Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “Black,” Sarine said. “It has to be. It was him. Axerian was here.”

  “Black?” Acherre asked.

  She cradled Zi closer to her chest. Even with the horror of what Axerian had done here, knowing they were following his trail put a spark in her belly. “A kaas power. Like Yellow, or Green. It disrupts magic.”

  “Like a Death binding?” Acherre said. “Though I’ve never seen a Death binding cut this cleanly.”

  “It’s similar, in some ways. But worse. And not without its costs.” She almost shuddered, remembering the waves of pleasure when she killed, the barest taste of Zi’s harvest from death and murder. A foul thing, made worse for her bond to Zi making it feel sweet. “Black disrupts magic, like Death does, but it takes it in, allows its wielder to borrow …”

  “Hm?” Acherre asked. “To borrow what?”

  Words slid away from her. The barrier towered overhead, and it should have turned her stomach to see any hole in it at all. Instead she caught a movement, something faint and out of place.

  “Sarine?” Acherre asked.

  “This is wrong,” she said. “Axerian … he did something, here. More than Black.”

  And suddenly, she saw it.

  Blue sparks, the same color as the swirling haze above the holes, but different. They’d been woven into the fabric of the Shelter itself. Axerian had called it a warding, when he’d first shown it to her: the blue sparks that allowed her to set anchors and channel leyline and kaas energies from somewhere else, somewhere far away, even if she wasn’t there in person. She’d seen that same energy around Reyne d’Agarre’s Codex, and again in the sewers, guarding the place the strange spirit voices had named Tanir’Ras’Tyat. And now she saw it here, dancing among the strands of Shelter in the towering haze of the barrier, a mesh of blue sparks woven as far as she could see in both directions.

  She reached for it, the same as she’d done before, and the blue sparks obeyed. A slow trickle at first, then faster. They’d been woven into the barrier itself, but they unknotted at her touch, as though she picked apart a knitted pair of stockings or a rug.

  “He set wardings here,” she said as the sparks pulled toward her. “Gods, Acherre, he wove wardings into the barrier. They’ll let him channel the kaas’ gifts as though he were here in person. If he has enough of them, he could—”

  Black.

  The warning sounded like a bell in her ears.

  Holes appeared in the barrier, a hundred at once, as far east and west as she could see. In an instant the towering haze shimmered, all hundred handspans of swirling blue film seeming to wane like the last slivers of a sunset. Then it was gone.

  The barrier was gone.

  Trees and grass stretched to the horizon. Bushes rustled where squirrels or rabbits might have nestled against the barrier before it vanished. Otherwise the land was quiet, as still and calm as any ordinary wooded plain.

  14

  ERRIS

  Atop an Unnamed Hill

  Near Ansfield Crossing, Gand Territory

  Musket fire sounded in the distance, popping and rippling across the field. She reined Jiri to a halt and the rest of her retinue followed her lead, planting her flags atop the hillside behind the 3rd Division’s supply line. Gods damn the stars on her collar; she’d as soon have been in the thick of it, feeling the rhythm of the fight as it unfolded around her. Instead she made do with a spyglass, panning to see the lay of the battle that had found them here, unexpected but not unwelcome, given the ground.

  Vassail had taken the initiative, seizing a ring of hills and fortifying them with a screen of infantry between the town of Ansfield and the best approaches to her line. Long guns were coming up the hillsides now, nine-and twelve-pounders pulled by teams of half a dozen horses each. They should have had to bleed for this position; the Gandsmen should have been the ones with artillery in place to shell every inch of the fields surrounding the town. Instead the red and white flags of Gand decorated lines that seemed timid, rows of infantry slow to deploy and slower to grasp the importance of the terrain.

  “High Commander, sir,” Vassail said as she rode up the hillside, offering a salute beneath a wide-brimmed hat she must have donned for the sake of the southern heat. “They only just told me you’d arrived. My apologies for my absence, along with my compliments.”

  She snapped the spyglass shut. “Fine work here, General,” she said, and meant it. “Any guesses as to why the Gandsmen made it this easy for you?”

