The Malazan Empire, page 103
Minutes passed.
Gesler, still frowning, went to join Stormy and the ex-priest.
Kulp returned. “One of them’s dead as a post,” he said.
Felisin thought to ask him what it all meant, but a sudden exhaustion swept the impulse away. She looked around until she saw Baudin. He was at the prow, his back to everything…to everyone. She wondered at his indifference. Lack of imagination, she concluded after a moment, the thought bringing a sneer to her lips. She made her way to him.
“All too much for you, eh, Baudin?” she asked, leaning beside him on the arching rail.
“T’lan Imass were never nothing but trouble,” he said. “Always two sides to whatever they did, maybe more than two. Maybe hundreds.”
“A thug with opinions.”
“You set your every notion in stone, lass. No wonder people always surprise you.”
“Surprise? I’m way past surprise, thug. We’re in something, every one of us. There’s more to come, so you can forget about thinking of a way out. There isn’t one.”
He grunted. “Wise words for a change.”
“Don’t soften up on me,” Felisin said. “I’m just too tired to be cruel. Give me a few hours’ sleep and I’ll be back to my old self.”
“Planning ways to murder me, you mean.”
“Keeps me amused.”
He was silent a long moment, eyes on the meaningless horizon ahead, then he turned to her. “You ever think that maybe what you are is what’s trapping you inside whatever it is you’re trapped inside?”
She blinked. There was a glint of sardonic judgment in his small, beastlike eyes. “I’m not following you, Baudin.”
He smiled. “Oh yes, you are, lass.”
Chapter Ten
It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.
LIFE OF DASSEM ULTOR
DUIKER
It had been a week since Duiker came upon the trail left by the refugees from Caron Tepasi. They had obviously been driven south to place further strain on Coltaine’s stumbling city in motion, the historian thought. There was nothing else in this ceaseless wasted land. The dry season had taken hold, the sun in the barren sky scorching the grasses until they looked and felt like brittle wire.
Day after day had rolled by, yet Duiker still could not catch up with the Fist and his train. The few times he had come within sight of the massive dust cloud, Reloe’s Tithansi outriders had prevented the historian from getting any closer.
Somehow, Coltaine kept his forces moving, endlessly moving, driving for the Sekala River. And from there? Does he make a stand, his back to the ancient ford?
So Duiker rode in the train’s wake. The detritus from the refugees diminished, yet grew more poignant. Tiny graves humped the old encampments; the short-bones of horses and cattle lay scattered about; an oft-repaired but finally abandoned wagon axle marked one departure point, the rest of the wagon dismantled and taken for spares. The latrine trenches reeked beneath clouds of flies.
Places where skirmishing had occurred revealed another story. Amidst the naked, unrecovered bodies of Tithansi horsewarriors were shattered Wickan lances, the heads removed. Everything that could be reused had been stripped from the Tithansi bodies: leather thongs and straps, leggings and belts, weapons, even braids of hair. Dead horses were dragged away entire, leaving swathes of blood-matted grass in their wake.
Duiker was well past astonishment at anything he saw. Like the Tithansi tribesmen he’d occasionally exchanged words with, he’d begun to believe that Coltaine was something other than human, that he had carved his soldiers and every refugee into unyielding avatars of the impossible. Yet for all that, there was no hope for victory. Kamist Reloe’s Apocalypse consisted of the armies of four cities and a dozen towns, countless tribes and a peasant horde as vast as an inland sea. And it was closing in, content for the moment simply to escort Coltaine to the Sekala River. Every current was drawing to that place. A battle was taking shape, an annihilation.
Duiker rode through the day, parched, hungry, wind-burned, his clothes reduced to rags. A straggler from the peasant army, an old man determined to join the last struggle. Tithansi riders knew him on sight and paid him little heed apart from a distant wave. Every two or three days a troop would join him, pass him bundles of food, water and feed for the horse. In some ways, he had become their icon, his journey symbolic, burdened with unasked-for significance. The historian felt pangs of guilt at that, yet accepted the gifts with genuine gratitude—they kept him and his horse alive.
Nonetheless, his faithful mount was wearing down. More and more each day Duiker led the animal by the reins.
