Michel finished his coffee. He would have just enough time to reach the safe house before curfew. He’d get a couple hours of rest and then there’d be another night of smuggling families out of the city. He could meditate on the problem during the mission.
A short time later he walked down the street toward the safe house, tipping his hat to a passing Dynize soldier, who told him, in broken Adran, that the curfew was fifteen minutes away. As he rounded the last corner, he felt his feet slow involuntarily, his senses responding to the long instinct of a spy rather than any particular stimuli. He came to a stop, eyeballing the street, looking for something out of place, and then stepped onto a nearby stoop to continue his examination.
It took him several seconds to see what his instincts had responded to: Three Dynize soldiers loitered near the entrance of the tenement containing the safe house. Michel focused on them for a moment, trying to decide if their presence was a coincidence, when a movement caught the corner of his eye.
Another Dynize soldier peeked over the rooftop of the tenement, his face barely visible beneath the morion helm. Michel felt his pulse quicken, and now that he knew what to look for, he quickly spotted the extra soldier at the opposite intersection, and then another lurking in the window of the apartment two doors down from his safe house. Michel’s mouth went dry, his legs twitching with the desire to run.
The safe house was compromised. Hendres was either dead, captured, or had gone underground. Michel ran through a checklist of items he’d left in the safe house to make sure there was nothing he couldn’t abandon, then cursed himself for a fool. He should have realized earlier; if Taniel could find him, so could the Dynize.
CHAPTER 7
Vlora stood on the dark slopes of the Hadshaw River Valley with a half-empty skin of watered wine dangling from one hand. She hugged herself, Olem’s jacket thrown over her shoulders, and stared into the darkness. The garment, smelling of Olem’s sweat, cologne, and favorite tobacco, had a comforting effect that allowed her to think about the last few weeks without becoming overwhelmed.
Two days had passed since what the soldiers had taken to calling the Battle of Windy River. Two days since the Second Dynize Army had been spotted, and two days since a Fatrastan colonel had served her with a warrant of arrest from Lady Chancellor Lindet.
It was a stupid gesture, of course. Both Vlora and Lindet knew she wasn’t going to accept the warrant and come along quietly. The colonel had given her the papers and returned to his own army, and Vlora suspected that the paper was simple ceremony—something to tell the Fatrastan soldiers that the mercenary defender of Landfall had done something to lose Lindet’s favor.
Vlora sipped her wine. She’d not slept well for almost a month. Her eyes were tired, her body sagging. She refused to take powder until she actually needed it, forcing her body to accept the fatigue rather than give in to addiction. The last thing she wanted was powder blindness.
“Are you all right?” a voice asked through the darkness.
Vlora felt Olem’s hand slip into hers and gave it a little squeeze. He came to stand beside her, wearing the same blood-soaked shirt he’d had on since the battle, an unlit, half-smoked cigarette hanging from his lip. He wore a bandage around his left forearm to protect the stitches of a deep cut he’d received from a Dynize bayonet.
“Not really,” she answered.
Olem stared off into the night for a few moments. “Normally, people just lie and say yes when they’re asked that question.”
Vlora took a half step closer to him and put her head on his shoulder. “They’re burying another forty-three soldiers.” She let her gaze fall to a small gathering of torches about a hundred yards down the side of the valley, where her men threw the last few shovels of dirt on the graves of soldiers who’d given in to their wounds during the course of the day.
“Still bothers you, does it?” Olem asked.
She looked up at him, barely able to see his bearded profile in the darkness. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“I …” He was silent for a few moments. “One of the women they just put in the ground has played cards with me for twelve years. I’m going to miss her. But I’m a soldier, and I can’t stop and think about all the death or I won’t be able to function tomorrow.”
Vlora shivered, though the air still retained much of the damp heat of the day. “I’ve built up plenty of calluses toward death. But some days …” She lifted her eyes past the burial, over the fires of the Riflejack camp, and across the river to a sea of flickering lights that spread out in the distance on the other side of the river. The Fatrastan Second Field Army had arrived yesterday. It was enormous, over fifty thousand men plus auxiliaries and camp support, and as much as Vlora would like to have taken comfort in their presence, she was all too aware of that warrant of arrest sitting on the table in her tent.
Olem searched his pockets, giving up after a few moments. He seemed to sense the direction of her gaze. “I’m not entirely pleased,” he said, “that they decided to camp there.”
“I don’t think we’re meant to be pleased.” For the first time since coming to this damned country, Vlora felt small. Her brigade of mercenaries—just over four thousand left after this last battle, and most of those wounded—was barely a footnote in the eighty thousand or more soldiers assembled within shouting distance here on the banks of the Hadshaw. If she walked up to the ridge, she could see the Dynize camp to the south, watching her and the Fatrastan Army with a caution that their brethren had lacked. She felt as if they were a hammer poised above her, and the Fatrastans were the anvil. “I gave the order releasing the Landfall Garrison and the Blackhat volunteers over to the Fatrastans.”
“I heard. Are you sure that’s wise?”
“If we get sandwiched between these two armies, as I suspect we will, five or six thousand men won’t make a difference. Besides, they’re Fatrastan. Having them tell the tale of the Battle of Landfall might gain us some goodwill.”
“We must have made a good impression, because about a thousand of them have asked to sign on.”
“Even knowing about the arrest warrant?” Vlora asked. She raised her eyebrows in surprise. Soldiers could be loyal to the death, or they could blow away with the next foul breeze. She expected anyone willing to join a mercenary company to be the latter.
“They’re mostly Adran expatriates asking to join. Even here, so far away, Adran patriotism has run high since the Adran-Kez War.”
“I’ll take it, I suppose,” Vlora said reluctantly. “Sign them up and spread them out among the companies. We’ll need to fill out our numbers if we get out of this situation.”
“And if we don’t get out?”
“Then they’ll learn firsthand about the risks of being a soldier of fortune.”
“I see the calluses have grown back already.”
Vlora gave him a tight smile, though he probably couldn’t see it in the dark. “Have our scouts reported anything from either camp?”
“Nothing of particular note. The Dynize are probing both sides of the river with quite a lot of caution. So far they haven’t made any move to set up on our flanks. Seems that the Mad Lancer desecrated a few hundred of those Dynize cuirassiers and left the bodies where they’d be found. I have no idea what the Dynize are used to, but that probably turned a few stomachs.”
“Including mine. One of these days I’m going to have to rein Styke in, and I’m not looking forward to it.”
“Neither am I.” Olem turned his head toward her. “Is that my jacket?”
“Yes.”
He reached into the breast pocket. A matched flared to life a moment later, lighting his cigarette and illuminating a pleased smile. “There’s some communication between us and the Fatrastans, but mostly trade. Our boys are making good use of their camp followers while they have them.”
“And spending all the money Lindet paid us to defend Landfall. Soldiers have no sense of planning for the future, do they?”