Sins of Empire

Chapter 60

Messengers streamed in and out of Fort Nied, leaving Vlora with an increasingly uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The garrison was under heavy fire from troops that had landed north of the city, while Olem faced heavy losses at the point of the bay, and the smoke from musket fire over his position continued to rise as fast as the breeze blew it away, making it next to impossible for Vlora, Norrine, or Buden to give Olem any support fire.

Greenfire Depths was in flames, and the Blackhats had been seen fleeing the city en masse. She ordered the garrison to bring any and all cannons from the old forts scattered around the city to the eastern edge of the plateau, and diverted two thousand men from the southern side of the city to reinforce the north, and another nine hundred to help Olem.

“All of them!” she shouted at a messenger in a yellow Fatrastan jacket. “We’re not going to hold the bay, and I intend on making it next to impossible for the Dynize to take the plateau. Get me every weapon not nailed down inside the city. Raid Blackhat depots, I don’t give a damn!”

“But the Blackhats…”

“Are gone! Damn it, I’ll have my own men do it. Bloody pit, get out of my way!” She ran to the other end of the wall, taking a spare rifle from a wounded private she’d assigned to load her weapons. She searched the Else for a Dynize Privileged and, when she couldn’t find one, put a bullet through the eye of what looked like a Dynize officer.

She paused, lowering her rifle, and returned to the Fatrastan messenger. “Wait!” she shouted. “I want this rioting put down, and the fires in Greenfire Depths extinguished. Anyone in the garrison who isn’t dedicated to direct combat needs to do that. Get me newspapers, city criers, everything. If the rioters know the city is under attack by a foreign force, they might abate.”

A cannonball slammed into the top of the wall, and Vlora ducked, and the sound that accompanied the impact put her on edge. A single glance confirmed her fear: Masonry had shattered. The Dynize attack had finally broken the sorcery holding Fort Nied together.

“I need engineers up here!” she shouted, glancing over the edge of the wall. Longboats drew near, too numerous for her smaller gun crews to pick out of the water with grapeshot. Men stood in the prows with grappling hooks, ready to scale the walls of the fort. “Does nothing scare these assholes?”

She took one step and sagged, her right leg refusing to obey her. She looked down to find a shard of limestone as big as her thumb and twice as long sticking out of her leg, blood soaking the pants around it. She jerked it out, so deep in a powder trance that she barely registered the pain, and quickly bound the wound with her handkerchief.

The pain she could drown out, but her muscles wouldn’t respond.

She limped along the wall. “We can win,” she whispered to herself. “We can win. We will not break in the face of our enemies. We will hold strong. We are the anvil. We are the stone.” She reached the closest of her remaining gun crews and staggered over to the commander as he shouted orders.

“Distance, five hundred yards!”

“Distance, five hundred yards!” one of the crew repeated, helping the others adjust the aim of the gun. “Sir, ready to fire!”

“Fire!”

The cannon kicked back several feet, belching flame and noise. In the distance, the mast of a Dynize capital ship suddenly cracked, split, and with the slow momentum of a falling tree, toppled to the deck, scattering sailors and gunners.

“Report,” Vlora demanded of the gun commander.

“Range, four-hundred and ninety yards. Reload, reload!” The gunner didn’t bother looking or saluting. “We’re almost out of straight shot, General,” he shouted over the din. “We’ve got a few hundred rounds of canister left, but the boats will be here any moment.”

“Major,” Vlora shouted at an officer in the muster yard below, “I want riflemen lining the walls! Give everyone double ammunition and tell them to fix bayonets.”

The gun commander continued: “The ships are getting closer. We’ve sunk at least eighteen of the warships and another thirty or so of the transports and small support, but there’s just too damn many of them. We have” – he paused, scanning the walls, his lips moving as he counted – “just eight big guns left. Their ships of the line are getting close enough for some serious accuracy.”

Vlora slapped the gun commander on the shoulder. “Keep giving them the pit,” she ordered, limping over to another set of messengers. She was surprised to find one of them was a Palo, wearing one of the pale green uniforms she’d last seen on Mama Palo’s men. Her heart leapt into her throat before she remembered that Mama Palo – the real Mama Palo – was on her side.

