The Sin in the Steel

by Ryan Van Loan

* * *

  Screams rent the air, as heated as the gunfire that cut them short. As heated as the sun that beat down upon them. It’d been dawn when they first moved into the gap, and they’d barely had a moment’s rest in its shade before they’d been driven back on all sides. Seetel had ordered him to press the attack and Eld had obeyed, for all the good it’d done. Now the Company was strung out well into the far side of the gap, where hard ground gave way to soft sand. Boulders littered the sides of the hill to their left, concealing a platoon or more of Burnt soldiers who managed to keep up a steady fusillade despite their ancient matchlock muskets.

  A woman stepped up beside his aide and the lad screamed when she caught the ball meant for him, brains and blond hair splattering across his cheeks. Eld’s stomach tightened and a bitter taste filled his mouth before a high-pitched scream cut his reaction short: the Burnt were charging. His training took over and he began barking orders.

  “Clean yourself up later, Bahrais!” he said, his words pulling the lad back to himself. “Get to First Platoon’s sergeant and tell him to dig in, with swords if he has to. I’m sending reinforcements, but they must hold. Understand?” Bahrais’s dark eyes were unfocused and Eld had to restrain himself from punching the youngster. He was just a year or two younger than Eld himself—but he doesn’t have your training, Eld thought. A fat lot of good it’s doing you, the thought chased after, but he stepped on it. Hard.

  “Soldier! Get to the First Platoon. They are to dig in!” His shout brought the boy’s eyes into focus. Bahrais saluted with a fist to his chest and took off, boots churning up sand in his wake.

  “You!” Eld’s voice stopped the woman rushing past him. Seetel had told him the mark of a good officer was a stout pair of lungs and an even voice and, at least, in that he hadn’t lied. The soldier somehow managed a salute while continuing to reload her musket. The fire to their front, which pinned them down, slackened as Burnt held their fire, probably waiting for their comrades to flank them from the hill.

  “Get back to Tensil’s weapons squad and tell her I want all the grenadoes she has sent up to First on the left flank. On the double now!” His shout chased after her—unlike Bahrais, she’d taken off as soon as she understood his intent. Marking her out for promotion if she survived the day, Eld bellowed for the platoons to hold, then rushed after his aide.

  “To me, condottieri!” Eld forced a smile into his voice that felt as false as his courage. All he felt was numb, cold, but it was another’s stiffness—he had a job to do. “Their muskets are as like to blow up in their faces as ours and we’ve got Servenzan steel to greet them with. With a kiss, aye? You’ve kissed your lover before today? If not, you’ve left it late, condottieri, left it damned late.”

  A few laughs greeted his words, but the First’s line straightened among the boulders and scraps of sand dunes that offered what little protection there was in the Burning Lands, stiffened by their commander’s words. Eld felt a flash of pride as they brought their muskets up to level as one cohesive machine. A machine of death that he meant to unleash on the veiled bastards rushing toward them. It’d been mere moments since the scream, but it’d been enough. The sergeant’s voice called out the order and the line erupted in flame and smoke, obliterating the hillside. The high-pitched yell faltered but didn’t stop, and Eld bit back a curse.

  “Sin Eater!” The mage appeared at his side as if by magic, which perhaps it was. “Reinforcements, I need them now.” The woman’s dark features tightened—mages hated being ordered. “If you please,” he added. “We’ve a regiment in front of us, if not several. Tell Commander Seetel I need the reserves brought up if I’m to hold the gap.”

  The woman’s mouth twitched. As she began to nod, a loud rush of thunder caused them both to turn. Toward the opposite side of the line, to the right, where the hills rose higher, where the rest of the regiment was supposed to be holding the Burnt’s attention. Whatever was there, it wasn’t the regiment, because scores of cavalry were cascading over the ridge, pointed right toward his weakened flank. Grenadoes began to explode among the Burnt charging from the left—the countermeasures he’d ordered. The orders that now ensured their opposite flank would have no protection from the charging cavalcade.

  For a breath he could do nothing. Then his mouth moved as if of its own accord. “Reinforcements, Sin Eater! Now! Tell Seetel to send every man and woman jack of them he has left in the camps.” Even as he spoke, Eld realized any reinforcements would arrive far too late to do more than stop the looting of their corpses. “Belay that! Call in cannon fire on the hill.”

