Wrath of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Ji-Matle continued to struggle despite the life flowing out of him, reversing the grip on his knife and swinging for Styke’s side. Styke caught him by the wrist and slammed Ji-Matle’s elbow against a marble gravestone, bone erupting from the skin. Ji-Matle refused to scream, still attempting to fight until Styke grabbed him by the face and smashed his head against the same stone.

  The fight was over in seconds. Styke dropped the crumpled figure at his feet, fingers covered with blood, brain, and bits of skull. It seemed like his whole body was slick with warm blood—from the horse and from Ji-Matle—and he turned to face the dragonmen.

  They stared at him as if in disbelief, looking at him and at the corpse of their dead companion. The woman spoke. “Ka-Sedial was right not to underestimate you, Ben Styke,” she said quietly. “Kill him.”

  The word had barely left her mouth when a blast went off nearby and the top of her head exploded. Her mouth remained open, her face fixed in an expression of mild annoyance, before she toppled off her mount and to the ground.

  Both Styke and the remaining dragonmen looked for the source of the blast, only to see Celine sitting astride Amrec less than twenty yards away, partially hidden by a nearby house. She held Styke’s carbine in both of her hands. She trembled visibly, and immediately began to reload the carbine.

  Several things happened at once. First, the dragonmen began to move—one toward Celine and two toward Styke. Celine dropped the carbine, and Styke began to run toward her, shouting over his shoulder, “Ka-poel, if you’re done hiding, I could use some of that blood magic!”

  The nearest dragonman froze. “What did he say? What name did you speak?”

  The dragonman keeping watch from nearby shouted, taking the attention of all three of his remaining companions. They suddenly turned their horses and beat a fast retreat toward the east, leaving Styke standing in bloody clothes to try and figure out what had scared them off.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The sound of approaching riders came swiftly, and soon behind them the Mad Lancers rode out of the forest to the north with Ibana and Jackal at their front. Ibana joined Styke quickly, staring at his clothes and the bodies of the dragonmen. “What happened? Do you want us to run them down?”

  “Not a great idea,” Styke said. The lancers might have a better chance against dragonmen with carbines at a distance, but he did not want them to get tied up in a forest against those bastards. “Keep everyone tight, and triple the scout patrols.”

  “Who the pit were they?” Ibana asked. “And what happened to you?”

  Styke hurried toward Celine, calling over his shoulder, “They’re dragonmen, and they’ve been following us since Landfall. Apparently they’ve been sent to kill me.” He reached Amrec and picked up his carbine, returning it to the saddle. Celine looked distant and frightened.

  He pulled her down, taking her in his arms. “It’s all right,” he told her.

  “I killed her.”

  “You did. It was a very good thing.”

  Celine blinked at the sky. “I didn’t like it.”

  Styke squeezed her gently and set her on her feet, only then realizing she was now also covered in blood. He lifted her chin with one finger, laying his other hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. You never have to kill anyone when I’m around. Never again.”

  “But she would have killed you.” Her face hardened. “I didn’t like it, but I won’t let anyone kill you, Ben.”

  “I know,” Styke said gently.

  She looked down at his arm. “You’re bleeding.”

  “That’s just horse blood. And human. But it’s his.”

  She poked him, sending a jolt of pain up that arm. “It’s also yours.”

  “Right. I’ll get cleaned up in the river. Go find Sunintiel. Tell her you killed a dragonman. She’ll be very proud.” He pushed her away and headed back to the bodies, only to find Ka-poel had beaten him there. She frowned down at the dragonmen’s corpses. He said, “If they had rushed me, could you have done anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s not very reassuring.” He paced from one end of the graveyard to the other, walking off the adrenaline rush. Part of him knew that he very easily could have died. Another part rejoiced at fighting another real warrior like that. The fight with Kushel had been drawn out. This had been short, brutal, and satisfying. “Did you find out anything about the town?” he asked Ka-poel.

