The Guns of Empire

by Django Wexler

  “Excuse me?” Marcus said.

  “The queen,” Andy said. “I think she likes you.”

  “I would hope,” Marcus said, “that I have proven worthy of her trust.”

  Andy gave him an exasperated look. “I mean I think she likes you. You know. How a girl likes a boy?” She pursed her lips speculatively. “You do know about that, right? See, when a girl and a boy like each other, or maybe have just had too much to drink, they—”

  “Andy,” Marcus growled.

  “Sorry. It’s just that it’s been, what, six months we’ve known each other? I don’t think I’ve seen you so much as look at a girl. I didn’t think the army made you take a vow of chastity. I know Winter had Mad Jane, and Fitz Warus has his young man. And there’s enough whores following the train to fill out another regiment.”

  Fitz— Marcus shook his head. Not my business. “I don’t . . . I mean . . .”

  “It’s all right if you don’t want to talk about it,” Andy said. “I was just curious.”

  “There was a girl.” Marcus let out a long breath. “In Khandar.”

  “Ah.” Andy gave a knowing smile. “Had to break her heart, did you?”

  “She tried to kill me,” Marcus said flatly. “I helped kill her, instead.”

  “Oh.” Andy looked at her feet. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.” Marcus looked down at her and narrowed his eyes. “But you can’t seriously be suggesting that the Queen of Vordan is . . . interested in me. It’s absurd.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s the queen! And I’m—” He gestured at himself.

  “Column-general of the Grand Army? Right hand of the First Consul?”

  “A commoner,” Marcus said. “Not even nobility, much less royalty.”

  “I don’t know much about that,” Andy said. “But I’ve seen enough girls with the boy they fancy to know the signs.”

  “I think you’re mistaken.”

  “All right, all right. Just thought I’d mention it.”

  “You’d better not mention it to anyone else,” Marcus said. “I don’t want any rumors getting started.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WINTER

  The sergeant was a big woman, with blond hair tied back in a bun and a thick scattering of freckles across her broad face. She came forward at a run, boots churning the mud, raising her long stick in two hands over her head. Stupid. She had the advantage of reach, but that attack wasted it, her intended strike so obvious that Winter had a dozen options to avoid it. She chose the most straightforward: a step forward, putting her shoulder under the woman’s hands, so the end of her weapon passed harmlessly overhead. At the same time, Winter brought her own staff forward in a vicious thrust to the stomach. The air went out of the sergeant with a woof, and she doubled over, staff tumbling from her hands.

  Winter stepped out of the way as the woman collapsed to the ground, curled up around her pain. The watching crowd waited in silence.

  “If I had an edge on this,” she said, raising her voice, “I’d be brushing her guts off my shoes right now. Unless I did her the kindness of slitting her throat, she’d live until nightfall at least, lying in a pool of her own insides. You all understand what that means?”

  The troops around her, a company of the Girls’ Own and several companies from de Koste’s Third Regiment, gave a cautious murmur. Winter turned to Bobby and held out her hand, and Bobby passed her a musket, bayonet already locked. The triangular steel blade gleamed as she held it over her head.

  “I said, do you understand?”

  This time the response was a definite “Yes, sir!”

  “Good.” Winter lowered the weapon. “Split into two teams. Attack and defense. And no playing around, you understand? I’m telling the cooks that anyone who comes back without at least one decent bruise doesn’t get dinner.”

  They gave the beginning of a groan, quickly cut off by a glance from Winter. She waited until the lieutenants started to get things organized, setting the companies up as attackers and defenders, and then turned back to the sergeant, who’d rolled over, breathing hard. Winter bent down and extended a hand to help her up.

  “Thank you for your assistance,” she said.

  The big woman grimaced as she got to her feet. “My pleasure, sir.”

  “Give de Koste’s rankers as good as you got,” Winter said. “And don’t let them go easy on the women. Got it?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  The sergeant staggered off to join her company. Winter took a canteen from her belt and drank deep, soothing her ragged throat. She’d been doing too much shouting of late.

  “That’s the last for today?” she said to Bobby.

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby said. “But Abby said she wanted a word.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Over by the musket drills.”

  The Second Division camp was a hive of activity. Winter had commandeered a stretch of open field adjacent to the tents for drill, and every man and woman of her four regiments who didn’t have another duty was out there. Companies practiced formation marching, bayonet charges, and the manual of arms, even forming company squares, at Winter’s insistence, in spite of the fact that it wasn’t in the tactics manual. Larger groups staged exercises like the one she’d just left, attack and defense, battering at one another with staves and clubs. Hanna Courvier, the senior cutter, had set up an aid station that was already receiving a steady trickle of patients.

  It was midafternoon. The long column of the Grand Army was still filing into its camp, regiment by regiment and division by division. The pace was leisurely, by the standards of the Velt campaign—ten miles a day, to allow the lumbering wagon train to keep up over the rutted Murnskai roads. Winter had driven her troops ahead of the rest, arriving early so as to have much of the day free for drills.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to let the regiments practice as units?” Bobby said, as they circled another melee exercise that had devolved into a massive scrum. Sergeants shouted and hauled struggling men and women away, covered in mud and torn grass.

