Hunter and hunted sped through the snow-covered plains. The horses ate through the distance, their riders leaning on their mounts’ necks in eagerness. Their sabres glimmered in the morning sun, hungering to bite into the fleeing infantry’s unprotected back, promising doom, death and destruction.

  But the hunter was to be disappointed. The quarry was on the brink of salvation, only a minute away from the fort, their comrades leaning from the parapets, and cheering them on to make one last effort, and cheat death by putting the walls between their pursuers and themselves.

  I judged the distance well, Miklen smirked to himself. The fugitives were already in the fort’s shadow, the unprotected gate yawning enticingly before them.

  By God, we have them!

  He should have known he was tempting fate with such thoughts. Whoever led the fort’s garrison, the man knew his business. He recognised the trap prepared for him, turned it on its architects, and judged the moment extremely well. The gate crashed shut with a thunder just before the sappers reached it, and the parapets exploded in fire and smoke at the same instant.

  “Bastards!” swore Anselmo in his native tongue. “They saw through the ruse!”

  “Clever villain,” hissed Filip too.

  Miklen peered into the writhing mass of the sappers stopped dead before the shut gate. His stomach felt cold and heavy with fear, as if he swallowed a millstone. He thought furiously. We have to extricate them. They must have a load of wounded and dead. I need to provide some cover for Ayda! “Fire at the parapets by squadron!” he bellowed to his horsemen in Ekvinark. “First squadron! Carbines ready! Aim! Aim high!”

  Amidst the bowel-loosening terror and confusion of battle even the bravest and most experienced of veterans could lose their heart in an unguarded moment. The only antidote to that was relentless drilling, which gave the mind the security of the thousand times practiced procedures. Miklen liked to think that his banderium was the best drilled military force in Ekvinark, maybe on the whole world. No matter how many battles and campaigns his soldiers fought, they never stopped practicing the most basic manoeuvres and the result was plain to see.

  The soldiers, whose order was thoroughly destroyed by the pretended, but still very hot pursuit separated by squadron, and by the time Miklen finished speaking, they formed eight lines, the first of them raising their carbines towards the Tharven fort.

  “Fire!” Miklen shouted. The carbines spat lead and smoke. Without order, the horsemen of the first squadron wheeled their horses, while the second squadron raised carbines.

  From this distance the light firearms had little chance of hitting a target, but the whistling bullets did make the enemy duck. This will slow down their reloading time too and draw some of their fire to us.

  The second and the third squadrons fired too. Miklen saw with relief that the sappers were not as badly mauled by the surprise salvo as he first feared. What a terrific company they are! Even without commands, their order is restored. But why are they not retreating? What is Ayda doing? Does he mean to scale the walls?

  The sappers furiously worked on something at the gate, shrugging off the sporadic fire harrying them from the parapets. Ayda himself stood at the front of the great reinforced door, festooning something on the planks. Iron hooks and bronze-coloured cylinders gleamed in the sunlight.

  Petards! Miklen realised. Anselmo beside him must have come to the same conclusion.

  “They will blow the gate! By God, they are cold-blooded! What magnificent soldiers!”

  He just finished, when the sappers were suddenly running, dispersing, ducking on the field. There was a flash of orange fire, the thunder of explosions, and even through the thick, black smoke, Miklen could see the hole cut in the middle of the gate.

  “First squadron, second squadron with me! Filip, you take over here! Keep those Tharvens ducking!”

  Ayda’s sappers surged towards the breach, and they evidently cut down their dazed opposers, because right when Miklen wanted to stop his squadrons and dismount, the gate opened and he rode through unopposed. The small fort had a single courtyard in the middle, and at the sight of horsemen streaming through the gate, the garrison all fled to the parapets, or were cut down by sabres. Ayda’s men took the gatehouse, and they were pushing the defenders back with methodical salvos from their heavy muskets. Miklen searched for stairs, and counted three beside the one the sappers already took.

  “We will flank them!” he shouted to his men. “Follow me!”

  He sprung from his horse. Unsheathed sabre in one hand, pistol in the other, he raced up the steps. Anselmo ran past him, his long, wiry legs carrying him with unreal speed and grace. A Tharven tried to stop him, but the Anselmo cut him down with a blindingly fast move. By the time Miklen made it on the parapet, the tall duellist already killed two more of the enemy and was driving a third one back with rapid stabs and slashes. Miklen aimed carefully and shot the Tharven soldier.

  As if answering the crack of his pistol, a trumpet called. Over the smoke, the shouts and the fighting men, a piece of white cloth appeared on a pole.

