by Various
“All right,” he said. “Just take them and go. You have the evening to say your good-byes. We’re breaking the new men out into companies tomorrow morning, so be on the field when you hear the call.” He cast about on the table, found a bit of rag paper, and scribbled something on it. “Take this to Rhodes and tell him you need a new jacket. And try to look as respectable as possible. God knows this regiment looks shabby enough.”
“Yes, sir.” Pocketing the pins, Winter got to her feet. The captain made a shooing gesture, and Fitz appeared at her side to escort her to the door.
When they were in the corridor, he favored her with another smile.
“Congratulations, Sergeant.”
Winter nodded silently and wandered back out into the sun.
Chapter Two
Marcus
SENIOR CAPTAIN MARCUS D’IVOIRE sat at his makeshift wooden desk and contemplated damnation.
The Church said—or Elleusis Ligamenti said, but since he was a saint it amounted to the same thing—that if, after death, the tally of your sins outweighed your piety, you were condemned to a personal hell. There you suffered a punishment that matched both your worst fears and the nature of your iniquities, as devised by a deity with a particularly vicious sense of irony. In his own case, Marcus didn’t imagine the Almighty would have to think very hard. He had a strong suspicion that he would find his hell unpleasantly familiar.
Paperwork. A mountain, a torrent of paper, a stack of things to read and sign that never shrank or ended. And, lurking behind, on, and around every sheet, the looming anxiety that while this one was just the latrine-digging rota, the next one might be important. Really, critically important, the kind of thing that would make future historians shake their heads and say, “If only d’Ivoire had read that report, all those lives might have been spared.” Marcus was starting to wonder if perhaps he’d died after all and hadn’t noticed, and whether he could apply for time off in a neighboring hell. Spending a few millennia being violated by demons with red-hot pokers was beginning to sound like a nice change of pace.
What made it worse was that he didn’t have to do it. He could say, “Fitz, take care of all this, would you?” and the young lieutenant would. He’d smile while he was doing it! All that stood in the way was Marcus’ own stubborn pride and, again, the fear that somewhere in the sea of paper was something absolutely vital that he was going to miss.
Fitz returned from escorting another newly frocked sergeant out of the office. Marcus leaned back, stretching his long legs under the desk and feeling his shoulders pop. His right hand burned dully, and his thumb was developing a blister.
“Tell me that was the last one,” he said.
“That was the last one,” Fitz said obediently.
“But you’re just saying that because I told you to say it.”
“No,” the lieutenant said, “that was really the last one. Just in time, too. Signal from the fleet says the colonel’s coming ashore.”
“Thank God.”
One year ago, before Ben Warus had gone chasing one bandit too many, Marcus would have said he wanted to command the regiment. But that had been in another lifetime, when Khandar was just a sleepy dead-end post and the most the Colonials had been required to do was stand beside the prince on formal occasions to demonstrate the eternal friendship between the Vermillion Throne and the House of Orboan. Before a gang of priests and madmen—more or less synonymous, in Marcus’ opinion—had stirred up the populace with the idea that they would be better off without either one.
Since then, Khandar had become a very unpleasant place for anyone wearing a blue uniform, and Marcus had been living right at the edge of collapse, his mouth dry and his stomach awash in bile. There was something surreal about the idea that in a few minutes he was going to become a subordinate again. Hand over the command of the regiment to some total stranger, his responsibilities reduced to carrying out whatever orders he was given. It was an unbelievably attractive thought. The new man might screw things up, of course—he probably would, if Marcus’ experience with colonels was any guide—but whatever happened, up to and including the entire regiment being massacred by screaming Redeemer fanatics, it would not be his, Marcus’, fault. He’d be able to turn up for heavenly judgment and say, “Well, you can’t blame me. I had orders!”
He wondered if that carried any weight with the Almighty. It was something to tell the Ministry of War and the Concordat, at any rate, and that was probably more important. Of the two, the Almighty was a good deal less frightening. The Lord, in his infinite mercy, might forgive a soldier who strayed from the path, but the Last Duke certainly would not.
