Blood of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  “You damn well better hope that whoever is commanding the purge doesn’t decide to get around to you until tomorrow,” Sika said, throwing up her hands. “I can’t spare anyone, I can’t risk…” She trailed off helplessly.

  “No need,” Etzi said confidently. “We have good walls. My soldiers will be back within a few hours. We’ll be fine.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Certain. You’re right. You can’t spare anyone, and you can’t stay here. You have to warn as many of our allies as you can. I’ll send out a few runners of my own.”

  Styke side-eyed Etzi. Sending out messengers would deplete the few guards they had left. He swore inwardly, willing the guardsmen to return with his Lancers. Once they were back, he’d have options—defend Etzi, flee the city, or even escort Etzi’s entire Household to a bigger compound. He tried to wrap his head around this new shift. He would use this civil strife to his advantage, of course, but he had to figure out exactly how to do it.

  Did he go fetch Ibana and ride the army to the godstone, allowing the Dynize to slaughter one another? Or did he intervene on behalf of Etzi? The former was the smart thing to do. The latter was… the more honorable? The old Styke would have ridden away laughing. There was nothing better than an enemy at war with itself. But now?

  Sika and her soldiers took some refreshment and ammunition, then disappeared back into the city. Once she was gone, Styke cornered Etzi. “If you can spare anyone—anyone—I need you to send them south with an update for my second-in-command. I’ll write her a message myself.”

  “It’ll be done.”

  “You also want to tell Ka-poel what’s going on,” he advised.

  “We may already be a lost cause, unless your men can come quickly enough,” Etzi responded.

  “I can’t promise that Ka-poel won’t think otherwise, but once your soldiers bring mine back from the prison, I can get them armed and on horseback. We can at least escort your Household to somewhere more defensible.”

  Etzi passed a hand across his face. “I appreciate the offer, but there isn’t anywhere more defensible. We have to make a stand here.” He nodded to himself. “I will go make my case to Ka-poel.”

  He hadn’t been gone more than ten minutes when Styke heard a warning shout from one of the guards. He climbed quickly to one of the towers and looked toward the city, where a mob had begun to gather at the end of the causeway. It was already fifty strong and growing quickly. He could see city guardsmen among them, and even while he watched, an officer detached from the mob and walked the length of the causeway. He stopped a few yards from the gate.

  “I have an arrest warrant for Meln-Etzi!”

  Etzi was summoned and climbed up beside Styke. He was ashen-faced, but steady. A single glance told Styke that Etzi knew exactly what this was. “I am Meln-Etzi,” he told the officer.

  “In the name of the emperor and the Great Ka, open this gate! You are under arrest for treason!”

  “If I open this gate,” Etzi whispered, “we will all die.”

  “Agreed,” Styke said.

  “But if I don’t, they will storm the walls and destroy us anyway.” He froze in place for several moments, then climbed down from the tower.

  “Meln-Etzi!” the officer called. “Meln-Etzi, I demand you open this gate.”

  “Keep it closed,” Etzi ordered. A small group had already begun to gather in the courtyard, and Etzi doled out tasks in a quick, efficient tone. “Maetle, get the youngest children and pregnant women into the smuggler hole. Send boats across the lake to our closest allies and tell them we need help. Open the armory for everyone else. We will try to stall for the return of our soldiers.”

  The group scattered without questioning the orders. Within minutes people began flooding back in, wearing old, ill-fitting breastplates and morion helmets and carrying muskets from the Household armory. Styke watched them impassively, considering getting his own weapons, when he spotted Celine and Jerio.

  Jerio was carrying a musket. The boy could barely lift it, but he was looking it over with the serious air of an experienced soldier. Styke could hear him arguing with Celine. “You are my guest,” Jerio said, mimicking words that Styke had heard Etzi say on more than one occasion. “Join the children in the smuggler hole!”

  “I’ll man the walls,” Celine insisted, grabbing for Jerio’s musket. She put on a brave face, but Styke could see that the seriousness of the situation seemed to have struck her more deeply than it had Jerio. Her voice trembled. She was breathing hard. She was terrified.

