19

ERRIS

Lorrine River Crossing

Southern Sarresant Territory

She stood beside the banner of the 1st Division—her banner—watching the men of the 9th Infantry stream across the bridge. It was the 2nd Corps’ third week at rest, and she’d taken the initiative to redeploy her men for continued training exercises near the sleepy agrarian city of Lorrine. It was a far cry from the bustling streets of New Sarresant or Villecours, but it was the largest settlement in the province that bore its name. Farther south there were only a handful of mining towns, farming hamlets, and the odd fishing village along the coast before civilization gave way to open wilderness. She’d already sought dispensation from the Vicomte de Lorrine to use his town as the focal point of this week’s maneuvers. Her men had acquired a good sense of working together in the open; now she wished to drive home the importance of maneuver to defend, or assault, a key objective.

“Tell me, Brigade-Colonel,” she said as they rode, “what did you think of how Colonel Chellac used the Ninth when he had command, in the exercises by the sea?”

Brigade-Colonel Savasse eyed her as he replied. “We were judged successful in holding the seaward approach, as you’ll recall, sir.”

“Yes. Would you have made the same assignment?”

“No. We’d have been better suited to the center lines, in the rocky bluffs overlooking the coast. Brigade-Colonel Chellac’s assignment was lucky; Brigade-Colonel Royens attacked with infantry on the seaward side of the line. It could as easily have been cavalry, and we’d have been flanked.”

“Did you have scouting reports? Perhaps it wasn’t luck.”

“We had reports, sir. No sense taking unnecessary risks by assuming the reports are accurate.”

She nodded. “A fine point, Brigade-Colonel. Still, if Chellac had used the Ninth to cover the seaward approach, he couldn’t have deployed the Sixteenth to protect the artillery on the bluffs.”

She went on to explain Chellac’s strategy: He’d maneuvered his counterpart, Brigade-Colonel Royens, into committing both units of his cavalry to the center flanks, then placed infantry to ring the artillery batteries in a critical position overlooking the approach to their main body. Savasse was, strictly speaking, correct: The ideal response from Royens would have been to ignore the central position, flanking with cavalry on the seaward approach, threatening to sweep around the hill from behind. But for that to work, Royens would have to have anticipated it and arrayed his forces thusly before he committed to the engagement. Dangerous to assume one could correctly guess the enemy’s plan. Far too easy to give the enemy too little credit for brilliance, or too much.

“So, commander,” she continued, “what are your thoughts on the upcoming exercise?”

“I’ve deployed three companies of the Fourteenth Cavalry to scout the plains to the east, where the trade roads converge into Lorrine.”

“Only three companies?”

“Yes, sir. I have the fourth company of horse patrolling the river, and skirmishers from the Sixth Infantry setting up sweeps on the hilltops.”

She nodded. It was neatly done. She’d expected Savasse to miss the river approach, which of course was the likeliest route of attack for Brigade-Colonel Vassail, though she doubted it would be the first one Vassail would try.

“What of the rest of your—” She stopped mid-sentence.

“Sir?” Savasse asked. She barely heard him.

Golden light.

She’d tried to find it again a dozen times since the battle, if only to prove to herself it had actually happened. Tried and failed. And yet here it was. Far off in the distance, a speck from the south. Pulsing like a star in the night sky, drawing her vision to the horizon. As if something needed her, called to her, pulled her awareness toward it.

Jiri came to a skidding halt, sensing her rider’s sudden alert.

A sinking feeling gripped her. Last time she embraced the light, she’d caused the deaths of more than a thousand men. Victory, but death just the same.

“Sir?” Savasse repeated, reining in his own mount as the officers and aides in their column slowed alongside them. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Brigade-Colonel,” she replied. “Go on ahead with the rest of the command staff. I will catch up shortly.”

“Sir?” he asked again.

“A binder’s matter, Brigade-Colonel. Keep the column moving. That’s an order.”

He frowned, but saluted and spurred his mount forward. The rest of the aides followed at his heels, all save Aide-Lieutenant Sadrelle, who lingered behind.

“Respectfully, sir,” Sadrelle said, “are you certain you’re all right?”

