Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder, #1)

by Brian McClellan

The dragonman came out of the tumble on top, spitting sand and blood, and slammed the haft of an ax into Styke’s nose. Styke, his saber lost, punched the dragonman in the jaw, causing the Dynize to lurch back, dazed, before he caught Styke’s second punch and twisted his arm painfully to one side. Styke fought back, flexing, using every ounce of his strength, until the dragonman’s head suddenly snapped back and the sound of a pistol being fired at point-blank range left Styke’s ears ringing.

Styke found Ibana less than fifty feet away. She was still on her own horse and held Amrec’s reins in her teeth, forcing both horses to twirl, hooves flashing, battering at the Dynize infantry that stabbed at her with their short bayonets. Her saber rose and fell, dripping gore, and within moments she’d cleared the Dynize and stopped her spinning. She spotted Styke and raised her sword in a greeting.

“We can win,” she whispered to herself. “We can win. We will not break in the face of our enemies. We will hold strong. We are the anvil. We are the stone.” She reached the closest of her remaining gun crews and staggered over to the commander as he shouted orders. “Distance, five hundred yards!”

The man at their head was the biggest, ugliest man Michel had ever seen. He wore a faded Fatrastan cavalry jacket and rode a black warhorse with a black and brown mottled neck. His face was pitted and scarred, his back slightly bent in the saddle, and he rode ahead of a standard flying an image of a lance through a skull. The same skull that was on the ring that Fidelis Jes wore. Michel didn’t have to ask who that was. “Jes!” Ben Styke roared, throwing himself from the saddle before his horse had even come to a complete stop. “You’re a dead man!”

brandishing

“Who’s in command of the Blackhats?” one of them asked. Bravis drew himself up and pinned the Platinum Rose to his chest. “I am.” There was

“Major Cole, we’ve received almost two thousand riders as backup from Landfall. Colonel Styke is taking command of the defense of the monolith. I asked him to keep the fight as far from us as possible, but I’m going to keep your soldiers in reserve here with the land-barge in case the Dynize make it past them.” “With the what?” “The land-barge.” Michel felt his cheeks redden. “I just thought it looked like…” “A barge on land,” Cole said with a reluctant nod. “Yeah, I get it. It fits. We’ve all just been calling it the big wagon.” “Mine is much better. Keep your men nearby, Major Cole.”

Outnumbered two to one. Cavalry against infantry – infantry that, it seemed, refused to break in the face of superior enemy action. Routing an enemy was the best chance cavalry had against such odds and Styke did not like their prospects one bit.

“Taniel!” he called, turning in his saddle to look for the powder mage. He discovered Taniel about twenty feet behind him, standing in the stirrups, a rifle held to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel as Ibana held his reins. “What is he doing?” Styke shouted. “His job,” Ibana responded. “They have six Privileged and —” Taniel’s rifle jumped, the crack making Ibana flinch slightly and then rub one finger in her ear. Taniel watched the horizon, focused, rifle still raised, his lips moving as he counted silently. Several seconds later he lowered his rifle and immediately began to reload. “They have four Privileged,” he reported. Styke laughed despite himself.

Styke’s people were outnumbered two to one. The Dynize, he decided, should have brought more men.

Vlora used her sorcery to ignite a tiny bit of powder almost a mile away. It detonated, and chain reaction was almost instantaneous as the rest of the powder in the ship of the line’s magazine went up with it, tearing the ship in half and hurling the entire mast so far through the air that it almost struck dry land.

“At least it’s not your own,” Vlora said, choking back a sudden, unbidden sob. She wasn’t sure where it came from – fear of seeing him like this, or joy that he seemed to be in better shape than he looked. “No,” Olem replied, “my blood ruined my rolling papers.” He took his arms off the privates and waved them away, testing one foot tentatively before limping over to a bench along the inner wall and sagging into it. Vlora sat down beside him, allowing herself a moment’s rest.

Vlora saw a Dynize soldier throw down his musket and flee back toward the beach. He was joined by others and then, like a candle being blown out, the entire Dynize army routed.

The Riflejacks and garrison seemed to get a second wind, redoubling their efforts and giving chase. The Dynize soldiers reached the water, some of them clamoring into the few remaining longboats while others realized the hopelessness of trying to swim away and turned to organize a defensive. It was too late, and Vlora’s men hit them from behind, forcing them back into the ocean.

Vlora watched Dynize soldiers in their heavy breastplates drown by the score, unwilling to comprehend the horror of such a fate. She looked toward the wreckage of Vallencian’s ship, knowing it would be days before she would be able to mount a rescue, and to...

Amrec leapt a wounded infantryman and Styke lowered his lance, tearing out a Dynize throat with the tip and driving it into the face of the next Dynize. He kept his grip tight, aiming true until the lance was snapped just past the haft. He threw the useless weapon at an infantryman trying to bring his bayonet to bear on Amrec’s chest, then drew his heavy saber, swinging it with enough force to decapitate a Dynize officer.

