Traitors Gate

8

The enemy crept cautiously out of the forest's edge, watching for the glare of fire in the distance where villages burned. Captain Arras had set his ambush carefully: four lines of attack, trip wires, and a gauntlet of spearmen to sweep around from behind so no stragglers could escape back into the trees. The fighting was short, sharp, and efficient; not one of his men was killed, although ten sustained wounds and two were so badly hurt they'd likely be crippled. Ten of the enemy survived the main attack on their feet and refused to surrender, preferring to fight to the death, so he had them taken down with arrows. Three of the enemy were mortally wounded but still breathing; he cut their throats himself, as a mercy.

At dawn, he commanded the men to drag the bodies into the open clearing behind the ruined waterwheel, where he paced out the measure of the dead, his sandaled feet moistened with dew as he counted thirty-four men and women, two short of a full cadre. Too bad they'd joined up with the wrong side; he could have used such bold, hard fighters, molded them into something more than a ragtag poorly led herd of frustrated rebels.

Sergeant Giyara herded the shivering child forward and, at his gesture, moved away to the perimeter. No one could overhear them now.

'You did as you were told,' he said to the child: he wasn't sure if it was a homely boy or a brawny girl. 'How many were left at camp?'

The child was weeping, tears smearing lines through its filthy face. 'Dunno. A few. Not fighters.'

'Any outlanders?'

'I saw one.' Its voice trembled as it contemplated the ashes of its triumph. Under Arras's steady gaze it found its tongue and spoke in a whisper. 'You won't kill my family?'

'First, you'll lead us to the clearing.' The captain fastened a hand over the neck of the child's jacket.

The raid on the villages was well in hand, according to the runners who came in from his other companies to report. He called in the men, had the wounded set up a perimeter within the ruins to await his return, and settled the rest into files, making sure his

strongest, most stubborn fighters were concentrated in the van and at the rearguard. The dogs and their handlers were sprinkled throughout the line in case of attack while they were strung out and vulnerable on a forest track. This was the dangerous part of the operation, so he took point with a pair of trusted men, put the child on a rope, and sent him ahead like a dog. They trotted at good speed along the track.

A mind, surely, was like this forest, tangled and overgrown, its reaches hidden to the common eye. What the cloaks possessed was something like the path they marched along, a way to punch into what you otherwise could not penetrate. What if there was a way to let your thoughts grow over and hide from the cloaks?

The enemy hadn't been entirely stupid. They'd emplaced a lookout, but the person had fled, the only survivor. They'd tried to cover their tracks, keep their base hidden. His company had to wade up a stream, a good technique for throwing off dogs on a scent, and take a second track yet deeper into the forest. But in the end they found the clearing with its canvas structures still strung up. The fire was ashes. Platters were scattered around logs set out as benches; small animals had been feeding on the leavings. Wind bellied the canvas awnings. Birds fluttered away through high branches. Two corpses cooled: an elderly woman and a lass wearing the blue cloak of an envoy of Ilu.

He had an itch on his shoulders, that gods-rotted feeling he was being watched, but although he paced the edge of the clearing and peered into the foliage, he saw not even a bold crow. There! The bright flash revealed birds with red and yellow plumage.

'Track over here, Captain,' called Sergeant Giyara.

'Secure the site,' said Arras to her. 'Search for weapons, supplies, and coin. You twenty, come with me.'

They followed the second trail through more forest, over rockier ground, only to have it give way at a rocky spine thrust out of the earth and covered with hanging vines and low-growing shrubs nestled in its crevices. There was an actual cave inhabited by a scatter of ancient debris, rotting leaves blown in through the vines that screened the entrance, and a jumbled pile of animal bones scored with tooth marks.

'A predator's nest,' said one of the men nervously.

'Nothing's lived here for a long while,' observed the captain, 'and I see no sign they were storing anything here either.'

They lit a pair of torches, but the cave's ceiling lowered in the

back until they'd have had to crawl to get in any farther, and there was an odd smell like rotten eggs that made the man in the front cough and choke until he couldn't speak, so Arras called them back. They searched the vicinity but found only a scumble of tracks.

