“Line fire,” Taniel said. “They’ll fire that shot, then the next before they charge. You wait…”
The second volley sounded. Taniel counted to three before he let the boy back up and came up himself, ready to fire.
The Kez charged with a mighty roar, their bayonets leveled.
“Fire at will!” came the call.
Taniel took a deep breath of the smoke from the powder. It made his head buzz, his blood pump faster. His hands weren’t shaking from mala withdrawal anymore. His body had found something so much better. He poured a bit of powder onto the back of his hand and snorted.
The Kez reached the bottom of the earthworks and began the steep climb. Taniel rose up high enough to fire down at them, when he spotted a Privileged about a hundred yards away with her hands twitching up sorcery. Taniel adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger.
The woman went down in a spray of blood, clutching at her throat.
Kez infantry poured over the earthworks like a flood breaching a levy. Taniel thrust his bayonet into a man’s stomach, cracked another soldier across the face with the butt of his rifle. He leapt onto the rise to keep them from coming over, swinging and stabbing.
He barely heard the call for retreat.
“Hold!” he screamed, knocking a grenadier off the earthworks with his rifle stock. “We can hold!”
The young soldier who had been beside him went down with a bayonet through his chest. Taniel leapt off the bulwark to his aid, skewering the Kez infantryman like a side of beef.
The boy might die from a wound like that. It had gone straight between his ribs – likely through a lung. If so, he’d drown in his own blood.
But Taniel couldn’t leave him there. The Adran soldiers were retreating.
“Hold! Hold, you bloody bastards!”
Taniel was almost alone on the earthworks. The boy lay at Taniel’s feet. The first soldier he’d spoken to lay against the rear of the earthworks, dead eyes fixed blindly on the sky. Major Doravir was gone.
He reached out and felt the powder of the Kez infantry. A thought was all it took to light it. He used his mind to warp the blast away from him and away from the earthworks. The sound rang in his ears, sending him to his knees. Every ounce of powder within a dozen yards went up.
Powder smoke rose in the air, and charred corpses littered the earthworks. Groans and cries for mercy rose from the wounded. Men farther down the line had stopped their fighting to stare at Taniel. He took a step toward them, going to help hold the earthworks at the next spot, when he realized he couldn’t see an infantryman in a blue jacket on his feet anywhere.
It was just a sea of sandy uniforms. The Kez had taken the earthworks.
The boy was still alive and coughing blood. Taniel slung his rifle over his shoulder and grasped the young soldier under the arms, pulling him backward toward the Adran camp.
It was a long haul, half carrying the boy over a hundred paces to the next set of earthworks. Most of the Kez ignored him. A few potshots skipped off the dirt nearby, but the Kez were too busy securing the new ground. They’d level the earthworks and move back to their own camp, where they’d push their artillery forward another hundred paces and prepare for tomorrow’s charge.
Exhausted, his head still buzzing from the powder trance, Taniel reached the Adran army. “See to him,” Taniel said when a surgeon came running. The surgeon balked and her eyes were wide.
“He’s dead, sir.”
“Just bloody see to him! Make him comfortable!”
“No, sir. He’s not just dying. He’s dead already.”
Taniel dropped to his knee beside the young soldier and put his fingers on the lad’s throat. No pulse. He used the same two fingers to close the young soldier’s eyes.
“Damn it,” he said.
The surgeon got on her knees next to him.
“I’m fine!” He pushed away her fingers.
“Your arm, sir.”
Taniel looked down. His uniform had been torn through, leaving a bloody, jagged cut along his left arm. He’d not even felt it.
“Surgeon,” a voice said, “tend to someone who’s worth it.” Major Doravir stalked toward them, her brown hair wild and her cheeks black with powder burns. Her jacket was gone, her white shirt stained with sweat and blood.
Taniel got to his feet. “Major Doravir,” he said. “Didn’t have the decency to die with your men, eh?”
Her backhand jerked his head to the side. He touched his cheek. That had been hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Do that again and I’ll break your hand.”
“I was the last one away from the front on the retreat,” Major Doravir snarled.
“No,” Taniel said. “I was. We could have held that bulwark. Instead we lost ground and who knows how many hundred men.”
“I obey orders. You don’t. No more warnings, Captain. I’ll see you hanged.” The major spun on her heel and marched off, shouting for the provosts.
Taniel rubbed at his chin and caught Ka-poel watching him from a distance. She headed toward the battlefield, where Kez soldiers were leveling the earthworks and civilians from both sides were already collecting the dead and wounded.
“Where the pit are you going?” Taniel shouted.
She pointed toward the battlefield and held up a doll. Damned girl. That wouldn’t work like it did on Kresim Kurga. There were too many enemies here, and not enough dolls.
Taniel glanced toward Major Doravir. She was speaking to two soldiers with the insignia of Adran provosts on their shoulders. Military police. Doravir pointed to Taniel.
He decided it was a good time to make himself scarce.
Chapter 13
Tamas climbed out of his tent and finished buttoning up the front of his uniform. He adjusted the gold epaulets on his shoulders and he wondered if they’d have rain that day. The sky over the Adran Mountains to the east had just barely taken on a light halo, while the rest of the world slept on in darkness.
Tamas gazed at that slight brightening and wondered how things went on the other side of the mountains. Budwiel had fallen. The Kez were no doubt pushing their way up Surkov’s Alley. Tamas hoped that his generals could handle the defense. He grimaced to himself. With Budwiel gone, the fight could only go in Kez’s favor. His men needed him. His country needed him. His son needed him. He had to get across these damned mountains.
He could hear rustling in the camp, and the low whistles of sergeants as they kicked their men from their beds. The smell of smoke came from cookfires that no doubt had little over them.
Olem sat beside Tamas’s tent. His forage cap was pulled over his eyes, his legs propped on a log in front of him, and his hands thrust deep in his pockets. The pose was an affected one. Olem’s Knack eliminated the need for sleep.
“Quiet night?” Tamas asked, squatting beside the small, smoldering fire and rubbing his hands together. The heat of the summer didn’t touch the early morning, not in foothills like this. He poked the coals with a twig, then tossed in the twig. No more than ash. There wasn’t much to burn on the high steppe.
“Little bit of rustling, sir. Some grumbling, too.” Olem sniffed as if the grumbling were no more than an annoyance.
His men were hungry. Tamas knew it, and it pained him.
“I put a stop to it, sir,” Olem said.
“Good.”
Tamas heard soft footfalls on the dirt. Olem shifted, and his hand emerged just a little from his coat. He had a pistol.
A carcass thumped to the ground beside Tamas. He started.
“Elk, sir,” Vlora said as she squatted down next to him.
Tamas felt a little spell of relief. Meat.
“Any more?” he asked, his voice a little too hopeful.