The Guns of Empire (19 page)

“Let's try to avoid that,” Winter said. “I'll let you know when I've spoken to Janus. He may want to meet you.”

Alex waved a hand regally. “I'll try to make time in my schedule.”

—

“Interesting,” Janus said. “You're certain she carries a demon?”

“It's not something you can fake,” Winter said. “Not up close, anyway. Infernivore . . . reacts.”

“But she didn't say what sort of power it grants her?”

“She was remarkably closemouthed. But Corporal Forester agrees that it's a powerful one.”

“Do you think she's telling the truth?” Janus tapped his grease pencil thoughtfully on the big map at the center of the command tent. “About hiding from the Church?”

“It seems . . . plausible,” Winter said. “I can understand how a demon-host could hear the rumors and think of taking shelter with us. But there's more she's not telling us.”

“Being on the run does inculcate the habit of secrecy,” Janus said. “All right. Keep her with us for now, with all appropriate precautions. See what else you can get out of her.”

“You don't want to see her yourself, sir?” Winter said.

“Best not,” Janus said. “We can't rule out the possibility that she's a Penitent. At this point I imagine the Pontifex of the Black is getting desperate, and he would certainly try to kill me if he could. A suicidal attack might have the best chance of success.”

“We'll keep an eye on her, sir.” Winter hesitated. “She seems to understand quite a bit about demons. Is that something she could have learned from the Priests of the Black?”

“Doubtful. They're not exactly free with their knowledge.” Janus flicked
his pencil north across the map, to the mountains and forests of northern Murnsk. “Perhaps she's been in contact with someone else.”

“Who else is there?”

“There are . . . others. Survivors.” Janus shrugged. “The Church has done its best to eradicate all the knowledge and traditions of the pre-Karisai age, but there are remnants if you know where to look. The old tribes had their mystic traditions, as did the Mithradacii Tyrants. The greatest height of knowledge came after they were torn down, in the era of the so-called Demon King and his colleagues. Even the early Church, in its pre-Elysian days . . .” He shook his head. “In any event, pockets of the old world remain here and there. Before my assignment to Khandar, when I had only just convinced myself sorcery was real, I did a great deal of research. Church suppression was much more thorough in the south, among the more civilized peoples, than here in the north. I spent some time poking around the lost corners of Murnsk. It's possible Alex found one of them, too.”

It was the first Winter had heard of such a thing. Janus himself, she reflected, wasn't good about sharing his knowledge either.

“In any case, I think you made the right decision to bring her in. She could be a useful asset, if we can convince her to open up.”

Winter relaxed a little. “Thank you, sir.”

“And your operation against the partisans was well conducted. I understand our casualties were light?”

“Yes, sir,” Winter said, trying not to picture the doomed boy flailing at the dead Girls' Own soldier with his knife. “I must say I'm concerned at the Murnskai's fanaticism. This could become a very ugly campaign.”

“I agree,” Janus said. “All the more reason to make it a quick one.”

His gaze shifted south again on the map. The Pilgrim's Road was drawn in red, running northeast from Vantzolk, crossing one river line after another at tiny towns whose names Winter could barely read. A mass of markings in red grease pencil clustered around the river Syzria, with cryptic markings and dates merging into a complex mess.

“Make sure your soldiers are ready for some harder marching, Division-General,” Janus said, as though reading Winter's thoughts. “It won't be long now.”

T
he mood of the camp had gotten darker over the past few days.

Raesinia rode near the head of the column, with only a few attendants. She'd returned most of the Girls' Own guards to their regiment now that the fighting had begun, though Barely and Joanna had volunteered to continue as her personal escorts. Most of the Grenadier Guard had been left behind, too, at Raesinia's insistence. They weren't field soldiers, and their elaborate kit took up wagon space that could be used for supplies. With Janus constantly suggesting she'd be safer behind the lines, Raesinia was determined not to give him any reason to think she was hindering the march.

At first the quick retreat of the Borelgai and the slow pace gave the whole affair the air of a triumphal procession. They passed through towns and villages, watched from the sides of the road by awed Murnskai peasants. They didn't look very different from Vordanai peasants, in truth, though the women universally wore ankle-length skirts and drab colors. Even the meanest settlement had its Sworn Church, wooden spire topped with a double circle, a constant, slightly alien reminder that they were far from home.

Still, enemies or not, the people were happy to sell what they had to the foreigners at what were no doubt ludicrously inflated prices. To the great consternation of her servants, Raesinia insisted on sampling local fare—coarse black breads, roasted potatoes and turnips, and a seemingly endless variety of ways to rearrange the parts of a pig. There was very little wine, but quite a few local drinks made from fermented potatoes, beets, or grains. She purchased a sampling of these to serve at her dinners with Marcus, though she had to admit that since her demon made her unable to get drunk, she didn't get much out of them.

