Traitors' Gate (77 page)

Shouts and cheers and the stamping of feet on earth sent her on her way, just as an audience showed its approval at the Festival contests. She was grinning as Tumna slipped into a weak thermal and got some lift. She couldn't really shout
across the gap between eagles, but she found her place in the formation easily enough.

Peddonon flagged a “follow me,” and they continued south toward the delta, an intense green shivering mass of vegetation ahead. Kanness was laughing as he banked into place; not that she could quite make out the lineaments of his face, but he was a hearty laugher; she knew him well enough by now to recognize how his torso and head looked when he was full-on guffawing.

She didn't feel like laughing, precisely, but it was so cursed good to know they'd finally inflicted some damage. After all the months of feeling like useless observers.

Why in the hells hadn't the reeves done this earlier?

We're not helpless any longer.

That cursed Commander Joss and his gods-rotted outlander ally had been right. Imagine that.

A month ago, the enemy had been dispersed across the plain of Istria and the lower reaches of Haldia, stretching to the Haya Gap, pillaging, burning, and generally causing havoc. Now it seemed everyone was marching toward Nessumara. Barges moved downriver, laden with slaves or building materials. Gangs worked in the western forests, felling logs, which were lashed into huge rafts and floated toward Skerru.

As they flew downriver after the skirmish, she observed with new eyes. That gang of men being marched under guard down-road was not vulnerable because they were guarded by too many soldiers for one wing to attack. Yet there, several mey from the river in heavily wooded hills, a half cadre of men hauling wagons was too far away from foot-based relief to call for help; a single wing could scatter them, and two wings working in concert—if such a thing could be managed—could obliterate them before their company came to their rescue.

Her hands itched, eager to pull Tumna's jesses, to go on the hunt. To strike a blow.

When the wing passed over the town of Skerru, she saw people like ants boiling, all hard at work building what looked like rafts. Something big was up, for sure.

She, Pil, Kanness, and Peddonon set down on Copper Hall's islet while Orya and Warri remained aloft. Three fawkners hustled over to greet them, a cursed sight friendlier than they had been the first time Nallo had landed here.

“What news?” the first cried as they clustered around Peddonon. “We're in the hells of trouble here.”

“You must have seen!” blurted the second. “That gods-rotted army is building walkways to cross the marsh and swamp.”

“The hells!” cried the third, looking at Nallo. “You've got blood all over your leathers.”

Drying streaks splattered her vest and trousers. Flakes shed from her hands. A spot on her chin itched, and when she raised a hand to rub at it, the fawkners flinched as if they thought she was about to hit them.

“We've been in a skirmish.” Peddonon gestured to get their attention. “I need to see the marshal at once.”

“You're in luck,” said the first fawkner. “They're in council now, with the commander and that outlander captain.”

“Joss? Is here in Nessumara?”

“Just came in last night—”

“The hells! Kanness, you stay with the fawkners. Nallo, Pil, come with me.”

The fawkners blurted out a protest but a glance from Peddonon, and the menace of his big frame, silenced them. Nallo and Pil trotted obediently after him as he made his way through the compound to the marshal's cote, a pretty cottage surrounded by a garden on the landward side and with a wooden pier jutting out onto a wide channel. Two low-slung boats had been tied to the pier. A girl, ten or twelve years of age and quite thin, was set to watch them. Two elderly reeves sat on the porch, mending harness. When they saw Peddonon they clambered to their feet. One tapped the sliding door and went inside the cote while the other blocked the stairs.

“I'm here to see Commander Joss,” said Peddonon.

“You're Peddo, right? Where's your eagle perched?”

“I'm Peddonon, sergeant in charge of the contingent stationed at Law Rock. If the commander's here, he'll want to
speak to me. If Captain Anji is here, he'll want to hear about the skirmish we just fought.”

“Skirmish?”

The old man's gaze fixed on Nallo, taking in the blood. “Aui! What happened?”

“I'll give my report to—”

The door slid open, and the other old reeve indicated that Peddonon should go in.

He paused on the porch to take off his boots, nodding at Nallo. “Go wash yourself off.”

“Where?” she demanded.