  She shook her head.

  Frustrated, Styke paced the graveyard again. Maybe he should have sent the lancers after those dragonmen. Losing even a hundred men would be worth not having four dragonmen prowling the countryside. He thought about the woman Celine had shot and turned to Ka-poel.

  “ ‘Ka’ is the title for the bone-eyes, right?”

  Of the royal family, she wrote on her slate.

  The implication was not lost on him. “So what are you, some kind of princess?”

  Another head shake.

  “Then what?”

  I don’t know, she wrote.

  Styke stared at her for several long seconds, hoping she’d give at least some sort of elaboration. When none was forthcoming, he finally turned away to examine the passing column of lancers. None of them looked worse for wear, which meant they hadn’t run into any trouble the last week. But that, he was certain, was about to change.

  CHAPTER 21

  Vlora, Taniel, and Little Flerring relocated to a small complex of cabins deep in the forest on a gently sloped hillside. Flerring pointed at each of the buildings as they passed, explaining their uses. Most of the buildings were used for the creation and storage of black powder, but a few stone huts way up the hillside away from all the others were set aside for the substance that had made the Flerring family a household name throughout the Nine: blasting oil.

  “We do everything explosive,” she explained to Taniel as they headed up a path to a cabin sheltered from all the others by a large boulder. “Black powder was our original trade, and still makes up the volume of our production. You’d be surprised at how many different mixes there are for mining applications. Explosive velocity, temperature, humidity—all these things have to be taken into account when we decide the formula and granule size.”

  “Just like mixing powder for military use,” Taniel said.

  “But far more complex!” Flerring declared. “Out here in the mountains, you’ve got to be more careful. I’m handing explosives over to idiots from all over the world, most of whom have never even fired a gun, let alone drilled into solid rock and detonated explosives in the hole. I’ve got to know what kind of rock it is, the altitude, the depth of the mine.” She scoffed. “I do everything I can to make it simple for the miners, but people still die every day.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Vlora said. “I’m surprised you’re on-site, rather than one of your people.”

  Flerring made a sound in the back of her throat. “I’m on-site because I’m making a damned fortune selling these miners blasting oil. Transportation has been banned all over the Nine due to … accidents … so the damned stuff has to be mixed in person. I wanted to do a little traveling anyway, so …” She shrugged and unlocked the cabin, ushering them inside. It was cozy without being cramped, with space enough for perhaps a dozen people to gather around a potbellied stove or half that many to enjoy a game of cards.

  Flerring stoked the fire and put on a kettle, then kicked her boots off. “So that’s why I’m here. You going to tell me what a dead war hero and a decorated Adran general are doing in the armpit of Fatrasta?”

  Vlora had been struggling with how much to actually tell Flerring. She was perfectly trustworthy—after all, someone in the explosives business has to know how to keep secrets to keep a leg up on her competitors—but this wasn’t the kind of information she wanted spread around.

  Taniel gestured toward Vlora, as if to say, She’s your friend.

  “We’re looking for an artifact,” Vlora said. “You’ve heard about the war?�
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  “Everyone has,” Flerring replied. “Word just arrived the other day that Landfall fell. We’re so far off the beaten path that no one here wants to abandon their claim, but if the fighting swerves this way, my bags are packed.”

  “Right. Well, we’re looking for an artifact, an ancient bit of Dynize sorcery that should be floating around nearby.”

  “Is floating around nearby,” Taniel corrected.

  Vlora went on. “This artifact is the reason the Dynize are invading. It has both Lindet and the Dynize scrambling to find it.”

  “And you want to get to it first?”

  Vlora glanced at Taniel, whose expression was unreadable. “We want to destroy it,” she said.

  “Huh.” Flerring moved a few bits around on the table next to her until she found a boning knife and began to pick her teeth with it. “What does it do?”

  “It grants power,” Taniel said quickly. “Sorcerous power. The kind we don’t want anyone to get their hands on.”