Dusk approached. The distant dust cloud continued to march on, until the historian was certain that Coltaine’s vanguard had reached the river. The Fist would insist that the entire train drive on through the night to the encampment that the vanguard was even now preparing. If Duiker was to have any chance of rejoining them, it would have to be this night.
He knew of the ford only from maps, and his recollection was frustratingly vague. The Sekala River averaged five hundred paces in width, flowing north to the Karas Sea. A small village squatted in the crook of two hills a few hundred paces south of the ford itself. He seemed to remember something about an old oxbow, as well.
The dying day spread shadows across the land. The brightest of the night’s stars glittered in the sky’s deepening blue. Wings of capemoths rose with the heat that fled the parched ground, like black flakes of ash.
Duiker climbed back into the saddle. A small band of Tithansi outriders rode a ridge half a mile to the north. Duiker judged that he was at least a league from the river. The patrols of horsewarriors would increase the closer he approached. He had no plan for dealing with them.
The historian had walked his mount for most of the day, preparing for a hard ride into the night. He would need all that the beast could give him, and was afraid that it would not be enough. He nudged the mare into a trot.
The distant Tithansi paid him no attention, and soon rode out of sight. Heart thumping, Duiker urged his horse into a canter.
A wind brushed his face. The historian hissed a blessing to whatever god was responsible. The hanging dust cloud ahead began to edge his way.
The sky darkened.
A voice shouted a few hundred paces to his left. A dozen horsemen, strips of fur trailing from their lances. Tithansi. Duiker saluted them with a raised fist.
“With the dawn, old man!” one of them bellowed. “It is suicide to attack now!”
“Ride to Reloe’s camp!” another yelled. “Northwest, old man—you are heading for the enemy lines!”
Duiker waved their words away, gesturing like a madman. He rose slightly in the saddle, whispered into the mare’s ear, squeezed gently with his knees. The animal’s head ducked forward, the strides lengthened.
Reaching the crest of a low hill, the historian finally saw what was arrayed before him. The encampment of the Tithansi lancers lay ahead and to his right, a thousand or more hide tents, the gleam of cooking fires. Mounted patrols moved in a restless line beyond the tents, protecting the camp from the enemy forces dug in at the ford. To the left of the Tithansi camp spread a score thousand makeshift tents—the peasant army. Smoke hung like an ash-stained cloak over the sprawling tattered shanty town. Meals were being cooked. Outlying pickets consisted of entrenchments, again facing the river. Between the two encampments there was a corridor, no more than two wagons wide, running down the sloping floodplain to meet Coltaine’s earthen defenses.
Duiker angled his horse down the corridor, riding at full gallop. The Tithansi outriders behind him had not pursued, though the warriors patrolling the encampment now watched him, converging but without obvious concern…yet.
As he cleared the inside edge of the tribe’s camp on his right, then the peasants’ sea of tents on his left, he saw raised earthworks, orderly rows of tents, solidly manned pickets—the horde had additional protection. The historian saw two banners, Sialk and Hissar—regular infantry. Helmed heads had turned, eyes drawn to the sound of his horse’s hooves and now the alarmed shouts of the Tithansi riders.
The mare was straining. Coltaine’s pickets were five hundred paces ahead, seeming to get no nearer. He heard horses in pursuit, gaining. Figures appeared on the Malazan bulwarks, readying bows. The historian prayed for quick-witted minds among the soldiers he rode toward. He cursed as he saw the bows raised, then drawn back.
“Not me, you bastards!” he bellowed in Malazan.
The bows loosed. Arrows sped unseen in the night.
Horses screamed behind him. His pursuers were drawing rein. More arrows flew. Duiker risked one backward glance and saw the Tithansi scrambling to withdraw out of arrow range. Thrashing horses and bodies lay on the ground.
He slowed the mare to a canter, then a trot as he approached the earthworks. She was lathered, her limbs far too loose, her head sagging.
Duiker rode into the midst of blue-skinned Wickans—Weasel Clan—who stared at him in silence. As he glanced around, the historian felt himself in well-suited company—the plains warriors from northeast Quon Tali had the look of specters, their faces drawn with an exhaustion to match his own.
