The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  Raesinia put her hand over the note and waited until the courier had gone. She pretended to stare at the broadsheet, engrossed in its hyperpatriotic idiocy, while she unfolded the message. Andy leaned across to get a better look.

  The note was written on thin foolscap, in a neat hand, and read:

  Your message received and transmitted. Still secure here but not sure for how long. Backup plans under way. Will bring you over here as soon as I can, but may take some time to arrange secure transport. Contact again using usual arrangement. Giforte.

  “Well,” Andy said, “that’s something.”

  “At least Maurisk hasn’t found them,” Raesinia said. “Come on. We’d better show Marcus, before he goes mad with waiting.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  WINTER

  “—And then we’ll ride out and give ’em hell!”

  Winter exchanged a look with Jane, and tried not to smile.

  She and the other officers had followed the cavalry commander back to the designated campsite, which was in a broad meadow beside a belt of woodland. A few fences indicated this land was used to pasture animals, but whatever farmer did so had long since fled, and the soldiers had mostly torn the split-rail barriers down to feed their fires. Give-Em-Hell had about five hundred cavalry camped there, a regiment that, like Winter’s command, was a mix of old Royal Army horsemen and post-revolution recruits.

  They’d already kindled fires, and as the men and women of the Third stumbled in, the cavalry brought them food and water. As on the previous days, the regiment had stretched into an extended column on the march, so its soldiers didn’t arrive in a body but in an extended trickle. At Winter’s request, Give-Em-Hell had sent more of his men back down the road with torches, to help gather up stragglers and show the way in the dark.

  In the meantime, he’d been explaining the plan in his typical idiom, which involved a great deal of slashing at imaginary foes with an imaginary saber. It was short on tactical niceties, however, and Winter cleared her throat.

  “Colonel?” Give-Em-Hell had gotten his own promotion, presumably around the same time Winter had. “Did Janus leave you any written orders?”

  “Yes, he did, as a matter of fact.” The cavalryman dug around under his breastplate and came out with a much-folded sheet of paper, which he passed to Winter. “He’s got everything laid out, as usual.”

  Winter unfolded the note and read. While she did, Give-Em-Hell turned to Abby and looked her slowly up and down.

  “You’re a woman,” he said, with a faint note of surprise.

  “So I’ve been told,” Abby said dryly.

  Winter paused, holding her breath and waiting for the explosion. The old cavalry commander had not exactly been famous for his open-mindedness.

  “So it’s true that there’s a women’s battalion?” Give-Em-Hell said. He sounded more curious than angry.

  “Yes,” Abby said.

  “And they’ll fight?”

  “They certainly have so far.”

  “Hell.” The cavalryman broke into a gap-toothed smile. “I always said infantry was such an easy job that girls could do it.”

  Winter rolled her eyes. Not perfect, but I’ll take what I can get. Any reaction was better than Lieutenant Novus’. She turned her attention back to the note, which included a hastily sketched map that she compared to the terrain she could see with the last of the fading light.

  “All right,” she said, looking up. “I think I understand. Thank you for your help, Colonel. I understand we’ve got an artillery battery?”

  “Captain Archer,” Give-Em-Hell said, nodding. “He’s camped over there a ways.”

  “Janus says here that I’m to be in overall command of the force,” Winter said. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

  Give-Em-Hell pushed his hat back and scratched at his thinning hair. “Not unless you’re planning on keeping me out of the action.”

  “You’ll get plenty of action, don’t worry. But it needs to be on my order.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Just wave your hat, and we’ll give ’em hell.”

  “Excellent.” Winter glanced at her officers and nodded toward the woods. “Follow me.”

  It was fortunate that the moon was high and three-quarters full, because Winter forbade any of the torch-carrying cavalry pickets from accompanying her and the small group of officers into the forest. It wasn’t a true wild wood, but a well-tended belt of trees occupying the rocky ground at the top of the ridge, separating one shallow valley from the next. Still, picking their way through it went slowly, and it was a half hour before they were at the other side and looking down on what would, tomorrow, be a battlefield.

