In the Shadow of Lightning

35

Idrian leaned heavily on his shield, sword resting on one shoulder as he watched the last of the Ironhorns trudge wearily into town. There was no conversation among the stragglers, just grim-faced determination broken on occasion by a nervous look over a shoulder for the inevitable pursuit. Braileer stood behind him, carrying both their packs, practically asleep on his feet.

The sun was still low on the eastern horizon, and just over fourteen hours had passed since their crushing defeat. The night had been a disaster of communication errors and logistical blunders, with seemingly no chain of command and little coherence among those troops that had managed to escape the Grent onslaught. Dawn had brought no succor – just Grent dragoons and Kerite’s mercenary skirmishers, harrying their rearguard and pushing the Ossans out of the Copper Hills and down into the gentle landscape that surrounded the capital.

Their rallying point was Fort Bryce, one of the mighty star fortresses that formed a defensive cordon around Ossa and sat just on the other side of Bingham. Idrian could hear intermittent musket shots on the breeze, a testament to the Grent offensive, and wondered where the reinforcements were from the fort. Why hadn’t they sent out the garrison?

Idrian waited until the last of the stragglers entered the town and then looked around for Tadeas. He found Mika first. She was bleary-eyed and quiet, her lips moving as she counted the engineers among the regular infantry. “When’s the last time you saw Tad?” he asked her.

“Just a couple hours ago. He should be up ahead with Valient.”

Idrian nodded his thanks and fell in beside her. He resisted the urge to put his helmet back on, knowing it would just give him a headache. His body was beginning to weary of all the sorcery resonating through it, and it was showing in the yellow scales forming on the backs of his hands. Even a glazalier couldn’t handle so much godglass for so long. He needed to get out of his armor for even just a few hours. He wondered which would do them in: the exhaustion, or the crushed morale. He couldn’t think of a worse defeat in his long career. Three brigades of Ossa’s best, the vaunted Foreign Legion, routed on an open battlefield in mere hours. Was Kerite really that good? Were her soldiers really that well-trained?

He lifted his head to see Tadeas standing on the next corner, shouting orders in a hoarse voice to dozens of men and women, soldiers and civilians alike. Here, closer to the town center, the streets were packed with Ossan citizens trying to cart all their worldly possessions to somewhere safe. It seemed like everyone was bickering; a fistfight breaking out just to Idrian’s left. He ignored it, too tired to so much as cuff sense into the idiots.

Mika shoved her way through the logjam to look for her husband, while Idrian waited on the periphery until Tadeas saw him and waved him over. Tadeas looked just as tired as Idrian felt. A bloodstained tear in his jacket showed a wound received sometime in the night, and the red and white glassrot scales on his cheek were evidence of the godglass that had seen him through it.

“Found out why communication broke down,” Tadeas greeted him, bodily shoving an irate local out of his face. The local took a deep breath, ready to scream vitriol at Tadeas, but expelled it with the noise of an ox’s fart as he saw Idrian. The man slunk away quickly.

“What happened?” Idrian asked.

Tadeas pointed down the street. “After the defeat, Stavri and his staff, the entire senior administration of the Foreign Legion, retreated to the Bingham Brawlers Club just over there. They figured they were safe while the soldiers trickled in to the rallying point…”

“Glassdamned cowards.”

“… and they were all butchered by Grent glassdancer assassins.”

Idrian bowed his head and swore under his breath. The headache was back almost immediately, and the shadows darting around in the corners of his vision grew bolder. A child’s laughter echoed from the tenement window overhead. “Everyone?” he breathed.

“No survivors. Not even a witness.” Tadeas glanced around them. “The whole town is terrified, and we’ve all been trickling in since last night. The state of us isn’t helping things.”

“Do they know the Grent are right behind us?” Idrian asked quietly.

“They can probably guess. Those gunshots aren’t that far, and skirmishers have been spotted less than a mile away. Every rumor is like wildfire. The only reason it’s not worse is that hundreds of people fled in the night when they first learned we’d been routed. This whole disaster might cost Sammi Stavri her place on the Inner Assembly.”

“To piss with Sammi Stavri, where’s the garrison from Fort Bryce? Why aren’t we getting backup?”

“I have no idea. I sent someone ahead to find out.”

Idrian looked toward the Bingham Brawlers Club, where a handful of Cinders stood outside eyeballing the packed streets nervously, no doubt wondering how the piss they were going to get out of town before the Grent arrived. His meandering examination fell on a mounted soldier forcing her horse through the chaos, laying about her with the stock of her musket at anyone who got too close.

By the time she reached Idrian and Tadeas, she’d lost her hat and was covered in sweat. Her horse danced nervously, eyes rolling. The soldier dismounted, keeping a firm grip on the bridle and leaning in toward them. “Are you the highest-ranking officer in Bingham?” she asked.

