The Guns of Empire (51 page)

There was little enough to eat, even for high-ranking officers. A few crackers of hardtack and strips of boiled horsemeat, with a few tiny wrinkled fruits that looked like pickled plums. The latter came from the enemy, looted from the pockets and pouches of dead bone women. The horses came from the enemy, too; the last of theirs had been killed and eaten days before.

The Colonial guards on Janus' tent stepped aside as Marcus came in. Janus was sitting up in bed, which wasn't unusual these days. Since the fighting had
started, he'd shown more animation, talking to whoever was present. Unfortunately, not a lot of what he said made any
sense
, and his fever was still practically hot enough to fry an egg. Marcus wasn't sure if this represented an improvement. Breakfast that morning, for example, had been accompanied by a lecture on the mating habits of scorpions and how this represented an adaptation to their various environments.

Janus looked over as Marcus entered. His skin was alarmingly pale, and his already thin face had turned cadaverous. His gray eyes were huge and fever-bright.

“Marcus!” he said. That was a positive sign; Janus didn't always seem to know whom he was talking to.

“Good evening, sir,” Marcus said. “I've brought—”

“Marcus, do you think I'm a genius?” Janus said.

That was less positive. Marcus made his way to the bed, holding the tray with its pathetic meal in front of him. “I—” he began.

“Of course you do,” Janus said, speaking just slightly too fast. “It's obvious from your behavior, faith and hero worship, common enough traits. Why shouldn't you? I encourage the notion, taking advantage of preexisting embedded cultural tropes—genius as eccentric means less likely to be questioned, greater trust required, highly advantageous. Can hardly place blame for deliberately inspired ideation. And yet. And
yet
, Marcus!”

“Sir?” Marcus held out a cracker of hardtack. “You should eat something.”

Janus snatched the hardtack, bit down triumphantly, and chewed the sandpapery stuff with every evidence of enjoyment.

“The question is whether you understand the
nature
of genius,” he said, spraying crumbs. “If not, how can you—as a proxy for the common man, Ligamenti's
hitsujikai
—be expected to recognize it when you encounter it? Is genius merely above-average performance, or is it, must it be something more than that, something
qualitative
, or are we merely splitting syntactical hairs, or is there a sliding scale, Quartier's distribution but along which axis? Which axis, Marcus?”

“I'm not sure I follow, sir,” Marcus said, offering some of the boiled meat.

“I have seen the real thing.” Janus' tone suddenly darkened, all the energy draining out of him. He accepted the meat and chewed mechanically, shoulders sagging.

“Genius?” Marcus said, hoping to keep up his end of the conversation.

Janus swallowed. “You think I'm out of the ordinary.” His voice was a whisper. “
She
could do everything I can do, and yet she outshone me, the sun
against a candle. Looking at her was staring destiny in the face. I knew she was going to reshape the world, overturn kingdoms and empires, change the course of history. I
knew
it. And then . . .”

He let out a long breath and settled back to the pillows.

“Sir?” Marcus said, eager to keep him talking. “Are we talking about Mya?”

“Mya.” Janus' eyes slowly closed. “We have to help her, Marcus. Lost in shadow. All that strength, lost. We're so close. Just a little farther.” His voice fell to a whisper. “It's there, under Elysium. My demon . . .” He lay still and quiet.

“Sir?”

Marcus checked Janus' breathing, which was shallow but steady. His forehead was frighteningly warm to the touch. Marcus sighed and left the rest of food beside the bed, in case he woke up.

Outside the tent, Andy was waiting for him. Her uniform was filthy with sweat and blood.

“You all right?” Marcus said. “You look like you've been butchering hogs.”

The comment, under other circumstances, might have been in bad taste, but Abby only gave a morbid chuckle.

“One of them tried to grab me after I stabbed her. Ended up well covered in it. What about you? Your arm okay?”

He raised the bandaged limb for her inspection. It was starting to hurt, but he kept the pain out of his face. “Just a scratch. I'll be fine.”

