The Guns of Empire (33 page)

“We have to get back to the camp,” Marcus said. “There may be more of them. Janus has to be warned.”

—

As it turned out, the warning was unnecessary. Everyone in the camp was already well aware of the white riders.

They'd come from every direction at once, appearing from the snow to slaughter terrified pickets in a blur of fur and arrows. Then they'd turned away, hovering just out of musket range, as though deliberately taunting their opponents. Fortunately for the Vordanai, most of their division commanders—Winter, Fitz, Val, and Mor—had been in Khandar, where the Desoltai had nearly wiped out an entire battalion of Colonials when Adrecht Roston had fallen for a similar trap. The regiments formed up, but held their position at the edges of the camp, with only the cavalry giving chase.

Unlike in the Colonials in the Great Desol, the Grand Army included a sizable force of both light cavalry and cuirassiers. The size and armor of the latter gave them an advantage in close combat against the white riders, but the great southern warhorses fared poorly in the snow, and the raiders could fire with astonishing accuracy from the backs of their horses. The snow and the awkward, broken ground split the combat up into a hundred tiny skirmishes in the freezing darkness, bands of horsemen riding in every direction, not sure whether the next group they encountered would be friendly or enemy.

By the time Marcus and his diminished force returned to camp, Janus had taken things in hand, and the situation had improved. The smaller divisional guns, supplemented by detachments from the artillery reserve, were distributed around the camp at intervals, their fire chasing the white riders out of bow range. Give-Em-Hell immediately called in his cavalry from their confusing, fragmented battle, a process that took most of the night. Marcus rode from point to point, reassuring nervous commanders and drawing cheers from the soldiers.

The snow slackened with the rising sun, and the white riders withdrew.
Around the camp, the corpses of men and animals were strewn like scattered toys, blue-coated Vordanai cavalry mixed with the fur-clad bodies of their enemies. A thick layer of snow covered everything, filtering down through the trees and burying the just-sprouted fields in a smothering white blanket. The sun seemed like a cold, shrunken thing, promising little relief.

—

“I thought it might help when the mud froze solid,” Fitz said.

Marcus snorted. “Ever the optimist.”

They stood with a small crowd of soldiers, backed up behind a knot in the column. A caisson had split one of its great round wheels and tipped over, trapping one of its horses. Sweating men, breath steaming, struggled to right it.

“I've got to go and see Janus,” Marcus said. “Can you get this sorted out?”

“Of course, sir,” Fitz said. “Go on ahead.”

At least he had the sense not to ask what Janus was going to do next, which was a question Marcus was getting tired of answering. Or, more accurately, not answering, since Janus had as usual divulged nothing of his intentions.

Marcus led his horse carefully up onto the verge, then remounted on the other side of the obstacle and continued ahead at a careful walk. The frozen ground was treacherous, especially for animals. The mud had solidified in whatever rutted, pitted shape it had been in the day before, and hardened until it was as tough as rock. Now, with the ruts and divots buried under the snow, it was far too easy for a horse to put a foot wrong, or for a wagon or gun to break its wheels in an unexpected hole.

The infantry had its own problems. Their coats weren't really adequate for the cold—even Marcus found it hard to blame the quartermasters for that, given the season. Overnight, the uniform appearance of the soldiers had vanished, as they stuffed their jackets with tent fabric, pieces of bedroll and blanket, and whatever else would keep them warm. The lucky ones had scavenged furs from fallen white riders. For once, looting the dead had been officially encouraged. Digging graves in the frozen ground was impossible, so last night's corpses had been burned, a mixed bonfire of split logs and pasty, naked bodies whose smoke had cast a pall over the column for hours.

Janus had sent for Marcus around midday. He picked his way along the column, which was stopped in a half dozen places and had gaps in as many others, and got directions from a cavalry picket to a hill just to the left of their line of march. Marcus left his horse with a soldier at the base and climbed the slope on foot, probing the snow with the tip of his boot.

On the way, he passed a thickset man he recognized as Christopher de Manzet, commander of the Eighth Division. The general's eyes were wide, and he descended the hill with dangerous haste, pausing only to offer Marcus a cursory salute. Several aides were waiting for him at the bottom, but de Manzet set off back toward the column without a word, his staff trailing behind him like anxious kites.

