The Crimson Campaign (67 page)

“No,” Tamas said. “You’ve tried this already. Your failed attack last night. Someone is feeding the Kez information. They’ll be ready for your attack on the prison and for mine on the barracks.”

“What else can we do?” Demasolin said. “I don’t know who the damned traitor is.”

“You want a distraction? I’ll give you a distraction. This General Saulkin. He’s staying at the governor’s manor, correct?”

Demasolin answered hesitantly. “Yes.”

“Is he still there?”

“As of an hour ago, yes.”

“Tell your spies that Field Marshal Tamas is going to kill Saulkin.”

“And how will that help?”

“Because Saulkin is Duke Nikslaus, and I cut his bloody hands off. If he knows I’m in the city, he’ll forget about everything else.”

“Then you’ll walk into a trap.” Demasolin held up one hand. “Don’t get me wrong. The world will be a better place if you die today. But if he kills you right away, this city may die with you.”

Tamas ran his fingers along the map, memorizing the streets of the city. “I walked into one of his traps twice now. I don’t intend to do it again. Do me a favor, though… don’t give this information to your men until about six o’clock.”

“Are you going to tell me how you plan on avoiding a trap?” Demasolin asked.

Tamas tapped the map absently. “I don’t think you need to know that. Remember. Six o’clock. I’m going to kill this bastard once and for all.”

CHAPTER

42

The beatings lasted through the night.

They pummeled Taniel with cudgels and fists. He faded in and out of consciousness but was, mercifully, out for most of it. He could feel the cold air on his skin when they finally took him outside. Through bloody eyes he could tell that the sun barely touched the tips of the eastern mountains.

Dawn was here.

Ka-poel might already be dead.

Taniel’s feet dragged behind him as the Prielight Guards carried him through the Kez camp. A thousand voices reached his ears along with the sounds of an army preparing breakfast. Taniel wondered if any of them knew – or cared – who he was.

He was dropped unceremoniously on the ground. Taniel lay facedown, groaning into the dirt. His whole body felt numb and destroyed, smashed to a pulp by Prielight Guards. His body would be one giant bruise in a day or two. If he lived that long.

He felt along the inside of his mouth and wondered at the resiliency of his teeth. Was that Ka-poel’s sorcery at work? Keeping him from breaking bones? His ribs
felt
broken, though Taniel didn’t think he had the strength in him to check.

Did he?

Taniel opened his eyes. Men moved and worked all around him. A sea of legs and feet.

“One, two, pull! One, two, pull!”

The mantra was repeated again and again. What could they be doing?

He dragged his hand along through the dirt until he could see it. Moved a finger, then another. They were all still working. That was something, wasn’t it? Those cuts on his knuckles. Where had they come from?

Oh. Right.

Those were from Kresimir’s teeth.

Strong hands lifted Taniel to his feet. He swayed back, nearly falling. His arms were lifted, wrists bound together by strong cord.

“Make it tight,” someone said. “He’ll be up there a while.”

Up where?

Taniel’s arms were lifted above his head. He felt the rope between his wrists snag on something and the guards stepped away. Taniel’s legs gave out beneath him, but he didn’t fall.

“One, two, pull!”

Taniel’s whole body jerked as he was lifted from the ground by his wrists.

“One, two, pull!”

Panic caused Taniel to flail about with his legs, but there was nothing beneath him but air. He looked up.

He hung from a hook fastened to an immense beam being lifted perpendicular to the ground. Teams of men pulled on ropes to raise the beam until it pointed at the sky.

The vision of Julene, nailed to a beam in the middle of the Kez camp, her hands gone at the wrists, haunted his memory.

He vomited down the front of himself.

“One, two, pull!”

It took the workers some time to get the beam in place. Taniel’s back finally hit the wood and his feet scrambled for purchase on the beam. There was none to be had.

He was facing the Adran camp. In the early dawn light he could see soldiers gathering on the front lines, pointing and talking. A few officers were examining him through looking glasses. He closed his eyes, unable to bear looking back. Those men he’d thought to lead to victory would see him here now.

