Brian McClellan: The Face in the Window

Taniel had been impressed, and more than a little annoyed, that she had come along when he enlisted in the Fatrastan militia. She had insisted that the men needed spiritual guidance, and Major Bertreau agreed.

She had promised to be his chaperone, she said. Wouldn’t want to let his father down, she said.

Kresimir forbid, anyone let his father down.

“What in Kresimir’s holy name is that smell?” a militiaman asked. A few others grumbled the same question, and Taniel lifted his nose to the wind. Nothing but road dust and unwashed frontiersmen. What could it be…

There. The scent hit him like a runaway cart full of cow shit. It was a heavy, earthy smell, like damp leaves and manure that had been sitting all winter and then suddenly disturbed.

“That’s the swamp,” Dina said, chewing on a bit of reed she’d plucked from the roadside. “The Tristan Basin, they call it. Over six thousand square miles of forested wetlands. The smell gets worse as you go.” She glanced at him, as if that might change his mind about going into the interior.

“How much do you know about the swamp?” Taniel asked.

“My husband and I did some preaching here when we were younger. You see, back then….”

“I see. I’d better check in with the major.” Taniel jogged up the column before Dina could launch into one of her long-winded stories.

Major Bertreau sat on her charger where the road emerged from the trees and crested the hill they’d been climbing. Her face was passive, but shifting eyes betrayed her nervousness and she gently ran her fingers along the thick scarred bruise on her neck. The scar that none of the men dared talk about.

She was originally from Kez, but from one of the mountain towns so close to the border that she might as well be Adran. Like many of the soldiers enlisted in this war, she claimed to be thoroughly Fatrastan now.

And like every Kez citizen that had signed on with the rebelling colonists, she had a death-mark on her head.

Bertreau pulled her collar up to conceal the scar on her neck and acknowledged Taniel with a nod. “Captain.”

“Major,” Taniel said.

“Looks like we’re here.”

The hillside below them gradually gave way to a thick stand of cypress trees growing out of a marshy, shallow lake. The forest seemed to stretch on forever from their vantage point, and Taniel quickly realized why the Tristan Basin was a perfect place from which to conduct their raids: it was immense.

Nothing was going to follow them into that swamp.

“Past the cypress are miles and miles of sawgrass,” Bertreau said. “Grasses taller than a house, and so thick you can’t hack through it with a sword.”

Bertreau’s fingers slowly crept back to her neck. She was a handsome woman with gold hair braided over one shoulder and pretty, round cheeks. Taniel had noted her wandering eye and guessed that had he not mentioned his fiancé waiting back in Adro, Bertreau would have had a go at him by now.

“The savages better be true to their word,” Bertreau said. Her lips twisted slightly when she said ‘savages.’ “If we head into that swamp and they’re not there to guide us, we’ll all be dragon food by tomorrow night.”

“Dragons?” Taniel asked.

“Swamp dragons,” Bertreau said. “Big lizards. Longer than a horse. Their jaws will snap a man in two.”

Taniel fingered the bayonet case at his hip. No one had said anything about giant lizards. Snakes, yes. He didn’t like the idea of them, either, but in a powder trance he was faster than a striking snake.

Was he stronger than one of these swamp dragons?

Taniel removed a snuff box from his belt pouch and tapped a line of black powder out on the back of his hand. He snorted it in one breath and felt the world warp and twist beneath his feet. He spread his feet to brace himself, and a moment later the world came into focus sharper than it had been before.

He let the powder trance take him fully, and he looked out across the Tristan Basin again. He could see a big boa in the top of a cypress over a mile away, sunning itself, black forked tongue darting in and out.

“Any word from the savages in the Basin, sir?” Taniel asked. “Or our outriders?”

Bertreau looked down the road back the way they’d come. “Should be back by now.”

Taniel took a step closer to Bertreau’s mount. “We need to tighten up this formation,” he said. “If the Kez catch up to us like this, we won’t get the chance to be eaten by swamp dragons.”

Bertreau snorted. “I know my way around a company of soldiers, captain,” she said, her voice suddenly cold. “And despite your talents and your father’s name, I don’t seem to remember you having bloodied your hands before.”

“My apologies, major,” Taniel said, forcing down a retort. He wasn’t here to tangle with Fatrastan officers. He was here to kill Kez soldiers, and if Kresimir was kind, a Kez Privileged sorcerer.

Bertreau lifted her eyes to the road curving down the hill toward the morass. “Our destination should be right down there,” she said. She lifted a hand and called to a man nearby. “Sergeant, bring the men in tight at this hilltop. We’ll rest momentarily, and then I want a smart march into Gladeside. The town should still be ours, but who knows where we’ll run into a Kez patrol. We’ll garrison the town and wait for contact with the Basin savages. Can you--”

She cut off at the sound of hooves coming up the road behind them at a full gallop.

Taniel could very clearly see the small gelding maneuvering its way through the soldiers sprawled across the road. Taniel wondered why they bothered calling them a ‘rear guard.’

The rider reined in beside Major Bertreau, a narrow-faced young man clearly exhausted from the long ride. “Five companies on foot, major,” the outrider said when he’d caught his breath. “Kez colors.”

“Of course they’re Kez,” Bertreau snapped. “We don’t have five companies in this neck of the country. How far are they?”

“They’ll be here by tomorrow afternoon.”

Bertreau looked up at the sun. It was well past its zenith and headed down to the western horizon.

Taniel noted the outrider shifting nervously in his saddle. “What else is there, soldier?”

“Well…,” he said, glancing at Taniel’s rifle and the silver powder keg pinned to his breast. “See, there’s a problem…”

Taniel felt his gut tighten. “Privileged?”

The man nodded.

“Well,” Taniel said, forcing a smile on his face, “that’s why I’m here. I’ll put a bullet in his eye from over a mile out.”

Taniel’s mouth tasted sour as he remembered that he’d been hoping for a Privileged just a few minutes ago. Privileged were not something to hope for. A single Privileged had potent elemental sorcery at his call and was more dangerous than ten companies of Kez soldiers. They could call fire and lightning down on his company as easily as Taniel could float a bullet.

“I don’t want him getting that close,” Bertreau said. “Sergeant, a double march down to Gladeside. We’ll quarter there tonight and head into the swamp at first light. With or without our savage guides.”

Taniel looked back the way they’d come and had to remind himself that there wouldn’t be a company of dragoons coming up that road any time soon. They were safe.

For now.

If their savage guide was waiting for them in Gladeside, then they’d be deep in the swamp by tomorrow night, and by the end of the week they’d be raiding Kez towns up and down the length of the Tristan Basin.

And if the Privileged caught them out in the open, they’d all be dead before they could load their muskets.

Taniel sat on a bench in the corner of the wide room of the common house, his foot tapping out the rhythm of the pub song the other soldiers were singing. The room was dimly lit by fireplace and candle and smelled like ale and wet dog, and every so often the singing would be drowned out by the hammer of a particularly fierce shower of heavy raindrops on the roof above.