  Something inside Styke snapped. His face twisted, his gut clenching. He strode over to the arguing children and snatched the musket out of Jerio’s hands. “You’ll do no such thing,” he ordered. The idleness and suppressed fury of the last couple of weeks finally overwhelmed him. He could barely see straight.

  “Ben!” Celine turned on him, her eyes tearing. “They’re going to kill my friends, Ben. We can’t let them. I’ll fight, I will!”

  Styke grabbed them both by the shoulders and shoved them toward the stables. “No fighting. Take Jerio.”

  “I won’t hide!” Celine yelled.

  “Of course you won’t, you little shit. Jerio, I want you to load my carbines. Celine.”

  Her tears were flowing freely now. “Ben?”

  Styke reached out and wiped a tear away with his thumb. “Go get my armor ready.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Styke ran a thumb along the base of his neck where enchanted steel pressed against his bare skin, adjusting the thick wool shirt he wore as a padding to protect him from such chafing. He wasn’t just hot already—he was boiling—but the sensation of his armor once again resting on his shoulders made him forget every other ill, discomfort, and pain. The weight of it felt protective and reassuring, but it was the scent of sorcery that made his heart sing. That scent was just as potent as it was ten years ago. It swirled in his nostrils like the smell of a bitter beer.

  One of the greatest dangers a soldier could face was the feeling of his own invincibility. It was a particular kind of stupidity that could get anyone killed. Styke had danced with such a feeling his whole life, but the armor? The armor removed that blind spot. It made him a walking fortress, with few weaknesses.

  He stepped forward and finished adjusting Amrec’s armor. The big warhorse shimmied and shook his head in protest at the weight of the draping chain mail, but Styke took him by the nose and whispered in his ear until he calmed. “You’re fine, you big baby. We tried this on you back at Starlight. You can do this.” He ran his hand along Amrec’s flank, feeling for uncomfortable wrinkles in the chain. He could hear shouting just outside the stables. The mob was growing impatient, threatening to batter down the gate of the Etzi compound.

  “How do I look?” Styke asked, presenting himself to his small audience.

  Celine looked him up and down seriously. “Like a knight.”

  Jerio seemed more skeptical. He could hear the sounds outside and they were clearly getting to him. “You’re sure it works?”

  Styke breathed in that bitter draft of sorcery. “It works.”

  “My uncle is a captain. He says that armor, even enchanted armor, is no match for a good musket ball.”

  Styke reached up and grasped Amrec’s saddle horn, put a foot in the stirrup, and pulled himself onto the warhorse. “Normally, I’d agree with him. But in this case…” He patted Amrec on the neck and nodded to the stable door. Celine ran to open it, but she was beaten by the door sliding open on its own.

  “Ben, are you…” It was Etzi. The Household head froze at the sight of Styke, looking up with widening eyes. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to disperse the mob.”

  Etzi scoffed in disbelief, then ran forward to take Amrec by the bridle. Amrec snorted and stomped at the gesture, and Etzi took a step back. “That’s not just a mob. They have muskets and pikes. Real weapons. Whatever you think you can do with a set of enchanted armor, it’s not enough. The
re are well over a hundred now. They’ll pull you down and kill you.” He took a deep breath and set his jaw. “I’m going to offer myself without opening the gate. I’m hoping that’s enough to buy the rest of you some time.”

  Styke scratched at his neck. The wool shirt was slipping again. Even after months of freedom he still weighed two stone less than he had the last time he wore this armor. It wasn’t dangerously loose, but it was uncomfortably so. “Move,” he told Etzi.

  Reluctantly, the Household head stepped aside. Styke gestured to Celine, who rushed to the corner of the stables and snatched up his helmet and lance. He took the helmet first, fitting it onto his head, enjoying the protective claustrophobia that still smelled of his decade-old sweat. He took his lance, ducked his head, and rode out of the stables.

  A hodgepodge of Household members had gathered in the courtyard. They jumped out of the way as Styke entered their midst, staring. He wondered what was going through their heads and remembered the old days. Back in Landfall, the first few times the Lancers had worn their armor in public, everyone had thought them mad, imbeciles, fools clad in ancient vestments. It wasn’t until they’d won battle after battle that they’d begun to chant when they entered a town.

