Traitors' Gate (32 page)

“I'll assign them, Captain,” said Giyara, as he'd known she would.

“Captain!” Subcaptain Orli's runner came panting up, face streaked with mud. “There's trouble on the first bridge. Burning arrows, Captain.”

“Get back to Subcaptain Orli. I want everyone over and the main central planks pulled out. We must control access to the bridge, stop their reinforcements from marching up over the causeway.”

“They can still land boats, Captain—”

“One thing at a time! Get those men over and close down that bridge.”

His soldiers fell to their tasks with the discipline he'd drilled into them, but as he scanned the shape of the island—too big a slab of ground to encompass easily but not so large that it offered a range of environment—remnants of First Cohort came fleeing down the road with shields slamming on their backs in rhythm to their pounding steps. Their faces were tight with bewilderment and unthinking fear.

He grabbed a company banner ripped by arrow shot and placed himself in the center of the road with the pole held horizontal to block their headlong flight.

“Halt, you gods-rotted cowards!”

He'd trained all his youth with an ordinand's staff; of all weapons, a strong staff still felt most comfortable in his hands. He lashed out now, thumping the men in the front with a flurry of blows that knocked them back or sent them to their knees.

“Halt!”

The second rank slowed, men responding to his voice in the shaken manner of people coming awake abruptly. The soldiers behind them had to stutter step to avoid smashing into those before them, and this shift altered the entire momentum of their collapse.

“Get in your cadres! Form up!”

Folk who feel helpless desire order just as the starving desire food, or the falling man grasps at any object that will stop his fall.

“You!” He grabbed a soldier who was moving too slowly and backhanded him. Others skipped into ranks, startled by the blow.

The young man he had hit reeled sideways, then caught himself and snapped upright. “Captain?” he squeaked.

“Where's your sergeant?” Arras roared

Men looked around, seeking sergeants. “Captain! I don't know, Captain!”

“Move your group off the road. Stay in formation!” The mass began to seethe as the press behind them thickened. “You
there!” He pointed at another man. “Where's your sergeant? Eiya! Move your group off the road, to the other side. Stay in formation!” He whistled, and one of his runners jumped up beside him. “I need Subcaptain Piri and his company.”

By the time Piri arrived, Arras had two cadres sorted out.

“Captain!”

“Piri, take your company to the forward bridge. Make sure it's blocked, then hold the perimeter. I'm sending these two cadres with you.”

“Captain?”

“If we're stuck on this island, we'll claim all the ground and place our perimeter on the shoreline. Dig in.”

“Captain!”

As Piri and his company pushed through First Cohort's retreat, Arras cracked the whip of discipline over the fleeing men, separating out more cadres, sending them with runners to reinforce: this cadre to Orli at the eastern bridge; three cadres to Giyara to break up wagons, but not boats, so his own troops could be released to set a shoreline perimeter. With the remains of First Cohort, he might have enough to hold the island.

Yet every time he looked skyward, those cursed eagles circled, spying out his every move. A sweating runner sprinted into view.

“Subcaptain Piri's compliments, Captain. The bridge approach is secure. Any intact planks on our side are pulled back for later use if we choose to push forward. We'll need more planks. We've set up a strong archery screen so they can't completely dismantle the railings on the far side. First Cohort's forward companies on the far side look pretty well slaughtered. There are bodies in the channel, but they're getting swept downstream by the current into the swamp. Orders, Captain?”

Arras looked him over, a stocky young man with a fresh cut on his chin. “You're one of the new recruits. Laukas, isn't it?”

“Yes, Captain.” The young man didn't smile as some new recruits did, when the captain honored them by recalling their names. He wasn't a friendly sort like Navi. “Orders, Captain?”

“Escort this sorry-looking cadre to Piri. Have him split
them out among his own company. I want a secure perimeter. I'll be up soon to get a look.”

“Yes, Captain.” No nonsense there. He ran back to the front.

Arras beckoned to the lone sergeant wearing First Cohort's spear-and-star tabard. “What's your name, Sergeant?”

