The Crimson Campaign (33 page)

Taniel’s mind raced. What to do? Run for it? Go out, dignified, and let them take him away? “Answer me this, first: What has happened to me? I’m stronger and faster than before. I’ve never felt this kind of power. It took enough mala to kill a horse just to get me buzzed. I know it’s more than just being a powder mage. Is it because of her?” He flung his finger toward Ka-poel, who raised an eyebrow in response.

Mihali hesitated for several moments. “You’ve been tempered,” he said. “This girl here has you wrapped in protective sorceries. Kresimir’s returning strike after you shot him was enough to bring down South Pike Mountain. It should have shattered your mortal body. That blow he gave you could very well have killed me, for all my knowledge of sorcery. But you…” Mihali chuckled, as if something was funny. “You, it just made stronger.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, it —”

“It’s time to go,” Mihali said.

Taniel took a deep breath. “All right. Ka-poel, stay here. I don’t want them touching you.” Without waiting for an answer, he stepped out of the tent and into daylight.

The provosts surrounded him quickly, their pikes leveled.

“All right, you bastards. Take me to General Ket, I —”

Someone brought a truncheon down on his head, hard. Taniel staggered forward, spitting blood from the blow. Another hit his stomach, then his knee. He collapsed to the ground. He was cursed and kicked and beaten, and when he thought he could take no more, he was pulled to his feet and struck about the face and head until he lost consciousness.

CHAPTER

20

Tamas listened to his stomach growl as his charger trotted along the road at the rear of the column. Ahead of him, the men of the Ninth Brigade shuffled to the crack of a single drummer boy’s snare. The air was hot and oppressive, even with the cover of tall pine trees. The summer humidity soaked through Tamas’s soiled jacket and made every breath a labor.

He watched one of the infantry in the column ahead of him. The man was tall, with dirty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail over one shoulder. About twenty minutes ago his shoulders had started to sway dangerously as he marched. He’d be the next to faint. Tamas would have put money on it.

Every so often the soldiers would glance back at Tamas’s charger with hungry eyes. They watched with the same looks every scout and officer who was still riding. It was unsettling.

They’d slaughtered the last of the Kez horses two days ago and distributed the meat. Tamas heard rumor that some of the company quartermasters were holding back and selling the last precious pounds. He’d tried to get to the bottom of it, but no one would confess. Every stream they passed saw a dozen men leave the line, throwing themselves into the mud in search of tiny fish and crawdads. Their sergeants had to beat them back into the column.

“They think they’re going to get a meal soon,” Olem said.

Tamas shook himself from his reverie. He felt light-headed, weak. He’d not eaten in four days. The men on their feet needed it more than he did. At least there was some periodic grazing for the horses.

Olem pointed up to a pair of buzzards circling high above the treetops.

“Ah,” Tamas said.

“They’ve been following us for fifty miles,” Olem said.

“You can’t be sure it’s the same vultures.”

“One of ’em has red on the tips of his feathers.”

Tamas grunted. Words were coming slow out of his mouth. The heat didn’t make him feel much like talking.

“That red-tipped buzzard kept on when most of the others stayed behind at the camp two mornings ago, when we slaughtered the horses.” Olem pursed his lips. “I think he’s hoping for the big payday.”

Tamas looked up at the buzzards. He didn’t want to talk about them. He’d seen far too many on far too many battlefields. “I haven’t seen you smoke for a week,” he said.

“Too bloody hot, pardon the language, sir.” Olem patted his breast pocket. “Besides. I’m saving my last one.”

“A special occasion of some kind?”

Olem continued to watch the buzzards. “Gavril told me we might be making a stand at the Fingers. I figure it’ll be nice to die with a cigarette between my lips.”

Tamas couldn’t help but scowl. “Have you told anyone? About the stand, I mean.”

“No, sir.”

“Damned Gavril. Needs to keep his mouth shut.”

“So it’s true, then?”

