Not likely he'd be able to gather enough units for that many, but not a bad idea to sow the idea that their army could, if necessary.
The woman gave a small shrug, accepting the figures. "Two days ago. Left that way." Pointing downcurrent. "But only pretended to. Once they thought they were out of sight, they swung around toward the deeper swamp.” She swung her arm around to show the way.
Tiepool thanked her, but she was already gone, back into the house. And the rest of the village as well? Tiepool had the sudden sense that the stilt houses contained an endless maze of hidden spaces within them. A silent labyrinth. If there were rebels hiding within, they were as silent as the current.
Late in the day, the sound of an ax guided them to a hillock where Commander Relgan had camped his soldiers. Many low, flat boats surrounded the hillock, each with a pair of tents pitched on its deck. Tiepool’s boat weaved between the tents and came abreast of the makeshift dock. Tiepool hopped out.
Relgan strode to the edge of the hillock to meet him. “You the one they sent to clear this up?” He was a stocky man, and mosquito bites had turned his face above his beard into a blotchy pattern of red and white. Relgan had fully taken to the good luck plants himself, with the white flowerlets woven into his beard, just as the boat captain had mentioned, and the thick stem of another moving between his lips as he spoke. “Where are they? How do these mud-lovers always know we’re coming?”
“No luck again, I take it?” The irony of the name of the plants they chewed. Not that Relgan looked likely to appreciate it if Tiepool mentioned that fact. His glower was answer enough.
“Well, I didn’t come with answers, only to ask the questions, tease out the source.”
Relgan lifted his eyes to the cloudy skies as if to ask for release from fools—Tiepool himself or their mutual superiors?—then said, “Why here, then? There’s no one out here to ask. Let’s get back to the base.”
Tiepool assumed he meant in the morning, but Relgan barked out a series of orders. Were they going to decamp entirely simply on his account? Tiepool couldn’t believe it, except it was happening. In the end, it wasn’t the entire three hundred. Relgan left a lieutenant in charge of most and took much of his command along with a small force of soldiers.
Back into the boat once more. How big would the mosquitoes grow as night fell? And how aggressive?
On the way, Tiepool plied Relgan for the details of what they’d been looking for and what they found.
“Rebels, weapons, always the same things we look for. Heard they were gathered in that village, feinted one way, then another, finally swept in. Nothing.”
“Nothing? Just empty buildings, or what? Signs that they’d been there?”
Relgan growled. “Buildings. The usual few older folks hanging on, saying no one had been there in ages. Most of the buildings covered with vines and great big leaves.”
Sounded like bad intelligence, then. An old gathering place, maybe, if the vines grew fast enough for that. This war wasn't so old as that. Tiepool stared into the thick vegetation along their route. In the dusk, it turned into a writhing mass that rebelled against the foreign soldiers as much as the people did. “Nothing else in the village? Any signs that more people had been there recently?”
Relgan shook his head. “Not really. Some of the hearths felt warm, even in the overgrown houses. But no secret rooms or evidence of other people.”
The main camp was set up much as the field camp had been. Only the hill of dry land was much bigger. Tiepool chose to sleep on one of the floating boats that surrounded the camp, and though he would need the sleep, he took time to set up the boat’s front room to conduct his interviews in the morning.
*
The soldier seated in the boat’s wicker chair squirmed. His hands sought something to hold, to fidget with, finally settling on the frayed edges of wicker on the arm of the chair. Not the first to do so. Too many of these interrogations, and Tiepool would need to request new chairs.
“I never learned to write, sir. I couldn’t have passed a message on.”
Most likely the truth. Tiepool read that fact in the man’s body. The nervous mannerisms were the nerves of being called in by an official from the highlands, not guilt. After a few more questions, Tiepool dismissed him.
“His story checks.” Stenner was one of Relgan’s chief lieutenants, there mostly to observe and to note if anything someone said under interrogation didn’t match with what was known about the person’s activities. Tiepool didn’t answer, only walked to the railing of the deck outside.
The sun burned down through the thinning swamp mists, and Tiepool needed a break from interviews. Seven people ranging from common soldiers to locals hired to keep the camp clean, each grilled about what they knew, where they went, who they knew beyond the camp.
No one waiting at the moment, so he left the boat to wander the camp’s dry land. The rigid lines of tents led to the central command, another tent but far larger. Sleeping tents and command tent all had a puddle of old luck plant leaves just outside the flaps. He doubled back beside the sleeping tents where the cooking fires smoldered in the drizzle. Beyond them were the pens of bleating, miserable animals. Did they long for the highlands as much as the soldiers did? Maybe Relgan ought to command they be given good-luck plants too. The army employed locals to take care of the animals. That would be worth looking into, along with the cleaning staff. Tiepool paused as if to pet the goat that came to the fence and bleated at him. From here the command tent was much too far to overhear anything.
Moving on, he came to the camp garden, a small affair, though he was pleased to see the gardeners had made use of every bit of soil they could. The space spilled out peppers and gourds and foods of every color.