  “We’ll get to that,” Winter said. “They all saw what happened to Ibsly, and that should provide plenty of motivation to get their formation changes done faster. But I want the rest of the soldiers to get used to mixing with the Girls’ Own.” Once she’d used games of handball for that same purpose, but she didn’t think they could afford such a leisurely approach now, with the campaign already begun. Once they reached Vantzolk, any moment could bring an encounter with the enemy.

  Abby was waiting near the space reserved for musket drill. Long lines of blue-uniformed soldiers went through the motions of loading and firing, over and over, while officers barked for more speed and berated anyone who fumbled. Abby herself looked like she’d been through half a war already, her uniform muddy and soaked with sweat. She saluted Winter, who gave her a stiff nod.

  “Sir!”

  “Bobby said you wanted to talk?” Winter said.

  Abby nodded and stepped away from the nearest soldiers. “You haven’t been having dinner with the rankers lately,” she said, her voice low.

  “I’m a bit busy,” Winter said, trying to keep any defensiveness out of her tone.

  “I understand, sir. I just thought you might appreciate being kept abreast of how they’re feeling.”

  “Let me guess,” Winter said. “They’re not happy.”

  “No, sir. The Girls’ Own especially.”

  “I didn’t think they’d balk at a little bit of drill,” Winter said.

  “A little bit is one thing,” Abby said. “I’ve had to borrow carts from the train to carry all the rankers who can’t walk in the morning. But it’s not just that.”

  “No?”

  “They feel like they did all they could at Gilphaite,” Abby said. �
�We lost a lot of good women there. And now they think you’re punishing them.”

  “You know I can’t give the Girls’ Own special preference,” Winter said. “And it’s not meant to be punishment. Tell them the next time Janus asks this division to do something, I expect them to be able to do it.”

  “If we lightened the schedule just a bit—”

  “No. We have seven more days until Vantzolk, and I intend to use them.”

  Abby pursed her lips and looked like she wanted to object, but all she said was “Yes, sir.” She turned on her heel and walked away.

  “Winter . . .” Bobby said.

  “What?” Winter turned. “We’ve been over this. Better sweat and bruises now than blood later.”

  “I know,” Bobby said. “It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “Never mind.” The girl shook her head. Winter sighed.

  They don’t understand. The look on Janus’ face as she’d made her report. The hint—barely visible—of disappointment in his eyes. They don’t know what it’s like to be responsible for all of this. The dark abyss loomed at the bottom of her mind, and she felt like she was scrabbling on the edge by her fingernails.

  With everyone out in the drill fields, the camp itself was nearly deserted, aside from the cooks and the sentries. There was none of the usual laughter and conversation, the dice games and surreptitious bottles of liquor. Good. Winter stalked through the darkened rows of tents to her own. Bobby paused as she lifted the tent flap.

  “Is there anything else you need, sir?” she said.

  “No,” Winter said shortly. “Thank you.”

  “If you want to . . .” Bobby colored slightly. “Talk, you know? You seem . . .”

  “Thank you, Captain. Go and keep Captain Marsh company.”

  Bobby winced. She saluted and turned stiffly away.

  That was unfair. Bobby and Captain Marsh seemed well suited to each other, and by rights Winter ought to have been happy for them. Somehow, though, seeing them together seemed like a twist of the knife. God, what is wrong with me? It all came back to Jane, fucking Jane, lying in wait in her thoughts like a jungle panther, ready to pounce whenever she let her guard down. Let Bobby fuck her handsome captain. What difference does it make to me?

  God damn it. Winter kicked off her boots and sat in front of her writing desk. A stack of pages was already laid out, waiting for attention, but she couldn’t read them through a sudden haze of tears. No, no, no. I’ve cried enough over this. By all the fucking saints, we’re done. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  Most of the stack were casualty reports. Cyte had offered to take care of them, but Winter couldn’t bring herself to accept help, not for this. It felt like a betrayal. The lists, endless rows of neat handwriting, carried a horrible, clinical precision.

  Merriwan, Joanna. Unfit for further duty.

  Moore, Annette. Returned to duty.

  Morse, Sasha. Not expected to recover.

  Murphy, Andria. Not expected to recover.

  Murphy, Genevieve. Missing. (4/19)

  Murzow, Bridgette. Missing. (4/19)

  Nailer, Susan. Unfit for further duty.

  So much was hiding behind those words. Beneath Unfit for further duty lay the horrible song of the bone saw and the piles of pale arms and legs outside the cutters’ tents. Ruined men and women, hauled to Vordan by the wagonload, chewed up and spat out by the war. Not expected to recover meant the endless lines of blood- and shit-stained pallets in the infirmary, those who’d had their guts opened or their skulls cracked and could do little more than wait for the wound to fester.

  Missing was worst of all. Some of these were surely lying dead on the field, too mangled to be recognized or tucked away somewhere unnoticed. Others, no doubt, had deserted. But some fraction had been taken by the Borelgai during the retreat, either injured or simply exhausted and overrun.

