Blood of Empire

Chapter 15

Vlora sat astride her horse, nodding gently into the morning sun, desperately trying not to fall asleep as the distant beat of drums marked out three full brigades of Adran soldiers falling into rank. Her head hurt from a night without rest, her body ached from her wounds from the Crease, and her mind still wondered at the conversation with General Etepali the night before. She knew instinctively that she had missed something in the encounter and it clawed at the back of her brain.

“Sleep well last night?” Bo asked cheerily, riding up beside her.

“Not a wink. You?”

“Like a baby. Nila brought a young captain back to the tent last night, and I’ll tell you…” Bo made the shape of a woman with his hands.

“Please don’t,” Vlora cut him off. “And what the pit do you think you’re doing, sleeping with my officers?”

“It’s very boring here,” Bo said defensively. “Besides, it was Nila’s idea. She figures we can, uh, spend time with someone from every regiment in the entire army by the time this stupid thing is over.”

“I hate you so much right now.” Vlora poured a bit of water from her canteen onto a handkerchief and pressed it to her forehead. She knew about Nila and Bo’s proclivity for play, of course – they were Privileged, after all, and had the libidos that went with their sorcerous power – but it served as a reminder that Olem had still not returned. She only now realized that the ache of his absence had become almost physical, joining all of her wounds to a pulsing nest of pain in the back of her head. “Are you and Nila ready to deal with anything they throw at us?”

Bo pursed his lips. “Odd, that.”

“What is?”

“We can’t find them.”

“The enemy Privileged?”

“Right. They’ve either left, or they’re very, very good at hiding.”

“You’re out of practice. Talk to Norrine and Davd.”

“Already did. They can’t find any Privileged, either.” He spread his hands. “There’s a lot of sorcerous noise over there – color left over from the Dynize bombardment of New Adopest – but not enough to hide a bunch of Privileged. There were eight yesterday, and now…”

“Shit,” Vlora said under her breath. She searched the horizon, reaching for her sorcery instinctively and clutching at nothing. The one time she wanted to do everything herself, and she literally couldn’t. She beckoned over a messenger. “Send people to the First, Second, and Fifth. Tell them that we don’t know when to expect a sorcerous barrage, and I’m holding our own power back to counter any surprises. They are to proceed with the battle plan.”

The messenger bolted, and Vlora gestured to Bo to join his wife at the front before settling back to watch the proceedings. Her left flank marched over the horizon to the north, swinging around the enemy earthworks with heavy cavalry support. Her right clung to the river in a tight column while their cannons rained down a withering cover fire on the Dynize artillery platforms. The center, directly in front of her, ground forward in a line four-deep, bayonets fixed, prepared to ford the river tributary as soon as pressure had been applied to the flanks.

Vlora swept up and down the length of the river tributary with her looking glass, that feeling of uncertainty still wedged in her gut. The Dynize returned fire with their heavy guns, but by the time her men reached the tributary, she had the odd feeling that the return fire was too sporadic, that there wasn’t enough movement on those earthworks.

It was with some surprise that she saw her own cavalry sweeping down the length of those earthworks before her center had even reached the other side of the river. The cavalry galloped over a handful of Dynize, swept through multiple artillery platforms, and then rode out of sight beyond the earthworks. Her soldiers crossed the river and followed them without a single scrap of resistance from the enemy line.

Messengers soon came flooding back to her, all of them with the same story: only a token resistance. A few hundred Dynize soldiers threw down their weapons the moment the Adran infantry arrived. There was no sign of General Etepali, her officer corps, her Privileged sorcerers, or the main body of her army.

The Dynize were gone.

Vlora walked through the Dynize camp, the seeds of their deception unfolding before her eyes.

It was clear that most of them had already been gone by the time she met with General Etepali last night. Every third tent had been left standing, and all the campfires stoked just enough to smolder. It was shockingly clean – the Dynize had taken everything with them but the tents – evidence of an ordered withdrawal rather than a frantic retreat. The withdrawal had forded the river within sight of New Adopest, but around the bend from Vlora and her troops.

