Traitors Gate

36

Dry season it might be, but Arras's cohort, given the right flank on the downstream end of the line, was able to move forward no more than about two mey during the night's advance. Despite torches blazing and no cursed reeves to plague them, they bogged down time and again in sludge-sucking hollows and spongy ankle-deep pools. One poor man had his leg bitten off by a kroke, which then slithered away into the darkness. The man died screaming. Shortly after, arrows flying out of the gloom drove the forward cadre into the protection of a hedge of thorny brush whose intertwined branches caught the missiles.

Arras came forward and waited a short space, tested an advance; no arrows flew. He personally led the reluctant cadre forward past the hollow where the beast had sheltered and the dead man sprawled. Marsh worms had already risen from the mire to sup on fresh blood.

'Where are my gods-rotted pioneers?' he shouted. 'If you'd been out in front as you were supposed to be, testing the ground with spears and beating the brush, you wouldn't have been taken by surprise.'

'What about the arrows, Captain?'

'Keep your shields up. Now, move out.'

He took a stint at the front, searching for traps, hacking at tangles of thorny brush, shifting a rotting log into a ditch to fill in for better footing. That shamed the soldiers, and the men assigned to track forged out in front of him.

Soon after dawn, the first reeves passed overhead. None dropped rocks. Nor, in the mire, did he see any sign of skirmishers, not that it was easy to see within the tangle of growth. This was flat ground but dreadfully overgrown. The thorns were the worst, but there were also thick stands of pipe-brush and sprawling tangles of a shrub the locals called poison-kiss. Mosks followed them in clouds. Flies buzzed in ecstasy, drunk on sweat.

Five months ago this entire expanse of ground had been underwater, impassable. They moved forward step by cautious step, slow, hot, stinging, and nasty work, and the men were hard-pulled and short-tempered. So when one cadre cornered a kroke, not a very big one, he-allowed them to delay the march to hack it into pieces. They took positions at midday on solid ground and rested under their shields. The sky was as blue as a demon's icy gaze and the heat was unrelenting. A few men fainted, but the rest held strong.

How the other cohorts were faring on the upstream side of the mire he did not know, but he found a knobby hillock and from that vantage thought he could see the causeway shimmering in the heat haze. Or perhaps he was just fooling himself, thinking he saw companies from what could be Eighth Cohort moving along the stone berm. Likely it was too far away to see, unless you were a cursed reeve harnessed up with your cursed eagle.

'Captain?' Giyara's face was red, but she moved easily in her boiled leather coat and quilted leggings. 'The sun's easing. Best we move forward because at day's end we'll be staring straight into the sun for a bit, not able to see anything in front of us.'

He signaled. The horns blatted, and the men began the next stage. They'd come about halfway. No doubt the commanders hadn't taken in account how slowly they would advance under these conditions. The commanders were accustomed to roads and paths, and never seemed to take into account that things might not go as they wished.

'You're thoughtful, Captain,' Giyara said as they trudged behind the front line.

Td've been happier if we'd been allowed Eighth Cohort's position in the center. Captain Deri will do all right, though.'

'Nice of you to say so.'

'I respect competence.' He swiped at mosks. His glove-encased hands were hot, but the thin leather gave him a better grip on his

weapons. 'If we're flanked,' he added, 'you'll go to the rear company and set up a defensive line.'

'Do you think they're hoping to cut around behind us, Captain?'

'That's what I would do, if I were defending the city. When we reach the first open channels, we'll pull the pioneers back to reinforce the rearguard. Then if one of the other cohorts breaks as First Cohort did, we can send our reserve to rally them. Cursed if I'll retreat again. It also gives us the option of wheeling on the enemy, taking them from the back.'

'If they attack.'

'If I've thought through every contingency, I can act faster when the hells break loose, as they will. I worry that Lord Radas prepares himself only for victory. He's so used to people falling onto their faces before him he can't imagine anything else.'

Her color heightened as if with a flash of heat. 'Captain, if you'd keep your voice lower, I for one would appreciate it. This cohort is loyal to you but that doesn't mean there aren't men here who won't carry tales in exchange for the prospect of advancement. To be blunt, I'd rather not be cleansed for being under suspicion of harboring traitorous thoughts.'

'Aui! My apologies.'

Yet his mind would spin and weave as they slogged through ground increasingly difficult to push across, sinkholes and mud pits like ambushes laid across the mire. A better plan; better commanders; more disciplined men, soldiers honed to a peak of skill and loyalty. His cohort was all right; he trusted them to hold their ground because he'd trained them. It was the rest of the cursed army he didn't trust, and yet even to think that thought might get him killed, just for being honest about the army's glaring weaknesses. Aui!

'Keep moving,' he called to a cadre of soldiers stymied by a slippery depression that in the wet season likely flowed with water. 'Hack down the pipe-brush over there. Lay it down right across the mud. That's right. Excellent.'

Onward, with the reeves watching from on high and, so far, no sign from the city hidden within the delta beyond that the Nessumarans meant to put up any further resistance.

At dawn, Joss flew Toughid to Horn Hall and gave Kesta orders to delegate a reeve to convey Toughid, and an advance force, to Law Rock.

'Aui!' She glared at him. 'We're undermanned. I've got an entire flight running messages up and down West Track for the captain already. To move one hundred soldiers from the army to Toskala will mean every reeve we have here must make the journey twice. It'll take three days at least. More if he decides he wants more lifted.'

