Katherine hauled Arius’s reins and leaned right, eliciting an indignant whinny and turning the horse so sharply the weight of his barding nearly dragged him over. Even so, she was close enough to feel the flames and the gusty whump of rushing air. The left side of her armor grew almost hot enough to sear.
Vitriolic fire. It’d burn itself out after a few moments of almost supernatural intensity, but until then, almost no force of nature could extinguish it. No way in hell could she or her knights pursue those vessels through that raging inferno.
But then, she didn’t have to pursue them. Not directly.
A quick gesture with her sparking lance, delivering an unspoken order to the horsemen riding up from behind, and then Katherine was charging away from the river as swiftly as the clinging muck would permit. The marsh rapidly grew shallower, eventually ceding the terrain to thick-packed earth, relatively dry and firm.
Arius all but screamed in delight at the solid ground beneath his hooves; Katherine didn’t even need to signal for him to burst again into a full gallop. Later, the beast would tremble with exhaustion, probably require a full rubdown and some extra care, but for now he was the wind wrapped only loosely in flesh.
Paralleling the Black River, now, horse and rider pounded south, hoofbeats blending like the shots of a chain gun. Trees loomed out of the night, dark and twisted hands against black, and were gone just as suddenly. Occasionally they leaned so near that Katherine felt the tips of branches scratch and snap against her armor. Ahead, the squat walls, towering structures, and web-work of walkways that were the city of Corvis grew ever larger, ever nearer.
Only a quarter mile from the city proper, Katherine angled back toward the river. Arius slowed when his hooves left the tight-packed earth, but not so dramatically as earlier. Here, nearer the community, the patches of marshland were shallower, less eager to snatch at any who dared pass through.
They reached the water’s edge, Arius doing his best impersonation of a huffing bellows, only yards ahead of the tiny flotilla. Katherine couldn’t help but smirk behind her visor—now lowered for battle—at the wide, white eyes of the first crewmen to spot her.
Again she discharged a levinbolt, aimed not at the boat this time but the water directly before it. Tendrils of lightning sizzled over the surface of the Black River, some scorching the lead vessel’s hull. Several score of dead fish, along with a few snakes and turtles, bobbed to the surface and floated away on the current.
As a command, it was pretty difficult to misinterpret.
Indeed, even as the rest of her knights thundered up behind her, the paddlewheels on the boat reversed, kicking up such a froth that the entire craft partially disappeared behind the curtain of spray.
But not so thoroughly that the assembled knights failed to note that something more, something odd, was occurring. The boats moved sideways relative to each other, dragging themselves across the water at peculiar angles impossible for the paddlewheels alone to achieve.
With a mechanical precision, the lead boat drew back toward the others. The barge that had extruded the vitriolic fire rotated, slid forward, turning diagonally toward the bank where Katherine stood. The second smaller boat drifted starboard until it, too, floated between the knights and the primary vessel. The result was a V-formation aimed at the attackers, with the larger boat protected in the hollow.
“How in the . . . ?”
“Some kind of chain-and-gear system, Lieutenant,” answered a young, bald knight by the name of Glinn. “Caught a glimpse when the smaller boat rocked against the current. I think they’re all three linked below the waterline.”
Clever. Even as they watched, crewmen appeared on the two shielding vessels. Some carried breach-loading rifles, some large metal tubes and bipods that would almost certainly combine into mortars, and a few bore pumps, linked by long rubber hoses, to something within the body of the barge.
Probably more of the vitriolic fire, Katherine decided. And then she chuckled.
“Firing line!” she ordered.
A rifle cracked, and a bullet ricocheted from the lieutenant’s armor. She flinched only slightly, watching until her men were in position.
The knights were now arranged along the water’s edge, shields and lances raised. A series of shouts and a burst of extra hustling on the part of the mortar crews suggested that the sailors knew something bad was in the works.
Oh, you’ve no idea . . .
“All lances, target the barge! Directly between those two men with the pumps!”
