They'd put the three of them (only now he had to think of them as the honored guests) in a tent; sat on the ground, with a guard outside. Nennius winced: time for diplomacy. 'It's all right,' he snapped at the guard, who made himself scarce. At least they hadn't been tied up. He shouldered through the tent flap and smiled.
'Have you had anything to eat?' he said.
All three of them looked at him as if he was mad. Then the older of the two men said, 'We want to see the officer in charge.'
Nennius broadened his smile. It felt uncomfortable on his face, like an ill-fitting boot galling his heel. 'That's me,' he said. 'Can I get you anything?'
'That man, the one we brought in-'
'Daurenja,' Nennius said. It seemed important to show that he knew the name.
'He's a murderer,' the man said. 'You've got to put him under arrest until we can get him before a court.'
On balance, Nennius would have preferred it if the man had punched him in the face. The dazed, wretched feeling would've been the same, and it'd have been over quickly. 'I'm sorry,' he heard himself say. 'I don't-'
'He murdered my son,' the man went on. 'He's admitted it, in front of a witness. Presumably you can deal with it yourself, if you're the commanding officer. I'm not quite sure about how the jurisdictions would work out, but in the circumstances-'
'I'm sorry.' An understatement. 'I can't do that. You see-'
The older man tried to jump up; the younger one grabbed his arm and yanked him back, not gently. 'Don't give me that,' the older man said. 'He's-'
'It's all right,' the younger one interrupted. Clearly the wrong thing to say.
'He killed my son and raped my daughter.' A loud, clear voice; probably they could hear him right across the camp, even in spite of the hammering. 'He's admitted it. I want him tried and hanged.'
'That's not possible.'
'Don't be ridiculous. Look, if you don't believe me-'
'It's true,' the other man said. The woman had her head turned away, fastidiously, as though ignoring a couple of drunks. 'My name's Miel Ducas. I heard him confess.'
Miel Ducas; wasn't he a guerrilla leader? Unimportant. Nennius couldn't spare any mental capacity for heroes of the Eremian resistance; he'd just thought of something. 'Daurenja's one of the Duke's engineers, he answers directly to Valens. I haven't got any authority.'
For a moment, the older man's anger seemed to hover in the air like a falcon; then it slumped into the most ferocious resentment Nennius could ever remember witnessing. 'Where is the Duke?' he asked quietly. 'We'll have to take Daurenja to him.'
Which meant the moment had passed. 'We'll be joining up with him,' Nennius said, 'as soon as this column is mobile again. We've had to stop to repair the carts.' He took a deep breath. 'I'll make sure Daurenja doesn't leave the column until we meet up with Valens' party. I'm afraid that's all I can do.'
'We understand.' Ducas, trying to keep the peace, the way well-meaning idiots do. 'Thank you. But it really is very important.' Now he's going to try and change the subject. 'Can you tell us what's going on here, please?'
Nennius explained as succinctly as he could manage while being silently hated to death by the other man; then he summoned a young ensign who had the misfortune to be too close, left him in charge of looking after the guests, and escaped. Outside, he stood for a moment and listened to the ringing of hammers. So simple; wrap a bit of iron round it; so obvious. Of course, it would never have occurred to the carpenters, and it definitely hadn't occurred to him, or anybody else for that matter. As for Daurenja being a rapist and a murderer; well, Nennius had no problem at all believing that. The appalling thing was, he really couldn't care less, so long as the carts got fixed. That, he decided, was why countries had to have dukes and kings and governments; someone who could pin a medal on a man like that for saving the column, and then string him up as a criminal.
In spite of the hammering from the night shift, he slept well, and an ensign had to shake him awake in the morning, to tell him that the work had been finished well ahead of schedule, and the carters were backing the horses into the shafts, ready to start. Meanwhile, the three guests who'd come in with the engineer had apparently found a notary and sworn out depositions about something or other. They'd insisted that he should have them as soon as he woke up, and since he'd given orders that they should have anything they wanted…
Well. He could read them later, at some point.
