Something had been hanging in the balance, some equilibrium between the stunned immobility of the Khandarai survivors and the pressure of the still-eager men behind them, shielded from the fire by distance and the bodies of their comrades. The second volley tipped the balance, and men started to run. Some were fleeing, some running toward their tormentors. Some, unable to breast the current of men behind them, ran sideways along the ranks of Vordanai like ducks in a shooting gallery. When the third volley exploded, those few who’d tried to reach the blue line went down with it. One by one, the guns spat a second discharge of lethal projectiles. The Preacher aimed at the thickest points in the crowd, where those trying to flee met those coming up from behind, and the fire cut them down in clumps.
Then there were no more men trying to close, or even pressing forward from the rear. The whole vast host was in flight, panic spreading from man to man like a plague, until even those who hadn’t gotten close enough to taste the smoke were throwing down their weapons to speed their flight. Only the black-clad priests tried to stem the rout, and few listened to their entreaties. One cluster sent up their high-pitched song yet again, and it moved something in their followers. A knot of men started to gather around them, accreting more as these brave few grabbed their comrades bodily and turned them back to face their foes. It lasted until the Preacher took notice. One of the guns growled, sending a storm of metal in their direction. Priests and men were blasted to bloody ruin, and the rout resumed.
The colonel turned back to Marcus. His smile was gone, but his eyes still sparkled.
“The men are to fix bayonets and advance. Keep the pressure on. They may make a stand around their camp.” Then he did smile, slightly. “Oh, and a message to Captain Stokes. Tell him the leash is slipped. Tell him”—Janus paused—“tell him to give them hell.”
• • •
Even a half mile down the road, leaving the scene of the slaughter behind, the plain was still dotted with corpses. Some wounded men had made it this far before their legs gave out. Others had been cut down by Give-Em-Hell’s pursuing horsemen. Janus had instructed that quarter was to be offered to those who asked for it, but thus far few had, preferring to trust to their legs rather than the mercies of the foreigners.
Marcus rode slowly, feeling dazed. What had seemed like an eternity while it was happening now felt like a flash, an instantaneous transition. A few minutes separated certain doom from total victory. The men had seemed to take it in stride, setting off after the Khandarai with a chorus of cheers and yells, but Marcus was having more difficulty.
He couldn’t have known. It nagged at him like a broken tooth, best avoided but unavoidable. He couldn’t have known. There had been a moment, just a moment, after the first volley had slammed out. A matter of thirty seconds or so, when nothing had protected the Vordanai line, not even bayonets. If they’d pushed the charge home, that line would have shattered like glass. Every man for himself, and damn the consequences. Marcus was certain that he himself had been only an instant from putting the spurs to Meadow and riding for it. Perhaps that was what rankled.
It hadn’t worked out that way, of course. But he couldn’t have known they’d break. Not for certain. Janus had tossed the dice, and they’d come up sixes, but the thought of what might have been made Marcus’ stomach roil.
Even worse, he didn’t know why. Why hold fire for so long? Why deploy to meet that giant horde at all? He wanted to march up to the colonel and demand an explanation, but that simply wasn’t done. Colonels were under no obligation to explain their battle plans to subordinates.
If he was overconfident before this, now there’ll be no stopping him. Marcus thought of the strange light in those gray eyes and shivered. “He couldn’t have known.” But he acted as though he had.
“You seem troubled, Captain.”
Marcus hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud, or that Miss Alhundt had been riding alongside him. He looked up into her dirty spectacles and managed a sickly grin.
“Apologies, Miss Alhundt. I didn’t see you there.”
She waved a hand. “You were preoccupied. I merely wondered with what.”
“Tired,” Marcus said. “Just tired.”
