Traitors' Gate (31 page)

“Captain Arras? Message from Captain Dessheyi.”

“Go on.”

The lad pulled up beside him and began to talk. “First Cohort has crossed the first bridge, Captain. It's a plank bridge. Single wide, one wagon at a time, easy for counting toll and controlling traffic. Looked to me like you could remove the middle planks and block it. The front ranks are crossing the island beyond it now, toward a second bridge.”

“What is the island like?”

“Storehouses, courtyards, a threshing ground, gardens and orchards. It's deserted.”

“Interesting. What are my orders?”

“Cross the first bridge. First Cohort will move forward over the second bridge, while Sixth holds position on the island until the cohort behind yours reaches the first bridge. Then you'll cross the second bridge in support of First Cohort.”

“Each cleared space taken possession of immediately. I see. Anything else?”

“I'm to continue on to give my message to Seventh Cohort, commanded by Captain Daron.”

“Very well. Follow me.”

He signaled Sergeant Giyara to maintain control of his personal staff and, with the runner in tow, dropped back from the front of his unit. He passed the first-strike infantrymen, his heaviest shields. Behind them marched a cadre of guards walling in the hostages, followed by five cadres of proven infantry with new soldiers mixed in among the veterans. Next in line came the wagoners with their six wagons rumbling along without incident, archers pacing them with bows ready. He reached the rearguard, where his toughest men were wiping their brows and eyeing the distance opening between them and Seventh Cohort, its vanguard barely in sight behind them. The youth took a swig from his flask, then sprinted off as Arras followed his swift progress with an approving gaze.

“Anything?” he asked Subcaptain Orli after he had relayed First Cohort's orders.

“No, Captain. Seventh Cohort is maintaining distance, according to plan. As for the mire, cursed if I know. I saw a boat.”

“So did I. Stay alert. Betrayal seems cursed simple, but something could easily go wrong.”

The runner reached the vanguard of Seventh Cohort. Arras worked his way back up through the unit to the wedge that surrounded their twenty-eight hostages, all of whom looked frightened and weary.

All but one.

The other hostages watched what she did, listened for what she said, adjusted their stride to match her pace. They were cowed hostages who knew they were alive only on the sufferance of their captors. She was not cowed. Interesting.

She offered him something that wasn't a smile as much as a challenge. “Captain Arras. How nice of you to come explain yourself.”

“Explain myself? I'm still trying to figure what you did with those chickens.” He clasped his hands behind his back as he fell into step beside her.

“We didn't do anything with the chickens. We had to put the cage back. You saw the whole thing.”

“The other chickens. The ones you successfully stole via misdirection.”

“I did nothing but what you saw me do, Captain. I'm sorry you believe otherwise.”

It was a discussion they'd had four times in the last four days; he was no nearer to figuring if the hostages had managed to cook the birds without him knowing or to trade them without being caught, and in the latter case for what items in exchange? He had the hostages' bundles searched every night for weapons and contraband, but nothing ever showed up beyond the usual gear: a spoon, a bowl, a flask, a hat and cloak to keep off rain and sun, a spare linen jacket, soap, a comb, a towel, and a mat to unroll on the ground.

“I meant to say,” she went on, “I'm surprised you didn't leave us back in camp instead of forcing us to march into battle with you. Won't we just get in the way?”

“Only if there's trouble.”

Her lips curved into a mocking smile. “Traitors opened the gates of Toskala. Nessumaran traitors can easily tear down barriers that block causeways. They'll let you take the city without a fight. It's the same day, is it not? Wakened Ox.”

“It's better this way. For the Nessumarans.”

“Not for you?”

“Fighting threshes the weak from the useful. Helps me get to know my soldiers.”

She walked in silence, strides of her long legs matched to his. She was thinking over his words, or hoping he would go away; he wasn't sure which. He was pretty sure she wasn't afraid of him, as she ought to be. It was a cursed admirable trait, to be so cool and confident.

“Captain!” His attendant, a decent young man named Navi, had slipped back along the causeway. “Sergeant Giyara sends her respects, Captain. Our vanguard has started across the bridge.”

