Taniel saw red in the corner of his vision. His mind’s eye saw Ka-poel’s body in the street, her neck bent at the wrong angle, lifeless eyes staring into the sky.
The Warden suddenly sagged. Taniel made a fist with his hand, pulled it back…
And stopped in horror. His hand was covered in the Warden’s black blood. Between his fingers, the flesh still clinging to it, he held one of the Warden’s thick ribs. He looked down. The Warden, collapsed, stared back up at him. His coat was soaked through with blood.
Taniel saw the vision of Ka-poel’s lifeless body again in his mind and rammed the Warden’s own rib through its eye.
He stood for several moments, gasping in ragged breaths. Something touched him and he nearly screamed, his body was so tense. It was Ka-poel. She wasn’t dead. She put one small hand on his, heedless of the Warden’s blood.
“I’ve never seen a powder mage do that,” Fell said, breathless, as she approached them through the empty street. The front of her secretary’s smock was covered in black Warden’s blood, as well as in some of her own. One cheek was red and swollen, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Where’s the other Warden?” Taniel asked.
“He ran,” Fell said.
“You’re not just an undersecretary,” Taniel said, remembering the long stiletto Fell had fearlessly jammed into a Warden’s throat. “Wardens don’t run.”
“He did when he saw what you did to his friend,” Fell said. “I kept him busy until then.” She sniffed. “You’re not an ordinary powder mage.”
Taniel looked down at his hands. He’d punched through the Warden’s skin and ripped out its rib. No one could do that. Not even he could, in the deepest powder trance. Then again, maybe a god killer could. Something had happened to him up on South Pike.
“I guess not.” He looked around at the carnage. The closest people were over a hundred paces away, watching and pointing. He heard Adran police blowing their whistles as they grew close.
“This was a trap.” Taniel said. “A Kez trap. How are they in the city? I thought Tamas rooted out the traitor Charlemund and his Kez accomplice.”
“He did,” Fell said. She seemed troubled.
Taniel fingered a powder charge and closed his eyes. Back in a powder trance. It felt incredible. His senses were alive. He could smell every scent on the air, hear every sound in the street.
His heart still thundered from the fight.
“I’m leaving,” he said, taking Ka-poel by the hand.
“Ricard…” Fell began.
“Can go to the pit,” Taniel said. “I’m going south. If Tamas is truly dead, and the Kez are making Wardens out of powder mages, then the army will need me.”
Tamas rode beside Olem at the head of the Seventh Brigade. The column stretched out behind them, twisting along the Great Northern Highway as it rose and fell through the foothills of the Adran Mountains. His men were already dusty and tired, and the journey to get back into Adro had barely begun.
They marched northwest, unsheltered by Mihali’s sorcerous fog that had allowed them to escape the Kez army four days before. To the east, the Adran Mountain Range cut into the sky with craggy, snow-topped peaks, while the sweltering summer heat beat down on Tamas’s army. To the south and west, the Amber Expanse – the breadbasket of the Nine, and the source of the Kez’s great wealth – spread out as far as the eye could see.
Tamas would have preferred to march on foot beside his men. But his leg still had a twinge to it, and he needed to be able to get up and down the column quickly. His orders had seen many officers’ horses redistributed to the pickets, joining his two hundred cavalry in scouting.
“We’re running out of food,” Olem said from horseback beside Tamas.
It wasn’t the first time Olem had mentioned rations, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“I know,” Tamas said. His men had their basic kit with a week’s worth of road rations. No camp followers, no supply train. They’d marched double-time for four days now, and he had no doubt that some of his men had already finished their reserve against orders. “Give the order for half rations,” Tamas said.
“We already did, sir.” Olem chewed nervously on the butt of a cigarette.
“Halve it again.”
Tamas looked west. It was infuriating. Millions of acres of farmland within sight, seemingly within a stone’s throw. The reality was they couldn’t be any farther away. The closest crops might be eight miles distant, without roads to reach them. No way to traverse the foothills and get down on the plain, forage with over ten thousand soldiers, and get back up to the road without losing a full two days’ worth of marching.
It was their lead on the Kez armies that Tamas could not risk, even for food.
“Put together more foraging parties,” Tamas said. “Twenty men each. Tell them not to range more than a single mile off the Northern Highway.”
“We’ll have to drop our pace,” Olem said. He spit out his cigarette butt and reached in his pocket for another, only to examine it for a moment and slip it back in his jacket. He muttered something under his breath.
“What’s that?” Tamas asked.
“I said I’m going to run out of cigarettes sooner or later.”
Cigarettes were the least of Tamas’s worries. “The men are exhausted.” He turned in his saddle to look back along the column. “I can’t push them double-time another day. The only way they’ve been able to go so fast for so long is thanks to the residuals of Mihali’s food.”
Olem saluted and headed down the column.
Tamas wished that the god had accompanied them on the ill-fated flanking maneuver. He ran his eyes over the faces of the men of the Seventh and Ninth. For the most part, his men met his gaze. These were hard men. His very best. They’d done twenty-five miles a day for four days. Kez infantry averaged twelve.
He caught sight of a rider coming up along the column. The figure looked huge, even on a cavalry charger.
Gavril.
Tamas tipped his hat to his brother-in-law as he came up alongside.
Gavril wiped the sweat from his face with one long sleeve and took a few gulps from his canteen. He’d discarded his grungy Mountainwatcher’s furs on the heat of the high plains and wore only his faded Watchmaster’s vest and a pair of dark-blue pants from an old cavalry uniform.
He grunted a hello. No salute from Gavril. Tamas would have been surprised to get one.
“What news?” Tamas asked.
“We’ve spotted the Kez,” Gavril said. No “sir” either.
Tamas felt his heart leap into his throat. He knew the Kez were on his trail. It would be stupid not to realize that. But for four days they’d not seen any sign of the Kez armies.
“And?” Tamas lifted his own canteen to his lips.
“At least two brigades of Kez cavalry,” Gavril said.
Tamas spit water all down the front of him. “Did you say brigades?”
“Brigades.”
Tamas let out a shaky breath. “How far?”
“I’d guess fifty-five miles.”
“Did you get close enough for an accurate count?”
“No.”
“How hard are they pushing?”
“Can’t be sure. Kez cavalry will make forty miles a day on the open plain if they push hard. An army of that size, and in the foothills – twenty-five, maybe thirty miles a day.”
Which meant that if Tamas allowed his men rest and forage, the Kez would catch them in seven days. If Tamas was lucky.
“In six days,” Gavril said, “you’ll hit the edge of the Hune Dora Forest. The terrain will be too steep for cavalry to surround us. They’ll be able to dog our heels, but nothing more. Not till we reach the Fingers of Kresimir.”
Tamas closed his eyes, trying to remember the geography of northern Kez. This was Gavril’s old haunt, back when he was Jakola of Pensbrook, the most famous womanizer in all of Kez.
“The Fingers of Kresimir,” Tamas said. He knew the location, but it sounded familiar for more than just its mark on a map…