An older local poked his head out from the profuse growth, and for a moment Tiepool remembered all the stories of the plant magic of the region. Had the man used some spell to make the food grow so richly? As soon as he wondered it, he shook his head. No reason to assume this man was a plant mage, and besides, that wasn’t even how the magic was supposed to work. They grew special plants that were themselves the spells, not mere tricks to grow bigger food.
“Hello, hungry?” The gardener swung his arm to take in all the produce, as if offering Tiepool his pick.
And take away the fresh food of one of the soldiers, no doubt. Or of one of the workers. Tiepool shook his head with a smile. “How much can you feed them with this garden?”
The gardener tapped his fingers against the pruning tool he held in his other hand. “I grow a lot, but there are a lot of people to feed, aren't there?” He shrugged. “Most of your food comes from outside. But a little green on everyone's plate each night. That's my job.”
“And you manage that, with such little space?”
A nod. “Most days, as long as there's enough ripe.”
A simple enough man, Tiepool judged. Still he would need to question the man as well, unless he found the leak before then. “Excellent. I look forward to hearing more about your garden. I'll be talking to you more soon.”
Beyond the garden were the makeshift piers where goods from the highlands arrived. Tiepool strode to the end of one and looked out through the mist toward home. He could almost convince himself that a shadow beyond the nearest trees was a glimpse of rising land, a reminder of home. But it was probably nothing more than a wish and a cloud.
Returning to his little boat, Tiepool conducted interrogations well into the afternoon, eating nothing more than a bit of bread and cheese to get him through. The gardener’s offer sounded a lot better by the time he wrapped up for the day. At least he would get a taste at the evening meal.
As they sat down to eat, however, Relgan grabbed Tiepool and pulled him aside. “New tip. I’m telling only those who are coming. Want a first-hand look at how it plays out?”
As if he could say no. Leaving the plate of warm food behind, Tiepool grabbed bread and cold meat and crept out with Relgan and a few others who had a
lready trickled out to meet them. They stood in a knot, eating what food they’d managed to grab and chewing on good luck plants.
The alley between tents was dark, but Tiepool recognized one of the people he’d interrogated that morning, a man in charge of supplies who had brought some of the earlier tips in. The others were all common soldiers.
They slipped into three boats, and the oars whispered out, sped them away in the darkness without disturbing the croaks of countless frogs. The swamp was incredibly alive in the night, not only the frogs but the splash of a large animal sliding into the water here, the swish of branches that writhed without noticeable wind there, the hum of insects everywhere. Tiepool kept expecting something to reach out from the water and grab them, but every crashing sound of an animal in flight went away from their passage.
Was that the answer? The locals noticed the clues of their routes in the noises of animals? Possible, but not a very satisfying conclusion to his interrogations. Even the most attentive locals couldn’t possibly have enough time to hide their weapons before Relgan’s arrivals.
Relgan made no attempt at a roundabout approach this time. The boats sped through the swamp straight to the little hunting camp they’d been told housed a large cache of weapons.
Without even a lantern they swept in and poured from the boat. Tiepool followed a few steps behind, watching the supply man, watching the other soldiers for any hint they knew more than they should. It was a small platform, winding among a dozen or so trees, with a single building in the center and storage nets strung underneath. An ideal place to keep something hidden from the authorities.
No lights answered their invasion. No shouts came from the building when the lead soldiers burst inside.
Relgan called for lights. Tiepool’s back tingled with the knowledge that they were making themselves vulnerable, visible. The swamp beyond the hunting outpost grew far darker. Old blankets lay on the floor. No sign of a hasty flight, just innocent items abandoned or left for a later return.
Tiepool went to the door at the far side and looked out. The light spilled onto a massive map. Tiepool jumped back. What was that doing here? No mere hunting map, that was sure. A battle map? Would they see Relgan’s troops laid out in formation? Some system for arranging pegs or other tokens to show his movements? Tiepool edged back out, followed with his eyes the line of the Cranue River through the hazardous crosshatching of the swamp.
He must have made some noise of surprise. “What do you see?” someone asked. The soldiers came after, shining their lights more clearly out the door.
And the map disappeared.
In its place was only the trunk of a very large tree, its bark hoary with age. If he squinted, he could still see the line in the bark that had looked like the river, the way the grain of the bark had mimicked the crosshatching that showed swampy ground.
“I… no, nothing. A trick of the light.”
What a fool he must seem. Tiepool tried to make up for his mistake by getting right in the work of pulling up the nets under the platforms. They found no weapons, nothing worth their raid. Tiepool himself crawled under some of the platforms, looking for other nets that might have been hidden, or markers that revealed the location of underwater caches. Others climbed the trees and the roof of the building.
All for naught. Relgan called them to return to their boats, cursing the swamp as they returned.
*
Back to the boat and the interrogations. He ran through several of the members of the raid, alternating with some of the local workers and others who had been left behind.
“Where did you grow up?”
“How did you end up on the raid?”
“Why did you choose to work for us, against your own homeland?” An unfair question, since most of the people here supported the soldiers more than the little pockets of rebel fighters, but one that had to be asked.
