Stands a Shadow

CHAPTER TWENTY

Juno’s Ferry

The settlement of Juno’s Ferry lay to the south of the Windrush forest, that myth-wrapped woodland that spanned the central region of Khos. In the summer months, the boughs of the trees would sway in the warm asago that blew in from the east bearing sands from the far Alhazii desert, and in the colder seasons would clatter instead in the occasional storm of the shone, gusting across the breadth of the Mideres all the way from the northern continent; a wind said to cause depression and madness for those who lived in its path.

To the east, the great swathe of the Windrush was naturally bounded by the mighty Chilos, the sacred river of Khos. Known for its cleansing properties of mind and spirit, the Chilos was also renowned for never freezing over even in the depths of winter. Its source came from the hot springs of Simmer Lake, site of the ancient floating town of Tume, and as its waters wound their slow way south towards the Bay of Squalls, they cooled only gradually.

On a widening stretch of the Chilos, the twin settlements of Juno’s Ferry sprawled along both banks like inverse reflections of each other. On the western bank could be seen the fort and encampment of the Khosian elite reserves, the ‘Hoo’, named after their battle cry, two thousand heavy infantry in all. Next to them ranged the temple complexes with their stone bathing areas and their bronze bells that rang out the hour; deep tones that rolled across the flat waters of the river. Countless camps sprawled between the temples. Thousands of devotees washed away their transgressions in the turgid flow.

In contrast, the eastern side was a ramshackle place of smoky tavernas and zel dealers and wagon shops, a staging post for travellers and merchant caravans, a place of commerce. It was here, on the eastern bank, that the Khosian army had camped for the night, bedding down on the edge of the civilian settlement. The flat-bellied ferries continued to ship men and equipment across the river in darkness.

Like many of the men, Bull stood naked and thigh-deep in the river, his feet sunk into a sandbar as he scrubbed himself clean. Men were whooping all around him from the chill of it, though the water was hardly as cold as it should have been. A few of the army’s monks washed alone in devoted silence, the silent cloud-men of the Dao who would bless them before battle in the name of the Great Fool. Bull threw a handful of water over his bare chest and watched as it shed off him with tiny sparkles of blue. Wherever it splashed against the slow-running surface, the froth burned with the same ghostly light before it faded away; the strange effect of Calhalee’s Tears, legendary figure of Simmer Lake to the north, from which these waters gained not only heat but these enchanting, eerie properties.

He’d stood in this river once before, as a boy, when his father had brought him here with his younger brother at the insistence of their mother. Then as now, Bull had felt invigorated by the cleansing waters of the sacred river, but nothing more. Perhaps its spiritual properties were all nonsense; or perhaps whatever it was that tainted his spirit was too deep to be washed away by what little faith he possessed.

To the north, on the other side of the river, the forest could be seen as a wall of trees standing black and still beneath the stars. Sharp knocks of woods were sounding from within the tree line, like giant birds pecking holes in their trunks. They were the alarm signals of the Contrare, the free-spirited hunter-gatherers and occasional brigands of the forest. Bull imagined them standing there with their goad faces and their clothes of woven bark, watching them cautiously.

His mother had been one of the Contrare, before she’d married his father, a skins merchant from Bar-Khos, and had moved with him to the city to start a family. Bull had known little about her people, save for the tales told to him at his bedside, and the songs she’d sung when bathing him, and the little superstitions she’d carried with her from her previous life in the forest – like the sign of protection she made at the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightning. Still, his accent bore some of his mother’s voice in it, and his skin was particularly swarthy and his eyes were narrow above high cheekbones. As a boy, people had known what he was – a bark-beater – and many had treated him like a dog because of it.

He was reminded of those hard, painful days of youth as he turned and saw how the soldiers were avoiding the flow of the river directly downstream from him. Now it wasn’t because he was a dirty barkbeater. Now it was because he was the slayer, the killer of their hero Adrianos.

