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

by McClellan, Brian

  Blinking the tears of pain out of the corners of her eyes, she realized she was staring into a bruised, blood-caked face. The man lay on his side, facing her. He had been stripped to the waist and she could see thick black stripes on his bare shoulders and arms—he’d been whipped and beaten until he was raw. His hands were bound behind his back. The inhumanity of it made Nila want to recoil in horror.

  She didn’t dare. If she moved, they would know she was awake and she might be given similar treatment. If she was lucky.

  Her heart began to race again, the calm she had attained slipping away from her like grains of sand through her fingers. She could feel her arms trembling and then…

  She recognized the man lying beside her.

  It was Olem.

  She bit back a curse. Was he still alive? “Olem,” she whispered, her own pain forgotten. “Olem!”

  His eyes opened far too slowly for Nila’s liking. It took several moments before she could see the recognition in them. His short beard was matted to his face with blood, but she could see the corner of his mouth twitch upward.

  “Glad to see you awake.” He coughed.

  “What the pit did they do to you?” she hissed.

  “Just asked some questions.”

  “They beat you senseless!”

  “They didn’t like the answers.”

  She wanted to ask him if she was next, but it seemed insensitive. “Barbarians.”

  “Yeah.” Olem shifted slightly, grunting in pain. “Pit, that hurts.”

  “They have to give you medicine. I’ll shout until they do. How can they do this to a prisoner of war?”

  “Shh,” he said. “Don’t say a word. Keep still for as long as you can. Most of them are asleep. They won’t bother you till morning.”

  Her calm was completely gone now. “And if I wake them?”

  “I don’t know. The commanding officer is the Gurlish Wolf. He’ll do just about anything. The rest of them aren’t much better.”

  “I’ll burn this whole camp down.”

  Olem gave a slight shake of his head, grimacing as he did so. “They don’t know you’re a Privileged.”

  “Really?”

  “No gloves, remember? I told them you were my secretary.”

  Nila tried to find that place between reality and the Else again, but had no success. She couldn’t believe it had gone so wrong. One minute they’d been alone, and the next these Kez had erupted from the fog to kill them all. “We’re finished. Did they wipe us all out?”

  Olem’s eyes had closed and for a moment she thought he had passed out. Then, “No. They hadn’t expected us to all be in close formation. It was heavy fighting for a while, then I got separated from the rest of the regiment. Been listening. They captured fifteen or twenty of us, killed a few dozen more, but the rest of the boys are still out there.”

  “There’s hope, then?”

  Olem didn’t respond to that. “Been listening,” he repeated. “They plan on sending my head back to Tamas. Probably with you. Best chance for you to get away from this.”

  “No!” she said, a little too loudly. When no one seemed to take notice, she went on. “They wouldn’t!”

  “They’re spreading fear and doubt. Trying to get Tamas off of Ipille’s trail. My head seems like a solid idea.”

  “We’ll make a run for it,” Nila said. “We’ll slip out in the middle of the night. We can—”

  Olem was shaking his head again. “Too dangerous. They’d just kill you too. This is the best way. That’s why I told them who I was.”

  “Olem.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “Olem, don’t say that.”

  “Is all right,” he slurred. She could see his head droop. He was passing out.

  “Olem, stay with me!”

  There was no response. Nila tried to wake him several more times, and short of a cold bucket of water she didn’t think anything would do it. She prayed silently that he wouldn’t die right then and there.

  She rolled over on her back and took stock of her surroundings. Forms around the nearby campfires snored in their bedrolls, and she could no longer hear any talking. She and Olem appeared to be unguarded, and that seemed odd to her. It took several moments of considering this to realize that they had no need of personal guards. He was beaten to within an inch of his life, and she was a mere secretary, and unconscious to boot.

  She reached out and touched the Else. She could feel the sting of fire on her chafed wrists as her bonds melted away beneath her sorcery. A brief hint of burning hemp touched her nostrils and she was free.

