Traitors Gate

27

Cursed rocks.

Nallo could not imagine a more idiotic training regimen, yet here she was flying sweeps with her new wing hauling a cursed basket of cursed rocks, each rock about the size of her fist. Poor Tumna took most of the strain, although the motion of banking or rising caused the basket to bump so heavily against Nallo's legs she was sure she'd end up mottled with bruises.

As if hauling a gods-rotted basket of rocks to lob at miscreants would do any good.

They flew out in wings of six: from her position she could see Warri and his eagle Dogkiller out on the right flank of the wing. She was next, flying at slightly higher elevation, and inside of her but lower flew Pil with Sweet in the second striker position. First striker, and head of the wing, was Peddonon with Jabi, flying yet lower beyond and in front of Pil. The third striker and left flank were Kanness with Lovely — a worse-tempered raptor than Tumna — and Orya with lazy Candle. The eagles tolerated each other — they had to, or no reeve hall could function — but Peddonon had had to try several different formations with the eighteen reeves left to him at Law Rock in order to send out wings whose eagles wouldn't take territorial swipes at one another. Even so, Tumna was cursed suspicious of Candle, enough that Nallo felt a tug whenever the raptor looked that way.

They had taken off from Law Rock midmorning and pushed south, practicing maneuvers and resting between times on powerful high thermals. That the land should look so peaceful astonished her. With the sun shining above, the river flowed like a spill of light away to their right. The variegated colors of the dry season gave the landscape an intense texture: fields stubbled with

gold stalks not yet turned under; ponds fringed with a wrack of withered weeds and cracked dry soil where the waters had retreated; orchards and woodland seeping green. Dusty irrigation ditches and empty paths and minor roads netted the land, seeming almost to have some deeper pattern when seen from on high.

A whistle caught her ear. Pil was flagging with an orange cloth: Alert! Follow close! She tugged on the jesses, and Tumna, sighting an object on the ground, followed Sweet and Jabi. Nallo grabbed her own orange flag on its stick, thumping a knee against the basket while she was at it. Eihi! Pain throbbed, a lump blossoming beneath the skin.

This new formation was total rubbish, a cursed stupid plan.

Pil flagged with the orange and white stripe that meant: Attack!

The hells!

Tumna dropped, wings outstretched, and they sailed over woodland broken with clearings, unturned fields, and distant villages in the midst of rings of cultivated land. When she saw what Peddonon was aiming for, her heart seemed to rise up into her throat so she could not breathe. A heavily loaded cart pulled by two dray beasts was being coaxed across the ford of a substantial stream, a tributary river that wound toward the River Istri, now out of sight to the west. The dray beasts had decided they would rather wallow in the water, because they were trying to pull off the gravel bar that sliced partway across the ford and on into deeper waters where they could relax. One soldier was whipping the dray master; two others were whipping the animals. Another pointed at the eagles, alerting his fellows. There were too many to attack, twenty at least.

Yet Peddonon cut low, Kanness approaching from behind. Pil climbed, circling back.

Were they really going to try to hit this cadre?

Peddonon swooped over the ford as the dray beasts took advantage of the soldiers' distraction to pull hard for the wallow. The wagon began to slide off the gravel bar.

Peddonon upended his basket. Two arrows flashed upward through the hail of stones. Unlike the rocks, the spent arrows fell harmlessly back to earth.

Splashes, shouts, and the panicked blundering bellows of the dray beasts marked the impact of the first volley. Kanness came right behind, dumping his basket. A stone struck a dray beast

right on the head, and the animal staggered violently, snapping its yokes as it collapsed to its knees. The cart yawed, tipped, teetered; the ox toppled, and the second, still bellowing, thrashed to try to break free and keep its head above as the cart tumbled over and into the deeper water.

Nallo had overshot. She tugged so hard on the jesses that Tumna objected with an outraged chuff, but the raptor had her hunting blood up; she banked sharply, returning for the kill.

The dray master was chest deep in water, trying to free the beasts. One soldier floated facedown in the water as Orya's basket, cut loose, spun earthward in the wake of a spent volley of rocks. Another man fled toward the far shore, his bow arm dangling limply, his weapon lost as he tried to drag his sword free with the other.