“I'll come right up.”

“It's cursed strange, though, Captain.” The young man swiped a hand over his left shoulder in a nervous gesture he had, the kind of thing that could get to irritating a man if the youth weren't so stolid otherwise.

“What's that?”

“Just that the channel we're crossing is running so strong, Captain. You'd think they'd control the flow of water better. With dams and locks and flood barriers.”

“What good would that do? I'm uplands born and bred myself.”

“I'm Istria born, Captain. There's plenty you can do by diverting a strong river current into irrigation channels and canals. I'd have thought they'd divert a side channel into a series of canals that would make haulage and transportation easy within the inner delta and the city, that's what I'd—”

He seemed likely to chatter on, made enthusiastic by knowing something his captain did not. Arras cut him off. “Well observed. We'll see what to make of it when we come to know the city better, as we will—”

Light glinted on the water, a flash repeated twice. Arras raised a hand to shade his eyes, staring over the flat expanse marred here and there by a bright explosion of greener brush or tenacious trees grown on hummocks.

Zubaidit lifted an elbow to point up. “That came from the sky. The reeves are signaling to someone out there in the swamp.”

“Why would they be—?”

Once before in his life, as a youth training as an ordinand, out on a field expedition with eleven others like him, he'd heard a sound before he realized he'd heard it. His action, back then, had saved his own life although it hadn't saved the lives of the other young ordinands he was with. He'd not been captain of their merry little band. Indeed, he'd been youngest
and least experienced among them, but the slaughter had taught him a lesson he would never forget: Don't act for yourself alone; you are responsible for your comrades.

“Shields up!” he shouted as he grabbed Navi's arm and yanked him behind the cover of the nearest infantryman.

Streaks darkened the sky as shapes rose out of the water, but his soldiers had already obeyed. Arrows rained down on the causeway, thwacking stone, thudding on upraised shields, but no one was hit. Hostages sobbed with fear.

“Get down!” cried Zubaidit to the Toskalans. She dropped, and the others followed like wheat mowed down as a second flight of arrows rose into the sky from the wetlands and clattered down. A man among the hostages screamed and thrashed.

“I'm hit!” cried one of the soldiers, without panic, just letting everyone know.

“Heh, trying to grow a second tool from your ass, Tendri?” laughed one of his comrades.

Arras heard the clamor of battle joined far ahead, whose first tremors in the air had warned him before he fully recognized what he was hearing.

“Tortoise!” he cried. The soldiers shifted seamlessly, forming a barrier with their shields. Movement flurried through the ranks as Sergeant Giyara pushed back to join him. For an instant he stood above the turtling backs of the shields, above the cowering hostages, and scanned the entire prospect: the deadly mire, the exposed bridge and the solid island beyond, the enemy in the swamp, boats slipping into view with more archers within, a chaos of dust and hammering action ahead where the vanguard boiled with action against the haze and smoke raised by the commotion. Impossible to see what they were up against.

“Captain Arras,” said Zubaidit from the ground. Her grin was so cocky that he wanted to kick her. “I think your betrayers have either betrayed you, or been betrayed in their turn and had their plan exposed.”

She was right, curse her.

Seventh Cohort's captain acted at last: Figures, small at this distance, broke off in clusters from the cohort behind his and
plunged into the water toward the half-hidden archers, only to flounder into traps and sinkholes.

“Captain!” Sergeant Giyara yanked him under a shield as a new shower of arrows fell. His people were too cursed exposed, and they were taking hits.

Zubaidit grabbed his arm. “Captain! I beg you. Can the hostages hide under the wagons? I've got five hit already.”

He shook her off. “Sound the drum! Push over the bridge and get onto land! Move! Move!”

Arrows flew. Men staggered. Some fell, and were dragged by their fellows as the companies pressed forward, pushing hard to get off the causeway. One man spun away over the edge of the causeway and tumbled into the shallows, facedown in the muddy water. Behind, Seventh Cohort was retreating, cursed fools; they had three mey of causeway to cover to get back to dry land; they'd be picked off.

