Traitors' Gate (27 page)

Arda walked briskly into the mess tent, followed by Miyara, the reeve who, with Joss, had witnessed the birth of Mai's child.

He greeted both women, then turned to Miyara. “The baby got off safely?”

“Atani?” Her smile lit her face. “A sweet child, very small, mind you, but healthy. He was feted with a feast and songs, very proper, although done in the Qin manner. I don't mind saying that they eat terribly strange food.” She glanced at Tohon. “Begging your pardon, ver. Just not what we are accustomed to.”

Tohon had a genial smile. “Hard to offend me, verea. Food is food, different in different lands. As long as I'm not hungry, I'm content.”

Both the women studied him with that look women got, Joss had observed, when a man surprised them in a way that pleased them. It was different from an admiring stare for good looks or an attractive body.

An older male reeve hurried in, puffing as though he'd been running. “Heya, Arda! I got the flag. Marshal Joss!”

“Etad. Greetings of the day to you. Please sit down.”

“I will. You're back from the north. What news?”

Siras entered with more cups and a pitcher of cordial. After he'd poured around, Joss leaned forward on his elbows. “I've agreed to stand as commander over Clan Hall until the emergency has passed—”

“Or we're all dead,” said Arda with a snort.

“Or we're all dead,” agreed Joss, “or some other calamity befalls us. In any case, I'm asking you three as representatives of Naya Hall if you'll accept Verena as acting marshal of Argent Hall for now, and with you, Arda, and Miyara and Etad to stand for Naya Hall as a daughter hall to Argent Hall.”

“That goes against tradition,” said Miyara, “although in the tales—”

“Yes,” said Joss, “we already discussed appointing an ordinand or a hieros.”

Miyara chuckled. “There's some appeal in the latter. Yet in days like this, with that which ought to face upward facing downward, maybe a fawkner as marshal is not such a bad thing.”

Etad nodded. “Rena stuck it out through the months we suffered under Yordenas. She never truckled to him or his lackeys. Yet neither did she beat herself bloody trying to go against them when it would have done no good.”

Joss knew Arda cursed well because of all the years they'd served together at Clan Hall. He could see a grin forming on her face.

“And also—” she began, “—since your mention of a hieros naturally brought devouring to mind—”

“Don't say it!”

She laughed and did not say one word about who had tumbled whom and what had transpired after. He plunged into a discussion of how soon the Naya Hall reeves should start being sent out on patrol with more experienced reeves, and how else they might be used to free up experienced reeves for more difficult tasks, and how Clan Hall was going to attempt to create larger units for coordinated ventures.

“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.”

•  •  •

A
FTER 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 us, 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.