Authors: Kate Elliott
Shai watched sidelong as he scoured out the pot that had been used to cook rice. The conflict had been taking shape over several days of marching, and now, having stopped for the night in yet another isolated, abandoned, burned village, the malcontents within the cadre of thirty-six had decided to confront their leader.
“I was named captain when the cloak left us,” snarled the sergeant. “You going to argue with the lord?”
The man with the axe sneered. “You think that pervert cares about us? You ever think maybe we were led into a trap? I've been thinking the lords sent us west to test Olossi's strength, not caring what became of us. Like scarpers sent into a hole to see if an adder will bite. What do we owe them? Why go back at all, eh? Plenty of fields here. We've got slaves to do the work.”
Shai sat on a charred beam out in front of a shed where most of the younger children, chores complete, already rested on such pallets as they could scrape together from grass or straw. They were always scratching, bodies speckled with bites and discolored with sores and bruises and welts. His foot itched. He leaned down and felt along the arch until he identified the bump where he'd been bitten. Aiye! He hurt everywhere, but he must never let it show.
Twenty-six men had congregated around the sergeant, so there were nine men not present. He identified four in visible watch positions where two paths entered the wide clearing. Two more would be in the woods on a ranging watch. Where were the other three? Yet he could not possibly lead twenty-four frail children and adolescents into the woods; even with a head start, they would be caught.
“Farming is hard work,” said the sergeant as his allies muttered agreement. “I didn't sign up to farm.”
“You say that because you get a good lie-down every night, when there aren't enough to go around who are old enough, eh? Or are you like the cloak, eh? The younger, the better?”
“You gods-rotted, pus-filled shit!” The sergeant flicked up a hand, and Twist and another pair of soldiers threw the challenger to the ground. Their bodies blocked Shai's view of the beating, but two girls who were carrying buckets on a pole down the lane faltered and dropped the pole, so frightened were they at the sight. Solid thumps changed tone to a meatier, more liquid sound; they were bashing in the man's head.
There is a way men have of breathing hard when their blood is up that Shai had come to recognize in these soldiers, a spillover that the Qin soldiers had, evidently, learned to rein in. Twist lurched out of the gathering, glaring around, hands clenched. Men moved back from him as he spotted the cowering girls. Shai leaped up and trotted forward.
“Here, now!” he called out. “I'm thirsty! Where's my water?” He affected the lopsided gait that made the men laugh at him, but no one was laughing.
“Take the body away,” snarled the sergeant. “If any of you have further complaints, let me know.”
Twist grabbed Shai. “You're not what you pretend to be, that's what I think, cursed outlander.” He spat in Shai's face.
The spittle landed beneath an eye, and he flinched, sparking with hatred as he forced a stupid grin. “Heya! My dear mom said spitting wasn't nice.”
“I'd wick your dear mom until she wept for mercy!” Twist slugged him up under the ribs.
The impact doubled him over, but the spectacle had drawn the attention of the others, those slinking away to lick their wounds and those needing a bit of fun to work out the bloody aftermath of the killing of one of their own.
“Heya, Twist! I'm betting his mother was a ewe. I hear that's more to your liking.”
“You ass-wiping turd.”
Gagging and hacking, Shai stumbled out of the way. A fight broke out, fists flying, and more men waded in, laughing with a high-pitched giggling, but as Shai staggered toward the girls the roil settled out and the knot dispersed, men grumbling as they headed to fires or shelters.
“Pick up the buckets.” It was hard to choke out the words with his chest throbbing. “Get back to the well and get more water. Keep moving like nothing happened.”
Faces gray with fear, the girls grabbed pole and empty buckets and hurried off. They were so scrawny their
shoulders came to a point instead of a nice rounded curve. What remained of their tunics hung in flaps.
Shai rested on hands and knees as he waited for the worst of the pain to fade. Merciful One protect them! Tohon would be making a plan, while he did nothing more than react as each new blow fell. Maybe he was dull-witted in truth. He'd done his best, organizing the children into banners so they could look out for each other, carrying the weakest when they lagged. But it wasn't enough.
