Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

“Down!” Olem suddenly shouted, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving them both to the ground behind the protection of the wall. Vlora’s sorcerous senses flared, and a half a second later fire swept the top of the wall in a hot, angry column that scattered and charred two gun crews.

“Privileged!” someone shouted.

Vlora got to her feet, peering over the top of the wall, opening her third eye. She found the Privileged within moments – a woman, standing in the prow of one of the longboats about a quarter of a mile out from the shoreline. Her gloved hands waved over her head, fingers twitching and arms rising and falling like she was directing an opera.

Fire slammed into the north side of Fort Nied with the strength of a dozen cannonballs, engulfing crew eleven entirely. The Privileged suddenly jerked and toppled onto the soldiers behind her, crimson blossoming on her forehead. Farther down the wall, Vlora saw Norrine lower her rifle, blowing smoke from the end and immediately reloading. Vlora gave her an appreciative nod.

“There’s more!” Norrine shouted.

Vlora sensed them, too. At least twenty Privileged, all of them out scattered among the longboats. Some of them were harder to get a fix on – obviously hiding themselves in the Else – while others seemed to note their fallen comrade and began to surround themselves with walls of hardened air.

“Olem, how many Privileged does the garrison have?”

“Two.”

“Two?” Vlora demanded. “What good is two Privileged going to do against that ?”

“We do have powder mages,” Olem responded, gesturing to Norrine.

“Yeah, four of us. They have a whole bloody fleet. Send a message to Lindet. Tell her we need her personal cabal down here now or this fight might not last the evening.”

As if to emphasize her point, there was a chorus of screams from the mainland as shards of ice appeared over the marketplace at the mouth of the Hadshaw, raining down among the civilians there. Vlora swore, turning to look back toward the longboats approaching the end of the bay. “Take Davd and an extra company. Reinforce the garrison out on the point. Tell Davd to focus his fire on the Privileged. Go!”

Vlora watched Olem spring down the stairs into the muster yard. He grabbed Davd from his spot at a gun port and within the minute he and a company of Riflejacks raced on foot down the causeway connecting Fort Nied to the land.

Vlora snatched the arm of a messenger. “Get replacement gun crews up here, and make sure one of our Knacked engineers is keeping an eye on the sorcery in these walls. I don’t want the nasty surprise of their Privileged suddenly punching through this rock.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

With her back to the wall, she lifted herself up to look sidelong out at the approaching longboats. The Privileged were gradually coming within range, raining sorcery down on the fort and bay. They, like the ships they were coming from, would get more accurate as they drew closer. She took a deep breath and reached out with her senses. Farther, farther, and yet farther still, stretching out over a thousand yards to one of the longboats with a Privileged on the prow.

With a thought, she detonated the powder of all the soldiers in the longboat. It exploded in a hundred smaller detonations, tossing flesh and wood for fifty yards in all directions. She felt the kickback from triggering powder deep in her bones, rattling her as if she was standing near the explosions.

It was an effective way to destroy a longboat, but she couldn’t keep it up forever.

She wondered how many of the Dynize Privileged had ever encountered powder mages in a battle. She couldn’t take them all out by igniting powder, but she didn’t need to. “You!” she yelled, pointing at a nearby private. “Get me my rifle!”

Styke rode at the head of the column of a little over thirteen hundred cavalry, the flags of the Mad Lancers and the Riflejacks flying in tandem from a pair of lances tied to the saddles of Jackal and an Adran sergeant whose name Styke had forgotten. Major Gustar and Ibana rode on either side of him – Ibana keeping her head tilted to one side, listening through her one good ear as Gustar gave Styke a rundown on his new command.

Styke only half-listened, his eyelids drooping as a full night’s ride to Jedwar and back threatened to topple him from his saddle. His legs were practically numb now, and he gripped his saddle horn to remain steady, laying a calming hand on Amrec’s neck. Behind him in the saddle, Celine dozed peacefully, her arms wrapped around Styke’s stomach.

Gustar suddenly fell silent, and Styke looked up to find Ibana nodding to the road in front of him. He felt an involuntary twitch at the corner of his lip.

Blackhats. At least two hundred of them.

The Blackhats were heavily armed with blunderbusses and muskets. About half of them marched, the other half on horseback, with three heavy wagons among them. Styke looked over his shoulder at Jackal and jerked his head. Jackal grinned and rode past him.

“We going to call a halt?” Gustar asked.

“We don’t halt for them,” Ibana said, a note of disgust in her voice.

The column continued on as Jackal rode on ahead, reaching the Blackhats a hundred yards or so out. Styke could see one of the Blackhats look up at the banner, look back at Jackal, then take a good, hard gander at the approaching cavalry. He shouted something over his shoulder and slowly the Blackhats cleared the road.

By the time Styke reached the Blackhats they were waiting by the ditch, staring daggers at Styke and the banner that flew above Jackal’s head. Styke directed Amrec off the side of the road, letting the rest of the column continue on as he approached the Blackhat with a Silver Rose dangling from his neck.

“You know who I am?” Styke asked.

The Silver Rose raised his chin in defiance. “Pretty good idea.” He put on a good face, but Styke could see the fear in his eyes.

“Good. What are your orders?”

“None of your damn business.”

“What are your orders regarding me?” Styke reframed the question.

Styke could see the “Sod off” on the tip of the Silver Rose’s tongue, but a glance at the column of cavalry and he seemed to think better of it. “We’ve been ordered to ignore you. Bigger problems, it seems.”

“Well,” Styke responded, “glad your asshole of a boss can find something better to obsess over.” He turned Amrec around and headed back toward the front of his column.

Behind him, the Silver Rose shouted out, “You have the road, lancer! But the grand master wants you to know this isn’t over.”

“No,” Styke muttered to himself. “It isn’t.”

He caught back up with Ibana, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, resisting the urge to turn around and ride the Blackhats down. “Where are they going?” she asked.

“Didn’t ask.”

“Might have been a good idea.”

Styke made a sour face. “They’re Blackhats. They can go right to the pit for all I care.”

The road carried them toward the distant Landfall Plateau, taking them over numberless marsh-fed rivers draining into the ocean and then up onto a rocky outcropping with thirty-foot cliffs plunging steep into the sea. They reached the top of these cliffs and Gustar suddenly turned over his shoulder, calling for a halt.

Ibana’s head jerked around toward him. “Only the colonel calls a halt,” she snapped.

Gustar ignored her. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Gustar produced a looking glass, raising it to one eye and gazing toward the Landfall Plateau. He scanned the horizon, while Styke shared a puzzled glance with Ibana and strained to hear anything.