The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  Interlude

  THE DIRECTORY FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

  The triumphs of the past few days had done much to insulate Maurisk against shock, or else he was still feeling the effects of the treasures he’d looted from the liquor cabinets of Durenne and his allies. Either way, when he turned back to his desk to find Ionkovo standing in the corner of the room, he gave little more than a startled grunt. Maybe I’m just getting used to him.

  “It appears,” the Penitent Damned said, with his customary lack of preamble, “that congratulations are in order.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go as far as congratulations,” Maurisk said. “But things do seem to be in hand, for the moment.”

  “In hand,” Ionkovo said. He stepped away from the wall and circled the desk. Almost unconsciously, Maurisk retreated, sidestepping to put the desk between them. “Yes, I think that might be a good description. Your affairs are in hand.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Your enemies languish in dungeons, the Deputies-General are firmly cowed, and that toad who commands your guard will jump whenever you dangle a pretty bauble in front of him.” Ionkovo leaned forward and put his hands on the desk. “My affairs, however, would seem to have been . . . neglected.”

  “Plans are in motion, I assure you.”

  “Like your plan to seize d’Ivoire? Your men were late.” Ionkovo straightened up. “I cannot abide lack of punctuality.”

  “D’Ivoire can’t hide forever,” Maurisk said. “And we still have the queen—”

  “You do not, in fact, have the queen,” Ionkovo grated. “Indeed, I begin to doubt if you ever did.”

  Maurisk found the courage for a bit of indignation. “If you doubt my word—”

  Ionkovo cut him off again. “I don’t doubt your word, only your competence. Let me remind you that all of your political triumphs will be worth nothing if I don’t get what I want. The legions of Murnsk and the Borelgai fleet will grind this country to dust, and you will be remembered as the man who presided over the final destruction of Vordan.”

  Sweat trickled down Maurisk’s neck and into his collar. “I assure you, I am making every effort. I will investigate the matter of the queen. And in the meantime—”

  “Forget the queen for now,” Ionkovo said. “One of my associates will see if there is anything useful to be learned from that farce. But more important, you have captured one of Vhalnich’s men, have you not?”

  How could he possibly know that? Maurisk swallowed and nodded. “Yes. He denies it, but we’re certain he’s working for Vhalnich. He must have left a cadre in the city to protect the Thousand Names.”

  “Of course he did. And what has he told you?”

  “Ah . . . nothing, so far. But I have men who are skilled in loosening tongues. He’ll talk before much longer.”

  “I have extremely limited patience. Your men are restricted to . . . conventional methods, while my associates are not. One of them is waiting outside. You will accompany him to this prisoner, and he will practice his craft. I will join you there. Understood?”

  “Now?”

  Ionkovo smiled. “Now.”

  It was only a short walk to the old Butchers’ Union building, a blocky brick structure on one of the streets that led away from Farus’ Triumph. Maurisk spent the time glancing at his companion, who seemed a remarkably ordinary sort of man, balding and a bit paunchy, walking with a slight limp. The only oddities were his fingernails, which were as long and white as an eagle’s talons.

  The Patriot Guards outside the Butchers’ Union saluted and opened the doors, and Maurisk led the stranger through the darkened space. The sun had set, and no light came in through the many narrow windows. This had once been the killing floor, before the pressures of commerce had moved sanguinary operations to less savory districts south of the river. After that, the vast open space had been sluiced down, refurnished, and rented to firms in need of temporary accommodation. With the drop-off in trade caused by the war, it had rapidly emptied out, and been taken over by the Directory for its own ends. During the day, it served as a muster hall and meeting ground for the Patriot Guard, and the cellars that had once secured sides of beef and curing hams had proven ideal for sensitive prisoners.

  Another pair of guards waited at the stairs, and yet another outside the room itself. Maurisk kept looking over his shoulder, expecting to see Ionkovo skulking in the shadows, but the Penitent Damned made no appearance. One of the guards unlocked the door with a key from his belt, and Maurisk led the bald man into a dry, windowless space, illuminated by a single candle in a wall bracket.