Exhaustion tugged at her shoulders, slowed her feet, but Vlora was galvanized by her anger. She strode around the camp in wider and wider circles, ignoring the soldiers who stared at her as she passed, swearing under her breath.

On her third circle, she ran directly into General Sabastenien and his bodyguard. Sabastenien was dismounted, examining the ground at his feet. He shook his head as Vlora approached, said something to one of his bodyguards, and came to meet her. “Ma’am.”

“It’s the same damn thing.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

“The same damn thing I did to the Fatrastans and Dynize when they cornered me at Windy River. This was why I couldn’t sleep last night. I had an inkling of what was happening, but I just couldn’t put the pieces together.” Vlora was angry at everything – her officers, her scouts, the enemy, and especially at herself. “Your cavalry. Were they ever able to gain ground south of the river last night?”

Sabastenien pulled a wry face. “They just reported in. They met stern resistance until dark, then pulled back and conducted a night crossing after midnight. When morning came, it was like the enemy had never been there. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Evidence of a mass exodus. Easily thirty thousand men. They must have crossed the river over the last few days and headed west while we were heading east.”

“Yeah,” Vlora said crossly, “I figured as much.” Everything came into focus. The tributary bridges had been left standing to give Vlora an easy ride on purpose. Had they been burned, she would have taken a longer time getting to New Adopest – she would have spread out her forces to look for a better route and been more insistent about scouting south of the river and caught wind of their retreat. Those cavalry she saw crossing yesterday afternoon must have been the tail end of their forces. “Why?” she demanded, half to herself. “Why would Etepali slip away when she had such a good defensive position?”

Sabastenien clasped his hands behind his back. “If she only had thirty thousand, and she knew the size of our force and our offshore fleet, then she was wise not to allow a confrontation here. Slip around us, head back to the mainland. She loses New Adopest, but she puts herself in position to be reinforced by the rest of the Dynize Army.”

A messenger approached, starting when he saw the look on Vlora’s face.

“What is it?” she snapped.

“Sorry, ma’am. One of the Dynize soldiers. He had a note for you.”

Vlora snatched the note from the messenger and broke the seal. It was written in Adran in a gorgeous, flowing hand in crimson ink.

Vlora crumpled the letter and dropped it, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Used my own tactic against me and I didn’t even see it coming.”

She heard horses and looked up to find Bo and Nila approaching at a trot. The two Privileged dismounted, and it was Nila who came to Vlora’s side and picked up the letter she’d dropped. She read it silently and handed it to Bo.

“If you laugh, Privileged Borbador, I will shoot you in the face,” Vlora said.

Bo turned a chuckle into a cough, then began to hack and spit. “I would never,” he said when he recovered.

“This isn’t funny.”

“It’s kind of funny.”

“No, it’s not. I now have the most decorated general in Dynize at my back. She’s put herself in a position to block my progress off the Cape and bring in reinforcements. What’s more, I missed what should have been an obvious deception.”

“We all have bad days,” Bo suggested.

“My bad days get people killed.”

Sabastenien cleared his throat. “Ma’am, I understand we’ve received messengers from the city. They’re hailing us as liberators and have asked that you come meet with the mayor.”

“I don’t have time,” Vlora said. “Get everyone turned around. I want you to take command of our combined cavalry and head upriver. See if you can get in front of Etepali’s army. Harry them. Slow them down.”

“We’re going after her?”

“Yes. I’m not going to let her get reinforcements, not if I can help it.”

“What about the prisoners?”

The words “execute them” floated on the tip of Vlora’s tongue. The terrible urge rooted in her belly almost pushed them out, but she managed to choke them off. “Hand them over to the city garrison of New Adopest.”

“And the city?”

“Strip their granaries and munitions. Take everything we might need to fight our way to Landfall.”

Sabastenien’s eyes widened. “We’re sacking the city?”

“Not a sack,” Vlora replied. “Keep the men in line, but requisition everything. If they disagree, signal the fleet to fire a few salvos at their harbor.” This was it – the second lesson she needed to teach both her allies and her enemies: that Fatrastans were not their friends. The Adran Army was not here to liberate. They were here to accomplish a task. “Get to it, General. I want you at the head of our cavalry and after the Dynize within the hour.”