There’d be thousands of Kez soldiers in that parade ground. Tamas had to kill Nikslaus before he reached the mountain. He stopped to catch his breath, and leveled his pistol at the back of the carriage. No. Not now. Too many Deliv in the streets. He needed a clean shot.
Tamas neared the edge of the city. The downpour had become a deluge. The carriage was lost to him, but he had no doubt of Nikslaus’s destination. No doubt, also, that the powder in his pistol pan was wet.
A crowd began to emerge out of the rain, and the sound of shouting suddenly rose above the thrum of rain against the ground. There were men everywhere, choking the street.
It took Tamas a few moments to realize they were fighting. A brawl? No. A battle, a bloody melee. Every one of them wore the dark-blue coats of Adran infantry, but he was able to make out two sides. It appeared that every man on one side had torn off their white shirtsleeves and wrapped them around their right arms.
Tamas grabbed a man without a white band on his arm. “Kez?” he asked in Kez.
The man seemed taken off guard. “Yes,” he answered in Kez.
Tamas ran the man through and shoved him off the end of his sword with one boot. He turned just in time to parry the thrust of a bayonet. It came from a soldier with a white band. The soldier was about to lunge again when he came up short. “Field Marshal!”
“Where’s Colonel Olem?” Tamas asked, saying a silent prayer of thanks that his men recognized him.
“No idea, sir. He led the charge.”
“The bands?” Tamas gestured to the shirtsleeve tied around the soldier’s arm.
“Colonel Olem’s idea, sir. Keep us all straight.”
“Good.”
The soldier suddenly stripped off his jacket and tore the other arm off his undershirt. “Here, sir.”
Tamas let him wrap his arm. “Thank you. What are your orders?”
“Slaughter the Kez,” the soldier said. He lifted his rifle and charged off with a yell.
Tamas stood, still in a little bit of shock at the melee. He’d not heard horns or drums or seen any kind of panic in the Kez soldiers that said that the Seventh and Ninth had arrived. Didn’t Nikslaus have scouts? Then again, who could see anything in this rain?
Despite the ferocity of the battle, not a shot was being fired. It was too wet for that. Olem must have convinced the other generals and colonels of the need to charge straight in.
It was a commander’s nightmare. Already the parade grounds had been turned into a muddy quagmire. The downpour was so thick Tamas could barely see twenty feet in front of him.
Nikslaus’s carriage must have been slowed by the rain. It had to have followed the road, otherwise it would get bogged down in the mud.
Tamas set off at a trot along the cobbles.
The fighting raged all around him. The sound of screams and yells, the ring of sword on sword, rose intermittently above the pounding rain. The cobbles were slick with rain and blood.
He fought his way through, sword out in front of him, right arm raised so that his soldiers could see the dirty white band tied just below his shoulder. He shoved and stabbed, paused for only a moment to urge on infantry from the Seventh, and then moved on down the road, searching for Nikslaus.
How had the duke’s carriage gotten through this melee? Had his driver shoved forward, trampling soldiers on both sides, desperate to escape Tamas’s wrath? Or had the duke given him the slip, and somehow concealed the carriage from Tamas in order to escape back into the city?
Tamas caught sight of Colonel Arbor, his uniform soaked through, holding his false teeth in one hand while he used his cavalry saber to give a pit of a fight to a Kez captain. A particularly thick sheet of rain came down, concealing the colonel. Both men were gone the next time Tamas looked.
Tamas fended off a bayonet thrust and opened his third eye, fighting the dizziness that came with it. Specks of color rose out of the storm, dancing like candles in a drafty room – Knacked soldiers on both sides of the fighting.
He swept his gaze back toward the city. Nothing that way but Knacked. No Privileged. A few Wardens.
The rain fell harder. Lightning lit the darkening sky, giving Tamas a brief glimpse through the deluge and across the entire battlefield.
