Authors: Kate Elliott
“Settle!” barked the leader. “I heard of Captain Mani.”
“Sheh! Let me not speak ill of the dead, though I'd like to. What a tight ass he had, eh?” Some man among the company snorted, as in agreement, but Shai couldn't tell which one it was. “We fled with the clothes on our backs, these horses, and our weapons.”
“And slaves.” He nodded toward the awning.
“We were told we'd get the pick of the loot in Olossi, so we took what we could.”
“I'd like to see your catch.”
“Sure you would. Wait 'til dawn.”
“I surely would wait, if I didn't suppose you might have a cadre of soldiers hidden under that awning like to murder us in our sleep.”
Aui! They were two wolves facing off.
Bai bared her teeth. “Listen, ver, I'm happy to give you a look, but a look is all. I'm not one of those gods-rotted temples where anyone can go in as long as they show a little respect. I'm aiming to collect coin for leasing the older ones and to sell the younger.” She spat. “You give me trouble, you've got a fight. And believe me, you'll go down first. You and your brother, there.”
The leader glanced at his second, but the other man looked unsure as the fire played light over his face. Some
people, Shai realized, simply were in charge and, being so confident, cowed others. Captain Anji was that kind of person. So was Zubaidit.
“Give me a cut of the action?” ventured the leader.
Zubaidit heaved her shoulders in a big sigh. “And then won't every cursed lout be wanting a cut, eh? Still. Keep your end of the bargain, and I'll consider your offer.”
Even knowing what to expect, having heard Bai explain how she intended to con her way into camp, Shai shook with an anger he could not express. Yet when the children were called out, they kept heads bent obediently and shuffled into a tight huddle, youngest in the center. Yudit was trembling, arms crossed in front of her scrawny body, but she said nothing, did not bolt, did not cry. Vali clutched her arm.
One of the men checked inside the awning. Others stared at Eridit.
“She going for sale, too?” asked the leader finally, indicating her with an elbow.
“Neh. She was Captain Mani's bed warmer, although I don't see what she saw in him. I promised to see her safely back to the army.”
The man leered. “Looking for a real man to take you on, eh? I'll consider it, but you'd have to show me what you have to offer.”
Eridit looked about to say something rude, but she scanned him in a measuring way. “I'm looking for a man who will treat me decent. One with a bit of coin to keep me clothed and fed. Say what you will about Captain Mani, but he treated me decent and so I treated him decent. That's worth plenty.”
Simple words, and yet with her tone and posture she did get those men to looking at each other as though sizing up their competition. Set their backs up. Sow a scattering of dissension. Good tactics. Bai signaled, and Eridit herded the children back under the awning.
“We'll move out at dawn,” Bai said.
They settled into an uneasy truce, one man from each company set to the watch. Shai was dismissed, but although he settled down against the awning, he was twisted too tight to sleep. He fretted all night, wondering where Tohon was concealed, but neither saw sight nor heard sound of the Qin scout, not even when night's shroud lifted to reveal an overcast dawn.
They walked the next day on forest tracks, pushing east through heavily overgrown countryside. At their approach, birds ceased singing. The children ate nai paste in the morning, and afterward trudged with faces set, little soldiers who had lost all hope of returning home and, in doing so, gained new strength. Shai moved up and down the line as they marched, keeping an eye out for exhaustion, quietly making sure none of the soldiers bothered them.
In the afternoon they stumbled across an abandoned farmstead, blowing through like locusts, stripping any least thing that might be edible. Dena and Eska proved adept at crawling along the narrow eaves of the storehouse to collect bundles of drying herbs. It was strange to see how sharing food altered the behavior of the soldiers, some joshing the children good-naturedly as they might younger siblings. The landscape began to open with harvested woodland, large clearings suitable for pasturage, a pair of charcoal pits, and strips of old field gone fallow. Twice again they moved through emptied farmsteads, and gleaned what they could.
Where had the farmers gone? No one made any guesses.
But in both farmsteads Shai collected an arrow fletched in the Qin style discarded in the dust beneath one of the storehouses. Tohon had been here before them.