The column was under way by mid-morning. Nennius sent outriders on ahead to see if they could pick up Valens' trail, or find anybody who knew which way he'd gone. Catch us up had been all very well when he was convinced he'd never get the carts going again; now he had a whole new set of problems to fret over. Water; food; fodder for the horses; finding the right road; making up time; fending off Mezentine sorties. It's a rule of human life that when a soldier successfully deals with an apparently insuperable difficulty, he gets rewarded with something twice as bad. The new concerns kept him happily occupied for the rest of the morning, and at noon he halted the column to see how the repairs were holding up.
'Fine,' Daurenja announced, crawling out from under a cart. His back and sleeves were white with dust, but he made no effort to brush himself off. 'Don't look as though they've shifted at all. Provided we take it reasonably steady, we shouldn't have any bother.'
Not quite what he wanted to hear. 'When you say reasonably steady…'
Daurenja thought for a moment. 'Brisk walking pace,' he said. 'You don't want to go any faster than that on these roads, even if the carts were new from the workshop.' He pulled a face. 'I know you want to make up time and join up with the Duke, but we've got to be realistic. Leave it to the outriders to catch him up and tell him to wait for us. If you push the pace and bust up the carts, we'll never get there.' He looked away, and added: 'How are my friends getting along? I haven't seen them.'
'Fine,' Nennius replied awkwardly. 'I shifted some people around so they could have a wagon to themselves, and I've seen to it they've all got fresh clothes and plenty to eat.' He hesitated. Did Daurenja know about the sworn depositions? Probably. Since he'd mended the wagons, he had become the hero of the column, the man who'd saved the day. Whoever gave the order to place him under arrest wouldn't be popular with the troops. As for his accusers, they weren't even Vadani. Miel Ducas he'd heard of, vaguely; the other two-had he been told their names? If so, he'd forgotten them. He'd assumed they were telling the truth, mostly because of Daurenja's unfortunate appearance; he looked like someone who was capable of rape and murder, but that was sheer unfounded prejudice. For all Nennius knew, they were compulsive liars, delusional; Mezentine agents paid to discredit the miracle-working engineer. Anybody could swear an affidavit, but what about corroborative proof? (And would he be entertaining these high-minded doubts if Daurenja hadn't just saved the column?)
'That's fine,' Daurenja said. 'Thanks, I'm obliged to you.' He smiled reassuringly. 'I expect it all seems pretty odd to you, but I want you to trust me. I know who my friends are, even if they don't. It'll all smooth out, and everything'll be fine. There's nothing in it for you to worry about.'
Again; dismissed. Nennius nodded. After all, said the quiet voice of logic in his mind, if there really was anything in their wild claims, would Daurenja be acting like this toward them, when he could have them tied up and dumped by the roadside if he wanted to? Serves me right, Nennius decided, for judging by appearances. And as soon as we meet up with the Duke, it won't be my problem anymore.
The next day and night were delightfully uneventful: no problems with the carts, no dust-cloud behind them marking the approach of a Mezentine army, and the river shown on the map was exactly where it was supposed to be, so they could fill up with enough water to last them at least three days. Food and fodder for the horses weren't yet a matter of desperate urgency, so if they could only make contact with Valens' contingent in the next forty-eight hours…
Which they did.
The crows had found them, and begun the long, patient work of rendering them down into raw materials. They flew off angrily as the column came over the rise, reluctantly abandoning their quarry to the superior claims of a better class of scavenger.
A quick inspection showed that the crows hadn't been the only ones who'd come there to feed. The bodies had been stripped of their clothes, weapons, boots and possessions, then stacked up in neat piles like cordwood. At first glance, the ratio of Mezentines to Vadani seemed to be something in the order of three to one. The stacks lined the road verge at intervals of roughly fifteen yards, up to the brow of the next rise and presumably over it.
