Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

She’d been accompanying Taniel Two-shot at the time and, if Flint was right, still was.

He took a step back, hand going instinctively to touch Amrec’s neck. The big horse nipped at his ear, then bumped him with its nose. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Styke asked. “Taniel’s girl. I remember you from Planth. Ka-poel.”

Her smile widened.

Styke let out a shaky breath. Sorcery had never frightened him particularly. What unnerved him back at Planth, and here now, was Ka-poel’s confidence. She held herself like someone seven feet tall, head high, shoulders squared, daring the world to try its worst. “What do you want?” he asked.

Ka-poel remained silent, studying him, then Celine, and finally Amrec.

“Did Taniel get my note?” Styke asked. “I guess I left it for Tampo, but the two of them are the same, aren’t they?”

She stuck her bottom lip out, nodding as if impressed, spreading her hands toward him. Very good. She mimed writing, then reading, and pointed at him again with a nod.

“So he did get it.”

Another nod.

“So he knows I quit? I appreciate what he did for me, but I’ve got other obligations now. If we cross paths again, I’ll try to do him right, but for now…”

Ka-poel snorted. She folded her arms and shifted her stance, putting her weight on her back foot. It almost made Styke laugh, but he could still smell the rotting flesh of her sorcery.

“I suppose you think that’s not good enough?” he asked.

She gave him a look that was less than impressed, then made a flat-handed gesture that he didn’t quite understand. She reached into her duster pocket and removed an envelope, crossing the space between them to hand it over. Styke eyed her warily, breaking the seal with his thumb, then running his eyes across the writing. It was written in Adran, and said, You still owe me a favor. I intend on collecting it. – T

Styke handed the letter over his shoulder. “Put this in my saddlebags,” he told Celine. Taniel still expected something, but seemed willing to hold on to that debt until later. “What’s his game?” Styke asked Ka-poel. “He’s playing long, isn’t he? Huh. Never mind that. What’s your game?”

Ka-poel gave him a cocky smile, chest rising and falling in a silent chuckle. Styke rubbed his nose, not enjoying the smell of her sorcery at all. She pointed at him, then at her palm, then at herself, lips moving silently. Styke didn’t like the implication.

“What the pit is that supposed to mean?”

She pointed over his shoulder, and it took him a moment to realize she was pointing at the note he’d just handed to Celine.

“Are you saying I owe you a favor?”

She mimed shooting a pistol at him.

Part of him wanted to wring her neck, then boot her down the road. The other part, the part dedicated wholly to self-preservation, said that would be a very bad idea. “You’re a funny little thing, you know that?”

She grinned and mouthed the words I know . She pulled her hand out of her pocket and, in a quick move, ran a knife across her left thumb. Styke shied away, but she was quicker than he’d expected and stepped over to him in a flash, reaching up on her tiptoes to smear the rising well of crimson across his forehead. He grabbed her by the shoulder, shoving her away, using the other hand to wipe at his forehead. She danced out of his reach, and he looked at the blood now on his hand and his face.

“What the pit was that for?” he demanded. “I don’t like sorcery, girl, and I won’t stand for –” His words were arrested by the sound of hoofbeats, and Styke took Amrec by the bridle, head tilted to listen to the approach of the riders. Blackhats? Or Mad Lancers?

Ka-poel gave him one last smile and slipped around the corner of the building. He considered going after her but had no interest in running headfirst into a group of Blackhats. Instead he hunkered in the shade of the building and rubbed at his forehead, trying to get all the blood off. He listened to the hoofbeats grow louder, and waited for them to pass him by.

They did not.

He forgot the blood. The hoofbeats were coming around the outskirts of the village, and it sounded like a lot of them. He pulled his knife, ready to throw himself at the first person to come around the corner, and bit off a yell as the first rider rounded it.

Ibana rode on a white stallion almost as big as Amrec, saddle weighed down with carbines, pistols, and cavalry swords. She was followed by others on horseback – Gamble, Sunin, Jackal – all his officers and then more, falling in as Ibana pulled up in front of him. They kept coming, rank upon rank, spreading out in a fan, until he could no longer count all of them. Well over two hundred cavalry, all heavily armed on stout warhorses and wearing the faded yellow cavalry jackets and black pants they’d been issued at the beginning of the Fatrastan War for Independence.

Sunin’s uniform was too big, Gamble’s too small, but each and every one of them had it. They even had their lances, tied to their saddles and waving yellow streamers in the air. The sight of it overwhelmed him, tears threatening his vision. He sheathed his knife, barely daring to breathe, mouth open like a gawking schoolboy.

Ibana dismounted, fetching a carbine, pistol, and heavy cavalry sword from her saddle and coming over to Styke.

“You came,” Styke said, unable to think of any other words.

Ibana rolled her eyes, thrusting the bundle of weapons into his arms. “Of course I did, you big fool. We all did. You’re Mad Ben Styke, and without you we aren’t the Mad Lancers.”

Styke looked over her shoulder at his old officers, and all the familiar faces gathered behind them. He remembered seeing some of them that night at Sweetwallow, but the memories were hazy and he hadn’t truly believed they’d all come to rescue him. Yet here they were.

The faces stared back at him, expectant, and it took him several moments to realize they were waiting for him to say something. He shook his head and glanced at Ibana, wondering what she told them about their current mission. “We’re not going to fight the Blackhats,” he said, raising his voice.

He was greeted by silence. No mutters. No scowls. Just soldiers waiting for their orders.

“I never much fancied us as mercenaries,” he said. “But the Mad Lancers always rode to protect Fatrasta, and Fatrasta, in case you noticed, doesn’t really want us right now.” Some of the riders exchanged looks, no doubt remembering what they’d lost at the hands of the Blackhats the last few days. “The only one who wants us is Lady Flint. She’s been hired to protect Landfall from that Dynize fleet sitting out beyond the bay. It may come to a scrap. It may not. Regardless, she’s going to pay us, feed us, and kit us up. She’s also dead set on keeping us and the Blackhats from each other’s throats. I’ve made my peace with that, and if any of you have a problem you can talk to me about it, or you can turn around and ride back to Landfall. That’s up to you.”

“We don’t need any protecting from the Blackhats!” someone in the back shouted.

Styke searched for the source of the voice, but couldn’t find it. “Like pit we don’t,” he said. “But I don’t mind having them off our asses long enough for us to become the Mad Lancers again. We’re old, we’re rusty. Pit, I’m healed up a bit but I’m still a damn cripple. I’d rather ride a free man as part of the Landfall garrison than skulk around in the shadows waiting to get overwhelmed. Now, like I said, if you have a problem no one will hold it against you if you go. Ya hear?”

The gathered cavalry responded with a stoic silence. Leather creaked; horses shifted and whinnied. Sunin, looking almost ninety, her hair white and wispy, skin as wrinkled as a prune, leaned over in her saddle and spat a wad of chew into the grass.