“Your duty to His Grace is to obey,” Razzan said, almost before his master had finished speaking.
“My pardon. I mean no offense, but my duty is not to His Grace the Prince of Khandar. Rather, it is to His Majesty the King of Vordan, to whom I have sworn my sacred oath. He has directed me to secure the Vermillion Throne, and I intend to do so or perish in the attempt.”
There was a long silence. The prince muttered something that sounded like an insult. Razzan, perhaps remembering that Janus understood well enough without the translation, rendered it after only a slight hesitation.
“You are a most impudent man, His Grace says. He promises that his friend and cousin the king will hear of your conduct.”
“I have no doubt of that,” Janus said.
Through the Last Duke, if nothing else. He’d seen Miss Alhundt around the camp a few times since the battle, but he’d avoided speaking to her. So far she hadn’t pressed the issue. He wondered if he had justified an entry in the reports she sent home.
“His Grace will consider what you have said,” Razzan said. “You are dismissed.”
“Thank you,” Janus said. “The last of the regiment crosses by this evening.”
The two Vordanai bowed and retreated from the royal presence. The Chosen of Heaven did not look pleased in the least.
“He’ll consider what you have said?” Marcus repeated, once they were outside. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’ll cross,” Janus said, “but he didn’t want to say it, because he’d lose face. The last of the baggage train is over?”
“It should be by now,” Marcus said, glancing at the reddening sun. “I’ll speak to Fitz.”
“Good. Then get the Fourth moving. Save space on the boats for the prince and his retinue when they decide to turn up.”
“What if they don’t?”
Janus didn’t bother to answer that.
• • •
The prince turned up, of course. Janus embarked with the second-to-last boatload, and Marcus with the very last. He settled in for the trip among the stacked cargo at the front of the barge. It was well after sundown, and the colors were beginning to fade from the western sky. Ahead, a few stars were already winking. Fortunately the crossing was not hazardous, even in the dark—the broad, flat Tsel was as hospitable a river as could be imagined.
The prince’s servants had thrown up a silk curtain around him, cordoning off their lord and his noble attendants from the rest of those on the barge. The boat was only half full in any case, and the Colonials seemed inclined to give the Khandarai a wide berth. They accorded Marcus the same privilege. In the days before the Redemption, the men would have thought nothing about coming over to him to share the latest city gossip or grouse about the duty rosters. Now everyone knew he’d been spending time with the new colonel, and apparently Janus’ exalted status was contagious.
He was a little relieved, therefore, to hear the sound of boots on the deck behind him. The greeting froze in his throat when he turned to find Miss Alhundt looking down at him through her spectacles, hands on her hips, wearing a curious little half smile.
I want to know where your loyalties lie. Marcus’ eyes darted like a cornered animal, but there was nowhere to run. He stood, instead, and sketched a bow.
“Miss Alhundt.”
“Captain.” Her smile widened slightly. “I feel like you’ve been hiding from me.”
“Duties, I’m afraid. Colonel Vhalnich keeps me busy.”
“I imagine.” She gestured at the crate Marcus had been using as a bench. “Do you mind if I sit?”
Yes. “Not at all.”
She placed herself delicately on one corner, and after some hesitation Marcus resumed his own seat. Together, they stared for a few moments at the black water of the Tsel, smooth as glass except for the fading scars torn by the other barges. The torches and lanterns of the new camp were tiny specks of light on the distant bank, winking like fireflies.
Miss Alhundt broke the silence. “I heard the colonel had a disagreement with the prince.”
“I’m not really in a position to comment,” Marcus said.
“No,” Miss Alhundt said. “No, I suppose not.”
There was something odd in her tone, as though the heart had gone out of her questioning. He waited, expecting another attempt, but when he risked a look at her face she was just staring at the water.
It was a pretty face, he noted absently. Soft and round, with a small nose and wide brown eyes. The spectacles and severe hairstyle lent her an air of formality, but it felt like a borrowed thing. A mask. He cleared his throat.
“Are you all right, Miss Alhundt?”
“He’s really committed now, isn’t he?” she said. “The colonel, I mean.”
“We all are. With the river behind us . . .”
She nodded. “You don’t seem worried.”
He almost repeated the line about not being able to comment, but it felt wrong. This wasn’t a Concordat agent fishing for information, just a young woman looking for reassurance. He forced himself to relax a little.
“The colonel has been right so far.”
“He has.” She sighed. “Captain, can you keep a secret?”
“I like to think so.” Then, a little unfairly, “I didn’t think the Ministry was in the business of sharing secrets.”
She nodded, as though the jibe were no more than her due. “Not that sort of secret. This is . . . one of mine.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Go ahead, then.”
She turned to face him, swinging her legs over the edge of the crate. “It was at the battle on the road. You remember?”
“I’m not likely to forget.”
“I was sitting on my horse, watching the charge come in—it was like watching the sea come in, a wave of screaming faces. And you and your men were out front, such a thin line, and I thought we’d all be pulled under. Just crushed underneath, like a wave lapping over a rock.”
Marcus said nothing. He thought back to the same moment, waiting desperately for the order to fire, this close to yanking Meadow’s head around and applying his spurs.
