Devil of the 22nd Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Where to get more

  About

  Devil of the 22nd

  A flintlock fantasy novella by Richard Nell. A prequel in the God-King Chronicles universe.

  All material contained within copyright Richard Nell, 2018. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and scenarios are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  “Put the chicken down, Griss, or I’ll blow your God damned head off.”

  Kurt brushed a hand over his only visible pistol. In a perfect world he would have passed the conflict by without a word, but here he was. His bodyguards tensed but didn’t intervene—so far his tone was pleasant enough. Just stating a fact, really.

  Griss hawked up a wad of phlegm.

  “Birds are ours, by God. We found ‘em, square, Sarge. Rookies were no bloody help.”

  Kurt sighed and drew the pistol, very casually, which hung loose and always loaded when he walked through the camp.

  “What are the rules, Griss?”

  The big veteran glanced at his comrades, then all three looked at the dirt like boys caught with sweets.

  Well, stone-cold murdering thugs caught with sweets, at least.

  “Two-thirds for the veterans,” Kurt said rotely, “one third for the recruits. Let’s go, boys, I don’t have all day.”

  The half-dozen pale-faced but starving rookies watching the exchange licked their lips. They outnumbered the veterans two to one. Kurt expected they’d have lost a fight, if it came to it, but they were too hungry to back down. Some had camp doxies waiting not far off, too—no doubt the women propped up their will.

  The veterans looked at the younger men with pure contempt, then wiped it off as they glanced at Kurt.

  “Bugger it just give ‘em the skinny one,” said Griss.

  Another of the veterans frowned and examined his chicken, which looked no skinnier than the rest. He shrugged.

  “Go get it, little pricks.” The bird squawked as it struck the dirt, and the soldier encouraged it with a kick. The rookies scrambled in pursuit.

  “Look lads, mice chasing chickens!”

  The veterans all laughed, and Kurt joined them, though he didn’t put away his pistol.

  “They’ll be dead in a month,” he said, “but ah well. Tell Harm I say hello.”

  Griss nodded and scratched his crotch, rubbing the layer of fat on his belly as he turned away.

  By ‘Harm’ Kurt meant Private Harmon, the unofficial leader of the very hardest, cruelest bunch of veterans in the old 3rd division. He had no official authority, but what he did and said swayed many others.

  Kurt finally stabbed his pistol back in its holster, and his silent pack of bodyguards relaxed.

  “Lights fading,” said Torsten—Kurt’s friend and right hand—who had stood some distance away throughout the encounter. “And who gives a shit about a bunch of starving rooks?”

  Not me, Kurt thought. But rules were rules.

  “If I walked on by then word would travel I don’t care, now wouldn’t it?” He winked, which he knew Torsten hated. “Let’s go.”

  He took up his usual pace, which with his long legs was just below a jog for most. All around him a mix of cavalrymen from the 2nd through 10th divisions followed through the chaos of camp, ready to draw their heavy sabres and hack apart anyone who got too close.

  Canvas tents in triangles and squares now filled most of the muddy, trodden dirt field the miserable camp rested on. Women moved about freely, hanging laundry or cooking, wrangling filthy, half-starved children or carrying water. Kurt noticed the lack of feral dogs that had plagued the camp for months. He supposed with the food shortage getting desperate, they’d all fled, or ended up in stew.

  “Sir! Sergeant! I served with you at Vindamare!”

  A stick-thin soldier shouted from atop a cart, and three of Kurt’s guards moved to intercept.

  “Let me join you, sir! I’ve my own gun, and some shot, and good boots and jacket. Sir! Please, I’ll do anything you ask!”

  The poor wretch leapt from his cart to move closer, and one of the 2nd tossed him violently to the muck.

  Kurt winced at being seen and recognized. A few others had noticed and stared at him now, and he could only hope the treatment of the last inquirer would ward away others. He didn’t change his pace. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, exactly, or meant them any harm. But he had a great deal to do today, and in any case not enough resources to attend every poor bastard the army let wither on the vine.

