Siege of Tilpur by Brian McClellan

Author:Brian McClellan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brian McClellan
Published: 2017-11-05T05:20:05+00:00

Tamas walked through the main gate of Tilpur fortress three days after his nighttime raid. His arm hung at his side uselessly in a sling, wrist set and bandaged with his uniform jacket hanging off his shoulder. everything hurt—his head, his wrist, his ribs, his shoulder, his legs. A light powder trance held the pain at a low buzz in the back of his head. He felt naked without his musket hanging off his shoulder or a shako on his head, and seeing the courtyard in the daylight sent a shiver down his spine. He half expected a Gurlish soldier to lean out the window of the barracks and take a shot at him.

But the fort had been emptied of Gurlish forces two days ago. Less than six hundred men, a good portion of those wounded, had survived the detonation of the fort’s munitions. The garrison commander had immediately called for a parlay and surrendered without condition. Their forces were now camped out on the plain, disarmed, while the Adran officers decided what to do with them.

It was, without a doubt, the biggest turnaround of the season, if not the entire campaign. And General Seske had yet to call for Tamas.

He paused inside the courtyard, watching as Adran soldiers made repairs. The munitions explosion had collapsed a large part of the courtyard and destroyed most of the barracks when the ground dropped a dozen feet beneath it. Bodies were still being hauled out of the rubble, while the sorcery-protected stones of the inner wall were being scrubbed clean of the soot and ash from the explosion.

Overseeing the whole operation was General Seske, standing up on the walls near where Tamas and his squad had gone over the top. He was surrounded by aids, a broad smile on his face as he handed out orders and cracked jokes with his officers, standing with thumbs hooked through his belt, bicorn cocked forward like he’d conquered Tilpur himself.

It did not, Tamas thought, bode well.

Seske’s gaze swept past Tamas, pausing for just the slightest moment, his smile faltering, before moving on. Instead of a gesture or a grin or anything to acknowledge the man who’d just handed him an enemy fortress, he continued bantering with his officers.

Tamas made a circuit around the fort, examining the repairs, taking a look down into the well and examining the ancient, rusted grate that had almost gotten him killed. He counted fifteen paces from the well and scuffed at the black, stained stone with one toe, chuckling to himself. The Privileged he’d landed on, he’d found out later, had died almost instantly, spine snapping like a twig at the impact. The stain under Tamas’s boot was likely his blood.

“Sergeant,” a voice said.

Tamas looked up to find one of Seske’s aids beside him. “Yes?”

“The general would like to see you.”

Tamas followed the aid to the nearest gatehouse and up the steep, narrow stairs, the pain in his side deepening with each step. By the time he reached the top of the wall he was covered in sweat and quite dizzy.

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