“I prayed,” she said, in a whisper. “I literally, honestly prayed. I can’t remember the last time I did that. I said, ‘God Almighty, if you get me out of this and take me back to my nice safe desk under the Cobweb, I swear to—to you that I will never leave it again.’”
“I think every man in that line had something similar in mind,” Marcus said. “I know I did.”
She let out a long breath and shook her head. “I asked for this assignment, you know. I was bored. Bored! At my safe little desk in the third sub-basement, where mad priests never came screaming over the ridge to try to roast me alive.” She looked up at him, glasses slightly askew. A strand of mouse brown hair had escaped from her bun and hung over her ear. “Do the Redeemers really eat their prisoners?”
“Only on special occasions,” Marcus said. At the look on her face, he gave a little shrug. “I expect not. They certainly enjoy setting fire to them, but eating them afterward?” He shook his head. “It’s just a rumor. Believe everything you hear in the streets and they’ll have you thinking the Steel Ghost is a wizard who can bend space and time, and that the old priestesses on Monument Hill can speak with the dead.”
She gave a weak chuckle, then lapsed into silence again. The last of the light had faded from the sky, and the barge rowed by torchlight. The constellation of fires on the far bank spread wider as they approached, as though to engulf them. Miss Alhundt’s knee, Marcus noted, had fetched up against his own. He could feel the warmth, even through two layers of fabric, though she didn’t seem to notice.
“I wanted to apologize,” she said.
“For what?”
“For the way I behaved before.” She looked uncomfortable. “I have to write a report—you know that, of course. So when I first met you I thought, ‘Aha, here’s a good source of information.’”
“I gathered that,”
he said.
She winced. “Was I that obvious about it?”
“More or less.”
“This really isn’t my job. I read reports other people write, extract the salient points, and write another report. At first I thought this would be just like that, except I’d have to ask questions instead of reading. But . . .” She paused. “When I saw the barges crossing, it sort of hit me. If we lose—if the colonel makes a mistake—or . . . or anything, we’re all going to die. I’m going to die.” She looked up at Marcus again with a brave smile. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my detachment.”
“We won’t lose.” Marcus wished he felt as confident as he sounded. “The colonel knows what he’s doing.”
“You really admire him, don’t you?”
“Is that going in the report?”
She laughed. “I packed the report away. It doesn’t matter much now, does it? Either he wins, or else I won’t get the chance to send it.”
“Then yes. He’s—you have to talk to him to understand. He’s different. When I was at the War College, I knew plenty of colonels, but no one like Janus.”
“Janus?” She smiled again. “You’re awfully chummy with him.”
Marcus blushed under his beard. “He insists. Usually I can get away with ‘sir,’ though.”
“Better than ‘Count Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran,’ I suppose.” Her eyes glittered in the torchlight. “Well, if he’s Janus, I should be Jen. Can you manage that, Captain?”
“Only if I can be Marcus. ‘Captain’ sounds strange to me, anyway. Old Colonel Warus always called me Marcus, or just ‘Hey, you!’”
She laughed again, and Marcus laughed with her.
“Miss Alhundt . . .”
“Jen,” she admonished.
“Jen.” In the quiet darkness, that felt oddly intimate. “So what are you going to do now?”
“The same thing as everyone else, I suppose. Hope like hell the colonel knows what he’s doing.” She sniffed. “I don’t even know why I’m here, not really. The Cobweb is that kind of place. You hear rumors, but you never know anything.”
“Not so different from the army after all, then.”
“But with us everyone thinks you know. You can see it in the way they look at you.” She glanced up at him again, and he was astonished to see tears in her eyes. “I’m just a clerk, really. It’s my job. I write reports and . . . and that’s all. Just a clerk.”
Without really knowing why, Marcus put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her against his side. She gave a little jerk when he touched her, and her skin pebbled into goose bumps, but she raised no objection. After a moment he felt her head on his shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It’s all right.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “It’s not your fault.”
For the rest of the journey, they didn’t speak. Jen soon fell into a doze. For his part, Marcus looked up at the growing ranks of stars and thought about Vordan, and the home that now existed only as a fading memory.
• • •
The drums started at sunup, in spite of the moans of exhausted men. Those who’d come over on the last relay of boats had gotten only half a night’s sleep, but the drummers were relentless, and bit by bit the encampment came alive. Given that he was one of those who’d been deprived, Marcus found himself sympathetic to the groaners.
“I’m still not happy about the split,” Janus said, when they met in the sodden fields outside the little fishing village. “But it’s the best we can do.”
Marcus nodded. He was taking the Old Colonials with him, and Janus the recruits, rather than splitting by battalion. It made more sense, given the nature of their separate tasks, but administratively it was a headache.
“Figure on four days, at the outside,” the colonel went on. “One to locate the enemy, one to destroy him, and two to return. Can you give me that long?”
“I can certainly try, sir.”
“Good.” His smile again, just a flicker, there and gone. “Good luck, Captain.”
Behind the two officers, the First Colonials formed up. The larger column, just over two-thirds of the men, all the cavalry, and half the guns, headed south with Janus toward the upstream ford. The remaining third turned their steps north, toward Ashe-Katarion and the canal that linked the city with the Tsel.