Bull didn’t mind, or so he told himself anyway. Since an early age he’d raged against the jests and cruel indifference of his peers. He’d fought tooth and nail to gain the respect of these Khosians, first as a street brawler and then as a soldier in the Red Guards. Now at least they no longer looked down on him. Aye, now they feared him.

Besides, he was free at last, and that was all that Bull cared about just then. In truth he’d been ready to lose his mind in the confines of that buried cell. Yet here he was, standing thigh-deep in the Chilos river, with the stars bobbing on its surface and Calhalee’s Tears glowing all around him, the scents of the deep forest strong in the night air. If these were to be the last days of his life, Bull could hardly ask for more than this.

He sluiced a last handful of water over his face and shook his hands dry, his disfigured knuckles cracking loudly, ruined after all those years of pit-fighting. For a few moments longer, his eyes lingered on the distant forest. He’d never ventured further than the trading posts along its fringes, yet it was part of him. It was in his blood.

What’s stopping you? Bull asked himself, and could not fathom the answer.

The men of his chartassa file sat around the fire, talking amongst themselves and passing around a skin of wine. Bull said nothing to them, for he knew they wouldn’t heed him. Indeed, as he stood there against the heat of the fire, sweeping his skin dry with his hands, they ceased to talk entirely, and none would look his way.

Bull scowled and wandered off to one of the nearby wagons, his bundle of equipment under an arm and his backpack over his shoulder. Away from the warmth and light of the fire he dressed quickly, though he left his armour balanced against the wagon next to his sheathed shortsword. He pulled the cloak about him and sat with his back against one of the wheels, then searched around in his pack until he found the small vial of mother’s oil. He dabbed a little on his finger, and ran it around his gum where his back teeth were throbbing again, all the while eyeing the men huddled around the fire.

They’re frightened, thought Bull to himself. They know they march to their slaughter.

He thought of the battle that lay ahead at the end of their march, and felt the fear of it inside him too. The sensation thrilled him; made him feel that he was alive.

Bull drew his new sword from its sheath, and inspected the watermarks along the gleaming steel of the blade. It was Sharric steel, cast here in Khos, the finest in all the Mideres. He contented himself with sharpening the edge of it with the finer side of his whetstone.

In the light of a nearby campfire, he spotted General Creed walking past, conversing with the colonel of the Greyjackets. Bahn followed a few paces behind, looking as pensive as he had the first day Bull had ever met him, all those years ago on the cold marshalling grounds between the walls, with the first two walls of the Shield already fallen, the third likely to be next, the men shattered, their morale lower than any time before or since.

Bahn saw him now and gave a curt nod of his head, though Bull noted how he did not pause, did not share with him a few words.

Bull stared coldly back as the man walked beyond the light of the fire.

Behind the departing figures, young Wicks came stumbling towards him as the lad guzzled wine from a flaccid skin. Wicks tripped and rolled on the grass, then climbed to his feet again as though nothing had happened. He was alone too, though that seemed a matter of choice for Wicks more than anything else.

He noticed Bull in the shadows and flopped down next to him. ‘Hey, champ,’ Wicks panted as he offered Bull the wine. Bull shook his head. He no longer trusted himself with alcohol, not since the day he’d gone to the home of Adrianos and butchered him like a stag.

Wicks settled himself with exaggerated care by his side, resting his back against the wagon wheel. ‘All this bloody marching,’ he muttered as he massaged a foot. ‘My soles are killing me.’

‘This is nothing. You’re lucky we’re not pushing even harder.’ Even as Bull spoke he felt the ache of his own feet and back, and knew they would only worsen before they got better. He was in poor condition after a year in the cell, never mind that he’d tried to maintain his condition.

‘Nothing, he says. And me with my feet in tatters.’

In the distance Bull heard a roar of men, the second time now he’d heard them.

‘What is that? Is there a fight?’

‘Aye. They’re at it again, the Greys and the Volunteers. Two bareknuckle champions this time.’