A group of captives cowered on the road, roped together, unable to move. The soldiers bolted back the way they had come, heading for the safety of a copse several hundred paces away. Nallo released her basket, but she had cursed totally misjudged their speed and her angle and distance and the entire gods-rotted pummel of stones rained uselessly on dirt.

They tucked their heads and kept sprinting. None saw Pil and Sweet stooping from above, or Peddonon and Kanness coming in at an angle.

Sweet struck with such breathtaking precision that Nallo shouted. The talons gripped, plunging right into a man's torso as he screamed. Then the raptor, beating its wings, rose; none of the soldiers even attempted an attack. They were too stunned. Pil, turning in his harness, released first one arrow, then another, and a third and fourth in quick succession as Sweet rose. Two arrows hit their mark. Sweet released her prey.

Kanness's Lovely struck, talons raised and wings battering, as if she was taking a deer. The men scattered, one uselessly flinging a spear in the direction of the eagle's tail feathers. Peddonon slammed a javelin into the back of the bold spearman as Jabi grazed another man, missing the strike and pulling up hard as Peddonon released his grip on his javelin. One soldier had the presence of mind to nock an arrow to his bow.

Nallo had overshot again. She passed over the ford. The captives struggled at their bonds, and the dray master out in the current had grabbed a dead man's sword and cut free one beast. He was now diving in and out of the tangle to try to save the

other while the prisoners shouted at him to come cut them loose instead while they still had a chance to run.

Warri and Orya remained aloft, and that cursed idiot Warri hadn't even released his stones, which when you thought about it described him very well.

The hells!

Two soldiers ran up a path on the far side of the ford. Seeing her, they scrambled for the nearest bushes, any scant cover that might protect them.

She felt Tumna's attention like a burst of fire in her own body, a powerful spear of hunting hunger. Eihi! She hadn't cut the basket free; the cursed thing was in her way, but Tumna was already diving. She grabbed one of the four thin javelins stowed in a quiver to her right; no time to fumble for a knife and cut the basket loose.

How did she ever get to be such a gods-rotted slack-minded lackwit?

One man dove sideways into a crackling mass of thornberry.

Tumna struck the other.

Her wings flared; she thumped down so hard that Nallo pitched sideways and slammed into the raptor's body, then stubbed her foot on the hard dirt, but Tumna's powerful talons pinned them — and the soldier — to the earth. He twitched. He didn't yet know he was dead. He croaked, struggling to get free, and Nallo plunged her javelin into his back, right where she thought the heart must be. He sagged and went slack.

A howl. A roar. Behind her, the other soldier attacked.

In the instant, she thought: He'll kill me from behind. How do / fight?

All her lessons and training scattered like dross.

Tumna was faster than either of them.

She struck in one movement, piercing the man through the chest as Nallo drew up her legs and dangled in the harness watching a man die an arm's length from her face. He looked like a rabbit caught out in the field, too stunned to understand what was happening. His mouth opened and shut as if he had forgotten what he meant to say. Bubbles of blood beaded at his nostrils, sucked in and out. She grabbed her knife, unhooked the harness, and dropped into a crouch beside him. His gaze did not follow her movement, but Tumna squawked irritably.

'Hush!' Nallo snapped. 'Do what you want with him.'

She ducked out from under the raptor's wings and circled around to the other man, who amazingly was not yet dead. Somehow, he was trying to pull himself up the path. She got a foot under his body and shoved him over. She bent, grasped his chin, and held it back to get a full curve. Then she cut deep to sever the windpipe, the foodpipe, and the blood vessels in one strong stroke, as she'd learned to do growing up among goat herders in the Soha Hills.

Battle wasn't much different from slaughtering goats, when you thought of it that way. You killed when you had to, not for any joy you took in it.

Tumna shook the other man loose. She bent her head and nudged him.

'Heya!' shouted Nallo.