As they traveled on, the shadows grew long. A murmur nagged at Shai's ears.
“Best we look for a camping site,” said Bai.
The leader shook his head. “Neh. We're near enough. Keep moving.”
“Near enough to what?”
The ground gave way to an incline thick with flowering brush, humming with bees and flitting birds. Shai's gaze skipped over these wonders to the vista beyond as the children clustered around him, murmuring in amazement, shocked out of their daze. It took him a while to realize that the wide strip of blue-green land that split the earth was not land but a river twice as wide as the River Olo. The spilling murmur was its voice.
He looked down. A second river flowed past, neither as wide nor as deep, but much closer, cutting a swath through cultivated land.
“Look.” Bai nudged him.
Where the rivers met, a city rose, ringed by walls. Within the inner wall, canals quartered the inner city. A huge outcropping thrust into the confluence of the two rivers, tiny buildings visible like children's toys set atop the broad rock.
But this astounding city was not what Bai was pointing at. The soldiers had already started down the track, which zigged and zagged through the flowering growth.
Between the rivers the land, of course, narrowed in the manner of a funnel. Tidy ranks of orchards and cultivated fields covered this tongue of land as far north as he could see. Above, a pair of eagles circled. Below, a vast army marched, rank upon rank descending on the city to the beat of drums. The drums stuttered a new rhythm, and in stages the ranks staggered to a halt, their line stretched from bank to bank. Merciful God! There were so many!
“We can't take the children into that,” he whispered.
“It's exactly what we must do.” With her body lit by the westering sun, Bai looked
eager.
Vali held Yudit's hand, his gaze cold, hers exhausted like a hurt dog who knows it must keep limping. The other children watched Shai. Ladon and Veras walked up behind with the leader and his second, and Ladon shaded his eyes and gave a grunt of surprise, while Veras flung
his head back like a startled horse catching sight of unfamiliar movement in dangerous country.
“Heya!” The second cheered, then laughed. “The main army beat us to Toskala, eh? I'll be glad of a dram of cordial tomorrow.”
“Eh,” agreed the leader. “If we can get it, which I doubt. We haven't much coin between us for cordial.” He looked at Bai, whose gaze had not left the army settling into its new camp. “I'm counting on our arrangement, verea.”
“Eiya! Both whores and slaves need cleaning and fattening. As it is, they're too scrawny to be of interest to any but the worst sort, if you take my meaning, and that sort hasn't more than a vey or two to rub together. I can't earn my fortune that way, eh?”
His gaze slid to Eridit's behind, and back to Bai. “Neh. Neh. I don't have many connections, I admit, but there's opportunity for those following the camp. It's true a better class of offerings will attract more coin.”
Bai's answering smile made Shai shudder and the other man grin as at a gift. “Listen to your greed, ver. I know the temples say otherwise, yet they enrich themselves with our offerings, eh? I've a brother still in debt slavery, and mean to free him. So let's go. Before the army moves on.”
He laughed. “Moves on? Lord Radas's army has reached its target.”
The siege of Toskala had commenced.
T
HE FLIGHT OF
reeves swung wide around the road until it reached the upper reaches of the River Olossi, here not wide but swollen to a green churning roar with the flood rains. They glided southwest, strung in a line at varying elevations along a valley's edge. Each eagle bore a reeve and a soldier.
Anji, harnessed in front of Joss, said, “Look there. A ford.”
A rockslide broken off from a treeless ridgeline had filled part of the river, boulders and debris sunk halfway across and thereby making the shallows hard to defend. This time of year, the remaining deep channel boiled with white water. A booming sound pounded at intervals like a smith hammering on an anvil.
“Where's the next crossing?” shouted Anji.
“The Westcott ferry.”
They covered about eight mey, passing hamlets and farmsteads set back from the river although mostly the land here was forest cover sprinkled with clearings, moister than the Barrens but not as lush as the countryside in the east.