  The mage’s face contorted, her cheeks hung as if she’d lost all control of herself. Her mouth moved and a voice that sounded deeper than he remembered answered him. “Not yet, Leftenant. Soon, but not yet.”

  “You don’t give the orders,” he snapped. Or tried to. Her refusal stole the breath from his lungs. He’d faced death once or twice in the past few months, but always with the knowledge that it’d be an unlucky chance that took him. Unless the Sin Eater used her magic to relay his orders, to call in literal divine intervention, the cavalry would cut through his thin ranks and roll up his line, acting the hammer to the militia’s anvil. It would all be over in a few brief, bloody moments. “I do,” he reminded her. It came out as a whisper.

  “And I use my magic to speak with my sister who is with the artillery,” the mage said in her too-deep voice. “Trust me.”

  Her words sent a shiver down his sweat-soaked spine. One of his profesori at the Academy had told him that in war, trust was the sound of death. Now he was staring it down. They locked eyes, her amber orbs steady and untroubled, and he almost believed her. Almost. Because to wait made no sense. He cleared his parched throat.

  “Just do it,” he grated. “Or we’ll all die where we stand.”

  The Sin Eater laughed, but if she replied, Eld didn’t hear her. Breaking into a run, he began bellowing for the Second and Third Platoons to form up. Second was a shell of its former self, having caught the brunt of the fighting throughout the morning, and Third was depleted from sending squads to reinforce the left flank. Despite all that, both platoons began to move into a cohesive line. Pride rose in his chest at the sight. We’re doing it.

  The cavalry struck.

  The Burnt made for sorry infantry with their outdated weapons and ill discipline, but their cavalry was another matter. The only way to survive the harsh dunes was to travel from watering hole to watering hole and they were born to the saddle. Eld watched in horror as the thinly held line caved in, rebounded against the horse flung against them, and began to crack in places, a small hole here, a larger there. Then the heavy cavalry caught up, double-humped camels bearing two riders with matchlocks or long spear-scythes that chewed through armor and limb like a cleaver through stale bread. The cracks became gaps, became rents, and even as he shouted encouragement, Eld’s Company broke, becoming individual men and women fighting for their lives. The line shattered like miscast iron against the forge.

  “Now!” the Sin Eater shouted in his ear. He glanced down and saw her beaming up at him, dark braided locks framing her sunburned face. “The time is now, Leftenant.” Her voice changed back to the one he remembered as she began speaking with her sister, who was almost a third of a league away at the fortifications they’d left at grey dawn. Just as the mage gave Eld a wink, her head exploded, wet hair and bone slapping him in the face. Sputtering, he swiped at his eyes with both hands. When his vision cleared, he saw bits of bone and brain and strands of dark hair covering his blood-soaked hands. The world sucked in, bending back on itself until all that existed were his hands and the low scream building in the back of his throat.

  Clean yourself up later.

  The words he’d shouted at Bahrais were like ice water splashed across his face. The world returned in a rush of acrid powder and bright steel and the sounds of people killing and being killed. A camel careened toward him, the rear hump empty, the front occupied by a rider who balanc
ed a spear in one hand and the reins in the other, robes flying behind her like a banner. Eld saw his death approaching and couldn’t muster up the energy to care. All around him lay blood-drenched bodies in tattered uniforms of the Servenzan army.… What was one more? The rider roared and drew back her arm and Eld waited for the impact.

  In the end his apathy saved him. The rider aimed for where she thought he would dodge, and he heard the whine as the spear whipped just over his head. Then the stirrup crashed into his shoulder, knocking him off his feet, and somehow, in midair, Eld grabbed the leather harness and felt himself lifted clear as the camel leapt a pile of corpses. The rider screeched as the sudden imbalance threw her off her mount. The camel really took off, running away from the smells and sounds of death, with Eld grimly hanging on.