Fitz was saying something, which Marcus had missed entirely. His sleep lately was not what it ought to have been.
“What was that?” he said.
The lieutenant, well aware of his chief’s condition, repeated himself patiently. “I said that the troops are almost all ashore. No cavalry, which is a pity, but he’s brought us at least two batteries. Captain Kaanos is sending the companies up the bluff road one at a time.”
“Will there be room for everybody inside the walls?”
Fitz nodded. “I wouldn’t want to stand a siege, but we’ll be all right for a few days.”
This last was something of a joke. Fort Valor itself was a joke, actually. Like a strong lock on a flimsy door, it was effective only as long as the intruder remained polite. It had been built in the days when the most dangerous threat to a fortress was a catapult, or maybe a battering ram. Its walls were high and unsloping, built of hard native limestone that would crumble like a soft cheese once the iron cannonballs started in on it. They wouldn’t even need a siege train—you could take the place with a battery of field guns, especially since there was no way for the defenders to emplace their artillery to shoot back.
Fortunately, no siege seemed to be in the offing. The Vordanai regiment had scuttled away from Ashe-Katarion, the prince’s former capital, and as long as they looked like they were leaving, the Redeemers had been content to watch them go. Still, Marcus had bitten his fingernails to the quick during the weeks of waiting for the fleet to arrive.
“Well,” Marcus said, “I suppose we’d better go meet him.”
The lieutenant gave a delicate cough. Marcus had been with him long enough to recognize Fitz-speak for “You’re about to do something very stupid and/or embarrassing, sir.” He cast about the room, then down at himself, and got it. He was not, technically, in uniform—his shirt and trousers were close to regulation blue, but both were of Khandarai make, the cheap Vordanai standard issue having faded or torn long ago. He sighed.
“Dress blues?” he said.
“It would certainly be customary, sir.”
“Right.” Marcus got to his feet, wincing as cramped muscles protested. “I’ll go change. You keep watch—if the colonel gets here, stall him.”
“Yes, sir.”
If only, Marcus thought, watching the lieutenant glide out, I could just leave this colonel entirely to Fitz. The young man seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing.
The dress uniform included a dress sword, which Marcus hadn’t worn since his graduation from the War College. The weight on one hip made him feel lopsided, and the sheath sticking out behind him was a serious threat to anyone standing nearby when he forgot about it and turned around quickly. After five years at the bottom of a trunk, the uniform itself seemed bluer than he remembered. He’d also run a comb through his hair, for the look of the thing, and scrubbed perfunctorily at his face with a tag end of soap.
“Why, Senior Captain,” Adrecht said, coming through the tent flap. “How dapper. You should dress up more often.”
Marcus lost his grip on one of the dress uniform’s myriad brass buttons and swore. Adrecht laughed.
“If you want to make yourself useful,” Marcus growled, “you might help me.”
“Of course, sir.” Adrecht said. “Anything to be of service.”
References to Mar
cus’ rank or seniority from Captain Adrecht Roston were invariably mocking. He had been at the War College with Marcus, and was the “junior” by a total of seven minutes, that being the length of time that had separated the calling of the names “d’Ivoire” and “Roston” at the graduation ceremony. It had been something of a joke between them until Ben Warus had died, when that seven minutes meant that—to Adrecht’s considerable relief—command of the Colonials settled on Marcus’ shoulders instead of his.
Adrecht was a tall man, with a hawk nose and a thin, clean-shaven face. Since his graduation from the War College, he’d worn his dark curls fashionably loose. Keen, intelligent blue eyes and a slight curve of lip gave the impression that he was forever on the edge of a sarcastic smirk.
He commanded the Fourth Battalion, at the opposite end of the marching order from Marcus’ First. He and his fellow battalion commanders, Val and Mor, along with the late Ben Warus and his brother, had been Marcus’ official family ever since he’d arrived in Khandar. The only family, in fact, that he had left.
