Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

The sea gate that Willen had told him about.

Styke was about to climb down to the breakers when something caught his eye. There was a ship coming in quickly, sailing in from the west. Styke squinted into the wind and was shocked to see that it flew the sunflower yellow of the Fatrastan flag. Settling back onto the boulder, he watched it come closer.

It was only when the ship was almost to the docks that he spotted more on the horizon. Ten, twenty. Maybe even more. There were frigates, transports, and ships of the line, all of Kressian design. He leaned forward, enthralled, wishing he had his looking glass with him. He had thought that the Dynize owned this coast, and as the lead ship came up to dock and dropped anchor, he tried to figure out how a fleet this size could materialize on the other side of the continent from Landfall.

There was a scrape of metal on stone, and Styke looked around sharply, searching for the source of the sound. He thought he heard voices on the wind, but when he could not find them, he turned his attention back to the ship coming in to dock. The minutes slowly ticked by and the wind picked up, the sky growing darker despite sundown being several hours away. Men scrambled through the rigging of the ship, rolling the sails, and a plank was rolled out.

Styke was just about to turn around and leave when he saw a familiar figure appear on deck.

Lindet.

“Oi!” he shouted, waving both arms. There was no response, and no one on the ship seemed to notice, his voice buried by the sound of the waves on the breakers. He looked once more for a way to the docks and didn’t find one. Irritated, he hurried down from his boulder and across the hidden beach to the groundskeeper’s path.

Lindet was here . No wonder Dvory and the Third had been in a hurry. This was some kind of damned rendezvous. All those ships out there – that was probably all that was left of the Fatrastan fleet. They’d picked up Lindet from the coast off Redstone and brought her down here to meet with the Third, where she could take command and sweep the Hammer clear of Dynize, just as Willen had said.

Styke almost laughed at himself for being such a fool. Dvory’s secrecy was damned well explained away by this: Lindet didn’t want anyone to know that she was taking the fight to the Dynize personally until she was on hand. He tried to figure out how this changed his own plans. The moment she discovered his presence, she would attempt to commandeer the Mad Lancers. If she found out about Ka-poel, that would … well, Styke wasn’t going to let her find out about Ka-poel.

He was about halfway up the path when he passed the narrow bridge leading to the gun platform, and froze in place at the sight of some fifteen men – having appeared from seemingly thin air – working over the guns. They cleaned the barrels, brought ammunition up from a cache in the floor, and pointed to the distant ships. It wasn’t the men themselves that startled him so much as their appearance.

Every one of them wore a turquoise uniform, a morion-style helmet, and a smooth breastplate. They had red hair and ashen freckles.

Styke changed directions in midstep and hurled himself across the bridge. He was among them before they even saw him, his knife flashing, and within the minute, he was coated in their blood and gore. Heart hammering, Styke looked toward the beach, only for his view to be obstructed by the corner of the citadel.

Goddamn Dvory was a traitor. This was Lindet’s rendezvous, and Dvory had turned it into a death trap.

Somewhere far above him, there was a flash in one of the citadel towers and then the report of a coastal gun. More followed quickly, and Styke was suddenly all too aware that the Third Army was now sitting at the base of an enemy citadel, whose guns were being manned by Dynize. He wiped the blood from his face and began to run.

Vlora rode past a field of the dead and dying, listening as their moans seemed to keep tempo with the clip-clop of her horse’s hooves. Another reckless charge by Dynize dragoons, meant to do nothing more than slow down her column. At a glance, there were no more than a hundred of them – not even close to enough to do any real damage. Their horses had already been either put down or taken, and the Adran dead buried beneath simple stone cairns beside the road. The Dynize – wounded and dead alike – lay where they fell and remained ignored as the Riflejack rear guard marched past them.

She wondered if anyone had bothered to tell her about this attack. Perhaps. She was exhausted from days of forced march, barely able to sleep even when she did have the time. These attacks had come so frequently that they hardly warranted her attention anymore. They came at night, in the rain, even out in the open as the Dynize general sent his cavalry along every goat path and mining trail he could find to try to flank the Riflejacks – to try to trip them up and force the column to slow, even for fifteen minutes at a time.

She wanted to dismiss the attacks as a waste of the enemy’s resources, but the truth was they were working. Despite the larger, more cumbersome army, the Dynize infantry remained just three hours behind the Riflejacks. Vlora felt like she could barely breathe.

Up ahead, her column snaked down through the foothills and onto a relatively flat plain, where the vanguard had pulled off to the side for a few moments’ rest, allowing another company to take the lead of the column. She searched for Olem and was unable to find him.

The sound of galloping hooves made her turn to find Taniel and Norrine coming up the road from the west, covered in the dust stirred up by Vlora’s infantry. Norrine wore a tired but satisfied smile, and Taniel held his rifle across the saddle horn. He pulled in next to Vlora and tapped on the side of his head. “That’s all of them.”

“All of who?” she asked.

“As far as we can tell, we’ve popped every Privileged and bone-eye in the Dynize Army. We’ve also killed half their senior officers.”

“And yet still they come hard on our heels.” Vlora had meant to say that in her head, but it came out without her even realizing she was speaking.

Norrine nodded. “They are … persistent.”

Vlora looked back toward the dead and dying Dynize dragoons from the last ambush, unable to get rid of the weight of dread sitting in the pit of her stomach. “You’ve done well,” she told Norrine. “Go find some chow.”

Norrine headed up the column, leaving Vlora and Taniel alone by the side of the road. “I don’t like the look on your face,” Taniel said.

“I don’t like the fact that we can’t gain even an hour on these bastards. They won’t slow down, even with their officers and sorcerers dead.” She gestured to the dead dragoons. “They’re throwing lives in front of us with as little regard as if they were tossing caltrops in a road.”

“The zeal scares you?”

“It terrifies me. I have a little voice in the back of my head whispering every few minutes that we’re all going to die on this blasted continent.” She rolled her shoulders, trying to calm herself. “I’m not thrilled with the idea of dying, but there are worse fates. Dying, hunted like a dog … it feels like our campaign through northern Kez during the war all over again. Except this time I’m the one responsible for all these lives.” She looked Taniel in the eye. “I don’t want all these men to die here, Taniel.”

Taniel’s expression was grim. “You’re doing the best you can.”

She wondered at his plans. He wasn’t an Adran, not anymore. He was stronger, faster, and sturdier than any normal human – even any powder mage – and when the Dynize finally trapped the Riflejacks and slaughtered them to the last man, Taniel would no doubt carve his way out and disappear into the hills, heading across the continent to reunite with Ka-poel. Vlora briefly considered grabbing Olem and attempting to run for it.