The Autumn Republic

Tamas swore under his breath as one of the surgeons poked a finger at his wound. “Bandage it up and get me some black powder. It didn’t hit a lung. I’ll live.” He beat the surgeons back with one hand and got unsteadily to his feet. The pain in his side was sharp now, and he was reminded of a similar wound he’d taken in Gurla twenty years before. He had been bedridden for weeks and nearly succumbed to infection.

He didn’t have time for that now.

In the valley below them he saw that the Wings of Adom had taken up a defensive ring around Ket’s camp and had dug in with fortifications not unlike the kind Tamas had used against Beon je Ippile’s cavalry-though not nearly as deep. He spotted Vlora racing along on her charger, white flag snapping in the wind. She reached the Wings’ lines and after a few tense moments was allowed past.

The Kez continued to fall into line. Their army looked immense-and it was-but its size made it ponderous. Tamas adjusted his initial guess that they’d attack by ten. They wouldn’t be ready until at least noon. Maybe one. They would attack straight out, using their superior numbers to surround and overwhelm General Ket’s camp.

Tamas cracked a powder charge and sprinkled a bit on his tongue. Once the initial shock of the powder trance passed, he felt younger and stronger and the pain from the knife wound was nothing but a tickle in the back of his mind.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tamas saw Olem approaching.

“Anything?” Tamas asked.

“No sir. Both provosts claim that Hilanska warned them you might return but that it would be a Kez trick-a Privileged disguised as you. They also claim he didn’t expect your doppelgänger for weeks.”

Tamas snorted. “So he panicked and ran when I arrived early? Let’s just be glad he wasn’t ready for us. Pit, what other rumors has he spread?”

“I can try to find out, sir.”

“Do it.”

“Permission to search his quarters?”

“Granted.”

Olem was off again and Tamas looked around him for someone he could trust. Most of the generals were with their brigades, and it seemed that at least some of Hilanska’s support staff had fled with him.

“You there!” Tamas called. “Colonel, come here.” From the side, the young man looked fairly familiar, and when he turned to Tamas, he recognized the colonel immediately. “Colonel Sabastenien, it’s good to see you alive.”

The former Wings of Adom brigadier was a short man in his midtwenties with muttonchops filled with premature gray and a somber face. Tamas noted that the gray hadn’t been there the last time they met, and wondered whether it was dyed. He gave Tamas a respectful nod. “Likewise, sir. And it’s not Sabastenien. It’s Florone now. I’ve taken my mother’s family name. I prefer not to be immediately recognizable to my former comrades.”

Tamas understood that. While he’d done nothing illegal or untoward in murdering a traitor in Tamas’s defense, Sabastenien had been cast out of the Wings of Adom because the traitor had been a fellow brigadier-and Lady Winceslav’s lover.

“All right, Saba… Florone. I need a battle plan. Where are you assigned?”

“I’m with the Twenty-First Artillery.”

“And you have artillery experience?”

“Seven years of it with the Wings.”

“Good. Congratulations, Florone. You’re now a general.”

The colonel blinked in surprise. “Sir?”

“Take command of the Second. Bring their artillery around to the south and have the gun crews standing by. Have your infantry dig in to the east and west.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I don’t know who I can trust in Hilanska’s brigades. You might get stabbed in the back by the end of the day. If you have any trusted support staff, take them with you.”

“Yes sir.”

“And General, have Mihali sent up here, would you?”

Florone hesitated for a moment. “No one’s told you yet?”

“Told me what?”

“Mihali is dead. He was killed by Kresimir two weeks ago.”

Tamas whirled to look back at the Kez formations and a cold sweat broke out over his body, the back of his neck pricked by an eerie sensation of shock and grief, breaking the calm of his powder trance. If Mihali was dead, why hadn’t Adro been swept aside already? There shouldn’t be anything left of Adopest or the Adran army but dust without Mihali to balance his brother’s power, and yet the country and its capital still stood.

What could possibly be holding Kresimir back?

His attention was caught by movement in the Wings of Adom camp, and soon Vlora was racing back up the hillside. She blew past the Adran sentries and didn’t stop until she reached Tamas, leaping from her horse and tossing the reins to a startled messenger.

“Where’s Ket?” Tamas asked.

“Gone,” Vlora gasped. “She was ousted by Abrax and Adamat just yesterday on accusations of profiteering. Abrax thought it might mend the schism between the camps, but… sir, are you wounded?”