  Vassail grinned. She was young, no more than thirty, but with a hardness in her born of years’ experience with wartime command. “A simple blunder, sir,” she replied. “We arrived to find them fortifying around the crossing, as if we’d up and ford the river without securing our flanks. The heights were empty. I sent skirmishers to pin them down while the rest of my division pulled back and dug in here.”

  Another wave of artillery sounded, four or five leagues distant, enough to dim the sound to tiny pops, and obscure altogether the screams that would go with them. Erris raised her spyglass again, pivoting southward to scan the tree line near the river. It made no sense. Ceding the choicest ground on the battlefield was a fool’s mistake, the sort made by novice commanders pushed into action by bureaucrats and newspapermen.

  “Are those guns with Royens’s corps, sir?” Vassail asked.

  She nodded. “He has orders to drive south-southwest, and hold the junction there.”

  “Sir, we have the initiative here,” Vassail said. “If you order Royens up the roads, to flank the enemy’s line while we hold the heights—it could decide the battle today, push him off the rivers and secure the crossings.”

  “Field-Marshal Royens has orders to hold back, not to engage.” She snapped the spyglass shut again. Good enough for a firsthand look; the scouts would have detailed reports for the rest. “You’ve done fine work here, General. But your orders are to hold this position. Check the enemy’s ability to redeploy his forces here, against an attempt to flank us on the route to Covendon. You are not to attack.”

  “Sir, we can press our advantage. Even if the enemy is holding back, trying to trap us in the south, he’s weak enough for us to break his line before he could bring up a reserve.”

  “You have your orders, General.”

  Vassail’s boldness had earned them an easy victory, there for the taking, if Erris had been willing to order the attack. Another handful of brigades might decide this battle, and she had eight divisions uncommitted between her three corps. But the Gand army had to be out there, hiding some reserve, part of a ploy to offer her a plum at Ansfield, then swallow her whole when she took it. Vassail could be the daring mouse, snatching cheese from the trap when they knew it had been set, but she couldn’t order the full strength of the army to follow the example.

  “Sir,” Vassail said. “If I do this, I do it under protest. We can break them, here. Today. If we give the enemy time to fortify, it may cost a thousand lives to push them out of the town. Give me two divisions, and I will hand us a victory.”

  “I put my flag here, and came here in person, to judge it for myself. If circumstances change, so will the orders. Until then, see to your division, General. Dismissed.”

  Vassail’s eyes flashed a bare hint of the fury Erris was sure was hiding under the surface. She’d been given stupid orders often enough to recognize the look; but this was no blunder on her part. The enemy commander was out there, the man behind the threads of Need who had almost beaten her twice. A novice’s mistake could be a master’s gambit, and until she knew which was which, she had enough strength to hold back and force his hand.

  “Good at hiding her anger, that one,” Foot-Captain Marquand said after Vassail and her aides were riding down the hillside. “You sure she’s not right?”

  “No,” she said, and nudged Jiri toward Marquand, offering a hand to help him up into the saddle behind her.

  “Going to use Need again?”

  “I have to. Vassail’s doubts are a pa
le shadow next to mine. I need reports from the south to be able to piece this together.”

  “Aren’t we stopping here? You can use Need without risking falling off the bloody horse, and leave me out of it.”

  “Get up here, Captain. I need you to hold me in place. And no; we’re moving toward the front. The enemy is going to spring this trap, and soon, and I intend to see it the instant he does.”

  Marquand grunted and accepted her hand, swinging up to hold her around the waist. She relayed the order to reposition her flag to her aides, and made sure Jiri was moving and Marquand was in place before she slid her eyes shut. A sea of gold greeted her, dim awareness of hundreds of vessels and the golden threads between them. She snapped a tether in place to one stationed leagues to the south, somehow knowing precisely whom she’d chosen, though she still didn’t understand Need’s workings in depth. Enough that her senses shifted, giving her precious minutes—or seconds—before the binding shattered.

