The Crimson Campaign (66 page)

Tamas watched from the vantage of an old church tower as rain fell in thick sheets across Alvation.

The early morning was dim and cloudy, and Tamas didn’t think that it would get much lighter outside as the day went on. Tamas couldn’t even see the Charwood Mountains, though they rose less than a mile from his current position.

An excellent day for his army to sneak up on the city.

A terrible day for a battle.

Powder would be wet, the ground muddy, and with the Kez wearing Adran uniforms, neither side would be able to tell friend from foe.

The street below was full of Kez soldiers moving supplies.

He watched them work with no small amount of trepidation. If he was right, and he feared he was, Nikslaus’s last act when he pulled out of the city would be to put it to the torch, slaughtering civilians and leaving enough chaos behind that no one would bother to question who was behind the attack.

The Mountainwatch above Alvation was about twenty-five miles away. Early this morning, Tamas had heard the faint report of cannon fire from that direction. Nikslaus had the Mountainwatch under siege.

It wasn’t a strong Mountainwatch. Not a bastion like South Pike; more of a fortified toll road. It wouldn’t hold long against two brigades of Kez soldiers.

Tamas had sent Vlora back to the Seventh and Ninth hours ago.

He missed her now. No one to watch his back. The Deliv partisans didn’t trust him, so he spent most of his time watching the Kez soldiers – watching for patterns, waiting for Nikslaus to make his move. One eye always on the road, on the chance Tamas would see Gavril among the prisoners being forced to do hard labor for the Kez.

Tamas heard a noise in the chapel beneath the tower. The large main door opened and closed again. A moment later, a set of footsteps rang on the stone stairs. Tamas brushed his fingers along the grip of one pistol and then took a powder charge between his fingers. He opened it carefully, only taking the tiniest pinch, and sprinkled the black powder on his tongue.

Just enough to keep him going. To fend off exhaustion and sharpen his eyes. Not enough for him to risk going powder blind.

He hoped.

Hailona ascended the belfry steps and joined Tamas at the top, where he stood beside the enormous bronze bell. He tipped his hat to her.

“Halley,” he said.

“Tamas.”

They stood in silence for several minutes.

Tamas stole a glance at her once or twice. He’d been unfair in his first assessment last night. She was still a regal woman. Stately, her back straight, arms held just so in a way that said she was equally comfortable in a silk gown worth more than a soldier makes in a year and in the plain brown wool that she wore now.

It wasn’t that she had aged
poorly
. She had just aged.

They all had, he reflected. He himself, Hailona, Gavril. She’d been the governor of Alvation for almost three decades. She’d ruled beside her first husband for twenty years, then alone at the king’s bequest for another ten. That was more than enough to age a woman beyond her years.

“You never came back,” she said suddenly.

“Halley…”

She spoke over him. “I never really expected you to. I don’t blame you. Not terribly, anyway. I see now what your goals were, what has driven you the last fifteen years. I can’t say I agree with them, but I understand, at least.”

Tamas had had dozens of lovers over the few years immediately after Erika died.

He only regretted one of them.

“You caused me a lot of pain after you left,” Hailona went on, “when I still thought you might come back for me. You came and stayed for a few months, and then disappeared. But… I want you to know something. I want you to know that you made me feel amazing in those few weeks. Like a woman who could stand up against the world. That in my long life, only two men made me feel that way: you and my first husband.”

“Your second husband…”

Hailona gave a choked laugh. Tamas glanced out of the corner of his eye to find that her face was red and she held a handkerchief to her mouth. “My husband is a coward. Pit, I can’t even say his name.” She sighed, leaning against a column beside the bell. “I respect him. He’s one of the finest merchants in southern Deliv, but he’s also one of the biggest cowards in southern Deliv. I do not love him.”

Tamas stared out into the pouring rain and pondered the unsaid words. She didn’t love her husband – but she loved Tamas. He swallowed a lump in his throat.

He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Halley. For what it’s worth. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry…” She laughed again. It came out a half sob.

Tamas felt his heart being torn in two. This woman beside him was a powerful creature. She could stand up beside Lady Winceslav among the best women to seek his hand in marriage, before the world found out just how bitter of an old widower he really was.