Wicks looked about him with his large eyes sparkling in the firelight. He was bored, Bull could see. The lad wanted some mischief to occupy himself for a while. It reminded Bull of his own restless boredom.

He sighed, and took the skin of wine from the young man; allowed himself one long satisfying pull from it before tossing it back.

‘You know, I saw you fight once. The time you became champion of Bar-Khos.’

‘I hope you bet on me to win.’

‘I wish I had. But I thought you were just another contender like the rest of them. You lost me a full purse of stolen coins that night. Though I’ll say it was worth it, just to see you fight. I thought you were going to kill him in the end.’

‘I was. If they hadn’t stopped me.’

‘I can’t believe it’s really you. The real thing, right here in front of me. The greatest fighter in all of Khos. Unbelievable.’

Bull swept the whetstone along the edge of the blade, ignoring the lad now. It had been a long time since a stranger had offered their admiration to him. Once, he had relished such praise, had felt validated in every way by the respect of so many.

Now it was only a reminder of how fickle most people really were.

‘They’re talking about us again,’ said Wicks casually with a nod to the fire. The men around it were trading words in low voices. Old Russo, the veteran of Coros, cast a one-eyed glance in their direction.

His accusing stare caused Bull to grind his rotten teeth together. He felt the satisfying throbs of pain deep inside them.

‘Find yourself a whore yet?’

‘No,’ Bull admitted. ‘None of them will touch me.’

‘They probably think you’ll strangle them where they lie.’ Wicks laughed drunkenly at the thought of it.

‘Don’t laugh at me, boy. I’ll have your eyes out if you laugh at me.’

The lad seemed to sober up for a moment; his grin faltered. Wicks sprawled onto his back, surprising himself with a belch. ‘You can’t take a joke, champ. That’s your problem.’

Bull felt momentarily chastened by his words. He knew the young man was right.

He couldn’t help but like this lad. Wicks reminded him of his younger brother: feckless and afraid of no one. He’d been one of the few to approach Bull and converse with him during the march so far; a thief playing at being a soldier, he’d told Bull, as he showed him the branding scar on his wrist, told him how he’d been released from a military stockade on the day the army had marshalled outside Bar-Khos.

Bull looked at the wineskin in his hands and said, ‘I thought you were skint. Have you been thieving again?’

‘I went swimming,’ he told Bull. ‘Over by the temples. If you go when the sun’s still up you can see the coins lying along the riverbed.’

‘You fool,’ growled Bull. ‘It’s bad luck to steal people’s offerings. You want to bring a curse on your head?’

Wicks waved his hand. ‘What difference does it make? They throw the coins away and never see them again.’

There was no point trying to explain it to him. The lad simply had no concept of tradition or belief.

Again that roar of throats in the night. It sparked a decision within him.

Bull climbed slowly to his feet.

‘Where are you going?’ Wicks asked in sudden interest.

‘To pick a fight,’ he told him as he cast his cloak aside. ‘Want to come?’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Wicks, and tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet. Bull had to help him up in the end. ‘We should pool our coins. I’ll lay the bets for you.’

‘Wicks,’ Bull said with a grin that split his face from ear to ear; and then the smile vanished in a flash. ‘You really think that anyone’s going to bet against me?’

Bahn was walking a little easier tonight. The pains in his calves and back from riding all day were no longer excruciating, as they had been on the previous nights of the forced march, for he was finally getting used to the saddle again. They were covering almost twenty laqs a day at their present pace. It was as hard as General Creed dared to push the army, for they still had days of travel ahead of them. The Lord Protector wanted the men fighting fit once they engaged.

In front of Bahn the general and Halahan strolled side by side. They were in good spirits tonight, having reached Juno’s Ferry on schedule, where the army had joined the two thousand men of the Hoo. The mood of the men too seemed especially boisterous. They had crossed the Chilos, and now faced a march through the lands of the Reach, hard-bent on closing with the enemy. Tonight the reality of their situation was beginning to hit home. They were in need of some distractions.

