Traitors' Gate (103 page)

“Why was it for the best?”

“It's not proper for men to behave that way. I'd prefer Vekess. He's steady.”

Joss shook his head. “Chief Toughid, you've done well, and in truth we'd be in a cursed bad place without you Qin. I'll send you with Vekess if it's your request, but I feel obliged to say that you're in the Hundred now. Not in Qin country. How a man, or woman, worships the Devouring One has nothing to do with what manner of man he is. And I'll thank you to remember it.”

The soldier nodded, his placid expression impossible to fathom. Was he offended? Understanding? Dismissive? Who in the hells could tell with these outlanders and their quick grins floating atop an implacable reserve?

“We'll have to clear this rockfall,” Toughid said. “Difficult work but possible to manage if we work down through it a step at a time.”

Laughter and singing swelled from the city below, where torches and tapers bobbed along the avenues and canals, a festival of lights as folk danced in the street. On the balcony, reeves and firefighters were jostling, joking, drinking, roistering. In the light of their last few lamps, Peddonon had pulled a knife and was waving it in front of Pil's face. The young Qin reeve was laughing, just like the rest of them, rather drunk and leaning casually in that way reeves had with a friendly arm around Nallo and a shoulder pressed companionably against one of the young firefighters.

“Heya! All that hair just gets in your way! You don't look like a proper reeve,” the reeves were shouting as the firefighters egged Pil on.

Toughid's gaze narrowed as he watched.

Pil released his topknot, and his long black hair rippled
down over his shoulders, chest, and back as women and men whistled appreciatively.

Peddonon stepped back, eyes wide and expression as startled as if he'd been slapped. Joss chuckled, having seen Peddonon through many a sudden infatuation. Pil was faster, though; he grabbed the knife out of Peddonon's hand and hacked off his beautiful hair as the others cheered and Peddonon pretended to mourn.

With a grunt, Toughid turned away. Walked away, pausing to call over his shoulder. “Commander, are you coming? I've maps to go over, more plans to consider.”

Joss shook his head. “Neh. I'll meet with you at dawn, Chief. For now, I've a mind to celebrate. With my reeves.”

 

“J
OSS
?”

He startled awake to find Peddonon jostling him in dawn's gloom. “Eh? What?”

Peddonon kept his voice low, as though he were trying not to wake someone else up. “You were talking in your sleep, Joss. You were saying her name again.”

“Marit.”

His frown swamped Joss with friendly disapproval. “Twenty years dead, and you've never let her go.”

“What if I told you she was a Guardian now?”

“I'd wonder how much you drank last night.”

Peddonon stepped back from the humble pallet unrolled on the mats of the sleeping chamber. One door was slid halfway open, and through the gap Joss saw a thin pallet stretched in front of the doors of the outer chamber. A naked man, his back to them, seemed to be asleep, sprawled on the pallet.

Peddonon grinned. He wore a kilt, hastily wrapped around his hips, but it was obvious by his sleepy eyes and mussed hair that he'd just woken up.

Joss mouthed, without voicing the words, “Is that Pil?”

Peddonon's grin widened.

“And yet I'm the one with the reputation,” murmured Joss, groping for and finding his leathers. His mouth tasted sour and his stomach was curdling from too much cordial.

“Anyhow,” Peddonon went on, “wouldn't that be a worse thing than her being dead? That she'd become a demon?”

“The Guardians aren't lilus, or demons, or any bad thing! Some may have become corrupted—”

“If some have, then how can we trust any of them? Ask yourself: Why do we need Guardians at all? With a militia to keep order, reeves to patrol the roads coordinated with guard stations on the ground, and reorganized assizes to oversee justice in the towns, we can do it ourselves. Cursed if I want cloaks creeping into my mind and heart like folk say they can do. When I was with the army yesterday I talked to some of the Qin soldiers, and they said—”

“They say whatever Anji tells them to say.”

“Aui!” Peddonon retreated as if Joss's breath had driven him back. “Sheh! He might be an outlander, but where would we be if he hadn't agreed to put his life and his troops on the line for the Hundred, eh? Would else could have marched against Lord Radas and his army? We have hope,
at last
, for peace.”

“The hells! I meant no criticism. It was just a statement. The Qin soldiers are loyal. Everyone knows that.”

