Traitors' Gate (106 page)

“Krokes and snakes, too, I suppose,” joked Joss. “Best to be cautious.”

They chuckled. Krokes and snakes fled fire; they'd have departed for cooler waters. Still, they tested their ground and eyed eddying waters, just in case; he followed in their wake, careful to step exactly where they had also set their feet. They waited for him to catch up, then forged forward again. Forgi might warble like a bird; Ussoken might point, and Forgi would confirm with a nod, but whatever they acknowledged remained invisible to Joss. Once he glimpsed a ripple in a dark channel of water, but since the scouts ignored it, he assumed it was not dangerous.

Soon, they fell silent, and he asked no more questions. Every seed and dry leaf he brushed against adhered to his skin; although they came across no open swaths of fire, soot ran in streaks on his bare arms and powdered his leathers. A tiny five-pointed leaf fledged with hairlike spines stuck to his hands, and when he tried to wipe it away it left an inflamed patch of red. Forgi and Ussoken showed no sign of discomfort, although they too were smeared with ash.

Sloughs of water turned to isolated pools. Pine trees rose on dry islets. They were coming to the mainland. Abruptly, Joss realized he'd lost sight of Ussoken. A birdcall trilled within the trees. Forgi gestured for Joss to stand still. A muddy pool densely grown with reeds opened to one side, leaves from drooping branches skimming the surface of the water. Forgi moved sideways and, with a wicked big knife in hand, adjusted his body until it seemed he was part of the forest, almost fading before Joss's eyes.

The heavy foliage drowned distant sounds. They might have been alone in all the wide world.

Forgi let out a screech as he sprang toward the muddy shore of the pool. A figure Joss had not perceived rose out of the reeds, lifting a bow, but before the arrow could be launched Ussoken reared up behind the man. He grabbed the enemy scout's hair and yanked his head back, slit his throat so deep the head folded backward as the body convulsed. Ussoken shoved the body away and got out of the pool as it thrashed, a sure signal to wandering krokes. They moved on quickly, passing another freshly slain body, killed in a similar fashion. Flies swarmed on the open gash, their hum deafening. Eihi!

Yet Joss had seen worse things as a reeve. He knew what violence folk were capable of.

The ground began to rise and the foliage thinned, but now there were more thorns and entire thickets of those nasty five-pointed leaves. On the wind shuddered a drumbeat, a repetitive rhythm: five quick taps, three slow, five quick taps, two slow and a pause. Joss was glad to get the swamp out from under his feet but the scouts grew anxious, dropping to their bellies
to crawl up a slope. Joss bellied up after them, arms red and scratched, although his leathers protected the rest of him.

“Whsst!” Forgi dragged Joss under cover of branches swollen with a profusion of yellow bells. The ground gave way, and Joss rolled onto his back, staring up through leaves and flowers. Sunlight flashed overhead, but wasn't it still morning?

Aui! A cloak circled over the camp as if he'd just come from scouting. His cloak glittered with the strength of the sun's fierce golden blaze. Forgi tapped his arm, but Joss kept staring, trying to follow the Guardian's path. How had this Guardian crossed into the shadows? What choice had he made? Must it happen in time to every Guardian?

Yet the Lady of Beasts had only said that one among the Guardians would betray her comrades. If Marit's story was true, Atiratu's prophecy had already come to pass, and an outlander
would
save them.

The drums beat, accelerating their punch, as Anji marched his army closer to battle. An answering clamor of drums rose like a challenge.

A man coughed. “Hsst! There he is!”

A spear jostled the branches. The hells! While he'd been lying here dreaming, a cadre of enemy scouts had rolled up and over the crest. Forgi was gone.

Joss spun sideways under the thicket and sprang up on the far side. Thorns ripped at him as he forced a way through brambles, leading with his baton. An arrow thwacked into stout vines. Others passed over his head as he bolted for the swamp.

“Got him!” A figure bowled into him, throwing them both to the ground.

Joss rolled up first, planting the length of the baton along the side of the man's head. He scrambled back as he shoved his baton into its leash and drew his short sword. The cursed enemy had gotten between him and the tangle of the swamp forest. He backed up the slope toward the crest. They were driving him into their encampment.