Being with the army felt liberating and frustrating in equal measure. She
was away from the court, with its fawning sycophants and endless ceremony, not to mention the ceaseless debates with the Deputies-General over minor points of constitutional protocol. Marcus had relaxed, at least a little, and settled into his role as the queen's military tutor. Now all the talk of divisions and battalions, squadrons and batteries, lines and flanks and deployment no longer seemed quite so incomprehensible to her. Soldiers, she'd decided privately, were a bit like doctors, giving complex names to straightforward things to keep outsiders from understanding what the hell they were talking about.

Spending time with Marcus, though, reminded her of everything she'd given up. The time before the revolution seemed, in retrospect, unbearably naive, but she couldn't help longing for the nights of lounging around the Blue Mask with Ben, Cora, and the others, arguing over some of the same points the Deputies-General now investigated at such length. The brief taste of freedom she'd gotten later at Marcus' side, going incognito to investigate the attempt on her life, had only left her increasingly unsatisfied when she'd returned to the palace. Now, though she had escaped from Ohnlei, it felt as though some part of it had followed her here. Being constantly surrounded by soldiers meant keeping up her official mask at all times, and Marcus, though a bit friendlier, was still always scrupulously correct in his manner.

Worst of all was that she didn't have anything to
do
. She was determined to stay close to Janus, so as to be on the spot when the war reached its decisive point. But she didn't have any responsibilities in the army, not even the ceremonial sort that she'd grudgingly gotten used to at Ohnlei. Sothe had originally wanted to arrange reviews and parades, but Raesinia had forbidden it—again, she refused to give Janus any way to say she was interfering in military matters.

After the partisan attacks had begun, there was no more talk of reviews or parades, and the friendly markets with Murnskai peasants disappeared. The army huddled in on itself, sleeping fitfully behind trigger-happy sentries, like a beast suddenly aware there were predators out in the darkness. Two days out from Vantzolk, the Girls' Own was sent to clean out a nest of the irregular fighters, and the stories that filtered back were horrific.

“Is it true?” Raesinia asked Marcus that night at dinner. “About the children?”

“What?” Marcus looked up from his glass, which contained some dubious-looking red liquor probably derived from beets. “What children?”

“When the Girls' Own tracked down the partisans, the whole band attacked and was shot down, the boys and girls and women along with the men. And then when they found their camp, the elders had—”

“Oh.” Marcus shook his head. “Yes, that's about the shape of it, as far as I know.”

“Balls of the Beast,” Raesinia swore. She did that more frequently than she really ought to, just to see the look of shocked surprise that crossed Marcus' face every time. “The Priests of the Black, do you think?”

“Janus believes so,” Marcus said, looking uncomfortable. “He told me the pontifex won't hesitate to hurt the locals, because he knows they'll blame everything on us in the end.”

“Is he right?”

“I expect he is.” Marcus tipped back the drink and winced. “My experience in Khandar taught me it's easy to get people to think badly of foreigners.”

“So what do we do about it?”

“What can we do? Push on to Elysium and put an end to this.”

Raesinia hesitated. The hell of it was, the barbarism of the Church actually made Janus' position look more reasonable.
If Sworn Priests are telling villagers to slaughter babies like hogs, maybe we
ought
to root them all out.
But however awful the Elysian Church could be, and however passionate his rhetoric, she didn't believe for a moment that Janus himself cared.
What will he do when he has Elysium?
He'd crossed half the world to secure the Thousand Names, and now the greatest treasure trove of magical knowledge ever assembled was nearly within his reach.
What is he planning to do with it? Become the next Demon King?

The subject of the atrocities clearly made Marcus uncomfortable, though, so Raesinia let it drop. While the servants brought in another local delicacy—toasted black bread with a spread that was almost pure pork lard—he patted his coat pocket and pulled out a few sheets of folded paper.

“We've had word from Vordan,” he said, once they were alone again. “Via the flik-flik.” That was the innovation Janus had copied from the Desoltai, the chain of lanterns that could pass information across hundreds of miles in a single night.

“Anything important?”

“Most of it is just army logistics, of course. Supplying us is a massive effort. But Feor included a note saying that she hasn't felt any new
naathem
and that her training program is achieving some results. She mentioned that she had spoken with our . . . ah . . . unexpected ally.”

“The Steel Ghost?” The mysterious Khandarai, who'd once fought against Marcus, had aided them against the Penitent Damned, though Raesinia still had no idea as to his true motivations.

Marcus nodded.

“He came to me before we left, you know,” she said.

“Really?” Marcus frowned. “You might have told him we had questions.”

“Answering questions doesn't seem to be his style.”

“What was he there for, then?”

“To warn me that he couldn't watch out for me once I went north,” Raesinia said. She cut a bite of the toast and speared it with her fork, lard glistening in the candlelight. “He'd been keeping me safe from Penitents, but with Janus and the army out of the city, he said he was going to stay behind and protect the Thousand Names.”

“Janus has his own arrangements for that,” Marcus said grimly. “Do you trust the Steel Ghost?”

“He did save our skin from that monster of a Penitent.”

“He did,” Marcus said. “But why? Why would he help us?”

“He seems to hate the Black Priests as much as Janus does.” Raesinia popped the bite in her mouth, salty and thick with grease. “The enemy of our enemy, I suppose.”

“And if we beat the Black Priests, then what?”