Beyond the Weasel Clan’s encampment were military-issue tents and two banners—the Hissari Guard who had remained loyal, and a company whose standard Duiker did not recognize, apart from a central stylized crossbow signifying Malazan Marines.
Hands reached up to help him from the saddle. Wickan youths and elders gathered around, a soothing murmur of voices rising. Their concern was for the mare. An old man gripped the historian’s arm. “We will tend to this brave horse, stranger.”
“I think she’s finished,” Duiker said, a wave of sorrow flooding him. Gods, I’m tired. The setting sun broke through the clouds on the horizon, bathing everything in a golden glow.
The old man shook his head. “Our horsewives are skilled in such things. She shall run again. Now, an officer comes—go.”
A captain from the unknown company of Marines approached. He was Falari, his beard and long, wavy hair a fiery red. “You rode in your saddle like a Malazan,” he said, “yet dress like a damned Dosii. Explain yourself and be quick about it.”
“Duiker, Imperial Historian. I’ve been trying to rejoin this train since it left Hissar.”
The captain’s eyes widened. “A hundred and sixty leagues—you expect me to believe that? Coltaine left Hissar almost three months ago.”
“I know. Where’s Bult? Has Kulp rejoined the Seventh? And who in Hood’s name are you?”
“Lull, Captain of the Sialk Marines, Cartheron Wing, Sahul Fleet. Coltaine’s called a briefing—you’d better come along, Historian.”
They began making their way through the encampment. Duiker was appalled at what he saw. Beyond the ragged entrenchments of the Marines was a broad, sloping field, a single roped road running through it. On the right were wagons in their hundreds, their beds crowded with wounded. The wagon wheels were sunk deep in blood-soaked mud. Birds filled the torchlit air, voicing a frenzied chorus—it seemed they had acquired a taste for blood. On the left the churned field was a solid mass of cattle, shoulder to shoulder, shifting in a seething tide beneath a hovering haze of rhizan—the winged lizards feasting on the swarms of flies.
Ahead, the field dropped away to a strip of marsh bridged by wooden slats. The swampy pools of water gleamed red. Beyond it was a broad humped-back oxbow island on which, in crowded mayhem, were encamped the refugees—in their tens of thousands.
“Hood’s breath,” the historian muttered, “are we going to have to walk through that?”
The captain shook his head and gestured toward a large farmhouse on the cattle side of the ford road. “There. Coltaine’s own Crow Clan are guarding the south side, along the hills, making sure none of the livestock strays or gets plucked by the locals—there’s a village over on the other side.”
“Did you say Sahul Fleet? Why aren’t you with Admiral Nok in Aren, Captain?”
The red-haired soldier grimaced. “Wish we were. We left the fleet and pulled up in Sialk for repairs—our transport was seventy years old, started shipping water two hours out from Hissar. The mutiny happened the same night, so we left the ship, gathered up what was left of the local Marine company, then escorted the exodus out of Sialk.”
The farmhouse they approached was a sturdy, imposing structure, its inhabitants having just fled the arrival of Coltaine’s train. Its foundation was of cut stone, and the walls were split logs chinked with sun-fired clay. A soldier of the Seventh stood guard in front of a solid oak door. He nodded to Captain Lull, then narrowed his eyes on Duiker.
“Ignore the tribal garb,” Lull told him, “this one’s ours. Who’s here?”
“Everybody but the Fist, the Warlocks and the captain of the sappers, sir.”
“Forget the captain,” Lull said. “He ain’t bothered showing for one of these yet.”
“Yes sir.” The soldier thumped a gauntleted fist on the door, then pushed it open.
Woodsmoke drifted out. Duiker and the captain stepped inside. Bult and two officers of the Seventh were crouched at the massive stone fireplace at the room’s far end, arguing over what was obviously a blocked chimney.
Lull unclipped his sword belt and hung the weapon on a hook by the door. “What in Hood’s name are you building a fire for?” he demanded. “Ain’t it hot and stinking enough in here?” He waved at the smoke.