“Capture the reeve alive!” a man called, although Joss could not see him. “Lord Radas wants all reeves brought to him.”

That gave him one advantage, then. He leaped to the left, stabbing, and the soldier he probed at stumbled aside, caught himself on his spear, and lunged. Joss skipped back, to stand backed up to the thorny bramble. A man was cutting through the vines. Upslope, men advanced. Aui! Eight—neh—nine men. A burly man wearing a sergeant's badge stepped into view.

“No use fighting us. That'll only get you killt. Come along with us, and you'll not be harmed.”

Joss laughed. “Can you truly say so and expect me to believe it? Lord Radas's army has been killing reeves for twenty years, as I have reason to know. Even if you take me to him alive, so he can interrogate me, how can you expect me to believe he'll allow me to live afterward?”

The sergeant shrugged. “Agree to serve him, and he might let you live.”

“We could use some cursed reeve scouts,” shouted the man who'd knocked him over, wiping blood from his nose. “It's like we're cursed blind!”

“Enough!” The sergeant cut off a murmur of agreement with his roar. He raised his sword. “Surrender. Or we'll kill you now. It's really that easy a choice.”

“It's never that easy a choice, ver. I've been a reeve for a long time. Folk may say things are simple, but they rarely are. Let me assure you of that. Better you let me go, or better yet, follow me into the swamp and save your own lives before this battle finds you all dead.”

“This battle?”

They laughed heartily.

The sergeant nodded magnanimously at him. He was a reasonable man, his nod suggested, and reasonable men listened to each other. “You lot from Nessumara are on your last legs. The lord commander says so. You may have won a respite with your fires, but you've got thin forces on the ground. We've scouts who've told us you've got a cohort riding up the causeway, but when your militia hits our shields, they'll be crushed. And we've got two cohorts marching up from Saltow to join us, and another come in yesterday from over the river. It'll be
all over for you lot in another day. We'll rule the north. So decide if you want to be among the winners or the losers. Tell you what, friend. I'll meet you in a fair fight, no weapons. I toss you, you come quietly. You toss me, you come quietly.”

The men laughed.

Joss had a hells lot of experience as a reeve dragging out a tense confrontation until help arrived. You never knew when an extra mouthful of time might mean the difference between success and failure.

“I'll gladly spar with a big man like you, someone up to my weight. But I have to warn you, if I win, I'll have to arrest you all.”

They were laughing, relaxing, because he seemed relaxed. Because he knew how to joke; he had the power of a glib tongue and a charming smile that worked equally well on men as on women. He unbuckled his gear, set his knife down next to his baton, and waited, hands at his sides, as the sergeant handed his weapons to a soldier. The big man approached, hands raised, bobbing a little, ready to take a punch.

Joss danced back, pretending to throw a punch or two, keeping his distance as the soldiers jeered and called him names. Dared him to close in. But he waited. And waited. For the flicker of the eyes, the moment when the other man's attention wavered. He ducked in and shifted sideways, got the man's beefy arm around and then up behind him, fingers back until the pain drove the big man to his knees with a shriek of surprised pain. He jammed his knee into his back and shoved him forward into the ground as the soldiers hesitated. They knew the law of fighting. There were a lot of awful things a man might do, but to violate that law seemed extreme. The sergeant slapped a hand on the dirt twice.

Joss had him. Now what in the hells was he going to do, with eight men brandishing spears and swords ready to stick him from all sides?

A vast shadow of wings rippled over the ground.

Joss laughed.

“And you lot can all go to the hells!” He flung himself sideways toward his discarded gear.

Scar struck. His talons pierced one man, and he knocked another aside with his cruel beak, then shook the first man free and onto the head of a third man. Joss freed his sword, whipped around, and lunged for the sergeant. The man thrust up his spear to catch the blow. Joss cut inside the sergeant's reach and stuck him through the abdomen, jerked his sword out, and spun to knock aside an attack from behind. Scar came down hard on a man who had panicked and started running. An archer fumbled with his bow as wounded men screamed.

The hells. Joss shifted his sword into his other hand, drew his knife, and in one smooth motion threw it; the blade flashed, then buried itself hilt-deep into the archer's belly. Scar fluffed his feathers and with uncanny speed pounced on the last soldier, who had been backing toward the safety of the thorns.

