The next morning a messenger emerged from the postern gate under a white flag of truce. It wasn’t either of the Select, and he asked to speak to General Hake, not me.
Hake went forward with a small bodyguard. If snipers on the wall or the buildings behind tried to pick him off, the soldiers would try to shield his body with their own. I went along to sniff for treachery. I could feel none in the messenger, or on the walls immediately behind. If the defenders were setting a trap, they had a good enough idea of my capabilities to hide it from me.
“Am I addressing the commander of the Rockwall forces?” the man asked politely. He was of medium height and build, handsome, and unarmed.
Hake nodded. “I’m General Hake, commanding the First Expeditionary Brigade of the Army of Rockwall.”
The messenger bowed slightly. “I am Jyrus Brend, personal secretary to Prince Jeral. The prince has considered your invitation to talk.” His eyes darted briefly to me.
“I’m pleased to hear that, Master Brend. Rockwall would be delighted to extend the hand of friendship and allegiance to Steel City.”
Brend gave a little smile. “Friendship and allegiance are fine things, General. But the sad fact is, we’ve had quite enough friendship and allegiance from the Monolith. As I’m sure you’ll understand. Prince Jeral therefore has another suggestion, which is that we settle for the mutual benefits of neutral commerce.”
Hake frowned. “Neutral commerce is a fine thing too, but it might be a little difficult for your prince to maintain neutrality with Monolith troops in his city.”
“Just so, General. And so my prince has asked his Monolith guests to depart, with the understanding merely that you will not harass or impede their passage. As it might seem inhospitable of him to ask them to leave if doing so were to put them in danger.”
“I see. And after they left, unimpeded…?”
“After that we would be able to freely pursue that mutually beneficial commerce that neutrality permits. With your troops lodged comfortably outside our walls.”
Hake’s frown had never quite vanished, but he nodded. “I’ll take some time to discuss your offer with my staff, Master Brend. I appreciate the offer, but as you can imagine, I do have to consider what’s best for my four thousand troops. Camped outside your walls.”
Brend’s smile didn’t falter. “Of course.”
“Selles,” Hake said, “Have our guest escorted to the officers’ mess and see to some refreshments for him. Then get the battalion commanders to my tent. Minos, you’re with me.”
“It’s not all I could have hoped for,” Hake said five minutes later when we were assembled, “but it’s not bad.”
His eyes fixed on me.
“I don’t think he was lying,” I said carefully. “But that one’s slippery. I could barely get a sense of his mind. He doesn’t give much away.”
Hake snorted. “I could have told you that without the Darkness.” He surveyed the other men in the tent. “Gentlemen, how do you suggest we play this?”
“I’m with you, sir,” Colonel Raji said. “It’s better than I’d expected. Assuming he’s telling the truth.”
“But what do we do with it?” Hake asked. “I’m happy enough not to have to lay siege to the place, but I don’t know that I trust them as a point of supply.”
Raji shook his head emphatically. “Five minutes after we’ve marched up into those mountains, the Monolith will be back to plug us in like a cork in a bottle. You look up the word ‘screwed’ in the dictionary and they’ll have a picture of us.”
“You’re saying Jeral will turn on us? Didn’t our Select say this Brend fellow wasn’t lying?” Thonn demanded.
I started to open my mouth to explain that wasn’t exactly what I’d said, but Raji shot back, “It doesn’t matter if he turns on us. He’s got a couple hundred cavalrymen and a half-competent militia. That’s plenty to hold the city, but he’s not going to put them in the field. If the Monolith comes back with a brigade, why would he even think of opposing them?”
“So you’re saying we can’t march on the Monolith,” Hake said.
“I’m saying we can’t on these terms. And to be honest, I wouldn’t trust any better terms Jeral offered us voluntarily. If we want to head into that pass, we need to take and garrison the city. Your Select’s gotten in once. You say he drove the Monolith out of Riverside single-handed. So I say we tell this Brend cockroach that his little prince can surrender the city, or we’ll take it. But either way, we’re in charge.”
