The Powder Mage Trilogy: Promise of Blood, The Crimson Campaign, The Autumn Republic

by McClellan, Brian

  He’d tried to loosen his bonds. No amount of wiggling would get him out of them. What else could he do? He looked down. No use anyway, he supposed. Kez guards stood at the foot of the beam at the bottom of a fifty-foot drop. Could he survive that far of a fall? Would he land, only to have the Kez finish off his broken body?

  How would Tamas have gotten out of this? The old bastard may have been mean, but he was clever, too.

  Julene had watched him struggle for all of an hour. She seemed amused by it, if anything, and the madness in her eyes seemed to come and go.

  “Why did he do this to you?” Taniel asked.

  Julene gave that choking laugh again. “I ask myself that every day.”

  There’d be no help from her, Taniel decided. She was clearly as mad as the god who put her there. He looked up at the hook from which he hung, and then toward the Adran camp. Even at this distance, without a powder trance, he could tell that the General Staff was gathering. Equal commotion was going through the Kez camp. Both sides were preparing for a parlay.

  Was that when Kresimir planned to kill them all?

  “Kresimir didn’t want to come back,” Julene said.

  Taniel turned his head sharply toward her. The madness was gone from her, and her eyes were suddenly lucid.

  “He wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t summoned him like I did,” she went on. “He doesn’t care that Tamas killed Manhouch. The fate of the mortals of this world don’t concern him. I was so wrong.” Julene coughed, then swallowed hard, her broken face somehow twisting to look more bitter. “If I live another twenty thousand years, I could not possibly make a mistake again like I did by summoning Kresimir.” Her whole body shuddered, and she threw back her head, moaning in agony.

  Taniel turned away. He couldn’t look at that. Cruelty for the sake of cruelty. Gods, it seemed, were capable of pettiness just as much as the next man.

  Taniel scanned the Adran camp, looking for familiar faces. It was too far to make out individuals.

  By now Ka-poel would know what had happened to him.

  If she was still alive.

  Taniel flexed his arms and pulled against his rope. He lifted a few inches, and then fell back. His struggling all morning had exhausted him.

  “What are you doing, powder mage?” Julene said.

  “Trying to get away.” He pulled himself up again. He gained an inch. Maybe two.

  “You can’t. You fall from here and you’ll break your legs.”

  “Maybe I can shimmy down.”

  Julene rasped out a laugh. “They’ll just put you back up.”

  Taniel spotted a movement in the Kez camp. It wasn’t significant, and he knew not what drew his eye in that direction. He willed himself to see farther.

  A small figure was winding its way through the soldiers. A hooded shape—it could have been a child. But Taniel knew that build. He knew how to read the sway of the walk, from long familiarity.

  Ka-poel. What was she doing here? She had to get out, to leave the camp before she was caught!

  No one paid her any mind. The soldiers were preparing for something big. She was a few hundred yards away, just working her way through the camp in no particular hurry.

  Taniel flexed again. He lifted himself up until his face nearly touched the hook. Every fiber of his body trembled from the effort, his bruised flesh crying out in pain.

  “What do you plan to do, powder mage?” Julene’s voice was steady. The rasp was gone. A glance in her direction showed her staring intently at him.

  Taniel let himself drop, gasping at the effort. “I’m going to kill Kresimir.”

  Ka-poel was getting closer. What did she plan on doing when she got to him? Her sorcery couldn’t get him off this beam.

  In the distance, in the no-man’s-land between the armies, Taniel saw a lone figure head out from the Adran camp. Tall and fat, wearing a white apron. Mihali.

  It only took a moment of searching before Taniel found Kresimir standing at the head of the Kez lines. The god had changed his bloody clothes for clean ones and still wore his mask. He, too, began heading toward the middle of the field.

  Taniel lifted himself up until he reached the hook. Inch by inch, he felt with his fingers. His struggles had loosened his bonds. Perhaps not enough to slip out of them, but…

  Taniel grasped the hook with both hands and placed his feet flat against the beam. He pressed with his legs, working his toes against the wood like the feet of a clamp. Firmly braced on the beam, he pushed up, willing even more strength from his already burning thighs. Just a couple inches was all he needed…

  And he was there! He worked his bonds along the curve of the hook until suddenly the rope was free. A wave of giddiness swept over him, nearly making him fall. He was free of the hook! He could drop from this height anytime he wanted.

