64

ERRIS

High Command

Southgate District, New Sarresant

Her knuckles went white, bracing herself against the edge of the table as Need faded from her senses.

She’d failed.

The attack wasn’t coming to the east, or the center. The sight of the Gandsmen through Vassail’s aide’s eyes drove a stake through her gut. That was no feint or diversion. That was the full strength of the Gand reserve, deployed to flank the western line, to sweep around, cut off her supplies, and as good as take the city. She knew it as soon as she’d laid eyes on them. Ten thousand soldiers marching into the Gardens, every eye taken by the golden light. Every man a vessel for the enemy commander.

She should be shouting orders, racing to reposition the units on the east, to collapse the line southward in the vain hope of being set before the enemy arrived.

Instead she stared, letting the full impact of failure wash through her mind.

The west flank had been tainted by whatever d’Agarre had done to drive half the city mad. Had some part of it taken her, too? How could she miss the possibility that the enemy would use the chaos as cover? Her vessels seemed immune to the effects of the terror, so long as she held the Need tether in place. A minor detail that she’d never been able to hold more than one link at a time; she knew the enemy commander could do it. She’d seen it firsthand with the officers of his army, behind the barrier, before they’d been butchered by the wild. A short leap from there to possessing every individual soldier. With that power to bolster them, they could march through the chaos on the west flank, sweep around, and take her positions in the rear, a pincer between northern lines and southern reserves. She might have been able to counter with the girl, Sarine, and her strange talk of colors and kaas. She might have—if she’d taken the initiative a half hour earlier, when there was still time to refocus her line.

She’d been blind. A thousand contingencies played in her mind. Branching webs of possibilities, orders she might have given, decisions she might have made. None of it mattered. She’d failed.

“Sir,” one of the aides said, “you’re back. We have reports from the center; the enemy is moving. We suspect—”

“He’s attacking the west flank,” she said.

The aide’s report died mid-sentence, and a handful more looked up from their planning as her words sounded through the chamber. Murmurs spread like an echo, repeating the information, drawing a wave of eyes. All focused on her.

She expected to see despair, a reflection of the weariness she felt, soaked through and bone-weary from the power of Need. Instead she saw resolve. Hope. They looked to her, every man hanging on the edge of whatever she was about to say. She’d let them down, but they hadn’t seen it. She was a mummer at the height of a show, only she’d forgotten her line, standing in silence when all expected her to speak.

“We attack,” she said at last. Empty pride, forming the words on her tongue. But even as she said it, the kindling of her aides’ and generals’ eyes caught a small spark, threatening a wisp of flame.

“We attack,” she said again. “We have reserves in the field, undeployed, here in Southgate. We ride to reinforce the Gardens lines. If we can push them back, if we can hold long enough for the eastern line to come up, there may yet be a hope of victory.”

Doubt snagged in her mind. There was no time. But she saw the fire of her belief catch and spread across the room.

All her career she’d served in an army of lions led by dogs, made to bark and yip for the sake of fools. In the moment she felt no better, but she knew they saw in her a lion. For their sake, for New Sarresant, she could roar, and go into defeat with pride.

She left her place by the tables, striding toward the chamber doors.

“Sir?” a handful of aides called as she passed.

“Deliver the orders. And run ahead to have Jiri saddled. I mean to lead this attack from the front.”

Jiri’s hooves thundered beneath her as she rode across the monument grounds.

Need served to warn the field commanders she was coming. Already three brigades assembled in her wake. The 12th Infantry. The 3rd. The 16th. They’d arrived late to the battle precisely because they were her best; with the surprise arrival of the Gandsmen they’d found themselves last in line on the march home when they were meant to be first to deploy.

Now they rallied behind her, a sea of faces cheering her name, and Sarresant. Surely some word had passed, as it always did in the army. The best of them would know her failure, would realize their line was strongest where the enemy was not, that their orders sent them to march toward the weakest part of their line. And now she’d arrived in person to lead them in a last-ditch charge. Yet instead of dismay, she found fervor. Cries of loyalty, fierce shouts as they rose up in a tide of blue.

Long lines snaked behind her as Jiri galloped forward, trumpet blasts carrying the order to follow in her wake.

The cries thundered behind as she arrived at the last of her reserve brigades. These men had reached the city only hours before, having been set to hard riding to scout ahead of the army’s march. It had been their burden to seek out likely landings for the enemy, somewhere between New Sarresant and Villecours. She’d believed the enemy commander would put her to a decision, forcing her to choose which of the two great ports she would defend. Instead he had attacked New Sarresant itself, spreading pain and fire throughout its streets. And the masterful scouting work of the 14th Light Cavalry had gone for naught.

D’Guile saluted her as she approached. The colonel’s starburst on his collar suited him, even if it was likely only a brevet promotion in the absence of the unit’s rightful commander. She’d see to it he was promoted in truth when this was over.

The roar of the men beside him drowned out the greeting he called to her, a smile breaking over his face. And relief. Even these men, men she had slept alongside and bled for, men for whom she had wept, men she had ordered to their deaths on countless occasions. Even they looked back at her as if she stood some great distance apart, as if she bore the mantle of divine providence.

And they cheered.

She hadn’t earned this. For all she cut a calculated figure sitting astride Jiri’s back, for all she hefted her saber into the purple of the evening sky to inspire these men to passion, this was her moment of failure, not triumph. Perhaps they knew it. Perhaps these men knew in their hearts she had ceded the crucial moment, been outmaneuvered in the enemy’s western attack and doomed them all to a charge, a last effort to break the enemy before they faced their inevitable surrender. But if they knew, her men showed only faith. Only a surging tide of faith in their commander as they rose up, abandoning their hastily erected fortifications to fall in behind as she rode.

“Soldiers,” she called out to them, her voice drowned out in the din. “Soldiers of New Sarresant.”

They roared, every brigade, massing together in a chorus that echoed across the open grass of the monument green. Surely the enemy could hear, even halfway across the city. Surely he would know the sons and daughters of Sarresant came for him now, lapping at his heels like dogs come late to the hunt.

“Forward!” she cried, wheeling her saber. “Forward to death and victory!”

She set Jiri forward, a stately gait fit for any parade ground. Alone among their ranks she was mounted, the horsemen of the 14th having left their mounts behind when they entered the city. And behind her marched the remaining strength of her army, two thousand souls as yet uncommitted to the fighting. This was the breaking point, the end of her line. Already she could see columns of red coats cutting across the far side of the monument green, racing toward the Gardens, even their frontline troops sent west to reinforce the main thrust of his attack.

She had one brigade to meet him, to hold against the sweeping maneuver of his line. And if there was any hope left in the day, it lay with Vassail, and the strange alliance she’d forged with the tribesman called Arak’Jur.

A vain hope, to trust in the tribes, but she’d made it clear their support was the price of peace, after the battle was done. Gods send they kept to their word. If the tribes fought alongside Vassail, if they could hold for long enough to delay the Gandsmen until her fresh brigades could strike at the center, perhaps there was hope. A hammer and anvil that maybe, just maybe, could catch the enemy in an unexpected trap and crack it in two.

By the Exarch himself, let them hold.