One of the Seventh’s officers turned and Duiker recognized him as the soldier who’d stood at his side when Coltaine and his Wickans first landed in Hissar. Their eyes met.
“Togg’s feet, it’s the historian!”
Bult straightened and swung around. Scar and mouth both shifted into twin grins. “Sormo was right—he’d sniffed you on our trail weeks back. Welcome, Duiker!”
His legs threatening to give way under him, Duiker sat down in one of the chairs pushed against a wall. “Good to see you, Uncle,” he said, leaning back and wincing at his aching muscles.
“We were going to brew some herbal tea,” the Wickan said, his eyes red and watering. The old veteran had lost weight, his pallor gray with exhaustion.
“For the love of clear lungs give it up,” Lull said. “What’s keeping the Fist anyway? I can’t wait to hear what mad scheme he’s concocted to get us out of this one.”
“He’s pulled it off this far,” Duiker said.
“Against one army, sure,” Lull said, “but we’re facing two now—”
The historian lifted his head. “Two?”
“The liberators of Guran,” the captain known to Duiker said. “Can’t recall if we were ever introduced. I’m Chenned. That’s Captain Sulmar.”
“You’re it for the Seventh’s ranking officers?”
Chenned grinned. “Afraid so.”
Captain Sulmar grunted. “Not quite. There’s the man in charge of the Seventh’s sappers.”
“The one who never shows at these briefings.”
“Aye.” Sulmar looked dour, but Duiker already suspected that the expression was the captain’s favorite. He was dark, short, appearing to have Kanese and Dal Honese blood in his ancestry. His shoulders sloped as if carrying a lifetime of burdens. “Though why the bastard thinks he’s above the rest of us I don’t know. Damned sappers’ve been doing nothing but repairing wagons and collecting big chunks of stone and getting in the cutters’ way.”
“Bult commands us in the field,” Captain Chenned said.
“I am the Fist’s will,” the Wickan veteran rumbled.
There was the sound of horses pulling up outside, the jangle of tack and armor, then the door thumped once and a moment later swung open.
Coltaine looked unchanged to Duiker’s eyes, as straight as a spear, his lean face wind-burned to the color and consistency of leather, his black feather cape bellying in his wake as he strode into the center of the large room. Behind him came Sormo E’nath and half a dozen Wickan youths who spread out to array themselves haphazardly against walls and pieces of furniture. They reminded the historian of a pack of dock rats in Malaz City, lords over the small patch they held.
Sormo walked up to Duiker and held out both hands to grip his wrists. Their eyes met. “Our patience is rewarded. Well done, Duiker!”
The boy looked infinitely older, lifetimes closing in around his hooded eyes.
“Rest later, Historian,” Coltaine said, fixing each person in the room with a slow, gauging study. “I made my command clear,” he said, turning at last to Bult. “Where is this captain of the Engineers?”
Bult shrugged. “Word was sent. He’s a hard man to find.”
Coltaine scowled. “Captain Chenned, your report.”
“Third and Fifth companies are across the ford, digging in. The crossing’s about four hundred and twenty paces, not counting the shallows on both sides, which add another twenty or so. Average depth is one and a half arm-spans. Width is between four and five most of the way, a few places narrower, a few wider. The bottom’s about two fingers of muck over a solid spine of rocks.”
“The Foolish Dog Clan will join your companies on the other side,” Coltaine said. “If the Guran forces try to take that side of the ford during the crossing, you will stop them.” The Fist wheeled to Captain Lull. “You and the Weasel Clan shall guard this side while the wounded and the refugees cross. I will maintain position to the south, blocking the village road, until the way is clear.”
Captain Sulmar cleared his throat. “About the order of crossing, Fist. The Council of Nobles will scream—”
“I care not. The wagons cross first, with the wounded. Then the livestock, then the refugees.”
“Perhaps if we split it up more,” Sulmar persisted, sweat glistening on his flat brow, “a hundred cattle, then a hundred nobles—”
“Nobles?” Bult asked. “You meant refugees, surely.”
“Of course—”
Captain Lull sneered at Sulmar. “Trying to buy favors on both sides, are you? And here I thought you were a soldier of the Seventh.”