He had to warn them. What had Kresimir said last night? He planned to burn the army, and Mihali with it.

A rasping noise reached him. It was guttural and base, but it had a pattern to it. Slowly, Taniel realized someone was laughing.

“Two-Shot,” the voice said.

Taniel craned his neck.

There, not much farther than spitting distance to his left, was another immense beam. They must have moved it up closer to the lines during the night. And still hanging there, the seared stumps of her wrists crossed in some kind of sick entreaty, was Julene.

“Didn’t think I’d see you here, Two-Shot,” she said.

Taniel looked away from the Predeii.

“Sorry, is it my voice? They haven’t given me water in two months.” She stopped and cleared her throat. Another long, raspy laugh. “The problem with not being able to die is just that.” A cough, and then another laugh.

Taniel closed his eyes, hoping she would stop talking.

“You look good, Two-Shot,” Julene said. “I mean it. Look at me. Kresimir tortured me for weeks before he hung me up here. I’m curious why he didn’t do the same to you. Don’t worry. A couple of weeks and you’ll be good as new. Me, though. I’ll never heal. Kresimir made sure of that. I haven’t seen a mirror lately, but tell me, can you still see that charming scar on my face?”

Had she gone mad from hanging from the beam for so long, unable to die? Taniel’s arms were beginning to ache from the strain of holding his weight. They could only get worse as long as he was up here. He finally turned to look at Julene.

She was hideous. Most of her hair was gone. Her skin, which once looked young and supple, was now cracked like old leather. Her face had been particularly savaged – the tip of her nose cut off, most of her teeth gone. She grinned at Taniel, as if she knew what must be going through his mind.

There was madness in her eyes.

“Charming as always,” he said. He looked up at his hands, tied about the wrist. They were starting to hurt more now. He tried lifting his legs but gave up after several moments with a groan – half pain, half anger.

“The pain doesn’t go away,” Julene said. “Even after months. Even after your arms are numb it will still throb deep down in your shoulders. I find” – she moved her head slowly to one side, a look of agony moving across her face – ”that switching the arm that holds all the weight gives you some relief.”

Taniel closed his eyes. Would he last that long? Would he still be alive in months, watching his country burn, unable to do a thing?

From the Adran army he saw a rider heading toward the Kez lines with a white flag billowing above him.

A call for truce? Or had that traitor Hilanska finally convinced the General Staff to surrender?

Taniel began to struggle harder. He had to get off this rope.

Tamas found Hailona in the mill’s basement, an old granary. It was the only private room in the place. It smelled of dry old wheat, the scent dusty in Tamas’s nostrils.

Hailona looked up when he knocked on the door frame of the open door. Ruper, the butler, was just inside. He stood when he saw Tamas.

“You killed my little brother,” Hailona said.

Tamas knew that wasn’t fair. Knew he wasn’t in the wrong. Sabon had known the risks of being one of Tamas’s soldiers. But Tamas also knew that convincing Hailona of that would be next to impossible.

“I need your help.”

“Go to the pit. Get out of my sight.”

“Hailona…” Tamas took a step forward.

Ruper got between them, blocking the path to his mistress with his body.

Tamas narrowed his eyes at the butler. “Hailona, I need a way into the governor’s mansion. I’m going to kill the man who killed my wife
and
your brother.”

Ruper moved forward until his chest touched Tamas’s. “My lady has said for you to leave, sir.”

Hailona held up a hand. “Ruper, it’s all right.” She dried her eyes with a handkerchief. Her hand remained up, as if asking for time to think. After a few moments, she let it drop. “Ruper, I want you to show Tamas the secret passage into the mansion.”

“Are you sure, ma’am?”

“Yes.”

Tamas stepped back from the butler. “Thank you, Halley.”

“Kill the bastard, Tamas,” Hailona said. “Make him suffer.” She took a shaky breath. “Then I don’t ever want to see you again.”