Janus was alone on the summit, wearing a heavy wool greatcoat, a spyglass in one hand. He looked over his shoulder at Marcus and beckoned.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes.” His tone put Marcus instantly on edge. There was something
off
there, hidden under his usual calm like a razor blade in a loaf of bread. “I'm very glad to see you made it back safely last night.”

“It was a near thing, sir,” Marcus said. “The raiders killed our translator and half our escort, and they burned the village we were visiting.”

“They seem to have been doing quite a bit of that.” Janus pointed. “See the smoke? There and there.”

“Why would they do that?” Marcus said. “Burn their own village.”

“Murnsk is a vast country, as I've commented before,” Janus said. “In particular, its northern boundaries are . . . disputed. Beyond the river Bataria is the great snowy waste, where winter never ends. The emperor claims dominion over the tribes who live there, but they acknowledge his authority only reluctantly.”

“Those were the white riders who attacked us last night?”

Janus nodded. “Trans-Batariai, for certain.”

“If they don't work for the emperor, what are they doing here?”

Janus dug in his pocket and held up a crude ornament on a torn leather thong. Two carved pieces of horn or bone, rough circles, one inside the other.

“They may not recognize the authority of the emperor, but the authority of Elysium is another matter. Especially the Pontifex of the Black. The Trans-Batariai have raided and warred with the more settled Murnskai for centuries, but they hate us heretics even more.”

Marcus hesitated for a moment, looking around to see if any of the guards were within earshot. Satisfied he wouldn't be overheard, he said, “We spoke with a woman in the village last night who told an interesting story. A legend, really.” Marcus repeated the tale of the Old Witch and the black-masked strangers. “I would have dismissed it as local superstition,” he concluded, “if not for the things I've seen fighting the Priests of the Black.”

“Just as the Church intends,” Janus said. “The Old Witch. I've heard the stories, of course, but they were all hundreds of years old. I didn't think the Black Priests had captured her.”

“If the story's to be believed, the snow could last all year,” Marcus said.

“Perhaps,” Janus said. “That may be an exaggeration.”

“What if it's not?” Marcus took a deep breath. “Sir, even without the white riders, keeping us fed in this weather would be difficult. We can't protect two hundred miles of supply line. Even if they never attack us directly—”

“What are you suggesting, Marcus?” The odd tone was back, a slight burr in the velvet voice.

“I . . .” Marcus hadn't really thought it through until now. “I'm not sure we can continue the advance. Not without losing half the army to starvation and frostbite. If we fall back to Polkhaiz, perhaps . . .”

He stopped as Janus' eyes narrowed.

“We can't go back,” the First Consul said very quietly. “The first step back and we've lost. It's precisely what they want.”

“But—”

“We're so
close
.” Janus pointed north, where the gray shape of a river was just visible. “That's the Kovria! Elysium is barely a hundred miles beyond!”

A hundred miles or a thousand, it doesn't make any difference,
Marcus wanted to say.
We can't get there.
But Janus' furious gaze seemed to freeze the words in his throat.

“You see what they're capable of,” Janus hissed. “You think the Pontifex of the Black spared a thought for the people his raiders would plunder on their way to fight us? You think he cares about all the peasants who'll starve when this year's crops freeze in the fields? Do you think he will show us any mercy?”

“Sir,” Marcus managed. “I—”

“The hell with it,” Janus snarled. Marcus had only heard anger in his voice like that once before, in the empty tunnels under Ashe-Katarion. A cold, killing rage, sharp as shattered glass. “I don't give a
damn
what you think. This army will reach Elysium, Marcus, if we have to crawl on our hands and knees. We will reach it if we have to eat the dead for food and wear their skins to keep us warm. I have not worked for so long and crossed half the world to be stopped by a little bit of fucking
weather
.”

He flipped the spyglass to Marcus, end over end, and stalked away. Marcus almost fumbled the catch, the brass instrument cold against his hand.

What did he say to poor de Manzet?
he thought. No wonder the man had looked shaken.

