by Kate Elliott
“Reeves were never meant to be soldiers,” said Joss, “nor is it anything I wish for, but we can’t exactly ask that army’s leave to come stand for judgment at our assizes. Nor can we stand aside and do nothing.”
They were thoughtful. They had good ideas, and they laid them out sensibly. They understood how bad things were in the north, and how what was bad would overflow to flood them. He was relieved when they had said all there was to say for the moment. He and Tohon went to the parade ground and he whistled down Scar and got him harnessed while the Qin soldier watched. Joss was restless; he needed to do something, to do more.
Zubaidit had walked into danger just as Marit had that day more than twenty years ago when she’d been killed by outlaws. It was the Hieros and Captain Anji who had loosed Bai on this impossible mission to kill Lord Radas. Aui! She’d gone gladly enough. She wasn’t his to fret over. Even so, he could not stop thinking of how sweet she was to hold in his arms. Yet when he remembered kissing her, he fell also into erratic flashes of memory of nights fireside with Marit, only a blanket between them and the earth. Had he really been so young once? Such a cursed innocent fool? Would he ever stop dreaming of her, seeing her trapped in the body she’d worn then, the body and spirit he had loved in a way he could never hope to find again?
Scar chirped interrogatively, catching his mood. Joss tugged on the last hook and buckle and stepped out to join Tohon.
“You’re brooding,” said the scout.
“So I am. I like to be aloft.”
“Hard to stand and watch,” agreed Tohon. “A man gets used to riding on at the break of day. Comes to think that movement and noise is where life is, when after all there’s life in stillness and quiet, too.”
“Wise words, my friend. Listen. We’ll have a pair of days to wait, and I am sure you will want to report immediately to whichever chief commands the militia camp, but if you don’t have to go there straightaway I might as well let you know I’m thinking of taking a turn out to the temple of the Merciless One first.”
Tohon grinned. “Don’t mind if I do. No hurry for me. I don’t belong to the captain’s regular troop.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I was transferred over to Captain Anji’s command in the Mariha princedoms. Before that, I served Commander Beje.”
“Ah.” There was a useful piece of information, all unwittingly spilled. But after all, did a man as canny as Tohon ever reveal anything he did not mean to? Hard to know.
“Need we bring gifts or fripperies or coin to the temple?” Tohon continued.
“Neh. It’s shameful to offer coin for what’s freely given.”
“Then how do they live, there in the temple?”
“Folk offer tithes to all the temples. Every young person who has celebrated the feast of their Youth’s Crown serves a year as apprentice in one temple or another, and their family pays a tithe to feed and clothe them. A few serve longer, in the manner of debt slaves. A very few serve their entire lives.”
“Like Zubaidit,” observed Tohon.
“Why do you say so?” asked Joss sharply. “Her contract was bought out.”
Tohon stroked the straggle of hairs that served him as a beard. “That part of the contract paid for in coin. But surely it’s easier to count sheep on a distant hill grown dense with snowflower bushes than to measure the extent of a person’s service to a god.” His gaze was easy but his understanding keen. “She’s already taken, my friend.”
Joss flushed. “I didn’t say—”
Tohon chuckled. “Not in words. But I can judge the lay of the land pretty well.”
Joss scratched behind an ear, a nervous habit he thought he’d lost as a child. “You traveled with her a fair way. Did she ever—ah—” The hells! He sounded like a love-struck youth! Wheedling after any mention of the object of desire. And her almost young enough to be his own daughter had he married and begotten a child by the age of twenty, as most folk did. As Tohon no doubt had done.
“It’s true we talked about many things and many people. She’s a cursed interesting woman to talk to. But she never once mentioned you.”
“I’m put in my place.”
“Maybe. But I thought it strange.”
“You thought what strange?”
“That she never once mentioned you, for you’re an important man whose acts all of Olossi has reason to be grateful for. It either means she never thought of you at all, or that she thought of you enough to deliberately not speak of you.”
• • •
AFTER THREE DAYS slogging in the mire—he lost two men to sand traps and one to snakebite—Arras pulled his men back to the main encampment at Saltow and left them to clean their filthy gear while he and Sergeant Giyara, in all their mud, reported to Commander Hetti.
“We probed as well as we could.” He stood in the sun, because he dared not smear with mud the commander’s fancy rug. “Barriers have been erected on the eastern causeway in four spots.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Hetti lounged on a field couch under an awning. “The question before us is how are we to defend the perimeter once the city is ours? How impenetrable are the wetlands?”
“We didn’t penetrate to the worst areas. Where you think there’s firm ground there’s a sucking mire, and where it looks unstable might well be the only safe path. I lost three men, in a cautious foray against no resistance. We have no local cooperators, but we’ll need guides to be effective. Or we’ll need to kill any locals who do not cooperate with us, so they can’t use their knowledge against us. Still, it could be impossible to track them if they retreat into the swamps.”
“Dirty, too.” The commander was a stout man no longer in fighting trim. He had a bottle of wine on hand and no cups, nor did he offer drink to Arras or the sergeant. His attendants were sour-looking men content with their idleness. There were a pair of painted women, too, of the kind who trade sex for jewels and coin. “We’ll take command of the locals in the same way we took command of Toskala. Assign hostages to every company. That’ll keep the rest in order.”
