The Crimson Campaign

Perhaps half the grenadiers still stood, their line ragged and broken, with more of them dropping beneath Kez infantry every second. The Warden cleared them with a single leap, landing among the Kez.

Most of the infantry ignored him. They were used to the Wardens, of course. It wasn’t until this one took a discarded saber in his hand and began slicing up the Kez ranks that horror began to spread.

The panic was palpable. Taniel watched as the Kez began to scream and back away from the Warden. Some tried to stand and fight. Some even attacked him. A bayonet speared the Warden through the neck and the creature snapped the steel bayonet off the end of the musket and kept fighting. The Kez began to waver.

Taniel had killed Wardens in hand-to-hand combat, the same creatures that terrorized the Adran army, and now Ka-poel had turned one on the Kez. A thrill worked its way up from his toes until it reached his fingertips, and Taniel wondered just what he’d become that allowed him to fight a ferocious monster like that.

“To me!” He lifted his rifle over his head. “To me!” he shouted above the sound of the trumpets, blaring louder and louder for the grenadiers to retreat. “Bugger the trumpets, we fight!”

The Kez began to crumple. None of their snare drums were calling a retreat, but they fled all the same. The few Wardens left on the field were finally overpowered and mercilessly slaughtered. Some of the Kez threw down their weapons and fell to their knees in surrender.

The Warden that Ka-poel controlled chased the Kez almost the whole way back to their camp. A dozen other Wardens had congregated to try to put it down.

Ka-poel’s eyes were alight with glee, and the wax figurine in her hands twitched and spun. Her lips opened in a silent laugh.

The Warden fought on. Stabbed, shot, sliced: it would not fall.

And then Ka-poel lifted the doll and pushed the head off with one thumb.

The Warden collapsed.

Taniel stared, openmouthed, at Ka-poel. How could this girl, the same woman who had pressed herself against him so intimately, fall asleep in his arms like a child one minute and then take to the battlefield with the power of a vengeful goddess the next?

She turned, as if feeling his gaze, and flashed him a shy smile. In an instant she was once again the girl he’d rescued from a dirty hut in the swamps of Fatrasta.

Taniel wanted to rush to her, to carry her away from this madness, to make sure that she was all right. But she wasn’t his to protect, not anymore. Not since Kresim Kurga. He had a feeling that who — or what — Ka-poel really was had just begun to show itself.

Ignoring his own wounds, Taniel began to cast about for Colonel Etan. He found the grenadier beneath a dead Warden. Taniel rolled the corpse away. Etan was still breathing, much to Taniel’s relief, but there was a profound look of panic in his eyes.

“I can’t move my legs,” Etan said.

Taniel dropped to his knees beside Etan and felt that same panic begin to rise within him. “It’s all right,” Taniel said. “We’ll get you a surgeon.”

“I can’t feel my legs!” Etan gripped Taniel’s arm. He gasped, and Taniel could see the strain on his face as he tried to move. “I can’t feel them!”

Taniel felt his heart crack. Etan was one of the strongest men he knew. To die in battle was one thing, but to be broken…

“Get me a surgeon!” Taniel yelled. “And tell them to stop with the bloody trumpets. We won already, damn it!”

Etan seemed to sag. “We won?”

“We won.” Taniel looked around the field. He could see soldiers running from the Adran side, coming to provide backup. If there wasn’t a surgeon among them, he’d strangle someone.

“You held it,” Etan said. “You held the line.”

“No. You did. You and your grenadiers.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you.” Etan was blinking rapidly now. Taniel searched him for a wound, trying to find something. Etan’s fingers grasped the sleeve of Taniel’s jacket, his knuckles bone white, his face drawn in pain. “I saw the way my boys looked at you. They would have followed you all the way to the pit just now. Just like Tamas. Just like your father.”

“Don’t say horrid shit like that,” Taniel said. He felt hot tears on his cheeks. “I’m nothing like that old bastard.”

“Taniel. Promise me you’ll win this thing. Promise me you’ll finish this. That this won’t be the last victory Adro has.”

“No need for promises,” Taniel said. “You’re not dying.”

Etan pulled Taniel close. “I can’t feel my bloody legs. I know what that means, you ass. I won’t see a battlefield again. So you promise me now that you’ll win this thing.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Taniel said.

Etan slapped him. Taniel felt his cheek burn from the force of the blow. “Promise me.” Another sharp blow nearly turned Taniel around. Even lying on the ground, unable to move his legs, Etan was strong. “Promise it!”

A woman, one of the surgeons, threw herself to the ground on Etan’s opposite side. She looked him over, a frown on her face. “Where’s the wound?”