Marcus put the spyglass to his eye. A column of smoke jumped closer, and he could see the skeletons of broken buildings toppled amid dirty snow. Beyond was the river. In the center of the channel, the water still flowed freely, but fingers of ice stretched out from the bank, like they were trying to close around someone's throat.

W
e're a thousand miles from home, surrounded by enemies, buried in snow on the banks of a river that's frozen in May,
Winter thought.
It seems unfair for me to be happy.

It was midafternoon, though there was no way to know it from the cold gray light that filtered through the canvas and the unbroken layer of clouds above it. Winter lay naked in her bedroll, all the blankets she owned heaped atop her. Cyte was curled up at her side, the swell of her breasts pressed against Winter's flank, her dark hair against Winter's chin. She was still asleep, breath a gentle tickle at Winter's throat.

Half the division was sleeping by day now. The white riders mostly attacked at night, sudden charges out of the darkness and volleys of arrows into the tents or the horse lines. Winter had doubled the pickets and then doubled them again, a thick line of skirmishers waiting in the cold and the darkness to confront the raiders. It was working, the white riders paying in blood for every strike, but the Second Division was being run ragged. There was no question of games anymore, much less drill. Every moment not spent on guard was devoted to eating, sleeping, or helping with the never-ending task of hauling supplies through the drifting snow.

Officially, they were camped here on the north bank of the Kovria to build up enough reserves of food and ammunition to make the final push north, over the last hundred miles of the Pilgrim's Road to Elysium. The track behind them was crowded with supply convoys, slogging from the well-stocked depots at Polkhaiz and Tsivny. But horses and oxen could only pull the wagons so fast through the snow, especially when the animals themselves were suffering badly from the cold. Every day, regiments trooped south to contribute their muscle
to the effort, returning shaky and exhausted at nightfall. And yet every day they brought in barely enough food to keep the army going on reduced rations, let alone to build up a reserve.

The foraging expeditions up the river, which were supposed to have brought in more supplies by boat, had been canceled. The white riders would have made such a trip too dangerous, and in any case the point was moot. The Kovria had frozen over the night after they'd arrived, and the crust of ice was now quite thick, solid enough that the soldiers simply slogged across the surface instead of using the little wooden bridge at the town of Isket, just south of the camp.

It felt like they were a ball thrown high in the air and reaching its apogee, with no energy to go farther but not yet able to fall back. Held there, unnaturally aloft, by the sheer force of Janus' will. Rumors had started to spread, and no one dared to even breathe the word
retreat
in the presence of the First Consul. But it was everywhere else, on the lips of the rankers standing watch in the snow and among the gloomy groups of officers drinking up hoarded wine in their tents.

Winter felt isolated from it all, at the very center of things but somehow apart. Her tent, her bed, was a circle of warmth into which the cold couldn't penetrate. She ought to be worried, ought to be thinking about what Janus would do next or the ultimate fate of the grand campaign. Instead, her mind drifted; the way Cyte smiled, just a bit, when she thought no one was watching, the way her hair fell across the delicate curve of her neck, the soft sounds she made when Winter touched her.

Somehow, the difficulty of the army's situation had made things easier between the two of them. There was no question of propriety, of secrecy, just the desperate need for comfort.
And we're hardly the only ones, after all.
There was a certain practicality to it.
Not many better ways to keep warm.

There was a scratch at the tent flap.

Fuck,
Winter thought.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
In here was warmth, and quiet, and peace. Out there was duty and responsibility, and she did not want to get up. Knew, in the end, that she would.

“What is it?” she said, feeling Cyte stir.

“White riders, sir!” It was a young woman's voice Winter didn't recognize. “They're attacking the Girls' Own pickets.”

“In the middle of the day?” Winter frowned. That wasn't according to the usual pattern. “Where's Colonel Giforte?”

“On her way there, sir. She sent me to get you, said we're holding them off for now.”

“Right. Give me a few minutes to get dressed. I'm on my way.”

“'S going on?” Cyte said blearily as Winter rolled out of bed and scrambled for her underclothes.

