Брайан Макклеллан - The Mad Lancers

Twelve years before the events of Sins of Empire…

A corpse hung from a dead tree on the outskirts of Fernhollow, bloated from the humid summer heat, feet swinging above the dusty road. It was a grim specter haunting an otherwise picturesque country lane, and Major Ben Styke took a few moments to imagine the scene – minus the corpse – as a painting in some posh nobleman’s collection.

Styke stared up at the body, quietly humming a lancer’s hymn to himself. He recognized the corpse, even with its crow-pecked eyes and torn clothes. It belonged to Daven je Kros, the local Kez tax collector. A beating had left Kros’s evening suit shredded to ribbons and the body beneath it a bloody pulp – and probably killed the poor bastard.

Styke’s warhorse, Deshnar, stamped impatiently beneath him, unimpressed by the smell of shit and rotting flesh. Styke patted his flank absently. They were alone here on the outskirts of town, accompanied only by the crows wheeling overhead, and he imagined that word of the tax man’s lynching had probably spread well ahead of his own discovery. None of the locals would use this road today.

So who was responsible? A handful of drunks on their way home from the pub? A posse organized by some of the less savory city elders? The family of someone Kros had recently turned out into the street?

To find a tax collector’s enemies, the old saying went, simply check the latest town census. But here in Fatrasta, a half-tamed frontier full of immigrants from a dozen countries and governed almost exclusively by the Kez, a tax collector’s death presented all sorts of complications. The Kez were an incompetent colonial power at best – a cruel one at worst – and people were getting angrier as taxes went up and public services declined.

Styke had an inkling that things were coming to a head – there were curfews up in Little Starland, heavy fines imposed on the wealthy malcontents in New Adro, and Kez soldiers arrived daily in every port city across the country. The Kez king’s crackdowns were fanning the flames of discontent. But that was big-picture politics. Styke had no place in that world, and he hoped that it would stay as far away from Fernhollow as possible.

“Far away…” he whispered to himself as distant movement caught his eye. Farther down the road, a group of riders had just come into view through the willows. There were four of them, and even at this distance he could make out the green and tan flag fluttering over the standard-bearer, and the matching uniforms.

Kez soldiers. He wondered, briefly, if they’d had anything to do with this, but dismissed the notion. They would be coming from the next town over, passing through Fernhollow to head toward the capital. Besides, they were Kez . They didn’t pay the same taxes as everyone else and therefore would have little interest in a tax collector.

He clicked his tongue. “Deshnar,” he said gently, directing his warhorse over to the body and standing up in the stirrups. He drew his big boz knife and tried to reach the rope looped around Kros’s neck.

No such luck.

Styke tied Deshnar to some nearby scrub and returned to the tree, wondering if its dead branches could hold his weight. As a child he’d loved to climb the big willows on the family estate, but that was before he’d grown to almost seven feet tall and twenty-two stone.

Deshnar snorted at him.

“Yeah,” Styke said. “I’m gonna look like a real asshole if I fall out of that tree and break my neck.” He glanced back toward town, where he could order any of his lancers to come out here and take care of the job for him. But that meant leaving the body hanging there while a squad of Kez soldiers rode by. They’d already seen it by now, of course, but leaving it hanging there was just an invitation to ask questions. Styke removed his cavalry jacket, the sunflower yellow of the colonial army, and began to climb.

“Ride, lancers, ride,” he sang softly to himself as he reached the second branch of the dead tree. “Through the meadows, against the tide. Let your hooves ring, steel ring; break your lances, break their bones, break their spirit against the stones.”

He finished his work and let the body drop with a thud, returning to ground and managing to cover Kros’s corpse with some canvas from his saddlebags as the Kez soldiers came within shouting distance.

Two of them rode ahead of the others, approaching him until they were just a few feet away from Deshnar. They wore steel breastplates polished to blinding shine in the morning sun, their backs stiff and formal with heavy cavalry swords and carbines hanging from their saddles. In Styke’s experience, cuirassiers preferred the glory of a single charge against isolated skirmishers. They didn’t like to do the real work of war.

He dusted off his palms and eyed their lapels. The man, narrow-faced and young, no more than nineteen or twenty with muttonchops grown out to make him appear older, bore the stars of a captain. The woman, a sergeant, was in her midtwenties and had dirty blonde hair cut severely at the shoulders. She looked down on him with the kind of irritated disregard that most people reserved for pigs lying in the street.

“By Kresimir, you’re a huge son of a bitch,” the sergeant said, looking from Styke’s boots to the top of his head. Styke stared back, unimpressed. She had some heft to her, but she had too small of a frame to be a proper cuirassier. Heavy cavalry needed strength to swing those swords and weight to back it up. And that polished cuirass had never seen combat. She went on, “I’ve seen ’em big, Captain, but I’ve never seen anyone that size.” She looked truly puzzled, as if she’d just seen a swamp dragon for the first time and couldn’t quite comprehend what creation had put in front of her.

“Can I help you?” Styke asked.

The sergeant started, as if surprised that he could speak. She covered it with a scowl and barked, “You can help me by saluting, soldier. You’re in the presence of a captain of his majesty’s finest.” She glanced over her shoulder at her captain, who’d remained back several feet. “By Kresimir, sir, I can’t imagine the commanding officer of this outfit allowing discipline to falter so. I tell you, if I had the command, things would be different around here. Damned colonials are all the same.”

Styke couldn’t help but snort a laugh.

“What’s that, soldier? Something you want to share with me? You will salute and you will salute now, or Kresimir help me, I will take you to whoever is in charge of this place and I will see you whipped five stripes every morning for a week.”

Styke opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the captain flipped his reins and directed his horse up beside that of his sergeant. “Sergeant Gracely,” he said, “stand down.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I won’t see a common colonial mock his majesty’s finest.”

“Sergeant, that colonial is seven feet tall.”

“My apologies, sir, but I don’t care how big he is, he–”

“Sergeant!”

“Sir?”

“Do you see his jacket hanging from that saddle? Do you see his lapels? He’s a lancer.”

“What does that matter, sir?”

“Can you think of a colonial lancer that size? Perhaps one that’s well known for having broken a company of elite Starlish grenadiers during the Battle of Fort Kurlin, by himself ?”

The sergeant’s mouth hung open for a few moments, and Styke could see from her face that she was doing a desperate bit of mental math. She closed her mouth, scowled, and then seemed to reevaluate Styke.