That was true enough. The nervous energy had gone out of him like water out of a bath when the plug was pulled, leaving him feeling unutterably empty. He wanted nothing more than to find a bed and sleep, for all that it was only midafternoon. But he couldn’t—not yet. There was more work to be done. Messengers had already carried his orders to the troops, telling them to re-form at the edges of the Redeemer camp and set guards while details of picked men rounded up the prisoners. He wanted no wanton violence toward civilians, and in this at least Janus had agreed with him. The tedious, grisly business of tending the wounded and burying the dead would last long into the evening as it was.
Miss Alhundt’s horse stepped daintily over a dead man in the road, lying on his face with his back slashed open by a cavalry saber.
“I must admit I had a moment of doubt when the Redeemers came so close. It seemed risky.” She caught his eye. “But I’m not a military expert.”
Marcus’ lip twitched. He said nothing, but he was sure she could read everything she needed in his expression.
“And yet,” she went on, “this is certainly a victory. Even His Grace can have no cause for complaint.”
Enough is enough. “What are you getting at, Miss Alhundt? What do you want from me?”
“I want to know where your loyalty lies.”
“Where it always has,” Marcus growled. “With king, country, and the chain of command.”
“In that order?”
“I’m not going to play word games with you.”
“It’s not a game, Captain. I need your help.”
Just for a moment, Marcus thought he saw something genuine in her expression. The coy, clever smile was still in place, but there was something in her eyes. It was the look of someone treading water over an infinite abyss. Then she turned away.
“What’s that?” she said.
“What?”
“That.” She pointed with one hand. “The smoke. Has there been more fighting, do you think?”
Marcus lifted his eyes. Beyond the next bend in the road, a column of smoke was rising. It wasn’t the gray-white color of powder smoke, which in any event tended to hug the ground like fog. This was the thick black smoke of burning wood and canvas, burning wagons and stores and blankets—
“Brass Balls of the Beast,” Marcus snarled, kicking Meadow to a trot. “What the hell have they gotten into?”
Chapter Eight
WINTER
Winter hiked wearily back toward the ravine where she’d left what remained of her company. The immediate aftermath of the Redeemer’s attack had been a desperate scramble to rescue what wounded they could and then run for the nearest cover. They’d ended up in a wind-carved defile through the high ridge, narrow enough at both ends to be easily defended. Only then had Winter felt secure enough to give most of the company a rest, while she and Bobby picked a cautious path up the empty hillside to find out what had happened.
When they returned, Graff shouted the men awake. Most of the survivors had dropped wherever they’d halted, sprawled across the narrow floor of the ravine like a blanket of corpses. But the corporal’s yell produced a miraculous resurrection, and as Bobby related the good news the buzz of conversation spread, punctuated by whoops and hollers. Winter pushed her way through the jubilant throng and found Graff.
“Good to see you back safe, Sergeant,” he said.
“Thanks.” She jerked her head in Bobby’s direction. “You’ve heard?”
“I’m not sure I believe it.”
“We had the whole story from a couple of Give-Em-Hell’s outriders,” Winter said. “From the top of the hill you can see the Redeemer camp burning.”
“Nice to get good news for once,” Graff said.
“Better than the alternative,” Winter agreed. “But we�
��ve still got a bit of a walk ahead of us, and it’d be best to make it before dark. How many of the wounded need to be carried?”
The corporal counted on grubby fingers. “Fox . . . Inimin . . . Gaff . . . Regult . . .” He looked up. “Four, I think.”
“What about Eiderson?” Winter wasn’t good with names, but she was starting to remember a few. Eiderson was a big, blond man with a sarcastic manner, prone to sneers, but he’d screamed loudest of all when they’d carried him from the battlefield with a carbine ball through the thigh.
“He died,” Graff said quietly. “An hour or so back.”
“Oh.” Winter felt guilty that this news didn’t affect her more. “Four, then. Eight men to carry them, and four more just in case. Bobby and I will stay with them. Can you take the rest of the men ahead?”
Graff frowned. “There could still be Redeemers about. Best to stick together.”
She shook her head. “The outriders said we’re in the clear. The more men we get back to a camp by nightfall, the less worried I’ll be.”