He waved a hand, but she wasn't sure if he meant the garden, or the pier, or the barracks. The door slapped shut behind him, and the old reeves stared so rudely! She grabbed Pil and walked to the pier. The heat was beginning to rise, already muggy and steamy here in the delta; in another few weeks it would become unbearable. She swatted at gnats attracted to her sweat, but they only returned, like that cursed army: swarms that would eat them alive if they could manage it.

“Abandoned again with the usual disregard important louts show for their underlings,” she muttered. “Not one word of praise for our victory.”

“Any decent fighting unit would have made quick work of our clumsy attack,” said Pil. “The eagles are huge targets. We need better tactics, and much more training.”

“Thank you,” she said as she stamped out onto the pier, Pil following with more caution. The girl turned to stare at them. “Now I'll just shove you into the water, if you don't mind, so you can feel what it's like to have water dumped over your excitement at finally having done something right!”

Pil didn't like water; it had been hard enough to get him to bathe in the way Hundred folk did.

“I didn't mean it,” she added, hating that stiff-faced expression he got.

“You were brave,” he said. “You didn't hesitate.”

She laughed. “That's praise coming from you, I suppose, with your fancy Qin ways.”

The brown water flowed so sluggishly you couldn't quite
see the current's ripple. A pair of boats eased downstream, one tied on behind the other, an older woman steering the forward craft. The woman glanced their way casually and then, startled, looked more closely at Pil.

“Heya! Auntie! Look where you're going!” A pair of young men called out jocularly to the older woman. She favored them with a long look, and whistled provocatively, and they laughed in reply. The men, rowing cargo upstream, were stripped down to loincloths, their muscular backs rippling as they stroked.

Nallo nudged Pil, but he was already looking in that pretending-not-to-look way he still had, as if admiring were shameful.

The girl ran her toes along one of the long lines, staring sidelong at Pil much as he was watching the passing rowers. “Why's he wear his hair all funny like that? Why isn't it short like a proper reeve? He's an outlander. So why's he wear reeve leathers?”

“I'm sure you're a smart girl,” said Nallo. “If he come in here jessed to an eagle and wears reeve leathers, what do you suppose he is? Anyway, let me ask you a question. Why does this water stink so much?”

“It doesn't! You've got blood on you. All dried and flaking off. Yuck.”

“It does! It smells like rotting fish and rubbish. Yuck.”

“I never asked you!”

“Yes, but you had plenty to say about my friend here, and you never asked him, just talked to me like he wasn't even there.”

“Outlanders can't talk proper speech, everyone knows that. If he could, why doesn't he say anything?”

“I have nothing to say,” said Pil softly. The girl, hearing him speak, shrieked and danced away to the end of the pier. He grinned, more sweetly than Nallo ever did.

The male rowers had vanished past a point of land piled high with piers and warehouses and the auntie floated out of sight under a narrow arched bridge that stretched between Copper Hall's islet and a spur of land that held what looked like a council square behind a screen of mulberry trees. The
channel lay empty but for a leafless branch swirling aimlessly like a dead snake in the brown water.

The girl sidled a few steps closer. “Folk say we're all likely to die,” she ventured, still staring at Pil. “Not so much by starving, 'cause we got fields all over the islands, but 'cause that army, they coming back.”

“This city is well defended by the river,” said Pil. “Only on two roads can an army march in across the wetlands. Likely the army will build paths and rafts. But your soldiers have weapons, boats, archers. You know the land. All this you can fight with.”

“We dun't really have soldiers,” said the girl. “My brother got hisself killt. He was on Veyslip Island with the militia that held off the main attack on the east causeway. So he's a hero, but he's still dead. I dun't see how we can fight them again. My clan tried to get us out in a boat but it cost too much. At least we live here in the hall, and get nai every day for our labor. Why do you fight them?” she said to Pil. “You being an outlander, I mean.”

He fingered his neat topknot. The clubbed hair bound around with thin leather strips had not a strand out of place. “I am a reeve.”

“Heya!” Peddonon appeared on the porch. “You two!”

Nallo rolled her eyes. “He's changed now that he's been put in charge on Law Rock. Whew! High and mighty!”

Pil looked away.

“You got something going on there, eh?”

The girl snickered.

Pil's stance took on the rigidity that told her she'd gone too far.

“You can't hear me?” Peddonon bellowed.

“Eiya! I'm sorry. And an idiot.” She slapped Pil hard on the shoulder, and he relaxed. “Let's go.”