  “So you’re here to find it and blow it up?”

  “Maybe,” Vlora said hesitantly. “We have to find it, but we might have to figure out how to steal it. We tried blowing up a matching artifact outside of Landfall with enough black powder to level a city and it didn’t do shit.”

  Flerring snorted. “You military types think you know how to blow things up properly.”

  “I’d like to see you do better,” Taniel said.

  Flerring sat forward as if intrigued. “I’m guessing by your presence that this is a matter of the Adran Cabal?”

  “It is,” Vlora said.

  “Well, then, as a representative of the Adran government and for a small consulting fee, I would be delighted to try.”

  Vlora realized, without even knowing it, that she’d been hoping Flerring would make the offer. The thought pleased her to no end, but there was a niggling feeling in the back of her head that not even Flerring’s blasting oil could damage the powerful sorceries protecting the godstone. “Consider yourself hired. But we still have to find the thing.”

  “Not sure if I can help with that,” Flerring said. The kettle began to boil, and she got up and poured them each a cup of tea, then disappeared beneath the floor and returned a moment later with a handful of shaved ice, plunking a bit in each cup. “I’ve been here a while. If someone had found a sorcerous artifact, I think I would have heard about it by now.”

  “Perhaps,” Taniel said. “It might be buried. It might be actively hidden. If you’re willing to help us find it, we can do more than whatever the fee the Adran government will give you.”

  “Fascinating.” Flerring continued to pick at her teeth with the knife, her face thoughtful. “It’s a bad time to ask questions, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What is going on?” Vlora asked, sipping her tea. “We got a little of it from the hotel manager. Some kind of power struggle?”

  “You could say that. Everyone wants the gold, but not everyone wants to work for it. Now, when we talk about gold sniffers in Yellow Creek, you’ve got freelance fools digging their own holes or panning for gold in the streams, and you’ve got hired fellas. The hired fellas work for one of two bosses, and those bosses own all the big claims in the surrounding hills.” She held up two fingers. “There’s Jezzy, the owner of the Pink Saloon. Her boys are called the Shovels. Then there’s Brown Bear Burt. He’s a Palo out of Redstone who made a fortune selling family land to Lindet after his whole tribe died to disease. Burt’s hired fellas call themselves the Picks.”

  Vlora leaned back, trying to take it all in, rubbing her eyes. “Don’t these guys know there’s a war on?”

  “You try to tell a desperate man he should abandon his claim to possible riches and he will gut you seven ways from sundown.” Flerring sighed. “Some of the independent miners are getting smart—selling their claims or closing things off to wait out the war. But not Jezzy and Burt. Those two are locked in a feud for control of the mines and won’t let up till one of them is dead or the Dynize roll into town to claim the whole lot.”

  “We might be able to use this to our advantage,” Taniel said thoughtfully. “With all this chaos, we need to find the artifact and get out of here before Lindet even knows where we are.”

  “Seems like a good call.” Flerring spat on the floor. “You know that bitch tried to kidnap me? Had some muscle up here six months ago trying to take me to Landfall. Had to run them off with a couple vials of blasting oil, then make it clear to her that if she ever wants to do business with the Flerring Company, she will wait until I come to her.”

  “I’ve met Lindet,” Vlora said. “I can’t imagine she took that well.”

  Flerring spat again, then finished her tea. “I don’t care how she took it. Brute force has no place in the business of explosives, no matter how incongruous that may seem. It’s all careful, planned, and gentle.” She squinted toward the window, nodding to herself. “Sun’s going down. I need to do my rounds before dark, and you should get back to town.”

  She walked them to their horses and then said good-bye before heading to one of the outbuildings.

  Vlora and Taniel returned to their hotel just at dark and had dinner in the great room. The food was better than road rations—barely—with watered-down beer and unidentifiable meat. They spoke quietly about Flerring and their search for the stone.