Bahn could smell the hazii weed from Halahan’s pipe as they walked. He didn’t smoke the stuff normally, but tonight he would have welcomed a proper pull on a hazii stick. Now that they had crossed the Chilos, he too had felt a sense of cold reality coming over him.

‘They’re approaching Spire, according to our scouts,’ Creed was saying before him. ‘Following the Cinnamon as we expected. In a day or two they’ll be entering the Silent Valley. We’ll engage them there, before they reach Tume. If it goes badly for us we can fall back to Tume and regroup.’

‘Vanichios will be glad to see you,’ Halahan drawled, causing Creed to shoot him a dark look.

Bahn recalled the name. There was history between the general and the Principari of Tume, though his recollections were vague on the subject. Something about a duel.

‘The reserves from Al-Khos,’ Halahan ventured from beneath the wide brim of his straw hat. ‘Do we know when they’ll reach Tume?’ His crippled leg was causing him to limp more than usual this evening, a result, he had said, of his knee playing up in the falling temperatures.

‘If they’re pushing hard enough, they should be halfway there by now. That is, of course, if that fool Kincheko doesn’t dither around.’

‘You think he will?’

Creed gave a shake of his head. ‘Who knows with that fool? He might linger for a day or two just to show his contempt for my orders.’

‘It was a greater fool who made him Principari of Al-Khos in the first place.’

‘Aye, well Michine blood is thicker than wine.’

A squad of Specials, just arrived in from the ferry, tramped by burdened with their backpacks and arms. They nodded in turn as they stepped past the general in a ragged line. One of them knew Bahn, an old friend of his brother Cole. The man surprised him with a warm embrace and words of good luck, before hurrying to catch up with his squad.

‘What’s going on over there?’ Creed had stopped, and was studying a crowd of men gathered in a clearing of poplars next to the river. The men were Volunteers and Greyjackets mostly, cheering and jostling each other as they watched two men stripped to the waist slugging it out.

A detachment of Red Guards was attempting to break them up, led by an officer on zelback, though the Volunteers shouted the officer away, jeering at him and spooking his zel by waving their hands at it. The animal reared, almost tossing the rider from the saddle. Other Volunteers were stepping in between them to try to diffuse the matter. Bahn saw the general’s eyes narrow.

‘Look at them. Always disregarding discipline at the first opportunity. This is why we Khosians have the finest chartassa in all the Free Ports.’

Halahan chuckled by his side. ‘They’re only having their fun while they still can.’

‘Fun? It isn’t fun they need, Colonel. This is an army here, not a rabble.’

‘Oh, come now, once its morning again and we’re back on the march, they’ll be as tame as kittens.’

Creed snorted.

They walked on, the general showing his face to the men and seeing for himself how they fared. He spoke to some of the animal handlers in the corrals where the war-zels were quartered, and to the quartermaster as he flustered over the supplies being ferried across. They even stopped at one of the skyships that had landed for the night, asking the crew if they needed anything, careful not to show them his frustrations at the lack of skyships accompanying the army; a mere three of them and a handful of small skuds, hardly adequate for controlling the skies.

Amongst the Hoo, the men of the elite chartassa, Creed sought out Nidemes, the colonel who had fought with Creed and Tanser-ine in Coros. Creed talked with the small quiet man alone for a time, while Halahan smoked his pipe and leaned on his knee while he talked with some of the men, veterans all of them; and Bahn blinked across the flames at heavily scarred soldiers with hard eyes, who sat wrapped in their purple cloaks, saying nothing.

‘He’s worried,’ Creed told Halahan when they continued onwards. ‘He wanted to know our plan of attack.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘The truth. That I’m still thinking on it.’

Halahan chuckled drily, and the sudden sound of it irritated Bahn for some reason.

‘These men face an army of forty thousand,’ he heard himself say. ‘And you laugh because you haven’t a plan yet.’

Halahan plucked the pipe from his mouth and flashed his mocking eyes at him. ‘And I’ll be there with them, won’t I?’

Bahn closed his mouth in exasperation.

