Брайан Макклеллан - Sins of Empire

Styke could see he had everyone’s undivided attention now. He might be bent and old, but he knew how much soldiers loved a good story. He turned around slowly, pointing his knife at the Riflejacks. “Taniel Two-shot spent three days evening the odds by putting a bullet in the head of every Privileged sorcerer in the Kez ranks. Took out a few officers, too. And a Warden, one of those sorcery-spawned killers. The day of the battle came and our little lot drew up in front of the city. The lancers took the center, the garrison took the wings, and the irregulars came down the river to flank the enemy.” Styke looked at his knife, remembering the close fighting in the Basin, remembering the weight of the armor on his shoulders, the stirrups on his feet, the power of Deshner charging unchallenged across an open field. He felt tears in the corners of his eyes and blinked them away. His next words were quieter, and he could see the strain on the soldiers’ faces as they leaned forward to hear them.

“You’ve never seen anything until you’ve witnessed three hundred lancers, wearing heavy plate you only hear about in legends, ride through enemy grapeshot like it was nothing more than rain. We hit them hard in the center and the garrison came in after us. I broke my lance on a Kez gunner and lost one of my swords fighting a colonel. It was as bloody a melee as I can remember, and we cut our way through to the general’s bodyguard all the way to the rear.

“That’s where I saw Two-shot. He’d brought his men around to flank and opened fire on the enemy rear, sowing confusion. The enemy general broke and ran, and me and a few of my lancers gave chase. What we didn’t know was that we had pursuers of our own, and by the time we caught up with the general, two Wardens had caught up with us.”

There was a chorus of boos. “Yeah,” Styke said. “You know those sorcery-spawned assholes. I bet a few of you have lost friends to them. Well, I lost two of my best to those trash, and I would have gone down myself had Taniel not put a bullet in the head of one of those bastards. He saved my life that day, and for that I’ll always be in his debt.”

Silence lay over the mess hall for several moments before someone shouted, “He saved mine!”

“And mine, too!” someone else shouted.

The whole hall was suddenly filled with the sound of cheers and applause, and Styke felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. It was good to feel that kind of brotherhood again – the respect of soldiers. He turned to climb down from the table, but was stopped by a shout.

“What happened to the other Warden?”

“I once watched a Warden carve through thirty grenadiers before they took him down!” someone else said.

“I saw one get hit by straight shot from an eight-pounder and keep going.”

“Shut up, everyone!” the sergeant shouted. “Yeah, Styke, what happened to him?”

Everything quieted down, the soldiers fixated on Styke. Styke’s attention, though, was drawn toward the door, where a concerned-looking infantryman had rushed over to Lady Flint and was whispering in her ear. Flint stood up, gesturing to Olem, then said across the quiet hall, “There’s a dragonman in the muster yard. He’s looking for you.”

Styke’s hand fell to the handle of the bone knife at his belt, then he drew his own and got down from the table. “Celine,” Styke said. “Stay here.”

Styke joined Flint outside the mess, where the white-knuckled grip on her sword gave away the anger behind a stony, expressionless facade.

The dragonman sat in the dirt just inside the fort gates, ignoring the guards and their lowered bayonets like a cat might ignore squawking birds that he may later kill at his pleasure. He wore a heavy canvas duster, under which Styke could clearly see the rippled, dark green swamp dragon hide. A pair of bone axes lay on the ground beside him, discarded as if unimportant. Styke felt a tingle on his spine at the sight of the legendary gear, and wondered if he’d made an enormous mistake.

“So,” Flint said through a clenched jaw, “you weren’t spinning a yarn, were you? These bastards really are in Landfall.”

Styke resisted the urge to let out an I told you so and instead nodded.

“What’s he doing in my camp?”

Styke looked down at her grip on her sword. Unless he was mistaken, she was more than ready to handle this herself. “I invited him.”

“You what ?”

“I’m old. I’m crippled. I’m not chasing this bastard around Landfall. I told him if he wanted to get his knife back he had to come get it.”

“What knife? You’ll forgive me for being annoyed, but the last one of them I saw had just carved up forty of my men. I’m going to put a bullet in his head.”

Styke put a hand gently on Lady Flint’s arm. “This is… personal.”

“You’re damn right it is.” Flint took a step forward.

“No,” Styke said, pulling her back by the shoulder.

“If you lay a hand on –”

“If you try to keep me from doing my job,” Styke growled, “you’ll have to go through me and then the dragonman. You gave me a task. Let me finish it.” He didn’t wait for an answer, but turned and limped toward the dragonman, stopping in the middle of the muster yard. He rubbed his leg, hoping the horngum would keep him limber enough for a fight.

The dragonman watched him for a few moments, lounging on his elbow like he was having a country picnic. He finally got to his feet, shrugged out of his duster, and collected his bone axes. The swamp dragon armor comprised a breastplate, leaving toned arms bare, and a skirt of leather strips that went down to his knees. His legs and arms were crisscrossed with black tattoos, giving an outfit that might have looked silly on another man a particularly sinister effect.

Styke took the bone knife from his belt and held it up. “Kushel, was it?”

Kushel’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

“You have two ways to get your knife back,” Styke said. “You can either tell me what these godstone things are that you’re looking for, and what designs you Dynize pricks have for Landfall, or you can fight me for it.”

Kushel openly scoffed. “You know a lot more than when we last spoke, Ben Styke. What makes you think I plan on letting anyone in this compound leave here alive?”

“Your friend up in the Basin only took out forty of Flint’s men. Impressive for one man, I’ll grant you, but you think you’re going to handle their pissed-off friends?” Behind him, Styke could hear the soldiers pouring out of the mess hall and lining up to watch the confrontation. “Tell me what I want to hear and you’ll walk out of here without a scuff on that pretty armor.” Styke thought back on those Palo kids at Mama Sender’s, about how they were too stupid to back down in the face of a man clearly unafraid of being outnumbered. He wondered if he was making the same mistake.

Probably.

Kushel’s eyes made a slow, mechanical circuit of the yard, noting guards in their towers and up on the wall, and lingering on Lady Flint before finally coming to rest on Styke. Styke recognized the gears turning in Kushel’s head. He’d made the same calculations on a thousand different occasions. Can I walk out of this alive? The slight upturn at the corners of his mouth said that he’d decided he could.

What an arrogant prick.

“Fight?” Styke asked. “You can pry this out of my old, crippled hand.” He gripped the bone knife with his mangled hand and his boz knife with his good, and put his weight back on his right leg. He’d barely fallen into a stance when the dragonman suddenly leapt forward.

Styke had fought a lot of quick men in his time, from duelists to bona fide assassins. But he’d never seen someone cover twenty feet in the blink of an eye like that. Kushel’s axes rose and fell, the left swinging down from overhead, the right swooping in for Styke’s belly.