Sins of Empire

by Brian McClellan

  Their muskets looked mass-produced, each of them with the same flared, engraved stock a dozen decades out of fashion in the Nine. Vlora couldn’t see enough detail to examine the flintlock mechanisms, but to her eye they looked just as modern as those of her men.

  “Down!” Olem suddenly shouted, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving them both to the ground behind the protection of the wall. Vlora’s sorcerous senses flared, and a half a second later fire swept the top of the wall in a hot, angry column that scattered and charred two gun crews.

  “Privileged!” someone shouted.

  Vlora got to her feet, peering over the top of the wall, opening her third eye. She found the Privileged within moments—a woman, standing in the prow of one of the longboats about a quarter of a mile out from the shoreline. Her gloved hands waved over her head, fingers twitching and arms rising and falling like she was directing an opera.

  Fire slammed into the north side of Fort Nied with the strength of a dozen cannonballs, engulfing crew eleven entirely. The Privileged suddenly jerked and toppled onto the soldiers behind her, crimson blossoming on her forehead. Farther down the wall, Vlora saw Norrine lower her rifle, blowing smoke from the end and immediately reloading. Vlora gave her an appreciative nod.

  “There’s more!” Norrine shouted.

  Vlora sensed them, too. At least twenty Privileged, all of them out scattered among the longboats. Some of them were harder to get a fix on—obviously hiding themselves in the Else—while others seemed to note their fallen comrade and began to surround themselves with walls of hardened air.

  “Olem, how many Privileged does the garrison have?”

  “Two.”

  “Two?” Vlora demanded. “What good is two Privileged going to do against that?”

  “We do have powder mages,” Olem responded, gesturing to Norrine.

  “Yeah, four of us. They have a whole bloody fleet. Send a message to Lindet. Tell her we need her personal cabal down here now or this fight might not last the evening.”

  As if to emphasize her point, there was a chorus of screams from the mainland as shards of ice appeared over the marketplace at the mouth of the Hadshaw, raining down among the civilians there. Vlora swore, turning to look back toward the longboats approaching the end of the bay. “Take Davd and an extra company. Reinforce the garrison out on the point. Tell Davd to focus his fire on the Privileged. Go!”

  Vlora watched Olem spring down the stairs into the muster yard. He grabbed Davd from his spot at a gun port and within the minute he and a company of Riflejacks raced on foot down the causeway connecting Fort Nied to the land.

  Vlora snatched the arm of a messenger. “Get replacement gun crews up here, and make sure one of our Knacked engineers is keeping an eye on the sorcery in these walls. I don’t want the nasty surprise of their Privileged suddenly punching through this rock.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  With her back to the wall, she lifted herself up to look sidelong out at the approaching longboats. The Privileged were gradually coming within range, raining sorcery down on the fort and bay. They, like the ships they were coming from, would get more accurate as they drew closer. She took a deep breath and reached out with her senses. Farther, farther, and yet farther still, stretching out over a thousand yards to one of the longboats with a Privileged on the prow.

  With a thought, she detonated the powder of all the soldiers in the longboat. It exploded in a hundred smaller detonations, tossing flesh and wood for fifty yards in all directions. She felt the kickback from triggering powder deep in her bones, rattling her as if she was standing near the explosions.

  It was an effective way to destroy a longboat, but she couldn’t keep it up forever.

  She wondered how many of the Dynize Privileged had ever encountered powder mages in a battle. She couldn’t take them all out by igniting powder, but she didn’t need to. “You!” she yelled, pointing at a nearby private. “Get me my rifle!”

  CHAPTER 56

  Styke rode at the head of the column of a little over thirteen hundred cavalry, the flags of the Mad Lancers and the Riflejacks flying in tandem from a pair of lances tied to the saddles of Jackal and an Adran sergeant whose name Styke had forgotten. Major Gustar and Ibana rode on either side of him—Ibana keeping her head tilted to one side, listening through her one good ear as Gustar gave Styke a rundown on his new command.