“Toskalan hostages?” Arras glanced around the bustling camp, with folk he had thought were camp followers or hirelings hard at work: cleaning harness, husking rice, pounding nai, braiding rope, hauling water and wood; the endless round of tasks necessary to keeping a soldier ready to move.
“You were assigned none?”
“We were not. We do everything ourselves.”
“Ah. Your companies reached Toskala late. You’ve what—? Three hundred men?”
“Three companies, Commander. We’re slightly under strength, having only three hundred and nineteen. I could absorb new recruits.”
“I’ve only myself to offer as a swordsman,” said the commander with a genial laugh as his gaze flashed to the young women, who pretended to smile. No doubt Commander Hetti had fallen prey to the aging man’s need to see himself as a youthful contender in the other ancient art of swordcraft.
“Have you made any attempts to recruit dissatisfied locals, Commander?”
“Eiya! We’ve enough trouble with them scuttling in at night and stealing our chickens!”
“Have you? We’ve recorded no such depredations in our encampment.”
“I suspect those cursed Toskalan hostages are turning a blind eye to the pilfering or even helping it along, if you take my meaning. We haven’t been able to catch them at it, nor will they squeal on each other. They’re a gods-rotted sullen lot.”
Since Arras could think of no reason why a hostage ought to be cheerful, he said nothing. Sergeant Giyara scratched at a welted hand, where in the mire a clinging vine had scraped its barbed tendrils over her skin. He flicked a glance skyward: as always, an eagle floated very high up, keeping an eye on the camp and their movements. Only dusk drove the reeves down to their halls.
“I’ll have my clerk assign a cadre of hostages to your command,” Commander Hetti went on. “See they’re not killed. If they’re dead, they’re no use to u
s, eh?” The commander laughed at his own joke, and his attendants and the two young women laughed with him.
“I have a more extensive report to give, Commander. And maps we’ve drawn of the land we reconnoitered. Some thoughts—”
“I’ll send a sergeant to take your report. Meanwhile, take two days’ rest for refitting. Expect to move out at dawn on Wakened Ox.”
“Isn’t Wakened Ox the same day the gates were opened in Toskala, last month?”
“Good fortune, don’t you think? Lord Radas likes that day. Meanwhile, keep your eyes open for outlanders and gods-touched, as before.”
“Why this interest in outlanders and gods-touched?”
“Cursed if I know or am likely to ask. If you find any, even slaves, bring them immediately to me. Also, I’m looking for a cadre of volunteers—”
A shriek lit the air like fire. Shouting rose from one corner of camp, and men rushed to see what was happening.
Commander Hetti fluttered his hands in the direction of his attendants. “It’s those cursed thieves again, I’m sure of it. Go see—” His words were drowned out by a larger outbreak of noise, a real brawl breaking out.
Arras had no desire to have any of his men volunteered for whatever task Commander Hetti had in mind, so he cocked an eye at Giyara, and she nodded.
“At once, Commander!” he said, loudly enough for the words to penetrate. He and the sergeant moved off. It seemed half the soldiers were running in that direction, maybe bored from having sat in camp for too long awaiting the knife in the dark whose blade would open Nessumara for them. Now he heard voices shouting wagers, and encouragement.
“Ten vey on the fat one!”
“Eiya! Don’t give up, you wine-sodden wretch! Keep pushing!”
“Think they’re betting on a fist fight?” Giyara muttered, with the twisted grin she used when she found any situation darkly amusing.
He pushed through the crowd, men giving way when they saw the lime-whitened horsetail epaulets marking his rank. A circle had formed around open space where two men, one beginning to spread into corpulence and one trimmer but clearly drunk, were grappling, locked in a swaying attempt to topple the other man. There was a woman, of course, egging them on in the way of the vain woman who likes to see men fight over her. She was tall and lean and not the handsomest female he’d ever seen. . . .
Then she moved, dropping into a crouch to look not at the fight but at something going on lower to the ground. He marked the supple way her body flowed, her complete command of her limbs. Whew! There was a woman worth grappling with.
He nudged Giyara and with a flick of his chin got her looking in the same direction; she caught his intention at once.
“Trained fighter, but not my type. I can see she might be yours, though. She’s not outfitted as a soldier.”
“Hostage? Hireling?”
“Spy?”
He pushed Giyara into the second rank of the crowd so he could watch without being spied. There the woman went, shifting backward until he lost sight of her.
He tapped the sergeant’s arm. “You stay here.”
He circled around until he saw, in the gloom, the ranks of wagons piled with poultry cages, all the birds asquawk as if a fox had come raiding. It was easy to miss the noise beneath the roar of the agitated crowd; easy to ignore a pair of dark shapes lifting a pair of cages from the rearmost wagon.
He strolled up. “You’ve got permission to secure those, eh?”
One of the figures—a thin youth clad in nothing more than a kilt—shrank back, but she turned to confront him as bold as you please, having set the two cages on the ground at her feet.
“Who are you to ask?” Her voice was low and assured.