“I understand.”

Tamas left the mill. Vlora was waiting for him out in the rain. She wore a tricorn hat and a greatcoat. She tipped the hat toward Tamas, water pouring off the front. She leaned against a rifle, and he could see her blue uniform beneath the greatcoat and a pistol at her hip.

“Did Olem head back to the army?”

She nodded.

“Where are the others?”

“Waiting.”

Tamas nodded. A few minutes later Ruper joined them in the street and they made their way out of Millertown. At the edge of the mill district, lounging around the outdoor seating of an otherwise abandoned streetside café, was Tamas’s powder cabal.

He’d only brought the best. The ones that Sabon had been training during the summer in Adopest were still in the city. They didn’t have the experience or training for a mission like this.

His powder cabal was outfitted much the same as Vlora, in greatcoats and tricorn hats. Every one of them had as much weaponry and powder at they could carry, from pistols to swords and daggers. Tamas felt a smile touch his lips. Eight men and women, every one of them a talented powder mage. As good as an army, as far as he was concerned. Tamas checked the streets quickly for any sign of Kez patrols, then turned to his mages.

“We’re going to provide a distraction so that the Deliv can rescue the political prisoners being held by the Kez,” Tamas said. “Gavril is among those prisoners. I’d like to be there to get our man out, but we have a more important task.

“Ours is to cut the head off this Kez abomination of an occupying army. We’re going straight for the throat. You all know my history with Duke Nikslaus, so you all know that I choose to do this with some… relish.”

There was a low chuckle among the powder mages.

“But as I said, we’re to provide a distraction. I intend on luring in as many soldiers as possible. There will be Wardens, no doubt. Perhaps several dozen. The odds, despite our skills and talents, will be very heavily against us. This mission smacks of revenge for me. I won’t ask you to throw your lives away for my vengeance.”

One of his mages, a girl not much older than Vlora by the name of Leone, spoke up. “You expect to die here, sir?”

“I never expect to die in battle. An expectation like that has a habit of coming true. However… there are times, more than others, when the chances I’ll lose are much greater.”

“That’s a fancy way of saying he expects to die,” Vlora said.

Tamas shot her a look.

“Sir.” Andriya raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“I signed on to kill Kez. I’ve got fifty-seven notches on my rifle from the last two months. I wanted a hundred by the end of the campaign. Will there be forty-seven Kez there?”

“I’d expect.”

“Very good, sir. I’m coming.”

“The rest of us are, too,” Vlora said quietly.

“Thank you.”

“Not doing it for you, sir,” Andriya said. “Doing it to kill Kez.”

“I appreciate it all the same. Ruper. If you please?”

They followed the butler through the streets, dodging Kez patrols as they went. Tamas watched the patrols from the shadows. There was an urgency in their step, and an extra vigilance. Tamas recognized the look. He’d seen it before in the eyes of comrades in Gurla, patrolling an unfriendly city on the last day before a withdrawal with the expectation – and fear – that anything could happen.

The governor’s mansion was back in the same wealthy part of town as Hailona’s manor. Their small group dashed from walled garden to walled garden until they reached a small wooded park well off the main street. Ruper led them into the woods to a groundskeeper’s shack.

It was a small building, barely large enough for all of them standing. Ruper moved a table, then pulled up an old rug and tossed it aside to reveal a trapdoor. He lit a lantern, and they descended into a cellar.

The cellar was rough-cut, descending past topsoil and into the clay earth. From a quick glance, it could have been any root cellar, about four feet wide and a dozen long, with a small room at the far end. When they reached the room and turned the corner, a sharply angled tunnel led off into the darkness.

Tamas counted nearly four hundred paces, sloshing through mud, trying to keep his greatcoat from scraping the damp sides of the tunnel, before they ascended a set of stone steps and came out in a somewhat more spacious basement. It was a stone room, with a dust-covered wardrobe in one corner, a double bed, and an empty musket rack. At the opposite side of the room a spiral staircase led upward.