Chapter Thirty-One

  They rode out in the dark of the early morning before the sun had begun to light up the sky above the peaks of the Shan. They rode in darkness, letting their horses pick their way through the gloom. Stars shone brightly overhead in a moonless sky. They rode in silence and with all haste that proper caution would allow. Dryden rode at the lead alongside Captain Benton, with Mar behind them. Benton was a young officer, and homely. Dryden didn’t need to see the man to know him well. Benton was of good breeding, and fearless in a charge, but you wouldn’t have known by looking at him. He was chinless, drab, and had long front teeth that reminded Dryden of a rodent. Still, he was proof to Dryden that you ought not to judge a book solely by its cover. Soon they found the road they were seeking, turned south, and soon after that, the first hints of sunrise began to illuminate the sky behind the mountains. The 2nd squadron of the 13th dragoons rode harder and made for the ravines that would hide their movements. As instructed by General Haddock, they did not spare their horses. Dryden spurred Rosie mercilessly, though it felt crueller even than killing men or burning villages to do so. He hated it so. Rosie did not complain, his bay mare simply went to the work that he demanded, never whinnying or showing any sign of complaint.

  They arrived at the ravine just as the sun was breaking the horizon. Dryden hoped that the darkness had been enough to mask their movement. It did not take long as they rode for the ravine to become a canyon with cliffs rising high above them on either side. The canyon was dry, with a silty bottom. They made no sound, lest sounds of their passing echo up the chasm and alert their enemy. It took two hours of riding for them to come to a junction in the gorge. Left or right, which to choose. The scout who had drawn the map was with them. He was a young Dravani lancer private named Guresh. He had introduced himself with his formal last name, but like most Dravani, the family name was long and arcane and Dryden found his tongue could not pronounce it. After the revelation about Chatham, Dryden misliked having to trust men in this land who were not of Vastrum, but he knew too that the Dravani people had bad blood with the Vuruni, old feuds that went back to before Marrowick or Stormburg or Ardmuth or any other Vastrum city was built. The Dravani would not betray them to the Vuruni. Guresh did not speak much Vastrum, which did not help the matter, but the Dravani cavalryman pointed to the left and away they went.

  Mar caught up and rode next to Dryden, “So, you’ve bitten off quite the task for us. I was hoping to catch up on my sleep now that demon pits no longer plague my dreams.”

  “The task needed doing and there was no group of men more up to it than we,” He replied, surprised at the attitude of Mar. He had thought all wizards, mages, and other intellectuals of the world were lazy, but so far in their dealings, Mar had proven otherwise, at least until now.

  “Is there not?” Mar mused, “Perhaps the Hussars could have ridden out for this.”

  “Are you suggesting this is a task created by my own ego?” Dryden replied, his tone sharper than usual.

  “Dryden, the men are tired. We rode through Ghinai, then down to Unkabi and Dau. We have spent most of the last week putting the whole valley to fire and sword. The men are exhausted. You are exhausted, sir.”

  Dryden frowned, “Do not tell me what I am. This is what war is, a hell of our own creation, a pit into which we throw ourselves body and soul. At the end of it, a mere shadow remains. If you’ve not the stamina for it, I suggest that when this battle is done, you resign your commission.”

  It was Mar’s turn to frown, “You have changed much these last weeks. I do not suggest anything but that others could have done the job as capably, men who have done far less than we.”

  “I object to the notion that they are as capable as the 13th,” Dryden commented, “We are the finest cavalry in the colonies.”

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  “We were before we lost half the regiment upon the plain below Golconda. We are a shadow of our former strength,” Mar replied grimly.

  “We will rebuild, Mar. Hundreds of young men will want to fight for the Bloody 13th. Perhaps thousands now that we are famous. We will have our pick of young men to recruit. There are always men who want to ride tall on a black destrier with a sabre on their hip.”

  “Why did you join, Dryden?” Mar changed the subject.