Movement stirred in the outer chamber as the young Qin reeve woke up. Maybe he had only been pretending to sleep. Peddonon slid shut the door to give Pil privacy, then grabbed up a cup from a tray sitting on the low table.

“You're sour this morning, Joss. Do you need cordial? Maybe a little rice wine?”

“At
dawn
?” Joss splashed water into the basin and scrubbed his face with a scrap of linen.
We have hope at last.
Was that uneasy worm curdling in his gut jealousy? Anger? Relief that he would not have to make decisions he wasn't entirely sure he was competent to make?

“Anyway,” said Peddonon. “Pil cut off his topknot last night. Eventually the Qin will all become Hundred folk, like us.”

“Peddo,” he said to the water as it rippled to a standstill to form a dark mirror; his cursed handsome face stared back at him. How long had he let his vanity and charm carry him through life, soaked down with one cup of rice wine after the
next? “I'm a good reeve, I think. I'm doing my best to be a good commander.” He looked up.

Peddonon folded his arms. “What's this about?”

Joss wiped his face and pulled on his trousers. “The reeve halls are taking orders from Anji now. As if we're part of his militia. I see a danger in that.”

“I see more danger in this cursed enemy that's rampaged across half the land! Are they defeated yet? Fifteen cohorts they've raised.”

“Don't you see the danger in a man who breaks the boundaries, kills a Guardian, and then
binds her cloak
instead of releasing it to the gods?”

“Lord Radas broke the boundaries before we ever did! He had your lover's eagle killed, didn't he? We're only protecting ourselves. The hells, Joss! Can't we have this conversation when we have space to breathe? We're still at war!” He grabbed the linen towel out of Joss's hands and washed his face, swabbing down his chest and arms.

Joss fished his vest off the floor, taking a couple of calming breaths. “We
are
still at war. So I need to piss, and eat a bit of bland nai porridge, if there is any, before Scar and I head out.” He grabbed his harness, his reeve's baton, his short sword, quiver, and empty provisions pouch. “You're staying here in charge of the rock. Your flights need rest. Vekess will convey the chief to Gold Hall.”

They headed out to meet the day.

But late in the afternoon, after hunting along the wrong roads and down empty paths, Joss thought about Pil's topknot as he quartered Istria in search of Anji's army. The emptied countryside west of the River Istri was ragged with fields going to seed or never planted, harbingers of bare store houses in the months to come. Hamlets and villages rose everywhere, and were everywhere abandoned. Where had the villagers fled to? Once he skimmed over woodland in whose depths he spotted canvas strung between trees, visible only because late in the dry season the foliage grew sparse. Later, he swooped low over a company of soldiers escorting a train of some forty wagons laden with sacks of rice or nai. They pointed at him as
half their number readied bows, eager to have at him if he dropped into range. They were ready for a reeve attack. He swung wide to turn, heading west and north.

So was Anji's strategy to use the reeves already ineffective?

Wouldn't it have been better for the reeves to stand aloof from the conflict so they might better administer justice? And yet, if Lord Radas's army won, what justice could anyone hope for? The mey flowed past below, offering no reply.

He caught sight of a trio of eagles spiraling up very high, and another trio west of them, gliding low as if following prey on the ground. Soon after, he caught sight of a cohort of mounted soldiers riding down a path leveled on a berm that cut through fields. He identified the horsemen as Qin, no doubt the group that had come up from Sirniaka recently. They'd made exceptional time, and as he turned again and pulled out in front of them he found, at last, the rearguard of Anji's army.

Horns blew and drums beat as the rearguard caught sight of the Qin cohort coming up behind. Joss and Scar skimmed low over an impressive mob of unsaddled horses, the army riding in disciplined ranks in staggered companies. Most of the young local militia men had grown out their hair to pull back in topknots. So who was becoming whom, eh? Pil was one Qin soldier. Here were hundreds of young Hundred men trying their best to look like their Qin sergeants and captains.

He set down in a clearing a short walk from the road. In this isolation he examined Scar's feathers, his bloom, his beak, his talons. The old bird was getting a bit sharp-set, so Joss checked his harness and when he found no raw skin or wearing, he released him to hunt, watching to see if there was any hitch in the motion of his wings as they beat upward to find the wind. The raptor looked well enough; he was tough and in his own way as even-tempered a raptor as Joss had ever met. A hunt and a rest would settle him.

As Joss was wrapping up his own harness in its sling, a cadre of horsemen thundered into the clearing, a young Qin sergeant in the lead, his face vaguely familiar.