  Styke only half-listened, his eyelids drooping as a full night’s ride to Jedwar and back threatened to topple him from his saddle. His legs were practically numb now, and he gripped his saddle horn to remain steady, laying a calming hand on Amrec’s neck. Behind him in the saddle, Celine dozed peacefully, her arms wrapped around Styke’s stomach.

  Gustar suddenly fell silent, and Styke looked up to find Ibana nodding to the road in front of him. He felt an involuntary twitch at the corner of his lip.

  Blackhats. At least two hundred of them.

  The Blackhats were heavily armed with blunderbusses and muskets. About half of them marched, the other half on horseback, with three heavy wagons among them. Styke looked over his shoulder at Jackal and jerked his head. Jackal grinned and rode past him.

  “We going to call a halt?” Gustar asked.

  “We don’t halt for them,” Ibana said, a note of disgust in her voice.

  The column continued on as Jackal rode on ahead, reaching the Blackhats a hundred yards or so out. Styke could see one of the Blackhats look up at the banner, look back at Jackal, then take a good, hard gander at the approaching cavalry. He shouted something over his shoulder and slowly the Blackhats cleared the road.

  By the time Styke reached the Blackhats they were waiting by the ditch, staring daggers at Styke and the banner that flew above Jackal’s head. Styke directed Amrec off the side of the road, letting the rest of the column continue on as he approached the Blackhat with a Silver Rose dangling from his neck.

  “You know who I am?” Styke asked.

  The Silver Rose raised his chin in defiance. “Pretty good idea.” He put on a good face, but Styke could see the fear in his eyes.

  “Good. What are your orders?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “What are your orders regarding me?” Styke reframed the question.

  Styke could see the “Sod off” on the tip of the Silver Rose’s tongue, but a glance at the column of cavalry and he seemed to think better of it. “We’ve been ordered to ignore you. Bigger problems, it seems.”

  “Well,” Styke responded, “glad your asshole of a boss can find something better to obsess over.” He turned Amrec around and headed back toward the front of his column.

  Behind him, the Silver Rose shouted out, “You have the road, lancer! But the grand master wants you to know this isn’t over.”

  “No,” Styke muttered to himself. “It isn’t.”

  He caught back up with Ibana, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, resisting the urge to turn around and ride the Blackhats down. “Where are they going?” she asked.

  “Didn’t ask.”

  “Might have been a good idea.”

  Styke made a sour face. “They’re Blackhats. They can go right to the pit for all I care.”

  The road carried them toward the distant Landfall Plateau, taking them over numberless marsh-fed rivers draining into the ocean and then up onto a rocky outcropping with thirty-foot cliffs plunging steep into the sea. They reached the top of these cliffs and Gustar suddenly turned over his shoulder, calling for a halt.

  Ibana’s head jerked around toward him. “Only the colonel calls a halt,” she snapped.

  Gustar ignored her. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  Gustar produced a looking glass, raising it to one eye and gazing toward the Landfall Plateau. He scanned the horizon, while Styke shared a puzzled glance with Ibana and strained to hear anything.

  Then he caught it. The distant but unmistakable report of cannon fire.

  Gustar thrust the looking gl
ass at Styke. “To the east of Landfall,” he said.

  Styke let his eye focus, holding his hands steady to find the ships out beyond the harbor. Gray plumes of smoke rose above their gunports. He lowered the looking glass, wiped the eyepiece on his sleeve, then raised it again. The Dynize were definitely shelling the city. He’d expected to return with a thousand cavalry as part of a show of force. Not to defend Landfall. “We’re under attack,” he reported.

  “That’s insane,” Ibana said. “They’re supposed to have a diplomatic meeting today.”

  “It must have gone wrong,” Gustar observed.

  “Really damned bloody wrong,” Styke said. He swept the horizon with the looking glass, taking in the full size of the fleet and the hundreds of longboats in the water between the ships and the shore. “Fort Nied is returning fire, and the Dynize are landing troops. Tell everyone we’re in for a hard ride.”

  He heard Ibana shift in her saddle. “We’ve ridden all afternoon. Our men and horses are tired. Pit, the lancers rode all night, too.”

