The Autumn Republic

Chapter 22

Taniel entered the Adran camp at a full gallop, hurtling past soldiers and camp followers.

The night was full of panicked shouts, punctuated by the screams of the wounded, and the chill air choked with smoke. The flames he had seen from a distance turned out to be fires jumping from tent to tent, burning the trampled grasses and catching everything they could along the way. He passed several bucket brigades working from the nearest streams and soon found himself in a haze of thick smoke near the Eleventh Brigade.

Where his and Ka-poel’s tent had been.

He left his horse with the closest soldier and ran deeper into the chaos. Men milled about, faces obscured by blood and ashes. Taniel grabbed one of them.

“What happened?”

“Surprise attack,” the man shouted, pulling aside the handkerchief covering his mouth. “They came from the west, at least a dozen Privileged and five thousand men!”

“Who?”

“Kez!”

Taniel shoved the man aside and stumbled toward where he thought his tent had been. Five thousand men? A dozen Privileged? The Kez had no Privileged left of any power, and how could they possibly have gotten close enough to launch a surprise attack? The smoke muddled his senses and the darkness disoriented him. The tents in this area were all gone, all burned to cinders. He plowed onward, knowing he’d have to trust to luck as much as memory to find Ka-poel.

He caught sight of a prone figure in the grass. It wore Adran blues and lay unmoving with a rifle a handbreadth from its outstretched fingers. He spotted another body in the gloom, and then another. All Adran. Some of them were little more than charred skeletons, while others looked as if they’d fallen asleep.

Taniel’s head began to pound, and he pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth to protect him from the smoke. His eyes watered terribly. He opened his third eye and, to his horror, found the world drenched in pastels. Sorcery for certain, then.

Perhaps these pastels were just a sign of Bo fighting back? Taniel dismissed that hope. Not even Bo could unleash this much of the Else in a fight. The colors were everywhere, running parallel to the fire in the grass and splattered across the bodies of the Adran soldiers like paint thrown from a bucket.

Where was Bo? Where was Ka-poel? Panic set in and Taniel found himself breathing heavily. He nabbed an Adran soldier by the arm. “Bo?”

The man shook his head.

“Where’s Privileged Borbador?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

As Taniel went on, he found more smoldering bodies strewn haphazardly about the camp as if the area had been shelled by enemy artillery. Taniel counted more and more dead Kez, and found where the Adran soldiers had put up a valiant resistance. Fifty men, all in a line, their corpses charred beyond recognition and only discernible as Adran by the remnants of the Hrusch rifles clutched in their hands.

“Bo! Ka-poel!”

Taniel tripped and bashed his knee, barely noticing the ashes that blackened his new uniform. He pushed himself up and limped onward, shouting for Ka-poel and Bo. Rescuers soon joined him, putting out any embers and checking bodies.

“Have you seen Privileged Borbador? Or the savage Bone-eye?”

Each soldier shook his head.

Taniel staggered drunkenly through the pandemonium that engulfed the Adran camp. Soldiers pushed past him, and someone collided with his shoulder, nearly knocking him off his feet. He stumbled on, mind in a daze, until he found his father with the Third Brigade, trying to make sense of the chaos.

“Get those fires out!” Tamas shouted. “Olem, I need casualty reports. Who the bloody pit attacked us? How many were there?”

“Kez,” Taniel said. “I saw the bodies. There’s sorcery marks everywhere. There were at least a few Privileged. Somebody said a dozen Privileged and five thousand men.”

Tamas responded, “The damage is bad, but it isn’t nearly that bad. Bloody pit. I thought the Kez didn’t have any Privileged left. Olem!”

“Yes sir, on it, sir!”

“I can’t find Ka-poel,” Taniel said.

Tamas whirled. “Olem! Find Ka-poel. I want a dozen men looking for her. Taniel, where’s Bo?”

“I can’t find him either.” Taniel tried to push down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. His breath came short and his stomach was twisted in a knot of fear. He could still see the pastels of sorcery in the Else floating before his vision and he remembered leaving for the parley at Tamas’s insistence. Bo had mussed Ka-poel’s hair playfully. “I’ll keep an eye on little sister,” Bo had said. “Go play politician.”

Taniel couldn’t stop hyperventilating. His chest felt tight. Beyond Tamas, Bo and Ka-poel were all he had left in this world. To lose them both at once…

“Taniel,” Tamas said, putting a hand on Taniel’s shoulders even as he kept barking orders to his men. “We’ll find her.”