“Minos?”
“General, I scared one Monolith battalion into giving up a ruined town with no defenses. I scratched some graffiti into a wall and scared Prince Jeral enough to consider talking instead of fighting. But for him to give up his crown while he’s sitting in a fortified city with five thousand troops? I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen easily. I can get back inside. I can probably get a door open and let the army in. But a lot of people are going to die.”
8. And Killing Them
Two dozen Monolith soldiers, led by two angry Select, trotted out through Steel City’s postern on rangy little horses barely larger than ponies. The Select, in particular, looked ridiculous. We let them go, as we’d agreed. They headed north.
“Not into the mountains,” Captain Almet observed.
Most of the command staff was assembled to watch the enemy retreat. A captain whose name I didn’t know said, “They’ll be heading up to Capitol or Queensboro. Probably looking to join up to a bigger force so they can come back and stomp us.”
And that was the problem. Our brigade was too big to be stealthy, too big to live off the land. But too small to face the kind of armies the Monolith could field as we got closer to its territory.
General Hake had written off the idea of striking into the Monolith as lunacy. We would feint north ourselves, giving the impression we intended to extend our campaign into the other Principalities. Then we would swing east, back into the disputed breadbasket of the continent. Foraging would be easier, and the enemies more easily defeated. Hake’s plan was to strike a blow at the Hawk’s Nest, then return to Rockwall along the Muddy and Whitewater, cleaning the rivers of any opposing forces.
The Hawks’ mercenary army was nearly twice our size, but it was deployed in the field. The general hoped an attack on their vulnerable homeland would disrupt their operations and pull the far-flung troops back - by which time we would be long gone.
I liked the plan. I’d contributed to it.
With the Monolith’s soldiers now fleeing north, our quartermaster’s company was resupplying the brigade from the city’s stores. The company captain, a massive wall of flesh named Agga, was waving his hands and shouting. From what I overhead of the heated negotiations, Steel City’s merchants wanted to be paid in silver rather than Rockwall scrip. I didn’t blame them. I doubted our masters in Panther City would follow through and annex this territory - in which case the scrip was worth just about its value as tinder when the winter came.
Another loud dispute had broken out in the ruins of Roddib’s establishment. We had put up tents for the women. One, the hard-faced redhead, stood outside shrieking curses at her employer.
“You can take my contract and shove it where the sun don’t shine, you disgusting pig!”
“You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head if you know what’s good for you,” the fat man growled. He employed two enforcers, heavyset men with wooden clubs. One moved toward the woman.
I strolled in that direction as the shouting continued. If the redhead was intimidated by Roddib’s thug, she didn’t show it. His hand had closed on her arm and she was slapping furiously at him when I arrived.
“Let go,” I said quietly.
Roddib let out a bleat when he saw me and stumbled away. The bodyguard released the woman as if she’d caught fire.
“You have somewhere to go?” I asked her. “Moya, isn’t it?”
She glared at me. “Anywhere’s better than here with this s
wine.”
I nodded. “Go ask for Sergeant Herin. Tell him I want you attached to Captain Agga. I assume you can cook or clean or sew?”
“I can make myself useful,” she snapped.
“You don’t want that ungrateful wench, master,” Roddib burbled. “She’s nothing but trouble, and her soul’s stained black as a yard up a demon’s bunghole.”
I produced what I intended to be a smile. It probably wasn’t, since the fat man took three more steps backward. “A preacher we met on the way here said it’s never too late for anyone to repent. Personally I’m pretty sure he’s wrong, but it doesn’t hurt to try, now does it?”
“Only, she’s got a contract with me, and that needs paying off…”
The expression on my face was now a smile only by Yoshana’s standards. “Of course. Would you say it’s worth more or less than your life?”