  In one corner, tied to a chair at his wrists and ankles, was the prisoner. He was a lean young man, with several days’ growth of beard and a wound under one ear that was crusty with dried blood. His clothing was rank and filthy.

  “Shut the door,” the bald man said. He had a Murnskai accent, much thicker than Ionkovo’s.

  Maurisk glanced nervously from the prisoner to the guards, then put his shoulder against the door. It swung shut with a hollow boom, locking itself with a final-sounding click.

  “This is our man, then?” said Ionkovo, stepping out of the shadows.

  Maurisk gritted his teeth to keep from shouting. Sorcery. He swallowed, regaining his composure, and nodded.

  “What makes you think he’s one of Vhalnich’s?”

  “He made regular visits to a particular set of cafés, always waiting in the same places, and every so often he’d leave what looked like a sign. Folded papers, twisted napkins, that kind of thing. A local woman tipped us off because she thought he was a spy.”

  “So he’s a spy. But is he Vhalnich’s?”

  “He’s Mierantai. If you can persuade him to speak, you’ll hear it in his accent. The men of Mieran County are notorious for their close-minded loyalty, so I can’t imagine him working for anyone else.”

  The prisoner raised his head, regarding his captors through a ragged fringe of hair. His eyes went from Maurisk to Ionkovo as they spoke, but his face remained impassive.

  “Well,” Ionkovo said, “we’ll know soon enough. My associate here is known, in our circles, as the Liar, and this is his area of expertise. If you would?”

  “Gladly,” the bald man said. He stepped in front of the prisoner, regarding the man blandly. “Now, this won’t hurt a bit.”

  “Watch,” Ionkovo said. “You may find this instructive.”

  Maurisk watched. He watched as the Liar’s nails began to glow a bright blue, and watched as the bald man sank these burning claws into the prisoner’s face as though it were made of butter. Maurisk felt his gorge rising, but he felt Ionkovo’s eyes on him, and dared not look away. It was obvious that there was a purpose to this exercise beyond simply gathering information. He wants me to know that it could as easily be me in that chair.

  As his blood ran down his face and dripped onto his shirt, the Mierantai spoke in a slow, careful voice, answering every question the Liar put to him. It was, Maurisk thought, when his instinctive horror of the supernatural subsided a little, considerably more efficient than the beating and flaying his own people relied on to achieve the same end. When the Liar was satisfied there was nothing more to be wrung from the wretch, he withdrew his hand. The young man gave a few final twitches and died.

  “Well,” Ionkovo said, “it appears you were correct.”

  “I’ll get a force together.”

  “Do so,” the Penitent said. “One of my people will accompany them.”

  “Cinder?” Maurisk said apprehensively. The old woman’s ability was anything but subtle, and keeping her involvement a secret always involved a regrettably large number of extra casualties.

  “No,” Ionkovo said, with a slight smile. “Not this time. Liar, would you please inform Twist that his services are required?”

  “Of course,” the bald man said, duc
king his head. The politician in Maurisk noted that there was a simmering resentment in the Liar’s gaze when he looked at Ionkovo. So there are rivalries among even the Penitent Damned? He filed the thought away for later perusal and kept his face blank.

  “This time,” Ionkovo said, stepping back into the darkness, “there are to be no mistakes.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  WINTER

  The river Piav was a large tributary of the Velt, running down from the Keth Mountains until it met up with the greater flow somewhere north of Desland. Rivers like it ran from east to west across the Velt Valley at regular intervals, carrying rain and snowmelt from the mountains down through the hills to nourish the lowlands and ultimately flow out to the sea. The Piav happened to flow within fifty miles of the Orlan Pass, the largest of the gaps in the mountain range and the only one capable of accommodating a large army. It was here, therefore, around the small town of Antova, that the Free Cities League had built its great fortress.