  Torsten pointed at the tip of a house-sized tent in Republican yellow, and Kurt grunted. Not for the first time he looked at the bright, sun-like color and thought, yes, canary yellow, perfect to hide mud and blood and camouflage scouts in war. He rolled his eyes and angled his path to come out in front, while also avoiding a miserable cluster of soldiers clumped around a fading fire.

  The War Ministry’s Office was a clean oasis in a desert of filth, as if they didn’t know or care that the East Army starved. Barrels of provisions lay stacked in orderly fashion covered by good, cloth tarps, and several Military Police snapped to attention at Kurt’s presence. Some were uniformed, some weren’t. All were called ‘Investigators’ by the Republic now, but by any name were secret goons working directly for the War Ministry. All that mattered is that Kurt had enough men to deal with them, if required.

  “Good afternoon.”

  Kurt raised his voice and waved as soon as he reached the clearing. He stepped to the administrator’s empty queue and threw his elbow onto the high counter, smiling in his most affable affectation. His small army of bodyguards waited at the edge of the crowd.

  “Hello, sir. How can I help you?”

  The youth attending him was perhaps sixteen. He wore a crisp, unblemished Republican uniform of yellow and black; his soft hands fidgeted over a fresh quill, his forehead glistened with sweat, and his pupils leapt about as if trying to escape his eyes. Kurt decided he’d never actually ‘helped’ anyone.

  “I’m here for new orders, for Colonel Gottfried.”

  “New Orders. Yes, sir.”

  The boy turned from side to side as if unsure, then lifted a pack of folders. Halfway through his search he stopped and not-so-subtly inspected his visitor again.

  Kurt knew very well what the boy saw. His black and blue patchwork imperial uniform had faded grey long ago. It was slightly ill-fitted, without any trace of rank or decoration save for the basic shoulder-marks of an officer. His leathery, scar-riddled skin showed several days of stubble; his greasy hair had grown too long for regulation. And are my eyes as tired and jaded as I feel?

  “Do you happen to have a message from the Colonel, sir?” The boy cleared his throat. “Something in writing?”

  And here we bloody go. Kurt withheld the sigh, then twisted his whole body into a sneer. But I can’t really blame him.

  “In writing, son? I assume you’re unaware then that Colonel Gottfried had his writing hand blown clean off in the battle of Vosage?”

  “I…no, sir, I wasn’t aware…”

  “Then no doubt you’re also unaware the colonel routinely sends messengers for all his official requests and reports?”

  “Understood, sir, it’s just that, without any official documentation…”

  “I’ve been serving Colonel G
ottfried, in war, for a decade. And not once, not once, has one of the Ministry’s thumb-sucking infants ever questioned my getting orders. You looking to be the first?”

  None of this was exactly true, strictly speaking, but the boy turned a bright shade of red. He snatched a folder from the ponderous stack, and laid it flat on the counter.

  “New orders for Colonel Gottfried. Very sorry, sir.” He seized a wax stamp simmering over a small candle, dabbed the folder and crushed it with an official seal. “Who shall I say received it?”

  Kurt stared at the folder and nearly forgot his practiced rage. Like every other set of ‘new orders’ for the past year, he’d expected an otherwise blank page that said ‘see previous orders.’ But this folder was too thick. It actually had something inside.

  “What? Oh. That’s Lieutenant Val Clause.”

  “Lieutenant Val Clause, very good, sir.”

  ‘Val’ just meant ‘House’ in Old Keevish, and so ‘Val Clause’ meant literally ‘of House Clause’, and denoted nobility.

  Kurt was, in point of fact, not of House Clause. Indeed he was so common born he had no last name at all, or if he did it would just be his occupation. He used this particular title because the real Lieutenant Clause had died quietly of consumption and looked a little like Kurt. And anyway, Kurt liked it. He figured since Colonel Gottfried was also dead, at least the lieutenant was in fine company.