The man looked gray about the eyes, as ashamed as he should be. “I'm called Eddo, Captain.”

“Take your cadre and secure every boat you can find on this cursed island. We'll need them all, half placed at each bridge. Then break down the planks in those warehouses. In case we need to build a floating bridge.”

The man stared at him, not responding.

For a moment Arras thought he was addled, or an imbecile. “Sergeant Eddo?”

There's a look men get when they have lost hope and then, unexpectedly, find a spark they can feed with the kindling of resolve. “Yes, Captain!” He briskly took charge of his men.

Arras rubbed his throat, and then his forehead. When had he gotten so sweaty? His hand came away smeared and dirty, as though his face had been rubbed in the earth by a bully, and he realized he was grinning.

Two First Cohort cadres—both lacking a full complement—waited alongside the road, watching him as if he were insane, or gods-touched. Waiting for orders. How many cursed companies did he now command? He'd not had time to count. He whistled over a runner and sent the lass to scout out Giyara, with an order to make an accounting and assign out the new cadres into the commands of his three subcaptains.

“Neh, neh,” he said, calling the lass back. “Tell Sergeant Giyara to attach as many cadres as she needs to her own staff, specifically for laboring. Got it?”

“Yes, Captain.” Off she ran, braided black hair tailing out from her boiled leather helmet.

He examined the two cadres left to him, one at half strength and looking completely demoralized and both missing their commanding sergeant, as if the enemy had specifically targeted sergeants as a way to break down and panic units. A
smart tactic, if it wasn't just by chance. He pulled the man standing straightest out of the larger cadre. “Your name?”

“Fossad, Captain.”

“You're acting sergeant now, promotion to be reviewed according to performance. Your task is to find shovels, anything you can use, and start digging. We'll be throwing up earth ramparts all around this island.”

“Yes, Captain!”

He turned to the final group, the sorriest-looking ragtag bunch he'd seen, scratched, limping, streaked with smoke, many with faces and arms reddened from burns.

“You lot were on the bridge?”

After a moment, the oldest among them spoke up. “Yes, Captain.”

“Get your wounded under cover in one of those warehouses. As for the rest of you, we'll need a steady source of water. You make a survey of the island, you dig within the gardens if you have to, or you collect buckets and start hauling to fill cisterns. You're in charge, Sergeant—”

“I'm not the sergeant—”

“You are now. Your name?”

“Segri, Captain.”

“Sergeant Segri, you're in charge, under my personal command. Get moving!”

That was the last of them. Without looking, he could hear and sense the focused activity of his troops around him, and he thought too that he felt a stammer of hesitation among the enemy. They'd launched their attack, but he had responded, fenced off his own people as well as he could. They must decide how to answer. He called in his personal staff and trotted west to the forward bridge. The causeway, in a sense, cut straight across the island; the bridge lay at the same elevation, no ramp leading up, merely a continuation of the roadway.

Subcaptain Piri met him with runners in tow and they surveyed the rushing channel, the stalwart reeds that could conceal an enemy, more flat islands beyond. The militiamen who milled about on the far shore shook spears and swords in their direction; they paced among the fallen, dragging their wounded and
dead free and stabbing any wearing the tabards of First Cohort's companies. Like the other cohorts, First had brought along a number of Toskalan hostages, but he had no idea what had happened to them; he'd marked none among the survivors who had reached him.

Above, the sun had passed the zenith and begun its steady descent. Eagles sailed, sharp-eyed reeves dangling beneath in their clever harnesses, waving flags to send messages each to the others and to their allies on the ground.

“Hard to win a war when they've got the eyes,” he remarked to Piri as the two runners listened. “Good thing the reeve halls are split as they are, no one liking to take orders from the next.”

“Lord Commander Radas had the reeve commander executed in Toskala. That's cut off their head.”

“If only we could kill the rest of the cursed reeves. Or unite them to work for us. I wonder who in Nessumara betrayed our plan.”