  The ground began to firm up as soon as they left the thick of the fighting, tearing at Eld’s legs. He tried to let go, but his glove was caught in the harness straps. The scent of the hulking animal was pungent, like a hundred sweaty men in desperate need of a bath, a clawing, choking, retching odor. Fighting the blind panic that hadn’t fully left him and was threatening to swamp him, he grasped blindly at his belt with his free hand, seeking his knife. Instead he felt the smooth handle of his pistole. Eld hesitated for a second, his lungs screaming for air, until a stunted tree tore a hole in his pant leg … and his skin. The pain decided for him and he drew and aimed in one motion, letting himself feel the movement of the lumbering beast.

  Eld squeezed the trigger.

  The animal went down in a heap, its momentum flipping it half onto its side and sending Eld free with a searing snap of harness that wrenched his arm painfully in the wrong direction. He thought he heard something break—it might have been his skull—as he careened end over end, until a small boulder brought him up short with a punch to his kidneys that drove the remaining breath from his lungs. Spots flecked his vision, dark fireflies against the bright cloud of smoke and dust that had risen around the battlefield. He could hear his breath whining in the back of his throat.

  Not whining.

  Shells.

  Gods, no, he thought. The Servenzan lines he’d sought to maintain had folded in on themselves, were now intertwined in with the Burnt, both sides holding their partners tightly in this dance of death. The mage had called the tune. Only that wasn’t quite true, was it? He had told her to play.

  “But not this,” he whispered through parched lips. His words were lost in the roar of explosions as a score of canisters burst overhead, turning the sands black with powder that was quickly replaced by blood. Solid shot fell among the swirling maelstrom, sending crimson geysers fountaining up dozens of paces into the sky, mixing human and beast and sand together until they blended into a uniform color that tore at his eyes.

  The image of a mad ballroom in the desert, where swords and spears and muskets replaced corsages and drinks and light touches of the arm, with an orchestra of cannon instead of strings, filled Eld’s mind. He began to wheeze, then chuckle, and finally laugh as he watched every man and woman he’d been entrusted with die before his eyes. By his orders. Orders the mage had twisted, for what purpose his broken mind couldn’t begin to grasp. He laughed until he cried, tears filling his eyes so that the scene was blissfully blurred before him, sobs tearing at his raw throat.

  Sometime later he became aware of a gurgling sound. It was his breathing, loud in his gunfire-deafened ears. Loud because the shelling had finally stopped. Blinking back tears, Eld pushed himself to his feet, using the boulder at his back for support. He looked around, from the sandy hills to the left of the gap to the taller foothills on the right. Nothing moved, nothing stood. Save him.

  I’m the only one left.

  * * *

  Eld came back to himself, the sound of the water roaring through the Cannon Ship sending gooseflesh across his arms, echoing the artillery he’d heard that day, years before. Those cannons had broken both armies. The cannons had broken Eld as well. The weeks that followed had been a blur until he found himself discharged to Servenza, listless and searching for a purpose. At first he thought revenge would do. Seetel and the mage—one was dead … but one was very much alive and seemingly guilt-free.

  But Eld had found revenge to be a shallow thing. He was on the brink of giving in to the inevitable and joining his fallen comrades in oblivion, until he found Buc. She’d been the gleam of light in the blackness surrounding him, promising something he’d never thought to find again: hope. He’d clung to that light ever since.

  “Sirrah!” At the sound of the voice from behind, Eld turned to see a sailor running toward him in the lamplight, no easy feat on a ship cutting through the night. The short man touched a knuckle to his bandanna-covered forehead when he reached him. “Sirrah, there’s something the matter with your woman.”

  “She’s not my woman,” Eld said, frowning past him toward the cabins. “I’m her man.”

  “Aye, well, it’s just that—”

  “Say! Is that smoke I smell?” Eld asked. Whatever the sailor answered, Eld didn’t hear, because he was already running toward the grey plume he could see coming from belowdecks. Buc.

  8

  Port au’ Sheen was a wooden pile of shit running itself down into the sea. Farther up, toward the top of the deforested hill, wood gave way to ancient stone buildings built in layers that rose to a point. Ramshackle hovels and shacks surrounded them and were piled beside one another down the hill and right up to the docks we stood on. It was hard to tell if the sea had spat out the rubble or if the rubble was slowly sliding into its depths. People strutted about, looking like fleas waiting for the ocean to wash them off their host.

