Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 024

The first mistake had been misreading the environment.

Standing on the second floor of that building, looking out at the moonlit plain, Soren had understood something he hadn't known before. Once the fog lifted, the tree line was clearly visible from the town. Every movement the column had made on its approach, every crouching silhouette and whispered order, had been readable from the windows of Tullane Township the entire time. The Ivory Army hadn't opened fire immediately because they hadn't needed to. They'd been waiting for the column to step deeper into the kill zone before closing it.

The second mistake had been overestimating the column's discipline.

Nearly half the men were wounded. They'd been marching for hours without food. The promise of a warm fire, a meal, and a place to lie down had been enough to override every instinct that should have been telling them to slow down and think. A tired army walking toward what it believed was friendly territory wasn't going to stop and take stock of the situation. He'd known that and hadn't found a way to use it.

The third problem had been the reinforcement column, and that one he hadn't seen coming at all.

A hundred-plus soldiers arriving from the forest behind them wasn't a tail. Nobody follows a column of thirty combat-capable men across open ground and waits for the right moment. That force had found the battlefield by following the signs left behind, footprints, discarded equipment, the dead, and had moved to cut off the retreat. It had been a clean trap, and the column had walked into it from both ends at once.

The conclusion Soren had arrived at was straightforward. If he wanted to complete the mission objectives, the town had to be taken before nightfall. And taking the town required more force than the column currently represented. There was another option, turning around and heading back, but that would mean accepting whatever minimal reward the Career Instance offered for partial completion, and he wasn't willing to do that yet.

He looked down at the body of the French soldier on the ground, and the idea that had been forming in the back of his mind sharpened into something workable.

Caleb arrived with his group a few minutes later, moving through the thinning fog with the same expression of relieved surprise he always wore when he found survivors.

"Lieutenant Caleb, you're alive," Thomas said.

"Evidently," Caleb began, settling into the familiar rhythm of the exchange.

Soren cut across it. "Sir, Lieutenant Lloyd is dead. I also managed to question one of the French soldiers before he died, and what he told me isn't good."

Caleb stopped. "What do you mean?"

"Tullane Township was retaken several days ago. The entire garrison was wiped out. Right now there are over a hundred Ivory Army soldiers inside that town, waiting for us to walk in."

The silence that followed was the kind that comes when a group of people all have the same thought at the same time and none of them want to be the first to say it out loud.

"That's not possible," Fisher said.

"I'd prefer it weren't true," Soren said, keeping his voice level. "But think about it. That unit we just fought, where did they come from? There's nothing out here except Tullane Township. They came from the town, which means the town isn't ours anymore."

Caleb's expression cycled through several things before settling on something grim. "You're saying they marched out from Tullane Township specifically to intercept us."

"That's what it looks like."

Whether it was actually true didn't matter. What mattered was that it was plausible, and Caleb was already believing it. Soren watched the calculation happen behind the lieutenant's eyes.

"Those damn French soldiers," Caleb muttered, and Soren could see the retreat forming in his thinking.

He moved before it could solidify. "Sir, the mission isn't over. We can still garrison the town. We just need reinforcements."

Fisher stared at him. "You want to attack Tullane Township with this many people?"

"Not with what we have now. That's why we send two men back to report to the General. He needs to know the town has been retaken. Given how much strategic value he placed on holding it, he'll move quickly." Soren looked at Caleb directly. "You know I'm right. He didn't send us here because this position was unimportant."

Caleb was quiet for a moment. "The town does sit on a critical supply route. The General was very clear about that." He rubbed the back of his neck. "But shouldn't we fall back to a safer position in the meantime? At least until the reinforcements arrive?"

"Is there a safe position on the Ironfront?" Soren said.

Nobody answered. The question didn't really have one.

Caleb looked at him for a long moment. "You said you had a plan."

"I do."

Soren pointed to the body on the ground, and specifically to the uniform it was wearing.

"It starts with changing clothes."

________________________________________

Two hours later, a ragged column of what appeared to be Ivory Army soldiers was making its way slowly across the plain toward Tullane Township, some of them leaning on each other, moving with the shuffling exhaustion of men returning from a hard engagement.

"Does anyone have a smaller belt? Mine keeps slipping."

"This coat smells like something died in it. I'm not convinced it was an animal."

"Anyone speak French? Teach me something. Preferably an insult."

"I'm just saying, I don't think this is going to work."

The complaints moved through the column in a low, continuous murmur. These were Soren's men, every one of them wearing stripped French uniforms over their own, the dead soldiers' coats and caps doing their best to pass as the real thing at a distance. It had taken a combination of patient argument and outright flattery to bring Caleb around, but the lieutenant's appetite for distinction had done most of the work. Once Soren had framed it as an opportunity rather than a gamble, Caleb had been easier to move than expected.

"I studied some French before the war," Caleb was saying, mostly to himself, picking at the collar of his borrowed coat with one fingernail. "Basic phrases. Enough to manage a short exchange, I think." His eyes kept moving to the edges of the road. "As long as no one asks anything complicated."

Soren was only half listening. He was focused on the weapon in his hands, turning it over, checking the mechanism with the careful attention of someone who had been told it had a problem. The Chauchat M1915, a French light machine g*n, 8mm, with a distinctive half-moon magazine that curved down from the receiver. It was automatic, which was what he needed. His G98 Mauser rifle was still slung across his back, because Thomas had mentioned the Chauchat's reputation for jamming at the worst possible moments, and Soren believed in backup plans.

"Cigarette?" Fisher appeared beside him, holding one out.

"I'm good, thanks." Soren waved it off. He didn't smoke, though he wasn't entirely sure whether Elias Snyder had. He kept the answer vague enough to cover both possibilities.

Fisher lit his own and took a long pull, exhaling slowly. "You're different today, Snyder. I noticed it earlier."

"Different how?"

"You barely talked before. Ate by yourself. Kept to yourself." Fisher considered the coal of his cigarette. "Today you seem like a completely different person. It's strange. Not bad strange, just strange."

"Snyder's a natural soldier," Thomas said from just behind them, with the easy certainty of someone who had recently been saved by the person he was describing. "I never knew he could shoot like that. And the way he talked to the lieutenant back there..." He trailed off, searching for the right word.

"He sounded more like the officer than the lieutenant did," Hoffman said.

"Keep your voice down," Soren said, with a glance toward the front of the column where Caleb was walking. "I'd rather not give him something else to think about right now."

Hoffman had the grace to look slightly sheepish.

Fisher was still watching Soren with that evaluating expression. "So what happened? You just... changed?"

Soren was quiet for a moment, watching the dark outline of Tullane Township grow slowly larger against the night sky.

"People change," he said finally. "Sometimes it happens all at once. Today was my day, I suppose."