She trotted toward the cote, Pil's steps sounding behind her. Commander Joss and Captain Anji emerged onto the porch, chattering away like her brothers when they would go on about the most precise details of the cursed goats.

The outlander had an engaging voice, his accent more
pleasing than difficult. “That huge old forest—the Wild, you call it—would be a perfect refuge for skirmishers. We could drop them in behind enemy lines to maintain a running disruption, and they could retreat into the forest when they got into trouble.”

“No human can enter the Wild, and live. It's forbidden to go in there.”

“What if we could speak to these wildings and ask them to allow our soldiers refuge? Just for the duration of the war? If they can think and communicate, then it is possible to negotiate with them.”

“Had much luck trading for horses with the lendings?” asked Joss with a laugh.

The captain winced, then grinned. “It was my own fault. I did not listen to good advice. But if the wildings are people, like to us, then it is merely a matter of coming to understand what they need and how we can offer that to them in return for what we need. Then both they and we benefit, to our mutual advantage.”

The tip-tap of a cane preceded the appearance of the marshal. He was old, weary, and stoop-shouldered, shaking his head as he appeared in the open doors as if disagreeing with Anji's statement. His evident weakness made the contrast between the three men even greater: Commander Joss's excessive handsomeness could not disguise his barely leashed energy, striking in a man who had counted a full forty years; the outlander captain had a quieter but more forceful charisma, a deadly wolf lying patiently in wait for the right moment to kill.

The captain addressed the marshal as if resuming a conversation broken off inside. “Marshal Masar, I know there is not time to properly train strike forces as efficient, disciplined units, but there is enough time to use them wisely. Reeves can carry soldiers and put them down behind enemy lines. We can sow confusion, pick off stragglers at little risk to ourselves. Create trouble. Draw off their attention while meanwhile I march the army up from Olo'osson. The key is to keep their gaze fixed elsewhere so they don't see us coming.”

“It goes against all tradition,” objected the old marshal.

Commander Joss's eyes widened as he noticed the blood on Nallo's leathers. “Masar, if we are all dead, then how will our traditions have served us? The ones who command the Star of Life army have cleansed tradition from their ranks. We need not kill tradition to fight them, but we must change to survive. Do you want Nessumara, and this branch of Copper Hall, to fall to the army? To suffer what High Haldia and Toskala have suffered?”

The outlander captain raised a hand. His gaze skimmed over Nallo and Pil in a way that made her stand up straighter; Pil said nothing, his gaze lowered as if he were ashamed, although what in the hells he would have to feel ashamed of Nallo could not imagine.

The captain lowered the hand and tapped his own chest. “Listen. I can move my army quickly. They're trained for exactly such a contingency. But I desperately need
your
support, and your support in particular, Marshal Masar, before I lay my plan before Nessumara's council tonight.” He paused, brushing the back of a hand along his beard, his gestures neat and graceful. “We
must strike
while the people of Nessumara and Toskala and High Haldia and the entire countryside along the immense length of the River Istri still possess the will to resist. We must strike before they begin to prefer
any
form of peace, however onerous, to continued suffering.”

The marshal dropped his gaze like a man beaten in hooks-and-ropes. An agony of sorrow shuttered his eyes. Abruptly, Commander Joss touched him on the arm in a manner meant to comfort.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Joss said. “Do not blame yourself when the blame must rest on those who forced the choice on you.”

“Why do you people hesitate?” Nallo cried, the words pouring out before she knew she meant to say them. “Do you think you're the only one who's lost a kinsman? Don't you understand I'm standing here today because that cursed army killed my husband and orphaned my helpless stepchildren?
Maybe it wouldn't have happened if there had been reeve wings fighting along West Track. I would rather fight and kill these gods-rotted bastards than sit around on my clean bench and moan about tradition while folk are being slaughtered, women assaulted, villages burned, children enslaved. But who am I to know? Just a cursed hill girl, born to goat herders, married against my will to a kind man who treated me decently despite my bad temper. I'd be dead if it weren't for the Qin.” The marshal was actually cringing, but that didn't make her feel the least stirring of shame for yelling at the sodden old fool. She fixed her glare on the captain, who watched her with unsettling interest. “My thanks to your men.”