The Darkness surrounded me. Roddib bleated again and fled into a tent. The two bodyguards exchanged looks and followed. I glanced around and discovered that Moya had already marched off, perhaps in search of Herin, perhaps not.
I shrugged. I didn’t doubt she had a vicious temper and a list of sins as long as my arm. But I really wasn’t in a position to be casting stones.
War involved a lot of walking. We had completed our eastward pivot and been hiking for a week. General Hake’s maps claimed the wide, flat road we were on would take us straight to the Hawk’s Nest. I saw no reason to doubt them. Still, it would take weeks.
At least it had stopped raining.
The region’s farmers had planted rows of trees and set up low stone walls to protect the wheat fields near the road. Those barriers were no more effective against the brigade than they would have been against a biblical plague of locusts. The grain was nearly ready for harvest, and the troops spread out and hacked down the stalks, passing the spikelets and chaff together to the quartermaster.
Some of the locals we plundered were brave enough to come out and complain. They got scrip as compensation. The ones that kept complaining got kicks or the flat of a sword for their troubles. It wasn’t fair, but an army has to eat.
There were probably paleos and bandits in this country. None of them were stupid enough to get within sight of our column. The Shadowed Hand took point anyway, scouting ahead for Hawks, Monolith regulars, or anything else that might be a threat.
The enemy knew better than to try my force again. Instead, they hit the middle of the column in the dark of night. Their cavalry had ripped through Agga’s cooks and launderers and vanished by the time my platoon got to the scene of the attack.
Medics were already at work. We had few dead, but many injured, some from the attackers’ guns and swords, others trampled by panicked horses and mules. Moans, screams, and sobs rose up into the night.
Moya lay on a blanket, her remaining eye fixed on the clouded sky.
“She’ll live, I think,” said a nurse who saw me staring. A bullet had taken the redhead in the face, shattering her right cheek and driving shards of bone into the eye socket.
“I can -” I began, but her head turned toward me.
“Stay away from me,” she hissed.
I took a step back. The Darkness, summoned to heal, began to boil instead.
Luco laid a hand on my shoulder, then recoiled at my expression. “Minos, should… I mean…”
“You and Kafer stay here,” I said flatly.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want the two of you for what comes next.”
“Minos, you can’t blame yourself for this. For any of this.”
I locked black eyes on his. “Do you really want to tell me what I can or can’t feel?”
He shook his head.
“Good. Stay here. Kafer too.”
Luco and Kafer were competent enough soldiers, but they weren’t killers in their hearts. I had no use for them now. I was done minimizing casualties. Whether this attack was a betrayal by Steel City’s rangers, or an assault by some other Monolith force, it was time to deliver a different message, written in blood.
“They’re a good hour ahead,” Sesk murmured.
“They’ll stop to rest at some point. And then we’ll kill them. Let’s go.”
The hunter and the paleo would have no trouble following the hoof prints even at night. But they were irrelevant. For the Darkness, this trail might as well have been blazoned with torches. I took off at a lope, my senses stretched out and scanning the ground before me, and the platoon jolted into motion behind. Luco and Kafer remained in the ruined camp, still as statues.
I slowed my pace so Sesk and Cat could keep up. I trusted the rest would follow as they could. But no more than twenty minutes had passed when Groff called out from the back of the straggling group. “Lieutenant!”
I angrily slowed to a walk, then turned back. “What is it, Sergeant?”
“Sir. We can’t all keep up. This kind of pace,” he gasped. Even in the dark, I could see his face was red and sweat-soaked. “You know every man. In the platoon. Can march forever. We’d all follow you. Into hell. But not all of us. Can run there as fast as you.”
“I don’t need all of you,” I snapped. “Whoever can keep up, keeps up. The rest of you follow as you can. Or go back.”
And with that I left him behind. With the Darkness in me, I could run until I died of dehydration - and probably after. There was no horseman who would outlast me.