  I took it all in a glance, hurrying down the gangplank, not bothering to acknowledge the captain’s cries of farewell. Or maybe they were curses. I’d been seasick the whole voyage, most of which had passed in a hallucinatory blur. From what I gathered, I hadn’t been my usual, pleasant self. As soon as my boot heels touched the dock, I felt my stomach settle, and took in a deep, shuddering breath. Land. The docks shifted beneath my feet, but after days on that murder ship, going faster than the wind, I barely noticed. My head felt hollow, but the dull pounding had ceased, so there was that.

  Eld dropped his pack beside me and squinted up the hill. “How you feeling?” he asked, shooting me a look.

  Hard, Buc, hard. Eld pulled me off the streets and I’d tried to even the scales since, but the journey from Servenza hadn’t been my finest hour. No one gets to see me weak. Not even Eld. I bit my tongue until it bled, and forced a smile. “I feel like ten thousand lire, fresh minted.” I plucked at my new dress. It was modeled after the riding habit I usually wore, but the Company didn’t know how to do things on the cheap, so the soft burgundy was cut through with thread o’ gold that would shine in the sunlight. And make me a mark for the cutpurses. I shouldn’t have been surprised—there is no fool like a rich one.

  Still, they’d given me the hidden pockets I’d asked for, for my blades. A dress without pockets is like a gondola without an oar: pretty but useless. I ran my hands down my sides, feeling the stilettos I’d slipped into the usual places, plus a couple in unusual ones, and twisted my left wrist to ensure that the flat piece of double-pointed steel was where it belonged.

  How they’d managed to have new clothes made for us in the few hours between our “business meeting” with Salina and our arrival at the Cannon Ship was almost magical in its own right, even if the clothes were really too rich for my taste. Eld handed me my dark leather purse and I glanced inside to make sure he’d packed it with my slingshot and a dozen lead balls plus one or two special ones of my own making. I slid the strap over my head and adjusted it so it hung by my side as I liked. Other women might have a score of items in their bags, but I didn’t want to rummage through a lot of things to try to find what I needed in the moment, so slingshot and ammunition was it.

  At close quarters a slingshot is nearly as powerful as a gun and infinitely faster to reload.
Slingshots don’t misfire, guns frequently do, and what the weapon lost in intimidation, it more than made up for in surprise. I once sent an entire street gang running after loosing half a dozen balls down a tight alleyway before they could do more than fire an old matchlock into the air. Surprise will do that for you.

  “I hadn’t thought to see pyramids here,” Eld said.

  “Pyramids?” I shifted my glance up from the purse to the stone buildings and swore. “So that’s what a pyramid looks like. I’ve read of them of course, but I thought they’d be more … pointy.”

  “There are pyramids in the Burning Lands that are a hundred paces tall … and pointy,” Eld said.

  “What do you know of the Burning Lands?” I asked.

  Eld shrugged, his face already bright in the sun or maybe burnt from the journey. “The captain said these were built to withstand the hurricanes that broke the coast up centuries ago. Relics of another age, but impressive in their own way.”

  “If you say so,” I said. I glanced back at the ship and my stomach flipped. “About time we were getting on, don’t you think?”

  “Aye.” Eld glanced at a man strolling past with two broad cutlasses thrust through a thick red sash that rode low beneath his broad, bare belly, which was darkened by the sun and ink from tattoos. The man caught Eld’s eye and grabbed at his crotch. Eld looked away, blushing.

  “Hoy, fatty!” I called. “I know he’s ugly, but he’s mine. Go find your own piece of meat.” The man glared at me, then bellowed with laughter and kept sauntering down the docks, exchanging greetings with a few others who were as covered in tattoos as he was.

  “Look at you, making friends,” I said.

  “Friends?” Eld sputtered. “This isn’t Servenza, Buc. The only law here is that of the blade and pistole. Speak like you have been and you might find someone thinks it’s worth drawing steel over.”

  “A good fight might be just what I need to clear my head,” I said. He snorted. “I’ll try to moderate my tongue, but you know how I am.” I shrugged. “There wasn’t much in the way of law on the streets, Eld. It’s you I’m worried about.”