by Kate Elliott
There was a name, rarely used, for the creature pulling its net tight around the fields and walled precincts of High Haldia: an army.
An eagle dropped down to their elevation and sheared off toward the southwest. Joss flagged Peddo, and they both banked, and followed the Iron Hall reeve ten mey at least, an unexpected distance. The reeve brought the eagle down on a narrow ridge, the last outthrust of a bank of hills. The River Istri churned below, forced to bend sharply here on its seaward course. A ferry banner marked a crossing point below the stretch of Whitewater, but no one was out on the river or waiting at the shelter. The Istri Walk, that wide road that ran the length of the River Istri from Nessumara to Seven, was entirely deserted; at this time of day it ought to be alive with the flow of traffic. As Joss and Peddo circled in, testing the air currents, the Iron Hall reeve hooded the eagle and trudged to the far end of the ridge to wait.
“The hells!” cried Peddo when he’d landed a safe distance from the other two eagles, and unhitched. Joss beckoned, and together they walked over to the Iron Hall reeve.
“The hells!” said Peddo again, as they came up to a tall, rangy woman with shadowed eyes, a chin scarred and twisted as though it had been broken but healed crooked, and silver streaking her black hair. “What’s going on? How can it be Clan Hall has heard nothing of this?”
The reeve’s expression tightened. A muffled chirp came from the other end of the ridge, her eagle sensing trouble. It was a big, big female, the kind who could cause a lot of damage.
Peddo barreled on. “Why aren’t you reeves doing anything but riding the winds and just cursed watching it all happen?”
She raised a fist. Joss stepped forward before she could slug Peddo.
“I’m Joss, out of Clan Hall. This is Peddo. Mine’s Scar, and his is Jabi. Greetings of the day to you. I don’t mind saying this looks like a rough one.”
She lowered her hand.
“Sorry,” muttered Peddo.
She relaxed infinitesimally. Not that she looked like she remembered how to relax. “I’m Veda, out of Iron Hall. Mine’s Hunter, there. Give her a wide berth. They gave me the duty of calling you Clan Hall reeves off, when you came. So now I’ve done. Best you go back to Toskala and tell the Commander—” Her voice, on that word, came edged with scorn, but Joss wasn’t sure who or what she was aiming at. “—that the council at High Haldia has sworn to hold out against the attack for as long as they can. How long that will be, I couldn’t say. But they’ve dug in. They’re expecting to be besieged. They’re as scared as any folk might be. They’ve heard the stories of villages burned and folk murdered or disappeared. High Haldia is a fine prize for a ruthless thief to grab.”
Peddo opened his mouth, but Joss pressed a hand to Peddo’s elbow to shut him down.
“This is all a shock to me, I’ll tell you,” Joss said, careful to mix geniality and genuine outrage. “Where did all those armed men come from?”
“Where did they come from? Out from under our noses, that’s where! The first cadre came marching down out of Heaven’s Ridge two weeks ago. Then the flood-gates opened.”
“They’d been hiding there and you never spotted them?” demanded Peddo. “That’s a lot of men to hide.”
“Where the hells are you from, boy?” snapped Veda. “Do you know those mountains? That’s a lot of mountain to hide in, all the way from where the Fingers clutch at the northern seas down to the south where the Barrens kiss the Spires. Hundreds of mey, and with caves and crevices and overhangs and box valleys and scarred heights aplenty. There’s a reason they call it the graveyard of runaway slaves. That’s a lot of cursed mountains to hide in! And die in. Not that you and your cursed eagle could likely fly that far!” Her voice rose on the words.
Joss had heard men turn hysterical in just this same way.
“That’s right,” he interjected hastily. “That territory is far too much ground to cover, and impossible to track given all the places a man could hide himself away.”
Given rope, she kept hauling. “We’re shorthanded. We’ve had to concentrate on settled areas. People demand protection. Arkhons demand protection. Councils demand protection. The cursed guilds demand protection. They want the fields patrolled, the roads patrolled, their stinking outhouses patrolled. And then when an attack like this comes, they’re after us for not having spent enough time searching the wilderness for signs of trouble!”