  “They are surrendering!” bellowed Miklen to the men following him. He strode forward and shouted at the enemy in his broken Tharven. “Your commander surrendered! Lay down your arms!”

  It took a few minutes to disentangle the fighting and disarm all Tharvens. Miklen found Ayda, who was speaking with a wounded Tharven officer propped up to the parapet.

  “What is the butcher’s bill?” asked Miklen the Lieutenant anxiously.

  “Ten dead, twice as many wounded,” answered Ayda grimly. “A fourth of my command. But it could have been much worse.”

  The Tharven officer apparently understood Ekvinark, because he cut into the conversation in his native tongue.

  “The vizier of Krestovik took my best men, when he rode past my fort. He only left me the greenhorns. The bloody squeakers fired the salvo too high, most of their bullets didn’t even come close to you.” The man spat blood and smiled. “If I had my veterans still, you would not be standing here.”

  “How did you know it was a trap?” asked Miklen.

  “Why should I tell you anything more?”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Ayla loomed above him. “Fear of death?” he asked.

  “I am a dead man anyways. Gut wound. Let us make a deal. I will tell you everything if you let my men go.”

  “After a week,” agreed Miklen. “I don’t need them spreading news of my coming.”

  “Fair,” the Tharven officer coughed up more blood. He won’t last much longer.

  “I had my patrols bringing in a Cazurian fugitive yesterday with frightening news about Selvoren’s blue demon and an ambush at Orkon bridge. He was an old soldier with a deadly wound. He did not seem to be the kind to desert and spread lies to cover up his cowardice. I sent out more patrols immediately, and they never came back. When I saw your men marching towards my fort, I became instantly suspicious. You were too organised for fugitives. You were all Demiri and all had their weapons. You did a good job making yourself worn and ragged, that I admit, but you were clearly still a military unit, and not a ragtag group of survivors.”

  “It happens often that a good company, or a battalion preserves discipline after a losing battle, and they extricate themselves from the chaos in good order,” answered Miklen.

  “But they would have picked up other refugees on the road. Or at the very least they would have met one of my patrols. When the pursuing cavalry appeared on the horizon, just far enough to never reach the Demiri, I knew you must be all Ekvinark soldiers clad in the uniform of my fallen comrades.”

  At least the news of Ayda’s treason hasn’t spread yet.

  “Did you send report to Krestovik after the fugitive Cazurian was brought to you?”

  “I sent a rider immediately to the next outpost along the road. Today or tomorrow the news must reach Krestovik.”

  We killed the vizier though, and Ayda says the man he left in charge in Krestovik is an unimaginative and passive man. He will sit in his fort and undertake nothing until we are knocking on his gate. Or at least I hope so.

  “Were there any more survivors who arrived later?” he asked aloud.

  “No other refugees, just the one. He said he had to evade a triple ring of cavalry patrols after the battle. One of those patrols gave him the carbine bullet in the arm that killed him in the end. You deserve your name, Zina?, you are a demon in human skin.”

  “Luck smiled on me, that is all. It will turn against me in the end. No luck holds for ever.”

  The Tharven commander grinned and spat blood again.

  “Alas, I will not be here to see it.”

  “It seems not,” agreed Miklen. “Anselmo, take him into a barrack, let him lie down and die in peace. Ayda, walk with me.”

  Once the duellist left with the dying man, Miklen turned on the sapper.

  “I will have your dead transported home. The Tharven Commonwealth stole their lives but won’t get them in their death too. They all deserve to lie in Ekvinark soil, and have their names set in stone.”

  Ayda looked at him with surprise. “Thank you, sir. The men will appreciate that, sir.”

  “Now to a more unpleasant subject,” Miklen’s voice hardened. “I know the Tharven army regulations are not clear on this subject, and Ekvinark banderia do not have a reputation for being merciful either. But I do not care for men, who murder prisoners. You threatened a captive who surrendered to me with death.”

  “Sir,” answered Ayda with perfect equanimity. At least he didn’t shrug.

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. Now. Do you think some of our men should dress as Cazurians for our next performance?”

  “The enemy commander did have some interesting suggestions, sir,” agreed Ayda.

  “Also, the petards were a great idea. You never told me you had them.”

  “I hoped we will not need them, sir. As for carrying them around – a sapper is not much of a sapper if he can’t even blow a gate, is he now?”

  “I can’t argue with that. Still, let us hope the next outpost will have a less observant captain.”