  He looked down and his stomach lurched. That didn’t seem like such a good idea.

  Grasping the hook, he turned himself around so that he was facing the beam.

  “You’re a stubborn bastard,” Julene said.

  Taniel didn’t answer her. Slowly, he began working his way down the rough-hewn beam. He dug his fingernails and the toes of his boots into the wood as if he were scaling a cliff face. Every muscle protested in agony. There was no way he could scrape his fingernails the entire way down.

  He worked down the first few feet and stopped, gasping for breath.

  “Can you really do it?” Julene asked. “Kill Kresimir?”

  Taniel worked his way down another foot.

  “It’s the savage, isn’t it? By pit, her sorcery is potent. She might be able to kill him.”

  Taniel remained silent. Another foot. He could do it.

  He looked down. There were four guards stationed around the base of the beam. None of them noticed his descent. He’d have to get near enough to the ground to drop on one of them, and then fight the other three—his hands still bound. Ka-poel would be there by now. She could…

  She entered his line of vision suddenly, approaching one of the guards at a quick pace. The guard straightened and said something, holding out a hand. Her small fist darted out, slamming into his throat. The guard fell to his knees, gurgling blood.

  Another foot. Taniel’s heart thundered in his ears. He had to keep moving.

  “Make me a promise,” Julene said.

  “Faster, faster, I have to go faster,” Taniel whispered to himself.

  “Promise you’ll kill me. Shoot me in the head with one of those bullets you used to blind Kresimir. I won’t survive that. Not in my weakened state. Consider it an act of vengeance, if you like.”

  Taniel looked down. Ka-poel was grappling with another guard. A third grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Promise me, Taniel.”

  Taniel was struck by the pleading in her voice. He stopped just long enough to look at her. “I promise,” he said.

  Julene gave a shrill laugh.

  Below, the three guards had forced Ka-poel to the ground. Taniel took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  Then he let himself fall.

  CHAPTER

  44

  Tamas followed Nikslaus through a side door of the mansion and out onto the lawn. The ground was soaked, rain coming down in thick sheets. Even though it was only half past six in the afternoon, the sky was darkening. A grandfather of a storm was blowing in.

  The Privileged was just rounding the corner to the front of the mansion as Tamas came out the door. He set off in pursuit.

  He reached the corner of the building and stopped. A quick glance showed fifty, maybe sixty soldiers in the courtyard. They hid behind carriages and sculptures, exchanging fire with the powder mages inside.

  Nikslaus leapt onto the running board of a carriage, hooking one arm through a handstrap. Tamas could hear him yelling between the volleys of musket fire:

  “Go!” Nikslaus pounded on the roof of the carriage with one stub and ducked inside. The carriage took off down the short drive and turned into t
he street.

  A bullet took a chip out of the masonry just above Tamas’s head. He flinched away. They’d spotted him.

  Tamas examined the soldiers. Too many. Even at his best. Most of his powder was gone, used in that shot through the limestone. He checked the garden wall about fifty paces away. Too tall.

  Tamas heard a commotion around the corner and risked a glance.

  The powder horn of a Kez soldier suddenly exploded, ripping the man in half. Another followed, and then another. Men began to throw their muskets, horns, and charges away to avoid being killed. It had to be Vlora. Only she had the range igniting powder to kill men all the way by the gates. She must have gotten to a window, or had someone directing her. It was dangerously stupid to ignite powder blind, both for yourself and for your allies.

  The front doors of the manor suddenly burst open. Andriya flew through them. He held a bayoneted rifle in both hands and was screaming at the top of his lungs. His eyes were wild, his hat gone, his greatcoat billowing around him. He leapt on the closest Kez soldier, skewering the man mercilessly.

  It was the best Tamas was going to get for cover.

  He set off at a sprint across the lawn, cutting behind the Kez soldiers. Most ignored him, their eyes all on Andriya.

