Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Lindet lifted her hand, and Vlora leapt forward. “Nuh-uh,” she said warningly. “Give a signal and your Privileged die. I’m not so impulsive that I don’t check the room when I enter, and I’m not the only powder mage in this city.” Out across the rooftops she could sense Norrine and Davd hidden from prying eyes, weapons trained on Lindet’s unseen bodyguards.

“I see,” Lindet said, slowly lowering her hand. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re making an immense mistake.”

Vlora felt an overwhelming sadness take her, an exhaustion as if the weight of a mountain had just been pressed onto her shoulders. “I’ve made a lot of big mistakes, Lindet. This isn’t one of them.” She tilted her head, listening to a sudden chorus of shouts from out in the hall. A moment later Olem put his head back in the room.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said.

“What is it?” Vlora asked, keeping one eye on Lindet.

“The Dynize have launched longboats.”

“How many?”

Olem held up a finger, tilting his head. Half a second later, Vlora heard it, too. A distant, muffled thumping. Boom. Boom-boom. Boom. Vlora knew that sound well, unmistakable to any veteran officer. That was the music of a bombardment.

“All of them,” Olem said. “It’s a full-scale invasion.”

Lindet lifted her chin, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “They didn’t buy my gamble for time.”

“It doesn’t seem that way, does it?” Vlora responded. Her mind ran through a hundred scenarios as she tried to figure out what to do. She’d thrown herself into a fire trying to arrest Lindet, only to realize the fire was on a sinking ship.

“I think,” Lindet said carefully, “that keeping the godstone out of Dynize hands is the most important thing we can do today.”

“What, and forget this ever happened?” Vlora demanded.

“Oh, no. I never forget this kind of thing,” Lindet responded coldly. “But I can overlook it until a future time. Why don’t we finish this conversation after a foreign empire tries to kill us?”

Vlora considered the implications. She had Lindet right now. She should throw her in a cell. But doing so would have Fidelis Jes and the Blackhats breathing down her neck within hours. Lindet would be a formidable enemy once this was over – but Vlora needed an ally more than she feared the future consequences. “I agree,” she said. “I’ll need supplies and backup troops. Arm your Blackhats and send your Privileged to the coast. All of them. ”

“You’ll have them,” Lindet promised.

Vlora left Lindet’s office at a run. Olem was beside her in a moment. “What happened to arresting Lindet?”

“That’s going to have to wait.”

“You left her in power?”

“I don’t think I have a lot of choice right now.”

“And when she stabs us in the back?”

“We’ll deal with that when it happens,” Vlora said. “Send word to Norrine and Davd, we need them down at the fort. For now, we’ve got an invasion to stop.”

Vlora and Olem made it back to Fort Nied among a heavy bombardment of straight shot from the distant Dynize fleet. Cannon fire pounded the eastern slope of the Landfall Plateau, the blasts striking streets and buildings at random, forcing her and her men to shove their way through crowds of fleeing pedestrians, carriages, and carts. It was utter chaos as some sought the safety of the plateau, and others fled downhill toward the docks.

Everyone had turned out in their weekend best to gaze at the Dynize fleet and await news of the negotiations. No one expected a bombardment, and it showed in the terror of the faces of those running, fighting, or crying over the dead and wounded.

Vlora entered the fort, shouting over the whistle and impact detonations of the bombardment. “All guns open fire! Crews six and seven, sink that frigate off the point of the bay. Crews eight through eleven, load grapeshot and sweep the waters in front of the docks. I don’t want any of their men getting close enough to torch the merchantmen at moor. The rest of you focus your fire on that ship of the line right off the southeastern star. Those ships will be inaccurate as pit but if they manage to get too close they’ll be able to blast us to oblivion.”

She took a deep breath, letting her senses soak in the sorcery woven throughout the walls of the fort. Fort Nied had survived the Battle of Landfall, holding out against the might of the Kez fleet. Its protective sorcery could shrug off a pit of a shelling, but she had no idea for how long.

She jogged up the stairs to the top of the eastern wall, gazing first out over the bay, then toward the open ocean, where puffs of smoke rose at regular intervals from every ship in the Dynize fleet. The fire was not focused – straight shot appeared to be landing everywhere from the industrial quarter all the way to the northern marshes – but Vlora doubted the Dynize cared. As far as she could tell, the sudden bombardment had a single purpose: to provide cover for the hundreds of approaching longboats by sowing chaos in Landfall.

“Where’s Taniel?” she demanded of a nearby sergeant.

“Who?” the sergeant asked, looking confused.

“Damn it, nobody even knows…” She grunted in frustration, looking around, casting out her senses for another powder mage or a blood sorcerer. She found only her own three mages and nothing else. “So much for getting some help, you asshole,” she muttered.

Vlora turned her attention to those longboats. They were each loaded with sixty or more Dynize soldiers, rowing hard for land, looking undeterred by the choppy waters that served to foul the aim of their capital ships. They would begin to land within fifteen minutes, and then it would be anyone’s guess what happened next.

A brief terror seized her as she sought her memories and training. No one knew how the Dynize fought. Any engagements would have been more than a hundred years ago, fighting with wheel locks and early flintlocks. She didn’t know if they fired in a line, preferred mass charges, or planned on simply bullying their way into a foothold by brute strength.

“Olem!” she shouted, waving to him from across the length of the fort wall. Olem raised his eyes, then ducked as a cannonball smashed into the top of the wall, ricocheting skyward with enough force to carry it over the entire fort and drop harmlessly into the bay. Olem ran toward her in a crouch. She grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him close enough to shout in his ear over the thunder of her own guns returning fire. “Those longboats are heading toward the north side of the bay. Who do we have out there?”

“Four thousand members of the garrison, and three companies of our own boys.”

Vlora raised her head, looking out at the longboats. She took a sniff of powder, heightening her senses, peering at the Dynize soldiers and willing herself to read their strategy.

She’d never seen soldiers armed quite like this – outside of mannequins in a museum. They wore bright teal coats beneath angled, heavy-looking breastplates and folded steel helms. Their faces were stoic and hard, teeth clenched in gritty determination as they rowed closer and closer to land. A blast of grapeshot tore through one of the longboats, killing a third of the rowers and immediately causing the aft to dip into the water. The soldiers in the nearest boat threw lines to their bailing companions to try to keep them afloat in their heavy armor, but kept rowing hard for shore.

Their muskets looked mass-produced, each of them with the same flared, engraved stock a dozen decades out of fashion in the Nine. Vlora couldn’t see enough detail to examine the flintlock mechanisms, but to her eye they looked just as modern as those of her men.