Adamat eyed the eunuch. They’d done it. Taken Vetas. Saved Faye. Would the eunuch turn on him now for blackmailing the Proprietor? Bo wasn’t here. Adamat didn’t even know if the Privileged was alive. Adamat didn’t know where Sergeant Oldrich was. No one would ask questions if the eunuch quietly killed them both and disappeared.
“She’s safe,” the eunuch said.
“Thank you.”
The eunuch was surprisingly gentle as he helped Faye into the room. Adamat stepped toward them, arms out.
The stiletto handle seemed to materialize in the side of the eunuch’s neck. When he opened his mouth, blood poured out, and he dropped to his knees. Faye, suddenly unsupported, toppled to the side, only to be caught by Lord Vetas.
No one moved at Tamas’s shouted order. The thick chaos of soldiers milling against the edge of the river did not change.
Tamas felt his heart begin to beat faster.
“Men of the Seventh! Take the line!”
Nothing. His hands shook. He’d overplayed himself. This false panic he’d meant to create had become real. He’d defeated himself before the battle even began.
“First Battalion!” a voice cut through the crowd. Someone shoved their way out of the press. It was old Colonel Arbor. He held his rifle in one hand, his teeth in the other. “To the line, First Battalion!”
Tamas swung around. The Kez cavalry continued to advance slowly. They were a half a mile out on the western front. The dragoons to the south began to move forward. Vlora and the rest of the powder mages continued to fire from across the river, whittling away at their numbers.
Adran infantry began to peel away from the mob by the river and get to their positions. Too few of them. Too slowly.
Then more. And more. Soldiers left the riverside and raced across the camp to the mound of dirt separating them from the Kez cavalry. They threw themselves to the safe side of the mound and readied their rifles, loading bullets and fixing bayonets. Tamas took a deep breath. He felt his heart soar. If he could have kissed every one of his men then and there, he would have.
He turned back to the Kez advance and his heart stopped.
The advance had ceased less than a quarter of a mile from Tamas’s position.
Fifteen thousand Kez cavalry wedged Tamas’s army completely against the river and the mountains.
He saw a man ride to the front of the cuirassiers. Had Beon figured out Tamas’s game? Did he sense a trap?
The man, Tamas recognized, was Beon je Ipille himself. Brave, to come out to the front of his heavy cavalry, when he knew a powder mage’s bullet might end him any second.
Beon seemed to cock his head at Tamas’s position. His lips moved briefly, then he kissed his sword and raised it.
A salute. Beon was saluting Tamas. The motion stunned him.
Beon’s sword fell and the earth trembled as fifteen thousand sets of hooves thundered toward Tamas.
“Hold!” Tamas yelled, gripping his rifle. He turned away from the cuirassiers. Their charge would be stopped by the sharpened stakes and crosses. They’d pull up hard and exchange fire with the Ninth, or advance slowly to try to navigate the defenses.
Between Tamas and the dragoons, however, there were no such apparent obstacles — only a thin layer of white fog over the ground and then the raised earthworks behind which his men crouched.
Three hundred yards. The dragoons leaned over their mounts, urging them faster. A bullet whistled over Tamas’s head and took a dragoon between the eyes. Tamas raised his rifle, lined up a shot, and fired. He lowered, reloaded, and repeated.
Two hundred yards. Dragoons raised their carbines and twisted their faces in wordless cries.
One hundred yards. Tamas’s lines opened fire. Hundreds of dragoons fell from the first volley alone. The rest charged on, heedless of their comrades’ fall.
Seventy yards. The dragoons opened fire with their carbines. Tamas’s soldiers crouched behind their earthen wall, reloading.
Fifty yards. Dragoons let their carbines drop and raised their pistols.
Thirty yards. The line of dragoons aimed pistols.
Twenty yards.
Ten yards.
The front line of dragoons disappeared.
Tamas closed his eyes for a brief moment as the screams reached him.
The momentum of the cavalry unit at full gallop had carried them headfirst into a concealed trench. Almost twenty feet wide and just as deep, it stretched the entire length of the “opening” Tamas had left in his defenses. The trench was topped with stakes covered in grass and other debris. A poor disguise in the light of the day, but the fog had covered them completely. They cracked under the weight of the warhorses.
Tamas had once seen a row of carriages go straight into the Adsea. The first carriage had plunged around a steep corner and off the end of a pier. The second had followed, the driver seeing the drop only at the last second, while the third driver’s attempts to slow his horses had failed.