They sighted a substantial village and the Rice Walk, which on the Westcott side of the river became known as the Lesser Walk. Folk in the fields spotted them. A figure ran into the village, and in its wake the rest fled toward the palisade. By the time Scar touched down in the nearest fallow field, sixty or more people stood at the gate with adzes, hoes, rakes, axes, spears, and staffs balanced in their hands.
Anji unhooked, and then Joss, but the reeve approached alone along a raised walkway between fields.
“Greetings of the day,” he called. He addressed the eldest person, a stoop-shouldered man with the weathered face of one who has spent years working under the sun. “I am Joss, marshal of Argent Hall, come on urgent business. I hope you'll give me your respectful attention.”
The old man walked forward accompanied by a middle-aged woman in a good quality silk taloos and a younger man carrying a spear. Joss heard his flanking eagles land.
“If you've come for one of us, we'll not allow your depredations,” said the old man. “Not unless you present proof beyond doubt of guilt.”
Maybe shock showed on Joss's face, because folk
pointed at him. “Have reeves come here and demanded you give up individuals into their custody?”
“Last year it did happen. Said they hailed from Horn Hall. They took five young people. Into custody, so they said.”
“Horn Hall!”
“Know you of Horn Hall?”
“The hells! Last year I had reason to visit Horn Hall, and found it abandoned.” He wanted to slap himself until he woke up. Another mystery, and one he had no time to solve.
“Folk can say anything they want,” agreed the elder. “There are plenty of rogues abroad these days. I'm called Menard. What's your business with us, and why have you brought so many eagles?” He gestured skyward.
“Rogues are my business,” said Joss, wishing he had a drink. “I don't know if you've had the news, but at the end of the Fox year an army out of the north attacked Olossi.”
“Might have heard a rumor of it. Might have had some trouble ourselves recently. Might have. I'm not saying we did.”
“A coalition of reeves, Olossi militia, and outlanders come to make their fortune in the Hundred banded together to defeat this army. Most of the defeated survivors fled north over months ago, but some hid out on the Olo Plain. This group have finally made their move to get home.”
“What's that to do with us?”
“They're marching up the Rice Walk. They'll hit this ferry and want to cross. They're being led by a man who pretends to be a Guardian.”
The elder whispered for a bit to his fellows, then turned back. “The Guardians are long vanished from the Hundred. Everyone knows that.”
“Maybe so, but I'm not the only one who has seen abroad creatures who in all parts resemble Guardians
except that they rule not in favor of justice but against it.”
“Sounds like demons to me. What's it to us?”
“You don't dispute my tale. Or ask to hear more particulars?”
“I don't.”
“Then you've heard rumors, or have seen what I speak of. As for Westcott, the companies that now march up Rice Walk will not show your town any mercy, once they cross the river.”
“You wish us to hold the ferry and defend the shore. This we can do easily enough. We've pulled the ferry to our side. We control its movements from the winch. Anyway, the river is swift this time of year. They'll not cross without our permission. They'll have two day's rugged march north to Hammering Ford, which is no easy crossing. There's neither ford or ferry south of here until Storos-on-the-water. That's a long way.”
“I'm glad to hear you have your territory so well scanned, Menard. So tell me. What defense have you against demons?”
“Why, the same as you reeves. Or are you here to tell me you have a plan in mind and wish our help?”
Joss grinned. “That's exactly what I'm here to tell you. We haven't long, for we're not that far ahead. We've plans to make and snares to set. As for your people, those who have heart and strength to fight are welcome to join us. All others should flee to refuge.”
“How many march in this army?” asked Menard grimly.
“Three hundred or so.”
They dropped back to confer with the villagers, but the conference was a short one. Soon the trio returned. “What do you want us to do?”
Joss beckoned, and Anji walked up, surveying the assembly as they stared and muttered. “This is Captain Anji, commander of the Olossi militia by request and consent of the Olossi council.”
“He's an outlander.”
“So he is. Olossi would be a ruin today if not for him.”
By their expressions, they weren't convinced.
“If you'll hear me out,” said Anji, facing their skepticism without any sign of discomfort, “I'll tell you that I consider myself a Hundred man now. I have an estate in the Barrens. I have a pregnant wife.”