‘What’s bothering you, Bahn?’ asked the general. ‘Speak up. Spit it out, man.’

Bahn lowered his tone of voice. ‘It just seems to me, General, that we’re marching into certain defeat here, and that you’re both happy enough to be doing it.’

Creed started walking again, more briskly now. The other two strode after him.

‘Nothing is ever certain, Bahn,’ Creed snapped over his shoulder.

‘No. But you can always consider the odds.’

‘ Pff. Odds? We lost those a long time ago.’

He didn’t wish to push him any further. When all was said and done, he still had every faith in this man.

Bahn had fought on the Shield in those early days of the war, after all. Back then, General Forias had still been Lord Protector of Khos, that decrepit nobleman who had gained his role through family connections. Even before the siege had begun, when the Mannians had first taken Pathia to the south and refugees had flooded towards Bar-Khos, it had been General Creed, not dithering Forias, who had ordered the gates to be opened so they could gain sanctuary within.

For the first year of the siege, Forias had commanded the defence of the city, and the Khosians had reeled as the walls had fallen one by one. Old Forias hadn’t been entirely inept in his role as Lord Protector: he had ordered the slopes of earth to be piled against the surviving walls to ward off the constant barrages of cannonfire, and at times had even fought on the walls themselves next to the men, risking his neck with the rest of them. But still, he lacked the charisma and bravado that was needed most of all in those dark days of plummeting morale. He simply hadn’t been a warleader who inspired hope in the people. Public protests were made against him. Mass calls for his resignation. Still old Forias, backed by the Michine council, refused to step down.

When the news came that the Imperials had invaded distant Coros also, in their attempt to open up a second front against the Free Ports, the Michine had agreed to make a token gesture in the League’s desperate defence of the island. General Creed, still frowned upon for having given the order to open the gates to the refugees, and no doubt by then considered expendable, had been dispatched to lead the small Khosian contingent of chartassa there. While he was gone, and with the siege of Bar-Khos entering its lowest point so far, Lord Protector Forias had withdrawn into his private mansion, claiming illness, and then had killed himself, or died in his sleep, depending on whom you believed.

Defeat had hung in the city air like a fog.

Creed, though, had changed all of that. He had returned from their unexpected victory in Coros within a week of old Forias’s funeral, now hailed as a hero and seen by many as their most likely saviour. The population of the city had taken to the streets to demand he be made the new Lord Protector. In the end, the Michine had been left with little choice but to concede to them.

And so Creed had set about defying what had seemed, until then, the natural course of the war. He launched daring counter-attacks against the imperial army; developed the network of fighting tunnels beneath the walls to stop them being undermined; roused the hopes of the soldiers and the people by the example he set for them all. Gradually the imperial advance was slowed, and the siege settled into years of resistance that no one had dared believe was even possible.

Now Bahn and the rest of them hoped for another miracle from this man.

‘General!’

They turned just as they were nearing the command tent. Two Khosian cavalry scouts were approaching with a civilian rider in between them, a man with a bandana around his head and a gold ring in his ear. They drew to a halt before Creed with the nostrils of their zels snorting vanishing clouds of steam. ‘A Mannian ambassador, General,’ one of the riders announced. ‘He wishes to speak with you. We’ve searched him for weapons already.’

All three of them studied the civilian who sat slouched in his saddle, something of the brigand about him.

‘Greetings to you, Bearcoat,’ he declared with a rueful grin.

‘Come on now, you have to tell us more than that!’

‘Leave it alone, will you? It’s embarrassing.’

Curl laughed along with the other men and women in the warm space of the medical tent. They were seated around the surgical table with their cards and coins before them, their pallid faces shining in the light of the single lantern that hung from the roof.

Andolson was playing on a jitar at the back of the room, crooning something obscene and ridiculous about the fallen king of Pathia. Kris stood next to a side-table, a collection of bottled wines and leather mugs arranged before her, carefully adding to each of the mugs drops from a medicinal bottle of sanseed. As for the rest of the medicos, they mostly chattered across each other, hands waving drunkenly over the table, parting the thick coils of hazii smoke that filled the tent.

