It had seemed like a sound plan at the time. But with this fever, Styke did not trust himself to be able to sneak and kill with any skill. It would be best to head back to Landfall, where he could hide and wait out this illness. Sirod would die for what he’d done to Rezi. But Styke would be a patient man.
“South is good,” he said, sagging in the saddle.
They left the streambed and took to the road heading south. Styke kept Deshnar at a trot while Jackal jogged along beside.
“Do you know how to ride?” Styke asked.
“I’ve only ridden once. It was terrifying.” Jackal spoke without breaking stride, no evidence that he was in any way out of breath.
“We get back to Landfall, and I’ll teach you to ride. It’s the least I can do,” Styke said.
“I’d rather not.”
Styke snorted. “And I’d rather not ride while you run alongside like some kind of slave.”
The word “slave” had barely left his mouth when they crested a steep rise in the road and found themselves looking down on a small group of cuirassiers. There were four of them, their breastplates and horsehair-plumed helms polished, their green and tan uniforms decorated with the red feather of the governor’s personal guard. The four blinked back at Styke, mouths open in the middle of conversation, as if they were just as surprised to see him as he was them.
In the instant it took for their sergeant to cry out, Styke forced himself to sit up straight and snatch up his lance. He dug in his heels and felt Deshnar leap beneath him, nearly throwing him from the saddle. Deshnar reached a gallop as they closed the distance, and Styke’s lance sliced cleanly through the throat of a cuirassier, causing a fount of blood that covered them all in fine, crimson droplets.
The lance punched through the center of the cuirass of the second man and into his ribs, spinning him out of the saddle and jerking the lance out of Styke’s weakened hand.
The sergeant managed to draw his curved cavalry sword and slash it across Styke’s brow as he fumbled with his lance. Styke reeled in the saddle as he shot past the cuirassiers, half blinded by his own blood. He tugged at the reins, turning Deshnar to face the two remaining soldiers as they did the same with their own horses.
There was a moment of calm, Styke wiping the blood from his eyes, feeling the flap of skin falling loose from his forehead while the sergeant and his companion took their stock of him.
The moment was broken as Jackal, having rushed to the fallen cuirassiers and stolen one of their swords, took the weapon in two hands and ran at the sergeant. The sergeant looked down on Jackal with a curled lip, digging his heels in to charge. Styke did the same, drawing his own cavalry sword and ready to watch Jackal get ridden down like a dog.
At the very last second, as the sergeant’s horse bore down on him, Jackal ducked in front of the animal and dodged to the sergeant’s off-hand side. Before the sergeant could move his sword from one hand to the other, Jackal brought his own weapon up and rammed it beneath the sergeant’s cuirass.
The final cuirassier, head turning as her sergeant went down, didn’t even see Styke’s sword as it slashed her throat.
The whole fight lasted less than thirty seconds. Styke gasped for breath, every bone and muscle on fire as he clung to Deshnar. The sergeant, mortally wounded and half-thrown from the saddle, stared at Styke in confusion until Jackal pulled him to the ground and finished the job with a savage flash of steel. Styke pressed a handkerchief to his forehead to stop the bleeding and drank deeply from his water skin as he watched the man die.
“That was well done,” Styke told Jackal. It was very risky to time a jump across the chest of a charging horse.
Jackal just nodded, making sure the other three cuirassiers were dead.
“You should take one of those horses,” Styke told him. He wiped the blood away from his face, then pressed the handkerchief to the wound once again. It stung badly, but he could tell by feel that it felt far worse than it was. The flap of skin would stitch easily, though he would need to keep pressure on it for now.
“I don’t want a horse,” Jackal responded.
Styke eyed the four horses. One had been hurt when its master fell to Styke’s lance. Another currently fled across the tobacco fields. The third and fourth were both halfway decent mounts. He pointed at the black one. “I don’t care. Take that one.”
“I don’t know how to ride.”
“Walk it, then. I’ll teach you later.”
He turned away without waiting for an answer, urging Deshnar down the road, eager to be gone from this place. Miles of cotton fields stretched in every direction, with few places to hide. He needed to get away from the plantations and find some rough terrain where he could hide out until he’d purged this poison from his body. Four cuirassiers wouldn’t stay missing for long. Someone would come looking.
A few hundred yards later, he glanced over his shoulder to see Jackal catching up, a glum look on his face, leading the black horse. Jackal had almost caught up when Styke’s feverish thoughts were interrupted by the distant sound of a whinny. He looked up sharply, seeing riders about a half mile away, blocking the road. They stared at him from the distance.
There were a lot. He could see fifteen of them, and that there were more behind.
“Jackal,” he said, nodding to the riders.
“I see them.”
“You sure you want to hang around? They probably won’t give a shit if you flee right now.”
Jackal considered the offer. “You’re good luck.”
“I’m still not sure how the pit you got that idea.” Styke reached for his lance, nearly tumbling from his saddle with weakness. He kept his eyes on the distant riders. They remained where they were, and after a moment he looked down at Jackal to find the Palo’s face serious.
“I went back to the assassin’s corpse while you slept,” Jackal said. “She had fallow root. You should have been dead this morning.”