“You first,” she said, pointing to the Palo.

“Message from the Red Hand,” the Palo said, looking entirely unimpressed by the chaos of the battle raging around them. “He says that the Dynize infiltrators have started the fires and the riots in Greenfire Depths. He’s dealing with that now.”

Vlora let out a sigh. Finally, some good news. She’d forgotten entirely about Taniel and Ka-poel’s Palo followers. If they could take care of the Dynize in Greenfire Depths and watch Vlora’s back, it would let her commit the last of her garrison reserves to the fight – soldiers she desperately needed. “Does he have any men he could spare for this?” she asked, gesturing toward the ocean.

The Palo messenger shook his head. “The Dynize have landed more men south of the city.”

Vlora let herself sag against the inner wall, letting out a soft sigh. We are the anvil. We are the rocks upon which our enemy will shatter. “I’ve just redirected all my men south of the city to reinforce the bay and the north.”

“The Red Hand demands reinforcements to the south.”

“He doesn’t demand shit,” Vlora snapped, suppressing the urge to take a swing at the Palo. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” she decided, was coined for this exact situation.

“The Red Hand wants you to know that the item in question is two miles south of the city. It needs to be protected from falling into Dynize hands.”

“The item in…” It took Vlora a moment before she understood what that meant. “The godstone.”

“That is what he called it, yes.”

Vlora called down to the muster yard. “Major, do we have anyone else at all we can send south?”

The major opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by the sudden thunder of hooves as Styke, Ibana, and a half-dozen Mad Lancers – along with Major Gustar – rode through the open gates of the fort. Vlora’s mind immediately changed directions and she waved off the major in the muster yard. “Styke!” she bellowed. “Report, now!”

Styke reined in just below her. “We’ve swept the beaches up north on our way in, and relieved Olem enough for him to withdraw from the point of the bay.” Vlora swore. She needed him to hold that point. But Olem wouldn’t pull back without damn good reason. “I’ve had about five hundred casualties,” Styke went on. “Leaves me with a little over eight hundred able-bodied riders.”

Vlora swore again. She’d hoped he’d arrive with full strength, but if he’d already been in two engagements, she should be impressed that he had anyone left at all. She looked toward the point of the bay, wondering how suicidal Styke really was to have ordered a charge into that smoky chaos on uneven ground.

“Two miles south of the city,” she said. “There’s an artifact down there. I don’t know where, I don’t know what the pit it looks like, but I need you to find it and secure it.”

Styke and Ibana both frowned, exchanging a glance. “But the battle…”

“You’ll get your battle,” Vlora said. “The Dynize are coming up from the south, and they want that artifact. I don’t know if they’re heading for it specifically, but if they find it before you get there we’ll have a pit of a time taking it back.”

Styke nodded. “Right-o, General.” Without another word he turned his big gelding back around and rode at the head of his men out of the muster yard. Vlora watched him go with a desperate longing. She needed Styke here, performing sweeps of the beach to relieve her defenders. But there was no one else to send, and the Dynize could not have the godstone.

“Ma’am,” the gunner commander shouted, “we need those riflemen up here now!”

“Major, get me those riflemen!”

“They’ll be sitting ducks on that wall! The ships are too close.”

Vlora grit her teeth, turning to look toward the ships of the line that were now just outside of the bay, broadside toward the fort, opening fire with fearless determination. “I’ll take care of it,” she said. “Just get your men up here.”

Staggering forward, Vlora put both hands on the wall and then cast her senses outward until she found the powder magazine in the depths of the warship’s hold. Hundreds of barrels of powder, all crowded together in one place. It took only a single thought to ignite it all, but she knew she’d feel a kickback strong enough to drop an elephant.

She touched off the powder and immediately felt like a wagon had run over her. She groaned, her head spinning, watching the ship blow apart through blurry vision, trying to breathe through a suddenly tight chest. It took her several moments to recover enough to have the presence of mind to duck as infantry in the Dynize longboats opened fire on the walls.

Within moments she was surrounded by her own riflemen, and the comforting cracks of Hrusch rifles returning fire.