“As you say, Sergeant,” Graff said. “Take Folsom as well, then. I can ride herd on the others.”
Winter glanced up at the sun. It had touched the horizon, and lurking under the still-stifling heat she could feel the chill of the desert night, waiting to pounce.
They rigged stretchers for the four wounded men out of muskets and torn jackets, and fashioned makeshift torches from scraps and scrub grass for when night fell. Graff set off first, with the balance of the company, promising he’d send riders to escort them the rest of the way once he reached the regiment. Winter and her small party left the ravine just after sunset, picking their way down the center of the valley where the land was flattest. The wounded men whimpered and moaned, and any false step that jolted them produced heartrending screams.
At first the stretcher bearers and their escorts kept up a lively chatter, Bobby among them, though Folsom had reverted to his usual silence and walked silently at Winter’s shoulder. As twilight deepened from red to purple, though, the gathering darkness smothered conversation like a shroud. The four unburdened men lit their torches, which gave enough light to place their feet by, but no more. They filled the valley with flickering, dancing shadows, decorating every rock with a long black streamer.
A column of smoke was visible, rising from burning Redeemer stores and blotting out a chunk of the darkening sky. Winter directed them toward it, which was the direction the valley ran in any case. She’d intended to skirt the base of the conflagration once she arrived, but at ground level it was more of a cloud than a bonfire, with no clear edges. They were in the Khandarai camp, or the remains of it, before they realized it.
There was actually very little to mark it as a camp of any sort. There were no neat lines of tents, as in the Vordanai encampments. Bedrolls and sheets were scattered at random, interspersed with crude lean-tos of linen and sticks. Amidst these were all the detritus of an army on the march—weapons, spare or broken, sacks of meal or fruit, bones and offal from butchered animals, bits of clothing left behind for the final march into battle.
Most of what would burn had been blackened by fire, and here and there fitful embers still smoldered, sending up choking black smoke. Before long, full dark arrived, and the circle of light cast by the torches defined the limit of their vision. They walked in silence, objects coming into view a few paces ahead and falling into oblivion after they’d passed, like floating wreckage flowing around a ship under sail.
Winter barely noticed the first body, blackened and charred by flame, curled into a ball amidst the crisped ruins of a bedroll. Only the skull marked it as something that had once been human. The next, though, was a ragged man coated crimson from a dozen wounds in the back, lying facedown in the dirt. Past him was a man with a spear still in his hand, the side of his head shot away by a musket ball. From then on, as they entered the center of the camp, they encountered more and more corpses, until they all had to tread carefully to avoid crushing stiff, outflung fingers or stumbling over twisted limbs.
There were women, too, Winter realized with a start. Some, dressed in rags and curled around the wounds that had killed them, were indistinguishable from the men, but this far into the camp any resistance had apparently collapsed, and the victors had found time for a bit of sport. They passed one body naked and spread-eagled, her throat cut in a ragged red half circle like a broad grin. Elsewhere the torchlight revealed the pale buttocks of three women laid facedown in a row, robes hiked up to their armpits. A gray-bearded old man lay nearby, killed by a single shot to the chest.
It went on, and on, and on. Winter wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare. Inside the smoke cloud, she had no way to navigate, so all she could do was lead her men on a straight course and pray they’d come through it eventually. She watched the faces of the men in the flickering light. Folsom, behind her, might have been carved of stone, but Bobby’s eyes were wide as saucers. The boy had dropped back when they found the first corpse, and with each successive discovery he pressed closer to her side. Winter reached out and found his hand with hers, tentatively. She wasn’t sure if the gesture was unmanly, but Bobby twined his fingers through hers, and gripped tight.
She felt an odd need to explain, to make excuses. It’s war. This is what it’s always been like. After a battle, when their blood is up, men will do things they’d never consider otherwise. But her throat was too tight to speak, and the burning camp had the heavy, unbreakable silence of a cathedral.