“I don’t intend to make a last stand, Olem. I intend to break the Kez. Last stands are for men who plan on losing.”

“Quite right, sir.”

Tamas sighed inwardly. Soldiers had a strange sense of fatalism. Most of them didn’t realize that any odds could be beaten with the right maneuvering.

“Olem…” Tamas began.

“Sir?”

“About what I saw the other day…”

A muscle jumped in Olem’s jaw. “What do you mean, sir?”

“I think you know what I mean.
Vlora.
If I’d come a few minutes later, I think I would have found the two of you in a much more compromising position.”

“That was the hope, sir.”

Tamas blinked. He’d not expected that kind of bluntness. “Can’t hold your tongue to save face, can you?”

“Not to save my life, sir.”

“I won’t have that kind of fraternization, Olem.”

“What kind, sir?” The corners of Olem’s eyes tightened.

“You and Vlora. She is a captain, you are —”

“A captain,” Olem said. “You made me one yourself.” He touched the gold pins on his lapels helpfully.

Tamas cleared his throat and looked up. Those damned buzzards were still there. “I mean that she is a powder mage. You know my mages are a different contingent of the army. I won’t have you crossing that line.”

Olem looked like he wanted to say something. He worked his jaw around, chewing on a phantom cigarette. “Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.”

The sarcasm in Olem’s tone leaked through like water through paper. It nearly shocked Tamas. Olem was normally so loyal, so quick to obey. He opened his mouth, a rebuke on his tongue.

The soldier with a ponytail staggered and fell out of line, hitting the ground hard. Two of his companions stopped to help him.

“Head up the line,” Tamas said. “Call for rest. The men need a sit-down.”

Only too grateful to get away, Olem spurred his mount on, calling out, “Field Marshal orders the column to halt! Fall out!”

Tamas could hear the order repeated farther up the column. Slowly, the line of soldiers came to a stop. Some men went looking for the closest stream, some men relieved themselves in the woods, and others slumped to the ground where they were, too exhausted to move.

Tamas opened his canteen and drained the last few drops. The water was hot and tasted of the metal. “Soldier,” Tamas said, pointing to a man who looked the least worse for the wear. “Find me some clean, cold water and fill this, then tell your sergeant you’re off latrine duty tonight.”

The soldier took the canteen. “Aye, sir.”

Tamas climbed down from his charger and hung the reins from a tree limb. He paced the width of the road, trying to work some feeling back into his legs after riding half the day. He stopped once and looked south. No sign of the Kez. The woods were too thick. According to the latest reports, the head of the Kez column was ten miles back. They had dragoons ranging in the area in between, trying to catch Adran stragglers and harass the end of the Adran column, but what mattered to Tamas was where the bulk of the cavalry were.

He was going to need that heavy lead.

“Sir.”

Tamas turned to find Vlora standing next to his charger. Her uniform was dirty, jacket loosened at the neck, her black hair tied back behind her head. He had the brief image of her naked beneath the waterfall, leaning in to kiss Olem. He willed the image away, trying not to let his embarrassment show on his face.

“Captain.”

“How is the leg, sir?”

Tamas flexed the muscles in his leg, felt them twinge. Riding hadn’t helped it loosen at all, but the pain wasn’t too bad. “It’s fine, thank you. Any luck hunting?”

“The deer are keeping well away from the column. If we range more than a mile or two from the road, we won’t be able to carry our prey back. A few squirrels and rabbits. Enough to keep the powder mages fed.”

At least his mages were keeping up their strength. He felt his stomach twist at the mention of rabbit.

“If we camped for more than one night, or even slowed down a bit, we might be able to bag some deer.”

“Sorry, Captain. I can’t allow that. We have to reach the Fingers well ahead of the Kez.”

“The scouts say we’ll be there in two days, sir.”

“That’s right,” Tamas said. “Once we cross the first river, we’ll burn the bridge and take it easy for a couple of days. Rest and restock.”

