Traitors' Gate (105 page)

Marit is speaking. “I searched for weeks around the valley where I met that young shepherd, the very place you yourself saw her. I even found the village the lad came from, but they told me—I saw in their minds—that they have not seen Earth for months. Not that they ever saw her much. It might not mean anything.”

“I do not like it.” The envoy glances over his shoulder.

A young woman is walking toward them, the wind pulling mist off her shoulders. With her pallid white face and pale grass hair and demon-blue eyes, she looks inhuman. What can it mean that the gods have cloaked an outlander, who cannot know what justice means in the Hundred? Have the gods abandoned them? Do they just not care? Or is there a deeper whisper here, a hint he cannot tease out?

Is his faith in the gods meaningless?

“Joss!”

He startled awake, sitting up so hard he slammed into Kesta.

“Aui!” She rubbed her chin, and he slapped a hand to his throbbing forehead. “You were muttering in your sleep. Why is it always Marit?”

“He killed her.”

“We know the story—”

“He killed the cloak of Earth, the one she's looking for. But if Marit thinks she's an ally, then he killed a Guardian who is not our enemy.”

“What in the hells are you babbling about?”

He scrambled up, wincing as his muscles screamed. “Where is Anji?”

“They marched out already. They took a short rest, food and drink, and kept going. Since you've not got Scar, I can give you a lift if you want to catch up to them. Best you eat before you go. No telling when you'll have a chance to eat again. Whew! I suppose we both stink. You look like the hells, I'll tell you.”

He laughed. “That good, eh? They say the hells are filled with attractive women. We'll have to fight over them, you and me, eh?”

She slapped him on the chest as she stepped away. “There's a few who don't bend your way, thank the gods. Say, what news of Nallo?”

“What, that termagant? You've an interest there?”

“You might not see it, but she's cursed attractive. I like a woman who can rip off a man's head when he's being a gods-rotted idiot.”

“She's given me the edge of her tongue, anyway, but not in the way I like it. I tell you, she scares me.”

“Like I said, I like that woman.” She grasped his wrist and tugged as he grabbed his gear and stumbled after. “You need some cordial to wake up, Joss?”

“At dawn?”

“It's what you always used to take.”

“The hells I did!”

“Tell yourself what you must. Here.” The barracks muster was abuzz with chatter, reeves and hirelings and fawkners drinking and eating in haste. A few women glanced twice, but nothing more than that. He ate and drank—the cordial did settle his stomach—and afterward relieved himself and washed in a trough half full of unpleasantly murky water, but the water was cool and the day was already sticky and hot. Kesta headed for the loft.

Joss stopped her. “Shouldn't we check in with the marshal?”

She shrugged. “There is no marshal. Chief Sengel gives the orders. Reeve Iyako acts as administrator. She's steady, and too old to fight. But we don't need clearance from her. I'll deliver you to the command unit and take my flight's orders from there.” She waved to familiar faces waiting in the shade of a parade ground, next to lofts, and while she went in to talk to the fawkners, Joss greeted six reeves from Horn Hall, each one in a state of enflamed excitement at the prospect of impending action. Their talk poured like the river's current, a flood of noise that meant nothing to him. Any way you looked at it, it seemed that Horn Hall, Clan Hall, Copper Hall, and Gold Hall were treating Anji as their commander.

“Joss!”

Arkest waddled out into the empty parade ground, already harnessed. The raptor's feathers hadn't the bloom one liked to see in an eagle, but she wasn't obviously ailing.

“Best you rest her after today,” he said as he paused beyond talon range to brandish his baton in the signal taught to eagles to recognize other reeves.

Kesta flashed him a look as good as a cut. “I'm not a fool, Joss. Hook in.”

Up!

Arkest had a hitch in her flight that would have troubled him if he didn't know the bird was compensating for an injury taken in battle a year ago. She wasn't the fastest, but she was a smart bird and very experienced. They swung wide to the east so he could see the eastern approaches over the dried out wetlands where Chief Sengel's trap had lured in almost two thousand men, many to their deaths. The surface of the shallow channels had a rainbow gleam, slicked with the remains of oil. The foliage along the banks was charred, brightened by spots of untouched growth. Folk were dragging corpses off scorched ground and onto barges piled high with dead.