Styke didn’t have time to wonder about the fallow root. He eyed the distant riders. Maybe they weren’t members of the governor’s household. They could be travelers or mercenaries or colonials. Maybe one of them had seen him dispatch the cuirassiers and the whole group hesitated. He peered at them, trying to focus his eyes.
After a few tense moments, one of the group finally broke off and trotted down the road. Styke summoned the strength to sit up straight in the saddle and lower his lance. By the time he looked back at the rider, he did let out a laugh.
“Afternoon, Major,” Captain Blye called. “I was about to offer our help, but it looks like you’re taking care of things just fine.”
“What are you doing here?” Styke demanded. He and the lancers camped in a hollow some distance from the four dead cuirassiers, their horses hidden among the willows, and not daring a fire lest they attract attention.
Blye had brought about half the company with him. There were a hundred and sixty-seven lancers and twenty-three of Cardin’s cuirassiers, including Cardin himself. They all wore civilian clothes, though they were heavily armed. They stared at Styke as if he were some sort of oddity or aberration, and he wished he could send them away.
“We came to help,” Blye said, lighting his pipe.
“I thought I told you to protect Fernhollow.”
“We saw them twenty miles north of the town, then headed your direction. Some of us, anyways.”
“Why?” Styke could feel his strength slipping away, the need to sleep growing stronger and stronger. His forehead still bled, and this damned fever persisted. If he didn’t rest, he would die. He did not have patience for do-gooders right now, not when a larger group was going to attract so much more attention than a single man. He almost voiced that thought, but a single glance around at the faces looking back changed his mind.
Blye puffed on his pipe, blowing a ring of strong-smelling smoke. He exchanged a look with Styke. “You came to kill the governor.”
“So?”
“So I know you’re bloody Ben Sty
ke, but a governor’s bodyguard is too much even for you. You need help, and we want to give it.”
Styke wondered whether they’d been turned and were here to lull him into a false sense of security and then kill him. He wasn’t normally paranoid, but the fever clawing at his mind was allowing in things that he might have otherwise disregarded. “Why?” he asked again.
“They killed Cherry,” Blye said flatly.
It took Styke a moment to catch up. Cherry was—or had been—Blye’s niece. A fourteen-year-old girl with a head for numbers. Blye’s brother had been saving up to send her to university.
“One of them murdered my mate Semm,” someone spoke up.
“Burnt down my farm.”
Another voice called from the back of the group, “Tommy’s never going to walk again.”
Names were spoken, misdeeds recalled until the faces surrounding Styke turned from curiously concerned to outright angry. He forced himself to hold his tongue while he considered this, letting his slowed thoughts work through it naturally. These people were angry. They were soldiers who’d lost friends, property, family, and lovers to a vengeful prick of a governor who couldn’t handle the idea of being chased out of a sleepy little town.
“You’re all decided about this?” Styke asked.
“We are.”
Styke thought about the resources that the governor had at hand—the thousands of troops he could summon from Landfall in addition to his personal bodyguard. He thought about the Privileged sorcerer that the governor had with him, then considered his own plan of action and decided that maybe he didn’t have as much of a shot at succeeding as he’d thought.
“Find somebody to stitch up my forehead,” Styke grumbled. “It’s a fight then, I suppose. We’re probably all going to die.” He laughed darkly to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Blye asked.
“We’ll need a name. One we can yell it when they torture those of us they haven’t killed.”
“Sirod has a Privileged,” Blye told Styke in the morning.
A night’s sleep had done Styke wonders. The fever was almost completely gone, and the pain in his muscles had subsided to the kind of weakness one might feel from a common cold. The men broke camp, grumbling about the dew and the heat and the lack of meat and a cooking fire. He was amazed they hadn’t been found yet.
Jackal lurked nearby, watching Styke. Styke could remember waking at several points in the night to find Jackal crouched in the darkness, eyes open.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he answered Blye. “I’m trying to figure out how to deal with it.” Looking at Jackal, he said, “Do you sleep?”
“On my feet,” the Palo responded.
“That’s handy.”
“Picked it up in the cotton fields. Eighteen hours of labor in the summers. Needed to get the sleep somewhere.”
“Shitty way to pick up a good habit,” Blye commented. He eyed Jackal. “Why does he have a horse and doesn’t ride it?”
“Ask him.”
“Why do you have a horse and don’t ride it?”
Jackal flinched away from the question, looking like he’d been struck. Styke recognized that sour, angry look sliding back onto the boy’s face and saw Jackal’s fist tighten. It was, apparently, a more sensitive topic than Styke had realized.
“No one taught him to ride,” Styke interjected. “He saved my life, so I told him I’d teach him when we get out of this.” Jackal might be a scrappy youth, but he’d have a bad day if he took a swing at Blye.
“I don’t want to learn,” Jackal said.
“Too goddamn bad. You want to follow me around, you have to learn to ride.” Styke turned to Blye. “What do you know about Sirod’s Privileged?”
Blye sucked on his pipe thoughtfully, smoke curling out of his nostrils. “His name is Bierutka. Not very powerful as far as Privileged go—he has some strength in healing, but not a lot else. He pissed off the king and wound up here in exile.” Blye tapped the side of his head. “I’ve heard he’s a bit thick, but… don’t underestimate a Privileged. It’s not a good idea.”