“I certainly hope so, sir. The men are looking poor.”

Tamas turned his attention to the soldier who had fainted. He was sitting up now, drinking out of a canteen, talking to one of his fellows. Tamas clasped his hands behind his back and faced Vlora.

“Captain, you and I both know that what happened the other day was completely out of order.”

Vlora didn’t even blink. “You mean, when you watched me bathe?”

Tamas could have slapped her for that. Damned girl. She knew what he wanted to say, and she wasn’t going to make it easy.

“You and Olem…”

“Sir, I don’t think that’s any of your business. With all due respect.”

“I am your commanding officer —”

“Yes, sir. And you’ve always made it very clear that what two soldiers want to do in their spare time is up to them, as long as it doesn’t break convention between the ranks.”

“This is different.” This
was
different, Tamas told himself. “I won’t have one of my Marked gallivanting around with my bodyguard, do you understand? I won’t have my bodyguard going around with… with…”

“A whore?”

She had spoken quietly, but Tamas felt the breath taken from him.

“That’s what you want to say, isn’t it, sir? You want to call me a whore for what I did to Taniel? A slut? I can hear the words on the tip of your tongue, even if you don’t speak them.”

“Watch your tone, soldier,” Tamas warned.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“Permission denied.”

Vlora ignored him. “You don’t think I know what I did to Taniel? You don’t think it kills me inside knowing that I threw away everything we had for a few months of passion with some idiot?”

“Permission denied, Captain.”

“You don’t hear the men talk.” Vlora’s voice rose. “You don’t hear what everyone says about me behind my back – even to my face. You don’t see the sneers. ‘Vlora, she’ll spread her legs for anyone now.’ You don’t hear them whisper that outside your tent at night, placing bets on who can be the first to get me on my back.”

“Permission denied!” Tamas stepped forward. Any other soldier would have shrunk beneath the red fury in Tamas’s eyes, but Vlora refused to back down.

“I spent eighteen months alone while Taniel was in Fatrasta because
you
sent him there. Taniel, the war hero. People talked about how every woman in Fatrasta was ready to throw themselves on him. And then to hear he had a little savage girl, following him everywhere. What was I supposed to think of that? No man would look twice at me at the university. They knew who I was. They were too afraid of Taniel to say any nice thing to me.”

Vlora spat the words in Tamas’s face, her voice dripping with bitterness, her whole body trembling with rage. “Then a man appears who doesn’t care whose fiancée I am. He charms me, loves me, and assures me there’s not another in the world that can make him so happy. I trusted him.” Vlora’s face twisted in disgust. “Then I find out he was bedding me just to
make you look bad
.”

The pain in Vlora’s eyes and the malice in her voice was more than Tamas could bear. Once, he had been her father, her friend, her mentor. But now he had become nothing more to her than an object of hatred, an enemy to despise.

“Get out of my sight, Captain. If we weren’t at war, I’d have you court-martialed.”

Vlora leaned forward, closer than anyone who didn’t know Tamas as well as she did would have dared. Close enough to embrace him. Close enough to stick a knife in his ribs if she wanted. “Kill me yourself, if you want it done so badly,” she said. “Don’t hand the job over to lesser men.”

She whirled on her heel and strode down the column. Soldiers stared openmouthed at her as she went past, then turned to look toward Tamas, waiting for his wrath to follow like thunder after lightning.

Tamas watched Vlora almost disappear around a bend in the road. She made an abrupt stop as Olem rode into view. The bodyguard leaned over his horse, said something to her. She put her hand on his thigh. He pushed it away gently and gave a meaningful glance at Tamas.

Vlora grabbed Olem by the belt and pulled him off his horse, pushing him into the woods off the trail. Tamas swore under his breath and took two steps down the column.

Someone cleared their throat. Tamas looked around.

It was the soldier he’d sent for water. “Your canteen, sir.”

Tamas snatched the canteen. When he looked again, Olem and Vlora were gone.