Lance-tips shifted. Armor creaked. Horses snorted. And a veritable barrage of shots erupted from the vessels as the boatmen overheard the lieutenant’s shouts and fought desperately to stop what was coming.
One of those shots got lucky, and a Storm Knight toppled from his horse, clutching at his left shoulder and grunting as he met the mud with a wet slap.
Katherine’s jaw clenched. “Fire!”
Against a single galvanic lance, or two, or even a handful, the Rhulic vessel’s ceramic hull would readily have stood fast. Against roughly a dozen, it burst like a child’s puzzle swept from the tabletop.
Again the night went stark white. Even with her head turned away, her eyes squeezed tight and her visor down, Katherine saw sunbursts flash across her vision.
And just as swiftly, the white turned red, and the echoes of the crackling lightning and booming thunder were drowned in the roar of a demon of raging fire.
Hunks of wood, shards of ceramic, and fragments of boatman—some violently aflame—rained over the Black River. The air thickened, scratching at the back of the throat and deep in the lungs with fingernails of ozone, charcoal, and acrid reagents. Clattering to shame a brass band falling down the stairs, several more of Katherine’s knights hit the ground, knocked from their saddles by the intensity of the blast or thrown when their warhorses, for all their training, reared in terror at the conflagration. Most remained mounted, however, reins and knees holding chargers steady, and all who had fallen remained healthy enough to scramble upright.
The barge was gone. Not on fire, not floating in bits of flotsam, but gone. Both connected vessels, now twisted sideways and drifting toward the far bank, were aflame. The second smaller boat had borne the worst of it; it floated prow-downward, rising and falling with the rippling waves. Every exposed inch of wood snapped and popped, fueling a column of fire that overtopped the trees.
The primary vessel, farther from the blast and apparently built of sterner stuff, belched smoke from several campfire-sized conflagrations. Most of the men who’d stood topside were dead, badly cooked, or thrashing in the flaming waters.
Just as Laddermore was shouting new orders, however, the boatmen of that vessel proved that they, too, were made of pretty stern stuff. More rifles protruded from the portholes on the wheelhouse, and a hollow thump from an open deck hatch heralded an incoming round.
Either the mortar crew was incredibly skilled, or luck had chosen to offer them a break after what they’d just suffered. Either way, though the boats bobbed wildly, burning in a dozen spots and slowly spinning in the current, the first shell landed directly in the midst of the Storm Knights.
Between their heavy armor, their training, and the fact that they were already scattering, most of the knights and their mounts escaped with only minor splinters of shrapnel.
Two of them—one of whom was Blevins, the young jester—hit the sodden earth in twisted heaps and wouldn’t rise again.
Beneath Katherine’s armor burned an abrupt rage that might have rivaled the fate of the flotilla. She’d lost people before, certainly, and knew she would again; men and women for whom she was responsible, who she almost considered family as much as subordinates.
But this? Against river smugglers? In a fight that she’d initiated based on intuition alone, and perhaps failed to take as seriously as she should?
For Blevins and Denburrough, the other man who’d fallen, she truly was responsible.
Swearing behind he
r visor, the lieutenant scanned her fire-lit surroundings, hoping for . . .
Yes. That one would do.
Katherine blasted another bolt—the last her lance would throw until she’d given it a few moments to recharge—into the trunk of a massive tree. One of several that were already burning fiercely, the trunk cracked and began to lean, spitting splinters out over the water.
Shouting herself hoarse, certain that at least a few of her knights would hear her orders, she kicked Arius into another run and bypassed the tottering tree. Barely had she left it behind her when the thunder roared, three other bolts struck in the same spot, and the great bole toppled. Flame, water, and wood all met in a hellish sputter.
It didn’t fully bridge the river. It didn’t point directly at the flotilla. But if Arius was up to the challenge, if she hadn’t run the faithful beast too near the brink of exhaustion, it would suffice.