A low call went across the small camp, and Styke got to his feet, instinctively heading towards Deshnar. A young man named Gredain, not much older than Jackal and fairly new to the company, sprinted down from the lip of the hollow, out of breath. “Two hundred Kez cuirassiers sweeping across the fields,” he reported.
Styke began saddling Deshnar, working quickly while Blye tapped out his pipe. Styke asked, “Did they see us?”
“I don’t think they know we’re here. They’ve got the governor’s feather, and they’re taking it nice and slow.”
Styke locked eyes with Blye. “They’re still looking for one man. Assholes think I’m just going to sit in a cotton field and wait for them? Get everyone ready.” He finished saddling Deshnar and rode up to the lip of the glen, where he could see a company of cuirassiers spread out across an entire field, their horses walking between the rows of cotton as the riders occasionally swung at the plants with their riding crops. Even at a distance, the company looked bored.
Their path would take them past the hollow within minutes, at which point they could either turn down a narrow dirt path and head down into the hollow—which seemed likely if they were serious about their search—or they could continue through the field.
He didn’t want to give them the chance to make that turn.
Styke took a few deep breaths, gathering his strength. He was still weak from the fever and several wounds. But he had help now, and he needed to take advantage of his lancers and finish this soon. He raised his hand. “Keep ’em quiet, and follow me.”
The company pulled out of the hollow in the opposite direction and looped around, using the willows as a thick screen, until they were well behind the line of enemy searchers. Styke led them back across the stream that fed the hollow and to the edge of the willows.
He caught sight of Jackal, hanging at the back of the group, still walking with the reins of his captured horse dutifully in hand. Styke rode to him quickly. “Stay here,” he instructed. “If any of them flee this way, smack them in the face with a tree branch.” He returned to the edge of the wood, where he was joined by Blye and Cardon.
“I gave you an out,” Styke told Cardin.
Cardin was ashen-faced. “Prost was an evil man. Sirod is no better. When I joined the army, I thought it was to fight against such people—not for them. I intend to change that from this day forward.”
Styke let the words hang in the air, then turned to Blye. “You’re sure you want to be involved?”
“We’ve already committed treason by killing the king’s soldiers,” Blye said. “Might as well kill a king’s governor.”
“Good enough for me. Loosen your lances, boys,” he called over his shoulder. The sound of creaking leather followed, and Styke urged Deshnar out into the field of cotton.
It was about a hundred yards from the edge of the willows to the backs of the Kez cuirassiers. Styke quickly urged Deshnar into a gallop, feeling the joy in the powerful beast, and listened to the pound of hooves as his lancers fell in behind him.
Normally, he would wait to lower a lance until the last minute, first unloading a carbine barrage into the enemy to soften them before the clash. He had no interest, however, in attracting nearby soldiers with the sound of gunfire.
Their gallop was noticed at seventy yards. A general, panicked shout erupted from among the cuirassiers, and they attempted to wheel around. At twenty yards, the cuirassiers had mostly turned to face the charge, some of them drawing their swords. A single carbine shot rang out before the lancers slammed into the loose line of confused cavalry with the sound of steel lance tips striking cuirasses, quickly followed by the screams of men and horses.
A proper lancer charge was a devastating thing. The cuirassiers, regardless of their armor, fell like wheat before the scythe. Styke killed three with his lance and another with his sword before he was on the other side of them and
turning Deshnar in a lazy loop for another charge.
The second charge reduced the cuirassiers to a confused mess, most of them fleeing across the field. A handful remained, circling closely, making a brave stand around the body of their commanding officer. They fell to the third charge.
It was not difficult for the lancers—most of them with faster horses not weighed down with armor—to chase down the fleeing cuirassiers. It was a pitiful sight, but necessary, and Styke waited by the body of the commanding officer while they cleaned up those final enemies.
“Three of ours dead,” Blye soon reported, joining Styke in the middle of the field. “Eighteen wounded, none of them badly.”
Styke glanced around at the dead and dying cuirassiers, many of them begging for help or to be put out of their misery. A few of his lancers wandered among them; some offering solace, some mocking. A few just staring while wounded men wept. “That went well,” he said. “Not for them, of course.” He lifted his head, working the last of the kinks out of his neck, still thinking about yesterday’s fever. He could feel it deep in his bones. Another melee would exhaust him. He lifted his nose to the air, breathing in deep, imagining that he could pick up the scent of brimstone. “How far are we from the governor’s mansion?” he asked.
“Four miles, give or take,” Blye responded.
“And how many are in his personal guard?”
“Five hundred, I think. He can double it with a request from the Landfall garrison, or just summon the whole damn army. With this group gone, he’ll only have around three hundred left—and they’ll be looking for you in smaller groups.”
Styke considered their options. Most of the guard would be out like these poor bastards, beating the fields while they looked for Styke. Sirod would have kept fifty or sixty men nearby in case Styke attempted something stupid, and then . . . he quashed that thought. No, he wouldn’t have kept much of anyone nearby. He didn’t need to.