Брайан Макклеллан - Wrath of Empire

Styke put away his knife and gestured for Jackal to do the same.

“I thought you were going to come for me this morning.”

Styke nearly jumped out of his skin. The words came from the mouth of the commander, but they were spoken in perfect Adran and in a voice that did not belong to a burly, war-weary dragoon officer. The tone was soft-spoken, the voice a gentle soprano with a hint of a laugh to it. He looked at Ka-poel, who hadn’t moved except to adopt a rather smug smile. He pointed at the officer. “Is that you?”

Ka-poel nodded.

Styke forced himself to relax. He walked down the line of frozen officers, leaning over to feel the soft breath coming from their lips and wave a hand in front of their eyes. He even pushed one over, watching him topple like a statue and remain cross-legged without so much as a flinch. Styke finished his examination by walking around the dragoon commander, examining her flushed face. Upon this closer look, he found her just as frozen as her men – except the eyes. They stared straight ahead, but there was life in them, and if he was forced to guess, he would say that she was still there, under the surface.

Styke wondered at this show of power. He’d been told that Ka-poel was more powerful than her fellow bone-eyes by several orders of magnitude, but that she was unpracticed. Could an enemy bone-eye do this to Styke? Could she do this to Styke? The answer to that second question was an obvious yes, and it made Styke’s skin crawl.

He considered what Ji-Orz had told him earlier this week, likening the sorcery of a bone-eye to rape. The thought – and all these frozen faces – made Styke uncomfortable.

Jackal still stood outside the clearing, looking like he wanted nothing to do with any of this. Ka-poel barely seemed to notice his presence, and Styke waved him off. “Go back to camp,” he told Jackal. “Tell Ibana that everything is in control here. We’ll be back soon.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when Jackal took off into the darkness.

“Will he be attacked leaving the camp?” Styke asked Ka-poel.

“No,” she answered through the mouth of the commander.

“Do you have control of the whole camp?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Ka-poel said. “I have about a third of them. Enough to remain unmolested.”

Styke walked around the commander once more, then over to Ka-poel. Despite her smugness, he could see she was uneasy. He wondered how much practice she had being up close and personal with the people she controlled. “We didn’t find this camp until almost light this morning,” he said in answer to her earlier question. “I didn’t know you had things under control, so I didn’t want to risk coming during the day.”

Ka-poel pursed her lips, nodding as if this were a satisfactory explanation. “I’m almost done here. We can go soon.”

Styke faced her, leaning over her until their faces were inches apart. “I want to know why you’re here.”

“Answers,” she replied shortly. She was unintimidated by his size, returning his look coolly. Styke reminded himself that he was just as unintimidated by her sorcery. Disconcerted by it, yes. But it did not scare him, and he wanted her to know that.

“What kind of answers?”

That uncertainty that he had seen in her eyes suddenly came to the forefront. She scowled distractedly into the darkness. “The kind that I cannot get from anyone else but a Dynize officer,” she said.

“Such as?”

Ka-poel did not answer. She sighed heavily, and Styke left her to stand in front of the commander. “Is she still in there?” he asked.

“Yes, she is. They all are, to different degrees.”

“I want to talk to her.”

Ka-poel’s eyebrows rose. She shrugged, and a sheen of sweat suddenly sprang to the face of the Dynize commander, her eyes widening further, face tensing. “What do you want?” she snarled in Dynize. This, Styke realized, was her real voice.

“Who are you?” Styke asked in Palo. He repeated the question slowly to make sure she understood.

The sweating grew more severe. He wondered if she was struggling against Ka-poel’s hold on her, and if it was possible to break it. “Can you force her to answer?” he asked Ka-poel, forestalling the answer by holding up a hand to Ka-poel and speaking to the officer directly. “No, wait. I don’t give a shit who you are. Tell me why you’re after me. Didn’t Ka-Sedial think the dragonmen were enough?”

“Dragonmen?” the commander echoed.

“The ones who’ve been following me. They’re not with you?”

The commander let out a hissing breath. “They’re after you? If I had known that, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

“What do you mean? What do you know of them?”

“All I know is that six disgraced dragonmen were freed by Ka-Sedial after Landfall fell. They were given the task of assassinating a Fatrastan officer in order to redeem themselves in the eyes of the emperor. That’s all I was told.”

“So if you’re not with them, who are you?”

The sweating intensified again, her eyes flicking from Styke’s face to Ka-poel and back again. “My name is Lin-Merce,” she said in a low voice. “And I’m here because you killed my sister.”

“You weren’t commanded to come after me?”

“No. I took my command and deserted the army.”

Styke paused. Over the years, he’d had plenty of people come after him for revenge. He was, after all, a fairly prolific killer. But he’d never had someone abandon their post for the express purpose of vengeance. “And the consequences?” he asked.

“I can never go home.” The voice came out in a whisper. Lin-Merce stared into Styke’s eyes with more hatred than he’d ever seen in a human being, and he was suddenly struck by a rare moment of real compassion. She had given up everything for her vengeance. She had ambushed him; she had crossed swords with him. She’d even managed to outsmart him more than once over the last few weeks. Without Ka-poel’s interference, she might have bounced back and still managed to kill Styke.

He could see in her eyes that she knew she was dead. She knew the power a bone-eye was capable of, and she clearly knew by now that Ka-poel was something special. But that hate was still there. Her whole body trembled as she fought for even a fraction of control so that she could strike at the man who’d taken her sister.

He wondered if he would feel the same about his own.

“When did I kill her?” he asked.

“She was with the cavalry you fought north of Landfall.”

“When you first landed?”

“No. After your general fled the city. I was told you ran her down, trampling her beneath the feet of your horse like a dog.”

Styke recalled that battle quite well. Windy River, Flint’s men had called it afterward. The Mad Lancers had attempted a flanking move only to run into a superior force doing the same thing. The battle had been brutal, but the lancers had prevailed. “In battle,” Styke said thoughtfully, “we’re all dogs.”

“She was everything to me,” Lin-Merce whispered.

Styke gave a heavy sigh, walking around Lin-Merce and letting his eyes run over the lines of men sitting obediently, under the thrall of Ka-poel’s sorcery. In another life, Lin-Merce might be him. These men might be Mad Lancers. And Ka-poel might be on the Dynize side.

“I have more to ask her.” The voice came from Lin-Merce’s mouth, but it belonged to Ka-poel.

“Every moment she lives is agony,” Styke replied. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.” Styke stepped swiftly up behind Lin-Merce and took a solid grip on her hair. “You’re the only cavalry commander who’s ever gotten the best of me,” he said in her ear, before drawing his boz knife across her throat. He pulled, going deep, the metal rasping along her spine, and he held her body as the blood soaked them both, until well after she stopped convulsing. Finally, he lowered her to the ground.