“If she’s dead, I’ll – I don’t know. I can’t… Bo. She has to be with Bo.”

“If she’s dead, then we have bigger problems,” Tamas said, his voice steady. “If Kresimir escapes whatever enchantment she has him under, we’re all dead men.”

Taniel grabbed Tamas by the lapels and jerked him around, pulling him close until Tamas’s startled visage was just a few inches from his face. “Ka-poel matters more than that bloody god!”

Tamas slapped him across the face, a distant stinging in Taniel’s panicked world. “Get ahold of yourself, boy!”

Taniel took a step forward, blinded by rage. He raised one fist, but he and Tamas were suddenly pushed apart.

Bo’s apprentice shoved her way between them. “Both of you, stop it!” she said. “Find Ka-poel! Find Bo! We’re on the same side!” Her face was a mask of fury and she managed to loom despite being a head shorter than either of them. “Can’t you see enough blood has been shed tonight?”

“Get your–” Tamas growled, but his threats were cut short as Nila pointed a finger at him and both her arms were suddenly wreathed in flame. She pointed her other finger at Taniel and looked between them, wide-eyed and wild, as angry as a lioness.

“Kresimir help me, I will set your boots on fire if you don’t get your heads together,” she snapped.

“Sir!” someone called from out in the darkness. “We’ve found Privileged Borbador! Come quickly!”

Nila had no time to reflect on the fact that she had just stepped between two of the strongest, most deadly powder mages in the world. She had no time to think of her fire or her anger. Even the men who followed upon her heels barely touched upon her mind.

Bo could be dead.

Once Tamas and Taniel had been pulled apart, a soldier led them all through the smoke and gloom, torch held over his head. Nila stumbled as she ran, her trembling hands betraying her. The burned grass quickly gave way and clods of dirt fouled her already uncertain step. The torchlight played upon the smoke and then upon immense shapes reaching into the night.

Tamas was called away, and he told them to go on ahead and find Bo, then took off at a run after a messenger.

The smoke began to recede and the smell of soil suddenly filled her nostrils as if she had stumbled into a damp root cellar. They stood among immense mounds of mud, scooped from the ground as if with a spade the size of a house. She did not open her third eye – she dared not, for fear of being overwhelmed. She didn’t need to. She could sense the sorcery still hanging in the air. Potent sorceries had tilled the ground as easily as a plow might turn a field, and the prospect terrified Nila.

Earth Privileged, Bo had called them. Capable of manipulating solid elements and shaping the very landscape.

Nila was shoved aside as Taniel barreled past her. “Bo? Where is he, damn it? Bo!”

Could he not sense the power that had been unleashed here? To Nila it was as if the ground might close around her at any moment – a trap waiting to be sprung by the unwary. She steadied herself against one of the mounds of earth, trying to catch her breath. Her entire body shook from fear.

“Bo!”

Taniel’s certain call drew Nila from within herself and she was running forward before her own fear could stop her once more.

Bo lay half-buried in the dirt. Black rods, each as thick as a man’s wrist and three to four feet tall, peppered the ground around him like a small forest, rammed into the ground at an angle, and with what appeared to be great force. The stench of spent sorcery was so thick Nila could barely approach, and the rods steamed in the chill night air.

“Don’t touch those!” Bo’s shrill, frantic warning came just a moment too late. One unfortunate soldier grasped a rod with both hands and leapt back with a howl, leaving several layers of charred skin on the rod. “Damn it,” Bo said weakly. His body trembled and sweat poured down his face. “They’re bloody enchanted. Fire and earth, woven together to keep them hot. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I’m getting bloody hot in here.”

The rods were clustered closely around Bo like a palisade, leaving him trapped and unable to move. She took a torch from one of the soldiers and held it out over Bo to confirm her suspicions. Blood streaked his hands, his Privileged gloves nothing more than shredded ribbons.

“The rods,” Nila shouted. “We have to get them out! He can’t do it himself. Bring horses and chains.”

No one moved and Taniel whirled on the soldiers. “You heard the Privileged. Go!”

Nila ignored them and edged closer to the rods, flinching from the heat. “Breathe, Bo, breathe! Stay with me. Is there anything I can do?”

Bo made a soft mewling sound, then said, “Just hurry with the horses.”

