The Silvered Read Free Page B

Bercarit to Trouge; toward the road a forced evacuation from Bercarit would have to take. The dense woods had made the men skittish, all of them familiar with the tales of the giant beastmen who kept Aydori safe. As the day went on, and the largest animal seen had been a small, white-tailed deer bounding away in terror, the men had begun to calm and, finally, to laugh at their fear.
    “Cap’n?”
    Pulled from his thoughts, Captain Sean Reiter shifted his focus to the man who’d fallen into step beside him. “Sergeant Black.”
    “Scouts say there’s a river up ahead.” The sergeant shoved a branch out of the way with his musket and waited until the captain passed before he released it. “Not a deep river, like, but running fast. No way to avoid being seen while we cross if there’s anyone about.”
    Reiter glanced up. The thick canopy prevented him from seeing the sky, and the shadows by the ground were either too constant or too broken to be of any use determining the time. He took a reading, mentally marked his path, tucked his compass carefully into a pocket, and pulled out his watch. Just past six. They’d lose the light soon.
    “Can we cross after dark?” He snapped the case closed.
    “Like I said, Cap’n, she’s running fast.” Black spat, cleared his throat, and spat again. “Wouldn’t want to risk it in the dark myself.”
    “We’ll cross it by squad, then. No more than three men visible at once. You cross with the first squad. I’ll cross with the last.”
    “Four men visible, then.”
    “Thank you, Sergeant. I’d never have managed that math on my own.”
    Black grinned. “I live to serve, sir. And Lieutenant Geurin?”
    Reiter snorted and lengthened his stride to clear a fallen sapling. “Lieutenant Geurin believes he walks on water, so put him in the middle of the river directing traffic.”
    They walked in silence for a few moments.
    Lieutenant Lord Geurin, Viscount Tribuline, had been a pain in Reiter’s ass from the moment he’d been assigned to this mission. He resented that Reiter, his superior officer, had been promoted out of the ranks. He expected blind obedience from men with significantly more time in, men who’d been handpicked for this assignment by General Loreau because of their skills rather than their bloodline. Reiter’d be willing to bet serious money that Geurin had been the sort of boy who’d spent his school days bullying the weaker boys and snitching on the stronger.
    Dumping him in the middle of the river sounded like a great idea.
    However…
    “He goes across with Four Squad. I’ll have him check that the tangles crossed safely when he gets to the other side. That’ll keep him busy until I get there.”
    “Tangles affected by water are they, sir?”
    “Could be.” Reiter knew Black could handle the young lieutenant, but that would lead to the men taking the sergeant’s side—more than they were naturally inclined to anyway and, eventually, that would lead to trouble. Inspecting the tangles, the ancient artifacts given to them to neutralize the mages, would suit the lieutenant’s sense of self-importance.
    “Figure they’ll still work? Them being so old and all.”
    “They’d better. Or it’s going to complicate things.”
    “Complicate.” Black punctuated the word with another mouthful of saliva. “Murphy says there’s Soothsayers behind our orders.”
    “Does he?” Murphy had a habit of stating the obvious. Shields were never deployed outside the empire and seldom outside the capital unless the emperor went on progression. The regiment acted as the palace guard, they supported the city guard, and they spent one fuck of a lot of time looking martial to impress the empire’s citizenry. But every man on this insertion team had been pulled from the Shields. Some of them, like Reiter himself, had only just been rotated in. All of them had been happy for a chance to be more than ceremonial soldiers, but the point remained—Shields were never