The light pulled on her again, glimmering in the distance. No time to argue. Feeling it again she recognized it for what it must be: a new leyline energy, one she’d never encountered before. Born of Need, or perhaps Hope? Neither was a recognized type of binding, but the light seemed to radiate its nature to her, the same way she knew the energies familiar to her: Body, Life, and Death.

She closed her eyes, letting long training with the leylines take over. It was impossible to forge a connection more than a short distance away, yet for some reason she could sense this energy over an incredible distance. She reached out to form a tether, intending caution, surprised when the energy nearly tore itself from her grasp, fighting to snap into place.

Her vision shifted.

She was in a small town. Glancing down, she saw she wore the uniform of a Sarresant cavalry scout, though once again she was in a man’s body. Strange. She was standing in a fountain square, surrounded by small buildings with thatched roofs and wood frames.

They were burning.

High-pitched screams came from behind her, and she pivoted to see a stream of barely clad women hurrying through the door into the square. Whores were a common enough sight following any army, but these were a better breed, the sort to find more permanent employment in pleasure houses such as, she supposed, the one behind her.

She rushed toward one of them, grabbing hold of an arm, eliciting a shocked look and an even shriller cry. “Stop, madame!” she barked in a harsh baritone. “I would know what town this is. Where are we?”

It took a firm shake to get a response. “F-F-Fantain’s Cross …” the whore managed before her eyes widened further and she screamed again.

She turned and saw the reason why. Gandsmen. Mounted cavalry in red coats rounding one of the thoroughfares into the main square, carrying torches alongside their sabers. She let the whore go as one of the Gand cavalrymen caught sight of her Sarresant uniform. She reached down to draw her sidearm, and found nothing there. Curse this soldier! He’d slipped away to go whoring in this village, this Fantain’s Cross, and not thought to come armed? No matter. She closed her eyes, reaching out for Body. Once more, she found nothing. Panic rose in her throat. The Gandsmen had already started riding toward her.

She whirled around and ran.

Their horses ran faster.

She coughed and sputtered as her vision snapped back into focus, sitting atop Jiri in the dust beside the road as the Ninth Infantry marched beside her.

“Sir?” Aide-Lieutenant Sadrelle asked. “What’s going on? Are you—?”

“Fantain’s Cross,” she said, then again. “Fantain’s Cross! A village to the south. Muster the division entire. We move with all speed. Cancel the training exercise and send word to Marquis-General Voren that we may be engaged forthwith.”

Sadrelle hesitated, uncertainty creasing his face.

“Move!” she bellowed, spurring Jiri into a full run.

They arrived two days later, and two days late.

Fantain’s Cross was a blackened ruin, the beams of its wooden shops and houses left half-standing and ashen. Thatched roofs may as well have been tinder. Even the stone chapel had been scored black. The Gandsmen had been thorough; not a building in the small town had escaped the torch. A remarkable display by itself—it was a rare thing, to strike so brazenly at nonmilitary targets. The sort of thing a prudent commander avoided except at absolute necessity. One understood, on a campaign, that one was not always the aggressor. Orders to sack villages and towns would be repaid in force the next time one found themselves on the defending side. But those were the orders the enemy had given here.

It wasn’t until they opened the chapel doors that they understood the extent of the barbarity.

The smell had been masked by the fumes and smoke billowing from the other buildings. When the great oak doors of the chapel gave way beneath the axes ordered to clear them, her first thought had been of some kind of twisted cookfire. Then she understood. Men did not smell so very differently from livestock when seared by flame. She’d retched and vomited at the sight and not been ashamed for it. She wasn’t alone. The Gand commander had ordered the denizens of Fantain’s Cross packed into the church while the fires raged through their homes. Then once all were inside the order had been given to set it ablaze. At first she’d harbored a vain hope that the dead had merely been stored there, some semblance of honor due the fallen. The scratch marks on the inside of the oak doors, on the walls themselves, put the truth to that lie.

“What do you make of it, sir?” asked Sadrelle, trailing behind her as she gave the orders to make this right. It was little enough comfort, dredging what remains they could from the ruin to give these villagers a proper burial. But the horror of it faded before hard labor spent undoing the damage. If her men had been sick at the sight of what lay within the church, they were all firm resolve now.