  Cautiously, slowly, she got to her feet. She checked Olem’s pulse—he was still alive, thank Adom—and then she began to walk quickly through the camp. No one paid her any mind. No one was awake to do so, and if they were, the still-thick fog obscured their vision. A few minutes later and she was past the last campfire.

  She literally tripped over the first sentry. He lay in a thicket, musket on his chest, gently dozing until her foot hit him. He shot awake, a startled exclamation on his lips. She could see the outline of his face in the darkness. She saw his eyes take in her blue uniform and then his mouth open to yell a warning.

  Her hand shot forward, taking him by the throat.

  She would not allow Olem to die for her safety. She would not allow herself to be beaten and humiliated and used by foreign savages.

  Blue fire shimmered and she felt his flesh give way beneath her fingers. She squeezed, feeling the melted flesh and warm, sizzling blood between her fingers. Her fingers wrapped around his spine and even that seemed to slide away, leaving the man’s head to roll down a hill and farther into the thicket.

  Nila was up and running a moment later. She didn’t have time to think about the murder. It was just one more on top of the countless she’d committed over the past few weeks. She had to flee. The Kez magebreaker might have sensed her sorcery—he could be on her trail in minutes.

  She navigated the hills with the use of her third eye, fighting down nausea. Between the darkness and the fog, her regular vision would be useless. She ran, forcing herself forward though each step made her want to scream in agony. Her thighs hurt from riding, her body from a night with her arms tied. Tears rolled down her cheeks from the pain, and her stomach pitched like she had been at sea for weeks.

  Hours passed. She stopped on every hilltop to listen for pursuit, but no sound followed her. She ran blindly—she would be hopeless at getting her bearings in the misty darkness. She knew that, for now, she had to get as far away from the Kez as possible. Though every hilltop looked the same to her in the Else, she attempted to memorize each one, tearing up grass or piling rocks whenever she could. She hoped that in the light of day she would be able to lead the Adran cavalry back the way she’d come.

  It was Olem’s only chance.

  The earliest light of morning tinged the mist. Nila could no longer open her third eye. Exhaustion flooded her senses and it was all she could do to keep stumbling through the dew-soaked grass. Her uniform was ripped and sodden, her boots full of water. She clutched her arms to her chest, shivering violently.

  She stopped to rest at the bottom of one of the countless ravines she had traversed. Her fingers stiff, she used what was left of her strength to coax a nimbus of flame from the Else. Kez pursuers be damned, she had to get warm! The flame sheathed her hands, then her arms, and she felt a dull warmth work its way into her bones. Her shivering slowly subsided. Steam rose from her clothes, and with a startled curse she realized that the flame now covered her whole body.

  It winked out, leaving her standing at the bottom of the ravine, the world once again cold and wet. She wanted nothing more than to lie down in the muck and sleep. The Kez be damned. Field Marshal Tamas be damned.

  A vision of Olem’s face, his beard matted with blood and his flesh torn to ribbons, sprang into her mind. That was all it took for her to begin to climb the side of the ravine.

  The rising sun began to burn away the
mist. If the fog cleared, she could get her bearings. She would head east in the hope that the rest of the Riflejacks were looking for the Kez camp to save Olem. It was risky, if the Kez were, in turn, looking for her. But she had no choice.

  It was not long after her rest that she caught a distant sound on the wind. The neigh of a horse, perhaps? The peaks and valleys of Brude’s Hideaway played tricks on her ears, and she struggled on to the next rise, where she stopped to listen, peering into the thinning morning fog.

  She thought she heard a shout. Whether Kez or Adran, she did not know. It was impossible to get a bearing on the sound. Please, she thought, please be Adran. She strained, head tilted to the side, until she heard it again.

  The sound came from behind her. She began to move again, heading cautiously onward. An Adran scouting party could have gotten behind her. After all, she didn’t know north from south right now. She could be heading just about any direction.

  Another shout. Nila’s senses pricked at the sound and a chill went down her spine. It hadn’t been quite intelligible, but that sounded Kez.

  The clop of hooves on stone reached her ears. She had crossed a series of flat rocks a while back, hadn’t she? Those hooves were following her, and the shouts were getting closer.

