The Thousand Names (50 page)

Marcus shifted, bringing his free hand up to run lightly along Jen’s flank. He gave her nipple an idle tweak, and felt it harden under his fingers. A little shiver ran through her body, and she wriggled tighter against him and pressed her lips to his bearded cheek.

•   •   •

She didn’t spend the night, of course. Sex on the camp bed was uncomfortable enough. Actually
sleeping
side by side would have been impossible. He must have dozed off at some point, though, because when he woke in the morning, still naked, Jen and her clothes had gone.

There was no question of keeping the liaison a secret—the walls of the tent were just canvas, after all, and there was nothing an army camp liked better than to gossip about its officers. But if the rumors reached Fitz or Janus, neither mentioned them, and the feeling that he was doing something monstrously wrong slowly started to fade from Marcus’ mind. Jen shared his bed the next night, when he’d traded the camp bed for a pair of bedrolls, and the night after that as well. The day after that, the Colonials marched into the Great Desol.

They’d been making steady progress through the Khandarai farmland beyond Nahiseh, in spite of the lack of good roads. As Give-Em-Hell had promised, past the town the land flattened out and the fields were marked by rough dirt tracks instead of stone walls, making for a much more comfortable march and easier going for the vehicles. Marcus’ spirits had revived somewhat, due both to Jen’s ministrations and to the fact that no Desoltai ambushes had materialized.

The second day, the cultivated fields started to give way to patches of rough scrub grass, and the grass in turn to open, sandy wastes strewn with rock. The streams that wound through the low valleys became narrower and farther apart, until they were dust-dry beds more often than not. Huge outcrops of rock, like jagged whales breaching through an ocean of sand and dust, took the place of the gentle hills they had found thus far. There was no definite boundary, but by the morning of the third day Marcus could look back and ahead and see not a hint of green from horizon to horizon.

•   •   •

On the morning of the fourth day out from Nahiseh, Marcus was roused from an uneasy sleep by Fitz, who knocked discreetly but firmly at the tent pole. Marcus had in fact gone to bed alone that night. The camp was abuzz with expectation, of an attack or some other sign of resistance from the Desoltai, and he’d been up half the night waiting for the alarm to sound. Whether she’d sensed this or had just been preoccupied herself, Jen had stayed away, and Marcus had eventually lapsed into a fitful slumber. He woke up, still fully clothed, and struggled groggily to his knees.

“Fitz?” he said. “Is something wrong?” The light outside didn’t seem bright enough for it to be much past dawn.

“I’m afraid so, sir,” said the lieutenant. “You’d better come and see.”

WINTER

“T
hey found them on the rocks?” Winter said.

“Strapped to them, hands and feet,” Graff said. He looked a little gray. “Like they were still alive when they put them up there. And that’s not the half of it, sir.”

“Oh?”

Graff’s eyes darted to Bobby. “Not sure the boy should hear, sir.”

Winter winced. They were in front of her tent, in the midst of the Seventh Company camp. No one was obviously listening, but she had no doubt a dozen ears were pricked up nearby.

“Corporal Forester is a soldier like the rest of us,” Winter said, a bit too loudly. “In spite of his
age
.”

“Yessir.” Graff swallowed. “Well, begging your pardon, sir, it seems that the grayskins cut the . . . ah . . . equipment off them, stuffed it in their mouths, and left them to bleed out.”

“Equipment?” Winter said. She had an image of saddlebags or bandoliers.

“Cocks,” Bobby said flatly.

Graff, turning a little red, nodded. “Give-Em-Hell is goddamned furious, I heard. He said he was going to take his whole command to find the bastards that did it and give them the same treatment.”

“Which I’m sure is just what they want,” Winter said. “Hopefully Captain d’Ivoire or the colonel will have better sense.”

“The colonel will,” Graff said. “He’s a cold bastard, that one. Looked up at those poor men and never said a word. It was the captain who finally got ’em cut down and seen to.”

Folsom jogged up, straightened, and saluted Winter, who as usual had to suppress the urge to look over her shoulder for an officer.

“Orders from Captain d’Ivoire,” the corporal said. “Break camp and prepare to march.”

There was a chorus of groans from the unofficial listeners all around. The recruits had rapidly picked up a bit of the cynicism of the Old Colonials, and they’d been hoping that the brutal murder and mutilation of a half dozen men meant they might get a respite from the day’s march. Winter’s voice cut through the curses.

“You heard him! Get moving!” As the complaining men got to their feet and the camp started to bustle around her, she leaned close to Folsom. “Can you take care of Feor?”

The big corporal gave a quick nod. Winter had tipped one of the carters to let the Khandarai girl ride with the water barrels, and Folsom delivered her there every morning swathed in a spare army greatcoat. It wasn’t the best arrangement, but with the captain’s new directives that no surplus baggage or personnel was to accompany the column, it was all that Winter had been able to come up with.

