Gavin’s presence on a battlefield wasn’t simple morale-boosting. King Garadul was leading the attack, surrounded by perhaps a hundred Mirrormen. As Gavin caught sight of him, he saw the king yelling at some messenger, gesticulating angrily.
He wants his drafters.
And why isn’t he getting them?
Gavin moved to the front of the Mother’s spear, stared out to the hill, some five hundred paces away. On the crown of the hill there were banners and a crowd. He drafted lenses, adjusted the distance necessary between the two to get the focus right, and studied the image above the low-hanging mists. A multicolored man was lifting a musket, pointing it right at him. Insanity. No musket could fire so—
The musket fired—a huge charge from the cloud of black smoke. Gavin couldn’t hear it over the rest of the sounds of battle, of course. One of the mortars fired. Gavin continued to study the man. He drafted the two lenses together to keep the focus steady. A polychrome wight. Probably a full polychrome, or at least pretending to be one, from all the colors he’d drafted into his own body. Curious. The man was studying him too.
Around Lord Omnichrome, there were not just the usual complement of generals and lackeys, but dozens of drafters. They were clearly not going anywhere.
Someone handed the musket back to Lord Omnichrome. Lord Omnichrome took the musket, aimed quickly, and fired. A second later, something hit the Mother’s spear two paces above Gavin’s head and exploded, taking a chunk out of the rock. Luxin projectiles? From five hundred paces? Gavin was still thinking about it as the Blackguards pulled him away and to the back of the spear.
Lord Omnichrome wanted King Garadul dead. So simple, so bold. He probably had even egged on King Garadul at Brightwater Wall, daring him to be a promachos, getting the young king to lead from the front, hoping he’d get killed.
If your enemy wants it, deny it.
Gavin drafted a small yellow tablet, making it read, “Capture Garadul, not kill. At all costs.” He covered it in blue and liquid yellow luxin and shot it into the path where he believed Corvan was going.
But Gavin’s intuition told him the main strike was going to happen elsewhere, while the defenders focused their efforts here. “To the Hag’s Gate,” he told his Blackguards. “We run!”
Chapter 87
Karris snatched a second sword from a man lying on the ground, bleeding from a stomach wound. She didn’t know what side he was fighting for; she didn’t care. The city smelled of gunpowder, sewage, and men’s sweat, the kind of stench that gets into leather armor and never comes out. As she ran, she drafted a thin sheen of green luxin down the swords, sealed it, then ran red luxin on top of that and sealed that too.
This entire area was a tangle of alleys. The buildings were thrown down haphazardly with seeming intent to vex one’s neighbors and make straight lines of sight impossible. The good news was that it made it impossible for King Garadul to rally his men in any numbers here.
The bad news was that—oh shit! Karris rounded a corner and almost ran into three Mirrormen, lost, peering down different alleys and looking like they were about to start arguing which way to go. Karris careened into them before any of them could react. She threw her weight into the smallest one and, catching him flat-footed, managed both to stop herself and to fling him off his feet. She spun, left sword swinging in a red arc.
The second Mirrorman was moving his sword into guard position, but too slowly, with no leverage. Her blade beat right through his and cut into his neck above his gorget. Not a deep cut, but deep enough, right there. Red luxin splattered on the outside of his armor, and as she yanked the blade back, red blood splattered the inside to match. He was still standing for the moment, but to Karris he was already dead.
Between colliding with the first Mirrorman and cutting the second, Karris had lost sight of the last one. She spun around, ducking, blocking with both swords, left down, right up in a reversed grip. The cut would have beaten right through her weak right-hand guard if she hadn’t ducked too. Instead, her own blade slapped into her shoulder. She couldn’t tell if it cut—what kind of moron went into battle without armor?
She came up cutting, but the Mirrorman blocked her strike. Then his eyes went wide.