'I think we've flushed out what's left of this nest of rats.' He took no pleasure in killing; it's just it had to be done and he liked doing what he was good at. Yet he still had that prickling feeling on the back of his neck: someone watching. 'We'll gather up the other units and march on.'

'We going back to Toskala, Captain?' asked one of the newcomers assigned to his command by Toskala's governor along with seventeen other untested men. Arras had spread them out, three to each cadre, keeping them isolated from each other so they'd bond with the soldiers he knew and trusted.

'No.' His strong voice carried. 'We're marching on Nessumara to join the army there, as we were commanded to by Lord Twilight himself. There's fighting ahead, and plenty of coin and loot to be had after the city falls.'

The three newcomers whooped, then fell silent as the veterans yawned and scratched, pretending to ignore the novices' enthusiasm.

The cadre retraced their steps to the clearing, where the pathetic items swept up from the remains of the camp were neatly laid out under Sergeant Giyara's supervision. Arras liked a woman with a tidy mind; Giyara was tough-minded and effective. She was attractive as well, but he knew better than to indulge that itch with a valued subordinate.

To the men he said, 'Divvy up what's portable in even lots.'

Giyara had already divided out the food: ten small sacks of rice, nai, turnips, bundled herbs, and a substantial store of smoked venison. The durable trenchers were easy to store in their travel packs. The canvas was good quality.

'We'll meet up with our other companies and continue south to Nessumara,' he said, again, his voice ringing beneath the canopy. 'According to our orders from Lord Twilight. We're expected to make good time, so let's hustle.'

The sergeant called out, 'Line up!'

The child looked like a beaten dog, all mournful eyes and drooping head. 'Are you leaving? What about my family?'

'Your family has not been harmed.' As the men began to march

out, he realized he could still make use of the child. 'A word of warning. The other survivors will begin to suspect your family's curious luck in escaping with no injuries. And although your family may be grateful now, they'll come to hate you later. Your kinsfolk's resentment may be worse than the anger of your neighbors. If I were you, I'd leave, and find a new place to make your way.'

He fell in with the rearguard.

No doubt it would straggle home bawling, yet wasn't it better to die than be a traitor? The angry ghosts of its dead would haunt it for the rest of its life, however long that would prove to be in these disordered times. He wondered if he felt kinship or disgust for the child.

'Captain?' Sergeant Giyara had fallen back. 'Sure you don't want that child's kinsfolk cleansed? Traitors ought to be punished.'

'Neh, we made them, so leave them be. Anyway, if I were a wagering man, I'd bet you the child will follow us and before five days are out be begging to let it join the company.'

'You think so?'

This was how you obscured your trail. 'I do.'

He scanned the forest. He was used to high-elevation trees, ones that could survive frost and a seasonal dusting of the snow never seen down here. These lowland hothouse woodlands creeped him, for sure, so dense and moist it was like being inside a vast sensate beast. Branches were swaying although the breeze wasn't strong enough to send them rocking like that.

At the ruins of the waterwheel, they carted up their wounded and called in the other companies, leaving behind half-pillaged villages with corpses and burned houses scattered like chaff. There was a decent north-south road here, running roughly parallel to but rather more inland than the famed Istri Walk, the major road that ran on high ground on both banks alongside the magnificent River Istri, whose humble headwaters he had grown up fishing.

Strange where life took an insignificant ordinand. He'd never imagined in his youth that he'd find himself living in a time where he could become a true soldier, just like those who were more reviled than admired in the tales.

By midafternoon they could no longer smell the smoke of their raid, and in the villages they marched through they paused only

long enough to demand coin. In one village, a pair of rambunctious cousins begged leave to join them, and he allowed them to sign on as hirelings mostly because their clansmen were clearly horrified at this desertion. Later, when he halted to allow his men to wet their throats at an inn, a rough-looking traveler named Laukas asked for a hire, saying he'd tend to horses or boots, anything for a meal and a chance at learning how to fight properly. The new men worked hard that evening when they set up camp; they'd either grow tired of the labor, or they wouldn't. Only time would tell.

He made a circuit of the sentry lines and returned to his own fire to eat nai porridge and smoked meat. The sergeants gave their reports, and afterward he dismissed all except Giyara.