He grinned. “I’m called Captain Arras. You’re not a soldier.”
“I’m not.”
“A spy, perhaps?” He set a hand on his sword hilt.
She rubbed her chin, head cocked to one side. “It’s sure I’d admit it if I were.”
“Heh. I’d say you were one of the hostages out of Toskala, but you don’t talk like them.”
“I don’t, it’s true. Not that it’s any of your business, but I was married into one of the mat-making clans in Toskala. I’m from the south. I guess the army thought my husband would miss me if they hauled me away.”
“Do you miss your husband?”
She spoke with the posture of her body, playing to his obvious interest. “He’s young and energetic. I have no complaints of how he’s treated me since we were wed.”
“But some complaints of the army, I take it. Why are you stealing chickens?”
“Do you suppose our masters feed us properly?”
“You could get whipped for stealing.”
“So I could, but I don’t like to see my comrades suffering.”
“You’re young to take on so much responsibility, knowing you’ll take the brunt of the punishment. Where’d you serve your apprentice year?”
“Where do you think?”
He laughed, lifting his chin to make the question a command. “What’s your name?”
“Zubaidit.”
“Tell you what, Zubaidit. You collect a cadre of hostages, hard workers and decent folk, and bring them along to my company. I’ll see you and your people are decently fed and cared for as long as you do your work and cause me and my soldiers no trouble.”
“That’s a generous offer, of its kind. What will you ask for in return?”
“It’s true I like a good workout at the Devourer’s temple, same as any person, but I’m not one of those who uses the power he has to coerce folk into sex. I like that you’re not afraid to talk to me, although I’ve caught you in the act of stealing, for which I could certainly see you and the lad whipped had I a mind to it. Or force you into my bed to spare you the welts.”
“So you’ll pull me along to work for your company and hope to persuade me by other means? I’ve a husband, as I’ve mentioned.”
“Many a woman has a husband, and many a man a wife, and the tales repeat what observation tells us: that the Devourer acts as she wills, and folk will find pleasure as they are driven by her will acting within them. What’s your point? If you’re worried you might conceive a child for his clan not of his breeding, then there are ways to make sure no child is sown in fertile ground. As every hierodule in the Devourer’s temple knows.”
“You’ve made your plan of attack plain!” She laughed, and he wasn’t quite sure whether she found him attractive or ridiculous, but anyway she wasn’t recoiling. “How do you know I’m fashioned that way?”
“I know how you’re fashioned.”
Behind them, the fight was breaking up. She set a fist on one hip, the angle emphasizing her shapely torso, the fit of her sleeveless vest, the curve of her hip over loose trousers belted up so the hem lapped just above her ankles. She knew he knew. It was just the first skirmish in a longer battle.
“Put those chickens back,” he added, “and I’ll speak with the captain you’re assigned to right now.”
She gestured, and the youth set the cages back on the wagon. Out of the darkening night, a pair of soldiers strolled up on camp duty.
“Got a problem here, Captain? The hostages are forbidden from congregating around the supply wagons. They’re all gods-rotted thieves.”
“There’s no problem,” said Arras.
After looking over the young woman and her mute companion, the soldiers walked on up the line of wagons.
She gestured after them. “So we are at your command, Captain Arras.”
“There’s one thing,” he added, stepping up close enough to let his muscle speak. “Don’t ever mock me.”
She didn’t shift at all. “I don’t mock, Captain. I’ll tell you straight to your face what I think of you.”
He liked a dangerous, confident woman who wasn’t afraid of him, and he was cursed curious about so young a woman married into a humble mat-making clan, come so far from her own people’s home. What gave so
me folk that sense of confidence? Discipline. Training. And a more intangible quality, gifted to them from the gods.
Later, after he’d detached twenty-six hostages of her choosing from the cohort to which they’d been assigned, he went to speak to the quartermaster in charge of the provisions wagons. It was well into night by this time, but the quartermaster was still awake, supervising six clerks working by lamplight as they administered the flow of provisions and supplies into companies refitting in preparation for the fall of Nessumara in four days.
“How can I help you, Captain?” the woman asked, looking him up and down to let him know she found him attractive. She was full-figured, about his age, competent and confident, but although he appreciated her interest, he could only think about Zubaidit. Aui! Where’s there an itch, you must scratch. He could not tell if, like Nessumara, Zubaidit had already fallen and was just holding out for a few more days to prepare the ground properly, or if he’d have to endure a longer campaign.
“Captain?”
“A favor, if you will. You’ve records for the poultry wagons?”
“I do.” Clearly, she was the kind who kept accurate records. “I’ve taken my day count earlier. I do another count at dawn, and then allocate birds according to those companies that have reached their week’s turn for a meat ration. I can’t change your company’s ration, if that’s what you’re after.”
“I’m just curious. Any chance you could do another count?”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Sure enough, the count came up one cage short, a cage pilfered from the middle wagons, well away from the rear of the line where he’d been kept busy. Thoughtful, he strolled back to camp under a cloudless sky, swatting away the bugs, whistling under his breath. The stars shone like jewels cast across the heavens, as it said in the tale. He carried a lamp to guide his feet. One did need a lamp. It was so easy to stumble.
