Hope's End: A Powder Mage Short Story Read Online Free

hide from Adran soldiers.
    A desert owl hooted somewhere nearby.
    She led her company across several small gullies and then into a ditch that went right up to the base of the fortress wall. She had been told the ditch was a runoff from the fortress wells, a place where the Gurlish bathhouses empties into the desert.
    They hadn’t mentioned that it also carried away human waste.
    One man stopped to retch loudly from the smell, causing the whole company to squat down in the squalor in fear of an alarm. Atop the wall, torches outlined the shape of Gurlish guardsmen. None of them called the alarm and in a low whisper, Verundish ordered her company forward.
    They reached the base of the wall and settled down to wait. Verundish unbuttoned the front of her uniform to get comfortable. No one out here would write her up for lack of discipline.
    She guessed they had about fifteen minutes until it started.
    It wasn’t long until Verundish heard one of her men squirming up the line toward her. She squinted into the blackness of the night, trying to determine who it was.
    “Sir,” he whispered, putting his face near hers. The scent of onions on his breath and the sound of his voice told her that it was Grenatio, a soldier who had been given the option of the Hope’s End or a firing squad after stealing from a local family.
    “What?”
    “Sir, when you said that we wait for the thunder...?”
    “The artillery.”
    “Oh.” There was a pause. “That makes sense.” Grenatio wasn’t the brightest, it seemed. “Sir?”
    Verundish suppressed a sigh. “Yes?”
    “I’m afraid.”
    “That’s natural.”
    “Will it go away?”
    “It will.” When a Privileged scours your bones clean with sorcerous fire.
    There were a few minutes of silence, and Verundish looked up at the top of the wall. Still no alarm. That was a good sign.
    “When will it start, sir?”
    “Soon.”
    “How soon?”
    Bloody pit... “Any minute. Get to your position.”
    The soldier moved his way back down the line, making enough noise to wake Adran soldiers back in their camp.
    And still there was no alarm.
    Verundish looked up at the black stone of the fortress walls and wondered if they would really be able to create a breach. Those walls were ten feet thick, reinforced by Privileged sorcery hundreds of years old. The Adran cannon had been firing on them for months without making so much as a crack.
    The Adran Privileged said they could break the walls tonight. What would happen if they did not fall?
    She heard a low whistle and had turned to shush her men when the first cannonball slammed into the side of the fortress wall above them. The impact made her stumble and she caught herself with one hand against the side of the gully.
    It had begun.
    Cannonballs and artillery shells rocked the fortress and shook the ground, causing the walls of the gully in which the Hope’s End crouched to shiver and slide.
    The physical bombardment was soon joined by the crash of sorcery. Fire lit the night sky, and slivers of ice the size of a carriage blasted into the wall, weakening it further with alternating heat and freezing cold.
    Verundish shielded her face behind the lapel of her jacket against pieces of rock, ice, and iron that ricocheted into their hiding spot.
    Gurlish screams told her that the enemy had sounded the alarm. Men rushed about on top of the wall, waving torches and yelling above the cacophony. One of them leaned over and tossed a torch over the wall, watching it fall to the ground below. It landed not far from the gulley that held the Hope’s End.
    The Gurlish were trying to discover where the attack would come from.
    Verundish knew it wouldn’t take them long to figure it out. When they did, a few dozen musketmen would be able to pick off Verundish’s men with little effort.
    She prayed for the wall to fall.
    She looked back on her men. One of them raised his musket and pointed it toward the men on the wall.
    “Down, fool,” she hissed.
    The