At the same time, he corrected the wobbling flight of the second bullet and sent it straight into the wagon of powder barrels.
The resulting explosion would have knocked him out of his perch had Ka-poel not steadied him by the back of his collar. He took a deep breath, his ears ringing from the sound, and watched the resulting chaos for several moments before handing Ka-poel his rifle and shimmying down the tree.
It would be several hours before anyone figured out that the Privileged had died from a bullet to the sternum and not from the explosion. The longer the Kez went without realizing there was a powder mage nearby, the better.
Two days after he killed the Privileged, Taniel watched from the vantage of a cypress tree as a pair of his companions fled into the woods, followed by at least thirty Kez soldiers. It was late in the evening, and he and the Ghost Irregulars had managed three more strikes, varying their tactics each time.
This strike had been different. Only a couple of Ghost Irregulars went in, getting close enough to assassinate a pair of guards. It was impetuous and sloppy and undertaken in the daylight, as if they were getting overconfident.
Just as it was meant to look.
Taniel sighted down his rifle, waiting for the pursuing Kez soldiers to get closer. But they came to a slow stop, firing their muskets and shouting a few choice words after the Ghost Irregulars, before turning back and retreating to their camp. He watched them go, disappointed, before climbing down from his hiding spot and heading to find Major Bertreau.
The major was with the rest of the Ghost Irregulars, spaced out around a hollow a few hundred yards distant, waiting in what would have been a perfect ambush for the Kez pursuers.
“They didn’t take the bait,” Taniel told her.
Bertreau swore. “We might have been too obvious.”
“They didn’t take the bait last night, either.”
Bertreau scowled into the trees, as if trying to will the Kez to fall into her trap. “They’re catching on to us.”
“They must have someone smart in charge for once,” Taniel replied. The Kez had a habit of putting their idiot, inbred nobility in command of their colonial armies. But that didn’t mean they should be underestimated, or that quality officers didn’t wind up with a command from time to time.
“Had to happen sooner or later,” Bertreau said. “Mapel! Have everyone fall back.” She jerked her head to one side, pulling Taniel away from the rest of the soldiers as they prepared to leave. “I’ve been thinking,” she said quietly, “about our orders.”
“What about them?” Taniel asked.
“Have you considered what they actually meant?”
“Sure. They wanted us to return to Planth. But we decided to come here and delay the Kez instead.”
“Not that,” Bertreau said. “What they meant! Think about it. The Kez sending a whole brigade into the Tristan Basin? Planth calling for every available regiment? There’s something important in Planth.”
Taniel stared at her. Two days straight of running a powder trance left his brain a little wired, and he was having trouble following Bertreau’s logic.
“Those orders were only four days old when we got them,” Bertreau said, “and they were signed by Lindet herself. Our damned chancellor is hiding in Planth.”
Taniel didn’t know a lot about the politics behind the Fatrastan Revolution but what he knew was that one of the local governors, Lindet, spearheaded the movement and was now in charge of the new government. She was outnumbered and outgunned by the Kez colonial armies and so she and her staff kept moving, always hiding.
And this time, apparently, the Kez had found her.
He cursed himself quietly for not seeing it earlier. Planth was far more important than he’d initially suspected. Lindet and her staff were the spine of the revolution. If this brigade reached Planth, the government would be captured and the war – Fatrastan independence and everything Taniel and his companions had fought for – would be over.
The thought troubled him the whole way back to camp. All of their efforts had barely slowed the Kez brigade, buying Planth perhaps an extra day to prepare. But the Kez were bent on reaching Planth, and they were not taking any bait that might distract them. A few hundred extra casualties meant nothing to them.
The Ghost Irregulars reached camp, breaking out the rations for a late dinner while men shook the spiders out of their hammocks. Taniel wished, not for the first time, that they were far enough from the enemy to make camp fires.
He sat down on a log next to Ka-poel and chewed his sausages and stale biscuits without relish, considering the options available to them. They could continue their tactics all the way to Planth – another three days’ march – and then harry them as they took the city. But beyond that, the Ghost Irregulars were helpless. They weren’t much use in a pitched battle, which this whole thing would no-doubt come down to.
So what else could they do to delay the Kez? Send a few squads to go on ahead, blocking the path with fallen trees? But there were still more Privileged with the Kez brigade – now hiding themselves from Taniel – and they could sweep aside any obstacle with a gesture.
It made Taniel feel helpless.
His increasingly negative thoughts were cut off by a distant call from one of the camp guards.
“Rider coming in!”
Taniel exchanged a glance with Ka-poel and snatched up his rifle before he went looking for Bertreau. He found the major having her own dinner beside her tent. “Did someone just say a rider was coming in?” she asked.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Taniel replied. Together, they walked to the edge of the camp, gathering a small crowd as they waited to see what type of bloody fool would ride a horse through this swamp dragon-infested mire. More than a few of the Ghost Irregulars had armed themselves, and even Ka-poel had a hand on her machete. Taniel was the first to spot a flash of metal moving through the trees.
“See him?” Bertreau asked.
“I… I think so? But I might be going mad.”
A few moments passed before Bertreau let out a long breath. “No. No, I definitely see it too.”
A horse waded through the knee-deep water. It was the biggest horse Taniel had ever seen, easily twenty hands high with the powerful build of a true war animal. Interlocking plate armor covered its head, neck, and hindquarters, while a skirt of mail gently skimmed the water.
A horse that size would make any man seem small, but the rider on its back looked shockingly proportional. He was similarly armored, encased in leather, plate, and mail that must weigh eight stone, and had both hands on the reins, a long, wooden lance under one arm with a cavalry sword sheathed on his left side and a carbine holstered on his right.
No one, not even heavy cuirassiers, wore armor like that any more. The whole thing was like a vision out a fairy tale, with a warrior two and a half centuries out of date.
A familiar tingle went down Taniel’s spine as the horse emerged from the water to stand, barely looking affected by all that weight, staring Taniel down like he was a bug to be stomped. Sorcery radiated off the creature, and it took him several moments to realize it wasn’t coming from the horse or the rider, but rather the armor that they wore.
Pit-damned enchanted armor. No one wore armor that looked like that any more, and no one enchanted much of anything, either.
The rider shifted, lifting a sack out of his saddlebags, tossing it on the ground at their feet. The sack was soaked through with blood, and a head rolled out of it to come to a rest at Bertreau’s toe. The face was fixed in a gruesome expression, the neck cut cleanly. By the size of the sack, there were two more heads inside.