Raesinia shook her head.
It all comes back to Janus, doesn't it? Damn.
She sighed. “I think I liked it better when we only had Orlanko to worry about.”

“Speak for yourself,” Marcus said, smiling. “Even if things are more complicated, it's nice to know that we've got a lot more muskets on our side.”

It's not complicated for him, though, is it?
Raesinia watched Marcus as the servants brought in the main course.
He trusts Janus. All he has to do is follow orders.
Raesinia wished, just for a moment, that she could do the same. But the responsibility that had driven her to start a revolution against her own government rather than see it usurped by Orlanko would not let her rest.
I have to see this through.

—

The next day the main body of the Grand Army reached Vantzolk. It was an impressive sight. Not the town itself, a few hundred wood-and-plaster buildings huddled around an ancient stone bridge, but the camp that had been constructed in the fields alongside it. Acres of rye and potatoes had been crushed underfoot to lay out a supply depot larger than most market squares, with military consumables of every description piled as high as they could be stacked. Crates of hardtack, barrels of powder, cases of solid shot, wagons of fodder, boots and shirts and trousers, canteens and cartridge boxes, rack upon rack of spare muskets. Even
more impressive were the animals, endless strings of horses for the officers and the cavalry, mules and oxen for pulling carts, cattle to be driven in the army's wake and slaughtered for meat as the need arose. Just keeping the vast herd fed and hauling away the shit employed enough handlers to form a new battalion.

In addition to the fleet of vehicles the army had gathered on the march, Vordan had been pressed into supplying anything that rolled. Raesinia saw carriages intended to carry ladies to grand, glittering balls, their tops hacked off and filled with dried corn; cabs from Vordan City, markings still advertising their fares, rattling and squelching along full of sacks of coffee or casks of butter. The edges of the camp looked like the Exchange on a particularly busy day, jam-packed with angry, shouting drovers and irritated animals.

Adding the Grand Army itself, a group of soldiers as large as a medium-sized city, turned the situation into utter chaos in spite of the best efforts of the officers assigned to direct them. Raesinia stayed out of the way, her servants erecting her tent on a small rise well inside the sentry cordon, but at a decent distance from the unfolding mess. She was not surprised when a messenger arrived from Marcus to say that he would not be joining her for dinner.

Somehow, staring out at the mountains of goods made it all seem more real. The colossal effort required to bring these things here was only the beginning. Invading Murnsk had been a byword for foolhardy, fruitless endeavors for centuries, but Janus really intended to go through with it—to push this vast army, and all the matériel that supported it, hundreds of miles over bad roads and through trackless forests, in spite of whatever the Emperor of Murnsk tried to do to stop him.
This is the man we made First Consul. Saints and martyrs.
The most frightening part was, she believed he could do it.

It also, she had to admit, brought with it a feeling of pride.
We did this. Vordanai.
Since the War of the Princes, Vordanai power had been at a low ebb, broken by the alliance of Hamvelt and Borel. Now mighty Antova had fallen, the Hamveltai were humbled, and the legendary Duke of Brookspring had barely escaped annihilation. And Janus was going to take his army where even Farus IV never had, to Elysium itself.

The next stage of the march was the sixty miles to Tsivny, on the river Norilia. The Pilgrim's Road left the river behind here, narrowing to a rutted strip of earth that would barely be deemed a farm track in Vordan. Janus had given strict orders that the column stay close to the trail, though, and as they moved farther from the river and into the hinterland Raesinia could see why. The road wound around hills, following the terrain, and the farther north they
went, the closer and thicker the forest became. Soon they were riding in the shadow of the trees, the enormous column squeezed down to an impossibly thin line of blue that stretched back for miles. Compressing the whole length into a single camp became impossible, and each division pitched its own tents wherever it found itself when night fell. The cavalry, pushing out ahead to make sure no enemy threatened the army in this awkward state, was run ragged by the constant patrols Janus demanded.

Every evening Marcus arrived for dinner looking tired but satisfied. She realized he hadn't been trying to snub her, back in Talbonn, when he said he was happy to be in the field again. This work, the endless small crises of moving an army through a hostile countryside, was what he felt most comfortable doing.

“You're probably right,” he said when she mentioned this. Grinning, he leaned forward. “Take it as a lesson, Your Majesty. There are different tools for every task, and war isn't just about fighting battles.”

“You've fought battles,” Raesinia protested.

“Of course I have. But I would never claim more than basic competence.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the command tent. “Janus is what a real battle commander ought to be. He knows his men, the terrain, the enemy army. He knows the mind of the enemy commander, probably better than the man himself does.”

“He's not unbeatable,” Raesinia said, a little uncomfortably.

“No one's unbeatable,” Marcus said. “He's just very, very good. But to him, all this, the marching over bad roads and so on, it's just preliminaries to be gotten out of the way before the main event. Whereas if you need someone to straighten out a traffic jam or organize a camp so nobody gets in anybody's way, that's more my forte.” He smiled, a little sheepishly, and scratched his beard. “Actually, when you put it that way, it doesn't sound very impressive, does it?”