Feor didn’t seem to mind. Since the night of the fire, she barely seemed awake. She walked when she was led, ate and drank when food was put in front of her, and when left alone curled into a ball and lay motionless for hours. It was as though something inside her had shattered after her confrontation with Mother, and nothing Winter did could reach her.

Folsom saluted again and went into Winter’s tent to fetch the Khandarai girl. Graff followed him with worried eyes, then looked back at Winter.

“You think we’ll catch them?” he said.

Winter blinked, distracted. “Catch who?”

“The Desoltai.” Graff pitched his voice low. “Only I heard some of the Old Colonials saying that nobody can catch them, not now that we’re into the desert. They know every rock and hidden spring, and they’ve got magic as well. And then there’s the Steel Ghost.”

“Let me guess,” Winter said. “You heard this from Davis?” That sort of malingering sounded like the sergeant’s style.

“No, sir. Someone in the Fourth. Apparently Captain Roston shares those opinions.”

“The colonel can catch them,” Bobby said. “If anyone can.”

Graff looked worried. “But what if no one can?”

Winter clapped him on the shoulder. “Then we’re in for a long march, aren’t we?”

•   •   •

The scouts they’d found without their manhood were the first evidence of the viciousness of the Desoltai, but far from the last.

Every day, Give-Em-Hell took his cavalry out to screen ahead of the column, their sturdy Khandarai-bred mounts struggling over rocks and sand. Every evening, they returned to camp empty-handed, and fewer in number than they’d been when they set out. And every morning, the missing men were discovered just outside the camp, having expired from whatever tortures the endlessly inventive Desoltai raiders had dreamed up for them.

By the fourth day Give-Em-Hell was mad enough to scream at the colonel when he once again turned down the cavalryman’s request to ride out in a body after the “cowardly scum.” Colonel Vhalnich bore the verbal assault calmly, in full view of half the First Battalion, then told the captain that he and his cavalry were relieved from their scouting duties and would henceforth ride in the center of the column, protecting the baggage.

In their place, Captain d’Ivoire ordered infantrymen to patrol by half companies, in order to prevent any more isolated disappearances. This meant the unlucky troops who’d drawn the job had to wake up hours before dawn and start walking, creating a buffer between the main column and the desert raiders who waited invisibly among the rocks all around them. The Seventh Company made such a patrol on the sixth day, and Winter fully expected a horde of enemy riders to suddenly materialize and massacre the lot of them. It was easy, especially in the predawn darkness, to people every crevice and shadow with watching eyes.

What actually happened was worse, in a way, although it happened on someone else’s watch. A company of the Second Battalion, walking a mile in front of the plodding column, surprised a gang of Desoltai watering their horses from a tiny rock spring. Eager for vengeance, the Colonials rushed after them, only to find all the nearby boulders sprouting armed men. Out of forty men, only nine escaped, and the screams of those who’d been unfortunate enough to survive echoed over the camp until well into the night.

The next day, the captain issued orders that the patrols were not to engage the Desoltai under any circumstances, but rather to fall back from any contact until more forces could be brought up. This kept the infantry patrols out of ambushes, but made great sport for the Desoltai, who rode up in twos and threes to fire a few shots and watch the entire column grind to a halt as the lead battalion started deploying for battle. The rate of march slowed to a crawl, which meant that those soldiers in the center and rear of the army spent most of the day standing idle under the blazing sun. April had worn into May, and the days were steadily warming toward the unbearable furnace of the Khandarai summer.

•   •   •

Ten days out from Nahiseh, the Colonials camped in the lee of a massive rock formation. The desert was changing as they marched farther west, Winter had noticed. The rocks were getting bigger, but also farther apart, and the stony ground underfoot was drier and sandier with every passing mile. Dunes had appeared, drifted against the rocks like huge gray snowbanks, and when the wind came up the men had to fasten handkerchiefs across their faces to keep their mouths from filling with flying grit.

Like the rest of the army, the Seventh had dispensed with tents. Setting the pegs was nearly impossible, since the ground was either too hard or too loose, and the effort of erecting the canvas was too much for the increasingly exhausted men. Winter hadn’t changed clothes in days, and her undershirt was stiff with dried sweat and chafed her raw where it was tightly bound. Worse, most of the men in the ranks had at least a week’s growth of stubble, since there was no water to spare for menial tasks like shaving, and she was starting to worry that her smooth face would be commented on. Bobby, at least, was young enough that she could still pass for a beardless boy.

Even campfires had grown scarce. What wood there was, gleaned from the pitiful local vegetation or carried on the carts, was reserved for cooking fires. For warmth, the troops had to make do with horse and ox dung, which they now collected and hoarded like gold. It burned well enough, but Winter found the smell cut through even the congealed stink of her own unwashed body, and she hadn’t bothered to kindle a blaze.