'I'm thinking of that child,' Arras said, as if the thought had just leaped upon him and wrestled him to the ground. 'Maybe you could leave a parcel of food and drink out beyond the sentry lines, something the child might stumble upon if indeed it is following us.'

Giyara cocked her head, examining him as if he were crazy. 'As you wish, Captain.'

'I just have a feeling,' he repeated, and shook his head, sensing he was overdoing it. 'What have you heard about the eighteen new recruits we were saddled with?'

She'd known he would want to hear the gossip, so she had already done her talking with the company subcaptains and cadre sergeants. Her analysis was succinct: Fifteen would likely work out, one had died in the raid through sheer idiocy, and the other two were troublemakers he'd need to deal with soon.

'Just kill them,' he said. 'Rid us of the problem immediately rather than let it drag on. You can slot those three new men in, but be sure to split up the cousins.'

He dismissed her, then considered the flames, the pleasant noises of an orderly camp settling down for the night, and the distant scream of a rabbit caught in the dusk by a predator.

'Captain.'

'The hells!' He sprang up, hand on his sword hilt, but it was already too late. A woman cloaked in night walked out of the darkness and captured him, her voice the hook and her eyes the spear. Down he tumbled, his heart and mind laid open to her sight, all his secrets revealed.

He liked Lord Twilight, truth to tell, although he knew a hum-

ble soldier like him hadn't the right to feel any sense of comradeship with a cloak, who was either a holy Guardian or an unholy lilu or some hells-brewed stew of both. Anyway, you couldn't say no to a cloak, even if — especially if — the cloak's orders were likely to get you strung up on a pole.

So he would cover his tracks as well as he could. He would play the game of misdirection. He had crushed a nest of bandits. Nothing suspicious in that. Meanwhile, he would send Sergeant Giyara out with parcels of food every night, ostensibly for a child who might be brash enough to follow, although he deemed that particular child unlikely to have the courage. That was the kind of child who stuck it out in a bad situation, too afraid to bolt, and got itself whipped and eventually, when its own people had come to despise it enough, butchered. Rotten, they would call it, and then they'd fling its spiritless flesh into the woods to be scoured by the Lady's beasts and pretend it had never existed. Every night someone other than him would take out those parcels for a child who probably wasn't following them, while he would hope that a fugitive outlander seeking safe passage to Nessumara had actually been hiding in the forest within hearing of his voice.

She released him.

He fell forward, barely catching himself on his hands, his nose brushing the dirt. 'Do you mean to have me cleansed, Holy One?'

She spoke without anger or sorrow. 'Captain Arras, I followed you because I was curious why three companies stumbled onto the very same bandits I did. It seemed unlikely it was a coincidence. Nor was it. I have a better insight into events now. Yet I do not fault you for obeying Lord Twilight's order. I appreciate your loyalty and your cleverness. You attempt to protect your soldiers as well as yourself. Very commendable.'

'How may I serve you, Holy One?' he said, keeping his head bowed and straining his will to empty his mind. Maybe he had a chance of surviving this.

'Fight well with the army, Captain. When Lord Twilight returns, when he seeks you out, as he will, tell him I have his brother.'

'Greetings of the day, verea. Nice the markets are open again, eh?' Ostiary Nekkar examined a tray of withered caul petals as he crouched on his haunches beside an old woman selling remnants from her garden.

'Generous of you to say so, Holy One. Only from second bell to fourth bell, and then us chased back into our homes.' She was very wrinkled, with many teeth missing, but she had a vigorous heart and was willing to speak her mind.

'Where's your granddaughter, verea? I miss her cheerful face.'

'As if we'd risk her in the marketplace in days like these.' She indicated two soldiers leaning on their spears and two others strolling as they looked over the merchandise. Usually, one bell after dawn, the main market of Stone Quarter was alive with chatter and gossip and laughter. Nekkar never tired of observing people: the blazing health and innocent beauty of the young, the nagging and hopefully jovial complaints of those who, like him, were mature without being elderly, and the enduring strength of folk like Gazara, twice widowed but a great-grandmother, the pillar of her poor but proud clan of day laborers, men and women who dug ditches, cleared canals, and worked on the road beds.

