The Autumn Republic

Taniel shoved the man aside and stumbled toward where he thought his tent had been. Five thousand men? A dozen Privileged? The Kez had no Privileged left of any power, and how could they possibly have gotten close enough to launch a surprise attack? The smoke muddled his senses and the darkness disoriented him. The tents in this area were all gone, all burned to cinders. He plowed onward, knowing he’d have to trust to luck as much as memory to find Ka-poel.

He caught sight of a prone figure in the grass. It wore Adran blues and lay unmoving with a rifle a handbreadth from its outstretched fingers. He spotted another body in the gloom, and then another. All Adran. Some of them were little more than charred skeletons, while others looked as if they’d fallen asleep.

Taniel’s head began to pound, and he pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth to protect him from the smoke. His eyes watered terribly. He opened his third eye and, to his horror, found the world drenched in pastels. Sorcery for certain, then.

Perhaps these pastels were just a sign of Bo fighting back? Taniel dismissed that hope. Not even Bo could unleash this much of the Else in a fight. The colors were everywhere, running parallel to the fire in the grass and splattered across the bodies of the Adran soldiers like paint thrown from a bucket.

Where was Bo? Where was Ka-poel? Panic set in and Taniel found himself breathing heavily. He nabbed an Adran soldier by the arm. “Bo?”

The man shook his head.

“Where’s Privileged Borbador?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

As Taniel went on, he found more smoldering bodies strewn haphazardly about the camp as if the area had been shelled by enemy artillery. Taniel counted more and more dead Kez, and found where the Adran soldiers had put up a valiant resistance. Fifty men, all in a line, their corpses charred beyond recognition and only discernible as Adran by the remnants of the Hrusch rifles clutched in their hands.

“Bo! Ka-poel!”

Taniel tripped and bashed his knee, barely noticing the ashes that blackened his new uniform. He pushed himself up and limped onward, shouting for Ka-poel and Bo. Rescuers soon joined him, putting out any embers and checking bodies.

“Have you seen Privileged Borbador? Or the savage Bone-eye?”

Each soldier shook his head.

Taniel staggered drunkenly through the pandemonium that engulfed the Adran camp. Soldiers pushed past him, and someone collided with his shoulder, nearly knocking him off his feet. He stumbled on, mind in a daze, until he found his father with the Third Brigade, trying to make sense of the chaos.

“Get those fires out!” Tamas shouted. “Olem, I need casualty reports. Who the bloody pit attacked us? How many were there?”

“Kez,” Taniel said. “I saw the bodies. There’s sorcery marks everywhere. There were at least a few Privileged. Somebody said a dozen Privileged and five thousand men.”

Tamas responded, “The damage is bad, but it isn’t nearly that bad. Bloody pit. I thought the Kez didn’t have any Privileged left. Olem!”

“Yes sir, on it, sir!”

“I can’t find Ka-poel,” Taniel said.

Tamas whirled. “Olem! Find Ka-poel. I want a dozen men looking for her. Taniel, where’s Bo?”

“I can’t find him either.” Taniel tried to push down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. His breath came short and his stomach was twisted in a knot of fear. He could still see the pastels of sorcery in the Else floating before his vision and he remembered leaving for the parley at Tamas’s insistence. Bo had mussed Ka-poel’s hair playfully. “I’ll keep an eye on little sister,” Bo had said. “Go play politician.”

Taniel couldn’t stop hyperventilating. His chest felt tight. Beyond Tamas, Bo and Ka-poel were all he had left in this world. To lose them both at once…

“Taniel,” Tamas said, putting a hand on Taniel’s shoulders even as he kept barking orders to his men. “We’ll find her.”

“If she’s dead, I’ll-I don’t know. I can’t… Bo. She has to be with Bo.”

“If she’s dead, then we have bigger problems,” Tamas said, his voice steady. “If Kresimir escapes whatever enchantment she has him under, we’re all dead men.”

Taniel grabbed Tamas by the lapels and jerked him around, pulling him close until Tamas’s startled visage was just a few inches from his face. “Ka-poel matters more than that bloody god!”

Tamas slapped him across the face, a distant stinging in Taniel’s panicked world. “Get ahold of yourself, boy!”

Taniel took a step forward, blinded by rage. He raised one fist, but he and Tamas were suddenly pushed apart.

Bo’s apprentice shoved her way between them. “Both of you, stop it!” she said. “Find Ka-poel! Find Bo! We’re on the same side!” Her face was a mask of fury and she managed to loom despite being a head shorter than either of them. “Can’t you see enough blood has been shed tonight?”

“Get your-” Tamas growled, but his threats were cut short as Nila pointed a finger at him and both her arms were suddenly wreathed in flame. She pointed her other finger at Taniel and looked between them, wide-eyed and wild, as angry as a lioness.