The artillery fell silent as Halfwing and her crews switched to grapeshot. Idrian leapt onto the front fortification of the commander’s dugout and slammed his sword against his shield with the tempo of the chant. Three times, roaring wordlessly into the wind, until he was sure that every soldier within three hundred yards was looking directly at him.
“To us!” he shouted. “To the Ironhorns!”
“To the Ironhorns! Os-sa! To the Ironhorns!” The call washed down the hillside like an avalanche, putting hammerglass into the spines of the fleeing Ossan soldiers. Idrian let himself be seen for a few more moments until he heard Halfwing shout to Tadeas.
“Artillery ready!”
Idrian leapt from the commander’s dugout, barreling down the hillside. Ossan soldiers jumped from his path, cheering him on, and he hit the first Grent breacher with the force of a runaway carriage, their shields connecting with a reverberating boom. Idrian plowed over the poor bastard, dipping his sword back to finish the job, only barely slowing his run.
The next was not so easy, dodging Idrian’s bulk and forcing him into a duel. It was short and brutal, and Idrian caught the breacher’s sword on his own hammerglass, splitting several inches into his shield, before taking her legs out from under her.
Idrian sliced his way through an entire company of Grent infantry who were so intent on bayoneting Ossan soldiers in the back that they didn’t even see him coming. Their breacher reacted too slowly, then tried to get the high ground on Idrian, turning his back toward the Ironhorns. He was rewarded with a bullet to the back of the head, no doubt fired by one of Valient’s marksmen. Idrian spotted a Grent glassdancer, marked out by the orange epaulets on his uniform. The glassdancer was staring right at him, and Idrian threw himself to the ground.
A shard of glass the size of Idrian’s hand sliced through the air where he’d been standing. It stopped in midair, reversing direction, and Idrian lured it to within feet of him before bringing up his shield. The glass hit his shield with surprisingly little force, shattering into a thousand little shards that even the best glassdancer would have a hard time controlling. Idrian ducked and weaved, conscious that a new attack could come from any direction, and charged. The best defense against a glassdancer was not that dissimilar to the defense against a marksman: give them a moving target, get them riled up, and hope their concentration slipped.
It did, and the last thing Idrian saw of the man before he took his head was the nervous sweat pouring down his brow.
The clash continued through the last of the twilight as the Grent advance slowly stalled and then finally retreated, cut down by the score by Halfwing’s grapeshot. A lone flare suddenly lit the night, and Idrian could see that he was practically alone. Every soldier who could still run had made it to the Ironhorn lines. The hillside was slick with blood, jumbled with corpses.
Below them, just out of reach of Halfwing’s grapeshot, the Grent infantry were re-forming. They would assault the hill once more, and this time there would be nothing between them and the Ironhorns.
Idrian sprinted back up the hill to find Tadeas and Braileer still in the commander’s dugout. The artillery had gone silent once again, and though the pieces were still there, the crews were gone. In fact, everyone seemed to have pulled out, or was in the process of doing so, the wounded and harried fleeing down a safe corridor of National Guardsmen. Braileer took Idrian’s shield and reached up to fix an extra piece of cureglass to his ear. Idrian let him.
“They’re coming, boss,” Mika shouted from her blasting wheel.
“We out?” Idrian asked Tadeas.
“We’re out. To piss with General Stavri, to piss with the Assembly, and to piss with the Grent. We just saved at least a thousand legionaries and it cost us a few artillery pieces to do, so my conscience is clear.”
Over at the blasting wheel, Mika struck a match and touched it to something, which began to burn and crackle furiously. “Slow-burning fuse,” she explained to Braileer, shielding her eyes from the light as she peered down into the valley. “If they maintain that march, all my mines will go off right as they reach this dugout.”
Idrian looked pointedly to several barrels of powder at Mika’s feet. They were connected by blasting cord to her slow-burning fuse. “Those aren’t mines.”
“Can’t leave our artillery pieces for the enemy, now can we?” Tadeas replied. He slapped Idrian on the shoulder. “You did your part. Let’s go.”
Idrian paused to look back down into the darkness. The hillside seemed to writhe with the wounded, many of whom would not see the morning, and beyond that he could see the newly re-formed rows of Grent infantry marching toward them from the west. Kerite’s Drakes moved forward in a pincer movement from the southwest. There were breachers and glassdancers among them – far too many to fight. The next hill over was almost overrun, the last of that battalion holding on just long enough that the Ironhorns didn’t take it in the flank.
Idrian waved his thanks to them, though he knew they could not see it, then followed Tadeas and Mika as they left the artillery battery at a run.
He was so tired he didn’t even look back when the entire hilltop exploded behind them.
31
Kizzie spent the rest of the day working through the membership list of the Glass Knife. She created a personal dossier for each name, cross-checking them with easily verified alibis and hyper-loyal potential patsies. There was, she had to admit, a lot of guild-family power in this little Fulgurist Society: a matriarch, two heirs, seven direct children, and five cousins – as well, of course, as the Duke of Grent’s brother. The Dorlani, Magna, Kirkovik, and Stavri were all represented. A diverse group by any standards, and one that caused her stomach to tie itself in knots at the thought of them all working together toward a single conspiracy.
Her instinct was to go ask for Capric’s help. He was personal friends with one of the Stavri, and he might give her an in. Something stopped her, though. She couldn’t help but wonder why there wasn’t a Vorcien in the Glass Knife. Was that on purpose? Was this club some kind of secret check on Father Vorcien’s power within the Assembly? Perhaps it was a coincidence or perhaps there were other members not listed. A Vorcien might be among those.
Regardless, she needed to be cautious about who she mentioned this to. If the Glass Knife already had blood on their hands from other occasions, they would no doubt move to snuff out an enforcer they found sniffing around in their affairs.
She had to start somewhere, and it wasn’t hard to find a somewhat more public link between three of the names on the list: they all belonged to the Bingham Brawlers, a boxing club out in the far western suburbs of Ossa. She knew of the place, though she’d never been to it. It wouldn’t be hard to head out in that direction, mingle and ask a few questions, and either stay overnight or take a carriage home. At the very least she could gather alibis for one or more of them. The only problem was that the Foreign Legion was way out there facing a new Grent army, and a battle might take place in the morning.
She took a hackney cab to the edge of Ossa, where the driver insisted on turning back on rumors that a battle had already happened. Kizzie let him go and set off on foot. The walk was long but pleasant, taking Kizzie away from the city as night fell and a chill crept into her bones. She stopped twice for hot coffee at the small cafés that grew farther and farther apart as tenements gave way to tract housing, then to the small, lower-class farms that provided most of the fresh produce for Ossa. Eventually the gas lanterns that lit the highway stopped altogether, and she was left to finish the rest of her journey in the dark.