The Crimson Campaign

“My back’s broken,” Etan said. His voice cracked. He looked Taniel in the eyes. “Promise me.”

“No.”

Etan’s eyes were glassy with tears. “Coward. If I were dying, you’d promise me. Because you wouldn’t have to answer to me then. But I’m not dying, and you won’t promise it. Bloody coward.”

Taniel turned his face away. He knew it was true.

They brought out a cart, one of the ambulances with a covered top and four cots to hold the wounded, to take Etan back to camp. Etan turned his head away from Taniel, and Taniel didn’t walk beside him as they carted him away.

They had destroyed the Kez attack. Probably a thousand of the enemy soldiers dead. Twice that many wounded and another few hundred taken prisoner. It took Taniel a moment to realize he was surrounded by soldiers. The Twelfth Grenadiers. The smallest of them was a hand taller than Taniel. He wondered how many had died in the melee. Their losses had to be staggering.

One of them approached him. Taniel thought about turning away. He could push through them and head back to camp. Had they been listening? Did they hear their colonel tell Taniel he was a coward?

The stout man had his bearskin hat in one hand. His other hand was empty. Clenched in a fist. Taniel lifted his chin and waited to be punched.

“Sir,” the grenadier said.

“Go ahead. I deserve it.”

The grenadier seemed confused. He looked down at his fist, then flattened his hand. “Sir, you’re not a coward. The colonel… no man wants to end up like that. The things he said… you’re not a coward. We just watched you charge a brigade of Kez infantry by yourself. I want you to know: If you need something, anything, you just say so. I’ll be there. I suspect most of these boys will say the same.”

There was a round of nodding, and then the grenadiers began to trudge wearily back to camp.

Taniel stood alone in the field for several minutes, watching the surgeons cart off the dead and wounded. He felt someone behind him. He didn’t have to turn around. Ka-poel.

He wiped the tears from his face with the sleeve of his jacket. “Don’t you have bodies to examine, or some such thing?” he asked.

She took his hand. He wanted to pull away, but couldn’t.

They stood together in silence as the blood of the living and the dead and the dying mingled together and made a red sea of Adran soil. Taniel lifted her hand in his. The movement was impulsive, sudden, and he wondered later what thought drove him, but he touched her hand to his lips firmly.

“I’m going to end this,” he said. “I’m going to kill Kresimir. For good. You need his blood? I’ll get it, even if I die doing it.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her give a slight shake of her head.

Without warning she stepped in front of him and wrapped one hand around the back of his head and pulled him down to her, pressing her warm lips against his. It seemed as if fire raced through his veins at the touch, and when she finally stepped away, he was breathless. He fought the impulse to drop to his knees, telling himself it was just blood loss that left him so weak.

Then the moment was past, and silent as always, Ka-poel went about her business, leaning over the body of a dead Adran soldier.

Stunned, Taniel watched her for several minutes until something far behind the Kez line brought him out of his reverie. In an instant he was a soldier again: vigilant, watchful, ready to defend against new threats from the enemy.

The Kez soldiers were raising something into the sky above their camp, just north of Budwiel’s city walls. It must have been eight stories high for him to be able to see it from this distance. He took a small hit of powder, sharpening his eyes.

It was an immense beam, hewn from what looked to be one giant tree. Soldiers and prisoners milled about the base and spread out in a fan behind it, pulling on long ropes tied to the top of the beam. It was lifted high and then suddenly it dropped ten or twenty feet — probably into a slot dug out of the ground — to stand straight in the air.

Taniel frowned. He could see something on the side of the beam. A person?

He focused his powder-heightened eyes. Yes. A woman, it seemed. Stripped naked, she was nailed to the beam by her wrists, and her hands were missing. A rope about her waist secured her to the beam.

Taniel was taken aback. Was she a traitor of some kind, put up there as a warning? The missing hands would indicate she’d been a Privileged. What could…

The body moved. Bloody pit, she was alive.

Her head lifted, and Taniel felt his blood go cold. He knew her. She’d fought him in Kresim Kurga, the holy city, when he tried to keep her from summoning Kresimir.

It was Julene.

CHAPTER 18

Tamas waited for the return of his night scouts and listened to the familiar sounds of his soldiers breaking camp.