  Campfires sparkled in long, parallel lines, marking the positions of the opposing armies. On Winter’s left, an irregular series of hills was topped by a few farmhouses and barns, and studded here and there with the regular shapes of orchards. Small fires burned all through their yards and down their slopes, avoiding the low-lying gaps between them. On her right, across two or three miles of valley flatland, another army was camped in a tighter mass behind the protection of a wandering stream.

  Now and then, nervous pickets down between the two forces fired at one another, or at fleeting shadows. Each musket shot was a sharp pinprick of fire, followed seconds later by the distant clap of the report.

  “That’s Janus,” Winter said, pointing to the left, then sweeping her arm across the valley. “And that’s di Pfalen.”

  “Unless he’s building fake campfires, that’s a hell of a lot of Hamveltai,” Cyte said.

  Winter nodded. “At least as many as Janus has, probably more.”

  “So what does he want us to do?”

  “Only to win the battle for him.” Winter blew out a breath and tried to picture things unfolding as Janus had explained in his note. The battalions marching with fluttering flags, the guns coughing smoke and flames. “We’re on the left end of the Hamveltai line, and they don’t know we’re here. He’s going to bait them into attacking his center, and while the battle’s going on we’re supposed to descend on their flank and send Give-Em-Hell into their rear.”

  They looked out at the field in silence for a while.

  “Sounds like a fine plan,” Sevran said cautiously. “Except that it requires di Pfalen to be so idiotic as to not take any precautions.”

  “Like sending someone up here to occupy these woods,” Abby said. “I certainly would.”

  “Janus thinks he’ll send at least a regiment of yellowjackets,” Winter said. “However, he’s ‘confident that a sudden attack, launched from under cover, will put them to flight.’”

  This time it was Jane who broke the silence. “I don’t know if we’ll be up to delivering an attack, sudden or otherwise. The soldiers we’ve got left are going to be exhausted. I don’t want to run my girls down, but nobody is ready for a fucking bayonet charge after walking a hundred miles in four days in the rain.”

  Sevran nodded agreement. “We won’t have the strength.”

  “We have to try,” Abby said. “What else did we come all this way for?”

  “We have to try something,” Winter said. “Janus wants us on their flank, but I don’t think he cares how we get there. I have an idea, but I want you all to tell me what you think . . .”

  * * *

  It was nearly midnight before Winter returned to the camp, to find that the slow trickle of haggard infantrymen and their cavalry escorts had nearly come to a stop. A patrol of four horsemen trotted up to the camp, with three women riding behind them. Winter recognized Anne-Marie’s blond curls first, and then identified the other two as Joanna and Barley.

  “Are those three all right?” she shouted to the lead cuirassier.

  “Just tired, I think,” he called back. “When we found them the big one and the little one were carryin
g the blonde between them.”

  At least some of the recruits made it, then. Winter found herself smiling.

  “You’ve got some tough ladies in this regiment, sir,” one of the other cavalrymen said. “Hell if I’d have been able to walk through the shit we’ve seen on the road.”

  “Wait until you see them in action tomorrow,” Winter said. “You’d better get some sleep if you want to keep up.”

  “Don’t worry, sir,” the leader said. “We’ll give ’em hell.”

  They continued on their way, and Winter continued on hers, finding a tree stump among where the Third Regiment soldiers had spread themselves over the still-wet ground. She sat down against it and closed her eyes, expecting sleep to come as instantly as it had the night before, but found herself disappointed. The battle she’d conjured, gesturing out at the field in front of her officers, continued to dance behind her eyes.

  She heard footsteps, and then a warm, soft body settled itself beside her. Winter opened her eyes and found Jane’s head on her shoulder, sodden red hair in a tangled mess against her sleeve.

  “Sorry,” Jane said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.” Winter blew out a breath. “Are you all right?”

  “Tired.” Jane hesitated. “You’re sure this is going to work?”