  “Open the gate,” Styke ordered.

  No one moved. A rock sailed over their heads and clattered against the wall of one of the buildings inside the compound. Another breached the compound gate, then another. A window shattered. Styke could see the fear on the faces of the Household members. Old women, young boys, invalids. All of them holding old muskets from the Household armory, all of them waiting for death to come streaming through that gate.

  He wondered where his own fear lay. Etzi was right, of course. One man, even in enchanted armor, couldn’t hold off an angry mob. The moment he slowed down, they would pull him from Amrec’s back and find the chinks in his armor. Riding through that door might as well be a death sentence.

  Fear, he decided, didn’t factor into it. These people had hosted and protected him. They’d taken in Ka-poel and Celine. They’d treated him like one of their own. Now, with the mob banging at their door, they couldn’t hope to protect themselves. But he could protect them. He could be their shield, buy them time until Etzi’s guard returned with his Lancers. He was Ben Styke and, he decided, it was about time this goddamn continent learned what that meant.

  He lowered his visor. “Open the gate!” he bellowed.

  Celine and Jerio appeared, rushing through the courtyard and throwing themselves at the mighty bar that kept the door locked. They were too small, even together, to make it budge. Etzi arrived at their heels and put his back beneath the bar, snapping his Household members out of their fearful reverie. The bar was lifted, the heavy doors pulled back.

  The first unlucky bastard to surge through the gate caught Amrec’s front hooves to the chest, hurling his body into the bottlenecked crowd with enough force to dash a half dozen of them to the ground. The mob arrested its own forward momentum, causing several of them to fall off the sides of the causeway into the lake. Those closest to Styke scrambled backward, the heat of their fury dissipating at the point of Styke’s lance and the spark of Amrec’s hooves on the flagstones.

  Styke advanced until Amrec was entirely on the causeway. He was surrounded now, though all those closest cowered in surprise at his advance. “Close the gates!” he called over his shoulder. He heard them creak closed behind him, then the boom of the bar being put back into place. He inhaled deeply, smelling the sorcery and sweat and fear and anger. He should be shivering in nervous anticipation, but instead he found a laugh rumbling up from his belly.

  This was what he was made for.

  “Who’s in charge of this?” he demanded in Dynize.

  The mob continued to claw a slow retreat, those in the front trying to move backward and those behind shoving forward. That retreat slowed to nothing when the weight of their more adventurous comrades kept them from being able to slip back farther.

  “It’s the foreign giant!” someone shouted.

  “Give us Etzi,” another whooped.

  Styke swung his lance across the noses of the closest of the mob. “You don’t want Etzi. You want me.”

  “He’s a traitor!”

  “Forget Etzi, this is the foreigner! Pull him from his horse!”

  “You pull him from his horse,” a young woman just out of reach of Styke’s lance called over her shoulder. She turned and leapt into the water. A few others joined her. The rest of the mob held strong. Styke could feel them growing a backbone, realizing that this was just one man in some armor. He could hear whispered encouragement from the center of things, no doubt coming from Sedial’s paid instigators. He tried to find anyone who looked like they held some sort of authority. He failed.

  Amrec could feel it, too—that growing tension. Styke tightened his grip on his lance.

  He saw a movement among the crowd. A young man lifted a musket, braced it on the shoulder of a comrade, and pulled the trigger. Styke saw the puff of smoke, heard the noise of the blast, and felt a ping against the visor of his helmet that jerked his head backward, all in a fraction of a second.

  There was a shocked silence. Styke reached, left-handed, across his saddle and drew his carbine. He leveled it and pulled the trigger, dropping the shooter in a spray of blood.

  All pit broke loose.

  The mob surged forward with a howl. Styke holstered his carbine in one smooth motion, took the reins in one hand, and dug in his heels. Amrec leapt into the crowd without hesitation. Within moments they were speeding across the causeway, nearly three hundred stone of armored warhorse and rider plowing through bodies. Styke’s lance tore the face off an old man throwing a rock, punched through shoulders and stomachs, quickly becoming too heavy to hold. He released the lance with a grunt, drawing his saber and laying about him. Bullets, pikes, rocks, and clubs all bounced off his armor. The cacophony of it was deafening, a bludgeoning that might have unhorsed a lesser man on a lesser horse.

