Free The Iron Wars by Paul Kearney

was before the dyke, whilst the new enemy force comes marching up from the coast to cut him off.” Barbius paused. “My mission as I see it has changed. I am no longer to reinforce the dyke because the dyke no longer exists. I must attack this second Merduk army and try to hold it off long enough for Martellus’s men to escape to the capital.”
    “What is the strength of this second army?” Albrec asked.
    “Perhaps a hundred thousand men,” Barbius said tonelessly.
    “But that’s preposterous!” Albrec protested. “You have only a twentieth of that here. It’s suicide.”
    “We are Fimbrian soldiers,” Formio said, as if that explained everything.
    “You’ll be massacred!”
    “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Barbius said. “In any case, my orders are clear. My superiors approve. The army will move south-east to block the Merduk advance from the coast. Mayhap we will remind the west how Fimbrians conduct themselves on the battlefield.”
    He turned away. Albrec realized he knew he was ordering his men to their deaths.
    “I will pray for you,” the little monk said haltingly.
    “Thank you. Now, Father, I wish to be alone with my adjutant. We have a lot to do before morning.”
    Albrec left the tent without another word.
    FIVE
    P OWER is a strange thing, the lady Jemilla thought. It is intangible, invisible. It can sometimes be bought and sold like grain, at other times no amount of money on earth can purchase it.
    She had some power now, some small store of it to wield as she saw fit. For a woman in the world she had been born into, it was impossible to possess the trappings of power as men possessed them. Armies, fleets, cannon. The impedimenta of war. It was said that the most powerful woman in the world was the Queen Dowager of Torunna, Odelia, but even she had to hide behind her son the King, Lofantyr. No Ramusian nation would ever tolerate a queen who ruled alone, without apology for her sex. Or they had not thus far at least. Women who possessed ambition had to use other means to gain their ends. Jemilla had realized that while she was still a child.
    She held the lives of two men in the palm of her hand, and that power had gained her her freedom. Allowing herself to be taken by the two guards had been unpleasant but necessary. She blocked out of her mind the acts she had performed for them in the dark firelight of her chambers, and reminded herself instead that with one word she could have them hung. It was not permitted for palace guards to couple with noble ladies in their care. They knew it—they had done so as soon as their lust was spent and she had risen from the bed still shining with their effluent, laughing at them. Which was why she was free to wander the palace whenever one of them was on duty outside her door.
    Such a simple thing. It worked with common soldiers as easily as it worked with kings.
    It was well after midnight, and she was prowling the palace corridors like a wraith wrapped in hooded silk. She was looking for Abeleyn.
    The Royal chambers were guarded, of course, but there were untold numbers of secret passageways and tunnels and alcoves in the palace, some of which predated Abrusio itself, and it was in search of these that she was out here creeping in the echoing dark. Abeleyn had told her of them months ago, one airless night in the Lower City when they were both spent and sweat-soaked with the late summer stars glittering beyond the window and two of the King’s bodyguards discreet as shadows in the courtyard of the inn below. He used the secret ways of the palace to come and go as he pleased, without fanfare or remark, and take his pleasure in the riotous night life of Old Abrusio below, as free and easy as any young man with a pocketful of gold and a nose for mischief. It was—had been—a glorious game to him to roam the backstreets and alleys of the teeming city, to wear a disguise and drink beer and wine in filthy but lively taverns, to feel the buttocks of some Lower