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What she didn’t want to admit was that Altan was scaring her.
But Chaghan looked surprisingly sympathetic. “You must understand. Altan is new to command. He’s trying to figure out what he’s doing just as much as you are. He’s scared.”
He was scared? Rin almost laughed. Altan’s attempted operations had grown so much in scale over the past two weeks that it felt as if he were trying to take on the entire Federation by himself. “Altan doesn’t know what scared means.”
“Altan is perhaps the most powerful martial artist in Nikan right now. Maybe the world,” said Chaghan. “But for all that, most of his life he was just good at following orders. Tyr’s death was a shock to us. Altan wasn’t ready to take over. Command is difficult for him. He doesn’t know how to make peace with the Warlords. He’s overextended. He’s trying to fight an entire war with a squad of ten. And he’s going to lose.”
“You don’t think we can hold Khurdalain?”
“I think we were never meant to hold Khurdalain,” said Chaghan. “I think Khurdalain was a sacrifice for time paid in blood. Altan is going to lose because Khurdalain is not winnable, and when he does, it’s going to break him.”
“Altan won’t break,” she said. Altan was the strongest fighter she’d ever seen. Altan couldn’t break.
“Altan is more fragile than you think,” said Chaghan. “He’s cracking under the weight of command, can’t you see? This is new territory for him, and he’s flailing, because he’s utterly dependent on victory.”
Rin rolled her eyes. “The entire country’s dependent on our victory.”
Chaghan shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. Altan is used to winning. His entire life he’s been put on a pedestal. He was the last Speerly, a national rarity. Best student at the Academy. Tyr’s favorite in the Cike. He’s been fed a steady stream of constant affirmation for being very good at destroying things, but he won’t get any praise here, especially not when his own soldiers are openly insubordinate.”
“I’m not being—”
“Oh, come now, Rin. You’re being a little bitch, is what you’re doing, all because Altan won’t pet you on the head and say you’re doing a great job.”
She stood up and slammed her hands on the table. “Look, asshole, I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”
“And yet, as your lieutenant, that is precisely my job.” Chaghan glanced lazily up at her, and his expression was so smug that Rin trembled from the effort of not smashing his face into the table. “Your duty is to obey. My duty is to see that you stop fucking up. So I would suggest you get your shit together, learn to call the damn fire, and give Altan one less thing to worry about. Am I clear?”
Chapter 19
“So who’s the newcomer?” Nezha asked casually.
Rin wasn’t sure if she could discuss Chaghan without kicking something, which would be bad, especially since they were supposed to be hiding. But they had been staking out the barricade for what seemed like hours, and she was getting bored.
“He’s Altan’s lieutenant.”
“How come I’ve never seen him before?”
“He’s been away,” she said.
A hail of arrows whizzed above them. Nezha ducked back below the barricade.
The Seventh Division had launched a joint assault with the Cike against the embassies by the wharf in an attempt to cut the main Federation encampment in two. In theory if they could hold the old Hesperian quarters, they could then divide the enemy forces and cut off their access to the docks. They had sent two regiments: one attacking perpendicular to the river and the other snaking around to the wharf from the direction of the canals.
But they had to move past five heavily defended intersections to get to the wharf, and those had turned into five separate bloodbaths. The Federation hadn’t met them out on the open field because they didn’t need to; safely ensconced behind the walls of the buildings they held on the wharf, they responded to the Nikara onslaught by embedding themselves on rooftops and shooting from windows on the upper floors of the embassy buildings.
The Seventh Division’s only option was to throw their infantry en masse against the Federation’s fortified position. They had to gamble that the press of Nikara bodies would be enough to force the Federation out. It had turned into a contest of flesh against steel, and the Militia was determined to break the Federation upon their bodies.
“You mean, you have no clue,” Nezha said as a fire rocket exploded over his head.
“I mean, you have no business asking.”
She didn’t know if Nezha was fishing for information for his father, or if he was just trying to make small talk. She supposed it didn’t matter. Chaghan’s presence was hardly a secret, especially after Altan’s dramatic rescue outside the east gate. Perhaps because of that, though, the Militia seemed even more spooked by him than they were by the rest of the Cike combined.
Several paces down, Suni lit one of Ramsa’s specialty bombs and hurled it over the barricade.
They ducked back down and plugged up their ears until a now-familiar acrid, sulfuric smell filled their nostrils.
The arrow fire stopped.
“Is that shit?” Nezha demanded.
“Don’t ask,” Rin said. In the temporary lull granted by Ramsa’s dung bomb they moved past the barricade and stormed down the street to reach the next of the five intersections.
“I heard he’s creepy,” Nezha continued. “I heard he’s from the Hinterlands.”
“Qara’s from the Hinterlands, too. So what?”
“So I’ve heard he’s unnatural,” Nezha said.
Rin snorted. “It’s the Cike. We’re all unnatural.”
A massive explosion rolled through the air in front of them, followed by a series of bursts of fire.
Altan.
He was leading the charge. His roiling flames, combined with Ramsa’s many fire powder spectacles, created a number of large fires that drastically improved their nighttime visibility.
Altan had broken through to the next intersection. The Nikara continued their surge forward.
“But he can do things that Speerlies can’t,” Nezha said as they pressed on. “They say he can read the future. Shatter minds. My father says that even the Warlords know of him, did you know that? It makes you wonder. If Altan’s got a lieutenant who’s so powerful that he scares the Warlords, why is he sending him away from Khurdalain? What are they planning?”
“I’m not spying on my own division for you,” Rin said.
“I didn’t ask you to,” Nezha said delicately. “I’m just saying you might want to keep an open mind.”
“And you might want to keep your nose out of my division’s matters.”
But Nezha had stopped listening; he stared over Rin’s shoulder at something farther along the wharf, where the first line of Nikara soldiers was pressing. “What is that?”
Rin craned her neck to see what he was looking at. Then she squinted in confusion.
An odd greenish-yellow fog had begun wending its way over the blockade toward the two division squadrons in front of them.