He nodded. 'Is there work for your people? How are you managing?'

She bent over the caul petals to separate the merely withered from the desiccated. 'The soldiers pay coin to anyone who brings them information, so I hear.'

'I remember,' said Nekkar carefully, 'that your clan took in two families of distant cousins some months ago.'

She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and spoke in a whisper. 'They're with us still, Holy One. We're keeping it quiet, for fear they'll get themselves expelled and us hanged.'

'A dreadful thing, truly. Verea, before the main army marched downriver on Nessumara, I was interrogated, because I went out scouting one day while the curfew was still on. This has been my first chance to get out.'

She measured him. 'You've a few bruises, like fallen fruit.'

'I'm asking around the market for a particular reason.' She looked up, alarmed, but he smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. 'When I was roughed up, there was a refugee in the line ahead of me. He was killed later, trying to get back to whatever alley he'd left his children in.'

'Orphans,' she muttered gloomily.

'I'm asking around, if anyone has heard tell of three children being swept up or driven out, or taken in, or glimpsed in the alleys.'

'Those village children were always gawking at the silks and

the noodle sellers.' She cracked a reluctant smile, but it fled quickly. 'The soldiers have been cleaning out the alleys. They've worked through the entire quarter riverside of our compound.'

'And the canal-side neighborhoods over by the temple,' he said.

'I'm sorry to say my lads have been forced to take hire building out that burned merchant's hall in Terta Square, that one they're turning into a fortified garrison headquarters. I heard them remark just last evening there are still neighborhoods over by the masons' courts with refugees hanging on in nooks and crannies. Eiya! It was better when those refugees weren't here, for they ate up the rations we need now, but it's a cursed terrible thing the army is doing-'

'Hush, my friend,' he said in a low voice, seeing the soldiers approach from her blind side. He went on loudly. 'I can't pay that ridiculous price, verea. I'm surprised you even suggest it!'

'For shame, Holy One! How can I feed my grandchildren if I can't sell my produce for a pair of vey, eh?'

The young men sauntered up behind her. 'Eh, look at those withered caul petals! My grandmother would have been too proud to demand coin for what she'd feed to her pigs.'

The old woman bent her head to hide the spark of anger.

Nekkar smiled blandly up at them. 'Greetings of the day, my nephews. A fine day, eh? The sun is very lively today, good weather ahead.'

'We've got our eye on you, uncle,' said the taller soldier. 'You can't trust those cursed envoys of Ilu, that's what Sergeant Tomash told us before he got reassigned. Always sneaking around, gossiping, getting into the business of others.'

'Where did you serve your apprenticeship, nephew?'

'Thinks he's got the right to ask, eh?' said the shorter to the taller, guffawing as at a merry joke. They sauntered over to a woman selling plums and took the nicest off her tray without paying.

'They call that "tithing,"' muttered Gazara. 'Cursed thieves.'

'The young have sharp hearing,' he said mildly.

The soldiers glanced over and gestured as if to say, 'Don't think to escape us.'

'I thank you for the tidings, verea,' he added, knees popping as he straightened.

'Don't get into trouble, Holy One. We here in Stone Quarter rely on you for your honesty and good temper.'

'I wish there was more I could do. For now, we must keep our heads down and try to survive.'

No matter how much he wanted to go haring off toward the masons' courts immediately, he loitered in the market, purchasing three honey-sesame cakes and tucking them in his sleeve as he made his way along the main thoroughfare toward the square where he had faced interrogation ten days earlier. The army had swept up ransom and hostages, and departed, and Nekkar was cursed sure that the garrison left behind to guard Toskala were the worst of the lot, bullies and thieves who took whatever they fancied just because they had the power to do so.

A pair of soldiers — likely the same ones by their mismatched height — trailed him at a distance, but he knew the neighborhoods better than they did. Behind Astarda's Arch, he cut into a nook where, according to temple history, there had once stood an age-blackened statue of Kotaru the Thunderer, a relic of an earlier era. He heard the startled cries of the men tailing him and the patter of their footsteps as they raced down the street in pursuit. He hurried back the way he had come and made his way into the warren of alleys behind the masons' courts.