  “No. There’s a million things that could go wrong.” Winter let her head rest on the rough bark of the tree stump. “But it’s the best I could come up with.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Remember what Janus told you, about being more careful?” Jane said.

  Winter nodded.

  “He may only want to keep his special demon safe. But I’m going to say it, too, and I really fucking mean it, all right? No more leading charges.” Jane’s hand found Winter’s wrist and gripped it tight. “We need you too much.”

  Winter shifted her hand to interlace her fingers with Jane’s and squeezed tight. This time, when she closed her eyes, sleep came quickly.

  The day of battle brought a blue sky, cloudless from edge to edge, with a cold, distant sun and a chill wind that made the branches rattle in the woods and brought down drifts of crunchy brown leaves. Winter stood where she had the day before, borrowing Cyte’s spyglass to examine di Pfalen’s dispositions.

  It certainly made an impressive array. Battalion after battalion of infantry in splendid yellow and black formed in front of the distant village of Jirdos, yellow banners rigid and snapping in the wind, displaying the roaring bull of Hamvelt. Cannon, still limbered and ready to deploy, formed neat lines in the gaps between the infantry columns. Behind the first line stood a second, and behind that came the cavalry, hundreds of horsemen sitting calmly in formation, each man’s boot only inches from his neighbor’s.

  “That’s the Guardians,” Cyte said when Winter passed her back the spyglass. “They’re supposed to be the elite. Every wealthy family in Hamvelt sends their spare sons to serve with them.”

  Jane snorted. “Rich men make bad soldiers. They’ve got too much to lose.”

  On the heights opposite, Janus’ army made for a less intimidating picture. Guns were parked hub to hub on each hilltop, flanked by infantry, but even at this distance the volunteer battalions looked shabby with their parti-colored clothes and improvised banners. Another mass of troops, mostly regulars in their solid blue uniforms, was forming in front of the line of hills, with more cannon alongside them. There was hardly any cavalry to be seen.

  “I would have thought Janus would keep all the guns on the heights,” Sevran said, frowning down at the maneuvering soldiers.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Abby said.

  Winter turned away at the sound of horses crashing through the brush. A moment later, the animals emerged, snorting and irritable, the cannon that they were pulling bouncing on its wide wheels. A young captain who Winter vaguely recognized spotted the eagles on her shoulders and hurried over.

  “Sir!” He saluted. “We’re coming into position now.”

  “Good.” Winter cocked her head. “It’s Archer, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were in Khandar?”

  “Yessir. Under the Preacher.”

  “And you came to rescue us at Diarach.”

  He blushed slightly and nodded. “Janus thought we might work well together, given our history.”

  “I’m glad to have you. You know what you’re supposed to do?”

  Archer nodded again. “I’m worried that we won’t be able to pull out in time. These woods aren’t too bad, but we got stuck a couple of times on the way up.”

  “Jane!”

  Jane turned, and Winter gestured to Archer.

  “Gather up a company or so from the Girls’ Own and help the captain clear a path for his guns. We don’t want them getting hung up here when we have to pull out.”

  Jane nodded and hurried off, back through the woods to the field where the Third Regiment was shaking itself out and trying to make ready for battle. Winter looked down at the Hamveltai, who so far showed no signs of movement.

  “Sevran, you’d better get back to your people,” she said. “I’ll send a runner when things start to happen here.”

  “Yes, sir!” Sevran saluted. “Good luck.”

  The battle began on the Hamveltai right, the extreme opposite end of the line from where Winter and the Third were waiting. From their wooded ride, they could see the banners of the yellowjackets as they advanced, but the troops themselves were concealed by a fold in the ground. Guns on both sides opened fire, filling the valley with low, distant booms. Before long, a cloud of powder smoke boiled up over that end of the line, lit from within by the flashes of musketry and cannon-fire.

  “Janus is moving in the center,” Cyte said not long after.