“What did you see that night?”
“Who do you know from other villages around us?”
“Have you ever dabbled in plant magic?”
He changed the questions, changed the order he asked them, mostly to keep his own mind sharp enough to notice the nuances, the nonverbal reactions. The first soldier had something to hide, but further questions told Tiepool it was merely an extra ration of tobacco he’d hidden away. As if Tiepool would have been sent all this way to ferret out a camp sneak. The camp cleaner he interviewed had nothing to hide. She didn’t love Tiepool’s people, but felt no great connection to the other villages of the delta, either. Her own people had welcomed the foreigners for their own reasons, and she did as they asked her, with pride.
So it went, from one interview to the next. By the time the gardener arrived, Tiepool had to work to keep his questions sharp.
“How long have you grown vegetables?” A simple start to the questions, to give Tiepool another chance to read the man’s demeanor.
“Since childhood, sir.”
“And when did you start growing food for the army?”
A laugh. “Before it was an army. Relgan stumbled across my little garden plot when it was only him and two scouts. No army, but they were half starved. Didn't know a thing about how to eat in the wetlands.”
“Then you joined him as far back as that? Didn't you have any duty to your family and village or anything of the sort?”
“No family, no village.” The man shrugged. “And land that was getting less use by the year. He offered a reason to keep me gardening far longer than I could have on my own.”
All reasonable, plausible responses. And they fit what tidbits he'd picked up about the old man from others. Now for a weed in his garden, a question he wouldn't expect.
“What do you know of plant magic?” He studied the gardener's face and added, “And how long have you practiced it?” A burst of surprise, but the gardener's face quickly regained its calm.
“I? No. I know the good luck plants. But everyone in these lands knows and chews them. Even your people have seen how they aid a person and begun the practice, Relgan above all.”
“You credit chewing good luck plants with the success of your garden?”
“Not at all. But every gardener here knows what plants to sow in the corners and along the rows to make the garden grow better. I imagine even your high country farmers do much the same, though they may not call it magic.” He spread his arms out wide in a shrug that took in all the plants around the camp. “But those deeper, real magics like in the stories? I wouldn't even know where to begin with those.”
No sign of any falsehood in the man's speech, but now Tiepool was curious what the locals said about plant magic. All he knew were the rumors that came up to the hill country. “What do your stories say about that? What is—or was—plant magic here? Who used it and why?”
The gardener turned his floppy hat in his hands for a moment, considering his words. “The stories are so different, you might grow a thousand varieties of plant magi from their stem. Best I can say is they were solitary wonder workers. Out toward the western coast we hear rumors of whole cities of plant spells, where the spell growers work together to defend their cities and build their wealth. Nothing like that here, but wonders…”
He spun the hat again, as if searching for a specific part of the hat. “Wonders you wouldn’t believe. Wonders I don’t believe. Spells that created this delta, plants that drew the hurricanes to destroy invaders, plants that harnessed the crocs, enslaved foreigners, or bound all insects into a web of protection and offense. If the great spell growers, unified, can’t achieve such things, I doubt solitary old swamp magi could. But that’s what’s in the stories.”
When his fingers reached a crease in the brim where the fabric was wearing through, he paused, kneaded the crease as if to push the fibers from either side into the damaged section and heal it. “So what of the stories is true? Messages sent by insect? That’s the kind of thing you’d like to find, right, to explain why you never find weapons or warriors? I don’t know if they c
an do such things, or ever could. I’m not even sure there are any left. All I know is my plants, which need some weeding this afternoon if I’m to feed the army.”
Insects. Tiepool sat back in his chair. It never would have occurred to him, but now that the gardener mentioned it, what was more prevalent in a swamp than insects? Were the spies as small as that, and hovering everywhere?
The idea stayed with him throughout the rest of the interviews. Midges to mark their movements, mosquitoes to prey on them, identify them even in hiding, deerflies to make them regret ever entering the swamplands. They were the ideal protectors of the river valley.
And if they were informing the enemy of Relgan’s movements, then what hope did his army have of ever completing its mission? Better to send a letter to the general back home, explain that it was in the army’s interest to return to the old approach of watching the Cranue River peoples… from a distance. Let them keep their supposed liberties, enough to make them think themselves free from the highlands’ control.
He ate his evening meal, barely noticing his portion of the gardener’s wares, his mind spinning with what an insect intelligence network would mean for an army and why the people here had never seized such a thing and conquered the world.
*
Another day of interrogations. Other wanderings around an island camp that was even smaller than it had felt the first time around. No new insights, no spies uncovered.
Relgan called him to the command tent late in the day. He hadn’t meant to mention the insects, but with no other discoveries or even suspicions, he had little choice.
“Magic? That’s the best you’ve come down to?” Relgan tossed a pen onto his camp table and turned his back on Tiepool. “We conquered this valley easily, ruled it for what, a hundred years, and now suddenly they’ve discovered an ancient insect magic to resist us? They sent you down here to find that?”
He had nothing else to say, merely dismissed Tiepool back to his boat and cot for the night.
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