  “We’ve ridden all night to a fight before,” Styke said.

  “Yeah, when we were all ten years younger. We’re old, fat, and out of shape. At least the rest of you are, anyway.”

  Styke was about to lower the glass when he spotted something else: more ships, far to the north of where the fleet had engaged with Fort Nied. There were at least a dozen transports emptying their decks of longboats, which plowed across the shallows to disgorge their troops with alarming swiftness. Styke quickly examined the lay of the land out from the beach—marshes and streams, with the odd village, and flat, drained suburbs at the base of the plateau.

  He spotted a brigade in dark yellow jackets marching out of the suburbs, heading double-time for the landing Dynize. At a glance, the Dynize already outnumbered them and with the heavy armor they wore they looked more than an even match for basic garrison troops.

  “Major Gustar, how do you feel about charging across sand?” he asked.

  “Depends on the kind of sand,” Gustar responded.

  “I don’t think you’re going to get the chance to check.” Styke handed the looking glass back and Gustar put it to his eye.

  He frowned, and seemed to come to the same conclusion Styke had. “The garrison is badly outmatched. My cuirassiers will sink in that sand, but the dragoons might have a chance. You want me to hit them from behind?”

  Styke grunted an affirmative and gently woke Celine, who rubbed her eyes and peered toward the distant enemies. “Sunin,” Styke called.

  He was joined by Major Sunintiel, her crooked yellow teeth framed in a broad grin. “Ordering a charge, Colonel? Been forever since I killed a man in battle, you know?” Sunin was old enough to be his great-grandmother, but looks were deceiving. She’d always been one of his meanest lancers—which didn’t mean she’d survive the shock of a charge at her age.

  “I am,” Styke said, “but you’re not in it. Take Celine.”

  “I’m not a nursemaid,” Sunin objected.

  “You can also barely hold a lance.”

  “Not true!”

  Ibana snorted. “You’re about a thousand years old, Sunin. Keep the girl safe.”

  Sunin grumbled, but she directed her horse up beside Styke. He took Celine by the back of the shirt, lifting and depositing her in front of Sunin. “Will you be all right?” Celine asked.

  “Me?” Styke let Amrec prance below him. “I’ll be fine. You take care of yourself. This is going to get bloody.” He turned away from her. “Gustar, take your dragoons and sweep the beach. Ibana, draw up the Mad Lancers and the Riflejack cuirassiers on the road. We have killing to do.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Michel, Taniel, and Ka-poel were forced to approach the dig site by horse, as the streets in and out of the city were all but impassable to cabs with pedestrians in a panic and the roads clogged by families and merchants fleeing the city. News that the Landfall bay was under attack by a Dynize fleet spread rapidly, and with it chaos.

  They left the western plateau, forcing their way through the press of the industrial quarter, cutting across streams, parks, and yards, before finally rejoining the main highway just outside the city. It was a fraught ride, and Michel, who rarely, if ever, rode, felt like he was going to tumble from his saddle at any moment. His fear was only made worse when Ka-poel snatched his reins from him and led his horse in a gallop across the open floodplains.

  He was only given a reprieve when they finally drew near the dig site and the three of them stopped a few hundred yards away, staring out across the farms at the cordoned-off, innocuous-looking excavation.

  Taniel scowled in the direction of the monolith. Ka-poel raised her nose to the wind, as if trying to smell for something other than the smoke coming off Greenfire Depths. Michel, for his part, tried not to be sick from their ride and occupied himself with wondering what the other two were seeing.

  He’d read a little about sorcery—it would be stupid to be a spy and not be aware of the ways he could be detected. But sorcery was as foreign to him as Gurla or Dynize, a distant concept that never really affected him in any significant way until he tripped those wards on the upper library and tipped his hand to Fidelis Jes. He thought of sorcery like he did politics: He knew it existed, and that it affected his life in deep, intrinsic ways, but he tried his best not to get any on him.

  Yet here he was, leading a pair of godkillers to something that, if they were right, could actually create gods.

