Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

Burt seemed unharmed. He held his hands over his head, cigar crushed in the dust and cane lost as he pressed his face against the ground. She forcibly turned him over, searching his pockets for her spare powder cartridges and shoving them into her own jacket.

“Remember our deal,” she growled, regaining her feet.

She detonated the powder of a trio of armed women on a roof across the street, ripping them – and the building on which they stood – in half. The exchange of gunfire continued, and Vlora wondered just how many men both sides had brought with them. Her ears ringing, she could make out gunfire from all over, extending well into the streets.

Both of these fools had brought their entire private armies with them.

She limped away from the park, back the way they’d come down the main street, snorting powder to quell the pain between her shoulders. She assessed the damage; her chest and the muscles of her back were tight, every step causing a spike of pain to bleed through her powder trance. She could still move her arms – though not as well. It would have to be good enough.

The acrid smell of smoke caught her attention, and she knew immediately that it was not powder smoke. There was a fire somewhere behind her, maybe even set by her own detonations, and she thought of all the slapdash wooden buildings crammed in together in the valley. Fire would spread damned fast. She redoubled her efforts.

The streets were full of people screaming and running. Vlora was jostled and shoved, but otherwise ignored. Some people ran away from the firefight; others called for a bucket brigade and ran toward the flames.

She reached Burt’s brothel, fetched her pistol from Burt’s office, and then went for her horse in his stable. A curious stable boy saddled the animal for a handful of pennies, while Vlora rested on a hay bale in the corner. Blood dripped down both arms, and when she finally regained her feet, the hay was crimson. It took the stable boy’s help to get her into the saddle.

Vlora rode out of town, slumped in the saddle, trying to get as far away from the fighting as possible. This wasn’t her war – this wasn’t why she was here. She drifted in and out of consciousness, barely holding together enough to direct her horse up the road leading to Little Flerring’s compound.

“What the pit is going on?” Little Flerring demanded from her vantage point above her cabin. Vlora tried to answer as she attempted to dismount, and only managed to slip from the saddle and fall to the ground in a heap.

The last thing she remembered was hands lifting her toward the sky.

The Mad Lancers left the Hock – and the remnants of their dragoon rivals – and soon reached the coast. They skirted the city-fortress of New Starlight late in the evening, using a sunken road to slip by undetected. It wasn’t until they were well past that Styke allowed himself to circle around the end of his army and gaze back upon the city, squinting through the fading light at Dynize flags flying from the turrets that had once flown the flag of the Fatrastan Army.

The city-fortress was not like anything else in Fatrasta. It was built on a wedge of land jutting off the northwest edge of the Hammer and guarded by a sloped curtain wall that cut the entire wedge off from the mainland and housed a small city – enough space for around ten thousand people. Inside that was the fortress itself, a towering knife of white stone, freckled with red, surrounded by seven mighty turrets, the largest of which was topped with an enormous lighthouse to warn incoming ships of the rocks below.

“Is that a castle?”

Styke turned to find Celine beside him, gently patting Margo on the neck. He sized up New Starlight, realizing that it looked far more like a storybook castle than it did the palisades or star-forts that dotted Fatrasta. “I suppose it is,” he said. It wasn’t a pretty castle, not by a long shot, but it had all the trappings of one.

“Who built it?”

“A Starlish duke,” he told Celine. “He was one of the first serious explorers to cross through the heart of Fatrasta, and when he reached here, he enslaved the local Palo and made them build him this fortress. I think that was, eh, three hundred years ago?”

Celine’s eyes widened. “It’s stood that long?”

“There are older castles in the Nine, but it’s a decent enough fortress.” He pointed to the turrets. “Those are big enough to hold modern cannons, and the wall is sloped slightly, which helps take a pounding from straight-shot.”

“Then why do the Dynize hold it?” she asked. “There’s no sign of a battle.”

Styke frowned at the fortress. She was right; there were no signs of a battle. The walls were undamaged, all of the turrets standing. “Sharp eyes.” He pondered the question for a few moments. “The garrison must have abandoned it at the first sight of the enemy. Maybe when they heard about Landfall. Damned cowards.” He resisted the urge to take a closer look. Even a poor garrison could have held New Starlight against an enemy siege – those towers would make short work of just about any fleet attempting a blockade.

But New Starlight wasn’t his problem.

As they watched, a small, mounted force exited the curtain wall and rode east. Definitely Dynize soldiers. Styke remained until the sun was almost gone, searching the horizon for any signs of those dragonmen before turning Amrec to catch up with the Mad Lancers. Celine followed in his wake.

Their camp was a few miles south of New Starlight in a gentle valley large enough to hold most of their army but small enough for a scout to miss until they were right on top of it. As Styke and Celine rode in, the men were just beginning to set up their tents, and Styke proceeded to the other side of the camp, where he found Ibana, Ka-poel, Gustar, and a dozen Mad Lancers gathered around an opening in the hillside.

The opening had, until a few minutes ago, been hidden behind a boulder. The entrance was squat – no more than three feet by three feet – and held together by thick-cut timbers. It looked like the entrance to a tiny mine.

Styke handed Amrec off to a nearby soldier and joined Ibana. “Is it still intact?” he asked.

“We’re finding out,” she answered without looking away from the entrance.

Gustar knelt by the timbers, squinting into the dark hole, a half smile on his face. “A Blackhat cache, buried under a hill in the middle of nowhere.” He shook his head. “How many people even know about this?”

“Five or ten,” Styke said, kneeling next to Gustar and peering into the darkness. He could see a light, somewhere in the depths, bobbing around. “Lindet uses forced labor for this kind of thing so that word won’t get out to the general public.”

“What’s it for?” Gustar asked.

“This,” Styke grunted with a gesture toward their camp. “Lindet is a firm believer in being ready for anything. In addition to regular supply depots, she’s got these caches hidden away all over the country – mostly in the less-populated areas. They’re specifically meant to resupply an army. If this one is untouched, it’ll provide us with canned food, wine, ammunition, and spare weapons to last weeks.”

As if to answer the next unspoken question, the bobbing of the light suddenly came toward them, growing until the lantern was set aside and Jackal’s head and shoulders emerged from the pit. Jackal grinned up at them. “Everything is there,” he reported.

Ibana clapped her hands together. Styke couldn’t blame her. They needed a bit of good luck after the last couple weeks of hard riding and fighting.