No time to ponder the vagaries of life. Joss sheathed his sword and clipped on his harness with the speed reeves trained for. Scar had turned his attention to the men who were thrashing, flexing his talons in the flesh of one and then another until they ceased crying out. The archer fell down and lay still, eyes open with terror, trying to play dead.

Joss brought his bone whistle to his lips and blew. “Scar,” he said.

The bloody eagle swung his huge head to regard him. The raptor could rip his head off without effort, and yet Joss could never fear him. He trusted this bird. With his life.

Men shouted; they'd been spotted. Drums raced away over the trees. Joss hooked in to Scar's harness and tugged on the jess.

Up!

Arrows arced harmlessly as the land dropped away. The swamp passed under his feet. What a cursed mercy it was not to have to slog through that again. A reeve became used to flight. He jessed, and Scar swung wide and winged back over the enemy encampment.

A massive spur of ancient rock—Kroke's Ridge—split the river into two major channels, which then splintered into the vast web of the delta. The western channel, flowing against a western ridge, received the brunt of the current. The eastern
channel, over the years, had been engineered into a net of channels, here bridged by two stone bridges and a series of ferries.

In the eastern lee of the ridge, on high ground bordered by the ridge on one side and the eastern channel—which would soon split into the hundred channels of the delta—stood the town of Skerru. Below the town lay the open staging ground, built up over generations, where the causeway emerged from the swamplands. It was a wide area where boats, barges, wagons brought over on the ferry, and pack-animal traffic could pay the delta toll and get permission to enter the causeway and move their goods down to Nessumara. It was easy to get across the river to Skerru, but Skerru controlled access to Nessumara just as Saltow, in the east, was gatekeeper of the eastern causeway. Rich clans lived here, and here on the open ground Lord Radas had settled his encampment, fortified by ditches and berms. Two cohorts were spread along the fortifications to defend against soldiers dropped behind the lines. After all, that's what Anji had done before.

Because the causeway was the only entrance to Nessumara, Radas had concentrated his best infantrymen there. An entire cohort braced in ranks, shields wrapped with dampened canvas against fire and oil. They were ready to hold, or to march; a second cohort backed them up. No Hundred militia could hope to penetrate this sturdy wall.

Qin cavalry, more than five hundred strong in even ranks, pounded down the causeway to the accompaniment of drums. Cantering, they transitioned in breathtaking unison into a gallop, an earth-thundering full-out run. Black wolves might bear down so upon their helpless prey. No soldier in the Hundred had ever faced anything like this.

They hit like a blacksmith's hammer.

The shields didn't hold, or waver, or even collapse. They simply disintegrated, like a fence of sticks stuck upright in the sand when a storm surge pours over them. A man stood upright in an eddy as horsemen cleared his fallen foes; untouched, he simply stood as one stunned, and then raised his sword too late as a passing rider cut him down.

They drove through the shields, a breaking wave. Through
this narrow passage a second cohort galloped four abreast like a strong current cutting through weak soil. Ahead, the Qin cohort split like the delta channels into smaller cadres to make room for the soldiers coming up behind. They swung wide to hit the enemy's two forward cohorts from the flanks. Steel flashed. A horse went down, its rider tumbling to earth and yet somehow coming out on his feet, slashing as he rose. Shields pulled together, trying to hold. Out in the encampment, horns blew frantically, signaling a retreat, as the cadres who had been deployed for an attack from behind used ditches and berms to create barriers between them and the incoming horsemen. Out of the north, not yet visible to the people on the ground, flights of eagles were coming in, weighted with passengers to drop for a rear attack.

Joss tugged on the jesses, and Scar found an updraft skirling off Kroke's Ridge. He rose higher and higher yet, until the land seemed like child's vat of clay and all the people moving below toys whose lives and deaths fell away into insignificance compared with the sun's fierce eye and the sky's immense indifference. Clots of smoke still rose out of the delta. The fires set by the defenders had given Anji time to reach Nessumara, but how easily the measure might have turned back upon the defenders or burned all the way into the hundred isles of Nessumara!