  He lost his battle with his motion sickness, leaning over his saddle and vomiting noisily in the cotton field. Neither of his companions seemed to notice.

  Taniel spoke up, his eyes still on the dig site, looking pensive and perplexed. “I wondered how it could have remained unnoticed for so long just outside the city, but even at this distance I can barely sense it.” He glanced at Michel. “You’re certain this is it?”

  “I’m certain,” Michel answered, spitting out the taste of sick and wiping his mouth. “I can’t feel sorcery and that thing whispered in my head. I’ve never heard of anything that could do that. And even if I wasn’t certain before, Fidelis Jes confirmed it this morning. They’re digging up the godstone.”

  Ka-poel clicked her tongue to get Taniel’s attention, then went through a series of hand motions too quickly for Michel to follow. Taniel watched carefully, nodding along. “What’s going on over there?” he asked, pointing.

  Michel followed his finger to see that part of the palisade surrounding the dig site had been torn down, and that hundreds of horses were being corralled by their handlers. Some sort of massive undertaking was under way, and it didn’t take much for Michel to guess what.

  “They’re getting ready to move it,” he said. “The professor in charge, Cressel, said they’d be ready within days. That was yesterday.”

  Ka-poel gestured quickly, and Taniel translated, “The arrival of the Dynize must have moved up their plans.”

  “Agreed,” Michel said, though he wondered why he bothered. This wasn’t his territory anymore. Taniel and Ka-poel were in charge, and he would let them have it.

  Taniel removed a snuff box from his pocket and tapped a line of black powder out on the back of his hand before snorting it. He rubbed his nose and squinted toward the dig site. “There’s a couple of Knacked down there,” he said. “They’ll be able to sense something off about Ka-poel. No telling how they’ll react. They can’t sense a powder mage, though.”

  “Any Privileged?” Michel asked, fearing the answer.

  “None,” Taniel said. “We actually passed one on our ride down here, beelining for the city. Probably recalled because of the attack.”

  Michel let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, so nothing down there but laborers, soldiers, and normal Blackhats. Right. This should be fine. Easy. No problem. We’ve got this. Can’t think of a single thing that will go wrong. Just the easiest thing we’ve ever …” He trailed off when he noticed that both Ka-poel and Taniel were staring at him. “Wh
at?” he asked.

  “You all right?” Taniel responded.

  “I’m nervous.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  Ka-poel reached over and patted Michel on the shoulder, and he tried not to imagine that he was nothing more than a pet to these two. “Look,” Michel said, “you two can fight your way out if this goes poorly. Me? I’m stuck.”

  Taniel reached over and slapped Michel on the back, almost knocking him out of his saddle. “We won’t leave you behind.”

  “Thanks,” he said, feeling less than reassured. He knew how this needed to go, and realized that he wasn’t going to be able to cede control—and responsibility—over to Taniel. “Okay, let’s get this over with. Ride behind me, and pretend I’m in charge.”

  “You’re the boss,” Taniel said.

  “That’s the worst thing you could say right now.” Taking a deep breath, Michel headed toward the dig site.

  Michel was met by the soldiers guarding the dig site about a hundred feet from the palisade. They looked tired and more than a little harried, casting glances toward the smoke rising above both the eastern and western ends of the Landfall Plateau. Michel didn’t give them a chance to speak, drawing himself up in his saddle and pulling the Gold Rose out of his shirt, dangling it haughtily. “I’m looking for Major Cole,” he said.

  There were six of the guards, led by a sergeant, who immediately touched her cap at the sight of the Gold Rose. “Sir,” she said, “Major Cole is overseeing the move, sir.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for? Take me to him!”

  The sergeant glanced hesitantly at Taniel and Ka-poel before nodding. “Right this way, sir.”

  The dig site seemed to have transformed overnight. The wooden buildings had been ripped down, half of the tents were gone, and, with the exception of Professor Cressel, whom Michel immediately spotted scurrying around the lip of the excavation site, Michel didn’t see anyone else who looked like they were from the college. This was no longer a dig, it seemed, but a military matter.