Every one of them wore a turquoise uniform, a morion-style helmet, and a smooth breastplate. They had red hair and ashen freckles.
Styke changed directions in midstep and hurled himself across the bridge. He was among them before they even saw him, his knife flashing, and within the minute, he was coated in their blood and gore. Heart hammering, Styke looked toward the beach, only for his view to be obstructed by the corner of the citadel.
Goddamn Dvory was a traitor. This was Lindet’s rendezvous, and Dvory had turned it into a death trap.
Somewhere far above him, there was a flash in one of the citadel towers and then the report of a coastal gun. More followed quickly, and Styke was suddenly all too aware that the Third Army was now sitting at the base of an enemy citadel, whose guns were being manned by Dynize. He wiped the blood from his face and began to run.
Chapter 63
Vlora rode past a field of the dead and dying, listening as their moans seemed to keep tempo with the clip-clop of her horse’s hooves. Another reckless charge by Dynize dragoons, meant to do nothing more than slow down her column. At a glance, there were no more than a hundred of them – not even close to enough to do any real damage. Their horses had already been either put down or taken, and the Adran dead buried beneath simple stone cairns beside the road. The Dynize – wounded and dead alike – lay where they fell and remained ignored as the Riflejack rear guard marched past them.
She wondered if anyone had bothered to tell her about this attack. Perhaps. She was exhausted from days of forced march, barely able to sleep even when she did have the time. These attacks had come so frequently that they hardly warranted her attention anymore. They came at night, in the rain, even out in the open as the Dynize general sent his cavalry along every goat path and mining trail he could find to try to flank the Riflejacks – to try to trip them up and force the column to slow, even for fifteen minutes at a time.
She wanted to dismiss the attacks as a waste of the enemy’s resources, but the truth was they were working. Despite the larger, more cumbersome army, the Dynize infantry remained just three hours behind the Riflejacks. Vlora felt like she could barely breathe.
Up ahead, her column snaked down through the foothills and onto a relatively flat plain, where the vanguard had pulled off to the side for a few moments’ rest, allowing another company to take the lead of the column. She searched for Olem and was unable to find him.
The sound of galloping hooves made her turn to find Taniel and Norrine coming up the road from the west, covered in the dust stirred up by Vlora’s infantry. Norrine wore a tired but satisfied smile, and Taniel held his rifle across the saddle horn. He pulled in next to Vlora and tapped on the side of his head. “That’s all of them.”
“All of who?” she asked.
“As far as we can tell, we’ve popped every Privileged and bone-eye in the Dynize Army. We’ve also killed half their senior officers.”
“And yet still they come hard on our heels.” Vlora had meant to say that in her head, but it came out without her even realizing she was speaking.
Norrine nodded. “They are … persistent.”
Vlora looked back toward the dead and dying Dynize dragoons from the last ambush, unable to get rid of the weight of dread sitting in the pit of her stomach. “You’ve done well,” she told Norrine. “Go find some chow.”
Norrine headed up the column, leaving Vlora and Taniel alone by the side of the road. “I don’t like the look on your face,” Taniel said.
“I don’t like the fact that we can’t gain even an hour on these bastards. They won’t slow down, even with their officers and sorcerers dead.” She gestured to the dead dragoons. “They’re throwing lives in front of us with as little regard as if they were tossing caltrops in a road.”
“The zeal scares you?”
“It terrifies me. I have a little voice in the back of my head whispering every few minutes that we’re all going to die on this blasted continent.” She rolled her shoulders, trying to calm herself. “I’m not thrilled with the idea of dying, but there are worse fates. Dying, hunted like a dog … it feels like our campaign through northern Kez during the war all over again. Except this time I’m the one responsible for all these lives.” She looked Taniel in the eye. “I don’t want all these men to die here, Taniel.”
Taniel’s expression was grim. “You’re doing the best you can.”
She wondered at his plans. He wasn’t an Adran, not anymore. He was stronger, faster, and sturdier than any normal human – even any powder mage – and when the Dynize finally trapped the Riflejacks and slaughtered them to the last man, Taniel would no doubt carve his way out and disappear into the hills, heading across the continent to reunite with Ka-poel. Vlora briefly considered grabbing Olem and attempting to run for it.
But who would she be if she abandoned the soldiers who so willingly sacrificed themselves for her?
Another thought crept up and touched the back of her mind. She flirted with it for a moment before shoving it to one side, where it waited, insistently, for her to consider it again. “I’ve got to talk with Olem,” she told Taniel. She turned and followed Norrine up the column, riding past the dust-coated soldiers, down out of the foothills, and onto the wide field where the column ground to a halt for a brief rest.
Beyond the field was something that her maps called Ishtari’s Crease. It was a great upthrusting of rock, as severe as a church’s steeple, that ran north-to-south for about thirty miles. It varied between forty and eighty feet tall, and was occasionally broken by natural fissures or modern clefts blasted out for roadways. Beyond the Crease the land fell steeply down into an old-growth forest, beyond which one could just make out the distant plains that needed to be crossed before reaching the ocean.
Those plains had haunted her thoughts for days like a waking nightmare. Flat and open, with few defensible positions, the larger Dynize field army would be able to slow and surround the Riflejacks, cutting them to ribbons without the need of either tactical or sorcerous advantages. To outrun them, the Riflejacks needed at least a day’s lead on their enemy. They had mere hours.
Vlora found Olem in a deep conference with the company’s quartermasters. He spotted Vlora and broke off, coming to her side, where he gave her a tight smile. “We’ve sent the capstone on ahead while the column rests. Our scouts are telling us that we won’t have to worry about being flanked by Dynize cavalry for a while – there isn’t another place to cross the Crease for miles, so they’ll either have to come straight up behind us, or wait until we’re completely through.”
There was a hint of suggestion in his words. It didn’t take a military genius to see that the Crease was a tactician’s wet dream. The road passed through a rocky divide less than twenty yards across, easily defended by a few hundred men, let alone a few thousand.
Quietly, so as not to be overheard, she said, “We’re going to die whether we fight them here or out on the plains.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Olem answered.
“I’d rather not die at all.”
“We can attempt to negotiate.”
Vlora scoffed. “And give them time to catch up with us and maneuver? You remember the negotiation before Windy River.”
“Things might have changed. We can try to give them the capstone.”
“Somehow, I’m not sure that will be enough.” Vlora eyed the Crease. In another situation, she might have found it beautiful, in a rugged way. The cracked, broken rock was periodically flushed with green where a group of shrubs or trees had managed to eke out its existence. It wasn’t, she decided, a terrible monument to make one’s gravestone. “If we attempt a last stand here, how long will it take for the Dynize to find another crossing and come around behind us?”