“I think so,” Tadeas responded. “I know there are officers scattered to both the north and south of the city, but I think it’s just me here. If you want someone higher you’ll need to go to Fort Bryce.”

“I’m from Fort Bryce,” the soldier said. “Colonel Wessen has ordered you to retreat into the shadow of the fort, where you’ll be protected while we regroup.”

“Since when is a garrison colonel giving orders to the Foreign Legion?” Idrian demanded, gesturing at the clogged roads around them. “These people need guidance and if we don’t provide it, we’ll have thousands of dead on our hands even if all the Grent do is stir their panic.”

“Colonel Wessen–” the messenger began.

Idrian cut her off. “This is your job. Why isn’t the whole garrison out here, keeping this shit organized and providing us some support? Why aren’t you–”

Idrian felt himself jerked sideways and looked down to see Tadeas holding him by the breastplate. “Cool down,” Tadeas hissed. “We’ve got no chain of command, we’re running low on ammunition, Mika is almost out of grenades. We can’t do shit but pull back, or the Grent will just roll over us.”

“I’m not leaving these people to get swallowed up.”

“Kerite isn’t known for brutality.”

“Tell that to Purnian revolutionaries,” Idrian grunted.

“This isn’t Purnia, and we’re not some uprising colony. Sure, these people will get all their shit stolen by Grent infantry, but Kerite has more to gain by driving them into Ossa to cause chaos than killing them. If we’ve orders to pull back, we’re pulling back.”

Idrian jerked himself out of Tadeas’s grip, trying to keep a lid on his own fury. He was exhausted, dizzy, swaying on his feet, and some fort commander was trying to give him orders? How dare those clean-booted bastards? He walked away several feet to get his head about him. They should be getting orders from the Ministry of the Legion. Who was in charge there? Maj Madoloc was out of the country for the entire month of the solstice holiday. Idrian shook his head again to try and clear it. By the time he returned, Tadeas had chased the messenger off.

“We don’t have a choice, Idrian,” Tadeas said. He didn’t look happy about it either, and Idrian knew that giving that order would pain him deeply. “We can’t face Kerite until we’ve regrouped.”

Idrian took a calming breath. Tad was right. He was always right, damn him. When Idrian trusted himself to speak again, he said, “Then we should get out of here before the real panic sets in. Where’s Valient?”

“He’s just around the corner. I–” Tadeas was cut off by the sound of screams coming from their west, back in the immediate direction that Idrian had come from. A series of musket shots brought Idrian’s hackles up, and he could feel the panic wash through the packed streets.

“Glassdamned skirmishers are here,” Idrian swore, “and they’re trying to start a stampede. Now I’m really pissed that the garrison isn’t out here helping.” He slammed his helmet on his head. The musket shots were coming faster and more furious now, and he thought he heard the thunder of cavalry. Dragoons. Even better. “Get everyone out of Bingham,” he told Tadeas. “I’ll do my best to hold them off and then meet you to the east.”

“Piss on you,” Tadeas spat, “we’ll be right behind you. Valient! Mika!”

Idrian didn’t argue. He raised his sword to the hundreds of frightened eyes now looking in his direction and gave his voice all the backbone he could muster. “Out of my way, pissants! The Ram has mercenaries to kill.” The cheer that went up was decidedly half-hearted, but a path was made, his coming told ahead of him as he rushed west down the street. He craned his neck, pausing momentarily to try and get a view of what was happening or how many enemies he faced. The musket shots grew more frantic, and then petered out. He could no longer hear hoofbeats.

After several blocks the jammed traffic grew lighter, then disappeared entirely as he reached abandoned carts and discarded luggage from those who had simply fled from the sound of fighting. Though his path was completely clear, Idrian proceeded with caution. If he was going to die facing a company of skirmishers, he wanted to take some of them with him.

To his shock, it was not a Grent or mercenary uniform that he spotted first. It was an Ossan cuirassier bestride a magnificent warhorse, black uniform a little dusty but looking fresh, standing in her stirrups while she peered off in the distance. Idrian joined her quickly and followed her gaze, hardly daring to hope that help had finally arrived when he saw two squads of cuirassiers charge past a crossroads two blocks distant, their silver and hammerglass breastplates glinting in the morning sun.

The woman wore the gold collar of a major. She lowered herself back into her saddle and finally regarded him with a nod. “Fair meeting, Ram.”

“More than a fair meeting.” Idrian grinned. “You are a sight for sore eyes. How many are you?”

“A battalion. Enough to get these skirmishers off your back. Are the Ironhorns nearby?”