He surprised a couple of locals scavenging through canvas shelters still strung from walls. Crude pallets had been cut open. A ripped and muddied doll lay in the street — it seemed there must always be a doll torn from the grip of some poor sobbing child. A dead dog had gone rigid, feet pointing up; at least it did not yet stink. He hurried past, but heard a scrape and turned back. A ragged child had grasped the hind legs of the dog and was dragging it into the shadows.

'Child,' he said softly, holding out the honey-sesame cakes.

The child froze. Its posture, as rigid in its own way as the dog's, betrayed the intensity of its fear and hunger. For a few breaths, they watched each other. Then Nekkar allowed his gaze to probe the shadows. A half-closed-up drain was tucked away under the two-story building leaning out over the alley. A face wavered in the opening. He could not be sure these were the children of the murdered man whose pleas had gone unheard by all except Nekkar, but truly, it did not matter.

'That's one very dead dog, neh? Not even the firelings as in the tales could heal it, eh?'

The child quivered but did not let go of the legs.

'You're right to be cautious. You are protecting the ones hiding

in the drain. I'm an ostiary, not one of the soldiers. I've come at your father's request to take you to the temple, where you'll be safe.'

'We gotta wait 'til he come back,' said the child in a raspy voice. Impossible to say if this filthy scrap was male or female, and it was certainly no more than ten.

'Yes, truly you do, but aren't the little ones hungry?'

Its gaze flicked toward the shadows and away, fearful of giving up its secrets.

'I tell you what. You come with me now, and we'll wait at the temple until your father comes.'

The child relinquished its hold on the dog's legs. It scratched the rash blooming across its exposed neck. 'He said to wait.'

'And so you have. But he's had to go out of the city, and now he needs you to come with me to the temple. How long has it been since you've seen him?'

The child answered with a shrug.

'Meanwhile, the little ones are hungry. And need a bath. By the honor of Ilu, child, I promise to care for you.'

Aui! Let the child be not so stubborn!

The sag in its shoulders "acknowledged its weary defeat. It turned to face the shadows and called. 'Heya! We're goin' to the Ilu temple and get fed.'

A smaller child crawled out from the hole, its body smeared with mud, followed by an even smaller child who wore only a scrap of linen tied over one shoulder, like a mockery of a cloak, and was therefore exposed as a boy-child. Both children were little more than sticks with joints that bent and eyes that blinked.

'You sure?' asked the middle one, who was clutching a bundle.

'You wanna eat this dog?' asked the eldest.

'We best hurry,' Nekkar said, 'lest soldiers come. They were here before, neh?'

'We hid,' said the eldest.

The middle one raised a hand. 'I hear them coming,' it whispered in a voice rubbed raw.

The eldest cocked its head as its eyes flared. 'We gotta hide, Holy One.'

Too late Nekkar heard the smack of footfalls and the conversational rise and fall of young male voices fading and growing as they turned an unseen corner that brought them closer.

'Hide,' he said.

He ducked down and slid on his belly through a stinking muck that slopped on his neck. The drain was stone on all sides, damp and fetid. The two little ones scrambled in behind, but the eldest darted back to grab at the dead dog.

Soldiers shouted. The child ran the other way to draw their attention away from the drain. They sprinted past, and their shouts of triumph told the rest of the tale. Then back they came, dragging the child, and the littlest one scrabbled out through the hole after his sibling and the middle one followed as his muddy foot slipped through Nekkar's grasp.

The hells! He was not so young and so fit as he had once been, and his tunic snagged and he had to rip it loose, gods-rotted nail! By the time he crawled out they were gone around the bend although he heard voices well enough:

'I knew we'd missed a few of these stinking roaches, eh!'

He hurried after them. As he bolted out from the alley into the street he ran straight into the soldiers who had been following him.

'Whew! You stink!' That was Shorter speaking with a cheerful grin. 'What, Holy One, you scavenging from what those refugees left behind? Aui! I thought better of an ostiary.'

'Them thinking they're better than us,' added Taller, grasping Nekkar with a cursed strong hand and towing him away from the direction in which the children had been taken. 'Yet they do tax and tithe and claim to be pure as new milk when they're just gods-rotted thieves without a scrap of shame, thinking it's owed to them.'