By now the cursed basket was half crushed. She cut the gods-rotted thing free, wiped her knife's blade such as she could in two swipes on the weaving, then shoved the blade back in its sheath. Pulling her reeve's baton, she approached Tumna brandishing it as the training regimen had taught her, as if anyone believed eagles actually feared the little stick of a baton that the reeves used to 'train' and 'control' the huge raptors. Tumna, anyway, was perfectly able and willing to rip off the head of her reeve, if her reeve annoyed her. But Nallo had been told time and again that it were better for a reeve to sacrifice herself than to allow her eagle to feast on human flesh.

Yet Tumna was only playing; she wasn't hungry, or inclined to eat; she rolled the body around and gave up, impatient with the corpse's lack of activity. It was only fun when they tried to escape.

'Aui!' muttered Nallo, hot and cold at once.

She heard folk calling, 'Cut us loose, you gods-rotted-'

A dray beast bellowed. A man cursed.

She would have run down to slap some order into them, but Peddonnon had been clear in his instructions: Do not stay on the ground.

Flight gave the reeves their advantage; on the ground, they were easy to kill.

She whistled, and Tumna stretched her wings, looking around as if hoping for more entertaining hunting. Nallo ducked under the shadow of her wingspan and hooked in.

'Up!'

Up.

The eagle's majestic strength carried her. The unbelievable sight of the skirmish unfolded beneath her: the dray master had finally gotten both animals out of the water and was helping the captives free themselves. Some had plunged into the water to recover weapons or gear; trails of red spun out in the water, marking dead soldiers in the current. Three women were coming up the path in Nallo's direction, and Nallo gestured to them, waving an arm to indicate where they should look for the fallen.

Shouts and cheers and the stamping of |eet on earth sent her on her way, just as an audience showed its approval at the Festival contests. She was grinning as Tumna slipped into a weak thermal and got some lift. She couldn't really shout across the gap between eagles, but she found her place in the formation easily enough.

Peddonon flagged a 'follow me,' and they continued south toward the delta, an intense green shivering mass of vegetation ahead. Kanness was laughing as he banked into place; not that she could quite make out the lineaments of his face, but he was a hearty laugher; she knew him well enough by now to recognize how his torso and head looked when he was full-on guffawing.

She didn't feel like laughing, precisely, but it was so cursed good to know they'd finally inflicted some damage. After all the months of feeling like useless observers.

Why in the hells hadn't the reeves done this earlier?

We're not helpless any longer.

That cursed Commander Joss and his gods-rotted outlander ally had been right. Imagine that.

A month ago, the enemy had been dispersed across the plain of Istria and the lower reaches of Haldia, stretching to the Haya Gap, pillaging, burning, and generally causing havoc. Now it seemed everyone was marching toward Nessumara. Barges moved downriver, laden with slaves or building materials. Gangs worked in the western forests, felling logs, which were lashed into huge rafts and floated toward Skerru.

As they flew downriver after the skirmish, she observed with new eyes. That gang of men being marched under guard down-road was not vulnerable because they were guarded by too many soldiers for one wing to attack. Yet there, several mey from the river in heavily wooded hills, a half cadre of men hauling wagons was too far away from foot-based relief to call for help; a single wing could scatter them, and two wings working in concert — if

such a thing could be managed — could obliterate them before their company came to their rescue.

Her hands itched, eager to pull Tumna's jesses, to go on the hunt. To strike a blow.

When the wing passed over the town of Skerru, she saw people like ants boiling, all hard at work building what looked like rafts. Something big was up, for sure.

She, Pil, Kanness, and Peddonon set down on Copper Hall's islet while Orya and Warri remained aloft. Three fawkners hustled over to greet them, a cursed sight friendlier than they had been the first time Nallo had landed here.

'What news?' the first cried as they clustered around Peddonon. 'We're in the hells of trouble here.'

'You must have seen!' blurted the second. 'That gods-rotted army is building walkways to cross the marsh and swamp.'

'The hells!' cried the third, looking at Nallo. 'You've got blood all over your leathers.'

Drying streaks splattered her vest and trousers. Flakes shed from her hands. A spot on her chin itched, and when she raised a hand to rub at it, the fawkners flinched as if they thought she was about to hit them.

'We've been in a skirmish.' Peddonon gestured to get their attention. 'I need to see the marshal at once.'