  She broke into a sprint, calling up every ounce of her energy for the run. They were on her trail now and when they found her, they would run her down like a tired dog in the street. A glance over her shoulder showed men on horseback less than two hundred yards behind her.

  Leaping across a streambed, Nila scaled a steep escarpment and threw herself down the other side, tumbling head over heels down a hill. She was back up a moment later, ready to run, when the sight of a mounted figure brought her up short.

  The figure was less than ten paces away. It sat silently, the fog barely seeming to touch it, the rider’s body cloaked against the weather. Steam rose from the horse’s nostrils, indicating it had just made a hard ride.

  She was cut off. The Kez had her now. Nila stiffened and waited for the figure to draw his or her pistol and fire.

  “Why do you run?”

  The voice startled her and she nearly fell. It was speaking in Adran. A male voice. “What?”

  The figure slapped his saddle horn angrily. “Why do you run?” he demanded.

  Horses rounded the far side of the escarpment thirty paces to Nila’s left. There were a dozen of them, coming hard, and she saw carbines raised to fire.

  “Bo?” she asked, breathless.

  “You aren’t a fox, fleeing before the hounds! You are a goddess of fire to these ants.”

  What was Bo doing here? How had he found her? “The magebreaker is chasing…” Nila ran toward him. The two of them might have a chance of escaping on his horse.

  “He’s not with them. You should have stopped to check. Turn and defend yourself. Show them what you are!” Bo’s voice rose to a bellow at the end. Nila stared at him, astonishment freezing her in her tracks.

  The crack of a carbine snapped through her thoughts and she found herself whirling in response. She made a flinging motion with her off-hand and fire like liquid gold spewed from her fingertips. The flames crossed the space in the blink of an eye and cut through men and horses like a bullet through paper. Black powder exploded on contact with the flames, and a single cry of dismay reached her ears before the entire party was gone, reduced to a black, smoking skid on hissing soil.

  Nila stared at the spot for several moments, trying to process what she’d just done. There had been no thought, no concentration. She’d just killed a dozen men and horses purely by instinct. The air hung heavy with acrid black smoke and the smell of burned meat.

  “Well done.”

  “I…” She turned to look up at Bo and could instantly see that something was wrong. He slumped in his saddle, his face pale and sweat on his brow. He swayed back and forth, knuckles white on the saddle horn. “Never run from a fight you can win. By the saints, you’re going to be powerful. I’ve never seen such… beauty.” His words were labored and breathless.

  “What are you doing here? Are you all right?” Nila rushed to his side and put a hand on his leg, from which she immediately recoiled. She had touched something hard and thin, and when she reached forward to lift his pant leg, she found not flesh, but a wooden prosthetic where his calf had once been.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “I got your… note.” He fumbled at his jacket pocket and removed a creased paper. It fluttered from his fingers and he made a weak attempt at catching it.

  Nila snatched it out of the air, barely remembering the angry words she’d scribbled down before riding off with Olem. All thoughts of the charred remains behind her were gone. Memories of the way she’d been treated by the Deliv Privileged were shoved aside. “Bo. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” He frowned at the paper now in her hand. “I’ve… I didn’t think… it proper… my apprentice off on her… own.” His words were halting and disjointed.

  “Bo?”

  He waved away her concern, and promptly slid from his saddle. She threw herself beneath him and they both went down in a heap beside the horse. She looked up in horror at the prosthetic still stuck in the stirrup, and the empty pant leg beneath his knee.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Feeling a bit fuzzy.”

  Nila felt tears in her eyes. Bo was her only hope of getting away, and here he was, crippled and sickly. How would they be able to find the Adran cavalry and return to rescue Olem? She briefly considered leaving him here and taking his horse, but that could very well be the death of him, and she couldn’t do that. Not after he’d brought himself out here to find her.

  Bo’s eyes were closed and she could see his chest rising and falling slowly. It hurt her deeply to see him like this, so vulnerable after everything he had done for her. She fought back her tears, angry at herself. This was the kind of weakness he despised, wasn’t it?