Young Coop stumbled out once more to be sick.

‘A damned waste of good wine!’ Milos hollered after him.

They were a strange bunch, these medicos of Special Operations whom Curl had fallen in with. Many had painted symbols and words onto their black leathers; the Daoist circle of unity, or quotes from all manner of sources, some even Mannian. Their hair was as often long as it was short, their faces scarred, their tempers hot, their moods unpredictable. Long inured to working in the tunnel systems beneath the walls of the Shield, they were a wild and troubled group of individuals, and they’d taken to Curl easily, and she to them.

The woman Kris was making another round of the table with her concoction of drinks. ‘Some more, madame?’

‘Thank you,’ said Curl, and accepted the offered mug and took a welcome sip from it. The wine was strong, but still she could taste the small amount of sanseed within it; liquid dross, essentially, used as a painkiller for the wounded. ‘If I’d known I could get this stuff for free I would have enlisted a whole lot sooner.’

‘That’s why old Jonsol enlisted,’ quipped Milos. ‘Isn’t that right, Jonsol?’

Jonsol was leering at her from across the table. The grey-haired man leered at every female within talking distance of him, though, and Curl’s scowl was a light-hearted one. Jonsol leaned back and howled at the canvas roof like a forlorn dog.

Curl had been fortunate from the outset, for the story of her outburst in the recruitment office had preceded her. The medico corps of the Specials had assumed she was a hot-tempered bitch not to be messed with, and she’d seen no reason to disabuse them of their illusions.

‘I’ll call,’ Jonsol said loudly, and threw in a few coppers. Only he and Curl remained in this hand, and the final card lay face-up on the table between them. A High King.

Curl spread the three cards in her hand face-up on the table. More laughter sounded as they realized she had won once again. Curl acknowledged their praise and curses as she swept the small pile of coins towards her.

‘You’re a fool, Jonsol. You walked right into it all over again.’

‘She might be a pup but she can play, I’ll give her that.’

It was true, she could play a decent game of cards. Though in fact tonight, for the sheer thrill of it, Curl was cheating. Every other time it was her turn to deal, Curl used one of the many shuffling tricks her old lover had once shown her to stack the deck in her favour. She was doing so well at it, in fact, that only one of them seemed to have yet noticed, and that was Kris, who simply watched with a knowing amusement in her eyes.

They all looked up as the tent flap parted and Koolas the war chattero stepped inside. ‘Mind if I join you?’ he puffed.

Exaggerated groans sounded from around the tent. ‘There must be a hundred games of rash in this camp tonight,’ chirped Milos. ‘And yet always you come to us.’

‘Well now,’ replied Koolas as he found himself a free seat around the table. ‘That’s because you medicos have all the good drugs.’

Jeers and catcalls exploded around him. Kris gave him a bow and began to fix him a drink of wine and sanseed, while Andolson changed to a different song, making up the lyrics as he went along. He crooned about the fat war chattero who was so in love with battle he rode along just to watch it.

‘Besides,’ Koolas called out, ‘I’m thinking of doing a story on you all. The medicos. The unsung heroes who go out there alone amongst the killing to save who they can, or to steal the jewellery of those who they can’t.’

Amidst the jeers Milos hollered, ‘Unsung fools more like!’

‘Aye, well, if it was truth the copy-houses wanted then I’d write of it. My thanks,’ he added, as Kris brought over a drink.

They were shouting him down when Major Bolt stepped into the tent.

‘Popular tonight,’ muttered Milos as the tent fell silent, and Kris hid the bottle of sanseed behind her back.

‘At ease,’ Bolt told them all. ‘I’m just here to see how you are. See if you need anything.’

‘We’re fine, Major, just fine,’ said Andolson languidly from behind his jitar.

Bolt surveyed each of them in turn. His eyes lingered on Kris for a moment, her hands behind her back. ‘Carry on, then,’ he said.

