Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

The Dynize dragoons appeared within hours of the Mad Lancers leaving the safety of the Third Army and harassed them all along the length of the Hammer for two more days. On the third, Styke called for a rest at midday and sent for his officers.

“Why are they riding my ass so hard?” Styke asked Ka-poel as he waited for his men to gather. Through his looking glass he watched a Dynize scout, wearing the now-familiar turquoise jacket and black pants of the Dynize dragoons. The scout was about three miles away and, from the way he was standing out in the open, clearly wanted to be seen. The Dynize were trying to get under his skin.

They were succeeding.

“Eh?” he asked, lowering his glass. “Why do they dog me? Did that prick of a Dynize commander order them after me as well?”

Ka-poel remained intractable, her face a mask of mild irritation, though whether that was directed at Styke, at the Dynize, or at their slow progress across the Hammer, he couldn’t be sure. She finally shook her head. I don’t know.

Styke made a vexed sound in the back of his throat. He’d been hunted plenty of times – the Kez had sent a whole field army after the Mad Lancers at one point during the war – but he’d never been ambushed so successfully as by these dragoons, nor followed so closely without his own scouts knowing exactly where the enemy was at all times.

He was struck by a thought that brought a smile to his lips. It was not that funny, but he soon found himself roaring, slapping his knee, bent double. When he was finally able to stand, he turned to find Ka-poel’s facade broken and an expression on her face that clearly asked, What the pit is wrong with you?

“Ka-Sedial,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “He must have been so incredibly pissed that someone crushed one of his dragonmen. When he found out I was a cripple … I can just imagine his face!” He made Ka-poel suffer through another round of chuckles, then gasped for breath.

Ka-poel smirked.

“I should write him a letter,” Styke said. “Tell him that I killed another one. And that a third had her head blown off by a little girl!”

His mirth was interrupted by the arrival of Ibana and Jackal. Ibana had a fresh cut across her cheek from where a Dynize bullet had barely missed her face in a sortie less than three hours ago. They’d lost seven Mad Lancers and only managed to down two of the Dynize, and she was clearly not in a smiling mood.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

Styke waved it off and forced himself to sober. “Nothing, nothing. Jackal, have you managed to wrangle any of your damned spirits so we can find out when and where these sons of bitches are going to hit us next?”

“I have, actually.”

Both Ibana and Gustar adopted dubious expressions. Styke held a finger out to them. “Only interrupt if you have any better ideas,” he said. They both remained silent, and he pointed to Jackal.

“There is one,” Jackal said. “She was an officer until Ibana killed her two days ago – their equivalent of a lieutenant. She does not fear Ka-poel like the others.”

Ka-poel seemed mildly intrigued by this. Styke asked, “Why not?”

“She will not say and I can’t coax it out of her. From what she tells me, the Dynize are not …” He paused as if trying to come up with the right phrase. “They are not of one mind.”

“Divided?” Styke asked. Ji-Orz had said as much, but it was interesting to have this confirmed by Jackal.

“They spent the better part of the last century locked in a bitter civil war. There were ultimately two sides and dozens of factions in each. She was a member of the side that eventually capitulated. She does not believe in Ka-Sedial’s plan to unite the country by invading Fatrasta, and she did not want to be here in the first place.”

“And that’s why she’s talking to you?”

“That, and she thinks her commanding officer is an asshole.”

Styke wondered briefly if this whole conversation was more evidence that he had come unhinged. If someone had claimed to speak with spirits back during the old war, he would have sent them to the front of the next charge and hoped they either became a spirit themselves or got the sense knocked into them. “I like her,” Styke said, referring to the spirit. “Does she know why they’re after us?”

“That’s not important,” Ibana cut in. “Does she know what their plan is?” She gritted her teeth, and Styke could tell it annoyed her to ask Jackal a question for the spirits. Major Gustar remained silent, still looking skeptical.

“Their plan is to wear us thin,” Jackal said. “They tried engaging us directly and lost more men than they’d expected. They will harass us until we reach the coast and then try to break us.” He paused. “It seems they are not an ordinary cavalry unit.”

“I could have told you that,” Styke snorted.

“At the end of the civil war, they were the other emperor’s bodyguard. Or rather, they are what’s left of his bodyguard.”

“I’m being chased by four dragonmen and a damned imperial guard,” Styke murmured to himself. “Ka-Sedial needs to learn to let things go.” He cleared his throat. “How far are we from the end of the Hammer?”

Gustar spoke up. “A few days at our current rate.”

Styke mused over the possibilities. “We could just ignore them until we reach the coast and they’re forced to engage us.”

“They’ll bleed us dry,” Gustar said. “We’re down to less than six hundred able-bodied men. We could lose another two hundred in those days. My guess is they still have fifteen hundred left. That would leave us outnumbered nearly four-to-one.”

“We’ve faced worse odds,” Styke said.

Ibana put her hands on her hips. “I’ll remind you again: We had enchanted armor. Not everyone is able to walk off every engagement they end up in, Ben.”

Styke frowned, considering his cavalier attitude toward the deaths of others. He knew commanding officers whose hearts bled for every death under their command – Lady Flint was one of those. To some that was a weakness. Flint had turned it into a strength.

He turned his gaze to the west – toward the end of the Hammer and, if Ka-poel was to believed, their final destination. He wondered briefly at their end goal in regard to the godstone, whether they were to capture and hold it, or to destroy it, or to try to put it on a boat and sink it in the sea. He decided that was best left to Ka-poel. He, in turn, would take care of whatever killing needed done in order to get there.

His eyes fell on the sharp terrain. The geography at the end of the Hammer was a far different sight from the east coast of Fatrasta, where they’d begun. Gone were the plains punctuated by bogs, lazy rivers, and plantation houses. Even gone were the forests and rolling hills of central Fatrasta. The terrain through which they must now pass was a dense wood filled with steep ridges and deep ravines covered in hanging mosses. It reminded Styke of the sharp foothills of the Ironhook Mountains, but there were no mountains within hundreds of miles. The locals called it the Hock.

Superstitious people claimed that the Hock had been carved by a war between gods millennia ago. During his time in the labor camps, Styke had once been partnered with a geologist – one of those government-employed fellows sent to look for likely deposits of gold ore – who had insisted that this sharp terrain had been caused by immense mountains of ice creeping their way across the land tens of thousands of years ago.