“White Riders are trying the pickets again.” Winter pulled her shirt on and shook out her trousers.

“Damn.” Cyte sat up, blanket falling away. “Wait for me.”

“They'll probably be gone by the time I get there,” Winter said, pulling on her boots. They were still damp with yesterday's melted snow. “Stay here. They may try another part of the line before I get back.”

Cyte nodded, trying to shake the sleepiness from her head. Winter belted on her sword and stepped out through the tent flap. The cold wind was like a slap in the face, and the Girls' Own ranker waiting in front of the tent wore a ragged, makeshift overcoat made of stitched-together blankets.

“Lead the way—” Winter began, then stopped when something tickled the back of her mind. Alex burst into view around a tent, trying to run and sending up huge sprays of snow.

“Winter!” she said.

“What's wrong?” Infernivore uncoiled deep inside her with its usual hunger.

“Can't you feel it?” Alex said. She pointed toward the edge of the camp.

Winter looked meaningfully at the ranker standing behind her, and Alex closed her mouth with a snap. She kept pointing, though, and when Winter looked in that direction, she realized she
could
feel something. Alex's demon dominated Infernivore's attention, but if she focused, there was a hint of a presence in the other direction.
Out by the picket line
—

“Is that where they're attacking?” she asked the ranker.

The young woman nodded. “Just past those trees.”

“Damn.”
Penitents at last?
“Alex, come with me. You”—she pointed at the ranker—“find Captain Forester and tell her to meet me out there, as fast as she can. Run!”

“Yes, sir!” the ranker said, bewildered but determined. She dashed off into the camp.

Winter started running in the other direction, as best she could in the snow. Alex pounded along behind her.

“You think it's them?” the girl said.

“We're only a hundred miles from Elysium,” Winter said. “This is practically their backyard.”

“What are they doing attacking the pickets, though?”

“That's what I'm trying to figure out. Maybe they're working with the white riders.”

They approached the tree line. Alex looked over her shoulder and extended a hand. “I'll make better time this way.”

“Wait—”

But Alex was already rising into the air, swinging toward the nearest tree on a line of pure darkness, trailing snow from her boots. She landed, lashed to the tree, then aimed her other hand and swung again. Winter struggled after her, now able to see the flashes of musket-fire deeper into the little woods. The snow muffled the sound of the weapons to a dull
thud, thud, thud
, like someone keeping an irregular beat on a drum. After a few moments, the firing stopped, although more distant shots came from farther along the line.

The first body was leaning against a tree, a woman in a Girls' Own uniform opened from navel to collarbone by a single long cut, hands clamped futilely over the wound. Her blood was startlingly red against the snow, and the drops and sprays had melted little craters in the delicate surface. A bit farther on, another soldier was curled on her side, lying in a pool of brown slush.

“Saints and
fucking
martyrs,” Winter whispered. Her hand dropped to her sword, and she scanned the silent, shadowed forest for movement. The
crunch
of her boots in the snow sounded loud.

Another body, still clutching her musket. And another, pinned to a tree, her feet several inches off the ground, hanging from a milky white spike driven through her sternum. Her eyes were wide with terror and disbelief.

“There you are,” a woman's voice said. She spoke Vordanai with a heavy Murnskai accent. “I was getting bored of slaughtering these rabble.”

Infernivore rose up in Winter's mind as a slim figure stepped around a tree. She was tall, with a great mass of black hair that fell below her shoulders. She'd wrapped herself in a thick fur, but at the sight of Winter she let this fall, revealing well-fitted dark leather.

Her face was invisible behind a black mask set with tiny chips of obsidian. The weak sunlight gleamed and shifted as she moved, running along the curving surfaces like dripping paint.

“You're a Penitent,” Winter said, stepping closer.

“Ahdon ivahnt vi, ignahta sempria,”
the woman acknowledged, moving slowly
to mirror Winter's approach. They circled, drawing ever closer. “And you're Vhalnich's pet demon lord, aren't you? Ihernglass.”

“I suppose I shouldn't bother asking you to surrender,” Winter said.

The Penitent laughed. “I'll tell you what. If you don't bother with that, I won't pretend that I'm going to let you live.”