And yet the girls did come back with the water without being hit. The men mumbled, and ate their supper, and called for their favorites or waited their turn. The beaten man had been dragged away by the other soldiers and thrown into the trees, but despite the pulpy mess of his head, some glimmer of life still animated him because no ghost rose.
Shai crept back to the shelter as twilight mellowed the scene. It was easy to believe they sheltered in a peaceful backwoods hamlet, trees soughing in the breeze, candlewick flowers giving off dusk's perfume. An owl hooted, and a nightjar clicked.
After night fell, Jasya and Wori and the others old enough to be taken hobbled back to the shelter, ducking past him on the threshold and finding their places in their banner groups as he had assigned them. He waited until all were back except Yudit, who was forced to remain with the sergeant all night. He had to wait, because three nights ago they had lost Jolas, done to death in a rough way that Shai sheared away from recalling, having seen the aftermath. He hadn't thought to go looking for the lad until morning, and by then of course it was far too late.
Yet what could he have done anyway?
How was it possible he could not keep them all safe?
Too restless to sleep, he braced himself across the opening so no one could grab one without him knowing. He considered paths of escape. Could they sneak out at night? By the two sentry fires, shadowed forms paced on
watch. The pair of men set to watch the prisoners' shelter kept up a steady murmur, an idiotic conversation about a game called hooks-and-ropes.
Rain passed over, out of the southeast. He dozed, woke when a child whimpered, but it was only a dreaming cry, not repeated. The watch fires glowed red. At the forest's edge, mist untangled from the vegetation to drift into what had been some poor soul's tended garden.
He rubbed his eyes. The mist took on a flowing shape, a ghost winged with a gleaming trail as if its spirit were blown back in an unseen wind from the land beyond the Spirit Gate.
The soldier was dead, then, his ghost wandering in confusion. That left thirty-five, still too many for a single woodchopper to take on.
Yet for an instant, as the ghost crossed the compound toward the byre where the sergeant slept, he saw in the misty shape the form of a woman who looked exactly like Cornflower.
Merciful One! Would her haunt never let him rest? He shut his eyes, wishing desperately for sleep, anything to shut down the fevered workings of his exhausted mind. If he breathed slowly, if he cupped hands before his heart in the attitude of prayer and murmured the beseeching phrases, perhaps he could find peace.
“I go to the Merciful One for refuge. Accept my prayers out of compassion. Peace.”
Footsteps pattered on the ground like a fall of rain. He opened his eyes as Yudit crouched beside him.
“The sergeant's dead,” she whispered. “They'll think I did it, and they'll kill me. But I was just lying there. A ghost came in and stole his spirit.” Shivering, she clutched his arm.
“Who's dead?”
“The sergeant.” She pressed two objects into his hands: the wolf ring and the belt buckle.
“Get inside.”
Shaking, she crawled past him. Whispered questions
greeted her. He eased out from the threshold and crawled to the corner of the shed, from which he could see down the central village path. No ghost emerged from the building where the sergeant slept. Maybe the sergeant's ghost had already passed through Spirit Gate. Or maybe Yudit, in her fear, had been mistaken.
A bird chirped, the herald of dawn's coming. Men slumbered. The watch paced. One man by the north path, just becoming visible, swayed as though dozing on his feet. An aura of gray touched the treetops as more birds assayed their predawn song. There was something he ought to have understood and acted on, but had missed.
“Heya!”
He ran back to the threshold. The south path guard was waving his hands, running toward the camp; he tripped and fell hard, cursing. Within the shelter, the children were already awake and alert.
A woman wearing a lord's cloak rode into the clearing, white cloth unfurling like wings as she raised a staff to command their attention.
“You ass-kissing turds. Rise as I command!” The voice carried without being a shout. Its resonance hung in the air as men scrambled up.
An armed woman rode beside her. He blinked twice, before he recognized her:
Zubaidit!
Had she betrayed them?
As the two females rode forward, his mind sorted out what he thought he was seeing from what was right in front of his face. The cloak was Eridit, but her bearing so changed and her aspect so frightening that it was hard to see in this cloaked woman the recklessly self-absorbed young actress who had dandled the other three men and afterward thrown Shai down beneath the overhang and, well, wicked him.