'You're in luck,' said the first fawkner. 'They're in council now, with the commander and that outlander captain.'

'Joss? Is here in Nessumara?'

'Just came in last night-'

'The hells! Kanness, you stay with the fawkners. Nallo, Pil, come with me.'

The fawkners blurted out a protest but a glance from Peddonon, and the menace of his big frame, silenced them. Nallo and Pil trotted obediently after him as he made his way through the compound to the marshal's cote, a pretty cottage surrounded by a garden on the landward side and with a wooden pier jutting out onto a wide channel. Two low-slung boats had been tied to the pier. A girl, ten or twelve years of age and quite thin, was set to watch them. Two elderly reeves sat on the porch, mending harness. When they saw Peddonon they clambered to their feet. One tapped the sliding door and went inside the cote while the other blocked the stairs.

'I'm here to see Commander Joss,' said Peddonon.

'You're Peddo, right? Where's your eagle perched?'

'I'm Peddonon, sergeant in charge of the contingent stationed at Law Rock. If the commander's here, he'll want to speak to me. If Captain Anji is here, he'll want to hear about the skirmish we just fought.'

'Skirmish?'

The old man's gaze fixed on Nallo, taking in the blood. 'Aui! What happened?'

'I'll give my report to-'

The door slid open, and the other old reeve indicated that Peddonon should go in.

He paused on the porch to take off his boots, nodding at Nallo. 'Go wash yourself off.'

'Where?' she demanded.

He waved a hand, but she wasn't sure if he meant the garden, or the pier, or the barracks. The door slapped shut behind him, and the old reeves stared so rudely! She grabbed Pil and walked to the pier. The heat was beginning to rise, already muggy and steamy here in the delta; in another few weeks it would become unbearable. She swatted at gnats attracted to her sweat, but they only returned, like that cursed army: swarms that would eat them alive if they could manage it.

'Abandoned again with the usual disregard important louts show for their underlings,' she muttered. 'Not one word of praise for our victory.'

'Any decent fighting unit would have made quick work of our clumsy attack,' said Pil. 'The eagles are huge targets. We need better tactics, and much more training.'

'Thank you,' she said as she stamped out onto the pier, Pil following with more caution. The girl turned to stare at them. 'Now I'll just shove you into the water, if you don't mind, so you can feel what it's like to have water dumped over your excitement at finally having done something right!'

Pil didn't like water; it had been hard enough to get him to bathe in the way Hundred folk did.

'I didn't mean it,' she added, hating that stiff-faced expression he got.

'You were brave,' he said. 'You didn't hesitate.'

She laughed. 'That's praise coming from you, I suppose, with your fancy Qin ways.'

The brown water flowed so sluggishly you couldn't quite see

the current's ripple. A pair of boats eased downstream, one tied on behind the other, an older woman steering the forward craft. The woman glanced their way casually and then, startled, looked more closely at Pil.

'Heya! Auntie! Look where you're going!' A pair of young men called out jocularly to the older woman. She favored them with a long look, and whistled provocatively, and they laughed in reply. The men, rowing cargo upstream, were stripped down to loincloths, their muscular backs rippling as they stroked.

Nallo nudged Pil, but he was already looking in that pretending-not-to-look way he still had, as if admiring were shameful.

The girl ran her toes along one of the long lines, staring sidelong at Pil much as he was watching the passing rowers. 'Why's he wear his hair all funny like that? Why isn't it short like a proper reeve? He's an outlander. So why's he wear reeve leathers?'

'I'm sure you're a smart girl,' said Nallo. 'If he come in here jessed to an eagle and wears reeve leathers, what do you suppose he is? Anyway, let me ask you a question. Why does this water stink so much?'

'It doesn't! You've got blood on you. All dried and flaking off. Yuck.'

'It does! It smells like rotting fish and rubbish. Yuck.'

'I never asked you!'

'Yes, but you had plenty to say about my friend here, and you never asked him, just talked to me like he wasn't even there.'

'Outlanders can't talk proper speech, everyone knows that. If he could, why doesn't he say anything?'