  Dreiroede of Hamvelt, probably the greatest siege engineer who had ever lived, had laid it out at the very height of his powers and influence. The town itself was pressed against the riverbank, and what had once been a fishing village was now dwarfed by the system of fortifications that surrounded it. Seen from a distant overlook, as Winter was seeing it now, it resembled a massive exercise in geometry, sketched onto the land by some idle deity. On the west side of the river, around the town, six points of a great star were traced by a ditch and a massive earthen rampart, pockmarked with embrasures for defending artillery. A seventh point, like a massive spike, stretched on the other side of the river, with additional protection provided by a swampy moat created with water diverted from the Piav. Between the points of the star were the outworks, ravelins and lunettes, from which the defenders could create a vicious cross fire and slaughter the crews of any cannon trying to breach the walls.

  It was Dreiroede himself, who had been as expert in attacking fortresses as he had been at building them, who had insisted that there was no such thing as an impenetrable fortification. Given sufficient numbers, artillery, and willpower, any fortress could be reduced; bastions could be toppled, outworks seized, and eventually a breaching battery established close enough to the wall to blast a hole in it and permit an infantry assault. The fortress builder’s art was therefore all down to buying time—angled walls of earth would deflect cannonballs rather than shatter beneath them, overlapping rings of defense would each cost time and lives to penetrate, and defending cannon could sweep the attackers back from the defenses until they were finally silenced. The strength of a fortress was measured in time, how many months the defenders could be expected to hold out without relief.

  Antova, his greatest work, was a year-strong fortress. Any attacker was supposed to have to batter the walls for at least that long before gaining entry, while deflecting the efforts of the garrison and surviving a cold and hungry winter. In the meantime, relief forces would be approaching, and the attacking army risked being caught between them and the fortress like iron between a hammer and the anvil.

  Janus was evidently not concerned. From where she stood, on a height in the mountain foothills, Winter could see blue-uniformed troops hard at work digging trenches. The Army of the East now numbered some thirty-five thousand. Di Pfalen’s routed army had nowhere near the numbers Dreiroede’s calculations required—even the strongest fortress required soldiers to man the walls—but even so the massive construction with its killing fields and siege guns seemed a daunting prospect. And to the north, approaching with the slow inexorability of a glacier, came Hamvelt’s greatest living soldier, Field Marshal Jindenau, with another thirty thousand soldiers.

  Janus spread a map of the Velt Valley on the grass and weighed it down with stones, explaining all of this in a slow, patient tone while he pointed out the geography with a stick. The colonels peered at the map and furrowed their foreheads, eager to impress with the depth of their understanding.

  Winter felt uncomfortable in their company. Some of them were Royals—Janus’ purge of the old, noble colonels meant that these were mostly younger men, War College graduates like Captain d’Ivoire, new to their posts and hungry for glory. The rest were volunteers, men who had either been elected to high rank by their troops or gained promotion on the spot in battle, who wore homemade uniforms and looked skeptical at the talk of ravelins and breaching batteries.

  But none of them murmured an objection, or even a question. Janus, thin-faced, gray eyes blazing, held them rapt. Looking at the faces around her, Winter found herself able to understand Jane’s qualms about Janus. After Diarach, Gaafen, and the latest Battle of Jirdos, their trust in the general was complete. They would storm the gates of hell against a legion of demons on his order, in full confidence that he would produce victory out of a hat like a street-corner conjuror.

  “That about sums up the situation,” Janus said, sitting back on his heels. The others, thirteen of them including Winter, sat or knelt in the damp grass around the map. “It will take another day to fully invest the fortress, but I don’t expect any interference from the garrison before our preparations are complete. It will take them some time to assemble an effective resistance.”

  “We should storm the walls tonight,” one of the volunteer officers said. “They’ll never expect it, and as you say, they’re still disorganized. Why give them a chance to catch their breath?”