Men struggled in the mire of the parade field, boots sliding and squelching. They were a sea of blue uniforms, drenched and muddy. Tamas wondered if the strips of white were even helping them tell friend from foe. He guessed that thousands would die this night to the swords of their own comrades.
Lightning flashed again, and Tamas saw something forty or fifty paces ahead, just off the road. A crash of thunder followed immediately. He felt his whole chest shake from the sound. His third eye had shown him a fire among the wreckage – not of flame but of light in the Else that betrayed the presence of a Privileged.
What he’d seen a moment before resolved itself into the wreckage of a carriage as Tamas drew closer.
It looked like the driver had swerved, one wheel going off the cobbles and into the soft, wet mud. The carriage had tipped over and slid down an embankment, ending top-down in two feet of water at the bottom of a ditch, wheels still spinning.
Infantry fought around the carriage as if they didn’t notice it was there, despite the fresh skid marks in the mud and the driver frantically trying to cut loose six crazed horses.
Tamas slid down the embankment some fifteen paces away, watching the carriage warily. No sign of Nikslaus. Tamas’s third eye told him the Privileged was still within. No Wardens, either. Was this an accident? Or a trap?
Tamas approached, one hand on the muddy bank to keep his balance, the other holding one of his pistols. The powder in the pan might be wet, but the residue in the muzzle would still be dry and he could light it with a thought. One shot. That’s all he had.
That’s all he needed.
Tamas wrenched the door off the carriage and stooped to look inside. Nikslaus lay in the rising water of the ditch, his back against one side of the carriage. Tamas snagged the Privileged’s coat with one hand and pulled him through the door, out of the water, and up onto the bank.
“I’m going to watch you die,” Tamas shouted above the rain. He rammed his pistol into his belt and grasped Nikslaus’s coat by the collar. He’d do it with his own hands. For Erika. For Sabon. For all the powder mages who’d died in the duke’s grasp.
Tamas blinked the rain out of his eyes as he lifted Nikslaus up in front of him. Once more, to look his enemy in the eye.
Something was wrong.
Nikslaus’s head lolled at an impossible angle, eyes staring blankly toward the sky. Muddy water poured from his mouth.
The man who’d haunted Tamas’s dreams for well over a decade – who’d killed his wife and his best friend and caused a war that threatened to destroy his country – had broken his neck and drowned in a ditch.
Tamas dropped the body. He opened his third eye, just to be sure. The light of the Else was gone from Nikslaus.
He took a few steps back, stumbling in the water, and fell against the opposite bank. Nikslaus had died, from an accident no less, just moments before Tamas reached him.
Tamas hammered his fists into the mud. He kicked a carriage wheel hard enough to break several spokes and bend the iron strake that held the wheel together. He slipped in the mud, falling to his knees.
He slumped forward in the same water that had just drowned Nikslaus, rain falling in his eyes. He still had his shot – for a moment, he considered putting it in his own brain. He’d lost Erika, he’d lost Sabon, he’d lost Gavril. And now he would never avenge them. He gripped his pistol, Taniel’s gift. No. Not everything. He still had his son.
“Please! Please, help me!”
The call brought Tamas back. He looked down to see that Nikslaus’s body was being carried away down the ditch with the force of the storm waters. A fitting end, even if Tamas hadn’t brought it about himself.
He climbed the embankment in time to hear the voice again.
>
“Please! I’ve lost my knife!”
The carriage driver was struggling in the mud, kicked and shoved by frightened horses as he tried to cut them loose. It looked like he’d managed to free all but two of the panicked beasts.
The fighting continued around them. Tamas knew he needed to get back to level ground and find his officers, to bring some kind of cohesion into the melee. With Nikslaus gone, the Kez might very well break and run.
A horse screamed, and Tamas again heard the sound of the pleading driver.
Tamas climbed the wreckage of the carriage and lowered himself down just behind the driver. The man was on his knees, trying to dodge thrashing hooves as he cast about in the water for his knife.