'I'll see if I can detach two flights from Copper Hall.'

He glided down over Copper Hall in late afternoon, flagging for permission to land. Fawkners came running, one of them an old acquaintance who recognized Scar.

'Is Marshal Masar in his cote?' Joss asked.

'You haven't heard?' They wore expressions of grief-stricken pride. 'You'll find the marshal in council square.'

He crossed a bridge that linked the reeve hall to the council islet. A man dressed in reeve leathers trotted across the span toward Copper Hall, brushing past Joss without a word. Nessumara's council square was an entire islet, banked with a stone revetment. Its elaborate garden surrounded a tiled roof supported by carved wood pillars. The paving under the roof was famous, spoken of in tales, but Joss only remarked the older folks sitting tensely on benches in the copious shade. Clerks of Sapanasu were writing busily. A pair of aged men in militia sashes were talking to a young runner, a lean lass dressed in kilt and vest. As he approached, the lass gestured a respectful leave-taking and took off running toward the eastern bridge.

The elders looked up as Joss approached.

'Greetings of the day,' said Joss.

The two men stared at him, making no welcoming gesture. Then one rose abruptly and smiled. Joss turned. Chief Sengel approached, accompanied by a stocky young man in a well-worn quilted militiaman's coat whose hands bore a farmer's calluses.

'Commander Joss! An unexpected visit.' The hells. Joss offered a forearm; Sengel hit hard, and his grin flashed when Joss did not stagger or wince. 'This is Laukas, freshly jessed.'

'Is that right?' said Joss. 'You're the first I've heard of in — well — months. You are well come to the reeves, comrade.'

The young man did not smile. 'I'm ready to fight,' he said. His

hair, Joss saw, had been pulled back but wasn't quite long enough to wrap in a ribboned topknot.

'What's your eagle's name? Maybe it's one I know.'

Laukas glanced at Sengel, and the chief nodded. 'Shy,' said the young man. 'Although she's actually pretty bold, so I guess you reeves -1 mean, we — make a jest of their names?'

'But-' Joss stumbled over his words. 'Shy is Masar's eagle.'

'Wait here,' said Sengel.

'Yes, Marshal.' The young man stepped aside obediently.

'What in the hells?' demanded Joss.

Sengel walked with Joss out to the end of Council Pier where they could talk without being overheard. The channel was running low this deep in the dry season. A dead fish stank on a muddy lip of stone. The city had a tense anticipation of coiled rope just before it's flung. Boats moved purposefully, piled high with an assortment of debris and junk, branches, planks, wheels, a blackened spar. Older folk poled and rowed, accompanied by youths.

'A cloak came down in the night. We filled him full of arrows and javelins until he did fall and lie in a stupor. I'd spoken to Masar about the situation. He claimed the right to unclasp the cloak as payment for his family.'

'He's an old, failing man!'

'Which is exactly why I let him do it. Don't you suppose that's how he wanted to die, knowing he'd struck a blow rather than wasting away on a pallet? Now what can I help you with? I don't have much time. The enemy's eastern line is more than halfway across the mire and we've not got everything in place yet. Do you bring a message from the captain?'

'Aui!' And yet, he could imagine Masar taking on one last battle. It was a proud way to go. 'Listen. Can you spare a flight to move troops up from the army to Toskala?'

Sengel shrugged. 'I can't, Commander. I've got three flights out today bringing in reinforcements to me. If you've just come from the army, you might have seen them.'

Joss shook his head, rubbing his forehead. 'I went by Horn Hall first.'

Sengel looked closely at him. 'What is it, Commander? Something troubling you?'

A horn rang in the distance. Drums rapped out a measure. Every soul seated under the council roof turned to stare eastward

over a wide channel, although he could see nothing but the crowd of one- and two-story buildings that filled the neighboring isles. So much was hidden from him. He didn't know the streets and alleys of this city — not Nessumara, precisely, although its complex tangle of islets, islands, canals, river channels, backwaters, and mires was famous in tale and in truth — but this unfolding market of events whose paths were obscure to him.

'I just think it's cursed odd we reeves have become carters.'

Sengel laughed in the easy Qin way. 'Not at all. Reeves are soldiers, doing what needs done.'

'Why'd the young man call you "marshal"?'

Sengel began walking back to the shaded square where people waited impatiently for him. 'A courtesy, nothing more. I'm in charge of Nessumara's defenses at the moment, and that includes the reeves. If there's nothing else, Commander, I have to go inspect the defenses. If you don't mind, could you walk Laukas over to Copper Hall? He hasn't even been issued reeve leathers or harness. It just happened this morning.'

Laukas wasn't shy, precisely, but bitter.

'Who's marshal now?' Joss asked him as they crossed the bridge.

'Chief Sengel's acting as marshal. He's got everything in hand in Nessumara. Without him, it'd be like we were walking into a cursed ambush, wouldn't it? But now we have a hope of victory.'

Midmorning, Keshad was working in quiet amity beside O'eki, each man at his own writing desk, when the door into the compound slammed open. Keshad splattered ink over his neat column of accounts.

O'eki looked up more calmly. 'Seren? What is it?'

The Qin soldier limped inside and a young reeve hurried in behind, his face so creased with worry that O'eki set his brush on its stand and rose.

'Reeve Siras has come from Merciful Valley,' began Seren.

The reeve broke in over Seren's words. 'You're to come immediately to Merciful Valley, Master O'eki. Chief Tuvi tells me to bring also Master Keshad.'