“Neh, neh, don’t think we’re criticizing you. We’re in no better order. Clan Hall is down to three flights, including the retired and fledglings.”
Her wild look eased slightly, although tears had begun to flow. “Three flights,” she muttered. “Not that you have much area to cover.”
“We know what you’re up against. The town of River’s Bend was burned at the beginning of the year. That was just the beginning. We’ve lost control of the upland reaches of Low Haldia. Almost all trade has ceased with the valley of Iliyat. Oh, I could go on, but I won’t. Tell me what’s happened at High Haldia. Who is attacking? What do they want?”
She sucked in air between gritted teeth, then wiped tears from her cheeks. “That’s the question,” she said. The wind whined, here at the height of ridge. Reeves became accustomed to the incessant growl, moan, howl, whine, flutter, and roar of wind, but for some reason the way this wind whistled over and through the rocks grated on Joss’s nerves. His headache was back.
“What’s the question?” said Peddo, looking ready to pop with frustration.
She glared at him, the only target she’d had in days, maybe. “The question we can’t answer. We have captured a couple of stragglers. Did you think we hadn’t done even that much? Some had debt marks and no accounts bundle to prove they bought their freedom under the law. Others were free men, the usual scum. Anyway, those who would talk under pressure spouted nothing but nonsense: any desire may be had in exchange for pledging loyalty to the cause; all the bad things done to them would be avenged. They would babble on so about the gaze that burns and the shadow flung down from the sky. Then would come stories of proving themselves worthy, such cruel and nasty things they claimed to have done as would turn your stomach. I don’t know how much of them were true. As likely understand the barking of dogs as learn anything from their gabble. They have this medallion they wear like an amulet, to protect them from evil, but it’s a flimsy thing, hammered tin. I could fold it with my own hands—” She mimed the action with her hands, front back front back. “—until it snapped in two.”
Joss grunted. “A tin medallion? By any chance, an eight-tanged starburst?”
“That’s right! You’ve come across it as well.”
“Only in the ruins of burned villages. What of the other men, the ones who wouldn’t talk under pressure?”
“They didn’t talk, did they? Tough bastards, I’ll give them that. They died, rather than talk.”
DROPPING DOWN OVER Toskala, skimming over the rooftops, Joss saw the truth that could no longer be ignored. Within the five quarters of Toskala, in every neighborhood, every courtyard and spare arm’s span of space in and around the warehouses or along back alleys was woven with a network of ropes over which were slung heavy canvas roofs and walls to build makeshift shelters. The neighborhood watches patrolled a tight web, working the streets and alleys to stop problems before they spread and to control garbage and pick up night soil. There were a lot of scared people here, torn out of their homes.
The reeves were helpless against this threat.
Everyone knew it. That’s why they were all building walls and running to walls. It was the only thing left to hide behind.
“WE CAN SEE now that River’s Bend was simply the opening attack in a careful strategy,” said the commander. “They’re encircling us.”
Like all reeve halls, Clan Hall’s architecture included a small amphitheater. In this case, the curved tiers were cut from the rock at the edge of the promontory, and offered a view beyond the proscenium to the river flowing past below, the wide Istri Wa
lk on the far shore, and fields and orchards opening out to the horizon. The commander was seated on a chair, on the proscenium. Reeves sat in the lower tiers; in a former time, they would have filled the tiers, but not now. Joss sat in the front row with the other three legates who remained. Peddo had slipped in beside him. The rest of Clan Hall’s reeves who could be spared from patrol or who weren’t fit for patrol held the other seats. Their tension was a presence of itself, a huge beast, waiting to rip them apart. Fear is its own challenge, the first battle that must be won. And after that, the war on despair.
Naturally, on top of all that, he had a pounding headache.
“In the eleven months since the burning of River’s Bend, we can see the pattern emerging.”
