Sins of Empire

Chapter 55

Vlora and Olem made it back to Fort Nied among a heavy bombardment of straight shot from the distant Dynize fleet. Cannon fire pounded the eastern slope of the Landfall Plateau, the blasts striking streets and buildings at random, forcing her and her men to shove their way through crowds of fleeing pedestrians, carriages, and carts. It was utter chaos as some sought the safety of the plateau, and others fled downhill toward the docks.

Everyone had turned out in their weekend best to gaze at the Dynize fleet and await news of the negotiations. No one expected a bombardment, and it showed in the terror of the faces of those running, fighting, or crying over the dead and wounded.

Vlora entered the fort, shouting over the whistle and impact detonations of the bombardment. “All guns open fire! Crews six and seven, sink that frigate off the point of the bay. Crews eight through eleven, load grapeshot and sweep the waters in front of the docks. I don’t want any of their men getting close enough to torch the merchantmen at moor. The rest of you focus your fire on that ship of the line right off the southeastern star. Those ships will be inaccurate as pit but if they manage to get too close they’ll be able to blast us to oblivion.”

She took a deep breath, letting her senses soak in the sorcery woven throughout the walls of the fort. Fort Nied had survived the Battle of Landfall, holding out against the might of the Kez fleet. Its protective sorcery could shrug off a pit of a shelling, but she had no idea for how long.

She jogged up the stairs to the top of the eastern wall, gazing first out over the bay, then toward the open ocean, where puffs of smoke rose at regular intervals from every ship in the Dynize fleet. The fire was not focused – straight shot appeared to be landing everywhere from the industrial quarter all the way to the northern marshes – but Vlora doubted the Dynize cared. As far as she could tell, the sudden bombardment had a single purpose: to provide cover for the hundreds of approaching longboats by sowing chaos in Landfall.

“Where’s Taniel?” she demanded of a nearby sergeant.

“Who?” the sergeant asked, looking confused.

“Damn it, nobody even knows…” She grunted in frustration, looking around, casting out her senses for another powder mage or a blood sorcerer. She found only her own three mages and nothing else. “So much for getting some help, you asshole,” she muttered.

Vlora turned her attention to those longboats. They were each loaded with sixty or more Dynize soldiers, rowing hard for land, looking undeterred by the choppy waters that served to foul the aim of their capital ships. They would begin to land within fifteen minutes, and then it would be anyone’s guess what happened next.

A brief terror seized her as she sought her memories and training. No one knew how the Dynize fought. Any engagements would have been more than a hundred years ago, fighting with wheel locks and early flintlocks. She didn’t know if they fired in a line, preferred mass charges, or planned on simply bullying their way into a foothold by brute strength.

“Olem!” she shouted, waving to him from across the length of the fort wall. Olem raised his eyes, then ducked as a cannonball smashed into the top of the wall, ricocheting skyward with enough force to carry it over the entire fort and drop harmlessly into the bay. Olem ran toward her in a crouch. She grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him close enough to shout in his ear over the thunder of her own guns returning fire. “Those longboats are heading toward the north side of the bay. Who do we have out there?”

“Four thousand members of the garrison, and three companies of our own boys.”

Vlora raised her head, looking out at the longboats. She took a sniff of powder, heightening her senses, peering at the Dynize soldiers and willing herself to read their strategy.

She’d never seen soldiers armed quite like this – outside of mannequins in a museum. They wore bright teal coats beneath angled, heavy-looking breastplates and folded steel helms. Their faces were stoic and hard, teeth clenched in gritty determination as they rowed closer and closer to land. A blast of grapeshot tore through one of the longboats, killing a third of the rowers and immediately causing the aft to dip into the water. The soldiers in the nearest boat threw lines to their bailing companions to try to keep them afloat in their heavy armor, but kept rowing hard for shore.

Their muskets looked mass-produced, each of them with the same flared, engraved stock a dozen decades out of fashion in the Nine. Vlora couldn’t see enough detail to examine the flintlock mechanisms, but to her eye they looked just as modern as those of her men.

“Down!” Olem suddenly shouted, grabbing her by the shoulder and shoving them both to the ground behind the protection of the wall. Vlora’s sorcerous senses flared, and a half a second later fire swept the top of the wall in a hot, angry column that scattered and charred two gun crews.

“Privileged!” someone shouted.

Vlora got to her feet, peering over the top of the wall, opening her third eye. She found the Privileged within moments – a woman, standing in the prow of one of the longboats about a quarter of a mile out from the shoreline. Her gloved hands waved over her head, fingers twitching and arms rising and falling like she was directing an opera.

Fire slammed into the north side of Fort Nied with the strength of a dozen cannonballs, engulfing crew eleven entirely. The Privileged suddenly jerked and toppled onto the soldiers behind her, crimson blossoming on her forehead. Farther down the wall, Vlora saw Norrine lower her rifle, blowing smoke from the end and immediately reloading. Vlora gave her an appreciative nod.

“There’s more!” Norrine shouted.

Vlora sensed them, too. At least twenty Privileged, all of them out scattered among the longboats. Some of them were harder to get a fix on – obviously hiding themselves in the Else – while others seemed to note their fallen comrade and began to surround themselves with walls of hardened air.

“Olem, how many Privileged does the garrison have?”

“Two.”

“Two?” Vlora demanded. “What good is two Privileged going to do against that?”

“We do have powder mages,” Olem responded, gesturing to Norrine.

“Yeah, four of us. They have a whole bloody fleet. Send a message to Lindet. Tell her we need her personal cabal down here now or this fight might not last the evening.”

As if to emphasize her point, there was a chorus of screams from the mainland as shards of ice appeared over the marketplace at the mouth of the Hadshaw, raining down among the civilians there. Vlora swore, turning to look back toward the longboats approaching the end of the bay. “Take Davd and an extra company. Reinforce the garrison out on the point. Tell Davd to focus his fire on the Privileged. Go!”

Vlora watched Olem spring down the stairs into the muster yard. He grabbed Davd from his spot at a gun port and within the minute he and a company of Riflejacks raced on foot down the causeway connecting Fort Nied to the land.

Vlora snatched the arm of a messenger. “Get replacement gun crews up here, and make sure one of our Knacked engineers is keeping an eye on the sorcery in these walls. I don’t want the nasty surprise of their Privileged suddenly punching through this rock.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

With her back to the wall, she lifted herself up to look sidelong out at the approaching longboats. The Privileged were gradually coming within range, raining sorcery down on the fort and bay. They, like the ships they were coming from, would get more accurate as they drew closer. She took a deep breath and reached out with her senses. Farther, farther, and yet farther still, stretching out over a thousand yards to one of the longboats with a Privileged on the prow.

With a thought, she detonated the powder of all the soldiers in the longboat. It exploded in a hundred smaller detonations, tossing flesh and wood for fifty yards in all directions. She felt the kickback from triggering powder deep in her bones, rattling her as if she was standing near the explosions.

It was an effective way to destroy a longboat, but she couldn’t keep it up forever.

She wondered how many of the Dynize Privileged had ever encountered powder mages in a battle. She couldn’t take them all out by igniting powder, but she didn’t need to. “You!” she yelled, pointing at a nearby private. “Get me my rifle!”