Hailona smoothed the front of her dress and visibly calmed herself. “I met the general of the Kez army when they first arrived,” she said, her tone suddenly businesslike.

“They took us by surprise. Marched in, pretending to be Adrans. He gathered all the nobility together at the governor’s mansion that first night. Told us we were prisoners in the city. He had an impeccable Adran accent. Spoke Deliv equally well. Not a trace of Kez. I was convinced, at first.

“Then I started thinking. I knew you. From Sabon’s letters I guessed he had great influence in your decision making. Neither of you would ever attack Deliv. Then I thought maybe one of your generals had gone mad. Gone rogue. This general – he seems a madman. Dangerous and deadly.”

“Did you see his hands?” Tamas interrupted softly.

Hailona frowned. “No. He kept them tucked away beneath his coat. I thought it strange, now that you mention it, but didn’t give it a second glance.”

“He doesn’t have any,” Tamas said.

“No hands?” Hailona seemed taken aback. “I feel like I would have heard of a Kez general with no hands.”

“It was a… recent development,” Tamas said. “And he’s not a general. He’s a Privileged.”

“How could a Privileged have no… oh.” She stared at him in silence for several moments. “You took them, didn’t you?” Another long pause. “You hate Privileged so much?”

“I hate
him
so much.” Tamas tried to keep the emotion out of his voice. He wasn’t successful. “Duke Nikslaus was the one who arrested and beheaded Erika, and then brought me her… her…”

He felt her hand touch his shoulder gently. He squeezed his eyes shut. Felt the tears swelling within them. He would never forgive himself for failing Erika.

“Tamas,” Hailona said.

He cleared his throat. “Was Sabon really disowned?”

She removed her hand from his shoulder and returned to lean against the column. “Being a powder mage was never illegal here in Deliv. Nor was it ever state-sponsored, like in Adro. Our parents thought he should have joined the Deliv army. But if he had, they would ignore his gifts. As if he wasn’t a powder mage at all. When you came along and asked him to join you and be in the first powder cabal in the world, he was ecstatic. I’ve never seen him so happy. My parents didn’t understand.”

“He never told me,” Tamas said.

“He wouldn’t,” Hailona said. She smiled at Tamas, and he remembered how beautiful she had been all those years ago. “You’re his best friend.”

“And he was mine.”

The smile disappeared. “Was?”

“He’s dead, Halley.”

She took a quick step back, then another. “What? No. Not Sabon.”

“Shot. By a Kez Warden. One of Duke Nikslaus’s men.”

“You… you let him die?”

“I didn’t. It was an ambush, I…”

The softness in her eyes a moment ago was gone. Any love, any feeling, also gone. She breathed heavily, clutching at her dress, her eyes filled with horror. She turned and fled down the belfry stairs.

“Halley!”

Tamas heard the door to the chapel slam below. He fell back against the bell, felt it rock slightly from his weight without making a sound. He shook his head and stared out into the rain sightlessly.

Was all he left behind misery and death? Sorrow, widows, and grieving families? He made his hands into fists. How dare she blame him? Sabon was his best friend. His closest confidant for the last fifteen years.

No, she was right to blame him. He was a harbinger of death, it seemed. Not to be trusted with the lives of anyone dear.

It was perhaps an hour before Tamas heard the chapel door open below. A slow, measured step lit upon the stairs. Tamas frowned, wondering who it was for only a moment before the mint-tinged smell of cigarette smoke wafted up the stairwell.

“Sir,” Olem said as he joined Tamas. He wore a greatcoat and forage cap pulled down over his eyes, soaked from the rain. Beneath the coat, his Adran blues. He wore the colonel’s pins Tamas had given him last night. That seemed like an eternity ago.

“I thought you ran out of those.” Tamas looked at the cigarette between Olem’s lips.

Olem drew it from his mouth, turned it sideways as if it were a peculiar thing, and blew smoke out his nose slowly before returning the cigarette to its place. “Stopped at a tobacconist on the way through town.”

“I see you have your priorities straight.”

“Of course. You don’t look so well, sir.”

Tamas looked back out across the city. “Sometimes I feel like a pestilence.”