At the base of the curve of seats lay a huge rectangular low-sided box in which was molded a large map of the Hundred as seen with an eagle’s sight, from the air. Normally covered, it sat glittering in the sun with canvas rolled up to either side. With a half-length field staff, her baton, the commander pointed here, and there, showing the growth of the rot as it crept out over the land.
“At first I thought our situation was the same as that in Herelia, fifteen years ago, when isolated villages began throwing out any reeves who came to stand at their assizes. There were targeted attacks to disrupt trade and disturb normal patterns of interaction between settlements. Both Copper Hall and Gold Hall had to withdraw their reeves from one area after another when it became clear that if they continued to interfere, then hamlets would be razed and innocent folk murdered. Well. They’re moving more quickly now. And it seems we now know why.”
She looked up, noting first Joss and then Peddo in her audience. “They have more forces at hand than they did fifteen years ago. That is how they’ve spread so quickly this past year. That is how they’ve increased their attacks on reeves such that we’ve had to combine patrols, send out two reeves as a unit, which limits how much territory we can cover. It limits the ability of the halls to communicate with each other, since we are each one of us so overwhelmed by local problems. These are not random attacks, a spasm of angry young men casting stones where they may. These attacks are carried out with a clear understanding of the limitations of eagles and the reeves. They hide in deep cover during the day and move, or attack, at night. The only calm periods come at the days of the Lamp Moon, when certain eagles are able and willing to patrol even at night if the skies are clear. Yet now, with the new year coming and the rainy season bound hard upon it, the cloud cover will leave us helpless always at night, even when the moon is at his brightest.”
Like the wide Istri, she poured on relentlessly. With one metal-capped tip of her staff, she indicated the location of each of the six halls.
“Copper Hall’s territory has shrunk. Gold Hall has confined its patrols to the Arro Mountains and the central Zosteria Plain. As we speak, Iron Hall contends with a siege on High Haldia, and the northern reaches of Haldia are in chaos. The northern plateaus remain silent, difficult to patrol in the best of years and as good as closed to us now. Herelia and Vess and the northern coast, as we know, we lost years ago. Of the southern halls, Bronze Hall and Horn Hall remain in communication. We trade a messenger with Bronze Hall twice a month. Mar has suffered no incursions, but in the last four months they’ve dealt with some troublesome elements pushing down out of the Beacons. Marshal Dessara at Horn Hall sends a messenger at the first and the middle of the month, always the same report: No change in our circumstances; we can spare no legate or reeves for Clan Hall at this time. I admit, however, that their latest messenger is four days overdue. As for Argent Hall, Legate Garrard departed eleven months ago, at the advent of the Whisper Rains. At first we received regular messages from him regarding his concerns about the health of Marshal Alyon and the difficulties besetting Argent Hall and the southern roads, but we’ve heard nothing in six months. The one reeve I sent south to the Olo’o Sea did not return. I’ve not had the luxury to send another, under similar risk.”
She raised her head and studied the faces of her reeves, one by one. Joss nodded, to acknowledge her, but she merely touched on him and moved on along the row of legates, the experienced reeves, the cripples and retirees and fledglings. Clan Hall had a higher percentage than other halls of reeves who could no longer fly, men and women who transferred in to help with the recordkeeping, mapmaking, and other administrative chores with which Clan Hall was burdened. Gods! And there sat that rancid spot of pus, the Snake, whispering in Sadit’s shapely ear. Sadit caught Joss looking, and flushed, and grimaced with anger, and looked away, which movement caused the Snake to note her action and glance Joss’s way. With a smirk, the Snake rudely flicked a finger.
Joss’s whole body went rigid, ready to smash that slithering sack of shit’s nose down into his ass . . . and then he thought of the reeve—Veda—who had lashed out at Peddo only because she had no one else to be angry with. Volias was a snake, all right, and Joss had seen him at his poisonous worst, but this situation was not Volias’s fault. He rubbed his head, but the pain did not go away. It was always worst in the season of Furnace Sky, in the last month before the rains brought relief.
