The Crimson Campaign

It took Tamas a few moments to realize they were fighting. A brawl? No. A battle, a bloody melee. Every one of them wore the dark-blue coats of Adran infantry, but he was able to make out two sides. It appeared that every man on one side had torn off their white shirtsleeves and wrapped them around their right arms.

Tamas grabbed a man without a white band on his arm. “Kez?” he asked in Kez.

The man seemed taken off guard. “Yes,” he answered in Kez.

Tamas ran the man through and shoved him off the end of his sword with one boot. He turned just in time to parry the thrust of a bayonet. It came from a soldier with a white band. The soldier was about to lunge again when he came up short. “Field Marshal!”

“Where’s Colonel Olem?” Tamas asked, saying a silent prayer of thanks that his men recognized him.

“No idea, sir. He led the charge.”

“The bands?” Tamas gestured to the shirtsleeve tied around the soldier’s arm.

“Colonel Olem’s idea, sir. Keep us all straight.”

“Good.”

The soldier suddenly stripped off his jacket and tore the other arm off his undershirt. “Here, sir.”

Tamas let him wrap his arm. “Thank you. What are your orders?”

“Slaughter the Kez,” the soldier said. He lifted his rifle and charged off with a yell.

Tamas stood, still in a little bit of shock at the melee. He’d not heard horns or drums or seen any kind of panic in the Kez soldiers that said that the Seventh and Ninth had arrived. Didn’t Nikslaus have scouts? Then again, who could see anything in this rain?

Despite the ferocity of the battle, not a shot was being fired. It was too wet for that. Olem must have convinced the other generals and colonels of the need to charge straight in.

It was a commander’s nightmare. Already the parade grounds had been turned into a muddy quagmire. The downpour was so thick Tamas could barely see twenty feet in front of him.

Nikslaus’s carriage must have been slowed by the rain. It had to have followed the road, otherwise it would get bogged down in the mud.

Tamas set off at a trot along the cobbles.

The fighting raged all around him. The sound of screams and yells, the ring of sword on sword, rose intermittently above the pounding rain. The cobbles were slick with rain and blood.

He fought his way through, sword out in front of him, right arm raised so that his soldiers could see the dirty white band tied just below his shoulder. He shoved and stabbed, paused for only a moment to urge on infantry from the Seventh, and then moved on down the road, searching for Nikslaus.

How had the duke’s carriage gotten through this melee? Had his driver shoved forward, trampling soldiers on both sides, desperate to escape Tamas’s wrath? Or had the duke given him the slip, and somehow concealed the carriage from Tamas in order to escape back into the city?

Tamas caught sight of Colonel Arbor, his uniform soaked through, holding his false teeth in one hand while he used his cavalry saber to give a pit of a fight to a Kez captain. A particularly thick sheet of rain came down, concealing the colonel. Both men were gone the next time Tamas looked.

Tamas fended off a bayonet thrust and opened his third eye, fighting the dizziness that came with it. Specks of color rose out of the storm, dancing like candles in a drafty room — Knacked soldiers on both sides of the fighting.

He swept his gaze back toward the city. Nothing that way but Knacked. No Privileged. A few Wardens.

The rain fell harder. Lightning lit the darkening sky, giving Tamas a brief glimpse through the deluge and across the entire battlefield.

Men struggled in the mire of the parade field, boots sliding and squelching. They were a sea of blue uniforms, drenched and muddy. Tamas wondered if the strips of white were even helping them tell friend from foe. He guessed that thousands would die this night to the swords of their own comrades.

Lightning flashed again, and Tamas saw something forty or fifty paces ahead, just off the road. A crash of thunder followed immediately. He felt his whole chest shake from the sound. His third eye had shown him a fire among the wreckage — not of flame but of light in the Else that betrayed the presence of a Privileged.

What he’d seen a moment before resolved itself into the wreckage of a carriage as Tamas drew closer.

It looked like the driver had swerved, one wheel going off the cobbles and into the soft, wet mud. The carriage had tipped over and slid down an embankment, ending top-down in two feet of water at the bottom of a ditch, wheels still spinning.

Infantry fought around the carriage as if they didn’t notice it was there, despite the fresh skid marks in the mud and the driver frantically trying to cut loose six crazed horses.

Tamas slid down the embankment some fifteen paces away, watching the carriage warily. No sign of Nikslaus. Tamas’s third eye told him the Privileged was still within. No Wardens, either. Was this an accident? Or a trap?