Styke looked around at the carnage, wondering if he would be sick from the sudden feeling of elation that rose within his chest. The smell of the dead, the wind in his hair, the blood on his steel: It made him feel vibrant and alive like nothing in the world had ever done for him. He thought about the guards at the labor camp and all the men he’d allowed to beat and belittle him just to try to reach parole.

“If you can’t break them,” he said. “Grind their bones to dust beneath your hooves,” Ibana finished, not lifting her eyes from the wounded Riflejack.

Vlora eyed the walls of Fort Nied, noting three complete breaches and at least fifteen spots of heavy damage. No doubt the engineers behind her saw more damage with their experienced eye. She gave a soft sigh at their arguing and tuned it out, glancing over the bay as some thirty or more longboats just like hers traversed the waters, fishing out corpses with hooks and nets, riflemen shooting every shark that surfaced. Beyond the bay, well past the range of her few remaining

“Damn it, Vallencian,” Vlora muttered, feeling the first real pang of horror that had struck her through the sea of bodies. “You were about the only decent person in this whole damned city.” She called to a nearby squad from the garrison that was sorting corpses by uniform on the rocky beach. A sergeant with a squat, ugly face and shaved head waddled over, hooked spear thrown over his shoulder.

In his head, he imagined the look on Fidelis Jes’s face when he realized how much shit the lancers had managed to steal before the Blackhats returned to the city, and then he remembered that Fidelis Jes’s face was attached to a head in a bag, quite possibly still tied to Ibana’s saddle. The thought brought a smile to Styke’s face. Jes’s corpse was probably already burning on a mass pyre, anonymous, with a thousand others south of the city. A fitting end for a man who dedicated his life to making sure everyone knew and feared him.

“You survived the fight,” he observed. “I did!” Celine said. “Sunin let me kill a man.” Styke sat up, sending Celine tumbling to the grass. “What?” he asked flatly. Celine righted herself, then nodded emphatically. “I held the lance and everything. I put it through his freckled cheek and watched his brains come out the other side. It was gross.” Styke got to his feet, ignoring Ibana’s chortle, and searched around for Sunin. He didn’t have to look far. She was a stone’s throw away, tending to her horse. “What the pit, Sunin!” he shouted. “You took her into battle? You let her kill someone?” “She has to learn to fight someday,” Sunin said over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around. “Yeah, when she doesn’t need help holding a lance. Damn it, Sunin, you were supposed to keep her safe.” “I had men to kill. Besides, she’s safe, isn’t she?” Styke growled, looking at Ibana, who was now bent over, shaking with laughter. Styke lifted a foot and planted it on her shoulder, shoving her backward. She fell into the grass laughing,

You shouldn’t be killin’ anyone, not at your age.” “Yes,” Celine replied haughtily. “Well, I did, and you can’t undo that. I’m a hero now.” “By whose standard?” “Yours! I killed a man during wartime. You told me that makes you a hero. I wanted to be one, and now I am.” Ibana, now lying with her limbs splayed in a gasping heap, let out a barking laugh. “She’s got you there, Benjamin.” “Damn it, I —” Styke cut himself off. He gritted his teeth, wondering what her dad would have done to punish her for something like this.

“Will you take a return message?” he asked the Blackhat. “Yes, sir. The lady expects it.” “Good. Ibana, fetch this nice young man the sack you have tied to your saddle.”

Michel stood on the plain south of Landfall, just a few hundred yards from the remains of the land-barge. The big wagon had been struck by errant sorcery during the battle – lightning that almost fried Michel where he stood, and destroyed enough of the big wheels that it wouldn’t be going anywhere without being entirely rebuilt. He waited with a group consisting of Styke, Lady Flint, Taniel, and Ka-poel and wondered what had gone so terribly wrong in his life to throw him into such company. He shouldn’t be here with warriors, sorcerers, and officers, trying to make decisions that would affect hundreds of thousands of people. He should be watching from the shadows, causing the tiny ripples that kept the government running.

Blood sorcery was far more an art than a science, and it always seemed to his eyes that Ka-poel made up her own rules.

The ground was covered in blood. Not soaked with it, but literally covered, like red ink spilled on an impermeable surface. It flowed, black and thick, bringing the smell of rotten corpses with it, toward the godstone. Vlora didn’t seem to notice until the blood reached the stone and began to climb up it, and then she let out a gasp.

Ka-poel suddenly let out a sigh and sagged, and Taniel rushed forward to catch her before she fell. She felt so small in his arms; weak. He remembered that someone had once described her as a teapot full of gunpowder – powerful but fragile – and he thought the description as apt as ever. “You’ll need to rest tomorrow,” he told her. She nodded in agreement.