“Here,” Tamas said. He pushed the man aside and drew his sword, and with two quick strokes, the horses were free. They rolled to their feet and were off, splashing upstream through the ditch, away from the carriage. They would be impossible to catch until they calmed down, and one of them might very well break a leg in these conditions, but at least they were free.
Tamas turned to the driver. The man cowered before him, blinking in fear at the epaulets on Tamas’s uniform.
“Thank you, sir,” the driver said.
“Find the closest Adran officer,” Tamas plucked at the white sleeve tied around his arm, “and surrender yourself. That’s the only way you’ll survive the night.”
The driver ducked his head, the water dripping off the brim of his forage cap. “Sir, thank you, sir. The duke, is he…?”
“He’s dead.”
It may have been the darkness and the rain, but it seemed that relief washed across the driver’s face. “What about the powder, sir?”
“Powder?” Tamas asked. “What powder?”
The color drained from the driver’s face. “The whole city. It’s filled with it. The duke was going to kill all those people!”
Tamas turned toward Alvation. Black powder! That’s why he sensed so much. Nikslaus must have strung it through every building, ready to be touched off at his command. That’s the only way he could have leveled the city in one night.
Tamas struggled up the embankment and began to run back the way he’d come. The Wardens would probably set it off, even if it meant dying themselves. No hope that a conscientious officer would countermand Nikslaus’s orders.
There’d have to be tens of thousands of pounds of powder throughout Alvation to destroy the whole city. They could have set it off and then swept through the wreckage, slaughtering the survivors. What better way to frame Adro for the attack? No one would suspect a Privileged like Nikslaus of using black powder.
Tamas would never make it in time.
The first blast was so large it shook the ground. A cloud of fire rose up over the market district as high as a four-story building and the shock wave knocked hundreds of fighting soldiers off their feet.
Tamas tripped and fell, bashing one knee on the cobbles. He was back running with a limp a moment later, eyes on the city, waiting for the next blast. The fire was gone almost as quickly as it had risen, but Tamas could see the outline of a plume of smoke and steam rising into the evening sky.
That wouldn’t be all of it. He had to get back into the city and…
And what? Stop the Wardens from lighting the powder? He didn’t know where they were, and the city was quite large. He could try to find the powder caches, but no doubt the Wardens would have blown them up already.
Another blast rocked the city, this time on its far side. Tamas was ready for it, and managed to keep his footing despite the rumbling of the ground.
Each one of the blasts was no doubt killing hundreds. He could suppress the blasts, or redirect the energy, but trying to contain that much powder would be like boiling water in a sealed teakettle – it would rip him apart.
Tamas entered the city, shoving his way through the melee, and spread his senses outward. There was a munitions dump on the next street, he could feel it. Enough powder to level ten city blocks.
Tamas sensed the match being touched to powder somewhere inside the munitions dump, and already it was too late to suppress the explosion. The pressure built in Tamas’s mind, the explosion rocketing outward from the gunpowder.
Tamas grasped the energy, ready to redirect it. His mind reached out for the rest of the powder to see how much he’d have to stop.
A scattering of powder charges was easy. A powder horn was no problem. Even a barrel of powder, Tamas could redirect.
Fifty barrels of powder went at once.
Tamas grasped the energy and pushed it straight down beneath him. It felt like he’d attached a hundred cannons to his boots and fired them all at once. The energy coursed out, throwing up dirt, rock, and cobbles, and Tamas could see the shocked faces of the soldiers closest to him just before they were vaporized in an instant.
It was too much. He couldn’t contain so much powder. His body groaned and twisted, and his skin felt ready to split.
All of this took less than a heartbeat. Tamas could feel consciousness slipping, and with it the will to control the force of the explosion.
He’d failed his wife. He’d failed his soldiers, his son, the people of Alvation and Adro.
He’d failed them all.
The world went black.
Taniel landed square on the shoulders of one of his guards. The man crumpled beneath him, absorbing some of the impact, but Taniel’s legs still buckled beneath him and he rolled, howling in pain, up against the base of the beam.
