Tamas felt himself shoved forward suddenly and heard a shout. He whirled, a curse on his lips.
Olem was shouting, his sword drawn, and was suddenly set upon by all four of the provosts who had followed them up the hill. Hilanska was behind the provosts, a dagger in his one hand.
“What the bloody pit is going on?” Tamas demanded. He reached for the butt of his pistol instinctively, but his fingers slipped on it. He held them up, blinking back a sudden dizziness. Their tips were red.
He’d been stabbed.
Hilanska had bloody well stabbed him.
The one-armed general turned and fled down the hill.
Tamas sat in the grass, his jacket stripped from him and his shirt soaked with blood, trying to make sense of what had happened.
A surgeon sat behind him with his hands under Tamas’s arms while another cut away his shirt and began to examine the stab wound between his ribs. Not ten paces away, the bodies of two Adran provosts were being carted away, while a third surgeon tended to a gash across Olem’s forehead.
Hilanska had betrayed him. That much was clear. But how deep did it go? How long had the betrayal been in the works? Had Hilanska let Budwiel’s walls fall, trapping Tamas behind enemy lines months ago? Hilanska had to be behind this schism with General Ket, working to ensure the annihilation of the entire Adran army.
“Olem!” Tamas had to know more. The most important question was: did Hilanska have accomplices?
Olem appeared a moment later, pressing a fresh bandage against his forehead. “Sir?”
“Fine swordsmanship there,” Tamas said. Olem had held off all four provosts until help could arrive. “Did any of them survive?”
“Thank you, sir. Two of them survived. One will die by morning. The boys were rough on them when they saw that you were wounded.”
“Rough won’t even begin to cover it,” Tamas said. “Go find out what they know.”
“Shouldn’t I go after Hilanska, sir?”
Tamas hesitated. “I don’t know whom to trust,” he said quietly. “Get two squads together – see if you can find any of your Riflejacks – and send them after Hilanska. I want you to stay close.”
“Yes sir.”
Tamas swore under his breath as one of the surgeons poked a finger at his wound. “Bandage it up and get me some black powder. It didn’t hit a lung. I’ll live.” He beat the surgeons back with one hand and got unsteadily to his feet. The pain in his side was sharp now, and he was reminded of a similar wound he’d taken in Gurla twenty years before. He had been bedridden for weeks and nearly succumbed to infection.
He didn’t have time for that now.
In the valley below them he saw that the Wings of Adom had taken up a defensive ring around Ket’s camp and had dug in with fortifications not unlike the kind Tamas had used against Beon je Ippile’s cavalry – though not nearly as deep. He spotted Vlora racing along on her charger, white flag snapping in the wind. She reached the Wings’ lines and after a few tense moments was allowed past.
The Kez continued to fall into line. Their army looked immense – and it was – but its size made it ponderous. Tamas adjusted his initial guess that they’d attack by ten. They wouldn’t be ready until at least noon. Maybe one. They would attack straight out, using their superior numbers to surround and overwhelm General Ket’s camp.
Tamas cracked a powder charge and sprinkled a bit on his tongue. Once the initial shock of the powder trance passed, he felt younger and stronger and the pain from the knife wound was nothing but a tickle in the back of his mind.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tamas saw Olem approaching.
“Anything?” Tamas asked.
“No sir. Both provosts claim that Hilanska warned them you might return but that it would be a Kez trick – a Privileged disguised as you. They also claim he didn’t expect your doppelgänger for weeks.”
Tamas snorted. “So he panicked and ran when I arrived early? Let’s just be glad he wasn’t ready for us. Pit, what other rumors has he spread?”
“I can try to find out, sir.”
“Do it.”
“Permission to search his quarters?”
“Granted.”
Olem was off again and Tamas looked around him for someone he could trust. Most of the generals were with their brigades, and it seemed that at least some of Hilanska’s support staff had fled with him.
“You there!” Tamas called. “Colonel, come here.” From the side, the young man looked fairly familiar, and when he turned to Tamas, he recognized the colonel immediately. “Colonel Sabastenien, it’s good to see you alive.”
The former Wings of Adom brigadier was a short man in his midtwenties with muttonchops filled with premature gray and a somber face. Tamas noted that the gray hadn’t been there the last time they met, and wondered whether it was dyed. He gave Tamas a respectful nod. “Likewise, sir. And it’s not Sabastenien. It’s Florone now. I’ve taken my mother’s family name. I prefer not to be immediately recognizable to my former comrades.”
Tamas understood that. While he’d done nothing illegal or untoward in murdering a traitor in Tamas’s defense, Sabastenien had been cast out of the Wings of Adom because the traitor had been a fellow brigadier – and Lady Winceslav’s lover.
“All right, Saba… Florone. I need a battle plan. Where are you assigned?”
“I’m with the Twenty-First Artillery.”
“And you have artillery experience?”
“Seven years of it with the Wings.”
“Good. Congratulations, Florone. You’re now a general.”
The colonel blinked in surprise. “Sir?”
“Take command of the Second. Bring their artillery around to the south and have the gun crews standing by. Have your infantry dig in to the east and west.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I don’t know who I can trust in Hilanska’s brigades. You might get stabbed in the back by the end of the day. If you have any trusted support staff, take them with you.”
“Yes sir.”
“And General, have Mihali sent up here, would you?”
Florone hesitated for a moment. “No one’s told you yet?”
“Told me what?”
“Mihali is dead. He was killed by Kresimir two weeks ago.”
Tamas whirled to look back at the Kez formations and a cold sweat broke out over his body, the back of his neck pricked by an eerie sensation of shock and grief, breaking the calm of his powder trance. If Mihali was dead, why hadn’t Adro been swept aside already? There shouldn’t be anything left of Adopest or the Adran army but dust without Mihali to balance his brother’s power, and yet the country and its capital still stood.
What could possibly be holding Kresimir back?
His attention was caught by movement in the Wings of Adom camp, and soon Vlora was racing back up the hillside. She blew past the Adran sentries and didn’t stop until she reached Tamas, leaping from her horse and tossing the reins to a startled messenger.
“Where’s Ket?” Tamas asked.
“Gone,” Vlora gasped. “She was ousted by Abrax and Adamat just yesterday on accusations of profiteering. Abrax thought it might mend the schism between the camps, but… sir, are you wounded?”
“It didn’t mend the schism,” Tamas said, “because Hilanska planned a betrayal all along. And what the pit is Adamat doing down here? Damn it all, this is when I needed Ket the most. Aside from Hilanska, she was the most capable commander here. Where’s Abrax?”
“On her way here.”
“We don’t have more than a couple of hours before the Kez attack. Gather the General Staff – I want as many senior officers as you can get within twenty minutes. We’ll send orders to the rest via messengers. Olem, what did you find?”
Olem arrived at a sprint and paused briefly to catch his breath. “He left everything. Hilanska’s been in bed with the Kez since the beginning. I found dozens of letters.”
“Anything to tell us who his accomplices are?”
“I haven’t had time to sort through it all.”
“Time. Bloody pit, we need time more than anything else. I can’t plan a defensive on such short notice, not against that monstrosity.”