  “An attractive thought, but it would be far too costly,” Janus said. “Di Pfalen’s army is shattered, but the walls are strong, and they have heavy siege guns we can’t match. We might be able to find a weak spot, but we’d lose half the army.”

  The rest of the officers hurriedly murmured agreement, throwing nasty looks at the man who’d spoken out, who hung his head. It reminded Winter of the prefects back at Mrs. Wilmore’s, competing to see who could most effectively kiss up to the mistresses. Janus looked around the circle, and when his gray eyes met hers his mouth twisted in a tiny, knowing smile, as though the two of them were sharing a joke.

  “No,” he went on. “We’ll invest the fortress, and dig trenches to keep the garrison from making trouble. We should be able to contain the Hamveltai and leave a substantial force free to maneuver.”

  More mutters of agreement, loudest of all from the man who’d spoken out the first time. Winter cleared her throat.

  “Maneuver where, sir?” she said. “Given the size of the fortress and the garrison, even dug in we’d need a sizable force here to keep them in check. That would make us substantially smaller than the field marshal’s army, and he’ll have the advantage that we’ll be tied to the siege. If he gets too close to the fortress, he could combine with the garrison and crush us.”

  “Di Pfalen outnumbered us,” one of the royal colonels said, with a touch of condescension in his voice. “And we’ve whipped him twice now. This Jindenau will fare no better.”

  Janus has whipped him, Winter thought. My soldiers and I have whipped him, marched through hell and mud to turn up on the enemy flank and beat three battalions to give the cavalry a shot at his rear. Where were you? Up on the hills, watching the artillery do the work?

  It was unfair, she realized. Men had fought all along the line, though casualties had admittedly been light among the troops nearest the Girls’ Own, where the Hamveltai line had given way. On the other side, where di Pfalen had led his initial attack, only desperate fighting had kept him from pushing the defenders off their hilltops, and those troops had retreated in good order when the rest of the line collapsed. It was largely thanks to the rearguard action of these disciplined Hamveltai regulars that di Pfalen had an army left at all.

  But it hurt Winter to watch the way the men all around the circle nodded, with solemn pomposity. Another Royal, a big man with heavy sideburns and a neat mustache, said, “Don’t worry. The general will find a way.”

  None of them were in Khandar, Winter realized. Fitz Warus,
now commanding the Colonials, was conspicuous by his absence; she guessed he was down organizing the construction of the trenches. Give-Em-Hell was off with his heavy cavalry, who’d taken serious losses in their hell-for-leather ride. The Preacher and Colonel d’Ivoire were back in Vordan.

  None of these men had seen Janus when his back was truly to a wall, as Winter had, the night of Adrecht’s mutiny and then again in the Desoltai temple. They thought that there would always be another scheme, another gambit, that his calm facade came from deep-down certainty that he would come out on top. Winter knew different. She’d seen Janus run out of tricks, trapped under a statue and facing certain death at the hands of the Penitent Damned Jen Alhundt. His calm had never wavered. When the day comes that he throws the dice once too often, you won’t see it on his face.

  “Thank you, Colonel, for your confidence,” Janus said. “For the moment, shovel-work is what is required. Colonel Warus is working to distribute the necessary orders. I need you to impress upon your men that this is just as important to our final victory as courage on the battlefield.”

  “Yes, sir!” the big colonel said, followed by the others in ragged chorus. They saluted, and Winter joined in.

  “Very good,” Janus said. “See to your men. Colonel Ihernglass, if you would remain a moment?”

  “Sir?” Winter said, frowning.

  Janus smiled at her again, but said nothing while the others walked away, down the slope of the hill to where their aides waited with the horses. His eyes never left hers, and she wondered if her dark thoughts had been visible in her expression. Janus sometimes seemed as though he could read minds, although she was reasonably sure this was only his remarkable insight and not an actual supernatural ability. Infernivore never so much as twitched in his presence.