She looked down, taking a steadying breath before she replied. “Horrible. And meant to incite us, though to what I can’t yet say. A dangerous turn for this war.”

“You think high command will order response in kind?”

She nodded. “They will.”

The gravity of that thought settled around them both, a somber cloak still hanging in the air when a scout from Vassail’s 11th Light Cavalry approached on horseback, offering a salute as her mount came to a halt.

“Sir, Brigade-Colonel Vassail sends her compliments, and wishes to inform you she has found the trail of the Gandsmen, heading south-southeast toward the coastline.”

“Very good, Horseman. Do we have any report on their composition?”

“We estimate some three mounted cavalry brigades, possibly more, taking the eastern trails.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “No infantry?”

“No, sir, no foot we’ve been able to discern, though the paths are thin. The brigade-colonel has the Eleventh arrayed in a broad search along the eastern flanks.”

“Good. Return to the Eleventh and order them to maintain the search, but keep a clear forward patrol. Poor country for an ambush, but I want warning before any sign of an engagement.”

“Yes, sir.”

She dismissed the scout, who rode off at a gallop.

She turned to another aide and went on. “Send orders for Lance-Captain d’Guile. I want the Fourteenth Light Cavalry covering the western flank, fanned out for signs of movements there.”

Another salute, another rider dispatched.

“You think they’re looking to lead our cavalry on a chase?” Sadrelle asked.

“I know I’d have been tempted to give it, if I still commanded the Fourteenth.”

He smiled ruefully. Sadrelle knew her temperament well enough. She’d have been off like a freshly scented bloodhound at the first sign of the butchers who had struck here. That it had been cavalry, all cavalry, was a piece clicking into place. The open country south of Lorrine might well be a poor site for an ambush, but if the enemy cavalry could rile them up and provoke a chase, they might be able to lure them into more dangerous ground south of the Gand border. Whatever the enemy’s goal with this sickening display, it began with troops that needed to stay mobile, and that pointed toward a trap.

Credit to Vassail that she’d found these monsters’ trail and not pursued straightaway. And just as well she hadn’t, if the numbers the colonel reported proved to be accurate. Three full-strength brigades of horse? Possibly more? She doubted whether the entire Sarresant army could field eight thousand cavalry, and certainly not in one place, not without leaving the main body blind for having no scouts to patrol ahead, to watch its flanks. What could draw Gand into committing so many of its horse into a single maneuver?

And what kind of Gods-cursed wretches would carry out an order to do this to Fantain’s Cross?

She shuddered.

She’d heard of atrocities being committed before; every soldier had. She’d seen the so-called exigencies of war firsthand, the product of a few isolated and overzealous men who blurred the line between innocents and enemy combatants. But she’d never seen nigh a division’s strength worth of soldiers act in concert for anything approaching what had happened in this village. No survivors, her men reported. Not a single one. No children hiding in some armoire, no families closeted away in an attic. Every living soul, even the bodies of those who must surely have died during the sacking of the city, had been taken to the chapel and put to the torch.

Barbarians. Madmen. With any luck, she’d find them herself. A thought most unbecoming of a general, to be sure, but there it was. She wanted to find these animals and gut them like pigs, showing them their entrails one at a time on the edge of her saber. And the officers saved for last, given ample time to contemplate the orders they’d given as they waited for their turn to meet her blade.

Sadrelle walked with her, saying nothing, Gods bless the man. An appreciation of when to remain silent was a talent worth its weight in gold in aides-de-camp.

They reached the horse lines and she gave her final orders for the day: to see the remainder of the dead buried with dignity, then to form the division in an orderly march along the eastern routes, guided by Vassail’s scouting reports. She herself would ride for the marquis-general’s command tent to make a personal report and confer with high command. The 1st Division would give pursuit to these attackers, but she needed to place their maneuver within the broader scope of the army’s strategy. The attack on Fantain’s Cross was no simple raid. There was a more sinister purpose here. She felt the surety of it deep within her bones.