The Autumn Republic

Gavril climbed into his saddle and glanced down at Andriya. The powder mage held his bayoneted rifle in one hand, the other hand grasping his belt casually. “Is he not riding?”

“Horses don’t like me, and I don’t like them.” Andriya took a pinch of powder from his breast pocket and snorted it.

“You could bathe,” Gavril suggested.

Andriya touched his blood-crusted uniform and laughed.

“He’ll keep up,” Tamas said.

“If you say so. You, boy, give me the flag!”

One of the groomsmen ran forward with the Adran flag, a crimson background with the teardrop of the Adsea sitting before the mountains. He handed it to Gavril.

“Where’s Beon?” Tamas asked. “Andriya, do you know where Beon is?”

Andriya gestured vaguely to the space behind Tamas’s command tent. Standing with a view of the battle, Ipille’s favorite son stood between two guards, his hat shading his eyes, jaw tight as he gazed at Budwiel. Tamas rode over to him.

“Why am I here, Field Marshal?” Beon demanded. “What damned deed do you have planned?”

“What, you think I’m going to threaten you?”

Beon did not respond.

“Tell me truly,” Tamas said, “if I put you in a noose and told your father to throw down his sword or I’d hang you, would he do it?”

“No.”

“I thought not. You’re here because your father’s royal guard will not surrender unless ordered to by a member of the royal family.”

“You think they would listen to me? You think I’d tell them to in the first place?” Beon demanded, chin raised.

“They’ll listen to you if Ipille is dead.”

Beon paled.

“Or,” Tamas continued, “if he’s fled. If I win the day-if I truly take Budwiel and further fighting will do the Kez no good-I want you to tell your men to stand down. Will you do that?”

Beon didn’t answer.

Tamas tugged gently on his reins, edging his mount toward Beon. “This doesn’t have to be any bloodier than it will be. A fight through the city, building to building, is not going to do anyone any good. If I fail, you’ll likely be rescued and you can dance on my corpse.”

“I’d rather not. I have more respect for you than that.”

“I believe you.”

“Very well, Field Marshal. If you clearly win the day, I will order them to stand down-though I can’t guarantee they’ll listen. But how long do you have? How long until the Grand Army comes up behind you? It will take you more than one assault to capture those walls.”

“It better not,” Tamas muttered, nodding to the guard to take Beon away. He held his sword over his head and pointed it at General Arbor. The general dismounted, true to his preference, as a boy took his horse away. Arbor ran ahead of his infantry, shaking his sword and bellowing to his men. They shouted back, bayonets thrusting in the air once, twice, three times.

The snares rolled out a beat and the ground shook beneath the feet of the Adran army.

Seventeen thousand infantry began the march toward Budwiel’s walls. Less than three minutes later they were within range of the few light cannon left to the Kez, and Tamas watched the first rifts open in his columns. Not a man among them wavered, and they continued on, bayonets glimmering in the sunlight.

“That’s a beautiful sight,” Gavril said.

“It is.”

“Sir!” a voice yelled. It was Silvia, the artillery commander. “I need more time. That portcullis will slow you down.”

“You don’t have it,” Tamas said. “Make me an opening! I want a gap in that wall opened when my men are two hundred yards from it.”

Tamas expected her to argue, but she returned to her gun crews, a slew of curses and orders on her lips.

Tamas turned in the saddle. Behind him, three hundred cuirassiers stood ready in their stirrups. Breastplates were polished, helmets donned, and carbines loaded. Each of them was armed with a long lance to reach over the bayonets of the Kez infantry. Their horses wore breastplates and side skirts, the heaviest armor still used by the Adran army.

“Men of the Thirty-Seventh!” he shouted. “That gate is the mouth of the very pit itself. I’m riding through it. Are you with me?”

A roar answered him as their swords were drawn and thumped against their breastplates in a terrible clamor. Tamas grinned at them. “Forward!”

The cuirassiers sheathed their swords and grasped their lances, and at Tamas’s signal they rushed forward. Tamas had left behind fewer than a thousand men in his camp; gun crews, grooms, support. Everything he had he now poured at the walls of Budwiel.

He prayed his men wouldn’t break.

With a sea of lances at his back, Tamas rode through the advancing companies of blue-uniformed Adran infantry. He kept his eyes on the spot on the wall-the one he’d told Silvia about. His heart thumped with the beat of the snare drums as the first cannonball suddenly slammed into one of the off-color stones. He counted the time in his head until the second ball hit, and then his heart lurched with the strike of the third.

Nothing happened. “Bloody pit!” he yelled.

The Kez on the walls lowered their muskets and he could see one of their officers stand up on the fortifications and raise his sword.