“What happened?” Taniel asked. “Where is Ka-poel?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought it was pretty obvious we were bloody well attacked!” Bo’s voice rose to a crescendo at the end of the sentence.

“Can you move your hands?” Nila asked.

“Barely. Whoever that was, she did a number on me.”

“I should have been here.”

“You would have been killed.”

“Bring a doctor,” Taniel shouted. “Where are those horses? You there, get shovels. Dig on that side of the slope. We can try to undermine the rods.”

Nila hated that she couldn’t do anything. She had no knowledge of air or earth sorcery, the two kinds that would allow her to remove the lances herself. She counted seven of them and tried to focus on the sorcery that caused the heat. She nudged it with her senses, agonizing on the thought that, had she better knowledge of powers, she might be able to at least pick apart the wards. “How long are these rods?”

“I didn’t see, as that bitch was ramming them through me,” Bo said. “I was too busy trying to kill her back. Kresimir, that hurts and” – he lifted his head toward the men digging downhill from him – “Stop that! The shifting dirt is grinding that thing against me and it hurts like bloody pit.”

“One of them’s touching you?” Nila asked.

“Uh, yeah. That one down there.” Bo waggled his chin. His face was red from the heat. Blood and sweat streamed down his face. “You know, right about where my knee used to be.”

Nila suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She had thought that the rods were merely meant to immobilize him, that none of them had actually hit him. But his lower body was buried, obscuring the position of his legs…

“Where are the horses?” Taniel demanded. “Faster now, boys! These damn things are killing him.”

“They’re not killing me.” Bo coughed, flecks of blood on his lips. “They’re cooking me. Fine distinction.” The quip had no energy.

Nila reached between the rods to touch his hand. She felt his fingers curl around hers. “If I can get your spare gloves onto your hands, will you be able to free yourself?”

“I’m knackered out, and I think a couple of the fingers on my left hand are broken. I couldn’t reach into the Else to save myself,” Bo said, the sentence ending in a gasp as the rod at his knee suddenly shifted.

“Stop digging!” Taniel bellowed.

Nila heard the jangle of harnesses and chains. “They’ve got the horses,” she whispered to Bo. “You’ll be free soon.”

Horses were backed into place, chains attached to their harnesses and the chains wrapped around the hot lances. The first was pulled out, with only a few pained squeals from Bo. The second and Nila was able to move closer to him. She leaned in and used her sleeve to wipe the grime from Bo’s brow.

He suddenly smiled at her. “How did the parley go?”

“What?”

“The parley? Isn’t that where you were?”

“He’s in shock,” Taniel said. “Where are the damned doctors?”

“Fine, fine,” Nila reassured Bo. “You should have been there.”

“Had to protect little sister,” Bo said. He looked at Taniel and his eyes seemed unfocused. “Did I? Where is she?”

“I don’t know!” Taniel said.

“They came for her. That much was obvious. Cut their way through the brigade. She stabbed one of their grenadiers in the eye with her needle. Damn, that girl has spirit.”

Another of the lances was jerked out by the horses. The ground shifted and Bo, along with the four lances still surrounding him, slid several inches.

“Who came for her? The Kez?” Taniel demanded. Nila wanted to tell him to back off, but Bo’s eyes were now focused, his confusion gone, and he gave a short nod. “Didn’t recognize any of their Privileged. Well, I didn’t get a good look at the one who stuck me, but her aura seemed familiar. Nothing I can place now. Killed another of them. I think there were two more. The one I killed should be over there somewhere.” He made a vague gesture. “Strong lot. I thought you told me all the Kez Privileged were dead.”

“They were supposed to be,” Taniel growled. “Look, Bo, hang in there. I have to go find Tamas. We have to make sense of what happened.”

“Go at it, chap,” Bo said, swinging weakly for Taniel’s chin with his fist and missing.

Taniel was up and gone a moment later. A fourth lance was now out, and soldiers had managed to dig the dirt from around Bo’s legs. He lay on an incline in the dirt, head back, looking almost peaceful. Nila dared a look at his knee.

It was completely destroyed. The lance had gone through flesh and bone like a knife through butter. His pants from the thigh down were cooked away and the flesh of his lower thigh and knee was black and cooked. The smell reminded her of the battlefield when she’d killed all of those soldiers, but Nila forced that out of her mind. She couldn’t panic. Not now.

“Is he dead?” a soldier asked.

