The Crimson Campaign

One long snort, and it felt like his brain was on fire. Taniel rocked back, his body shuddering, shaking. He heard a whimper — pitiful and low. Did he make that noise? Taniel put his head in his hands and waited for what seemed like several minutes before the shaking finally stopped.

When he raised his head, the world glowed.

Taniel blinked. He hadn’t opened his third eye. He wasn’t looking into the Else. But everything seemed to glow regardless. No, he decided. Not glow. It was like the lines stood out sharper than they’d ever been. The world was clear in a way that a regular man could never understand. As if every moment out of a powder trance was spent under water and only now had he surfaced.

Was it like this when he took the powder to fight that Warden in Adopest? Had he just not noticed?

How had mala ever felt like a good alternative to this? How could any drug compare?

Taniel felt the grin on his face and didn’t try to hide it. “Oh, pit. That’s good.” He finished loading a dozen powder charges before stowing them in his kit and hanging his powder horn from his shoulder. He got down on his chest and began to scan the enemy lines.

There were Privileged on the east side of the Addown. Most of them wore colorful uniforms and were surrounded by bannermen and bodyguards. A lot of Wardens, too. The Kez weren’t scared of powder mages, not with Tamas gone. They’d relearn that fear in the coming days.

Primary targets.

There were officers. Practically anyone on a horse, it seemed. Where were all their cavalry? Strange that the Kez hadn’t brought any of their cavalry north of Budwiel. Oh well. The officers would do.

Secondary targets.

There were artillerymen.

Tertiary targets.

Taniel felt the rumble in the ground before he heard the sound of hoofbeats. A few dozen yards to his left a group of some twenty Adran cavalry had gathered. Adran officers. A couple of generals. Taniel recognized a few of them.

General Ket was a handsome woman of about fifty — handsome, that is, if he didn’t account for the ragged bit of skin where her right ear had been. Her broad face seemed somehow familiar, as if Taniel had seen her recently, when he knew for a fact it’d been years since their last meeting. She was the general of the Third Brigade.

Ket wasn’t the only member of the group to have lost a bit of herself in battle. General Hilanska of the Second Brigade was morbidly obese and was missing his left arm at the shoulder.

None of them noticed Taniel.

They seemed agitated about something. Pointing and gesturing, all of them watching the battlefield through their looking glasses. Hilanska shouted for the artillery to be moved back.

Moved back? That was tantamount to conceding ground. Why would they…?

Taniel saw it now. Movement among the Kez lines. Whole companies coming up just behind their artillery. An assault. The Kez intended to push them back this day.

Taniel narrowed his eyes. There were huge men among those companies. Giant, twisted forms.

Taniel didn’t know if these were regular Wardens, or the new kind made from powder mages, like the kind that had attacked him in Adopest.

Either way, this would go poorly for the Adran army.

Taniel noted that the Adran artillery was staggered every couple hundred feet. The artillery out front could be pulled back while those beside kept firing. This was planned. Perhaps this was what they’d been doing the last ten days. It made sense, if they knew they were going to lose the front line anyway.

Taniel didn’t like it.

He left Ka-poel and headed down the hillock to join the officers, approaching General Hilanska.

“Sir, what’s going on?”

The general gave Taniel a dismissive glance, then a second, longer stare. “We’re pulling back, son.”

“That’s foolish, sir. We have the high ground. We can hold.”

General Ket brought her horse around behind Taniel, looking him up and down. He wondered if she remembered him. He must look different after four years.

“Are you questioning your betters, Captain?” General Ket asked.

“It’s a stupid tactic, ma’am. It assumes loss.”

“Captain, you’ll earn yourself a demotion without an instant apology.”

Another general, a blond man with a stiff bearing, added, “I’d imagine this is why he’s still a captain.”

General Hilanska held up his remaining arm. “Calm down, Ket. You don’t recognize our boy here, do you? Taniel Two-Shot, hero of the Fatrastan War for Independence. I’m glad to see you among the living.”

“General.” Taniel dipped his head. Tamas had told him a tale or two when he was a boy about what kind of man Hilanska was — loyal, passionate. The best kind of companion to have with you on the line. He was fat and and old now, but Taniel imagined him to be the same kind of person.

“I don’t care who he is,” Ket said. “No one disregards rank in this army and gets away with it.”

“Tamas — ” Hilanska began.

“Tamas is dead,” Ket said. “It’s not his army anymore. If you’d — ”

The argument was cut off by a messenger.

“Sirs, the enemy is advancing.”