'I have nothing to say,' said Pil softly. The girl, hearing him speak, shrieked and danced away to the end of the pier. He grinned, more sweetly than Nallo ever did.

The male rowers had vanished past a point of land piled high with piers and warehouses, and the auntie floated out of sight under a narrow arched bridge that stretched between Copper Hall's islet and a spur of land that held what looked like a council square behind a screen of mulberry trees. The channel lay empty but for a leafless branch swirling aimlessly like a dead snake in the brown water.

The girl sidled a few steps closer. 'Folk say we're all likely to die,' she ventured, still staring at Pil. 'Not so much by starving, 'cause we got fields all over the islands, but 'cause that army, they coming back.'

'This city is well defended by the river,' said Pil. 'Only on two roads can an army march in across the wetlands. Likely the army will build paths and rafts. But your soldiers have weapons, boats, archers. You know the land. All this you can fight with.'

'We dun't really have soldiers,' said the girl. 'My brother got hisself killt. He was on Veyslip Island with the militia that held off the main attack on the east causeway. So he's a hero, but he's still dead. I dun't see how we can fight them again. My clan tried to get us out in a boat but it cost too much. At least we live here in the hall, and get nai every day for our labor. Why do you fight them?' she said to Pil. 'You being an outlander, I mean.'

He fingered his neat topknot. The clubbed hair bound around with thin leather strips had not a strand out of place. 'I am a reeve.'

'Heya!' Peddonon appeared on the porch. 'You two!'

Nallo rolled her eyes. 'He's changed now that he's been put in charge on Law Rock. Whew! High and mighty!'

Pil looked awa|.

'You got something going on there, eh?'

The girl snickered.

Pil's stance took on the rigidity that told her she'd gone too far.

'You can't hear me?' Peddonon bellowed.

'Eiya! I'm sorry. And an idiot.' She slapped Pil hard on the shoulder, and he relaxed. 'Let's go.'

She trotted toward the cote, Pil's steps sounding behind her. Commander Joss and Captain Anji emerged onto the porch, chattering away like her brothers when they would go on about the most precise details of the cursed goats.

The outlander had an engaging voice, his accent more pleasing than difficult. 'That huge old forest — the Wild, you call it — would be a perfect refuge for skirmishers. We could drop them in behind enemy lines to maintain a running disruption, and they could retreat into the forest when they got into trouble.'

'No human can enter the Wild, and live. It's forbidden to go in there.'

'What if we could speak to these wildings and ask them to allow our soldiers refuge? Just for the duration of the war? If they can think and communicate, then it is possible to negotiate with them.'

'Had much luck trading for horses with the lendings?' asked Joss with a laugh.

The captain winced, then grinned. 'It was my own fault. I did not listen to good advice. But if the wildings are people, like to us, then it is merely a matter of coming to understand what they need and how we can offer that to them in return for what we need. Then both they and we benefit, to our mutual advantage.'

The tip-tap of a cane preceded the appearance of the marshal. He was old, weary, and stoop-shouldered, shaking his head as he appeared in the open doors as if disagreeing with Anji's statement. His evident weakness made the contrast between the three men even greater: Commander Joss's excessive handsomeness could not disguise his barely leashed energy, striking in a man who had counted a full forty years; the outlander captain had a quieter but more forceful charisma, a deadly wolf lying patiently in wait for the right moment to kill.

The captain addressed the marshal as if resuming a conversation broken off inside. 'Marshal Masar, I know there is not time to properly train strike forces as efficient, disciplined units, but there is enough time to use them wisely. Reeves can carry soldiers and put them down behind enemy lines. We can sow confusion, pick off stragglers at little risk to ourselves. Create trouble. Draw off their attention while meanwhile I march the army up from Olo'osson. The key is to keep their gaze fixed elsewhere so they don't see us coming.'

'It goes against all tradition,' objected the old marshal.

Commander Joss's eyes widened as he noticed the blood on Nallo's leathers. 'Masar, if we are all dead, then how will our traditions have served us? The ones who command the Star of Life army have cleansed tradition from their ranks. We need not kill tradition to fight them, but we must change to survive. Do you want Nessumara, and this branch of Copper Hall, to fall to the army? To suffer what High Haldia and Toskala have suffered?'