As he turned to leave he gave Curl a sidelong glance and a tug of his head.

She ignored the comments around her and followed him out through the flap.

Outside in the fresh air, Curl experienced a strange moment of transition. Suddenly she stood once more in a camp of war, and the memory of what they were doing, and what still faced them, came slowly back to her. Out there somewhere was the imperial army.

She shivered, the goosebumps rising on her flesh, and held an arm across her chest.

‘How are you?’ Bolt asked. ‘You seem to be fitting in well enough.’

‘They’re good people,’ she replied, looking up at him only briefly. She was always nervous in the company of this man, for she could never tell what he was thinking.

‘Here,’ he said, and handed her something. She looked down and saw a wrap of graf leaves in his outstretched hand.

‘I noticed the markings,’ he said, looking at her nostrils, which were less reddened now that she had left the city, and her supply of dross had run out. ‘It’s just a little muscado. It’ll help take the edge off a little.’

‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Really.’

‘Take it,’ he said, and she so she did, and slipped the folded leaves into a pocket. ‘You’ll be glad of it once we see some action, and we start running low on those bottles of sanseed.’

She looked up into his grey eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Bolt stared hard at her.

‘I’d better get back inside,’ she told him.

After a moment he nodded, his expression still blank. Without a word he turned and strode away.

They gathered in the warmth of the command tent, the space heated by the black iron stove that squatted in one corner, its chimney running up through the roof. A plain, square table stood in the middle of the tent, covered with maps and notes for the march. Bahn swept them up quickly to put them out of sight. Creed took the weight off his feet by sitting back in his wicker chair. Halahan sat on the edge of the table, his leg-brace squeaking. The Nathalese colonel was clearly fighting down his anger.

After a few moments the Mannian ambassador was allowed to enter. The guards had stripped him of his clothing before searching his cavities. The man hadn’t shaven in some days, and he covered his nakedness with a borrowed red cloak wrapped about him, so that his appearance was that of some ragged beggar. It was an illusion only. The man held himself tall, and seemed hardly concerned that he stood in the heart of his enemy’s encampment.

‘Our spies were correct, it seems,’ he said in an accent clearly Q’osian. ‘Though I can hardly believe it. You must have fewer than ten thousand men here, if even that.’

Creed brought his hand to his chin. His eyes flickered to Halahan.

‘State your business here, ambassador,’ Halahan instructed as he removed the hat from his head, lay it down on the table. His tone was openly hostile.

‘Please. Call me Alarum. May I sit?’ This last addressed to Creed.

The general raised a hand in consent, and the Mannian settled down in a chair with a long and weary sigh. ‘It’s been a hard ride,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we could share some wine and food while we talk?’

Creed’s chair creaked sharply as he leaned forwards. ‘Why are you here, fanatic?’

Alarum inclined his head and studied the general with his dark eyes. ‘I’ve been sent by the Holy Matriarch to offer you terms.’

‘She wishes to surrender?’

The man gave a quick, pinched smile. ‘It’s not too late, you know. Even now, after all these years, we can settle our differences another way.’

‘Aye,’ snapped Halahan. ‘You can pack up your armies and go home.’

‘Come, now,’ responded the man. ‘You know as well as I what reputations are riding on this. We can hardly simply withdraw. But what we can do is this: we can offer you the lives of your people, if only you will surrender Khos to us now, and agree to become a client state of Mann.’

‘What, open our gates to you like Serat, so you can decimate the population with your purges and enslave the rest?’ Halahan was incensed. Bahn could see the blood rushing to his face. ‘You came all this way for this?’

‘If you don’t, we’ll slaughter every man, woman and child of Bar-Khos. That is a promise not made lightly.’

Halahan stood up with his hands clenching. Creed held a hand up to restrain him, staring hard at the ambassador. ‘You still have to defeat us first,’ he reminded the man softly.

‘I have forty thousand fighting men at my back, General.’