Winter wondered how much of the devastation had been wrought by the Old Colonials and how much by the recruits. She had a depressing feeling that she knew the answer. Old Colonel Warus had taken a dim view of rape and pillage when it was committed under his eye, but he hadn’t troubled to extend that eye very far. And when a village had been suspected of harboring bandits or rebels . . .
They were not the only ones in the camp, though no living person strayed into the circle of firelight. Other torches moved here and there, bobbing among the slowly dying flames like distant will-o’-the-wisps. Alone, or in groups of two or three, they picked their way through the ruins. In search of plunder, presumably, though there was little of value that Winter could see. She could hear them at times, too, rough voices calling to one another over the crackle and spit of the flames.
It seemed they’d been walking for hours in silence, and even the cries of the four wounded men were muffled. When Winter heard a low, agonized groan, she assumed it came from her party, but it was followed by a hiss and a muffled curse. She stopped, and held her palm up to halt the others.
Bobby’s hand tightened convulsively, then slipped free.
“What is it, sir?” the boy said.
“I heard something,” Winter said. “Someone’s alive, near here.”
The soldiers looked at each other. One of them, a sandy-haired youth holding one end of a stretcher, spoke up.
“Are you sure?” he said.
“I heard it, too,” Folsom rumbled, and pointed. “Over that way.”
The soldier glanced at his companions, then shrugged. “So what? It’s got to be a grayskin.”
“It could be one of ours,” Winter lied. The curse she’d heard had been in Khandarai. “We can’t just leave him.” She surveyed their faces and came to a quick decision. “You keep on. The camp can’t be much farther. If we can find him, Corporals Forester and Folsom will help me bring him in.”
The man nodded. Another soldier kindled an extra torch and handed it to Folsom. The stretcher bearers and their escort trooped off, leaving Winter and the two corporals alone.
Bobby made a visible effort to control himself, shifting his musket from one hand to the other and shaking out stiff fingers where he’d gripped it too tightly. He took several long breaths and then turned to Winter, determination written in his face. Winter found her respect for him increasing. He was obviously scared, even terrified, and equally obviously determined not to let it prevent him from doing as he was ordered.
Folsom, as usual, was impassive.
“Right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They walked in the direction of the sound, past torn blankets and smoking piles of rubbish. Corpses were everywhere, sprawled in attitudes of fear and flight where they’d been cut down by their pursuers. Winter forced herself to look around, searching for movement. Bobby cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted a greeting, but it produced no reply, and he didn’t repeat it.
Then Winter caught a flicker of motion. She pointed.
“There!”
There was an overturned wagon, a dead horse still tangled in the traces. Someone crouched behind it, a dark shadow against the dull red light from distant fires. Winter stepped forward, hands spread, trying to look nonthreatening.
“Hello?” she said, then tried again in Khandarai. “Keipho?”
She half expected whoever it was to flee. She certainly did not expect the enormous shadow that rose up from behind the broken wagon, eyes glowing with reflected torchlight. It roared like a bull, a deep, animal sound with no human language in it, and charged.
It was a man, she could see, tall and thick-limbed, shirtless, with a hairy white belly that strained at his belt. His face was wild with rage, and in his hands was a curved sword half as long as Winter was tall. He vaulted the dead horse in a single stride, weapon held above his head.
From Winter’s right came a bang that shattered the stillness like a rock through a pane of glass. Smoke billowed from Bobby’s musket, but the boy had pulled the trigger before getting the weapon level, and the ball whined off into the night. The giant barely broke his stride, headed straight for Winter, his blade raised for a two-handed downward cut that would have chopped her in half.
Folsom stepped into his path, bulling forward underneath the stroke so that the pommel of the sword glanced off his shoulder. The corporal had let his musket fall, but he still held the torch in his left hand, and he pressed it against the giant’s back. The big man roared, and his knee came up and buried itself in Folsom’s stomach. Folsom gave a grunt and staggered backward, and the Khandarai came around with a backhand slap that lifted him off his feet and sent him sprawling in the dust.
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