  “I figure,” Vlora said as they finished eating, “we have two or three weeks until Olem gets here with the army. Those hills and narrow roads are going to slow them down, and I told him to take it easy. If luck is with us, we can find the stone and figure out a way to destroy or move it before they arrive. We sneak in a group of men and we can be out of here without having to bring in the army.”

  Taniel’s eyes roamed the great room. “Lots of armed men,” he said. “If it comes to a fight, they won’t stand a chance against the Riflejacks, but the last thing we need is locals seeing an army and digging in. They’ll slow us down. We keep our own heads down while we search. Don’t let anyone know who we are. And we’ve got to stay out of this Picks and Shovels nonsense.”

  “You won’t hear an argument from me,” Vlora said.

  Taniel put aside his plate and produced a leather satchel, flipping it open to reveal a sketchbook. Vlora felt the corner of her mouth tug upward, and she found herself happy to see that Taniel still enjoyed his old hobby. She remembered posing with Bo and Tamas as a child, while Taniel—face serious—forced them all to sit still for hours while he perfected his charcoal drawings.

  She didn’t pry, but a glimpse at the pages as he flipped them told her that he’d gotten much better since then.

  “That,” Taniel said, nodding across the room, “is a funny-looking man.” He opened to a fresh page and began to sketch.

  Vlora would have loved to stay and watch him work, but she needed some time alone to think—and a full night’s sleep would do her damned good. She fetched a bottle of wine from the barkeep and headed upstairs, gently tapping each door as she passed it until she reached the number that matched her room key. Rubbing her eyes, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

  She was surprised, when she blinked through her tired haze, to find the room already occupied. Three men waited in the room—all of them big, all of them heavily armed, and all of them with the kind of grizzled faces that looked like they’d been run over by a brigade of cuirassiers. One stood by the window, one leaned against the wall, and one reclined on her bed, grinning at her in what he must have thought was a friendly manner.

  Vlora took them all in sourly. Her saddlebags sat next to the bed, so this wasn’t the wrong room. “I paid for clean linens, asshole,” she told the one on the bed.

  The man’s grin faded and he stood up, crossing the small room to tower above her. “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  Vlora looked up at him and resisted the urge to cut his throat. People didn’t loom like that unless they were trying to intimidate, and her height meant she had to deal
with confident, tall idiots all the time. She could kill all three of them before they could draw their swords, but now was not the time or the place. “Can I help you gentlemen with something?”

  “Back off, Dorner,” the man by the wall said. Dorner, Vlora noted, was a Brudanian name. The man continued. “We were told a pair of mercenaries had checked into the hotel this afternoon, and were unaware of the circumstances surrounding the, uh, local politics.”

  The last two words made Vlora want to punch him really hard. Instead, she forced a smile on her face. “And what are you doing in my room?”

  “Recruiting,” the one called Dorner said in a deep growl. “You’re unaligned, and nobody in this town with a sword is allowed to be unaligned.”

  “And which one of these clubs do you idiots belong to?” Vlora asked. She leaned back against the door, slumping casually, her hands within easy reach of both her weapons.

  Dorner drew himself up. “We’re Jezzy’s Shovels, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll sign up with us tonight.”

  “What Dorner means,” the man leaning on the wall said, “is that Jezzy pays the best, and she’s not a greasy Palo. We’ll pay a hundred a week for your sword and we’ll give you a place to bunk.”

  Vlora pretended to consider. “Not interested,” she finally said.

  Dorner loomed closer. “Excuse me?”

  “I said I’m not interested. I came up here for some easy work guarding a mine or a caravan. This city is hot as a powder barrel over a fire and I’m not interested in getting into some stupid turf war.”

  “Listen, bitch,” Dorner growled, “you’re either with us or against us. You can—”

  Vlora’s palm hit him beneath the chin, snapping his neck back and spraying her face with blood. He stumbled back, crimson pouring out of his mouth. He spat half his tongue onto the floor and immediately began to scream, pawing at his face.