'I — l-'

'Eh? Eh?' They mocked him, his flushed face, his trembling hands, his ragged breathing. 'Are those honey-sesame cakes?' They ripped the cakes from his grasp and ate them.

'I need to see the sergent for Stone Quarter. There were some orphans given over to the temple I was meant to take possession of, but because of the curfew I couldn't get out to leash them in until today-'

'Slave takers, too,' said Shorter, and all at once Nekkar realized the young man had a debt scar scored into his face, by his left eye. 'Cursed temples take our labor and work us and then discard us. How I hate them!' Like lightning, he backhanded Nekkar so hard across the face the ostiary stumbled to his knees on the street, so much pain he couldn't stand at first even as they shoved and then

punched and then kicked him until he staggered up half blinded by tears.

'I need to see the sergeant.' His voice sounded like that young child's, scoured raw.

They hauled him to the inn after all, punctuating the long walk with a running commentary about what the sergeant would do to him, fingers broken, eyes gouged out, toes cut off, cleansed on the pole. They were enjoying the conversation because they knew he could do nothing to stop their chatter. Their talk was like a winding chain, winching them tight and tighter.

The inn was empty but for three young women serving ale to ten off-duty soldiers. His pair traded jests with their comrades before prodding him upstairs. There he waited in the corridor, pain jabbing in his ribs. After a while, another man, soberly dressed and moving as slowly as if he were recovering from a severe beating, invited him into a long chamber overlooking the square.

The sergeant seated in the chamber had a lass to pour his wine, a couch to lounge on, and a pair of writing desks set against the wall where two shaven-headed clerks hunched over accounts books. As Nekkar entered they glanced up and looked down at once, as if expecting to be hit.

The sergeant had a knife in one hand, coring an apple. 'What trouble are you causing? Be quick about it.'

If he talked fast, he didn't have to imagine what it would feel like to be hanged on the pole.

'Sergeant, I'm Nekkar, ostiary at the Ilu temple here in Stone Quarter. Three orphans were consigned to my care some days ago, and I've only just now been able to collect them. But your soldiers took them away. So if I can just fetch them from wherever they've been hauled off to, then I'll take them off your hands and the temple will provide-'

'They're probably being taken to the brickyards.'

'The brickyards!'

'We've a fair lot of building to do. Fire damage to fix. Defensive walls to reinforce. Small hands can work in the brickyards.'

'They're very young, the smallest not more than four-'

'I'm done with this conversation. You know, ostiary, I might well send soldiers by your temple if I've need of your novices' labor. Best you take care of your own, and be careful you don't displease me further. Indeed, I'll thank you to come by every

morning after second bell and give me a report on Stone Quarter's doings. Now, get out!' He popped a slice of apple into his mouth, then offered one to the lass, who glanced at the ostiary before she took it and devoured it.

He was shaking. 'Sergeant, if I may-'

The sergeant whistled, and the two soldiers entered the room, their grins fading as they took in the sergeant's grim frown. 'Get this cursed ostiary out of my sight. But don't be beating on him, you gods-rotted fools!'

They were strong with youth's surety. They marched him through streets emptying of traffic as the fourth bell tolled the curfew hour, although the laborers working on the army's projects would hammer and haul until dusk. They shoved him to the closed gates of the temple, and waited until the watch let him in past the growling dogs.

He shut the door in their faces. It was all he could do.

'Holy One?' asked the envoy on watch, looking worried. The novices came to the porch of the learning hall, staring but saying nothing. 'Shall we haul water for a bath?'

He shook his head roughly. 'I'll haul the water myself.'

So he did, each bucket spilling into the bronze tub along with his tears.

And when he poured the last bucketful in, the water splashed, rippled, lapped, and stilled to become a mirror. His own filthy, bruised face stared up at him, the ordinary face of a man who has done his duty and lived as decently as he could manage according to the precepts of the gods. No special craft, no exceptional skills, no particular ambition.

'I will fight,' he said to his reflection, to his hidden spirit, perhaps, or to the gods. 'Let me be a messenger, as befits my calling. Let me be an envoy, to carry resolve where it is needed. There must be a way to defeat them. We must find a way.'