“It’s a vanguard,” Vlora concluded.
“Making regular reports,” Davd added. “I’m willing to bet they’re no more than a couple of miles ahead of the main army. They’re probing, checking the lay of the land and trying to draw out our rear guard.”
“They’re moving awfully fast for a vanguard.”
“Huh,” Davd commented. “So they are.”
Vlora took a shaky breath. Her army—and the refugees they were guarding—were less than five miles from the pursuing Dynize. If the army was traveling as fast as the vanguard, they could force a battle before nightfall. If they took their time, Vlora might have two days to prepare. She wondered whether she should attempt to gain a few more miles before nightfall, pushing the refugees ahead of her, or choose a defensive position immediately. “You two, get me information. I want eyes on the enemy army. I want to know their strength and how fast they’re moving. No guns, and don’t be seen.”
She crawled out of the thicket of honey locusts and returned to the messenger who’d shown her the way. “We have enemy contact. Have someone prepare my rifles, then go find Major Gustar. He and Colonel Styke have an enemy vanguard to crush.”
CHAPTER 2
Ben Styke sat at the crest of a hill, his scarred face turned toward the morning sun, the ground damp and cool beneath him. He leaned against his saddle while his warhorse, Amrec, grazed nearby. The sun warmed Styke’s bones, allowed him to test the limits imposed upon him by old wounds. He squeezed a handful of pebbles to strengthen the tendons in his arm that had once been cut, then healed, by sorcery.
A little girl, Celine, played on a crumbling dry-stone wall. She skipped from stone to stone, barely seeming to pay her surroundings any mind until one stone slipped out from beneath her and she switched feet deftly, finding purchase before she could fall. She continued down the wall a hundred yards or so and turned around, doubling her speed for the trip back.
Somewhere over the nearby hills was Lady Vlora Flint—Styke’s new commanding officer—along with her tiny mercenary army and hundreds of thousands of refugees from Landfall. Styke kept his own men away from the column, preferring to flank the refugees and handle the scouting. Refugees weren’t his problem. Killing—when it had to be done—was.
Styke squeezed the pebbles until a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. He searched the back of his mind for his birthday—one of the many things forgotten after so long in the labor camps—and decided he was just a few months away from his forty-sixth. Almost old enough to be Celine’s grandfather. Certainly old enough to be her real father, if he’d gotten a late start.
Celine reached the end of the wall nearby and leapt to the grass. She wasn’t wearing shoes, despite having two new pairs, and her jacket and loose trousers were muddy from three weeks on the road. She had a girl’s long hair and a soft face, but her bearing left her mistaken for a boy more times than not. She was at once skittish and confident, the daughter of a thief and toughened by years in the labor camps.
She grasped Amrec fearlessly by the bridle, stroking his nose. He snorted at her but did not kick her to oblivion as he would anyone else so daring.
Styke discarded the pebbles and brushed the grit from his hands. The release of pressure on his tendons made him swallow a gasp, and he took a deep breath before calling to Celine.
“How do you decide which stone to step on?” he asked her.
Celine seemed surprised by the question. She left Amrec and came over to Styke’s side, throwing herself down against the saddle in the mock exaggeration of a tired soldier. She was, Styke decided, spending too much time with the lancers. Not that that would change any time soon.
“I just step on whichever one looks secure.”
“And how do you know which is secure?”
“I just know,” Celine said with a small shrug.
“Hmm. Think, girl,” Styke replied. “Think about how you know.”
Celine opened her mouth, closed it again, and furrowed her brow. “I don’t step on the flat ones. They’re the worst, because they wobble. The ones that are shaped like …” She made a triangle with her hands.
“Like a wedge?” Styke urged.
Her face brightened. “Yeah, like a wedge. Those are the strongest, because they rest on two other stones.”
“Very good.” Styke searched in his saddlebag and found a bag of wrapped caramels that he’d discovered while looting a Blackhat supply depot before leaving Landfall. He placed one in Celine’s hand.
Celine regarded the sweet seriously before looking up at Styke. “Why does it matter? Didn’t you tell me that instinct is a lancer’s best weapon? That’s what I use to find the stones, isn’t it?”
Styke considered his answer and glanced down the hill. Far below them, several hundred lancers practiced drills on horseback, riding back and forth across the small valley until it was a muddy cesspit. He listened to the shouts of his officers as they barked corrections and orders. “Instinct is just a word we use to describe all the little bits of information your senses collect and how your brain interprets them. Instincts can be improved.”
“So, when you make me inter … inter …”
“Interpret.”
“Interpret my instincts, you’re exercising my brain? Like what you’re doing with your wrists?”
Styke grunted, stifling a smirk. “You’re a clever little shit, you know that?”
“Ibana says that’s why you like me,” Celine responded, sticking her chin in the air.
“Ibana says a lot of things. Most of them are bullshit.” Styke climbed to his feet, leaning down to tousle Celine’s hair, then turning a critical eye on the lancers training down below. The training lasted hours each day as Ibana whipped old lancers and new recruits alike into shape. Both men and horses had to be trained, and Styke didn’t know of any army on this continent that drilled as hard as the Mad Lancers.
But that’s part of what made them the best.
Styke felt an ache deep in his back, in his thighs, and in his shoulders. He took a few breaths and stretched. There was a time when he was just shy of seven feet tall, and not a man in Fatrasta would have looked him in the eye. He was the biggest, strongest, and meanest—a hero of the Fatrastan revolution with a lover in every town between the coasts.
Now he was a broken man, and though mended by sorcery he was still bent from years in the labor camps, gnarled from wounds left by the firing squad.
“I’m still Ben Styke,” he whispered to himself. He thought about going down there, participating in the drills. He was out of practice himself, and he’d had Amrec for less than a month. Any warhorse big enough to carry Styke would need plenty of time learning the maneuvers of a lancer battalion. But that could wait. Half the lancers were old comrades, gathered from Landfall before it ended up in the hands of the Dynize. The other half were raw recruits. Best to remain aloof and let Ibana train them on the legend of Mad Ben Styke, rather than see the broken soul he’d become.
He turned to find Celine staring at the side of his face—at the scar where a bullet had bounced off his cheekbone a decade ago. Celine had grown bold since leaving the labor camps at his side. She was bigger, stronger, responding well to a healthy diet. In ten years she would be a stout woman with fists of iron, and Styke pitied the men who might think her an easy tail to chase.
“Ibana says not to let you feel sorry for yourself.”
Styke narrowed his eyes at Celine. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“She says you’re not as strong as you once were, and she catches you staring at your hands all the time. She says self-pity makes you a dog, and she needs you to be a man.”
What the pit was Ibana doing telling all this to a little girl? Styke’s little girl, particularly. “Ibana needs to shut her bloody mouth.”