The Crimson Campaign (14 page)

Olem returned from his task, cantering up beside Tamas and Gavril.

“Olem,” Tamas said. “Signal the column to stop.” He paused to examine the countryside. To the left of the road an overgrown field sloped down toward a ravine a half mile off. “This here, it’ll do.”

“For what, sir?”

Tamas steeled himself. “It’s time I talk to the men. Assemble them in ranks.”

It took nearly an hour for the last of the columns to catch up. It was valuable time lost, but thus far Tamas had left the officers to tend to their men and keep them informed. If he was going to keep command of this lot – retain their discipline and loyalty over the next few weeks – he needed to speak to them himself.

He stood on the edge of the road and looked down the slope. The field had been trampled, the green replaced by Adran blue, standing at ease in ranks like so many blades of grass.

Tamas knew that many of these men would die without reaching their homes.

“’Tention!” Olem bellowed.

There was an audible shifting of legs and straightening of backs as eleven thousand soldiers snapped to attention.

The world was silent. A breeze picked up, blowing down from the mountains and pushing gently on Tamas’s back. To their credit, not a single soldier reached to steady his hat.

“Soldiers of the Seventh and Ninth,” he began, shouting to be heard by all. “You know what’s happened. You know that Budwiel has fallen and that the Kez push in to Adro, checked only by the Adran army.

“I grieve for Budwiel. I know that you grieve with me. Many of you question why we didn’t stay and fight.” Tamas paused. “We were outnumbered and outclassed. The fall of Budwiel’s walls made our initial strategy obsolete and we could not have won that battle. As you all know, I do not fight battles that I will not win.”

There was a murmur of agreement. The anger at abandoning Budwiel had dulled in the six days since. The men understood. There was no need to dwell on it further.

“Budwiel may have fallen, but Adro has not. I promise you – I
swear
to you – that Budwiel will be avenged. We will return to Adro and join our brothers and we will defend our country!”

A cheer went up among the men. To be honest, it was halfhearted, but at least it was something. He raised his arms for quiet.

“First,” he said when the noise had died down, “we have a perilous journey ahead of us. I won’t lie to you. We have little food, no baggage train or resupply. No reinforcements. Our ammunition will dwindle and our nights will be cold. We are utterly alone in a foreign land. Even now, the enemy has set their dogs on us.

“Kez cavalry are on our trail, my friends. Cuirassiers and dragoons, at least our number’s worth and maybe more. I’d wager my hat that they are led by Beon je Ipille, the king’s favorite son. Beon is a brave man and he will not be beaten easily.”

Tamas could see the fear in his men’s eyes. Tamas let it stew for a moment, watched the growing sense of panic. And then he reached out his hand and pointed to his men.

“You are the Seventh and the Ninth. You are Adro’s finest, and that makes you the greatest infantry the world has ever seen. It is my pleasure, and my honor, to command you on the field of battle, and if it comes to it, to die with you. But I say we will not die here – on Kez soil.

“Let the Kez come,” Tamas roared. “Let them send their greatest generals after us. Let them stack the odds against us. Let them come upon us with all their fury, because these hounds at our heels will soon know we are lions!”

Tamas finished, his throat raw from shouting, his fist held over his head.

His men stared back at him. No one made a sound. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, and then somewhere near the back of the assembled troops someone shouted, “Huzzah!”

Another voice joined it. Then another. It turned into a cheer, then a chant, and eleven thousand men raised their rifles over their heads and bellowed their defiance back at him, buckles and swords rattling in a sound that could have drowned out cannon fire.

These were his men. His soldiers. His sons and daughters. They would stare into the eyes of the pit itself for him. He stepped back away from the road so that they would not see his tears.

“Good speech, sir,” Olem said, sheltering a match from the wind as he lit the cigarette pinched between his lips.

Tamas cleared his throat. “Wipe that grin off your face, soldier.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Once this quiets down, get the head of the column moving. We need to make more headway before night comes.”

Olem went off about his duties, and Tamas took another few moments to gather himself. He stared to the southeast. Was that his imagination, or could he see movement in the distant foothills? No. The Kez weren’t that close. Not yet.

CHAPTER

10

Adamat had spent the night in darkness, tied to a chair. At some point he hadn’t been able to hold back any longer and had soiled himself. The air smelled of piss and mold and dirt. He was in a basement of a heavily trafficked building and could hear the creak and moan of floorboards as feet moved across them.

He’d yelled out loud when he first awoke in utter darkness. Someone had come to tell him to shut up. He had recognized the grizzled voice of the thief and called him a bloody dog.

The thief had left, laughing to himself.

Morning had come hours ago. Adamat could tell by the light coming in through the cracks of the floor above him. He could hear his own stomach grumbling for food. His throat was parched, his tongue swollen. His neck, legs, and back were all sore from sitting tied to the chair for fourteen hours or more.

The whale ointment he’d used to smooth his wrinkles and hide his age was beginning to burn. The stuff was supposed to be wiped off in less than twelve hours.

He felt himself begin to drift and shook his head to keep himself awake. Sleeping in this situation was deadly. He needed to be awake. To be alert. He had a head injury. It would take more light to tell if his eyes were focusing properly.

It was difficult to tell where he was. Voices above him were muffled, and no particular smells – aside from those of his own piss and the cold damp of a basement – stood out.

Adamat heard the creak of a door, then saw a light off in the corner of his vision. He turned his head – a painful movement – to watch as a lamp bobbed down a flight of stairs. He could hear two voices. The thief was not one of them.

“He hasn’t said much except call Toak a bloody dog,” a man said. The voice was nasal and high. “Didn’t have anything in his pocketbook but a fifty-krana note and a false mustache. No checkbook. No identification. He could be a copper.”

A voice answered him, too low for Adamat to hear.