  He tapped his fingers loudly on the counter as he considered, mind already drifting far away. If the Ministry is assigning Colonel Gottfried new orders, then it means they still don’t know he’s dead. Good. Very good. Probably.

  But then it also meant the Ministry had no idea about the state of affairs in their Eastern army. It meant the Ministry, and therefore the burgeoning new Republic, was at least as ignorant as Kurt always feared, and that no one had any intention of doing anything about it.

  God in heaven how long can I possibly keep this bloody mess afloat? Will they officially disband us? Will they ever actually pay us anything for the last year and a half of service?

  “You can see the men over there for logistics, sir.”

  Kurt nodded without thinking and reached for the folder. Then he noticed Torsten, who stood near-by, had uncrossed his arms.

  “Sorry, logistics?” Kurt blinked. “You mean they’re giving us supplies? What does it say?”

  The boy flipped over the folder and furrowed his brow. He looked up, earnest face the picture of innocence.

  “Not sure, sir. It just says ‘F and S’?”

  Torsten re-crossed his arms. “Means fucking shit,” he said, and some of the closer men of the 2nd laughed.

  Kurt sighed, and took the folder.

  “It means forage and scavenge,” he corrected absently, then glanced at the boy and saw no sign of understanding. “We’re to provide for ourselves.”

  “Oh.” The Ministry’s representative glanced around in embarrassment at the men. “Well, good luck in any case, sir.”

  Kurt had already turned to leave. He didn’t open the folder because he preferred to read ‘orders’ in solitude, therefore buying himself time to make up whatever nonsense he wished. Torsten fell in beside him as the cavalrymen formed their protective marching circle. He knew better by now than to ask.

  “Well, it’s a license to take what we want, at least.”

  Kurt nodded, thinking we already do. He felt his strides increasing and deliberately slowed so his guards could match pace. You’re too distracted, he cautioned himself. The camp is still filled with desperate men who might kill anyone even close to an officer. This is exactly how you get yourself murdered.

  He changed his mind and took the safest rather than the shortest route, avoiding the newest and therefore poorest areas of the camp. Even so he felt swarmed by leaderless, angry soldiers. Even so he was forced to step over men lying prone in the pathways through the tents, and see children with swollen bellies. He saw some few wore the ‘Hungry Grin’ now, their lips and cheeks puffed so much from starvation you couldn’t tell whether they smiled or cried.

  All such wretches were the abandoned spawnings of camp whores and soldiers, or possibly barbarian slave-girls and soldiers. Kurt did his best not to trample them, though by now he’d grown mostly immune to their suffering. To a career soldier like him, suffering civilians were like typhus, or flux, whippings or executions—terrible, but expected. His guards kept close and watched for pickpockets.

  Soon enough he reached the well-built palisade that signaled the veteran’s section of the camp. Men guarded the closed gate here, and they ushered Kurt and his men through with spears and loaded muskets, but even still had to push back a small crowd of beggars to get them closed.

  “God damn animals. Welcome back, Sarge.”

  Kurt saluted and walked on. He had enemies in the veteran’s quarters, too, but his concern vanished. Republican or Imperialist, native Keev or foreign-born, the men here were proper soldiers. Many had served with Kurt for a decade or more as peers or subordinates, and he’d watched them turn from boys to killers. Most respected him, even if they feared, or maybe hated him. In any case they followed the rules.

  He clapped his tent-guard on the shoulder in dismissal, then sat at his desk and lit his second-last candle before opening Colonel Gottfried’s orders. As he worked at the crisp paper he felt the smallest tingle of excitement racing up his spine. If there were actually new orders, then perhaps there was hope…

  East Keevish Army. Red Division. Colonel Philip Carl Gottfried. Request for Action.

  Kurt clenched his jaw at the words ‘Red Division’. His very first post had been in First Division as a boy—the only man still in East Army who could make that claim—and he had since been part of every division scrounged and mashed together from the old, all the way from the first to the twenty-first. In all that time, and indeed for the last five hundred years, Keevish armies had used numbers. Now, suddenly, the ‘republic’ decided to use colors. They had also assigned all twenty-one divisions their own color, despite the fact only two were left with standards, and therefore only two actually existed.