The commander smacked her staff on stone. The crack resonated in his skull, making him wince. Her voice was sharp, cold, and flat. “They’re tightening the net, and drawing it closed around us. And we don’t even know who they are, or what they want.”
She stared for a long time at the map of the Hundred. It was a crude thing, really, once you had flown over the land with all its glorious variation, viewed it aloft from the vantage of the eagle: a prize beyond any other. Once chosen as a reeve, you were, in a way, a slave to the halls. No reeve could turn away from the eagles. The eagles did not allow it.
Yet for all that, he craved no other life. Not even the quiet routine of the Haya fish ponds.
“So,” the commander finished. “What do we do now?”
Joss stood immediately. A man snickered; certainly that was Volias, but he refused to notice him. “I have said for months that we need to investigate the situation at Argent Hall.”
“So you have,” said the commander in her kindest and thus most dangerous voice. “That’s why I sent Evo south. Evo never returned, and is presumed lost, and dead.”
Joss sat heavily. The Snake coughed like a man trying not to vomit. Others whispered, scratched their heads, shuffled their feet on stone; someone was crying softly. The river rushed on. The late-afternoon sun dragged shadows across them, a mercy in this heat.
“But.” The commander’s voice cut through their restlessness, their uncertainty. “The siege of High Haldia has changed all this. All my accounting must alter. If High Haldia falls, and in the face of such numbers I cannot imagine it will survive for long, then everything changes. The nature of what we are up against changes. The power that works against us has chosen to move out into the open. We are helpless to act as we have done. We reeves must find another way, or we will be destroyed, for that is surely their plan. The Guardians are dead. And the reeve halls, indeed the very sanctity of the laws and the Hundred, are under attack.”
Such a beautiful, hot, clear day, to hear such bitter words.
“I’ve selected three reeves to fly south, to investigate the situation at Horn Hall and at Argent Hall. Joss.”
“Of course,” muttered some wit in the audience. “They always choose him.”
“Peddo. And Volias.”
“The hells!” cried the Snake.
Peddo scratched his chin thoughtfully, then patted Joss’s knee in a brotherly fashion. “This doesn’t sound good,” he said in a low voice.
But Joss smiled. His headache had vanished, and for the first time in years, he felt an upsurge of recklessness overwhelm the long slide of despair. Exhilaration tugged at his heart as it had not done since the old days.
“I’m ready to go,” he said.
The commander nodded. She’d known that was what he would say.
20
They took flight
at dawn from the prow of Toskala. Folk were already at work along the outer wall and earthworks, strengthening the defenses. There were reeves on patrol out in the countryside where villages and estates lay vulnerable to attack. For a person with keen eyesight, they appeared as specks circling in the sky.
People were moving on the roads and paths, headed out to their fields or pulling out carts laden with night soil. The road commonly called the Flats, which struck south into the lush farmlands of the Istrian Plain, was crowded. But traffic thinned out where the wide road known as the ridgeward Istri Walk pushed into the north alongside the great river. When the three reeves banked to head downstream along the great river for the first part of the journey, Joss noted how quickly traffic turned sparse on the seaward Istri Walk as well.
No one wanted to be far from the safety of the walls.
At length they gained enough height that they were ready to turn more or less due south onto the plain, the eagles gliding and losing altitude until they found another thermal radiating up from the ground as the earth warmed under the morning sun. Fields, hamlets, and villages dotted the plain. This time of year, stubble dried to yellow on harvested fields, in places already mulched and turned into the earth. Here and there dense white smoke rose up from fields being burned clean in preparation for the coming new year’s rains. Farmers repaired irrigation ditches, mended fences, and restored the embankments that protected against flooding. Artisans gathered around smoking kilns or arranged bricks in ranks to dry in the sun. Everywhere folk worked on fortifications, digging out and raising earthworks or fragile brick walls around the ten and thousand villages of Istria that had for as long as anyone remembered lived in relative peace.