“Well, yeah,” the first voice said. “Most coppers carry a city mark on ’em, even if they’re trying for a bust. Could be one of those undercover-spy types. The field marshal has been using them to root out Kez spies.”

Another murmured answer.

The first voice had an edge of panic when he resumed speaking. “We didn’t know,” he said. “Toak said to grab ’im, so we did. He followed the lady back to the house.”

The speaker arrived in front of Adamat with the lamp. He held it to Adamat’s face. Adamat couldn’t help but shy away from the flickering candlelight. He blinked against the brightness and tried to see the speaker’s face and that of the murmuring man. It could be Vetas. Vetas would recognize Adamat in a second, and then he’d be a dead man, or worse.

“My name is Tinny,” the first voice said. “Look up at the gov’na.” Tinny grabbed Adamat’s chin and turned it toward the light. Adamat hawked the phlegm from his throat into Tinny’s eye. He was rewarded with a sharp crack across the face that knocked his chair over.

Adamat lay on his back, his hands crushed underneath him, stars floating across his vision. He couldn’t help the moan of pain that escaped his lips. He wondered if his wrists were broken.

“Pick him up,” the murmuring voice said.

Tinny hung the lamp from the ceiling and righted Adamat’s chair. Adamat considered head-butting the man, but thought his head had taken enough damage lately.

“What do you want from me?” Adamat tried to growl the words, but they came out as a rasp from his dry throat.

“That depends,” the murmured voice continued. “Why were you following the woman in the red dress?”

Why…? So it wasn’t Vetas. Or Vetas hadn’t recognized him yet.

“Wasn’t following anyone,” Adamat said. He tried to maintain a northwestern drawl. “Just shopping and going for a walk.”

“Without any identification? And a false mustache? Put the light to his face.”

Tinny grabbed Adamat’s chin again and shoved the lantern up next to it.

The murmuring voice gave a soft chuckle. “Ah, you bloody fool.”

“Fool for what? Going for a walk?” Adamat said.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

The lantern pulled away from Adamat’s face, and he could see Tinny clearly in the light. Tinny’s eyes were wide, his complexion pale. “It was an honest mistake, gov’na. I swear.”

“Leave,” the voice murmured. “Wait. Tell the master we have Inspector Adamat.”

Tinny hung the lamp back on the ceiling and left the room. Adamat couldn’t help the cold fear that spidered up the back of his neck. He squinted in the poor light, trying to see the source of that murmured voice.

“Adamat,” the murmuring voice said suddenly in his ear.

Adamat started. He hadn’t heard the man move, and there wasn’t another person in this dank basement. “Who, now?” Adamat said. Hold the pose. Play dumb. Don’t let them break you.

A soft sigh in his ear. A sudden blade against his naked throat. He had the all-too-vivid recollection of a razor blade breezing past his throat not more than two months ago. He pulled back instinctively, a sharp breath escaping him. The knife did not follow. A sudden tug at his bound wrists and they were free.

He rubbed some feeling back into them and stared straight ahead. He didn’t dare assume that he’d been released. He might take a knife in the ribs or across the throat at any time. No doubt the man behind him was ready for sudden moves, and even if Adamat overpowered him, Adamat was still in a basement beneath someone’s headquarters.

Adamat still didn’t know where he was. The murmuring voice belonged to someone who recognized him, even in such ill light. He cycled through the names of hundreds of men, trying to match a face to the voice, but to no avail.

He felt, more than heard, the presence move back in front of him. He could make out a heavyset shadow in a sleeveless shirt. A bald head shone in the candlelight.
Definitely
not Lord Vetas.

Adamat tried to blink the blurriness from his eyes and took in a deep breath. It caught in his throat at the slight scent of sweetbell and the recollection of a similar scent in his own home the same night that the Black Street Barbers had attacked him.

“Eunuch.” The word came out of his throat with a strangled sigh of relief. He felt his body sag against the ropes still tying his ankles to the chair, only to stiffen again a moment later as the realization set in that the Proprietor’s eunuch might very well be working with Lord Vetas.

The eunuch turned toward Adamat. “There,” he said. “Pretense dropped. Now, what were you doing following the woman in the red dress?”

Adamat sniffed. The smell of his own piss was somehow less bearable now this his hands were untied.

“Working,” he said.

“On?”

“I report to Field Marshal Tamas, and him only. You should know that.”

The eunuch tapped the side of his jaw with one finger, considering Adamat through narrow, unfeeling eyes.

“We’re on the same side, aren’t we?” Adamat said. The question came out just a little too desperate for his liking.

“In a few minutes my master will have decided what to do with you. If he decides to let you live, I suggest that you keep this little run-in to yourself.”

“‘If’?”

The eunuch shrugged. “I would like to know if we are working at cross-purposes. There are rumors about you, Adamat. Finding you where we did could mean one of two things.”

Adamat waited for the eunuch to elaborate on what those two things were. He didn’t. “That I’m with you, or against you?” Adamat hazarded a guess.

“These things are rarely so simple as ‘with or against.’”

“I was following a hunch,” Adamat said. “Trying to find someone.”

“Lord Vetas?”

Adamat watched the eunuch for several long seconds. No tic. No hint. No giveaways. He was as unreadable as polished marble. Was the Proprietor working with Vetas, providing enforcement and tails, as Adamat feared?

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Adamat looked at his hands. In the dim light he could see the dark welts where they’d been bound. His fingers all still worked. For that he should be grateful. He knew he wouldn’t feel the real pain and ache until he tried to walk. He looked back up at the eunuch.

Still unreadable. The truth could get him killed in this situation. There were a hundred lies he could tell. Adamat considered himself a good liar. But he could get himself killed with the wrong lie, even one told well, or if the eunuch even suspected a lie.