Gesler, still frowning, went to join Stormy and the ex-priest.
Kulp returned. “One of them’s dead as a post,” he said.
Felisin thought to ask him what it all meant, but a sudden exhaustion swept the impulse away. She looked around until she saw Baudin. He was at the prow, his back to everything…to everyone. She wondered at his indifference. Lack of imagination, she concluded after a moment, the thought bringing a sneer to her lips. She made her way to him.
“All too much for you, eh, Baudin?” she asked, leaning beside him on the arching rail.
“T’lan Imass were never nothing but trouble,” he said. “Always two sides to whatever they did, maybe more than two. Maybe hundreds.”
“A thug with opinions.”
“You set your every notion in stone, lass. No wonder people always surprise you.”
“Surprise? I’m way past surprise, thug. We’re in something, every one of us. There’s more to come, so you can forget about thinking of a way out. There isn’t one.”
He grunted. “Wise words for a change.”
“Don’t soften up on me,” Felisin said. “I’m just too tired to be cruel. Give me a few hours’ sleep and I’ll be back to my old self.”
“Planning ways to murder me, you mean.”
“Keeps me amused.”
He was silent a long moment, eyes on the meaningless horizon ahead, then he turned to her. “You ever think that maybe what you are is what’s trapping you inside whatever it is you’re trapped inside?”
She blinked. There was a glint of sardonic judgment in his small, beastlike eyes. “I’m not following you, Baudin.”
He smiled. “Oh yes, you are, lass.”
Chapter Ten
It is one thing to lead by example with half a dozen soldiers at your back. It is wholly another with ten thousand.
LIFE OF DASSEM ULTOR
DUIKER
It had been a week since Duiker came upon the trail left by the refugees from Caron Tepasi. They had obviously been driven south to place further strain on Coltaine’s stumbling city in motion, the historian thought. There was nothing else in this ceaseless wasted land. The dry season had taken hold, the sun in the barren sky scorching the grasses until they looked and felt like brittle wire.
Day after day had rolled by, yet Duiker still could not catch up with the Fist and his train. The few times he had come within sight of the massive dust cloud, Reloe’s Tithansi outriders had prevented the historian from getting any closer.
Somehow, Coltaine kept his forces moving, endlessly moving, driving for the Sekala River. And from there? Does he make a stand, his back to the ancient ford?
So Duiker rode in the train’s wake. The detritus from the refugees diminished, yet grew more poignant. Tiny graves humped the old encampments; the short-bones of horses and cattle lay scattered about; an oft-repaired but finally abandoned wagon axle marked one departure point, the rest of the wagon dismantled and taken for spares. The latrine trenches reeked beneath clouds of flies.
Places where skirmishing had occurred revealed another story. Amidst the naked, unrecovered bodies of Tithansi horsewarriors were shattered Wickan lances, the heads removed. Everything that could be reused had been stripped from the Tithansi bodies: leather thongs and straps, leggings and belts, weapons, even braids of hair. Dead horses were dragged away entire, leaving swathes of blood-matted grass in their wake.
Duiker was well past astonishment at anything he saw. Like the Tithansi tribesmen he’d occasionally exchanged words with, he’d begun to believe that Coltaine was something other than human, that he had carved his soldiers and every refugee into unyielding avatars of the impossible. Yet for all that, there was no hope for victory. Kamist Reloe’s Apocalypse consisted of the armies of four cities and a dozen towns, countless tribes and a peasant horde as vast as an inland sea. And it was closing in, content for the moment simply to escort Coltaine to the Sekala River. Every current was drawing to that place. A battle was taking shape, an annihilation.
Duiker rode through the day, parched, hungry, wind-burned, his clothes reduced to rags. A straggler from the peasant army, an old man determined to join the last struggle. Tithansi riders knew him on sight and paid him little heed apart from a distant wave. Every two or three days a troop would join him, pass him bundles of food, water and feed for the horse. In some ways, he had become their icon, his journey symbolic, burdened with unasked-for significance. The historian felt pangs of guilt at that, yet accepted the gifts with genuine gratitude—they kept him and his horse alive.