  Tamas neared the gate. A soldier turned toward Tamas, desperately trying to fix the bayonet to the end of his musket. Tamas sprinted toward the soldier, put his foot on a rock near the driveway, and launched himself in the air. He cracked the man in the chin with one boot and was past him and through the gate.

  There were more soldiers in the street. Tamas realized he was alone in the midst of twenty or more Kez infantry.

  He ignited all the powder nearby. He used his mind to warp the blast away from him, but he’d never been as good at that as some, and the shock wave knocked him off his feet.

  Tamas crawled to his knees, then to his feet. He tried to shake the dizziness. The ache of his leg suddenly pushed through his powder trance, making him stumble as he searched for Nikslaus’s carriage.

  The ground was littered with bodies. Nearly every one of the soldiers had been killed outright. Only a few moaned in agony, clutching at missing limbs. Gore and blood filled the street. The sight of it—the smell of powder and blood—made him retch.

  There, at the end of the street. Nikslaus’s carriage was heading down the main thoroughfare of the city toward the mountains, disappearing into the deluge. Tamas could see the driver frantically whipping his horses. Civilians leapt out of the way as the carriage surged forward.

  Tamas tried to run. He lurched sideways, catching himself with one hand on the lip of an overflowing rain barrel. He pushed back to standing and kept on, moving slower, trying to get his head to stop pounding. He felt something dribble down his cheek and touched his face. There was blood there. It felt like it was coming from his ears.

  He couldn’t stop now. The carriage was getting farther and farther away. Before too long it would break out of the city and head up into the mountains. Nikslaus would get away again.

  Tamas crunched one of his few remaining powder charges between his teeth and forced himself to run.

  The street cobbles pounded away beneath his feet. He let the powder trance take him over completely, feeling the burn of powder through his veins. Shops and houses flew by him. Tears formed in the corners of his eyes as he ran faster than a horse, his heart thumping in his ears. His hat came off, whipped away by the wind, and rain pelted his face.

  The carriage reached the eastern edge of the city well ahead of him. Tamas could see the land in his mind’s eye. A few hundred yards of sloped parade grounds, filled with Nikslaus’s soldiers and their ill-gotten gains from looting the city, before the mountains rose steeply and the road entered a valley, where it crept gradually higher into the Charwood Pile.

  There’d be thousands of Kez soldiers in that parade ground. Tamas had to kill Nikslaus before he reached the mountain. He stopped to catch his breath, and leveled his pistol at the back of the carriage. No. Not now. Too many Deliv in the streets. He needed a clean shot.

  Tamas neared the edge of the city. The downpour had become a deluge. The carriage was lost to him, but he had no doubt of Nikslaus’s destination. No doubt, also, that the powder in his pistol pan was wet.

  A crowd began to emerge out of the rain, and the sound of shouting suddenly rose above the thrum of rain against the ground. There were men everywhere, choking the street.

  It took Tamas a few moments to realize they were fighting. A brawl? No. A battle, a bloody melee. Every one of them wore the dark-blue coats of Adran infantry, but he was able to make out two sides. It appeared that every man on one side had torn off their white shirtsleeves and wrapped them around their right arms.

  Tamas grabbed a man without a white band on his arm. “Kez?” he asked in Kez.

  The man seemed taken off guard. “Yes,” he answered in Kez.

  Tamas ran the man through and shoved him off the end of his sword with one boot. He turned just in time to parry the thrust of a bayonet. It came from a soldier with a white band. The soldier was about to lunge again when he came up short. “Field Marshal!”

  “Where’s Colonel Olem?” Tamas asked, saying a silent prayer of thanks that his men recognized him.

  “No idea, sir. He led the charge.”

  “The bands?” Tamas gestured to the shirtsleeve tied around the soldier’s arm.

  “Colonel Olem’s idea, sir. Keep us all straight.”

  “Good.”

  The soldier suddenly stripped off his jacket and tore the other arm off his undershirt. “Here, sir.”

  Tamas let him wrap his arm. “Thank you. What are your orders?”

