Daniel Polansky - Low Town

It was this collective intransigence, intransigence which bordered on outright foolishness, that I blamed for forcing me out of bed in the middle of the night to go on a covert mission. It was the stupidity of our own brass, however, that I blamed for the logistical failure that was to leave me and my squad absent appropriate camouflage during the operation.

Inwardly, at least. Outwardly, officers don’t grumble about these little administrative mishaps, even if they’re of the sort likely to get them killed.

Private Carolinus had no such qualms. “Lieutenant, how are we expected to go on a mission at night with no faceblack?” he asked angrily, as if I had an explanation or a vat of the stuff hidden beneath my sleep roll. Carolinus was red haired and ruddy cheeked, a northern Rouender, one of that peculiar breed of men whose ancestors had invaded Vaal three centuries prior and never left. As squat and hard as the coal he had grown up mining, he was nearly as quick to complain as he was to go over the top. He had become, frankly, a constant source of annoyance, but with Adolphus invalided home he was the only man I thought capable of taking over if I caught a stray bolt. “Lieutenant, the Dren have eyes like owls. We’ll be porcupined for sure if we aren’t inked.”

I cinched tight the straps of my leather armor, making sure my weapons were in place and my trench blade hung loose at my side. “They aren’t expecting you to do anything, Private. I, however, am ordering you to shut that flapping cunt mouth of yours and gear up, because you’re going over the wall in a quarter hour whether you’re butt-fucking naked or covered in soot. And don’t worry about the enemy, from what I hear they only fire at men.”

The others laughed and even Carolinus smirked, but their humor was forced and so was mine. It wasn’t just the absence of faceblack-I hadn’t even known we were on until forty minutes earlier, when an aide to the company commander had roughly woken me from the first decent night’s sleep I’d had in a week, telling me to grab a crew of my finest and report to the major.

Truth was, none of it felt right. Donknacht the Unbowed was the capital of the Dren States, and for a millennium and a half it had stood free of foreign yoke. When the rest of the Dren provinces had been swallowed up by their neighbors, Donknacht alone had remained a free city. And when the surge of Dren nationalism seventy years past had unified these disparate states into one mighty confederacy, Donknacht had been the pivot around which the commonwealth had formed.

I couldn’t speak for the remaining provinces, but the soldiers facing us across a half mile of no-man’s-land died on suicide missions cursing our mothers. Their defenses wouldn’t be carried without a full-scale assault preceded by artillery and sorcery, and even then, it was likely to cost us half a division. This assumed the bastards didn’t fall back into the city and fight us for each house and street. Like everyone else, I was hoping the rumors of the armistice were true, and we would stop our long advance here, on the plains outside the capital. Either way, I was hard-pressed to see what five lone grunts were going to do to alter the situation, with or without faceblack.

I turned to Saavedra, our point man since a stray artillery shell had taken off the top of poor Donnely’s skull. His dark eyes and the stern set of his face betrayed his Asher ancestry, though why he had signed up as a member of our mixed unit instead of with the regiments of his own people none of us could say. Saavedra refused to discuss it, or much else for that matter, and the men of the First Capital Infantry were not the sort to look closely at a man’s papers, as long as he took his turn over the top. Despite his exile among us heathens, Saavedra hewed close to the standards of his race, taciturn and unreadable, the best card player in the regiment and a terror with a short sword besides. He’d have enough faceblack stashed somewhere to darken his own features, but sure as the single god of his people was a grim one, he wouldn’t have enough for two.

“Get the rest of them ready. I’m to see the major.” Saavedra nodded, silent as usual. I headed back toward the center of camp.

Our major, Cirellus Grenwald, was a fool and a coward but not an outright lunatic, and that alone placed him distinctly in the top half of the officer corps. If his primary talent consisted of being born at the top of a ladder, it was something at least that he’d yet to fall from it. He was talking to a man in a leather coat with silver trim, whom I took for a civilian at first glance.

The major offered me an ingenuous smile that, more than any actual competence, had hastened his ascent through the ranks. “Lieutenant, I was just telling Third Sorcerer Adelweid here about you. Head of the fiercest platoon in the division. He’ll provide an impregnable defense for your… undertaking.”

Sorcerer Adelweid was pale faced, thin but with a wormy film of excess flesh. He had found the time to slip his raven black, shoulder-length hair into a jeweled clasp, an adornment which, along with his gilded belt buckle and silver cuff links, seemed singularly inappropriate to the situation at hand. I didn’t like him, and I liked less the discovery that my mission involved his protection. The Crane aside, I hated sorcerers-everyone in the force did and not just because they were showy and whiny and got their requisitions for arcane items filled in a hot minute while we scavenged for boot leather and millet. No, every grunt in the force hated sorcerers because, to a man and with vituperate language, each could tell of losing comrades when some spell-slinger got careless directing battle hexes and annihilated half a unit in a spray of blood and bone. The brass thought them great fun, of course, certain that each new scheme they proposed would be the secret weapon that would win us the war.

But it wouldn’t do to let this animus play across my face. I saluted the man crisply, an obeisance he returned apathetically and without comment. Major Grenwald continued, “Welcome to Operation Ingress, Lieutenant. Your orders are as follows. You and your men are to take Sorcerer Adelweid four hundred yards into no-man’s-land, halting at a place of his choosing, at which point the sorcerer will perform a working. You are to detail one man to protect him, then you and the remainder are to travel another two hundred yards toward Dren lines, where you will place this talisman”-he handed me a small black jewel-“on an overlook within sight of the enemy defenses. You are to hold that position until Sorcerer Adelweid has completed his part of the mission.”

Adding up the distances I came to the unfortunate sum of six hundred yards, closer to the Dren’s territory than to ours and well within the range of even short-distance patrols. Nor did it escape my notice that Grenwald had offered no estimate as to how long Adelweid would need to complete his task. Was it ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? For that matter, why did we all assume this slippery piece of black glass would even work? From what I had seen of the Art, it was just as likely to blow up in my hands.

I didn’t imagine I’d get answers, even if I was foolish enough to ask the questions. Instead, I snapped a hand at Grenwald, praying it wouldn’t be the last time I’d salute the vainglorious motherfucker, then turned to Adelweid. “Sir, our unit is grouped at the front trench. If you’ll follow me.”

He nodded vaguely toward the major, then fell in line behind me without comment. I took the opportunity to make one. “Sir, now might be a good time to remove any reflective gear you have. That hair clasp in particular will give away our position to any Dren sniper we run into.”

“Thank you for the suggestion, Lieutenant, but my garments will remain as they are.” His voice was every drop as oily as I expected, and he rubbed at the gleaming bangle possessively. “Our mission would be quite impossible to complete without it. Besides, I have no wish to return to camp victorious, only to discover that someone has made off with the cuff links given to me by the head of the Order of the Twisted Oak.”