The outlander captain raised a hand. His gaze skimmed over Nallo and Pil in a way that made her stand up straighter; Pil said nothing, his gaze lowered as if he were ashamed, although what in the hells he would have to feel ashamed of Nallo could not imagine.

The captain lowered the hand and tapped his own chest. 'Listen. I can move my army quickly. They're trained for exactly such a contingency. But I desperately need your support, and your support in particular, Marshal Masar, before I lay my plan before Nessumara's council tonight.' He paused, brushing the back of a hand along his beard, his gestures neat and graceful. 'We must strike while the people of Nessumara and Toskala and High Haldia and the entire countryside along the immense length of the River Istri still possess the will to resist. We must strike before they begin to prefer any form of peace, however onerous, to continued suffering.'

The marshal dropped his gaze like a man beaten in hooks-and-ropes. An agony of sorrow shuttered his eyes. Abruptly, Commander Joss touched him on the arm in a manner meant to comfort.

'There was nothing you could have done,' Joss said. 'Do not blame yourself when the blame must rest on those who forced the choice on you.'

'Why do you people hesitate?' Nallo cried, the words pouring out before she knew she meant to say them. 'Do you think you're the only one who's lost a kinsman? Don't you understand I'm standing here today because that cursed army killed my husband and orphaned my helpless stepchildren? Maybe it wouldn't have happened if there had been reeve wings fighting along West Track. I would rather fight and kill these gods-rotted bastards than sit around on my clean bench and moan about tradition while folk are being slaughtered, women assaulted, villages burned, children enslaved. But who am I to know? Just a cursed hill girl, born to goat herders, married against my will to a kind man who treated me decently despite my bad temper. I'd be dead if it weren't for the Qin.' The marshal was actually cringing, but that didn't make her feel the least stirring of shame for yelling at the sodden old fool. She fixed her glare on the captain, who watched her with unsettling interest. 'My thanks to your men.'

'Reeve Nallo, isn't it?' the captain said. 'Yours is the daughter — she must be your stepdaughter, for you're not old enough to have birthed her — who turned down my good chief's marriage offer in favor of a mere tailman.' He laughed, looking at the commander. 'Bring Reeve Nallo to the council meeting. She'll argue our case convincingly.'

'Because she's right,' whispered the old marshal. 'How many more must perish while we hang on to what is already dead?' With an effort he mastered himself, pushing up on his cane to regain some of the stature years and grief had taken from him. Behind that seamed visage trembled a younger man, the body and strength he had once worn: upright, pious, fair, or believing

himself to be. 'We believed the past could protect us. We believe that if we serve justice, then all will be well. But it isn't true, is it? Without order, there can be no justice. If the stubborn fools on Nessumara's council do not listen, then they deserve to have their beautiful city pillaged and burned and their corpses tossed into the channels to feed the fish!'

'Eiya!' began Joss. 'I grieve with you, Marshal, knowing your sorrow at losing your grandchildren and family, but surely you cannot wish upon others what you have suffered.'

'It is natural to be angry,' said the captain. 'But let me admit that I have taken part in the sack of cities.' His tone was so thoughtful and calm it was impossible for Nallo to imagine him engaged in any such horror, yet on he spoke, not making light, but making sense. 'I do not think even so that the folk in those places deserved what befell them. They were merely unfortunate enough to be there. If any should suffer, it should be their leaders, and yet too often those who rule can buy their way out of worse grief while those who live ordinary lives receive the full blast of the storm. How do you think I got my beautiful wife? I saw her in the market one day, and because I could, I took her. That she proved to be much more than even I had imagined is not to my credit, but to hers.'

A horn's sad voice raised in a long plaint, and faded.

'That's the call to council,' said the old marshal.

Nessumara's council was divided: Surrender and beg for protected status. Buy off the army with coin and supplies. Fight, despite not having enough men to defend the city after so many had been killed in the first battle nor an experienced commander to lead them.

It was pretty cursed obvious, thought Joss, that their arguing rose as much from the strain of a months-long siege as from any significant differences of opinion. They quieted respectfully when Marshal Masar braced himself on his cane to speak.

