave the army undefended against Privileged or bone-eyes?” Vlora shook her head. “Not a chance.”

“Just one,” Olem pressed. “Take Norrine. She’s known Taniel for longer than you have. She’ll watch both of your backs, and can pull you out of trouble if Taniel gets himself into something only he can handle.”

“No. You need her here. Look, I can handle Taniel. I can handle a gold-rush town. You’ve got to trust me on this. I’m going to leave you in command and I need to know that you’re focused on that and not spending all your energy worrying about me.”

Olem looked at her glumly. He spat into the weeds and let out a sigh. “Fine.”

“Good. As long as no one is on our tail, you can let the army take it easy from here to Yellow Creek. Find somewhere a dozen miles outside the city to camp and send someone in to find us. With any luck we’ll have already destroyed the godstone and be ready to leave.”

“You don’t have that much luck.”

“No,” Vlora agreed. “I don’t.” She paused, thinking about Bo again. “Do me another favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Dispatch a letter to Adopest. Send three copies with three different couriers so you know it gets there.”

“From here? It’ll be six weeks on the fastest ship.”

“Send it anyway. I want Bo to know what’s going on here. Tell him about the godstones, and that both Lindet and the Dynize want to use them.”

Olem barked a laugh. “That sounds like a trail of catnip for a kitten. Do you really want Bo to come here? I’m not entirely certain he won’t throw his own hat in the ring to become a god.”

“Bo is a lot of things, but power hungry is not one of them. He may show up with the intent to study the damn things, but …” She trailed off.

“But what?”

“But I think having him here would do more good than harm. If only slightly.” She paused. “Oh, and tell him to bring his better half. I wouldn’t mind having the strongest Privileged in the Nine standing over my shoulder.”

“I know they’re your friends,” Olem said softly, “but involving them could be dangerous.”

“Then I better hurry,” Vlora replied. “So that this whole business is finished before Bo can even set sail.” She flipped her reins, riding to catch up with the army and calling over her shoulder, “I leave first thing in the morning. I expect to see you in my tent at sundown, Colonel.”