“No, he’s not dead,” Nila said, feeling her heart leap. He wasn’t, was he? “Bo?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Bo’s head came up suddenly. “Any of those damned engineers coming to help?”

“They’re still putting fires out,” a soldier said.

“Oh. Oh, I see. I’ll just lie here and feel myself cook then. Tell them not to rush.”

“The horses are doing the trick,” Nila said.

“They won’t for the one in my leg,” Bo said. “That one will be difficult. They’ll need levers and math and all sorts of things.”

“Go get the engineers,” Nila told a pair of corporals. “Now!” When they had gone, she returned to Bo’s side. “Bo. Bo? Stay with me!”

“I’m just resting my eyes.”

She crouched down beside him and sighed. “Please don’t die.”

“Not planning on it.”

“I don’t think most people plan on it.”

Bo seemed to consider this. “You are wise beyond your years.”

“Shut up.”

“All right.” He was quiet for a moment, then said pitifully, “This really hurts.”

Nila leaned forward and peered at Bo’s knee again. She held up one hand and brought fire from the Else to give herself light. The lance was still hot, and his flesh was cracked and cooked like meat that had been roasted over a flame for hours too long. Bo groaned as the soldiers and their horses removed the fifth lance.

“It doesn’t hurt as bad as you’d think,” Bo said. “After all, the nerves are all dead. But I can feel the heat of it still. Feel it slowly cooking. Pit, I’ll be lucky to ever use this leg again.”

Lucky? Nila had no experience with battlefield surgery, but as far as she could tell that leg was gone. “We’ll get you a healer.”

“It’ll be a rough job.”

“We’ll get you the best.”

“If you insist. Just tell them to leave a blackened scar. It’s more roguish that way. And a pit of a conversation starter.”

“Hush, now,” Nila said.

“Look, if I stop talking, I’ll probably start crying. And I make it a point never to cry in front of women. Especially ones I hope to bed someday.”

“Is that so?” Nila climbed to her feet.

“Yes. Makes me look weak. Women can sense weakness. Oh, sure, some women say they want a sensitive man. But no one ever says they want a weak man.”

There were just two lances left. The sixth would come out easily enough, but like Bo said, that seventh would be tricky. It couldn’t just be dragged out at an angle by a team of horses. It might rip his leg off completely, and the shock might kill him. It had to be pulled up and out, as straight as possible. She looked it over carefully. She had no idea as to the material – some kind of metal, by the looks of it – but sorcery emanated from the thing. Earth sorcery, no doubt. With fire to make it hot, and air to throw it.

Bo kept talking to no one in particular. “By Kresimir, this’ll be a conversation starter. I can imagine it now. Some fop in last year’s fashion sitting in the tavern, showing a gaggle of women some scar and telling them he got it from a knife fight with a man twice his size. And then, Bam! I lift my pant leg and show them how the strongest Privileged I’d ever seen blasted a lance of sorcery-hewn metal through my kneecap.”

“You’ll leave out the crying part?”

“I’m not crying, I… What the pit are you doing?”

Nila ignited the fire around her hands. It came as easily as a thought and a twitch of her fingers, and she didn’t have time to wonder at that. She tapped the lance hesitantly. When it didn’t burn her, she grasped it with both hands, set her foot on the ground beside Bo’s leg, and pulled.

His scream almost made her lose her nerve, but she pulled harder, sliding the pole out of his knee like a needle through cloth. It came loose with a jerk and she fell backward, lance in hand, then tossed it away before she hit herself in the face with it.

Bo’s body spasmed as he was wracked with sobs. He jerked and screamed, curling on his side and clutching at his blackened ruin of a leg. She threw herself to the ground beside him and took him by the hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s out now!”

He wept uncontrollably for a few moments. “All right,” he said between sobs. “I’ll leave out the crying.” And he sagged against her.

Nila checked his pulse with one hand and then let herself slump beside him. He was still alive.

Guilt began to crowd her thoughts. Perhaps if she’d been here, she could have helped. She could have turned that Privileged into a lump of charcoal and… and who was she kidding? She was an apprentice. She would have been killed outright. Bo was very powerful, clever, and trained, and he had only barely survived the battle.

Where were the damned doctors? Wasn’t Taniel sending help? Where was he now? Probably going after his savage girl. After all the worry Bo had showed for him, Taniel couldn’t just stay here to comfort his friend who might be dying?