“How's
he
doing?”

“Not well,” Marcus said. “He's not getting
worse
, but he can't stay like this forever. He's losing weight. And he . . . babbles.”

Mya.
Janus talked about her incessantly in his delirium. Marcus still didn't know if she'd been a friend, family, or a lover, or even if she was real, but her name was one of the few things that could get a reaction when Janus was in his worst states.
He thinks she's waiting for him under Elysium.
An odd thought struck him.
Maybe she's the demon he's looking for?

“Damn.” Andy shook her head. “You think Give-Em-Hell made it?”

“No way to know. We just have to hold on as long as we can.”
It's Weltae all over again
. For a moment he was back in Khandar, trapped in an ancient temple surrounded by Redeemers, with only a faith in Janus to hold on to.
But this time Janus is unconscious, and it's Raesinia I have to have faith in.

“Yeah.” Andy looked uncomfortable. “Look. I've been on the walls for the past few days—”

“I know. You've been amazing.”

“Thanks.” She let out a deep breath. “They're not going to hold, Marcus. Not for much longer. I don't know if it'll be tomorrow or the next day, but they'll break, and when they do it'll be bad. All that's keeping them here is knowing there's nowhere else to go.”

“I know.”

There was only so much he could ask of the same few battalions of tired, ragged men. The bone women and their archers had been roughly handled every time they'd crossed the river, but they had a large enough force to send fresh troops into every assault, to be met by the same exhausted defenders. To make matters worse, those same defenders had to care for their own wounded, add fresh ice to the walls, and drag hundreds of bloody corpses out of the line of fire.

“We have to do something different,” Andy said. “I've been talking with Viera. She had an idea, but it's a bit . . .” She shrugged. “Well. You know Viera.”

Which meant that the idea involved something exploding spectacularly. “At this point, I'm not going to rule anything out,” he said. “Let's hear it.”

—

“I don't like it,” Colonel Morag said. He was Royal Army, square jawed and stout, though some of his portliness had wasted away as the siege went on. “I can't ask my men to fight in such dangerous conditions.”

“Which is exactly why we're not going to tell them,” Andy said. “If anyone asks, we're just reinforcing the wall.”

“That's even worse,” said the colonel. He looked to Fitz. “Sir, you can't expect us to go along with this. Too much could go wrong.”

The other senior officers gathered in the tent muttered agreement. Viera, who'd explained her plan in clipped, precise tones, now sat and regarded them with undisguised scorn. Fitz sat beside Marcus and Andy, his expression bland as always.

“The column-general thinks it will work,” he said.

“With respect,” Morag said, “the column-general got us into this in the first place. If we'd stayed in place, we might have been able to rebuild the bridge by now. As it is—”

“Do you have a better plan, Colonel?” Andy snapped. “Because as it stands they're going to be boiling us for our bones before long.”

“We should attack,” Morag said immediately. “Break through their line and then break up. If we spread out into the forest, most of us can get away.”

“Get away so that we can starve in the woods, you mean,” Andy said.

“Better than getting killed here,” Morag said. “Or getting blown sky-high—”

“I've gone over the plan with Janus,” Marcus said quietly. “He think it will work.”

That silenced the gathering. The colonels looked at one another.

“You didn't mention that the First Consul was awake,” Morag said accusingly.

“He's very weak,” Marcus said. “But he has . . . moments of lucidity. I showed it to him after Andy came to me this afternoon.”

“Well.” Morag swallowed. “If the First Consul approves, I suppose it's not my place to argue.”

It's not your place to argue anyway,
Marcus wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Morag and the others were clearly hanging on to military discipline by their fingertips. “Viera will show you the work that needs to be done. We want to keep it quiet, understand?”
If word gets out, no telling what
that
will do to morale.
“If I hear any rumors, the people sitting in this tent are going to be very unhappy.”

“Understood, sir,” Morag said. There was a matching chorus from the others.

