Tamas looked up at the buzzards. He didn’t want to talk about them. He’d seen far too many on far too many battlefields. “I haven’t seen you smoke for a week,” he said.
“Too bloody hot, pardon the language, sir.” Olem patted his breast pocket. “Besides. I’m saving my last one.”
“A special occasion of some kind?”
Olem continued to watch the buzzards. “Gavril told me we might be making a stand at the Fingers. I figure it’ll be nice to die with a cigarette between my lips.”
Tamas couldn’t help but scowl. “Have you told anyone? About the stand, I mean.”
“No, sir.”
“Damned Gavril. Needs to keep his mouth shut.”
“So it’s true, then?”
“I don’t intend to make a last stand, Olem. I intend to break the Kez. Last stands are for men who plan on losing.”
“Quite right, sir.”
Tamas sighed inwardly. Soldiers had a strange sense of fatalism. Most of them didn’t realize that any odds could be beaten with the right maneuvering.
“Olem…” Tamas began.
“Sir?”
“About what I saw the other day…”
A muscle jumped in Olem’s jaw. “What do you mean, sir?”
“I think you know what I mean. Vlora. If I’d come a few minutes later, I think I would have found the two of you in a much more compromising position.”
“That was the hope, sir.”
Tamas blinked. He’d not expected that kind of bluntness. “Can’t hold your tongue to save face, can you?”
“Not to save my life, sir.”
“I won’t have that kind of fraternization, Olem.”
“What kind, sir?” The corners of Olem’s eyes tightened.
“You and Vlora. She is a captain, you are–”
“A captain,” Olem said. “You made me one yourself.” He touched the gold pins on his lapels helpfully.
Tamas cleared his throat and looked up. Those damned buzzards were still there. “I mean that she is a powder mage. You know my mages are a different contingent of the army. I won’t have you crossing that line.”
Olem looked like he wanted to say something. He worked his jaw around, chewing on a phantom cigarette. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”
The sarcasm in Olem’s tone leaked through like water through paper. It nearly shocked Tamas. Olem was normally so loyal, so quick to obey. He opened his mouth, a rebuke on his tongue.
The soldier with a ponytail staggered and fell out of line, hitting the ground hard. Two of his companions stopped to help him.
“Head up the line,” Tamas said. “Call for rest. The men need a sit-down.”
Only too grateful to get away, Olem spurred his mount on, calling out, “Field Marshal orders the column to halt! Fall out!”
Tamas could hear the order repeated farther up the column. Slowly, the line of soldiers came to a stop. Some men went looking for the closest stream, some men relieved themselves in the woods, and others slumped to the ground where they were, too exhausted to move.
Tamas opened his canteen and drained the last few drops. The water was hot and tasted of the metal. “Soldier,” Tamas said, pointing to a man who looked the least worse for the wear. “Find me some clean, cold water and fill this, then tell your sergeant you’re off latrine duty tonight.”
The soldier took the canteen. “Aye, sir.”
Tamas climbed down from his charger and hung the reins from a tree limb. He paced the width of the road, trying to work some feeling back into his legs after riding half the day. He stopped once and looked south. No sign of the Kez. The woods were too thick. According to the latest reports, the head of the Kez column was ten miles back. They had dragoons ranging in the area in between, trying to catch Adran stragglers and harass the end of the Adran column, but what mattered to Tamas was where the bulk of the cavalry were.
He was going to need that heavy lead.
“Sir.”
Tamas turned to find Vlora standing next to his charger. Her uniform was dirty, jacket loosened at the neck, her black hair tied back behind her head. He had the brief image of her naked beneath the waterfall, leaning in to kiss Olem. He willed the image away, trying not to let his embarrassment show on his face.
“Captain.”
“How is the leg, sir?”
Tamas flexed the muscles in his leg, felt them twinge. Riding hadn’t helped it loosen at all, but the pain wasn’t too bad. “It’s fine, thank you. Any luck hunting?”
“The deer are keeping well away from the column. If we range more than a mile or two from the road, we won’t be able to carry our prey back. A few squirrels and rabbits. Enough to keep the powder mages fed.”
At least his mages were keeping up their strength. He felt his stomach twist at the mention of rabbit.
“If we camped for more than one night, or even slowed down a bit, we might be able to bag some deer.”
“Sorry, Captain. I can’t allow that. We have to reach the Fingers well ahead of the Kez.”
“The scouts say we’ll be there in two days, sir.”
“That’s right,” Tamas said. “Once we cross the first river, we’ll burn the bridge and take it easy for a couple of days. Rest and restock.”
“I certainly hope so, sir. The men are looking poor.”
Tamas turned his attention to the soldier who had fainted. He was sitting up now, drinking out of a canteen, talking to one of his fellows. Tamas clasped his hands behind his back and faced Vlora.
“Captain, you and I both know that what happened the other day was completely out of order.”
Vlora didn’t even blink. “You mean, when you watched me bathe?”
Tamas could have slapped her for that. Damned girl. She knew what he wanted to say, and she wasn’t going to make it easy.
“You and Olem…”
“Sir, I don’t think that’s any of your business. With all due respect.”
“I am your commanding officer–”
“Yes, sir. And you’ve always made it very clear that what two soldiers want to do in their spare time is up to them, as long as it doesn’t break convention between the ranks.”
“This is different.” This was different, Tamas told himself. “I won’t have one of my Marked gallivanting around with my bodyguard, do you understand? I won’t have my bodyguard going around with… with…”
“A whore?”
She had spoken quietly, but Tamas felt the breath taken from him.
“That’s what you want to say, isn’t it, sir? You want to call me a whore for what I did to Taniel? A slut? I can hear the words on the tip of your tongue, even if you don’t speak them.”
“Watch your tone, soldier,” Tamas warned.
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Permission denied.”
Vlora ignored him. “You don’t think I know what I did to Taniel? You don’t think it kills me inside knowing that I threw away everything we had for a few months of passion with some idiot?”
“Permission denied, Captain.”
“You don’t hear the men talk.” Vlora’s voice rose. “You don’t hear what everyone says about me behind my back – even to my face. You don’t see the sneers. ‘Vlora, she’ll spread her legs for anyone now.’ You don’t hear them whisper that outside your tent at night, placing bets on who can be the first to get me on my back.”
“Permission denied!” Tamas stepped forward. Any other soldier would have shrunk beneath the red fury in Tamas’s eyes, but Vlora refused to back down.
“I spent eighteen months alone while Taniel was in Fatrasta because you sent him there. Taniel, the war hero. People talked about how every woman in Fatrasta was ready to throw themselves on him. And then to hear he had a little savage girl, following him everywhere. What was I supposed to think of that? No man would look twice at me at the university. They knew who I was. They were too afraid of Taniel to say any nice thing to me.”
Vlora spat the words in Tamas’s face, her voice dripping with bitterness, her whole body trembling with rage. “Then a man appears who doesn’t care whose fiancée I am. He charms me, loves me, and assures me there’s not another in the world that can make him so happy. I trusted him.” Vlora’s face twisted in disgust. “Then I find out he was bedding me just to make you look bad.”