The Crimson Campaign

SouSmith began collecting his cards in one hand. A moment later he was done and he stood up. “For once,” he said, “I agree with ya.”

Adamat closed his eyes. He didn’t blame SouSmith. Not one bit. But he’d been hoping against hope that SouSmith would once again refuse to leave. That he’d stay by Adamat’s side and see this thing through.

SouSmith fetched his jacket from the rack by the door. “Sorry, friend,” he said, “I’ll die for ya, but the Proprietor won’t stop with me.”

Of course. SouSmith had his brother’s family to worry about.

They shook hands, and Adamat heard SouSmith’s heavy step down the stairs and out the front door.

Adamat fell back into his chair with his head in his hands.

SouSmith was big and powerful and he was worth five men in a fight, but he was also a friend. Adamat couldn’t afford to have friends. Not with what he was about to do.

Adamat dragged himself to his feet just long enough to go find his bed. He didn’t bother removing his clothes before he dropped into it.

CHAPTER 14

Taniel rubbed at his eyes and tried to remember what it felt like to sleep.

Five times in three days he’d fought in a bloody melee on the front lines. Five times he’d been the last one to leave the earthen defenses when the Kez proved too strong. Five times he’d been forced to make the long trek across the corpse-strewn fields dragging the wounded and dying, furious that they’d once again let the front fall beneath a Kez onslaught.

How many times could they retreat before the army was nothing but dead and wounded?

Taniel paused to look to the south. Budwiel was getting farther away every day. The front — or what had been the front until half an hour ago — was about a quarter mile away and obscured in powder smoke. The Kez soldiers were already leveling the earthworks and carting away their dead.

This last offensive had been a bad one. The infantry from the Seventeenth Brigade was mostly green and they’d broken and run before the retreat was even sounded. Taniel wondered if there was a single man unharmed after that mess. The groaning of the wounded in the surgeons’ tents made his skin crawl.

He found Ka-poel sitting by the fire next to their tent. She stared at the coals, absently cleaning beneath her fingernails with the tip of one of her long needles. A pot of water boiled over the flames. She looked Taniel over once, then stared back at the fire.

Taniel dropped to the ground next to her. His whole body hurt. He was covered in countless cuts and bruises. A particularly nasty Warden had almost done him in, and he had a clean slice across the side of his stomach to show for it.

Ka-poel stood silently and moved around behind him, where she began to pull him out of the jacket. He didn’t like when she undressed him — well, he liked it, but he’d heard officers muttering about the impropriety of their relationship already — but tonight he was far too tired to argue. She unbuttoned his shirt and cleaned his neck and torso with a hot, wet washcloth.

He lay on his side while she stitched the wound on his stomach, wincing every time the needle went in.

“Pole,” he said while he lay there, “do you remember something being mentioned about Tamas putting together a school for powder mages in Adopest?”

She drummed two fingers on his arm. Yes.

“I think Sabon was in charge of it. I wonder if he’s still up there. Pit, I could use his help.” Taniel paused to think. Sabon’s face floated in front of him, perfect teeth standing out against his black skin. Sabon was the only one Tamas ever listened to. He’d taught Taniel to shoot. A good soldier; a good man. “Damn it, I should have asked Ricard. Even if Sabon is with Tamas, there had to be a couple other powder mages left in Adopest. We need them on the front.”

Ka-poel finished the stitching and Taniel climbed to his feet. His shirt was nearly black, stiff with dried blood. He smelled like a slaughterhouse. He left it on the ground. Ka-poel would find someone to wash it for him. He fetched his one spare shirt from the tent and buttoned it up.

His tent was on the side of one of the mountain ridges that frames Surkov’s Alley. It meant he had to sleep at an incline, but he also had a vantage over most of the valley, and right now he watched the Wings of Adom camp. The Wings’ camp sat closer to the front than the Adran, and they held the east side of the valley with their flank against the river.

Reports were that the Wings were holding their front every day, but were forced to withdraw when the Adrans retreated so that the Kez couldn’t flank them.

Tamas would have been furious had he been here to see it, that the mercenaries were putting forth a better defensive than the Adran army.

A pair of Wings brigadiers were making their way from their own camp toward the big, white-and-blue command tent at the rear of the Adran army. A few other officers seemed to be heading in the same direction. A meeting, it seemed. If Tamas were here, Taniel would be at that meeting.