Wheeling about yet again, Katherine Laddermore chose her angle and charged the Black River itself.
Flames reflected from the water, from the blue steel of her armor, veiling her in a shifting aurora of blood.
Her knees tensed in signal, and Arius leapt.
Horse and rider had worked as one for years, now, until they even thought in tandem. A horsewoman less skilled would surely have acted too soon; a charger less confident, less surefooted, would have skidded on the rocking, uneven surface, probably fracturing a leg before tumbling into either water or fire.
Not these. Arius landed firmly on the fallen bole with nary a stumble, stretched himself out in two galloping strides, and leapt once more.
The boat rocked wildly as they struck the deck, pitching one of the riflemen over the railing. Katherine’s lance punched through the body of the first man in her path. He flopped along with her as Arius continued, drooping from the weapon like some truly disappointing pennant. Two bullets whizzed past, a third dug into her armor and nearly knocked her from the saddle, but the Storm Knight advanced until she stood beside the hatch from which the mortar had fired. A quick glance, to determine precisely where the weapon stood, and then she tipped the lance forward, letting it fall point first into the tube—and enfolding the mortar in the dangling limbs of the scarecrow-limp corpse.
Two men rushed her from the stern, but she’d scarcely seen them coming before Arius reared and struck with both front hooves, shattering one sailor’s skull, breaking the nose and half the teeth of the other. When the warhorse dropped back to all fours, Katherine had a heavy Caspian battleblade to hand. No standard-issue tool, this, but an ancestral sword, one of the very few remnants of her past life she’d chosen to retain. Without pause she laid into everyone in reach, cleaving muscle and bone in an effortless, gory ballet.
Only twice did gunmen on the deck draw a bead on her from far enough away that she couldn’t reach them before they fired, and on both those occasions levinbolts hurled from the lancers on shore ended the threat for her.
Until finally, in an image out of hell, the Storm Knight and her mount stood alone, blood-spattered, hoof-deep in gore, on the deck of a burning boat.
The current should carry her to the bank—albeit on the opposite side of the river from her people—well before the fires destroyed the vessel or cut off her escape. Still, she knew she hadn’t a great deal of time. Sword in hand, in case any of the enemy remained below decks, she dropped from the saddle and made her way through the open hatch.
In the end, the only reward for her trouble was the recovery of her lance. The hold below was subdivided into several sizable rooms, but all of them stood empty—of coal or any other cargo, legitimate or otherwise. Perhaps there remained some hidden secret, a concealed hollow or some such, where the boatmen had been smuggling something they desperately didn’t want her to have. She’d never know; the fire wouldn’t permit any more thorough search.
She ended her night, then, sitting astride Arius on the eastern bank of the Black River, watching the last of the riverboats disintegrate into charred chunks and slip beneath the flowing waters. Two of her men were dead; over ten times that many sailors had died on the flotilla.
And Lieutenant Katherine Laddermore had nothing, nothing at all, to show for it.
She knew she’d been right to act. And she knew that something had happened here tonight, something important. Most likely, something very, very bad. But whatever it was, whatever enigma those men had been willing to run, and fight, and kill, and die for, eluded her.
Convinced that she’d lost this one, and burning with frustration that she couldn’t figure out how, she turned Arius about and began the slow walk back to Corvis.
***
In an office on the uppermost floor of the city hall, Katherine Laddermore stood rigid as Colonel Anhearne paced before her. The helm she held in the crook of her left arm gleamed, as did the rest of her armor—save for her boots, which had been quite thoroughly soiled during her approach to the building. Nobody crossed Corvis at ground level without picking up an unwelcome cargo of sopping muck.
Not even when going to visit a superior officer, more the pity.
She’d scarcely slept the night before. Debriefing her team, transcribing the details of the encounter for delivery to High Command, drafting letters to the families of the fallen knights, and cleaning her equipment, had all kept her up unto the smallest hours of the morning. Still, she refused to reveal even a flicker of exhaustion to the visiting officer.