  Her vessel was in a tent filled with pipe smoke, a cloud thick enough to wrap its occupants in a dim haze. Field-Marshal de Tourvalle, commander of her 2nd Corps, stood opposite a long table with the offending pipe in hand, accompanied by a woman and two men, each bearing a colonel’s insignia. It took another instant to recognize them as de Tourvalle’s cavalry commanders, including Brigade-Colonel d’Guile, her former second with the 14th Light Cavalry, now promoted to her old unit’s command.

  “Respectfully, sir,” d’Guile was saying, “this proves it, beyond any questioning. Why would their papers print the thing, if it weren’t true?”

  “Perhaps precisely because they suspected you’d find it and bring it here.” That was Brigade-Colonel Valerie de Montaigne, commander of the 11th and General Vassail’s handpicked successor.

  “And the six hours my men spent among their tents?” d’Guile shot back. “Not a single instance of their golden light. Not one.”

  “What’s this?” Erris asked through her vessel—a young woman with a voice pitched almost low enough to be a man’s. Always disconcerting, when her vessel’s characteristics differed sharply from the familiar.

  “Ah, High Commander,” Field-Marshal de Tourvalle said. “We were just entertaining debate over Colonel d’Guile’s latest field report.”

  “They’ve lost it, sir,” d’Guile said, beaming like a schoolboy who’d nicked his neighbor’s pie. “They’ve lost Need. I led a team from the Fourteenth into their camp. Five others can confirm it: None of the Gand officers have the golden light behind their eyes, not anywhere in the camp. And I intercepted this.”

  He indicated a newspaper lying atop the table at the center of the tent, bearing a simple headline: Chamberlain Promoted to Command; Promises Swift Action Against the Enemy.

  She reread it. “Chamberlain?” she said. It could only mean Major-General Marianne Chamberlain, who’d had the 1st Corps of the Gand 3rd Army the year before. A blind fool of a commander, with a propensity to order her divisions to sit waiting for hours while she wheeled long guns into immaculate positions for where the battle would have been, had she engaged at once instead of dithering for artillery support.

  “Chamberlain.” D’Guile nodded. “Two of my scouts confirmed it with spoken rumors, and one by sight. The old bitch has the command, sir.”

  The maneuvers around Ansfield replayed themselves in her mind. Yes, Chamberlain was fool enough to expect an exact repeat of the Sarresant invasion from the previous campaign. A new commander, under pressure from her peers to attack, when prudence dictated caution. The resulting haste might explain bungling the trap the Gandsmen had meant to set at Ansfield, ceding the heights while they set up batteries at the river crossing. And most importantly: Chamberlain could have been fool enough to miss the importance of the roads south to Covendon, or at least to expect her to miss it, too.

  It was too neat. It had to be a trap.

  Was the enemy’s true commander that good? Not Chamberlain—the man behind the golden light. But to refrain from using Need anywhere her scouts could see, to maneuver his army in the precise manner of a novice, a feint to trap her in the northern colonies while leaving the way to their capital undefended … It would require sheer brilliance, perfect execution from the highest levels of command down to the line officers, the quartermasters, sentries and …

  No.

  Fear bloomed in her stomach, but instinct overpowered it. This was no trap. This was exactly what it looked like, and she was wasting the initiative with indecision.

  “South,” she said, meeting d’Guile’s eye with a look of approval before she wheeled toward the others. “I want every corps on the march. Send riders for Royens and Etaigne, and get the Second Corps marshaled on the double. We move for Covendon. The objective is to seize the Gand colonies’ capital, imprison their Parliament, and end this war before the campaign begins.”

  “Sir,” Brigade-Colonel de Montaigne said. “We can’t be certain of their numbers. If they have reserves in the west, they could pincer us between their force at Ansfield. They could cut us off from home.”

  “I have no doubt that’s exactly what General Chamberlain meant to try,” she said. “But that leaves the Gandsmen a seven-hundred-league march to reach anything of value north of Lorrine, and we’re days away from their capital.”

  “What of Vassail’s division at Ansfield?” de Tourvalle asked. “We’d be sacrificing her position to entangle the enemy. Casualties would be heavy.”