  ︻デ═一

  The little fort was packed to the brim with food and fodder, shooing away the spectre of starvation for a while. The outpost was less well supplied with gunpowder, and it didn’t have a single cannon. Miklen left Filip to take an exact inventory and called the seven bannerets with the army into a council. Yesterday he asked Kylren and count Vonet to keep the final goal of their operations secret, but it was now time that all the commanders learned about it now. Let us hope that there will be no objections this time around, if Kylren and count Vonet support me.

  Leading an army mostly composed of the banderia of other powerful lords was a finicky process at the best of times. Miklen might have been the Margrave of Selvoren, but in Ekvinark he was not above other bannerlords. These seven decided to follow his orders from their own free will, but should they change their mind, the law gave Miklen no tools to force his way through. Thus, even with these seven bannerets, who were bound to him by friendship and mutual respect, he always had to be careful not to hurt their pride. No, I have to be careful especially with these seven. Yesterday’s allies make tomorrow’s most dangerous enemies.

  “My lords, I requested your presence to decide over our course of action,” Miklen explained his fellow aristocrats. “You must have noticed that our army grew by a company. Well, the rumours are true, they are Tharven soldiers who changed side after the battle at Orkon Bridge.”

  “Can we trust them?” asked Oraveli Ilmar, always to the point.

  “I spoke with their lieutenant, Evren Ayda, and I say he casts a straight-edged shadow,” answered count Vonet. “He was abducted from Ekvinark, he was pressed into the Demiri corps and forced to forget even his own name. He is not really a traitor, but a downtrodden soul, who turned against his oppressors.”

  Quite the change since yesterday. My revelation that Dormand is a Truthsayer must have made an impression on him.

  “Still,” interjected Kovat Tolvanen, ever the contrarian. “That does not explain why we are on the Southern side of the river Arvad. When you convinced us to join this endeavour, you said the main goal of the campaign was to burn the bridge at Orkon. Did we cross the river to take this insignificant outpost? You captured it even before our banderia arrived, so I doubt it. Out with the colour, Miklen!”

  Miklen cleared his throat.

  “Tolva, you have seen through me, as always. Indeed, I did not bring you over the river to besiege this fort. I actually want you to hold it for me.”

  “You want to march further South, and you need us to keep the road open for supplies” Ilmar surmised. “What is your objective? Do you want to burn the bridge at Zetreb too? It is hardly worth the effort, the river Pirenj is much smaller than the Arvad, and has barely any swamps.”

  “I will eventually burn that bridge, but only from principle,” answered Miklen. “What I really want, is Krestovik.”

  At his statement, a racket ensued. Thankfully, Kylren, the count Vonet, and amazingly, even Ilmar were on his side this time, and helped to convince the others. He also had a more detailed plan for them than yesterday.

  “There are altogether fifty-eight outposts and forts within one day marching distance from the road between us and Krestovik. It is, of course, impossible for us to occupy all. Even if we spent the remains of the winter and the whole spring, we could not hope to capture all these fortified places.”

  “Most of these outposts only host a garrison of ten to thirty, even less than this little redoubt. And if the Krestovik vizier really robbed them of manpower, they will be even more easy pickings,” argued Tolva for the sake of arguing. “Cursed Labyrinth, if they are as low on gunpowder and manpower, as you say, we might never find a better opportunity! I say we should bloody well take them!”

  “Well, I will assign to each of you a section of the road,” answered Miklen, “and ask you to keep it open for me. Carts will pass with all the gunpowder I can get my hands on, and I will send horses, cattle, sheep as well, should I find any. How you keep the road open is your business. If you capture every fortified place in one day’s march, that is fine with me. But please take care. There are some real strongholds that could bloody our nose, and the province is positively swarming with Cazurians. I imagine they would like nothing more than to repay us for the ambush at Orkon bridge, and that is a debt I would rather not settle.”

  “By God, neither would I,” muttered Kylren.

  “So you say I should be careful, and sit on my backside, while you gather all the laurels by taking the greatest city in the province?” asked Tolva raising his eyebrows. “Why do I feel that you gave us all minor roles, while you keep the part of the dashing hero?”

  Miklen sighed. Next time, he swore, I am just going to leave you at home, Tolva.

  He collected his thoughts, ready to give an answer which would be equally diplomatic, honest, and would give a military sense, but the count Vonet was faster than him.

  “You know the saying, son,” he said with one of his rare smiles. “There are no small parts, only small …”

  Kylren was the first to smoke it, but Tolva laughed the loudest. There was no more talk about heroes and laurels after that.