Nonetheless, his faithful mount was wearing down. More and more each day Duiker led the animal by the reins.
Dusk approached. The distant dust cloud continued to march on, until the historian was certain that Coltaine’s vanguard had reached the river. The Fist would insist that the entire train drive on through the night to the encampment that the vanguard was even now preparing. If Duiker was to have any chance of rejoining them, it would have to be this night.
He knew of the ford only from maps, and his recollection was frustratingly vague. The Sekala River averaged five hundred paces in width, flowing north to the Karas Sea. A small village squatted in the crook of two hills a few hundred paces south of the ford itself. He seemed to remember something about an old oxbow, as well.
The dying day spread shadows across the land. The brightest of the night’s stars glittered in the sky’s deepening blue. Wings of capemoths rose with the heat that fled the parched ground, like black flakes of ash.
Duiker climbed back into the saddle. A small band of Tithansi outriders rode a ridge half a mile to the north. Duiker judged that he was at least a league from the river. The patrols of horsewarriors would increase the closer he approached. He had no plan for dealing with them.
The historian had walked his mount for most of the day, preparing for a hard ride into the night. He would need all that the beast could give him, and was afraid that it would not be enough. He nudged the mare into a trot.
The distant Tithansi paid him no attention, and soon rode out of sight. Heart thumping, Duiker urged his horse into a canter.
A wind brushed his face. The historian hissed a blessing to whatever god was responsible. The hanging dust cloud ahead began to edge his way.
The sky darkened.
A voice shouted a few hundred paces to his left. A dozen horsemen, strips of fur trailing from their lances. Tithansi. Duiker saluted them with a raised fist.
“With the dawn, old man!” one of them bellowed. “It is suicide to attack now!”
“Ride to Reloe’s camp!” another yelled. “Northwest, old man—you are heading for the enemy lines!”
Duiker waved their words away, gesturing like a madman. He rose slightly in the saddle, whispered into the mare’s ear, squeezed gently with his knees. The animal’s head ducked forward, the strides lengthened.
Reaching the crest of a low hill, the historian finally saw what was arrayed before him. The encampment of the Tithansi lancers lay ahead and to his right, a thousand or more hide tents, the gleam of cooking fires. Mounted patrols moved in a restless line beyond the tents, protecting the camp from the enemy forces dug in at the ford. To the left of the Tithansi camp spread a score thousand makeshift tents—the peasant army. Smoke hung like an ash-stained cloak over the sprawling tattered shanty town. Meals were being cooked. Outlying pickets consisted of entrenchments, again facing the river. Between the two encampments there was a corridor, no more than two wagons wide, running down the sloping floodplain to meet Coltaine’s earthen defenses.
Duiker angled his horse down the corridor, riding at full gallop. The Tithansi outriders behind him had not pursued, though the warriors patrolling the encampment now watched him, converging but without obvious concern…yet.
As he cleared the inside edge of the tribe’s camp on his right, then the peasants’ sea of tents on his left, he saw raised earthworks, orderly rows of tents, solidly manned pickets—the horde had additional protection. The historian saw two banners, Sialk and Hissar—regular infantry. Helmed heads had turned, eyes drawn to the sound of his horse’s hooves and now the alarmed shouts of the Tithansi riders.
The mare was straining. Coltaine’s pickets were five hundred paces ahead, seeming to get no nearer. He heard horses in pursuit, gaining. Figures appeared on the Malazan bulwarks, readying bows. The historian prayed for quick-witted minds among the soldiers he rode toward. He cursed as he saw the bows raised, then drawn back.
“Not me, you bastards!” he bellowed in Malazan.
The bows loosed. Arrows sped unseen in the night.
Horses screamed behind him. His pursuers were drawing rein. More arrows flew. Duiker risked one backward glance and saw the Tithansi scrambling to withdraw out of arrow range. Thrashing horses and bodies lay on the ground.
He slowed the mare to a canter, then a trot as he approached the earthworks. She was lathered, her limbs far too loose, her head sagging.
Duiker rode into the midst of blue-skinned Wickans—Weasel Clan—who stared at him in silence. As he glanced around, the historian felt himself in well-suited company—the plains warriors from northeast Quon Tali had the look of specters, their faces drawn with an exhaustion to match his own.