'The army has been spread out over Istria and Lower Haldia for weeks, but now they're joining forces and marching on Nessumara. You're cut off from the countryside, which itself has been pillaged and burned. While the delta protects you to the south and the swamp forest to the north, the eastern marshland is very dry. Lord Radas's cohorts don't need the causeway to advance from the east. This army has raised fifteen full cohorts.

They are turning on you now and they mean to fight until they win.'

His words fell hard; afterward, all sat in silence. Lamps hissed, a familiar and almost comforting sound. The council speaker carried an infant in a sling at her hip, its sleeping face illuminated by a pool of light. She took the speaking stick from Masar and offered it to Anji. 'Sobering words, Marshal. How can anyone defeat fifteen cohorts, Captain?'

T will not fight a pitched battle unless I can win it,' said Anji in his cool voice, the one people listened to because they mistook it for that of a man who harbors no strong emotion. 'There are many ways to win a campaign. If you sit here, you will starve even if you aren't overrun. Those of you who have ships can flee, as long as you are not caught and thrown into the sea. But in the end, the shores you run to will be overrun in their turn. A commander who can raise fifteen cohorts will raise more. He will take your sons as soldiers and your daughters to serve those soldiers-'

As voices swelled, people angrily protesting, the baby woke and began to fuss. Anji crossed to the council speaker and offered to take the child, a pleasing baby of about the same age as Atani. After a hesitation, she handed over the infant. Anji had a deft arm, and as he paced, the little one quieted and, likewise, the assembly fell silent, watching him calm the baby.

He kept pacing, his tone incongruously pleasant and his aspect, with the babe in arms, so harmonious that his words fell like rocks dropped from a clear blue sky. T ask you to hear me out. The Hundred is not like the rest of the world. Let this army overtake you, and you will discover you have far less control over your lives than you had before. Your sons will be forced to join as soldiers, or be killed. Your daughters will be raped. Your temples will be burned. Your coin and your children and your possessions and food stores will be stolen. You will be their slaves, because they will hold the sword. They are commanded by cloaks — whether demons or corrupted Guardians — who cut right into your heart. Who can kill you with a word. Is that what you want? As long as a single one of those cloaks walks on this earth, they have the power to raise another cadre, another company, another cohort. Another army.'

He shifted the now happy baby to his other arm so he could hold the speaking stick like a sword. 'Or do you want to fight?

Because the only army that can defeat them now is an alliance of all those remaining who do not want to suffer under their rule.'

The baby babbled in cheerful reply to Anji's brutal words. Was the man brilliant, or did he simply miss his son?

Joss scanned the assembly; this tidy speech had frightened the council more than the very events and consequences they had seen with their own eyes. People were strange that way. They pretended their bags of rice and bins of nai flour weren't almost empty, sang tales to wish away the news of spoiled harvests or a trade ship gone missing. And then the storm would hit, and they weren't prepared.

Yet was he any different? Sometimes he felt he was hooked into harness but held no jess, at the mercy of winds and wings, so far above he could watch the land unfolding beneath and yet never be touched by it. Until a baby's babbling set into relief the harsh reality of the situation.

He rose. He'd been quiet all evening, and Anji stepped back to give him the speaker's stick. 'Listen, I know a few of you remember me from when I was a young reeve stationed at Copper Hall on the Haya shore.'

Some cursed woman in the back benches whistled admiringly, and folk did chuckle, but this time he did not blush. It was good they remembered him. It gave him a weapon.

'I was known as a reckless young man. I lost a woman I loved, another reeve.' Who is a Guardian now, having died to protect you gods-rotted fools. Yet after Anji's talk of cloaks and corruption, he must speak circumspectly. 'She was killed twenty-one years ago, and I am pretty cursed sure she was killed by men under the command of Lord Radas. Why do I tell you this? Because I got in a hells lot of trouble when I was a young reeve. I broke boundaries, I flew to Guardian altars looking for answers, and in the end I was disciplined and sent to Clan Hall. In the end, I told myself my elders were right, that I was walking where I wasn't meant to go. But now I ask myself: what if we had understood what was going on sooner? If we'd made more effort to figure out why Herelia and Vess kicked out the reeve patrols. If we'd paid more attention to villages who cut themselves off from the assizes. If we had bothered to notice that young men were vanishing, that the settlements around Walshow were growing. If we hadn't avoided it then, maybe we wouldn't be in this terrible situation now. Do we keep avoiding the truth? Or is it time to accept that

