The Crimson Campaign(The Powder Mage Trilogy)(40)

"We won." Taniel looked around the field. He could see soldiers running from the Adran side, coming to provide backup. If there wasn't a surgeon among them, he'd strangle someone.

"You held it," Etan said. "You held the line."

"No. You did. You and your grenadiers."

"Couldn't have done it without you." Etan was blinking rapidly now. Taniel searched him for a wound, trying to find something. Etan's fingers grasped the sleeve of Taniel's jacket, his knuckles bone white, his face drawn in pain. "I saw the way my boys looked at you. They would have followed you all the way to the pit just now. Just like Tamas. Just like your father."

"Don't say horrid shit like that," Taniel said. He felt hot tears on his cheeks. "I'm nothing like that old bastard."

"Taniel. Promise me you'll win this thing. Promise me you'll finish this. That this won't be the last victory Adro has."

"No need for promises," Taniel said. "You're not dying."

Etan pulled Taniel close. "I can't feel my bloody legs. I know what that means, you ass. I won't see a battlefield again. So you promise me now that you'll win this thing."

"I don't know if I can," Taniel said.

Etan slapped him. Taniel felt his cheek burn from the force of the blow. "Promise me." Another sharp blow nearly turned Taniel around. Even lying on the ground, unable to move his legs, Etan was strong. "Promise it!"

A woman, one of the surgeons, threw herself to the ground on Etan's opposite side. She looked him over, a frown on her face. "Where's the wound?"

"My back's broken," Etan said. His voice cracked. He looked Taniel in the eyes. "Promise me."

"No."

Etan's eyes were glassy with tears. "Coward. If I were dying, you'd promise me. Because you wouldn't have to answer to me then. But I'm not dying, and you won't promise it. Bloody coward."

Taniel turned his face away. He knew it was true.

They brought out a cart, one of the ambulances with a covered top and four cots to hold the wounded, to take Etan back to camp. Etan turned his head away from Taniel, and Taniel didn't walk beside him as they carted him away.

They had destroyed the Kez attack. Probably a thousand of the enemy soldiers dead. Twice that many wounded and another few hundred taken prisoner. It took Taniel a moment to realize he was surrounded by soldiers. The Twelfth Grenadiers. The smallest of them was a hand taller than Taniel. He wondered how many had died in the melee. Their losses had to be staggering.

One of them approached him. Taniel thought about turning away. He could push through them and head back to camp. Had they been listening? Did they hear their colonel tell Taniel he was a coward?

The stout man had his bearskin hat in one hand. His other hand was empty. Clenched in a fist. Taniel lifted his chin and waited to be punched.

"Sir," the grenadier said.

"Go ahead. I deserve it."

The grenadier seemed confused. He looked down at his fist, then flattened his hand. "Sir, you're not a coward. The colonel …  no man wants to end up like that. The things he said …  you're not a coward. We just watched you charge a brigade of Kez infantry by yourself. I want you to know: If you need something, anything, you just say so. I'll be there. I suspect most of these boys will say the same."

There was a round of nodding, and then the grenadiers began to trudge wearily back to camp.

Taniel stood alone in the field for several minutes, watching the surgeons cart off the dead and wounded. He felt someone behind him. He didn't have to turn around. Ka-poel.

He wiped the tears from his face with the sleeve of his jacket. "Don't you have bodies to examine, or some such thing?" he asked.

She took his hand. He wanted to pull away, but couldn't.

They stood together in silence as the blood of the living and the dead and the dying mingled together and made a red sea of Adran soil. Taniel lifted her hand in his. The movement was impulsive, sudden, and he wondered later what thought drove him, but he touched her hand to his lips firmly.

"I'm going to end this," he said. "I'm going to kill Kresimir. For good. You need his blood? I'll get it, even if I die doing it."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her give a slight shake of her head.

Without warning she stepped in front of him and wrapped one hand around the back of his head and pulled him down to her, pressing her warm lips against his. It seemed as if fire raced through his veins at the touch, and when she finally stepped away, he was breathless. He fought the impulse to drop to his knees, telling himself it was just blood loss that left him so weak.

Then the moment was past, and silent as always, Ka-poel went about her business, leaning over the body of a dead Adran soldier.