  He began to laugh, the mirth bubbling up from his stomach. It didn’t take long for him to reach the end of the causeway and gain the main avenue. Amrec’s momentum slowed as they rode into an even greater crowd. The avenue was packed, the mob here thick and angry. They swarmed like angry hornets, those with long weapons dashing forward to attempt to thrust them between Amrec’s legs, others leaping out of the way.

  Styke turned Amrec and drove him back to the causeway, clearing it completely in one swoop and then turning to ride back toward the city, plowing into the center of the mob. No one who could still stand remained in the causeway. The Household was safe. The entire fury of the mob was upon him.

  Amrec danced through the furious crowd, hooves flashing tirelessly while Styke’s saber rose and fell. He fought with one eye on the causeway, another on the mob, waiting for them to break.

  But they didn’t break. Organized city guard members, fighting as a unit, emerged from the mob. They gave up trying to shoot him and fixed their short plug bayonets. More pikes emerged, as if brought to them by auxiliaries hiding in the alleys. They began to rush Styke in determined waves, falling back from his mad flailing and then trying again.

  Styke lost all concept of time. He felt himself begin to grow sluggish as he continued to fight, losing strength behind the swing of his saber. He could feel Amrec’s exhaustion between his legs.

  He heard Amrec’s scream a moment before the horse lurched beneath him and fell. They both went down in a tumble, and only long-practiced instinct allowed Styke to throw himself free instead of being pinned beneath Amrec’s weight. He rolled, losing his saber but drawing his knife, coming up unsteadily and turning his head toward his horse.

  Amrec tried to regain his feet. Screamed again. The sound wrenched something inside of Styke, tearing out his guts as he watched Amrec fail, and try and fail again.

  The distraction cost him. Styke felt a scrape against his armor and then a sting at his side. He whirled hard, only to find a Dyn
ize face clinging close to him. It belonged to a middle-aged woman, who snarled through his visor. “From the Great Ka,” she hissed. Styke gasped as her knife was pulled from his side, raised, bloody and dripping, and thrust toward his eyes. He barely registered the stark white bone of the knife, the black tattoos that spiraled up the woman’s arm.

  He only heard his horse screaming.

  He slammed his head against her face, listening to the rasp of her blade sliding harmlessly along his visor. Blood sprayed from the impact, momentarily blinding him, but he had a hold of her with his left hand now and didn’t need his sight. He felt the tip of his knife drag at her swamp-dragon-leather armor. Giving a roar, he punched it through with all his strength.

  The dragonman sagged in his arms and he threw the disemboweled corpse into the crowd, then wrenched off his helmet so that he could clean the blood from his eyes. What he saw when his vision cleared was like something out of a nightmare.

  Soldiers swarmed Amrec, trying to put down the screaming, flailing horse with their long pikes. More dashed toward Styke, while those closest to him stared at the body of their dragonman in shock. “Dogs!” he spat. “Cowards! Can’t even put down a horse!” He steadied himself, his fury threatening to burst from his chest. Something caught the attention of several of the city guard, turning their heads. Styke took the opportunity to rock onto the balls of his feet and fling himself forward.

  He crashed into them with reckless abandon. He thrust his knife with one hand and wielded his helmet like a club with the other. Within moments both gauntlets were soaked in blood. Guardsmen fell beneath him like bugs, their screaming and pleading falling on deaf ears.

  He lost his helmet, turned, and snatched a man by the front of his shirt and drew his knife hand back.

  “Ben!” the man wailed. “It’s me!”

  The blow almost fell. Styke yanked himself from his bloodlust, eyes focusing until he recognized Markus clutched in his outstretched arm. He forced himself to let go, to lower his knife and look around. What he saw astounded him—armored figures riding down the Dynize mob, swarming around Styke at a charge. What remained of the city guard attempted to flee, only to run into the fixed bayonets of Etzi’s Household guard marching up the avenue.