Beyond the Weasel Clan’s encampment were military-issue tents and two banners—the Hissari Guard who had remained loyal, and a company whose standard Duiker did not recognize, apart from a central stylized crossbow signifying Malazan Marines.
Hands reached up to help him from the saddle. Wickan youths and elders gathered around, a soothing murmur of voices rising. Their concern was for the mare. An old man gripped the historian’s arm. “We will tend to this brave horse, stranger.”
“I think she’s finished,” Duiker said, a wave of sorrow flooding him. Gods, I’m tired. The setting sun broke through the clouds on the horizon, bathing everything in a golden glow.
The old man shook his head. “Our horsewives are skilled in such things. She shall run again. Now, an officer comes—go.”
A captain from the unknown company of Marines approached. He was Falari, his beard and long, wavy hair a fiery red. “You rode in your saddle like a Malazan,” he said, “yet dress like a damned Dosii. Explain yourself and be quick about it.”
“Duiker, Imperial Historian. I’ve been trying to rejoin this train since it left Hissar.”
The captain’s eyes widened. “A hundred and sixty leagues—you expect me to believe that? Coltaine left Hissar almost three months ago.”
“I know. Where’s Bult? Has Kulp rejoined the Seventh? And who in Hood’s name are you?”
“Lull, Captain of the Sialk Marines, Cartheron Wing, Sahul Fleet. Coltaine’s called a briefing—you’d better come along, Historian.”
They began making their way through the encampment. Duiker was appalled at what he saw. Beyond the ragged entrenchments of the Marines was a broad, sloping field, a single roped road running through it. On the right were wagons in their hundreds, their beds crowded with wounded. The wagon wheels were sunk deep in blood-soaked mud. Birds filled the torchlit air, voicing a frenzied chorus—it seemed they had acquired a taste for blood. On the left the churned field was a solid mass of cattle, shoulder to shoulder, shifting in a seething tide beneath a hovering haze of rhizan—the winged lizards feasting on the swarms of flies.
Ahead, the field dropped away to a strip of marsh bridged by wooden slats. The swampy pools of water gleamed red. Beyond it was a broad humped-back oxbow island on which, in crowded mayhem, were encamped the refugees—in their tens of thousands.
“Hood’s breath,” the historian muttered, “are we going to have to walk through that?”
The captain shook his head and gestured toward a large farmhouse on the cattle side of the ford road. “There. Coltaine’s own Crow Clan are guarding the south side, along the hills, making sure none of the livestock strays or gets plucked by the locals—there’s a village over on the other side.”
“Did you say Sahul Fleet? Why aren’t you with Admiral Nok in Aren, Captain?”
The red-haired soldier grimaced. “Wish we were. We left the fleet and pulled up in Sialk for repairs—our transport was seventy years old, started shipping water two hours out from Hissar. The mutiny happened the same night, so we left the ship, gathered up what was left of the local Marine company, then escorted the exodus out of Sialk.”
The farmhouse they approached was a sturdy, imposing structure, its inhabitants having just fled the arrival of Coltaine’s train. Its foundation was of cut stone, and the walls were split logs chinked with sun-fired clay. A soldier of the Seventh stood guard in front of a solid oak door. He nodded to Captain Lull, then narrowed his eyes on Duiker.
“Ignore the tribal garb,” Lull told him, “this one’s ours. Who’s here?”
“Everybody but the Fist, the Warlocks and the captain of the sappers, sir.”
“Forget the captain,” Lull said. “He ain’t bothered showing for one of these yet.”
“Yes sir.” The soldier thumped a gauntleted fist on the door, then pushed it open.
Woodsmoke drifted out. Duiker and the captain stepped inside. Bult and two officers of the Seventh were crouched at the massive stone fireplace at the room’s far end, arguing over what was obviously a blocked chimney.
Lull unclipped his sword belt and hung the weapon on a hook by the door. “What in Hood’s name are you building a fire for?” he demanded. “Ain’t it hot and stinking enough in here?” He waved at the smoke.