  Dryden sighed, “I wish I could say that I did so out of a sense of duty. I must admit that I chose the cavalry because I thought I looked handsome in a cavalryman’s uniform, and I liked when the ladies looked at cavalry officers when they rode on parade. I wanted them to look at me that way,” He smiled wistfully, “Alas, I have been disabused of such frivolity. Why did you join the 13th?”

  “I had little choice in it. The military treats wizards similarly to how they treat a cannon. You know, do you not, that we wizards, those of us with the aptitude for spellcraft, are selected for the service.”

  “Did you not choose the cavalry, though?”

  “No, they chose it for me. I was one of the very few at the wizard’s conservatory who had both the knack for battle magic and also for riding. I must admit, I prefer being attached to cavalry, rather than infantry or another service such as the navy. I pity the wizards that serve on ships of the line, a bloody business, that.”

  They came to another split in the canyon. The Dravani scout Guresh pointed them right this time. They snaked up through canyons that seemed to grow deeper and darker, and they rode through shadow and gloom. They took a break at noon, that short time when light filtered down between the high cliffs and illuminated the bottom of the chasm. They sat and ate a brief lunch in silence. Then somewhere up the canyon, a clatter of stones echoed off the steep sandstone cliff walls, followed by the sound of hoof beats.

  “A rider,” Benton hissed, “You and you, after him.”

  Two men, Sergeant Krach and a private who had been picked, leapt back on their horses and spurred them hard. Both had quick mounts and they blazed off down the canyon galloping after the sound. The rest mounted and went off too, but more carefully. Soon after the canyon opened up, the walls lessened, and shortly it opened into a broad plain that Dryden recognized well. It was where they had been ambushed for the very first time. He could see the half-rotted, vulture-picked carcasses of men and horses laying dead before them, a grisly reminder of the first battle where they had been ambushed from both sides. Away on the other side of the plain, beyond the skeletal remains of the dead, the cliff face loomed from where the enemy snipers had shot down at Blackwater’s army. Below the cliff lay the long road that led up from Vurun to the Settru Pass. On the open plain, Dryden saw his men riding down the sentry that they had been surprised by. The Vuruni man had a smaller pony, the kind ridden in the Kizil to the east and favoured by An-Beya warriors, sturdy but slower on open ground. Sergeant Krach cut the man down from the back of his black horse, then the two men returned to the squadron.

  “Just one, sirs,” Sergeant Krach noted as they arrived, “He won’t be tellin’ no one about us,” The sergeant was a grizzled and scarred man, with skin leathery from the sun, and as a result looked perhaps fifty, though he was not older than thirty years. He grinned, gold tooth flashing in the sun.

  “Good work, but it doesn’t seem to have mattered,” Dryden said, pointing off to where a column of Vuruni riders were coming around a bend in the road. They had a banner flying on the breeze. He pulled out his spyglass and looked. The flag was black with gold writing on it and a rearing horse, “Looks like An-Kujala,” Dryden noted. They had been one of the witch’s favoured clans, but he knew little about them otherwise. Many had died at the northern passes when Aisa’s forces had been decimated by Haddock. These must have stayed with Kurush when he retreated from Andaban across Settru Pass.

  “Should we engage, sir?” Captain Benton asked. His voice had no hint of fear, only eagerness. His hand was on the hilt of his sabre.

  The An-Kujala soldiers had finally seen them and began to array themselves on the open plain. Dryden frowned, by his estimation, they were outnumbered two to one. It would not be the first time that had happened. He knew numbers meant only so much in the face of the proper application and equal measure of discipline and fury. The enemy would come soon, he was sure of that. They were on hostile ground, with an enemy in front and the possibility of escape behind. But they had a mission, and to achieve it, they had to go forward and through this enemy.

  “Sir?” Benton asked.

  Dryden realized he had been sitting in silence watching the enemy while considering what action to take, “Give them the blade. Let us make a bloody wreck of them.”