35
Idrian leaned heavily on his shield, sword resting on one shoulder as he watched the last of the Ironhorns trudge wearily into town. There was no conversation among the stragglers, just grim-faced determination broken on occasion by a nervous look over a shoulder for the inevitable pursuit. Braileer stood behind him, carrying both their packs, practically asleep on his feet.
The sun was still low on the eastern horizon, and just over fourteen hours had passed since their crushing defeat. The night had been a disaster of communication errors and logistical blunders, with seemingly no chain of command and little coherence among those troops that had managed to escape the Grent onslaught. Dawn had brought no succor – just Grent dragoons and Kerite’s mercenary skirmishers, harrying their rearguard and pushing the Ossans out of the Copper Hills and down into the gentle landscape that surrounded the capital.
Their rallying point was Fort Bryce, one of the mighty star fortresses that formed a defensive cordon around Ossa and sat just on the other side of Bingham. Idrian could hear intermittent musket shots on the breeze, a testament to the Grent offensive, and wondered where the reinforcements were from the fort. Why hadn’t they sent out the garrison?
Idrian waited until the last of the stragglers entered the town and then looked around for Tadeas. He found Mika first. She was bleary-eyed and quiet, her lips moving as she counted the engineers among the regular infantry. “When’s the last time you saw Tad?” he asked her.
“Just a couple hours ago. He should be up ahead with Valient.”
Idrian nodded his thanks and fell in beside her. He resisted the urge to put his helmet back on, knowing it would just give him a headache. His body was beginning to weary of all the sorcery resonating through it, and it was showing in the yellow scales forming on the backs of his hands. Even a glazalier couldn’t handle so much godglass for so long. He needed to get out of his armor for even just a few hours. He wondered which would do them in: the exhaustion, or the crushed morale. He couldn’t think of a worse defeat in his long career. Three brigades of Ossa’s best, the vaunted Foreign Legion, routed on an open battlefield in mere hours. Was Kerite really that good? Were her soldiers really that well-trained?
He lifted his head to see Tadeas standing on the next corner, shouting orders in a hoarse voice to dozens of men and women, soldiers and civilians alike. Here, closer to the town center, the streets were packed with Ossan citizens trying to cart all their worldly possessions to somewhere safe. It seemed like everyone was bickering; a fistfight breaking out just to Idrian’s left. He ignored it, too tired to so much as cuff sense into the idiots.
Mika shoved her way through the logjam to look for her husband, while Idrian waited on the periphery until Tadeas saw him and waved him over. Tadeas looked just as tired as Idrian felt. A bloodstained tear in his jacket showed a wound received sometime in the night, and the red and white glassrot scales on his cheek were evidence of the godglass that had seen him through it.
“Found out why communication broke down,” Tadeas greeted him, bodily shoving an irate local out of his face. The local took a deep breath, ready to scream vitriol at Tadeas, but expelled it with the noise of an ox’s fart as he saw Idrian. The man slunk away quickly.
“What happened?” Idrian asked.
Tadeas pointed down the street. “After the defeat, Stavri and his staff, the entire senior administration of the Foreign Legion, retreated to the Bingham Brawlers Club just over there. They figured they were safe while the soldiers trickled in to the rallying point…”
“Glassdamned cowards.”
“… and they were all butchered by Grent glassdancer assassins.”
Idrian bowed his head and swore under his breath. The headache was back almost immediately, and the shadows darting around in the corners of his vision grew bolder. A child’s laughter echoed from the tenement window overhead. “Everyone?” he breathed.
“No survivors. Not even a witness.” Tadeas glanced around them. “The whole town is terrified, and we’ve all been trickling in since last night. The state of us isn’t helping things.”
“Do they know the Grent are right behind us?” Idrian asked quietly.
“They can probably guess. Those gunshots aren’t that far, and skirmishers have been spotted less than a mile away. Every rumor is like wildfire. The only reason it’s not worse is that hundreds of people fled in the night when they first learned we’d been routed. This whole disaster might cost Sammi Stavri her place on the Inner Assembly.”
“To piss with Sammi Stavri, where’s the garrison from Fort Bryce? Why aren’t we getting backup?”
“I have no idea. I sent someone ahead to find out.”
Idrian looked toward the Bingham Brawlers Club, where a handful of Cinders stood outside eyeballing the packed streets nervously, no doubt wondering how the piss they were going to get out of town before the Grent arrived. His meandering examination fell on a mounted soldier forcing her horse through the chaos, laying about her with the stock of her musket at anyone who got too close.
By the time she reached Idrian and Tadeas, she’d lost her hat and was covered in sweat. Her horse danced nervously, eyes rolling. The soldier dismounted, keeping a firm grip on the bridle and leaning in toward them. “Are you the highest-ranking officer in Bingham?” she asked.
“I think so,” Tadeas responded. “I know there are officers scattered to both the north and south of the city, but I think it’s just me here. If you want someone higher you’ll need to go to Fort Bryce.”
“I’m from Fort Bryce,” the soldier said. “Colonel Wessen has ordered you to retreat into the shadow of the fort, where you’ll be protected while we regroup.”
“Since when is a garrison colonel giving orders to the Foreign Legion?” Idrian demanded, gesturing at the clogged roads around them. “These people need guidance and if we don’t provide it, we’ll have thousands of dead on our hands even if all the Grent do is stir their panic.”
“Colonel Wessen–” the messenger began.
Idrian cut her off. “This is your job. Why isn’t the whole garrison out here, keeping this shit organized and providing us some support? Why aren’t you–”
Idrian felt himself jerked sideways and looked down to see Tadeas holding him by the breastplate. “Cool down,” Tadeas hissed. “We’ve got no chain of command, we’re running low on ammunition, Mika is almost out of grenades. We can’t do shit but pull back, or the Grent will just roll over us.”
“I’m not leaving these people to get swallowed up.”
“Kerite isn’t known for brutality.”
“Tell that to Purnian revolutionaries,” Idrian grunted.
“This isn’t Purnia, and we’re not some uprising colony. Sure, these people will get all their shit stolen by Grent infantry, but Kerite has more to gain by driving them into Ossa to cause chaos than killing them. If we’ve orders to pull back, we’re pulling back.”
Idrian jerked himself out of Tadeas’s grip, trying to keep a lid on his own fury. He was exhausted, dizzy, swaying on his feet, and some fort commander was trying to give him orders? How dare those clean-booted bastards? He walked away several feet to get his head about him. They should be getting orders from the Ministry of the Legion. Who was in charge there? Maj Madoloc was out of the country for the entire month of the solstice holiday. Idrian shook his head again to try and clear it. By the time he returned, Tadeas had chased the messenger off.