“Not far behind me,” Idrian responded. “We thought we were all that was between the Grent and these people.”

“You’re not,” she assured him. “You’ll want to check in with my commanding officer.”

Idrian blinked at her in surprise. “I thought everyone above major was dead.”

She gave him a tight grin. “He took a squad of my cuirassiers on foot into that tenement there,” she said, pointing to the next block over, “chasing some of their skirmishers.”

“Does he need help?”

“I doubt it.”

Idrian scowled at that, proceeding on toward the tenement she’d indicated. It was the first time he noticed that Braileer had followed him, still hauling their packs. Idrian sent the armorer back to find Tadeas.

Just after Braileer retreated a pistol shot went off, and then there was the sound of breaking glass. Idrian looked up to see a second-floor window suddenly fold in on itself, as if sucked into the room by a mysterious force. A glassdancer. Friend, or foe? The answer came a moment later as the body of a mercenary skirmisher was hurled out the empty window and landed on the ground just feet in front of Idrian. The woman’s eyes stared sightlessly upward, a piece of glass the length of Idrian’s fist rammed through her heart.

Several more shots followed the first, then a scream. Another window shattered and was sucked inward. Then silence. Idrian turned back to the cuirassier major. “Who’s the glassdancer?” he called.

She just pointed, and Idrian turned back to the door of the tenement to see a string of young children rushed out through the door, followed by cuirassiers on foot. Seeing the man that emerged behind them might have been a bigger shock than losing that battle yesterday, because Idrian would have bet his life he’d never see Demir Grappo in an Ossan uniform again. The uniform was moth-bitten, hanging off the younger Grappo as if taken in hastily by a poor tailor.

“Idrian,” Demir called, “good to see you.”

“Demir?”

“That’s ‘General Grappo’ to you, Ram,” Demir responded.

Idrian stared back at him, still at a loss for words. It suddenly hit him, and before he could stop himself he said, “Holy shit. You’re the most qualified officer left in Ossa, aren’t you?”

“Until Hammish Kirkovik or Maj Madoloc get back from the provinces, yes,” Demir answered. He gestured to the cuirassiers, who fetched their horses and then escorted the group of children back toward the center of the town. Demir nodded after them. “Makeshift orphanage in that tenement. Their minder fled in the middle of the night, the bloody coward, and then those mercenary skirmishers tried to use the kids as shields.”

“I take it that didn’t end well.”

“Sure didn’t.” Despite his almost jovial tone, there was a hard anger to Demir’s eyes.

Idrian took a step closer to him. It might not be proper etiquette, a breacher acting so familiar with a general, but damn it, Demir was practically his nephew-by-proxy. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Demir replied. “No, I am not. Almost died once this week, and now I’ve got to try and scrape together whatever is left of the Foreign Legion and make a stand against Devia glassdamned Kerite. I’m going to…” He paused, his eyes looking up above Idrian’s head. Idrian whirled to see a skirmisher in a blue-and-green uniform on the roof of the next tenement over. The skirmisher raised his rifle just as the window on the floor beneath him shattered, coalesced, and then shot upward. The skirmisher jerked once as he was impaled from below by a finger-thick, eight-foot spike of glass. He seemed frozen for a moment before he toppled, shattering the spike with his own weight as he fell.

Idrian turned back to Demir. The vein on the younger Grappo’s forehead throbbed violently. Demir touched a finger to that vein before continuing, “I’m going to rally the Foreign Legion at Fort Bryce, and then figure out what the piss to do against Kerite. Find Tadeas for me.”

“The Ironhorns were right behind me,” Idrian replied. “They should be here any moment.”

“Excellent.”

“Sir, did you get the package I sent?” Idrian asked, glancing around to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. There had been no communication since he dropped off the cinderite at the Hyacinth.

Demir gave a sharp nod. “I did. Kastora’s protégé is already at work using it to re-create Kastora’s work.”

Idrian let out a sigh of relief. At least something had gone right. If he survived this war he might have a future without madness to look forward to. He examined the side of Demir’s face, then glanced down to see that the man’s fingertips were trembling. Idrian looked closer at his eyes to see his pupils dilated, the whites bloodshot. Demir, he realized, wasn’t actually angry. He was terrified, and he was channeling fury to try and cover it up. Would it break him?

Idrian heard Tadeas’s voice shouting orders somewhere on the next street and directed Demir’s attention in that direction. Demir nodded, his chin tightening, and in that moment a mask seemed to descend upon his face. The terror in his eyes disappeared, his fingers no longer trembling. Idrian reassessed him, trying to understand what was going on in the younger Grappo’s head. Was he strong enough to hold together?

Who was in that head? The Demir who’d cracked at Holikan, or the Lightning Prince?