Piri laughed scornfully. He was an older man, his face pitted with scars and his back scored with the marks of many whips long since healed. He'd been one of the first soldiers assigned to Arras's first command, a man with a reputation, nothing good, but he'd been steady and true for the last eight years. Tough as stone, steady as an Ox, which he was. “I can't cry for those willing to betray their own when they're betrayed in their turn, Captain. It just leaves us in a worse situation than we expected.”

“I did not want to be ambushed today,” said Arras with a laugh that made those around him chuckle nervously, attempting bravado. All but that young man, Laukas, who just watched, thin-lipped and serious. “But here we are. First Cohort is a loss. We'll absorb their cadres into our own companies. It's strange, though. They lost cohesion so thoroughly.”

“They were hit hard and fast.” Piri shaded a hand to survey the militia gathered across the rushing channel, their hurried councils as they tried to decide what to do next. “The militia killed a cursed lot of the sergeants. There's not one captain
left standing, like they were targeted specifically. Maybe you and I should tear off these horsetails, Captain.”

“Neh, we're made of stronger stuff. The thing that concerns me is we've got no means to communicate with the other cohorts. Listen, Piri. Blood Cloak—Lord Yordenas—was marching in the front with First Cohort, wasn't he? Leading the advance?”

“I saw him.”

“Yet no sign of him now. Do you think—” The idea did not bear voicing aloud, but the situation required it. “Do you think they
killed
him?”

“The cloaks can't die, Captain.”

But if he'd been in the lead, and he wasn't dead, then was he taken prisoner? Impossible. Had he fled? Abandoned them? Arras shook his head.

“Captain?” asked Piri.

“Neh, it's nothing.”

“What do we do now, Captain?”

Arras surveyed the island, the sky and its spying reeves, the rushing water that would, he hoped, make boat travel on the channels more difficult for the defenders. They had too much daylight left, with reeves watching their every action. Later, night would cover the movements of their enemy, who knew the channels and mires as he and his people did not.

“We dig in.”

Across the way, a man approached the channel's bank waving a strip of cloth, an offer to parley.

Arras grinned. “I know what they're going to say. If we retreat in order along the causeway all peaceable like, they won't let our sleeves get dirty.”

“Cursed liars.” Piri snorted.

“My thought, too.” He whistled for a runner. “No, not you, Laukas. I've got a more difficult job for you, if you'll take it.”

The young soldier did not flinch or even look excited. “I will, Captain.”

“You. Lati, isn't it? Get back to the gardens. Send Navi up to me. Also, I need a pair of sergeant's badges. Any will do. I
want all the Toskalan hostages bound and confined in one of the warehouses. Find me among the hostages the woman who calls herself Zubaidit, and bring her here. If she won't be of use to me one way, then she can be in another.”

“What do you mean to do, Captain?” asked Piri.

“I'll give her sergeant's badges so if they kill her, we won't have lost one of our own. She can do the parley knowing the safety of the hostages depends on her coming back. And Navi and Laukas can keep an eye on her, while getting a chance to prove themselves. What do you think of that, Laukas? Willing to take the chance, going over to walk among the enemy?”

His expression did not change. He nodded obediently, like a good soldier ought. “Yes, Captain.”

•  •  •

H
AVING SLEPT PAST
midday after several interruptions to nurse, Mai felt better. She nursed the baby, rose and washed, and ate crunchy stalks of pipe-stem slip-fried with steamed fish.

“Sheyshi, you'll watch the baby. Come and fetch me if he cries. Priya and I will be in the counting room.”

A fair amount of rebuilding and fortification had taken place in the compound in the months she had been gone. The main house's entrance porch had a newly reinforced gate leading into the entrance courtyard; she heard horses, wagons, voices raised as the Qin guardsmen went about their morning duties on the other side of the high wall. The door to the counting room was on the left, and while before it had simply slid open and closed like all the other doors in this part of the world, now those doors had been replaced by a locked and barred door that opened on hinges like a gate. One of the soldiers standing guard lifted away the bars so Mai and Priya could cross into the office. As the door was opened, Mai heard O'eki scolding a young clerk.