  It was true. The blue-uniformed infantry moved forward in neatly aligned columns, crossing the valley floor at a leisurely pace with several batteries of guns alongside them. As they came into range of the Hamveltai cannon, puffs of smoke blossomed along the yellowjacket line, and Winter could see the dirt fountain where the balls struck the earth. From this vantage, it was easy to see how the round shot bounced, skipping over the ground like a stone skimmed into a lake in a series of shortening arcs. Where those arcs intersected with the Vordanai columns, they left a scattering of broken men in their wake, patches of blue against the brown of the fields.

  About seven hundred yards out from the Hamveltai line, the advance stopped, and the troops deployed from columns into long lines as the guns unlimbered. That was still much too far for musket-fire, but the cannon were soon banging away, their coughing booms mingling with those of their Hamveltai counterparts. The long, thin formations were less vulnerable to the bouncing cannonballs, but each hit still sent men pinwheeling away or staggering out of line. The tiny shapes of wounded soldiers walked or crawled toward the rear, like a tide of ants picking their way through a lawn.

  The exchange of fire went on for at least a half hour. Then the Vordanai began an unceremonious retreat, lines deploying back into columns and turning to march the way they had come. Cannon relimbered and rumbled off, leaving the occasional broken gun behind. A neat line of corpses marked the spot where they had stood.

  “What was the point of that?” Bobby said, frowning.

  “I think,” Winter said slowly, “that Janus wanted to convince di Pfalen that was the best he’s got.”

  “If that’s true, it may have worked,” Abby said. “They’re on the move.”

  The center and left of the Hamveltai line, so far idle except for the cannoneers, lurched into ponderous motion. Thick columns of yellow-uniformed men splashed through the small stream that had guarded their front and pushed across the valley toward the heights. Their cannon raced ahead, teams of horses laboring to pull them past the infantry and then turning around to set
up for firing. As they came closer, the hills seemed to explode with fire and smoke, a rippling volley of guns like distant thunder. Now it was the yellow line’s turn to dribble corpses and wounded to the rear as it advanced, battalions closing up whenever a ball cut through them like waves crashing around a rock.

  “Yellowjackets coming our way,” Cyte said, peering through her glass. “Three columns.”

  It was a few moments before the rest of them could see. The left-most regiment of Hamveltai had peeled off from the general forward advance and was headed toward the wooded ridge. As Winter had predicted, di Pfalen was not totally blind to the danger presented to his flank; as his main line advanced past the woods, he’d sent troops to guard against an attack from that direction.

  “Bobby, go find Archer,” Winter said. “Tell him to hold his fire as long as they keep coming. It’s when they get too comfortable that we’ll need to sting them. Then find Abby and help her get the Girls’ Own ready.”

  Bobby saluted and ran off. Winter stayed where she was, watching the approaching yellowjackets. Three columns probably meant three battalions, or something like three thousand men, opposing the bare thousand or so that remained in the Third Regiment after the hellish march. Janus’ original plan, that they charge from cover and catch the Hamveltai by surprise, might have worked if they’d been at full strength, but with the odds that far against them, it would have been a disaster. So even Janus isn’t omniscient. Winter wasn’t sure if that was comforting or terrifying.

  The first question, whether the Hamveltai colonel intended to occupy the woods or merely to screen them, was soon answered. He halted his men in column at the bottom of the slope, facing up toward Winter but not yet deployed into a combat formation. He still doesn’t know we’re here. More than likely, the yellowjacket commander expected to be called into action somewhere in the front line now engaging Janus’ army, once the danger of a flank attack failed to materialize. Time to show him otherwise.

  The cannon opened fire, right on cue. The closest gun was a dozen yards away, and the blast was enough to rattle Winter’s teeth in her skull. More fire came from all along the edge of the woods, where Archer had positioned his guns to take advantage of the cover and the high ground. The cannonballs followed long, arcing trajectories down toward the Hamveltai troops below, and even the first volley plowed into the tight-packed yellow ranks, knocking men down like toys. Winter gave an appreciative whistle. Archer knows his business.