“Viera, show them what they need to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Viera said with a sly grin. She escorted the senior officers out, herding them like a sheepdog.

“Did Janus really—” Fitz said quietly.

“Of course not,” Marcus said. “He has no idea where we are. But if they need to believe it . . .” He shrugged, exhaustion settling over him like a coat.

“You think it will work?”

Marcus looked at Andy. “I think it'll buy us at least one more day.”

“I suppose that's nothing to scoff at.” Fitz got to his feet. “If you'll excuse me, sir.”

“Go. Get some rest.”

Fitz nodded and left the command tent, if the tiny space they sat in could be dignified with the name. Marcus was left alone with Andy. She'd changed her shirt to one a bit less bloodstained, though brown patches still discolored her coat. It hung loose around her shoulders; like Morag, she'd lost weight, though she hadn't had as much to lose.

“They'll come again in the morning,” Andy said.

“Probably.”

“Even if this works, it won't hold them long,” Andy said. “Maybe until the next day.”

“Probably.”

“So we're all going to die.”

Marcus sighed. “Probably.”

“Okay.” Andy took a deep breath, let it out, and rolled her shoulders. “Why doesn't that scare me like it used to?”

“Because you're tired,” Marcus said. He'd been to that strange place beyond fear more than once. “When you're tired enough, dying just seems like a chance to rest.”

“Saints and goddamned martyrs.” Andy shook her head. “You're still sleeping in Janus' tent?”

“Someone has to look after him,” Marcus said.

She nodded. “I've got my own tent now. Some lieutenant caught an arrow and nobody objected when I took it over.” She cocked her head. “You're welcome to join me.”

Marcus blinked. “I'm not pressed for space, if that's what you mean—”

Andy sighed and shuffled across the tent on her knees, sitting down again immediately opposite him.

“Marcus,” she said. “Please listen carefully.”

“All right.”

She cleared her throat. “Would
you
”—she pointed at him—“like to come to my tent with
me
and . . . ” She turned the finger on herself, then brought both fingers together in an obscene gesture.

“Oh.” He swallowed. “Look, Andy, I don't . . . I mean . . .”

“I know, I know. I'm half your age, you don't see me that way, you're my commander, blah, blah, blah.” She shrugged. “That might seem more important if we weren't all going to die tomorrow or the day after. As it is, I don't mind admitting I developed a bit of a crush on you back in Vordan. If this is going to be our last chance, I thought I would ask.”

“It's not that,” Marcus said. “Well, I mean, I guess it
is
that. I just . . .” He raised his hands helplessly. “I don't know. But I can't.”

“It's all right,” she said. “I'm sure I can find someone. Viera and I are the only two women in camp, after all, and not everyone has Fitz's preferences.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I just thought I'd put the offer on the table.”

“Thank you. I'm . . . flattered, I guess.” Frankly, Marcus would have expected to find himself more scandalized.
I'm too tired for that, too.

Andy smiled. “Just don't come crying to me after we're dead.”

She got to her feet, bent over in the low-ceilinged tent, and went to the flap.

“I'll see you in the morning,” Marcus said.

“Good night, Marcus.” Andy paused and looked back. “Do you really not know why you can't, or are you just saying that?”

“Andy . . .” Marcus shook her head. “It just feels . . . wrong. I—”

“I only ask,” she interrupted, “because it seems pretty obvious from where I'm sitting. You're in love with the queen, aren't you?”

—

Janus was still asleep when Marcus returned to their tent, shaking out his bedroll in the far corner and pulling off his boots.

You're in love with the queen, aren't you?

I can't be, can I?
In the abstract, he supposed, he could see how it might look that way. Raesinia was smart, funny, pretty.
And sometimes, when she looks at me, I almost think . . .

But she was the
Queen of Vordan
. It was like saying you were in love with the moon.

He tested himself, carefully, as he might probe uncertain footing in the dark.
Can I imagine holding her? Kissing her? Touching her? Is that really what I want?