“Sergeant!” he called, having lost Giyara in the forward surge. He took a sharp blow to his head. An arrow slid down his body, and he stepped on it, snapping it in half. The hells! He swiped a hand over his helmet, but the arrow hadn't dislodged anything.

He snagged a pair of unbroken arrows. “Pick up every arrow you can find. Toss them in the wagons. Keep moving!”

The soldiers on the outside had their shields wedged well together to cover legs and torsos. The line inside had lifted shields to cover the heads of the outer rank. They marched in pace with the drum. The wagons rumbled. Arrows thudded into the gravel, or were swept up by a spare hand and tossed into the wagons. A driver grunted as an arrow sprouted in his side, but he kept driving, hunched over. Zubaidit leaped up on the bench and yanked the reins from the man's hands. Where were those cursed hostages? If they were getting in the way of his troops, he'd slit their throats himself. But they had boxed themselves in between the wagons, hauling their injured. A young woman went down in a fresh shower of deadly arrows. He felt the kiss of death brushing past, but nothing hit him; instead, he stepped over a limp body, a young soldier shot in the eye. Dead instantly, no doubt. Unfortunate. He grabbed the
fellow's sword and kept moving. Looking back, he saw one of the hostages—an older woman with her hair tightly wrapped in a scarf—wrench the shield from the soldier's slack hand.

The gravel of the causeway surface gave way to wood planking, the crunch of his footsteps turning to a scrape as he moved over the bridge in the midst of his personal staff. The current in the channel ran swiftly beneath, a purling sound so loud it muffled the roar of confusion coming from up ahead where First Cohort was fighting a foe of unknown size, ferocity, and skill.

The bridge went on and on, as arrows rained down, but although one man and then a second and then a third slumped against the railings, the drummer did not cease her steady beat, the wagons rolled, the men held. The Toskalan hostages grabbed wounded men and slung them on the backs of wagons.

They marched out onto dry ground where he got a quick impression of plenty of dangerous open space and scattered abandoned carts and wagons and hitching gear plus boats drawn up and overturned by the river wall. There were warehouses, trees in planted rows, low brick walls surrounding several conjoined garden plots, a long brick row house with porch and multiple doors, many left open, the place clearly deserted in haste. The island was small, with a lane piercing straight through to a distant bridge, where a mob of fighting churned and boiled, dust thick in the air.

He pushed forward to find the vanguard setting up a quick and dirty perimeter using a pair of storehouses as their cornerstone.

“We're not stopping. We push up to support First Cohort—”

A massive
crack
made everyone flinch. Out of the chaos ahead, men screamed; shouts rang as the enemy cried aloud in triumph. Arras ran out beyond the perimeter: the distant clot of First Cohort's rearguard was falling back in confusion, completely out of order. Smoke billowed from the vicinity of the bridge and the unseen ground beyond it. Flames licked, running high. A horrible screaming yammer—maybe no more
than ten men—caught in those flames on the bridge, but their agony stabbed panic into the rest. Arras had seen men break and run. He knew what would happen next; he'd witnessed the death of his comrades before, because once you are routed, you are easy prey.

“Heya! New orders!” The rain of arrows had abated now that they were on the island, but he knew their enemy out in the mire was merely taking this chance to regroup, or was pursuing Seventh Cohort down the causeway. “We're fixing a perimeter on this island. Move to those garden walls.”

“There's good cover, Captain, in these warehouses—” cried one of his vanguard sergeants.

“Neh. They'll burn us out of wooden structures. That thatch will go up in a heartbeat. Set up an outer perimeter along the warehouse line. Everyone else back to the brick walls. Sergeant Giyara!”

“Captain!”

“I want sweep teams through every abandoned building while we're free of archery fire. Strip any provisions, supplies, everything. I'll need another cadre to drag in all the wagons and boats. We'll break them up and build shelters, arrow breaks, barriers. If we can manage it in staggered units, break down that row house for bricks to strengthen our perimeter. We'll make the three walled garden plots our main defensive hold, build it up as we can, and I want to include that mulberry orchard, too, so we have range of motion and some protection from that direction. We'll need forward outposts, and banners torn up to form signal flags. Cadre sergeants—”