“That argument,” Olem said after a moment’s consideration, “could be made.”

“You make me feel so much better.”

“I try, sir.”

“What are you doing here? I told Vlora to give the signal, not order you here. And how the bloody pit did you get past the river in broad daylight?”

“I pretended I was a Kez colonel pretending to be an Adran colonel,” Olem said. “It was disturbingly easy.”

“They didn’t ask for papers or proof?”

“In this rain?” Olem gestured at the downpour. “You don’t understand an enlisted man, sir. Nobody asks for bloody papers in this kind of weather.”

“Sloppy.”

“I call it lucky. I also have news.”

Tamas straightened up. “What kind of news?”

“A Deliv army is about a day and a half outside the city. Coming from the west. Our outriders spotted them just a few hours ago.”

“How big?”

“Several brigades, at least.”

“Pit.”

“That’s not a good thing, sir?”

“Maybe. We need to launch an attack soon.”

“We won’t be ready, sir.”

“We have to. Something to tell the Deliv that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Otherwise their brigades will fall on us, thinking we are the ones holding the city.

“Come with me,” he said, heading for the belfry stairs. “And keep a hand on your pistol. I might be starting a fight I can’t win.”

Vlora was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

“My powder mages?” he asked.

“Waiting in an abandoned factory a quarter mile from here.”

Tamas gestured for her to join him. He checked the street outside the chapel before crossing over to Millertown. The ground was muddy from the rain, a frothy slurry of refuse and garbage. They cut through several alleyways to avoid Kez patrols and then entered one of the larger mills.

A pair of Deliv partisans guarded the door. They let Tamas pass through, eyeing Vlora and Olem suspiciously. Tamas climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Demasolin was examining a report while a few of his captains and spies looked on. He glanced up when Tamas entered, but did not greet him.

Tamas counted the men in the room. Six of them, if it came to a fight.

Tamas removed his gloves and threw them on the table for emphasis. “Why didn’t you tell me about the army?” he demanded.

Demasolin glanced up again. “What army?”

“Don’t be bloody coy with me. You’ve got the entire city running with your spies. I know you can get people in and out. There’s a Deliv army just over a day’s march from here.”

“You didn’t need to know.” Demasolin returned to reading his report.

Tamas planted both hands on the table in front of Demasolin and leaned over it until his face was only a few inches from Demasolin’s. “You want to go another round? You willing to bet my leg will go again? Because you’re putting my whole army in danger.”

He heard the creak of movement behind him as Demasolin’s underlings shifted uncomfortably. Tamas would leave them to Olem and Vlora if it came to blows.

Demasolin set the report facedown on the table. He leaned back in his chair, and his fingers crept slowly toward the sword at his hip.

“If the Kez know,” Tamas said, “which they undoubtedly do, they’ll torch the city tonight and be gone by morning.”

“They won’t torch anything in this weather.”

“Nikslaus will find a way. That leaves you all dead, and my army sitting there looking guilty while whoever survives the Kez slaughter will say Adro did it. No one wins if your king attacks my army. Would you risk the lives of everyone in this city, and the lives of Deliv soldiers, because you think I’m a butcher?”

Demasolin’s fingers stopped their movement toward his sword. “We’ll have to act tonight. Just after dark.”

“Have you found where they moved the prisoners?”

“We have.”

Tamas bit his tongue. How long had Demasolin been sitting on that information, too?

“Can you provide a distraction?” Tamas asked.

“No,” Demasolin said. “You have one man in there,” he said. “I have dozens. Including my brother. I’ll be going after them, and it’ll be you who provides a distraction.”

“Where are they being held?”

“I don’t think you need to know that.”

Tamas wanted to reach across the table and strangle Demasolin. Even so, he wasn’t sure if that was a fight he wanted to start, and he wasn’t keen on risking his leg going out again. He had better people to strangle.

Demasolin produced a map of the city and spread it out across the table. “The main city barracks is here. There are about two hundred men stationed there. Get close enough to detonate their powder reserves and it’ll bring every soldier within a half mile running.”

Tamas spun the map around so the south end was facing him. He ran his eyes around the marks, then spaced his fingers and did some math.