Stunned, Taniel watched her for several minutes until something far behind the Kez line brought him out of his reverie. In an instant he was a soldier again: vigilant, watchful, ready to defend against new threats from the enemy.

The Kez soldiers were raising something into the sky above their camp, just north of Budwiel's city walls. It must have been eight stories high for him to be able to see it from this distance. He took a small hit of powder, sharpening his eyes.

It was an immense beam, hewn from what looked to be one giant tree. Soldiers and prisoners milled about the base and spread out in a fan behind it, pulling on long ropes tied to the top of the beam. It was lifted high and then suddenly it dropped ten or twenty feet  –  probably into a slot dug out of the ground  –  to stand straight in the air.

Taniel frowned. He could see something on the side of the beam. A person?

He focused his powder-heightened eyes. Yes. A woman, it seemed. Stripped naked, she was nailed to the beam by her wrists, and her hands were missing. A rope about her waist secured her to the beam.

Taniel was taken aback. Was she a traitor of some kind, put up there as a warning? The missing hands would indicate she'd been a Privileged. What could …
 
 

 

The body moved. Bloody pit, she was alive.

Her head lifted, and Taniel felt his blood go cold. He knew her. She'd fought him in Kresim Kurga, the holy city, when he tried to keep her from summoning Kresimir.

It was Julene.





CHAPTER




18




Tamas waited for the return of his night scouts and listened to the familiar sounds of his soldiers breaking camp.

There was a light chatter this morning  –  something missing over the last two weeks' worth of march since the fall of Budwiel. Someone laughed in the distance. Nothing like a full belly to bring a man's spirits up. Combine that with elation at the victory over the Kez vanguard, and Tamas could almost call his men happy.

Almost.

Tamas didn't like eating horse. It reminded him of hard times in Gurla, of starvation and disease and the desert heat, when they'd been forced to slaughter their own healthy horses to stay alive. The taste was slightly sweet, and gamier than beef. Meat that came from cavalry chargers tended to be tough.

Then again, at least his stomach didn't rumble.

"What is it, soldier?"

Vlora stood at attention on the other side of his cook fire. She snapped off a salute.

"Kez spotted, sir. Riding under a white flag."

Tamas flicked a bit of fat into the fire and watched it sizzle. He stood up, wiping his hands on an already soiled handkerchief. Another problem they faced  –  no camp followers meant no laundresses. Both his uniforms were dirty and stained, and he smelled like a cesspool.

Adom forbid you do your own laundry, a little voice in the back of his head said. Tamas chuckled.

"Sir?" Vlora asked.

"Nothing, soldier. I'll meet them on the edge of camp. Olem!"

"Coming, sir."

Tamas was joined by Olem and a small bodyguard of Olem's Riflejacks. Among the Ninth, stationed as the rear guard, the last tents were being rolled and stowed in packs and cook fires put out. They'd be on the march in twenty minutes. The advance elements of the Seventh were already half a mile down the road.

He passed a row of wagons. They'd been able to salvage them from the abandoned remains of Hune Dora. The bottoms were already stained from the blood of the wounded, and they smelled like death at ten paces. Today, they would carry the wounded that had survived the last two days.

"Have those washed out," Tamas said to Olem. "In fact, I want bathing mandatory. There's plenty of mountain streams in these woods. Organize it with the scouts. I want fifty men to stop and bathe in every mountain stream we pass. If we don't look to ourselves, we'll have disease rampant in the camp."

"Yes, sir." Olem rubbed at his dust-caked uniform. "I could use a little freshening up myself."

They left the edge of the Adran camp and passed the rear pickets. The forest beyond was still, the only sounds that of chattering squirrels and the call of birds. Tamas welcomed the birdsong. It reminded him of peace, distracted him from the harsh call of the carrion crows and the memory of piled corpses that lingered behind his eyes.

Tamas saw the Kez riders before they saw him.

There were a dozen of them. They were still mounted upon their chargers in the middle of the road, watching the Adran pickets impassively. They wore the heavy breastplates of cuirassiers over tan uniforms with green trim. They dismounted as Tamas drew closer and one of them removed his helmet and approached.

"Field Marshal Tamas?"

"I am he," Tamas said.