She looked down at Bo. He gave out a light whimper when she moved his arm out of the way of the wound. She could see through his kneecap.

Her stomach turned at the sight of it. Would he ever be able to walk again? She’d heard of healers who’d regrown whole limbs, but those had just been stories. This kind of damage seemed beyond what anyone could heal, no matter their skill.

She remembered rubbing her fingers together frantically at the Battle of Ned’s Creek and hoping and praying for the right combination of sorcery to bring down those men.

And it had worked. She’d killed thousands with a gesture.

Like from the stories.

Bo said that healers were very rare. That they took great skill. But maybe… maybe she could be something other than a killer.

Nila bit her lip and wiggled her thumb. The aether. That’s what she needed. She reached out for the Else.

“What the bloody pit do you think you’re doing?” Bo batted her outstretched hand weakly to one side. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I felt you reaching out for it. Are you mad? I… oh, pit, this hurts. I don’t know what’s in your head.”

“I thought that maybe I could just…” She shrugged.

“You could just heal me? You’re bloody mad, woman, and I’ll have no talk of that. Remember that the aether is a refined matter that creates and breaks bonds. You’re just as likely to make every particle of my body explode as you are to heal me.” Bo grimaced and let out a long whimper. “Now, promise me you won’t ever try to experiment like that on me. Ever.”

“I promise,” Nila said, feeling like a scolded schoolgirl.

“Good.” Bo let his head fall against the mud.

The crew with the horses moved off, leaving the final lance sticking from the ground, now that Bo was fully free. Three men came out of the night bearing torches. Two were the soldiers who had helped dig Bo out, and the third was a doctor.

“The engineers are coming now,” one of the soldiers said.

“Never mind the engineers,” Nila told him. “Just help him.”

“We need to move him out of this,” the doctor said. “Get him to a clean tent and bring me hot and cold water and my instruments.”

The soldiers lifted Bo onto a canvas stretcher. Nila walked beside him, holding him by the hand as they moved out of the blasted battlefield. They were nearly out of the swath of destruction when Field Marshal Tamas emerged from the darkness.

“Bo, are you all right?”

Bo eyed Tamas as a man would eye a meal after having just thrown up. His face was scrunched in pain, but his eyes were clear. “I’ve had better days.”

“They’ve taken Ka-poel. And her package.”

“Ah, pit,” Bo sighed.

Nila frowned. She didn’t know what that meant, but what little color Bo had left in his cheeks was gone.

Tamas said, “We’re going back to war. Ipille called us to a truce and then blindsided us. I’ve had runners just now that our allies are ahead of schedule. The Seventh and the Ninth will be here soon and the Deliv are just behind them. We’re marching south first thing in the morning and we’re going to throw the Kez from our borders. I mean to destroy Ipille fully for this treachery.”

“Sounds good. And Taniel?”

“He wants to – he must go after Ka-poel. If they know what she’s carrying, we’re all dead men.”

“Bo, what is he talking about?” Nila asked.

Tamas looked at her. His body sagged from exhaustion and his face was creased with lines of worry and fear. “Not something to discuss in the open, my dear.”

Nila seethed. What did he mean by that? Did he not trust her? Did he not trust Bo? She felt Bo’s hand on her arm and he whispered, “I’ll tell you later.” He let out a hiss and suddenly writhed in her arms.

“I’ll give you mala for the pain,” the doctor said, searching his bag.

“Do you see this?” Bo thrust a finger at his charred leg. “I’m not smoking anything!”

“You’re in shock.”

“I’m cooking, that’s what I am. Get me whiskey. Lots of it.”

The doctor looked to Nila as if for some kind of confirmation. Not knowing what else to do, she nodded.

“The Deliv healers will be here within a couple of days,” Tamas said. His face was impassive.

“I don’t think he should wait that long.”

“Get a carriage,” Tamas snapped to one of his men. “We’ll send him to them.”

“I’m going with him,” Nila said.

Bo gave Tamas a sudden, wolfish grin. “Get me patched up and me and Tan will go after the savage.”

“You’re going to the Deliv army,” Tamas said sternly. “Taniel has already left. Olem is gathering a squad to send after him. And you, my dear” – he turned his eye toward Nila – “you’re staying here.”

“What do you mean? I’m not leaving Bo alone.”

“He’s a grown man.” Nila didn’t like the dangerous glint in Tamas’s eye. “You,” he continued, “I’m going to unleash on the Kez.”