Changer’s Moon

6

Gaunt and half-starved, Tuli prowled along the backside of the army, Ajjin and Allazo beside her running boldly in their four-foot forms. They had it down to a game now, a game they played with fierce pleasure, a game they always won because the demon beasts seemed unable to learn its rules. Coperic and the others of his band were scattered along the line of the army, preferring to stay as far from demons and norits as they could manage, whether they were ambushing stray soldiers or cutting out rambuts to butcher for their meals. The food they’d brought was gone, what game might roam here in ordinary times had retreated to safer, more silent slopes. Tuli and Coperic and the rest of the band lived off rambuts now, sharing them from time to time with the silent deadly Kulaan who’d come south to avenge their linas and who were going to continue their killing as long as they could crawl. Or with the remnants of the outcast bands, hungry ragged men and boys as feral as a pack of addichinin. Rambut meat was stringy and tough with little fat to flavor it, but it kept them going.

Most of the mijlockers were gone. After the first tenday half of them were dead and the rest were beginning to starve; they’d begun to melt away, leaving the dead behind to be buried hastily in the muck by work parties from the army. The futility of what they were doing and the lack of food sapped their will, so they went back to the deserted tars and empty villages to find what shelter and food they could and sit listlessly waiting for the war to end. Or they’d gone to the Havens to help fight off the Kapperim. As Hars and Teras must have done. Though she’d watched for them, she hadn’t seen either of them again. What little news she’d picked up from the mijlockers sharing, fire and half-raw meat with Coperic’s band was not comforting. The Kapperim had gathered and were attacking all the outcast Havens, trying to wipe them out. Some nights she dreamed of her family and cried in her sleep because she wasn’t with them. She fretted about not being with them, wondering what possible good she was doing here, helping Coperic flea and Bella flea and Biel flea and Ryml, Lehat, Karal, Sosai, Charda, Pyvin and Wohpa fleas take tiny bites from the flank of the monster that darkened the hillsides. But there was always the Game to take her mind off brooding and under the brooding there was the calm knowledge that she’d be doing far less if she was where her father could keep an eye on her.

She settled into the shade of some brush on a hillside above the section of wall where the Sankoise were. Coperic had been concentrating on the Majilarni and the Sankoise, pricking them into disaffection. During the first days of the siege when norits were falling like dying moths, Coperic and all of them had crept with near impunity among the skittish Sankoise, picking off one after another as they ran for cover. They were mostly town-bred men or sailors conscripted off Sankoise merchant ships. The wild country around them disturbed, even frightened, them. They were intensely superstitious; coming from a mage-ridden land, they saw omens in every turn of a leaf and the deaths, the throats cut, the men strangled, or left with skulls crushed, the rambuts lost, the equipment destroyed, all this worked on them until they began to settle into the mud like rotting logs. Kole was forced to call on his shrinking force of norits, leaving a good number of them with the Sankoise to weave alarum spells about the camps so the raids stopped and the men could sleep in such peace as they could find on the cold and uncomfortable slopes.

Tuli sat on her hillside watching them with considerable satisfaction as they wandered unhappily about, or knelt on blankets gambling or sought escape in sleep. The day was coming when even their centuries of conditioned nor-fear would no longer drive them to the wall. She lost her contentment when she looked toward the great Gate. Nekaz Kole was getting the walking towers built far faster than she liked. She scowled, got to her feet and went back to hunting demon beasts. That was a danger she could do something about.