  “As it happens, I am there in person at present. Vassail can hold, and Chevalier-General Perand has Royens’s Ninth Cavalry nearby for support. I’ll ride west and take personal command of the reserve. If you and Field-Marshal Etaigne can—”

  Her senses splintered, the golden light shattering like a pane of glass.

  “Gods fucking damn it!” she roared, making Jiri miss a step. Marquand tightened his grip around her waist, and she stayed in the saddle, for all she might have otherwise tumbled down in anger before her senses cleared. Need had shattered again, and she was once again on Jiri’s back, riding down a steep slope toward the sounds of musket fire through the trees.

  “Steady, sir,” Marquand said. “Are you all right?”

  She grabbed hold of the reins, pivoting Jiri around into her column of aides.

  “Send a rider for General Vassail,” she said. “And turn our column around. We ride west, on the double.”

  Her aides snapped into action at once, asking no questions before they moved to execute her orders. Gods bless their discipline, and Gods damn the shortcomings of Need breaking before she could fully deliver a plan to move the army. It meant couriers, delays, and putting trust in her field commanders. After a season of Need the old way felt cumbersome, but just as well she’d uprooted the old command structure and put men like Etaigne, Royens, and de Tourvalle in charge of her soldiers. They’d need to be swift to make the turn south toward Covendon, but she could do this. It felt right. D’Guile’s revelation that the man behind the Gandsmen’s golden light of Need had been removed from command had been the last piece she’d needed to understand the shape of this campaign. The time for planning was over. The time for action was here, whether they were ready or no.

  “First east toward the front line, and now we’re riding west?” Marquand said.

  “Just hold tight,” she said as Jiri wheeled around. “Keep me in place and we’ll be in the thick of it soon enough.”

  “Wait, you mean to use Need again?” Marquand asked. “Didn’t it just bloody shatter in your face?”

  “No choice, Captain. If my guess is right, the enemy has a force in the west, waiting to strike Vassail as soon as she’s engaged. General Perand needs to know it before we arrive in person. Now hold on.”

  Need glimmered as she shifted her sight, but this time the golden light seemed sharpened to points, each one like a shard of glass ready to break at the slightest touch. She had to be quick.

  “High Commander,” a ragged voice said as soon as she made the tether. “Thank
the Gods.”

  Her vision shifted into focus. Quiet; no sounds of musket fire or artillery shot. Only open plains, clear to a strange line between rolling grass and thick brush a hundred paces off, as though some overzealous gardener had cut wild forest like a nobleman’s hedge maze.

  “It’s gone, sir,” the voice said. Chevalier-General Perand, commander of the 9th Cavalry, though he sounded more a worried graybeard than a seasoned commander. “Bloody curse us all for fools, it’s gone.”

  “Slow down, General,” she said. “Report. What’s gone?”

  “The Great Barrier, sir. I swear to the Gods themselves, my scouts saw it vanish; one moment it stood, the same as ever. The next …” He gestured toward the break between the grass and the trees. “Gone.”

  Her stomach lurched, and she stared. She’d been expecting a trap, even if it had been a trap set by a fool. But this …

  The enemy had beaten her again. She couldn’t yet piece together why, or how the barrier’s collapse would lead to her defeat. But she saw his hand in it, and that was enough to be sure. Despair clawed through her, and before she could reply the golden light shattered, throwing her senses back atop Jiri’s saddle.

  15

  TIGAI

  A Dark Room

  Somewhere Near the Emperor’s Palace

  The starfield faded, and the air changed from southern wind to a stale, cloistered calm.

  “Wh—” a man began, and Remarin knifed him in the throat.

  The servant’s body slumped forward as the Ujibari chieftain pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle any cries. Tigai’s head reeled, the smells of dust and sour wine hanging in the air. He’d shifted them halfway across the Empire, and it left him haggard, breathing hard and seeing double until the strands cleared from his eyes. Darkness helped; a hooded lamp rolling on the ground where the servant had dropped it was the only source of light in the otherwise windowless room.