The neat lines of the tent city at Fort Valor, much less the barracks at Ashe-Katarion, seemed like a distant dream. Winter lay on her bedroll, with a thin sheet across her middle and her pack for a pillow, amidst a crowd of increasingly ragged men who’d simply thrown down their things wherever they finished their march. The men of the Seventh gave her a bit of extra room, as a nod to her rank. She wished they wouldn’t. It made her feel alone under the great river of stars that blazed overhead. As she stared skyward, the sounds of the camp seemed to fall away around her, leaving only a silence as profound as if she were alone in the world. Her hands clutched the edge of the bedroll to keep from falling
up
into that vast, endless ocean.

She thought about Jane. The dreams had left her, as though they knew that she had enough to deal with. Or, her traitorous mind supplied, perhaps they’d simply
abandoned
her in the end. She tried to call Jane’s face to mind, but all she could summon was a pair of green eyes, shining from within like the stars overhead. She remembered the warmth of Jane’s body, sweet and soft, pressed against hers, but all that did was make her feel the cold more keenly. She wrapped the sheet tighter around herself and shivered. How it could be so hot by day and still
cold
at night Winter never understood.

The
crunch
of sand beneath a boot made her heart jump wildly in her chest. The colonel had ordered a double line of pickets to defend the encampment, but there were still rumors that the Desoltai could get through, worming their way like shadows across the bare rock or blowing in with the sand. Every morning, they said, men were found dead with a single thin dagger wound to the heart, while all those around them had seen and heard nothing. Winter wasn’t sure she believed it, but she wasn’t sure she didn’t, either.

“Winter?” It was Bobby’s voice, a low whisper, as though she didn’t really want to be heard. “Are you awake?”

Winter sat up. Bobby was visible only as an outline against the stars.

“Sorry,” the corporal said. “I couldn’t get to sleep, and I thought . . .”

“It’s all right.” Winter looked up at Bobby, but she couldn’t make out the girl’s expression. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Bobby held one arm awkwardly, gripping it with her other hand. “I cut myself earlier today, when we were climbing over those rocks.”

“Badly?” Winter said. “Do you want me to have Graff look at it?”

“No,” Bobby said. “That’s just it. It’s . . . gone. When I unwrapped my sleeve to have a look, there was a little blood, but the cut was just gone. It hadn’t been five minutes.”

“Oh.” Winter looked into the darkness toward where Feor was sleeping. The Khandarai girl was invisible, too, huddled miserably under her sheet.

“I looked at it under the lamp,” Bobby went on. “The skin is there, but it looks—odd. Like . . .”

“I know,” Winter said hurriedly, not sure who was listening. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “In the morning we’ll ask Feor. She has to know
something
.”

Bobby nodded miserably. Watching her, silhouetted against the carpet of stars, Winter found herself wondering how she could ever have mistaken her for a man. She was so
small
, slender-necked and thin-shouldered. With her head bowed and her shoulders hunched, she looked like a little girl trying to hide her tears. She was shaking, Winter realized.

“Bobby?” Winter ventured.

“It’s c-cold,” Bobby said, arms wrapped tight against her chest. “During the day it was so hot I thought I was going to die. How can it be cold?”

Winter shook her head. Then, impulsively, she extended her hand and took the girl by the arm, drawing her closer. Bobby looked up, startled.

“Come on,” Winter said. “Old soldier’s tradition, huddling together for warmth on cold nights. I read that when Farus the Fifth fought the Murnskai, whole companies would pack themselves tight to keep from freezing.” Winter smiled. “I always had trouble picturing that. A hundred big sweaty
men
, with the ridiculous mustaches they wore in those days—have you seen the paintings? The smell must have been awful.”

Bobby gave a weak chuckle. She folded her legs underneath her and sat on the ground beside Winter’s bedroll, and Winter put an arm around her shoulders.

“Mind you,” Winter said, “I can’t imagine I’m any better off at this point.”

“Me, either,” Bobby whispered. “I think I’d happily kill for a bath.”

“A nice hot bath,” Winter agreed. “Did you ever have bath duty at the Prison?”

Bobby made a face. “All the time. We hated it. Scrubbing all those tiles.”

“After a while I started looking forward to it.” That had been after Jane had initiated her into the joys of not doing as she was told. “I mean, nobody ever
checks
to see that the tiles are scrubbed, and the doors locked from the inside. I would mix up a big batch of soapy water, for the smell, then just fill one of the tubs and soak for hours.”

“Really?” Bobby giggled. “Did you ever get caught?”

“Not once. Mistress Dahlgren once complimented me on my attention to detail.” Winter squeezed the girl’s shoulder. “Come on, I’ll shove over.”