He felt a cold tingle down his spine. The Kez thought they’d be able to sack Budwiel today. They would secure the walls with their infantry and then signal the reserves into the city to burn, rape, and plunder. Tamas had seen them do the same in Gurla. If they breached the walls, it would be a horror beyond imagining.
To think they’d do it in a single day was beyond optimistic on the part of the Kez commanders.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“Signal at the ready,” Tamas said. The flagger beside him waved out the order. Tamas could see the eagerness in the man’s face. The Seventh and Ninth were ready. They’d tear into the Kez flank with gusto. Tamas felt his blood begin to rise. “Wait… wait…”
Tamas blinked. What was that?
He put his looking glass to his eye. When he focused on the fields directly before Budwiel, he saw dozens of twisted men running toward the walls. They wore black coats and bowler caps. Wardens.
But these Wardens… Tamas swallowed. He’d never seen anyone run this fast, not even one of those sorcery-spawned killers. They covered the last few hundred yards to the wall with the speed of a racing Thoroughbred.
In his glass, Tamas could see the wall commanders bellowing. Muskets opened fire. Not a single Warden went down. They reached the base of the wall and leapt, clinging to its vertical face like insects and scurrying to the top. In a flash, they were among the gun crews, brandishing swords and pistols.
Wait, pistols? Wardens didn’t carry pistols. Privileged had an aversion to gunpowder, and they were the ones who created the sorcery-spawned monsters.
Small explosions rocked the top of the walls. Bodies fell from the fortifications, and one by one, the cannons ceased firing.
Tamas rocked back on his heels. What was happening? How could those Wardens have gained the wall so easily? He smacked his looking glass in his hand. Without the cannons to keep them at bay, the Kez infantry would take the walls easily. They wouldn’t have the threat of artillery at their backs to keep them from turning to face Tamas’s brigades head-on.
“Sir,” the flagger said, “should I signal the attack?”
“No,” Tamas said. The word came out a strangled cry.
He continued to watch as the infantry reached the base of the wall. Ladders went up, and by the time the tan-and-green uniforms reached the top of the wall, Tamas could not see a single Adran soldier left standing. The Wardens had cut them all down.
“Sir.” Olem appeared at Tamas’s side. He drew his own looking glass to his eye. “What… what happened?” Tamas could hear his own disbelief reflected in Olem’s voice.
“Wardens,” Tamas choked out. He wanted to spit, but his mouth was too dry. They were soon joined by officers of the Seventh and Ninth. They all looked out at the battle together.
Kez infantry flooded the walls. Minutes later the front gates were thrown open. The Kez cavalry charged up the road toward the gates.
“We must attack, sir,” said a major whose name Tamas couldn’t recall.
Tamas whirled to his officers when he heard mutters of agreement.
“It’s suicide,” he said. His voice cracked. “Budwiel is lost.”
“We could salvage the day,” another voice said.
Tamas ground his teeth. He agreed with them. By god, he agreed with them. “Perhaps,” he said. “Maybe we would be able to rout the tail end of the Kez army. We could destroy the reserves and set fire to the Kez camp. But then we’d be caught out on the empty plain, easily surrounded, and cut off from reinforcement.”
Silence. These officers were brave, but they weren’t fools. They could see he was right.
“Then what do we do?”
Tamas heard a boom echo out from Budwiel. Smoke and dust erupted from the base of the West Pillar. He yelled for a scout to check the tunnels, but already knew what had happened. The catacombs. Someone had set off an explosion inside of them, cutting off Tamas’s entry back into Budwiel.
“I’ve been betrayed again,” he whispered. More loudly, “We keep our backs to the mountain.” He tried to think of the closest Mountainwatch pass into Adro. It would be a nightmare to move ten thousand men over any of the passes. “We march toward the pass at Alvation. Tell your men.”
General Cethal of the Ninth Brigade caught Tamas’s arm.
“Alvation?” he asked. “That will take over a month of hard marching.”
“Maybe two,” Tamas said. “And we’ll be pursued.” He eyed Budwiel. Smoke rose from the city. “We have no choice.”
His stomach turned. Many of his men had family in the city, camp followers of the army. The Kez would put the city to the torch. The same fear techniques they’d used in Gurla. His men would hate him for marching away while the city burned, but it was their only hope for survival. He swore to get them back to Adro – to deliver them their vengeance.
Chapter 8
Adamat waited just a few shops down from the tailor’s. He sat on a stoop, a newspaper in his hands. His disguise today was younger, with black hair neatly greased to one side of his head in the latest style of coffee shop owners. He wore pressed brown trousers and a dress shirt with cuffs rolled up to his elbows. A matching brown jacket lay across his knee. Before he’d left that morning a quick application of Dortmoth whale ointment had given his skin a youthful glow. A false black mustache and tinted spectacles hid his face.
Adamat watched over the top of his newspaper as traffic moved through the street between shops and cafés. For two days he’d watched Haime’s shop. It was nearly three o’clock on the third day and he had yet to lay eyes on Lord Vetas.
His position gave him the perfect view of Haime’s shop. He could see not only the exit and approach clearly but through the front window and nearly everything that went on inside as well. Men came and went from the shop. There were very few women. At around two thirty a trio of big, hard-looking men entered the shop. Adamat was sure they were Vetas’s goons, but when they exited just a few minutes later, he could still see Vetas’s jacket still hanging on the mannequin.
Adamat half read the articles in the newspaper. The standoff in Budwiel continued, though since the news was three or four days old, anything could have happened.
The paper reported that a sudden loss of income had caused Lady Winceslav to disband two of the eight brigades of the Wings of Adom. That could only bode ill for the war effort. Four more brigades held position north of Budwiel, while the last two stood guard at the smoldering remains of South Pike, should the Kez army try a crossing of the volcanic wasteland.
As Adamat began to read through a story on the effect of the war on Adran economics, the movement of Haime’s door across the street caught his eye. He looked up in time to see a dress disappear through the door. A moment later a woman appeared in the window and began to speak with Haime.
She was a young woman with auburn curls. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen and, though young, she wouldn’t be mistaken for a mere girl. She had a confident bearing with a straight back and raised chin, and the red evening dress she wore looked tailored for her figure.
Haime turned to Vetas’s jacket and gestured. He waved his hand up and down the jacket and then motioned to the bottom corner, where Adamat had noticed the repaired rip. The woman nodded and Haime took the jacket down and wrapped it carefully in tissue paper.
The woman emerged a moment later with a brown box under her arm. She looked both ways, and Adamat resisted the urge to duck behind his newspaper. Look casual, he reminded himself. He didn’t know her face. She most certainly did not know his.
She headed west down the street. Adamat climbed to his feet, folding the newspaper and tucking it under his arm, and picking up his cane.
He followed her at a respectable distance. The key to trailing someone was to stay far enough back not to be noticed but close enough that he wouldn’t lose her if she deviated from her course suddenly. It helped to know whether she suspected that she was being followed. Adamat thought not, but one could never be too careful.