It came to me as I ran that Yoshana had let me go when I’d fled her in the Darklands. Sesk could tell the difference between a horse with and without a rider by the depth of the hoof prints. That was beyond my skill, but Yoshana could surely do the same with her far greater mastery of the Darkness. And if I could run until I died, she could run until the sun went dark and the earth froze. If she hadn’t caught me, it was because she hadn’t wanted to.
Because she’d wanted me to return to Our Lady and kill Prophetess? In my rage, I had come close. I had turned aside from that, but I was made over as Yoshana’s creation now.
The Monolith would learn what Yoshana’s creation could do.
They’d made a cold camp, but I could hear the occasional whinny of a horse long before the Darkness sensed them. I supposed we’d been running for about an hour. Only Cat and Sesk were still with me, though when I stopped I could hear the grunting and panting of other soldiers behind. I guessed about half my force had kept up.
“What do we do?” Sesk whispered as he came up next to me, taking deep, controlled breaths.
“Get close enough to shoot. You’ll know when.”
The Darkness blurred my outline, turning me into a black cloud against the blackness of the night. It deadened the sound of my footfalls as I ran. There was a sentry looking almost directly at me, but he didn’t know I was there until my sword cut his throat.
I raced through the camp, slashing at sleeping men as I went. Three more sentries guarded the other points of the compass. One turned to face me, and I moved toward him. He squinted into the night, seeing something, not knowing what. My blade tore him open before he knew how to react. He screamed as he fell.
The other two snatched at their carbines. A volley of gunfire cut them down.
Horses whinnied and stamped in panic. The camp came awake in a chaos of fear. More bullets found the first to take their feet.
There were nearly a hundred men in the enemy force. Plenty left to kill. I threw the Darkness wide in a stinging, clawing wave, and made my way back into their midst, hacking as I went.
My troops were beginning to join the melee. Pious was flinging bodies aside with great, sweeping swings of his pick, pausing only to hammer down the wounded and sleep-fuddled on the ground. I didn’t want the Darkness to destroy my own men, but distinguishing friend from foe was beyond me now. We had struck from the north, so I made my way deeper into the south side of the camp.
I was the Darkness. We were one. It was not a tool, subordinate to me. We were a single creature of rage and death. Enemies rose up be
hind me, and I sensed them and killed them. A bullet pierced my left arm and the wound closed behind it, and then the gunman’s eyes were gone and he was drowning in his own blood. Around me a hundred weak, feeble things hated and feared me. I hated them back with all my soul, but there was nothing in these pitiful husks to fear. I killed them because I could.
A gray figure in front of me fired a pistol as I closed on it. The first shot missed. The second pierced my leather jerkin and shattered a rib. The creature threw the gun away and raised its hands in surrender as I reached it. My first stroke took off its right hand. The second took its head.
Lalos fell dead at my feet. Tarc screamed wordlessly as he fired at me, all while scrambling onto his horse to flee. Others mounted and galloped into the night. I let them go. Gunfire from my platoon brought down a few more.
I kicked the Select’s corpse. “I told you I wouldn’t let you go again,” I shouted. “Didn’t you believe me?”
There weren’t many Select left in the world. We tried not to fight each other. We tried harder not to kill each other. When Grigg had shielded me from Yoshana in Stephensburg, it had likely been in part because of our shared race.
I spat on the ground. I had given Lalos and Tarc one chance, as much as Grigg had given me. They’d ignored my warning and continued to serve a power that held the Select in contempt. Like cowards they’d attacked cooks and tailors in our supply train instead of facing our soldiers. Lalos deserved what he’d gotten.
“Salvage their guns and round up the horses that are left,” I ordered. “Mount our wounded.”
“What about theirs?” Railes asked.
“Leave them. If the survivors come back, the wounded will slow them down. If not,” I shrugged. “The wolves and paleos can have them.”
“Soldiers kill people,” Cat grinned. “People’s turn now.”
I nodded. “Everybody’s got to eat something.”
Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle Page 50