The two remaining guards froze, their eyes wide, in the midst of trying to bring Ka-poel under control.
Taniel forced himself to his feet and caught the swing of a musket butt on the rope binding his hands. He lashed out with one boot, kicking in the side of a guard’s knee, and then slammed his tied hands across the face of the other.
Ka-poel’s hood had fallen back in the struggle. Her eyes were wide, her short red hair wild. She lifted her chin under Taniel’s brief scrutiny. The moment was over, and she wicked a drop of blood off the end of her long needle and darted forward, drawing her belt knife to saw through Taniel’s bonds.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Taniel said.
She finished cutting his bonds and thrust a powder horn into his hands. He tore the plug out with his teeth. The powder poured into his mouth, tasting sulfuric on his tongue, crunching between his teeth. He sputtered and choked, but forced himself to swallow a mouthful of black powder.
The powder trance raced through him, warming his body, tightening his muscles. The pain of his wounds and bruises faded to the back of his mind.
Ka-poel finished dispatching the four guards with her belt knife. She stood up and sniffed, wiping the blood off.
Taniel looked around. Despite the activity in the camp, plenty of soldiers had begun to notice their fight. An officer was running toward them at the head of a squad, pointing and shouting for others.
Taniel rubbed at his wrists. He and Ka-poel were in the center of the Kez army, completely cut off and with no hope of rescue. He’d have to kill a hundred thousand men to escape this.
“Pole.” He bent at the knee, fetching one of the guard’s muskets, and winced. Not enough powder in the world to completely drown out the pain. “I don’t think we’re going to get through this.”
Ka-poel surveyed the Kez army, like a general surveying her troops.
Taniel hefted the musket. It was a cheap make, nothing like the Hrusch rifle he was used to. He retrieved the bayonet from the guard’s kit and fitted it into place. It would have to do. The Kez were coming – fifty, maybe more now. And any fighting would bring the notice of the rest of the army.
“Pole,” he said, “I love you.”
Ka-poel touched one finger to her heart, then pointed at him. She tossed her satchel on the ground in front of her. It landed with the top open, and she lifted her hand.
Her dolls began to rise out of the satchel. Taniel remembered the fight at Kresim Kurga and the power she ha
d shown.
“It won’t be enough this time, Pole.”
The dolls kept coming. Ten. Fifty. A hundred. A thousand.
An impossible number rose out of the satchel and spread out evenly in the air surrounding them.
The Kez soldiers had come to a stop twenty paces away and were watching her sorcery, perplexed. A Kez captain lifted his hand. “Load!”
Taniel ignited their powder with a thought. Muskets ripped apart and powder horns exploded and the air filled with the scent of spent powder and the sound of screams.
“A powder mage!” someone yelled. The call went on through the camp as soldiers discarded their muskets and scrambled for swords and knives. More men came running – first a trickle, then in force. Taniel gripped the barrel of his musket and prepared for the fight.
It started as a small, out-of-place movement in the corner of his eye. A Kez soldier stopped in the middle of the camp and rammed his bayonet into the neck of the man beside him. The soldier seemed perplexed at what he’d just done before he suddenly turned and cracked his musket butt across the teeth of another Kez infantryman.
Another soldier suddenly held his powder horn up to his flintlock and pulled the trigger, blowing himself and three of his companions to the pit.
Fistfights broke out, and the tide of Kez soldiers heading toward Taniel and Ka-poel began to ebb as they turned on one another.
Ka-poel stood, legs braced, eyes on her dolls as if she were examining a chessboard. Around her, the dolls were moving of their own accord. Some of them fought each other, while others tumbled and stabbed at shadows. Taniel felt a terrible fear grip him. She was controlling an entire army, thousands all at once!
An unoccupied infantryman charged Taniel.
Taniel slapped aside the thrust of a bayonet and rammed his own through the infantryman’s eye.
“We should go,” he said to Pole. “You can’t keep them forever.”
Ka-poel caught his sleeve and made the shape of a gun with one hand, pointing at her dolls.