  “That’s enough of that,” Bo whispered. His eyes remained closed. “You’re safe now.”

  “You’re not, you bloody idiot!”

  “Oh, I’ll be… fine.”

  Nila held him close and knew she had to act soon. She could only save one of them—Bo or Olem. And Olem might already be dead.

  “Where are the Adran cavalry?” she asked.

  “I got a bit ahead of them,” Bo said, seemingly able to keep his sentences coherent only when he whispered. “I rode hard when I saw your sorcery in the Else.”

  “Ahead of them?”

  “They’ll be along… ah. There they are.”

  Nila raised her head. The creaking of saddles and the jostling of weaponry suddenly reached her, and from the depth of the fog emerged hundreds of cuirassiers, their breastplates beaded with morning dew, carbines resting across their saddles.

  Bo gave a groan and rolled out of her arms. He snatched the prosthetic from the stirrup and rolled up his pant leg. She caught sight of a leather harness attached to the healed, but ruined remnants of his knee. He strapped the prosthetic to the harness. Nila got to her feet, drying her cheeks, and helped Bo up and, at his insistence, back in the saddle.

  A cuirassier rode forward holding the reins to Nila’s horse. “Privileged Nila,” he said, his voice booming in the quiet of the morning. “Thank Adom we found you.”

  “Indeed,” was the only reply she could manage. Her knees felt like jelly beneath her, but she knew that this morning wasn’t over. She took the reins, never having thought she’d be so relieved to see a horse. Raising her voice, she said, “They have Colonel Olem. He couldn’t escape with me because they had flogged him half to death.”

  An angry mutter spread through the cuirassiers. “Can you lead us to their camp?” one of them asked.

  Nila closed her eyes, trying to picture every rise and valley she’d crossed in her desperate flight. It was a jumbled haze in her memory, but she knew the Kez cavalry that had chased her would leave a trail more easily followed.

  “Yes. Let’s go.
”

  CHAPTER

  39

  I never thought I’d see the day when I assaulted one of my own cities.”

  Tamas stared at the walls of Budwiel. The city sat in the narrowest spot in Surkov’s Alley, flanked on either side by the immense, sheer cliffs called the Gates of Wasal. There was no way into the city but over those formidable granite walls, each stone protected by sorcery as old as the city itself. If not for what he now knew to be Hilanska’s treachery, the same walls on the south side of the city would have withstood months of bombardment by the Kez army.

  And now Tamas had to take the city in a single day.

  General Arbor eyed the city, leaning on his heavy cavalry saber the way a gentleman might lean on a cane. The ancient general looked older than ever, but there was an excited fire in his eyes. He flexed his jaw, popping his false teeth out into one hand. “Aye. It’ll be a pit of a fight.”

  “Ipille has lined the walls with his personal guard,” Tamas said. “They’ll fight tooth and nail for their king. Once we breach the city walls, every street will be a bloodbath.”

  “I can give you some good news on that,” Arbor said. “I’ve dug up Ket and Hilanska’s spy reports, and if they’re to be believed, the Kez have left few enough of our people inside unmolested. Most were slaughtered in the initial attack and the rest have been sold as slaves.”

  “That’s the worst good news I’ve ever heard.” Tamas wanted to spit, but he knew it wouldn’t remove the bad taste in his mouth.

  Arbor gave him a toothless grin. “Just trying to say that there’s no harm in shelling the city! You have to look at the bright side of these things, sir.”

  “You’re not making me feel any better.”

  Doubt assaulted Tamas on all sides. Where was Taniel? There hadn’t been word or sign of him yet. If he had succeeded in his task of rescuing Ka-poel, Tamas would have heard by now. He didn’t want to think of the alternatives.

  Around Tamas, his camp swirled with motion. Artillery that they had sent south on the Addown River was being moved into position as earthen fortifications went up. Ladders and hooks, spare ammunition, and fresh rifles were all being unloaded from the barges. Tents had been pitched, and his tired men were taking shifts to get a couple hours’ rest before the attack.