“Commander Joss?” He dismounted and trotted over. “I'm
Sergeant Jagi. I've a horse, if you'd like to ride with us back to Commander Anji's headquarters.”

“Jagi? Aren't you the one who married that girl Avisha?”

A brilliant smile flashed. A cursed man couldn't look any happier. “She ate my rice, that's right.” Then he laughed and blushed, as if he'd just that moment understood there was another meaning to the phrase. “We're expecting a third—”

“A third child? But you can't have had two already, in less than a year, surely.”

“We've the two older children, her young brother and sister. And a new one coming. We live out at Dast Welling. She's using her seed money to set up a business. She's very clever. Making healing drinks and such things to rub into sore wounds and—ah—” His knowledge of the finer points of Hundred lore failed him as he rushed headlong into his praise of his new wife. “She's very happy. Plenty to eat and a good house.”

“The blessings of the gods on you, truly.” Joss had to smile, because it was impossible not to respond to Jagi's joy. “I'll accept the mount, with thanks.”

An adequate gelding was led forward.

After they'd ridden for a ways through the trees, Jagi said, “You've ridden before.”

“Before I became a reeve, I rode messages as an apprentice to Ilu, the Herald.” Before Scar. Before Marit. It was difficult to bring that youth into his mind. “It feels like a different lifetime. In another land.”

And so it did, riding out of the open woodland to see the aftermath of a skirmish. The enemy cadre escorting wagons had been caught and killed to a man. Their archers hadn't protected them against a powerful ground attack. Now a sergeant was directing the accounting of the captured wagons and a trove of bows and arrows. Jagi's cadre rode past the corpses dragged off the path, young men hooting derisive comments about the equally young men whose bodies had been dumped. There was one corpse with a crooked nose, mouth caked with drying blood, and another with coarse black hair unraveled into a fan around his head. Joss had been young like that, once. Who was
to say he might not have been talked into riding with the Star of Life army, not knowing better? Feeling angry, rebellious, hopeless, or just dragged along by friends?

“Commander?” asked Jagi.

“Do you suppose they were all killed fighting?” Joss asked.

“We've orders to kill every enemy soldier.”

“What if they surrender?”

Jagi shrugged. “We can't guard prisoners. And we can't leave them behind our lines, can we?”

War was so simple, wasn't it? Much simpler than justice.

They reached an abandoned village on whose unsown fields the army was settling in for the night. In this hot dry weather, most men were simply resting with heads on a bedroll or stretched out on a thin blanket as a ground cloth, but an awning had been raised in the center of the camp.

Jagi took the horse and gestured toward the awning. “Commander Anji is there.”

“My thanks, Sergeant.”

The guards recognized him and made way. A pair of reeves were standing, giving a report, while Anji bent over a camp table with Chief Deze, Chief Esigu, and a hierophant with a shaven head whom Joss didn't recognize. With his whip, Anji was pointing to various places on the map as the reeves made their accounting. He looked up as Joss walked in under the pleasant shade.

“Commander Joss. We saw your eagle overhead a while ago. Sergeant Jagi found you.”

“He did, indeed. You've made exceptional time. I saw a cohort of Qin soldiers reach your rearguard.”

Anji was neatly clothed, his black tabard straight, no hair out of place, his topknot bound with gold ribbon. “Yes. What news?”

“We're in control of Toskala.”

The reeves gasped.

Anji nodded, as if it were the news he had been expecting all along. “Good. I'll get the details after I finish with these two.” He picked up a rolled scrap of paper lying next to the maps and pulled it open to reveal the writing sacred to the Lantern: it was
a message of some kind. “You'll be interested to know, Joss, that these two reeves killed messengers riding north from Skerru toward Toskala. Lord Radas sent a messenger north to Toskala ordering the garrison there to fall back to Nessumara to build up their forces. Naturally, he does not yet know that Toskala has fallen and its garrison is routed. Nor will he, if we keep intercepting his messengers.” He handed the paper to the hierophant. “He mentions sending word to this place called Wedrewe, demanding reinforcements for a renewed assault on Nessumara. He's stubborn, I'll give him that. What interests me most is that the message is addressed to a Lord Bevard. He asks him if he knows the whereabouts of Lord Yordenas, and tells Bevard to fly personally to Nessumara to aid Radas in the next phase of the campaign.”