Marcus stood uncomfortably while Adrecht’s deft fingers worked the buttons and straightened his collar. Looking over the top of his friend’s head, he said, “Did you have some reason to be here? Or were you just eager to see me embarrass myself?”
“Please. Like that’s such a rarity.” Adrecht stepped back, admiring his handiwork, and gave a satisfied nod. “I take it from the getup that you’re off to meet the colonel?”
“I am,” Marcus said, trying not to show how much he wasn’t looking forward to it.
“No time for a celebratory drink?” Adrecht opened his coat enough to show the neck of a squat brown bottle. “I’ve been saving something for the occasion.”
“I doubt the colonel would appreciate it if I turned up stumbling drunk,” Marcus said. “With my luck I’d probably be sick all over him.”
“From one cup?”
“With you, it’s never just one cup.” Marcus tugged at his too-tight collar and sat down to turn his attention to his boots. There was a clatter as his scabbard knocked over an empty tin plate and banged against the camp bed, and he winced. “What have we got to celebrate, anyway?”
Adrecht blinked. “What? Just our escape from this sandy purgatory, that’s all. This time next week, we’ll be heading home.”
“So you suppose.” Marcus pulled at a stubborn boot.
“It’s not just me. I heard Val say the same thing to Give-Em-Hell. Even the rankers are saying it.”
“Val doesn’t get to decide,” Marcus said. “Nor does Give-Em-Hell, or the rankers. That would be the colonel’s prerogative.”
“Come on,” Adrecht said. “You send them a report that the grayskins have got some new priests, who aren’t too fond of us and have a nasty habit of burning people alive, and by the way they outnumber us a couple of hundred to one and the prince is getting shirty. So they send us a couple of thousand men and a new colonel, who no doubt thinks he’s in for a little light despotism, burning down some villages and teaching a gang of peasants who’s boss, that sort of thing. Then he gets here, and finds out that the aforementioned priests have rounded up an army of thirty thousand men, the militia that we trained and armed has gone over to the enemy lock, stock, and barrel, and the prince has decided he’d rather make the best of a bad job and take the money and run. What do you think he’s going to do?”
“You’re making the assumption that he has an ounce of sense,” Marcus said, pulling his laces tight. “Most of the colonels I met back at the college were not too well endowed in that department.”
“Or any another,” Adrecht said. “But not even that lot would—”
“Maybe.” Marcus got to his feet. “I’ll go and see, shall I? Do you want to come?”
Adrecht shook his head. “I’d better go and make sure my boys are ready. The bastard will probably want a review. They usually do.”
Marcus nodded, looked at himself in the mirror again, and paused. “Adrecht?”
“Hmm?”
“If we do get to go home, what are you going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I recall, a certain count told you that if you ever came within a thousand miles of his daughter again, he would tie you to a cannon and drop you in the Vor.”
“Oh.” Adrecht gave a weak smile. “I’m sure he’s forgotten all about that by now.”
Marcus, feeling prickly and uncomfortable, stood beside Fitz at the edge of the bluff and watched the last few companies toiling up the road. The path switchbacked as it climbed the few hundred feet from the landing to the top of the cliff. The column of climbing men looked like a twisted blue serpent, winding its way up only to be devoured by the gaping maw of the fort’s open gate beside him. There seemed to be no end to them.
The men themselves were a surprise, too. To Marcus’ eyes they seemed unnaturally pale—he understood, suddenly, why the Khandarai slang for Vordanai was “corpses.” Compared to the leather-skinned veterans of the Colonials, these men looked like something you’d fish off the bottom of a pond.
And they were so young. Service in the Colonials was usually a reward for an ill-spent military career. Apart from the odd loony who volunteered for Khandarai service, even the rankers tended to be well into their second decade. Marcus doubted that most of the “men” marching up the road had seen eighteen, let alone twenty, given their peach-fuzz chins and awkward teenage frames. They didn’t know how to march properly, either, so the column was more like a trudging mass of refugees than an army on the move. All in all, Marcus decided, it was not a sight calculated to impress any enemies who might be watching.