One of the Seventh’s officers turned and Duiker recognized him as the soldier who’d stood at his side when Coltaine and his Wickans first landed in Hissar. Their eyes met.
“Togg’s feet, it’s the historian!”
Bult straightened and swung around. Scar and mouth both shifted into twin grins. “Sormo was right—he’d sniffed you on our trail weeks back. Welcome, Duiker!”
His legs threatening to give way under him, Duiker sat down in one of the chairs pushed against a wall. “Good to see you, Uncle,” he said, leaning back and wincing at his aching muscles.
“We were going to brew some herbal tea,” the Wickan said, his eyes red and watering. The old veteran had lost weight, his pallor gray with exhaustion.
“For the love of clear lungs give it up,” Lull said. “What’s keeping the Fist anyway? I can’t wait to hear what mad scheme he’s concocted to get us out of this one.”
“He’s pulled it off this far,” Duiker said.
“Against one army, sure,” Lull said, “but we’re facing two now—”
The historian lifted his head. “Two?”
“The liberators of Guran,” the captain known to Duiker said. “Can’t recall if we were ever introduced. I’m Chenned. That’s Captain Sulmar.”
“You’re it for the Seventh’s ranking officers?”
Chenned grinned. “Afraid so.”
Captain Sulmar grunted. “Not quite. There’s the man in charge of the Seventh’s sappers.”
“The one who never shows at these briefings.”
“Aye.” Sulmar looked dour, but Duiker already suspected that the expression was the captain’s favorite. He was dark, short, appearing to have Kanese and Dal Honese blood in his ancestry. His shoulders sloped as if carrying a lifetime of burdens. “Though why the bastard thinks he’s above the rest of us I don’t know. Damned sappers’ve been doing nothing but repairing wagons and collecting big chunks of stone and getting in the cutters’ way.”
“Bult commands us in the field,” Captain Chenned said.
“I am the Fist’s will,” the Wickan veteran rumbled.
There was the sound of horses pulling up outside, the jangle of tack and armor, then the door thumped once and a moment later swung open.
Coltaine looked unchanged to Duiker’s eyes, as straight as a spear, his lean face wind-burned to the color and consistency of leather, his black feather cape bellying in his wake as he strode into the center of the large room. Behind him came Sormo E’nath and half a dozen Wickan youths who spread out to array themselves haphazardly against walls and pieces of furniture. They reminded the historian of a pack of dock rats in Malaz City, lords over the small patch they held.
Sormo walked up to Duiker and held out both hands to grip his wrists. Their eyes met. “Our patience is rewarded. Well done, Duiker!”
The boy looked infinitely older, lifetimes closing in around his hooded eyes.
“Rest later, Historian,” Coltaine said, fixing each person in the room with a slow, gauging study. “I made my command clear,” he said, turning at last to Bult. “Where is this captain of the Engineers?”
Bult shrugged. “Word was sent. He’s a hard man to find.”
Coltaine scowled. “Captain Chenned, your report.”
“Third and Fifth companies are across the ford, digging in. The crossing’s about four hundred and twenty paces, not counting the shallows on both sides, which add another twenty or so. Average depth is one and a half arm-spans. Width is between four and five most of the way, a few places narrower, a few wider. The bottom’s about two fingers of muck over a solid spine of rocks.”
“The Foolish Dog Clan will join your companies on the other side,” Coltaine said. “If the Guran forces try to take that side of the ford during the crossing, you will stop them.” The Fist wheeled to Captain Lull. “You and the Weasel Clan shall guard this side while the wounded and the refugees cross. I will maintain position to the south, blocking the village road, until the way is clear.”
Captain Sulmar cleared his throat. “About the order of crossing, Fist. The Council of Nobles will scream—”
“I care not. The wagons cross first, with the wounded. Then the livestock, then the refugees.”
“Perhaps if we split it up more,” Sulmar persisted, sweat glistening on his flat brow, “a hundred cattle, then a hundred nobles—”
“Nobles?” Bult asked. “You meant refugees, surely.”
“Of course—”
Captain Lull sneered at Sulmar. “Trying to buy favors on both sides, are you? And here I thought you were a soldier of the Seventh.”