“They're hauling them down to the ocean and dumping them in!” shouted Kesta.

“The hells!” Yet what else could they do?

They sailed on along the empty stone earthwork of the eastern causeway until they came to Saltow. The town with its staging warehouses and many roads and paths lay as empty as if it had been abandoned, but folk peeped from behind shuttered windows. Here and there an adult scuttled down a back alley as if bearing contraband on a deadly mission. The enemy camp had been substantial; abandoned tents fluttered, several having collapsed into heaps. Dogs had dragged the corpse of a woman out beyond a tent's entrance while vultures watched warily, edging in.

It was easy to find the enemy, because reeves were tracking them, hanging lazily on the wind as the soldiers trudged on the main road in the heat below. Curiously, there were two distinct groups. One was hastening ahead in a disorganized hurry, flying the banners of three different cohorts, although there weren't enough soldiers to fill out two cohorts. They marched with no supply wagons, only wounded being bounced around in carts.

A stage behind the lead group marched a second cohort, this one in disciplined ranks under a single banner marked with six staves. They had supply wagons, extra dray beasts, horses, and sheep carefully herded in the center, and only four wagons with canvas shades that, presumably, sheltered their injured. One of the wagons was surrounded by the bristling spears of a cadre of guards, as folk might circle treasure or a valuable prisoner. Their captain, in his lime-whitened horsetails, shaded his eyes to watch them pass overhead. A sergeant marched to either side, both women by their shape although their faces were really too small to make out features.

“Kesta! The hells!”

“Quit jerking around, Joss. You'll pull poor Arkest—”

“That's Zubaidit! Wearing sergeant's colors and—”

“How can you possibly tell from this height?”

“I'd know that body anywhere!”

Kesta laughed. “You just might! If it's her, then she's turned traitor.”

“Circle back!”

“No time, Joss. I've got to dump your weight. Arkest's tiring.”

They swung west over the narrowing delta. Here in the northern reaches grew the forested swamp. A constant rain of leaves built up a thick underlayer beneath the trees, which got very dry when the rains died. A dirty haze hung over the swamp as they flew onward, wisps of smoke drifting upward. Now and then flares of red flashed where the canopy parted, fires smoldering.

“What happened?”

“Chief Sengel set fire to the forest along the causeway. The smoke drove back the cohorts attacking under cover of the forest canopy. It was the only way to hold them back until Commander Anji got here.”

“But it's still burning.”

The rising smoke made them cough. Animals teemed in the waters or on safe islands. Elsewhere, weakened trees had collapsed to open up the understory to the glare of the harsh sun. The stagnant backwaters were streaked with blackened branches and the bloating corpses of krokes and men.

“There!” Kesta pointed with her baton.

It was past midday, really hot now, and cursed if the army hadn't covered ten mey already, halfway to solid ground at Skerru. How could they maintain such a pace? For now, they had halted, strung out along the causeway over more than a mey, companies separated by gaps, men asleep under the shade of blankets, many dousing the horses and themselves with water hauled up from the swamp. The order of march had shifted. Now, Captain Targit's Qin cohort rode as the vanguard with a cadre of local scouts as escort. A cohort of local Hundred men led by Qin sergeants came behind them. After them came several companies of skirmishers and archers, and then the companies that had been in the vanguard followed by another cohort of mostly local Hundred-men. Anji's command unit now marched two units from the rear.

“Whoop!” shouted Kesta as they plunged.

They came to ground on the causeway in front of the command unit. Six guardsmen trotted out to set a barrier, and with polite smiles escorted Joss and Kesta into the shade of an awning strung up over the entire causeway with immense
lengths of silk rope. Anji was in council, his chiefs seated on camp chairs while captains and sergeants stood behind them.

“Commander Joss!” Anji beckoned, smiling. “Cordial? Wine? There's kama juice. Mai's favorite.” He frowned, the expression brief and disconcerting, then chuckled as the reeves walked in under the blessed shade. “I will say, Joss, I've seen you look better.”

“So they tell me,” said Joss, unaccountably stung, but Kesta laughed. She was drawn aside by Sengel while Anji offered Joss his own chair and took one relinquished by Deze.