What happened to Alex?
Winter resisted the urge to look up at the treetops. The girl had to be there, somewhere, but she might have lost her nerve.
Maybe I ought to have waited for Cyte to put a squad together.
Winter dismissed that thought at once. Whatever this demon-host could do, it had clearly been able to tear through the Girls' Own sentries without difficulty.
I won't ask my soldiers to throw their lives away against a monster.

I have to get ahold of her.
Infernivore could destroy any other demon, but she needed close contact to unleash it.
If she doesn't know what I can do, I might be able to misdirect her.
She hefted her sword and squared her stance slightly.
She doesn't have a weapon, but that doesn't mean much . . .

“Well?” the Penitent said. “Are you going to get started, or should I?”

Winter shrugged. Then, before the movement was quite finished, she lunged forward, snow spraying out behind her. Only a few feet separated them, but Winter started her swing early, telegraphing a wide blow to the Penitent's left side. Even an indifferent swordsman could have blocked it, which was of course the whole point. Her left hand came up, open-palmed, no obvious threat.
If I grab her
—

The Penitent stood motionless, but snow fountained around her feet. As Winter's sword descended, a torrent of fine white particles flowed around the woman's clothes, rapidly enclosing her in a thickening shell. By the time the blade struck, the fine particles of snow had merged into a solid layer of ice, milky white color fading to absolute transparency. The blade hit and rebounded as though she'd struck stone, steel ringing with the impact as chips and splinters of ice flew.

Winter's other hand reached out, and she put her palm flat against the Penitent's chest. Her skin went instantly numb, but Winter was already reaching out with her mind, urging Infernivore on. It filled her arm, roaring through her fingertips, but the Penitent's demon remained stubbornly out of reach, separated by the icy barrier.

It's too thick,
Winter realized. She took a step and nearly stumbled. Her hand refused to move, stuck to the Penitent's chest, fingers numbed into insensibility as cold crept up her arm.

“Not exactly an auspicious beginning,” the Penitent said. Her voice echoed oddly; the ice had grown around her head, encasing it in a transparent helmet and visor like an old-fashioned knight. “Surely you've got something more than that?”

Winter aimed a second cut at the woman's head. It rang off her icy helmet, snapping off a chunk as big as a finger and sending spidery white cracks through the rest. The woman frowned, and the cracks receded, sealing themselves closed. She raised her right hand, and more snow rose from the forest floor and shaped itself into a long, thin blade with a needle-sharp point.

“I really don't see how you could have beaten Wren, let alone Twist,” the Penitent said. “Perhaps you had help—”

A line of absolute darkness shot down from the trees, slamming into the icicle sword near the hilt. The weapon shattered in a blast of cold and splintered ice. The Penitent spun, dragging Winter through the snow, and another spear of blackness stabbed down and hit the woman high in the chest. There was a horrible
screech
, like a knife blade drawn across glass, and the Penitent staggered back a step in a cloud of powdered ice. When it cleared, Winter could see that the ice armor was fractured in a neat bull's-eye pattern around the impact, but not broken.

It had stunned the woman for a moment, though, and Winter wasn't about to let that go to waste. She jumped, putting all her weight on the hand that was stuck to the Penitent's chest, and jammed both her feet against the woman's hips. She hung there for a moment, suspended like a climber from a tree; then, gritting her teeth, Winter straightened her legs and pulled as hard as she could.

There was no pain when her hand came free, just a cracking, tearing feeling that promised agony later. She pushed off the Penitent and landed a few feet away in the snow, rolling immediately with a spray of white powder. The Penitent ignored her, more snow whirling around her in a miniature cyclone. It condensed into icicles like thin white daggers, a dozen of them, which hung in the air for a moment before zipping into the trees like a volley of arrows. Snow and torn branches fell as they slashed by, but a moment later another pair of inky black lines lanced out. One hit the Penitent in the head, tearing away a big chunk of helmet, while the other slammed into her knee with a
crunch
of shattering ice. The woman let out a grunt, slapping an ice-gauntleted hand over her face, and snow spiraled inward to regrow her armor.