Marcus drove his troops hard, and they made good time, free at last of the cumbersome need to wait for the baggage train. The wagons were strung out on the road behind them, left to straggle in as best they could. Speed, Janus had agreed, was of the essence. By evening the canal was in sight, a winding ribbon of reflected light that looked more like a natural stream than an artificial construct. In spite of protests from the footsore grumblers, Marcus stretched the march until they’d reached the outskirts of the town that was their objective. Then, finally, they were allowed to rest, flopping down wherever they stood without bothering to set a proper camp.
• • •
Even then, there was no rest for some.
Marcus looked over his troops by torchlight. They were all First Battalion men, picked soldiers, those whom Marcus knew he could rely on when things got dangerous. At their head was Senior Sergeant Jeffery Argot, a grizzled hulk of a man who was among the longest-serving Colonials. He’d been commander of the First Company as long as Marcus had been in Khandar. What he lacked in imagination, he made up for in solidity. He was as completely unflappable as any man Marcus had ever met. The fact that he could wring a man’s neck like a chicken’s didn’t hurt, either.
By rights, it should have been Fitz leading the sortie. Not having the lieutenant there felt strange, like losing a limb. Marcus kept being surprised to find the vast, pockmarked face of Sergeant Argot watching him instead of Fitz’s dark, intelligent eyes. But there was no helping it—six companies of the First Battalion, all the recruits, were away with Janus, and Marcus wouldn’t have felt right leaving their command to anyone else.
Val and Mor were there, too, and Give-Em-Hell and the Preacher, leaving Marcus with only Adrecht and a handful of junior officers. It had seemed like a good idea at the time—if Marcus could not be there in person, it was the next best thing—but looking at the silent, brooding town in the flickering darkness he wondered if he should have been quite so quick to send them all away.
Adrecht will do what he needs to do. He had revived considerably since his brush with the colonel’s displeasure, attending regular drills and showing a renewed interest in command of his battalion. They hadn’t spoken much, but the few words they’d exchanged made it clear they didn’t need to, to Marcus’ vast relief.
Still. I would feel better if Fitz were here. He pushed the thought away—too late for that now—and turned to his picked crew. They numbered only two dozen, which he judged enough for the task at hand.
“I make it just past midnight,” he told them. “That means we’ve got three hours or so before first light. You’ve got that long to get into position. So be quick, and remember that if they hear a gunshot the game’s up. Everyone got that?”
They nodded. He watched their faces and was pleased by what he saw. No fear, just a steady determination. Even a bit of relief, he suspected. These were all Old Colonials, after all. In some ways they were as green as the recruits—marching in line of battle with flags flying and drums beating had been a new experience for all of them, Marcus included—but this sort of nighttime creeping was a familiar exercise.
“Right,” Marcus said. “Good luck.”
The sergeant doused the torch, and the little column set out. They left the road almost at once, heading due east to swing wide around the borders of the little town. Then, if all went according to plan, they would turn north and cut back west when they came close to the canal.
Marcus had made sure to take a good survey of the ground while there was still light, since he didn’t much trust his maps. They’d been drawn by Vordanai cartogr
aphers, working on secondhand sketches and descriptions, and were often woefully out of date as well. The town they were approaching was so small it hadn’t been granted the honor of a label with a Vordanai name, just a colored dot. From the locals they’d interrogated on the approach, Marcus had gathered its Khandarai name was Weltae-en-Tselika, or “Weltae on the little Tsel.”
Seen from above, it was roughly triangular in shape, with the point to the south and one flat side against the canal to the north. The ground rose slightly away from the canal, with a few rocky hillocks looming out of the sodden fields, and it was on one of these that the people of Weltae had constructed their temple. This heavy stone structure formed the point of the triangle. The road ran beside it, cutting through the center of town. The buildings lining the road were mostly clay and thatch houses, with a few wooden structures.
The town’s most important feature was at the canal. The “little Tsel” was unbridged outside of Ashe-Katarion, and in most places deep enough that a man trying to cross would have to swim the turgid water. Here, though, a dip in the ground caused the water to spread, and it was shallow enough to wade. Over the years, the Khandarai had made the crossing easier by tipping any stones they extracted from their fields into the ford, until it was very nearly a causeway.
For an army moving parallel to the Tsel, it was the only crossing short of making the long detour through the city streets. When General Khtoba moved to unify his divided forces, as he was surely doing even now, the three battalions at Westbridge would have no choice but to come down this road. By that time Marcus intended to be standing squarely in their way.
The locals had volunteered information readily enough—Redemption or no, the Auxiliaries were not popular—and Marcus had learned that there was a small garrison at the ford. It was hard to hide an army, even a small one, on this floodplain as flat as a billiard table, and they no doubt had seen the Colonials approaching. What they didn’t know, and what Khtoba would be eager to learn, was his numbers and intentions.
The southern approach to the village would therefore be watched, even by night. The sergeant’s circuitous route would take him as far north as the canal well to the east of the village, however, and hopefully stand a good chance of getting near the garrison undetected.
The Thousand Names Page 27