  Winter had read such reports before, of course. Not only were these longer, but there were more of those awful Missing entries, with all the horror of ambiguity. In the Velt campaign, the Girls’ Own had never finished a battle with the enemy in control of the field. As far as Winter knew, the only soldiers from her regiment who had ever been taken prisoner had been a few grabbed by League patrols when they’d straggled on the long, brutal march from Desland to Jirdos. They’d all been returned at the end of the campaign, without much to complain of besides boredom. This time, as much as Colonel Blackstream was convinced the Borelgai were honorable soldiers, Winter feared the worst.

  At some point a ranker had delivered dinner, army soup and hardtack, with a little bit of fatty pork floating in the bowl to mark it as an officer’s portion. Winter set it on her table and ate mechanically, tasting nothing. She turned the pages, read the names, and signed at the bottom, where neat figures tabulated the dead, wounded, and missing to give each unit’s current strength.

  Ibsly’s division had suffered worse, she knew, both in its initial assault and later, when it had crumbled in the face of the Borelgai charge. The Girls’ Own had the worst losses from her regiments, while the other three had gotten off relatively lightly.

  Should I have done it differently? Sent Sevran and the others in at the beginning, with Ibsly, when they might have made a difference? Seen the guns and not attacked at all? That way, she knew, lay madness, but she couldn’t help the thoughts.

  She worked until her eyelids drooped, keeping on until the lists of names were just a blur through a fog of fatigue. Missing, missing, missing, dead, dead, dead. Only then did she finally admit defeat, putting aside her pen and stumbling fully clothed to her bedroll. In the few moments between when her head hit the pillow and when exhaustion claimed her, she prayed she was tired enough not to dream.

  —

  Her prayers went unanswered, as they did every night.

  Bad dreams had haunted Winter nearly her entire life. The earliest had always been dreams of fire, spreading unstoppable flames that surrounded her, cutting off every exit, closing in from every side. There were shapes in the flames, faces she could almost remember. Screams. When she’d first come to Mrs. Wilmore’s Prison, she’d woken with violent shakes every night, or so the mistresses told her later.

  After she’d escaped the Prison, she’d dreamed of Jane and the night before she’d left. The farmer Ganhide coming to Jane’s room to extract his due as her new husband. The knife gleaming bright in Winter’s hand. Take the knife, Jane said, and press it in, upward, as hard as you can. She’d failed, and run away, as far away as it was possible to go. But the dreams had followed her.

  Then the Redeemers had risen in Khandar. Once all that was over, she’d had a new set of dreams. Green eyes glowing in the darkness of a temple hidden under the desert sand, the hiss of smoke, and the groping hands of dead men. Dreams where the thing inside her, the demon Infernivore, broke free and devoured everything around it.

  Now she expected to dream of the battle, the lists of names, horrible visions of what might happen to those who’d been captured. Or even of Jane, the ghost who would not let her be. Can you be haunted by someone who isn’t dead? And it was Jane she saw, but never the end, her drunken rages, the confrontation in Janus’ office, Jane’s finger pulling the trigger, the hammer falling. Instead, her dreams were—

  —happy. She dreamed of the first time they’d kissed, in a secret hollow in a hedge, covered in twigs and sap. The way the walls of the Prison seemed to fall away when they were together, no matter what tasks the mistresses assigned. Their first clumsy experiments, lips and fingers and giggles in the warm, close darkness, breath coming fast and heart slamming against her ribs so hard it was almost painful. Feeling like explorers in a strange, new, breathtaking country.

  When she awoke, there was always a tiny moment before she remembered. That was worse than any nightmare.

 
—

  Six days out from Vantzolk. Winter had her battalions practice deploying from column to line, then ploying back again, always demanding more speed. When she’d first started the exercises, the soldiers had accepted them easily enough, having seen the fate of Ibsly’s division. Now, though, they were muttering openly, and there were sour faces wherever Winter looked. Abby punctiliously obeyed every order but said nothing beyond “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!” Bobby hovered at Winter’s side like a nervous child trying to calm feuding parents.

  Cyte spent much of the day with the supply train and was missing from the command tent when Winter went in search of the latest batch of reports. Frustrated, Winter retired to her tent and went over her maps instead, plotting and replotting the march to Vantzolk and then the endless miles to Elysium. No matter how hard she stared, the Pilgrim’s Road didn’t get any shorter, nor the mountains and forests of the Murnskai backcountry less forbidding.

  There was a scratch at the tent flap. Winter looked up from the map, irritated. “What?”

  “It’s Cyte,” Cyte said. “Can I come in?”

  More reports. Winter gave an exaggerated sigh she knew was a lie. Another excuse to work until I fall over. Maybe tonight . . .

  “Come in.” Winter rolled up the map and pushed it aside. “What have you got for me?”

  Cyte slipped through the flap. Uncharacteristically, she was without a bundle of paper under her arm. Instead, she held a smoky yellow bottle, sealed at the top with wax. Winter frowned.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Cyte coughed. “Not . . . as such. I found this.” She held up the bottle. “In the train. It’s some local Murnskai thing, apparently. You can buy a bottle in the villages for a few pennies. I thought we might share it.”

  “Share it? Now?” Winter peered at Cyte, who flushed slightly. “You’re not serious, are you?”