‘Aye. That you do. And those men are far from home. Their fleet has departed. Their supplies are limited to what they already have and what they can pillage from the land. If they’re not fast, winter will set in and trap them here without adequate sources of food or shelter. You are hardly in any position of certainty, ambassador. Else you would not be here.’

Alarum’s response was to rise slowly from the chair with the cloak held loosely about him. He glanced at Halahan as the colonel took a step towards him. Bahn felt the sudden rise of tension in the air. He gripped the pommel of his sword without thinking.

‘If I may,’ said Alarum, with a soft, cautious smile. ‘The Holy Matriarch has sent a gift for you, should you fail to see sense in this matter.’

Creed nodded, and one of the guards at the entrance stepped forward with something in his hand. He handed it to Bahn, the closest person to him.

Bahn looked down at the sheathed dagger in his hand. It was a curved blade no larger than his thumb, and the scabbard was ornately decorated with gold and diamonds, and fitted with a cord to hang about a person’s neck.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

He looked up even as Halahan struck the ambassador hard across the face, sending the man toppling back across the chair.

Halahan kicked him in the side of the head as he tried to get up.

‘What gives you the right to this? What gives you the right to demand that others bow down to you or they must die? ’

‘Colonel,’ Creed snapped. ‘ Halahan! ’

At last the colonel backed away, panting hard now. Nothing in the world could tear his gaze from Alarum as the man climbed unsteadily to his feet. The ambassador’s lip was bloody, and he hitched the robe over his body to cover his sudden nakedness.

He glowered at Halahan as he dabbed a corner of the robe against his mouth. ‘What right? By right of natural law, what other? Do I need to explain this as though to children? What is man’s nature if not to take power wherever he can? The strong do what they like. The weak must endure what they must always endure. Do not blame we followers of Mann because life is this way. Blame your World Mother. Blame your Dao.’

Creed placed his hands on either side of his chair and rose slowly to confront him.

‘We have a belief, amongst the Free Ports, ambassador. A belief that power must always flow outwards, especially to those most affected by it. The idea comes from Zezike. I suppose you Mannians don’t read much of our famed philosopher, no?’

Alarum tilted his head, saying nothing.

‘I’ll be honest with you, I don’t always agree with him myself. But at times he made some fine points, especially about such notions as yours. If I recall his words correctly, he said that human behaviour is as much a result of our environment as it is the blood in our veins. And that our environment is as much a result of how we choose it to be as it is the turning of the earth and the sky.’

He leaned forwards, looking carefully at the ambassador’s expression.

‘You do not like that idea, perhaps? Yet you of Mann wish to shape the entire world in your image. Why is this, then? I will tell you why. Because you know this truth as well as Zezike ever did. You know that to rule absolutely, you must control those choices in people’s lives which allow them to shape their environment. Is that not so?’

Alarum’s breathing had calmed now. He dabbed his lip again, looked at the blood that stained the material of his robe. ‘You talk of ideals, General,’ he answered. ‘Empty words of this and that. I talk of something much closer to reality. I talk of power, which in the end needs no defence. Power will always speak for itself. It will always subdue what is weaker, no matter what you believe.’

‘Aye, it’s an old story certainly, subjugation. Yet so is murder. And rape. And theft. Things that decent people despise and outlaw from their lives when they have the choice to do so. Because they choose to believe in man’s capacity to be better than that.’

They blinked at each other as though from across an abyss. Bahn could barely see the seething anger beneath the general’s impassive features, so well did he hide it.

‘Now, ambassador, if you’d kindly get out my sight,’ Creed growled.

Alarum accepted his dismissal with a cavalier bow. He looked faintly amused as the guards pulled him roughly from the tent.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Bahn at last. He was studying the dagger in his hand again.

Creed ignored him. He remained standing with his eyes locked on the flapping entrance of the tent, his jaw muscles clenching.

‘The dagger,’ said Halahan with a wipe of his mouth, ‘is a ceremonial blade of Mann.’

‘For what purpose?’

‘For taking your own life.’