“We lost you in Nessumara and couldn't wait,” said Anji as they drank. “Do you mean to ride with us?”

“If you'll have me.”

After Joss reported on what he and Kesta had seen that day, they talked for a while of inconsequential things. Anji asked about the swamp, the islands, the delta, and finally the old question about how Copper Hall had come to have two halls, one on the Haya shore and one in Nessumara, without becoming two separate named halls. He sounded like any merrily curious visitor come to a new town, happy to enjoy the fresh sights and local color. Others dozed, while a new shift of guards came on duty. Finally, Anji unrolled a blanket, lay down with his head resting on his rolled-up armor coat, and fell asleep so quickly that Joss was pretty sure it was between one breath and the next.

The heat weighed on him. Kesta had left. He slumped, dozing off, and startled awake just before he tipped off the chair. He'd meant to get Anji's assurance, yet again, that he would not attack the other cloaks. Yet the ghost girl had killed three of Anji's soldiers. Why wouldn't Anji want to kill her, too? If she rode with Marit, did that mean Marit could not be trusted?

But Anji slept, and he dared not wake him. A soldier offered him a blanket for the dusty ground, and he lay down but could not sleep.

Why did an army led by a Qin commander and Qin officers trouble him so? They were only a few hundred men. Even with the addition of a cohort of some five hundred new Qin soldiers, they amounted to less than a thousand. Lord Radas's
horde was far larger and had done far more damage. The Qin had never harmed anyone except the enemy.

Except the Guardians.

Let it go.
Now was not the time.

He slept, and did not dream, and was awakened by men rising. He drank and ate with the others, quickly and on his feet. Biting down a grimace, he swallowed the pain of mounting a good-natured gelding brought for him to ride. How efficiently the Qin had trained the grooms and tailmen who attended them! The forward companies had already started marching, so reeves reported; scouts rode up with their own reports.

“Where is Tohon?” Joss asked, riding beside Anji as the command unit set out.

“I sent him some days ago with a scouting force of reeves to find Wedrewe.”

They rode through the last of the afternoon and into the swift dusk, twilight falling fast and hard. Soon night cloaked them. Local men trotted in shifts with lamps held high; wagons rolled in the gaps with lanterns swinging from their tailgates, beacons to guide their way.

They rode all cursed night except for one rest stop to changeover horses, and very late in the night, or so early that the first birds had begun to herald dawn with tentative songs, scouts rode in from the front with the expectant posture of men with stupendous news.

“The vanguard will be in visual range by dawn, Commander. We've killed eight pickets although some escaped.”

“Is there any change in their fortifications?” Anji asked.

“Neh.” These were local men, who knew the swamps and channels. “They've got shields set ten deep massed where the causeway opens onto the mainland. It's enough to press back any attack from the causeway, and it leaves them free to push forward at a moment's notice. They've figured out we're coming.”

Anji said, to Joss, “They've dug some minor fortifications at the rear of their encampment. They're expecting skirmishing groups to come at them from behind. I expect they know that Nessumara doesn't have as many troops as they do, so the
Nessumara militia could never risk a frontal assault down a confined corridor.”

“Isn't it better to let the reeves lift troops over their heads and hit them from behind?”

Anji shrugged. “That's what they're expecting. That's why they have the fortifications at their rear. If you want to see, go forward with the scouts.”

“My thanks. I'd like to go, if your scouts will have me.”

Of course they would, if Anji said they must.

They were easygoing local men. Their way of talking fell smoothly on the ears of a man raised on the Haya shore, who had spent some time around Nessumara in his youth, although he'd never walked deep into the delta. Krokes and snakes did not appeal, and the smell of decaying vegetation overlaid with smoke and ash made his lungs hurt.

The scouts numbered sixteen; all walked with a stoop but so quickly that he struggled to keep up. He was sent off with a pair of older men. Forgi was short and stout and as graceful as a cat; Ussoken was about Joss's height, thin, and had such a dry wit that maybe it scorched the land more than fire. They both had spears with which they poked the ground, testing for hot spots. This far north, they informed him, they did not expect to find fire, because they had fired the forest about three mey south, luring the enemy in far enough that he had no choice but to retreat fast and furiously. But you never knew how far it might have spread, so it was best to be cautious.