  Kurt sighed and skipped over the rest of the new preamble—all bureaucratic nonsense describing ‘rightful authority’ and ‘people’s government’. He fortified himself with a swig of cheap brandy.

  With all due haste, and with all available men and supplies, East Army Red Division is to march North-East into tribal territory, where it will facilitate, by all means necessary, the recovery of a Ms. Clara Lehmann, and return her to Keevish borders. Known location is barbarian fort-town of Magdalen. End Message.

  Kurt stared at the words, re-reading them over and over until it sounded to his mind like a language not his own, then he filled his glass to the brim.

  Nine months. His chest spasmed with a laugh or maybe a sob that nearly choked him while he drank. Nine months without orders, more without pay, and they give me this?

  He swallowed a mouthful and took a moment to hate himself. For a tiny, ridiculous moment, he’d allowed himself to think the orders might be meaningful. He’d thought perhaps, perhaps, the Emperor had begun to re-establish order—to pick up the pieces of this mangled and miserable excuse of a government of rich old men with only their own lands and wealth in mind. Maybe they’ll want to renew the war, he’d allowed himself to think, maybe they’ll supply us and tell us to start building roads, and defenses, and clearing out the trees and savage tribes and bringing Keevish civilization to this dark, ignorant world.

  But no. Some rich merchant or nobleman lost his daughter, most likely in a barbarian raid, and now men who hadn’t been paid in a year were being told to risk their lives to retrieve her.

  Kurt swallowed the rest of his cup, then slid it away and drank straight from the bottle.

  What do I do? His hands shook. God in heaven, what the hell do I do?

  He grit his teeth and squeezed the bottle, wishing for a moment it would break, that the pieces would dig their shards into his hands, into
his blood, into his soul.

  I’m not a colonel, for God’s sake. I’m not even Kurt Val Clause. I’m Private Kurt. I’m Kurt from the 1st who got lucky a hundred times just to be alive, and what the hell am I still doing here, or in charge?

  He took another, long drink, and swallowed.

  Why in God’s name am I even holding onto all this? The officers are gone, all running scared back to their lands and castles. Why does it all fall to me?

  He breathed and hated the weakness, because he knew the answer—because he didn’t have lands and castles. Because this was all he had, all he’d ever have. This was it. This was home. And what a bloody miserable sorry excuse for a home it is. He took another drink.

  So what the hell should he do? Serve the emperor? He scoffed and nearly choked. The republic? What does that even mean?

  Five seconds, that’s all you get!

  Then he was thirteen again and on his first battlefield, standing at attention while a soon-dead captain shouted in his face.

  Five seconds for self-pity and thumb-sucking and fear, little boys! Then you’re men, and you fight like men, and you march. Go ahead and count.

  One.

  Kurt closed his eyes. He tipped back the bottle, letting the feeling swallow him like the roar of cannon-fire, until the rest of the world dulled and silenced into nothingness.

  Two.

  He counted slow as he drank mouthfuls of fire, letting it coat and burn him like poison, the only true friend a soldier really had.

  No. He flexed his shaking hand. Enough. You’re not a little boy anymore.

  He forced himself to stop counting, stop trembling. He breathed out the anger, the helplessness, the sight of starving children and dying men and savage wildmen and miserable soldiers, all screaming for his blood. He flexed his hands again and again and waited until the shaking stopped, then neatly folded the letter.

  I’m not a boy, not a Private, not even a Sergeant. Not anymore. Now I’m Captain Kurt bloody Val Clause. And maybe Colonel.

  And frankly there wasn’t one damn officer left to say otherwise. Since the Republic and the flight or death of every nobleman, he was the oldest, highest ranking man in the East, and he had been for a year. But be honest, even before that, you were more. You were always more.