He had no doubt they were watching, too. The Colonials had made no effort to patrol the hills around the fort, and while the rebel commanders might believe the Vordanai were on the verge of departing for good, they weren’t so foolish as to take it on faith. Every scrubby hill and ravine could hide a dozen Desoltai riders. The desert tribesmen could vanish on bare rock, horses and all, if they put their minds to it.
In the rear of the column, far below, a lonely figure struggled after the last of the marching companies under the burden of two heavy valises. He wore a long dark robe, which made him look a bit like a penny-opera version of a Priest of the Black. But since the Obsidian Order—perennial of cheap dramas and bogeymen of children’s stories—had been extinct for more than a century, Marcus guessed this poor bastard was just a manservant hauling his master’s kit up the mountain. One of the sinister inquisitors of old would hardly carry his own bags, anyway. He wondered idly what was so important that it couldn’t be brought up in the oxcarts with the rest of the baggage.
His eyes scanned idly over the fleet, waiting for the colonel himself to emerge with his escort. He would be a nobleman, of course. The price of a colonel’s commission was high, but there was more to it than money. While the Ministry of War might have been forced to concede over the past hundred years that there were commoners who could site guns and file papers as well as any peer, it had quietly but firmly drawn the line at having anyone of low birth in actual command. Leading a regiment was the ancient prerogative of the nobility, and so it would remain.
Even Ben Warus had been nobility of a sort, a younger son of an old family that had stashed him in the army as a sinecure. That he’d been a decent fellow for all that had been nothing short of a miracle. Going purely by the odds, this new colonel was more likely to be akin to the ones Marcus had known at the War College: ignorant, arrogant, and contemptuous of advice from those beneath him. He only hoped the man wasn’t too abrasive, or else someone was likely to take a swing at him and be court-martialed for his trouble. The Colonials had grown slack and informal under Ben’s indulgent command.
The servant with the bags had reached the last switchback, but there was still no flurry of activity from the ships that would indicate the emergence of an officer of rank. More boats were landing, but they carried only supplies and baggage, and the laboring men down at the dock
were beginning to load the carts with crates of hardtack, boxes of cartridges, and empty water barrels. Marcus glanced at Fitz.
“The colonel did say he was coming up, didn’t he?”
“That was the message from the fleet,” the lieutenant said. “Perhaps he’s been delayed?”
“I’m not going to stand out here all day waiting,” Marcus growled. Even in the shade, he was sweating freely.
He waited for the porter in black to approach, only to see him stop twenty yards away, set down both valises, and squat on his heels at the edge of the dusty path. Before Marcus could wonder at this, the man leaned forward and gave an excited cry.
Balls of the Beast, he’s stepped on something horrible. Khandar was home to a wide variety of things that crawled, slithered, or buzzed. Nearly all of them were vicious, and most were poisonous. It would be a poor start to a professional relationship if Marcus had to report to the colonel that his manservant had died of a snakebite. He hurried down the path, Fitz trailing behind him. The man in black popped back to his feet like a jack-in-the-box, one arm extended, holding something yellow and green that writhed furiously. Marcus pulled up short.
“A genuine Branded Whiptail,” the man said, apparently to himself. He was young, probably younger than Marcus, with a thin face and high cheekbones. “You know, I’d seen Cognest’s illustrations, but I never really believed what he said about the colors. The specimens he sent back were so drab, but this—well, look at it!”
He stepped forward and thrust the thing in Marcus’ face. Only years of army discipline prevented Marcus from leaping backward. The little scorpion was smaller than his palm, but brilliantly colored, irregular stripes of bright green crisscrossing its dun yellow carapace. The man held it by the tail with thumb and forefinger, just below the stinger, and despite the animal’s frantic efforts it was unable to pull itself up far enough to get its claws into his flesh. It twisted and snapped at the air in impotent rage.