“Lord Radas sent me! Why are you loitering here when you are needed in Haldia? We are angry at your disobedience! Get your gear! Move out quickly!”
Her gaze passed over Shai as if she did not recognize
him. Zubaidit, measuring the movements of the men as they grabbed gear or slouched out of lean-tos and ruined houses, marked him. Both women were dressed more conservatively than he was used to seeing them, far less flesh exposed; Bai was accustomed to having a lot of freedom of movement, while Eridit had just liked flaunting it. But now Bai wore a shift under her laced leather vest, and leather trousers for riding, while Eridit wore richer garb, a silk tabard and flowing trousers whose bright blue color shone in the rising dawn light. Her glossy black hair was twisted up on her head and held in place by lacquered sticks.
Twist and his cronies formed a tight knot, blocking the path into the village. They looked skittish, but they held their ground. “I see no winged horse,” Twist said, although his voice quavered.
Eridit raised a hand, as if giving an order.
A hiss sounded. An arrow buried itself in Twist's throat. He crumpled, as the men around him shouted in fear and bumped into each other in their haste to get away from the stricken man. His body spasmed, legs pumping as he gurgled.
“We do not tolerate disobedience,” cried Eridit, and even Shai shuddered at her imperious fury.
A man came running from the byre. “Heya! Heya!” Sweating and gray, he stumbled to a halt as he stared at the two mounted women with suspicion and fear. “Sergeant's dead. Not a cut, or welts, or bruises on his throat. He's just dead.”
Zubaidit's gaze flickered, and Eridit glanced at her sidelong, the moment passing quickly as the soldiers gabbled in alarm and confusion.
“Thus are those who disobey us, punished!” cried Eridit. “Gather your gear. Move east. Quickly, now. Quickly.”
Cowed, they hastened to their shelters and pallets.
One brave man shuffled forward with head bent to touch fisted hands. “What of the prisoners, lord?”
Neither looked toward Shai.
“Leave the prisoners!”
“Er, eh, as you command, lord. But what of the two favored ones the lord cloak, Lord Bevard, commanded us to bring safely to camp. And what of the lackwit? The lord cloak promised he would tear our hearts out if we did not do as he ordered.”
“Show me the prisoners,” said Eridit in that same full-throated voice, deeper than her speaking tone.
“You there, woodchopper! Get them out.”
Shai ducked inside the shelter. Every child was standing, ready for anything, as he'd trained them to be. “File out in your banners. Stand close beside the door. Be ready to duck back inside if I tap my shoulder. Run like crazy for the woods on the north if I tap my head.”
They filed out. Bai looked them over, her grim expression unchanged.
Eridit's anger scorched. “These are no longer your responsibility. I know which are chosen by Lord Bevard. I am responsible now. You have your orders.”
Incredibly, the soldiers formed up in a ragged line and jogged out of the clearing and away down the southeastern path, their hulking forms vanishing into the trees one by one by one untilâMerciful God!âthey were all gone.
The children stared numbly after them. The rising sun brought the trees into color. In the long silence, birds twittered. They stood there for what seemed forever, unable to move. Shai's skin was atwitch like a thousand bugs crawling.
The brush beyond the path rustled. Vali began to sob. Shai clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Hush, Vali, hold it together!”
Tohon trotted out of the trees, carrying his bow. He jogged up to the two women, nodding at Shai as he halted. “They're moving off at speed.” He looked at Eridit. “That was done well, lass.”
Her high color sank to a dull sheen. She dismounted
hastily and took only three steps before she doubled over and retched, heaving until she had nothing left to bring up.
“Where did you get the horses?” Shai could think of nothing else to say.
“That horse has no wings,” said Dena. “The lord has a winged horse.”
Tohon surveyed the children, then caught Bai's attention. “I'm going to track the soldiers. These young ones are a complication. Best if they return to their homes.”
“Don't you think they would have done so long ago if they could have?” cried Shai. “They can't possibly walk so far now, even if they could find their way, which I doubt. Most would starve along the way or be captured again. The lord went back toward Olo'osson looking to round up more of the soldiers routed at Olossi. Do you want to send them walking back into his hands?”