  “Slaughter the Kez,” the soldier said. He lifted his rifle and charged off with a yell.

  Tamas stood, still in a little bit of shock at the melee. He’d not heard horns or drums or seen any kind of panic in the Kez soldiers that said that the Seventh and Ninth had arrived. Didn’t Nikslaus have scouts? Then again, who could see anything in this rain?

  Despite the ferocity of the battle, not a shot was being fired. It was too wet for that. Olem must have convinced the other generals and colonels of the need to charge straight in.

  It was a commander’s nightmare. Already the parade grounds had been turned into a muddy quagmire. The downpour was so thick Tamas could barely see twenty feet in front of him.

  Nikslaus’s carriage must have been slowed by the rain. It had to have followed the road, otherwise it would get bogged down in the mud.

  Tamas set off at a trot along the cobbles.

  The fighting raged all around him. The sound of screams and yells, the ring of sword on sword, rose intermittently above the pounding rain. The cobbles were slick with rain and blood.

  He fought his way through, sword out in front of him, right arm raised so that his soldiers could see the dirty white band tied just below his shoulder. He shoved and stabbed, paused for only a moment to urge on infantry from the Seventh, and then moved on down the road, searching for Nikslaus.

  How had the duke’s carriage gotten through this melee? Had his driver shoved forward, trampling soldiers on both sides, desperate to escape Tamas’s wrath? Or had the duke given him the slip, and somehow concealed the carriage from Tamas in order to escape back into the city?

  Tamas caught sight of Colonel Arbor, his uniform soaked through, holding his false teeth in one hand while he used his cavalry saber to give a pit of a fight to a Kez captain. A particularly thick sheet of rain came down, concealing the colonel. Both men were gone the next time Tamas looked.

  Tamas fended off a bayonet thrust and opened his third eye, fighting the dizziness that came with it. Specks of color rose out of the storm, dancing like candles in a drafty room—Knacked soldiers on both sides of the fighting.

  He swept his gaze back toward the city. Nothing that way but Knacked. No Privileged. A few Wardens.

  The rain fell harder. Lightning lit the darkening sky, giving Tamas
a brief glimpse through the deluge and across the entire battlefield.

  Men struggled in the mire of the parade field, boots sliding and squelching. They were a sea of blue uniforms, drenched and muddy. Tamas wondered if the strips of white were even helping them tell friend from foe. He guessed that thousands would die this night to the swords of their own comrades.

  Lightning flashed again, and Tamas saw something forty or fifty paces ahead, just off the road. A crash of thunder followed immediately. He felt his whole chest shake from the sound. His third eye had shown him a fire among the wreckage—not of flame but of light in the Else that betrayed the presence of a Privileged.

  What he’d seen a moment before resolved itself into the wreckage of a carriage as Tamas drew closer.

  It looked like the driver had swerved, one wheel going off the cobbles and into the soft, wet mud. The carriage had tipped over and slid down an embankment, ending top-down in two feet of water at the bottom of a ditch, wheels still spinning.

  Infantry fought around the carriage as if they didn’t notice it was there, despite the fresh skid marks in the mud and the driver frantically trying to cut loose six crazed horses.

  Tamas slid down the embankment some fifteen paces away, watching the carriage warily. No sign of Nikslaus. Tamas’s third eye told him the Privileged was still within. No Wardens, either. Was this an accident? Or a trap?

  Tamas approached, one hand on the muddy bank to keep his balance, the other holding one of his pistols. The powder in the pan might be wet, but the residue in the muzzle would still be dry and he could light it with a thought. One shot. That’s all he had.

  That’s all he needed.

  Tamas wrenched the door off the carriage and stooped to look inside. Nikslaus lay in the rising water of the ditch, his back against one side of the carriage. Tamas snagged the Privileged’s coat with one hand and pulled him through the door, out of the water, and up onto the bank.

  “I’m going to watch you die,” Tamas shouted above the rain. He rammed his pistol into his belt and grasped Nikslaus’s coat by the collar. He’d do it with his own hands. For Erika. For Sabon. For all the powder mages who’d died in the duke’s grasp.