Colonel Anhearne was very much like the room in which they currently stood: small, sturdy, drab in appearance, but perfectly functional. One of the most trusted seconds to Commander Adept Sebastian Nemo of the First Cygnaran Army, he wasn’t stationed in Corvis, wasn’t directly in Katherine’s chain of command, and frankly had no reason, so far as she could see, for being here at all. Surely, if she were about to face disciplinary action—and she could think of no other reason for being summoned before a visiting officer less than an hour after dawn—it should come from one of her own superiors in the Second Army.
And how in Morrow’s name did he get here so quickly? We only sent the report six hours ago!
“Well, Lieutenant,” Anhearne said finally, after a quick—and blatant—glance to ensure the door was shut, “this actually couldn’t have happened at a better time.”
Katherine blinked and focused on the man before her. “Sir?”
“Commander Nemo sends his greetings, by the way. He wanted me to ask you how the dynamic glaive performed.”
This conversation was going nowhere remotely near where the Storm Knight had anticipated. “Ah, truth is, sir, it shorted out the first time I tried to activate it. Had to go back to a standard-issue electro-lance. I was going to send in a report once Second Army reinforcements arrived and I wasn’t quite so busy.”
“Eh.” The colonel waved her explanation away. “The general said he expected as much. Some problem with the conductivity of the materials. Or at least, I think that was the issue. Frankly, I didn’t even recognize half the words he used, let alone know what they meant.”
Katherine’s lip quivered.
“Oh, at ease, Lieutenant. You’re not in any real trouble here.”
She allowed her shoulders to slump, if only barely (and invisibly, thanks to her armor). Colonel Anhearne leaned a hip against the desk.
“If those boats had been flying Rhul’s flag, it’d be a different matter. But I read the report when I got here, and had a quick exchange of telegrams with Commander Adept Nemo and Commander Stryker. They both agree that your actions might be questionable on paper, and probably due some measure of reprimand, but they’d likely have made the same call.”
Then, rather more seriously and with surprising gentleness, “Have you arranged for someone to inform the families?”
Katherine swallowed a quick lump. “Wrote the letters myself, sir.”
“Good woman. I think, between the two of us, we can call that reprimand enough.”
“I’d rather an alternative punishment, sir.”
 
; “Wouldn’t we all? Anyway, as I said, at least the timing’s fortunate. It means we can tell everyone you’re being more formally reprimanded.”
Just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of this conversation . . . “Sir, I don’t entirely follow.”
“You’ll be leaving Corvis, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, my people just—”
Anhearne raised a hand. “Not your people. Just you, along with two knights of your choice; no officers, and nobody whom you can’t trust to follow orders without question. Assign one of your sergeants to take command in your absence. We’ll be explaining your temporary absence as a punitive assignment, in reprimand for last night.”
“And the truth?”
The colonel idly ran three fingers through his hair. “You probably figured that I didn’t come here in response to your report?”
“I had, sir. No way you could have arrived so quickly.”
“Right. On my way already, to speak with you.” He passed over a letter stamped with the seal of Commander Coleman Stryker. “You can read this at your convenience, Lieutenant, but basically it states that you’ve been seconded to us, and you’re to undertake this assignment as though Stryker himself ordered it.”
“Us?”
“First Army, Second Division, 9th Brigade. Commander Adept Nemo.”
“Would you mind terribly if I sat down, sir?”
“Please do.”
Katherine dragged a chair—really just a stool with a tiny outcropping for back support—from the corner and thunked it down in front of the desk. It creaked alarmingly under the weight of her armor, but held.
Good old Cygnaran craftsmanship.
“Colonel,” she said after a moment’s contemplation, “Commander Nemo and I get along quite well—and I’ve enjoyed helping him field-test his creations—but I’m not First Army, and there’s nothing I can do that the people under his command can’t. I’m not refusing to obey, of course, I’m just wondering—?”