this is no tale, this is no chance event. Like the orphan girl in the Tale of the Guardians, we cannot live in the world we grew up in. We have to ask the gods for the strength to change things. It is time to go to Indiyabu, as the orphaned girl did. Maybe you say, Indiyabu is just a tale, a place long since lost to humankind. But it is also a place in our hearts, a place where we find the courage to do what we must.'

Suddenly the air seemed too thick to breathe. His skin burned, and his hands and forehead went clammy. 'How long must this talk go on and on when we don't have a choice?' he demanded, and heard that he had spoken aloud what he'd meant only for his thoughts.

Anji handed the baby back to its grandmother and pulled his riding whip from his belt, pulling its length through his hand like a man impatient to ride. 'Honored council members, I cannot wait while you chew through all your fears and hopes and suspicions. At dawn, Commander Joss and I leave to continue our scouting. Then he'll return to his hall and I to the army. This is a dire situation. We are weak, and they are strong, but their strength is also their weakness because they do not believe anyone can fight them, much less defeat them. If we go our separate ways, then in the end, we will all fall into the shadow. But if we act together' — he raised his riding crop, slashed it once for emphasis in the air, its hiss cutting into their fears — 'we can triumph. I have said every word that I can say. To go on discussing it is to pretend words will win this war. Some wars, words can win. Not this one.'

He gestured. Sengel and Toughid turned to make sure the path was clear. To Joss's surprise, Masar tottered after him to show which course of action he favored. So Joss rose as well. Nessumara's council members called after him in desperate voices to stay, to talk more, and it was Nallo, who had been standing in silent attendance through the meeting, who spoke.

'Go ahead and talk yourselves to death,' she snapped, a parting shot as they walked out. 'Just send someone to let us know when you've all expired so we'll know we can finally get something done.'

Before dawn the council sent a messenger to Copper Hall: Nessumara would ally with Olo'osson. Joss saw something he'd have sworn he would never see: Anji severed his faithful guard

Sengel — Joss had actually never seen Anji without Sengel standing within sight — and left him in charge of Nessumara's defenses.

The hells.

It was like that instant when your eagle shifted, and you knew he was about to dive: the fight was on.

A waning gibbous moon shone over the promontory of Law Rock. The River Istri streamed south, a ribbon glistening under the pearlescent light. A lantern winked on the river, but although Joss scanned the darkness, he did not see it again.

'What do you think of our outlander captain?' Peddonon asked. 'He strikes me as a cautious man. He keeps his guard close. Yet the Qin seem to haul around some odd notions, and hold to them pretty rigidly.'

'They're disciplined,' said Joss. 'It's an admirable quality. That Anji is cautious makes me think better of him. If he were rash, I would think him likely to leap into a clash he could not win just out of recklessness. But he's got something to lose, should he fall and die. An infant son, and a cursed beautiful young wife.'

'So everyone says,' said Peddonon with a smile, 'although I'm not the right man to admire her. Of more interest to me is that folk say she's a cursed clever merchant, who drives a brutal bargain. I'd say she shares that quality with her husband.'

Joss leaned against the polished wood railing that surrounded the thatched-roof shelter built over the upright slab of rock — the actual stele on which the law was carved — whose base was buried in a trough filled with packed earth. Lamps hung from each corner of the shelter, although these days only one of the four was lit. It burned all night, of course. No matter how little oil they had, one lamp must always burn at Law Rock.

'Sometimes we only look at the surface of things, forgetting what substance lies beneath.'

'Poor Joss. Women whistling at you again?'

'Eh, it'll take a better insult than that to hurt me. Since when can a Fox's nip harm a handsome Ox?'

'Since the Ox got too slow to move out of the way. If you need a walking stick, just let me know. I'm a fair hand at carving.'