The Crimson Campaign

Tamas approached, one hand on the muddy bank to keep his balance, the other holding one of his pistols. The powder in the pan might be wet, but the residue in the muzzle would still be dry and he could light it with a thought. One shot. That’s all he had.

That’s all he needed.

Tamas wrenched the door off the carriage and stooped to look inside. Nikslaus lay in the rising water of the ditch, his back against one side of the carriage. Tamas snagged the Privileged’s coat with one hand and pulled him through the door, out of the water, and up onto the bank.

“I’m going to watch you die,” Tamas shouted above the rain. He rammed his pistol into his belt and grasped Nikslaus’s coat by the collar. He’d do it with his own hands. For Erika. For Sabon. For all the powder mages who’d died in the duke’s grasp.

Tamas blinked the rain out of his eyes as he lifted Nikslaus up in front of him. Once more, to look his enemy in the eye.

Something was wrong.

Nikslaus’s head lolled at an impossible angle, eyes staring blankly toward the sky. Muddy water poured from his mouth.

The man who’d haunted Tamas’s dreams for well over a decade — who’d killed his wife and his best friend and caused a war that threatened to destroy his country — had broken his neck and drowned in a ditch.

Tamas dropped the body. He opened his third eye, just to be sure. The light of the Else was gone from Nikslaus.

He took a few steps back, stumbling in the water, and fell against the opposite bank. Nikslaus had died, from an accident no less, just moments before Tamas reached him.

Tamas hammered his fists into the mud. He kicked a carriage wheel hard enough to break several spokes and bend the iron strake that held the wheel together. He slipped in the mud, falling to his knees.

He slumped forward in the same water that had just drowned Nikslaus, rain falling in his eyes. He still had his shot — for a moment, he considered putting it in his own brain. He’d lost Erika, he’d lost Sabon, he’d lost Gavril. And now he would never avenge them. He gripped his pistol, Taniel’s gift. No. Not everything. He still had his son.

“Please! Please, help me!”

The call brought Tamas back. He looked down to see that Nikslaus’s body was being carried away down the ditch with the force of the storm waters. A fitting end, even if Tamas hadn’t brought it about himself.

He climbed the embankment in time to hear the voice again.

“Please! I’ve lost my knife!”

The carriage driver was struggling in the mud, kicked and shoved by frightened horses as he tried to cut them loose. It looked like he’d managed to free all but two of the panicked beasts.

The fighting continued around them. Tamas knew he needed to get back to level ground and find his officers, to bring some kind of cohesion into the melee. With Nikslaus gone, the Kez might very well break and run.

A horse screamed, and Tamas again heard the sound of the pleading driver.

Tamas climbed the wreckage of the carriage and lowered himself down just behind the driver. The man was on his knees, trying to dodge thrashing hooves as he cast about in the water for his knife.

“Here,” Tamas said. He pushed the man aside and drew his sword, and with two quick strokes, the horses were free. They rolled to their feet and were off, splashing upstream through the ditch, away from the carriage. They would be impossible to catch until they calmed down, and one of them might very well break a leg in these conditions, but at least they were free.

Tamas turned to the driver. The man cowered before him, blinking in fear at the epaulets on Tamas’s uniform.

“Thank you, sir,” the driver said.

“Find the closest Adran officer,” Tamas plucked at the white sleeve tied around his arm, “and surrender yourself. That’s the only way you’ll survive the night.”

The driver ducked his head, the water dripping off the brim of his forage cap. “Sir, thank you, sir. The duke, is he…?”

“He’s dead.”

It may have been the darkness and the rain, but it seemed that relief washed across the driver’s face. “What about the powder, sir?”

“Powder?” Tamas asked. “What powder?”

The color drained from the driver’s face. “The whole city. It’s filled with it. The duke was going to kill all those people!”

Tamas turned toward Alvation. Black powder! That’s why he sensed so much. Nikslaus must have strung it through every building, ready to be touched off at his command. That’s the only way he could have leveled the city in one night.

Tamas struggled up the embankment and began to run back the way he’d come. The Wardens would probably set it off, even if it meant dying themselves. No hope that a conscientious officer would countermand Nikslaus’s orders.

There’d have to be tens of thousands of pounds of powder throughout Alvation to destroy the whole city. They could have set it off and then swept through the wreckage, slaughtering the survivors. What better way to frame Adro for the attack? No one would suspect a Privileged like Nikslaus of using black powder.

Tamas would never make it in time.