“Get to it, then.” Taniel looked around the gathered soldiers and mages. “We have Kez to kill.”
Taniel dismounted and handed his reins to one of the Riflejacks, then collected his pistols, rifle, and sword. Vlora followed him, and together they crept through the forest, flanking the road on the east side by a few hundred yards. It would allow them to avoid any trickery on the part of the Kez and to sneak up on the grenadiers from the side – they wouldn’t expect mages in hot pursuit to slow down long enough for this.
Not that it was slowing them too much. He and Vlora could move through the trees more quietly than most, and they both burned powder trances, which made them move and think faster. Taniel could hear every crack of twigs and creak of trees in the forest for two hundred paces. It was a cacophony of information, but part of his training as a mage had been to filter that information into what were the animal noises of the forest and what was the movement of men.
Taniel found himself relieved that their mission required silence and the clear focus of moving quietly in the woods. He couldn’t afford to let Vlora distract him now. He was able to push those thoughts to the back of his mind, where they haunted him like a half-seen shadow.
He knew they would be back.
He let Vlora take point. Less than half an hour later she raised a fist, signaling a halt, and crouched down into the underbrush. Taniel crept to her side.
“We’re about a half mile out,” she said.
“Very close.”
“That’s about the farthest I dare try the detonation, and I have a clear sense of them all. They’re flanking the road from high vantage points.” She touched her temple and was silent for a moment, her eyes looking unfocused. “I’d guess as many as sixty of them.”
“Sounds right,” Taniel said. “Any Privileged?”
“No. I don’t sense your savage girl, either. You’d better check for her.”
Taniel took a sniff of powder, trying to ignore the way Vlora had said “your savage girl” and the accusation in her tone. He opened his third eye, steadying himself with one hand on the rough bark of a tree, and studied the Kez trap.
He focused on the area where he could sense the black powder and squinted into the trees, looking for the familiar dim glow of pastel color in the Else that indicated Ka-poel’s presence. The strength of her glow was somewhere between a Knacked and a Privileged, but several shades darker in color, which made her more difficult to see.
Several minutes passed before he let his third eye drop. He put his forehead against the back of his hand for a moment, fighting down his nausea. When he’d recovered, he said, “No sign of her. Does it seem odd to you that they have no Knacked?”
“Now that you mention it…” Vlora’s eyes were fixed on the Kez position. “Maybe they had one or two and they were killed in the attack on our camp.”
Taniel brushed off the niggling doubt he felt in the back of his head. “Probably right. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Vlora moved several feet forward to crouch behind a fallen tree. Putting her back to the hollow trunk, she set her rifle across her knees and closed her eyes. Taniel saw a smile touch her lips and then felt her reaching out with her senses.
He felt the series of explosions rippling through his mage senses. A moment later and he heard angry bangs going off like a fusillade on a battlefield.
“Go,” Vlora said.
Taniel hopped the fallen tree and was sprinting through the forest, rifle held at the ready, eyes sharp for the green-and-tan uniforms of the Kez grenadiers. He heard Vlora fall in behind and to his right. Dry leaves crunched under his feet and branches whipped his arms and face. This wasn’t about stealth now but about catching any survivors before they could recover.
They would be confused and disoriented from the explosions – more than likely wounded – and thinking that a whole brigade of Adran troops were about to fall on them. Taniel had to reach their position quickly and take them captive or kill them before they realized they were only facing two powder mages.
He reached the top of a hill and paused to get his bearings. “Where?” he gasped.
“Next rise!” Vlora didn’t pause, racing past him and taking point. She had already fixed her bayonet. Taniel cursed and fixed his own as he chased after her.
He skidded to a stop near the top of the next rise and ducked behind a tree. He could see Vlora up ahead. She had slung her rifle over her shoulder and drawn a pistol. Slowly, she stood up.
Taniel waited for her signal to move forward and strained for the sounds of the wounded and dying. Nothing. Even with his powder-enhanced senses the forest was utterly still. No birds, no animals. Had Vlora’s powder ignition killed every single one of the grenadiers outright? That didn’t seem possible.
The moments stretched on while Vlora stood silently, and Taniel finally lost all patience. He dashed to her side, rifle ready.
The scene on the hillside below them stopped him dead in his tracks. He could see the road from this vantage, and the evidence of powder detonations all along this hill and the hillside on the opposite side of the road. Black stains marked the trees, leaves smoldered, fallen branches burned, and the scent of the spent powder hung in the air like a fog. The ground was pockmarked with small craters.
But the only victims were the trees themselves and a couple of unfortunate squirrels.
Taniel lifted his rifle further and spun around. His eyes scanned the surrounding forest, looking for a trap within a trap. Not a creature stirred.
“I don’t understand,” Vlora said. “Is this some kind of distraction? Something to slow us down?”
A nearby motion caught Taniel’s eye. Upon closer examination he found it to be the leather strap of a powder horn, the ends burned off, but the leather itself surprisingly unharmed. It swung from a branch gently, as if mocking them. Taniel felt his heart thundering in his chest as he tried to discover not how they’d been tricked, but why.
“Do you hear something?” Vlora asked.
Taniel cocked his head to the wind and waited for the sound to reach his ears. It didn’t take long.
“Screams,” Taniel said. He was already running for the road as he said it. The screams were coming from the north. From the Riflejacks they’d left behind.
This wasn’t the entire trap.
Taniel raced down the hard-packed dirt tracks of the western highway.
He could hear Vlora’s pounding feet behind him as he tore a powder charge from his belt pouch and stuffed it in his mouth, feeling the grit of the black powder in his gums. In his haste he dropped several charges, but he didn’t have time to stop for them.
The trick was so simple. So obvious. They knew that Tamas would send powder mages after them. The mage would sense the trap, approach with caution, and then be ambushed from the rear. Or, in this case, he’d be separated from his men entirely. He had fallen for it without hesitation!
It took him and Vlora less than two minutes to cross the mile between the false ambush and where their men waited on the road, but even that was too late.
He took in the scene as he rounded a bend: sixty or more Kez grenadiers, armed with pikes and heavy sabers, their kits stripped of black powder, had fallen upon the Riflejacks. Bodies of men and horses littered the road and surrounding woods, and though less than fifteen Kez grenadiers remained on their feet, the Riflejacks, along with Doll and Flerrier, had been slaughtered.
Taniel put on a burst of speed, ready to close with the surviving Kez, but he felt a pair of hands on his side and he was thrown from the road and into a dry streambed.
He landed with an oof and Vlora on top of him.
“What…?” he started.
“Shh.”
He fell silent for long enough for her to poke her head from the streambed. “What the pit was that?” he hissed.