looks of them, but it was hard to tell from so far away-harder still with four armies encamped about the ruins.
He dumped his load into the trench and moved back out to the line of shovelers. He saw Petronus approaching through a haze of rain.
“Whose were they?” he called out when he was close enough for Neb to hear him.
“I’m not sure,” Neb shouted back. “Marshers, I think.”
Petronus looked worried. He’d not been the same since the night the Marsh King arrived. For the rest of that night and all of the next day, the Marsh King had preached from the northern edge of camp, his magicked voice blasting out across the ruined city. He railed against the injustices the Androfrancines had delivered upon his people, he quoted long passages from obscure, apocryphal gospels that Neb had never heard of, and at some points over the course of his oratory, he even babbled in ecstatic utterances.
It was unsettling. Several of the diggers dropped their shovels and left. Even the Entrolusian sentries seemed shaken in the end. But when the other two armies arrived the long oration wound down, and the Marsh King’s voice no longer boomed across the blasted lands.
From there, the tension had built until now. Petronus stood by Neb, and together they watched the riders gallop south. They watched a group of riders break from the forests to the south, riding north.
Neb couldn’t look away. The horses met and passed each other amid the distant sound of shouting. Some of the horses rode on without riders as spears and swords found their marks, bringing men from both sides out of the saddle and into the black soup. He felt Petronus’s hand on his shoulder and he looked up. The old man was pointing to the northeast where more riders, these followed by a scattered cloud of foot soldiers, advanced south as well.
“The Marsh King is to war now,” Petronus said.
Neb watched as the two cavalries made another pass before breaking off. Then he watched as a group of soldiers and horsemen moved north to meet the next wave of Marshers. But these weren’t Entrolusians-more likely the Honor Guard of the Queen of Pylos. At least that’s where Neb thought their camp was. “He’s outnumbered- three armies to one.” He looked at Petronus. “Why would the Marsh King enter into this war? And why on the side of the Gypsy King?”
“I’m not sure, but he does. He has a long hatred of Windwir. Perhaps he thinks Rudolfo brought down the city as the so-called Pope has said.”
Neb had studied the Marshers a great deal in school. They had a history of skirmishing with Windwir and the outlying villages under Androfrancine protection. The Marshers had come to the Named Lands early as well, a ragged tribe made up of those the Madness had particularly tainted. They’d arrived not long after the first Rudolfo and they’d settled into the valleys along the banks of the Three Rivers. But after a generation or two proved that the Madness had not purged itself, they were gradually pushed back-under the auspices of the early Androfrancines-into the swamplands and marshes near the headwaters of the Central River.
Neb turned back to his wheelbarrow. “I should get back to work,” he said.
Petronus squeezed his shoulder. “I should, too.”
Neb finished out his shift and cleaned up in the bathing tent. The temperature had dropped considerably in the last few days. He scrubbed his robes while he danced around the lukewarm shower, rubbing the same rough bar of strong soap over them as he did himself. After drying and slipping into clean clothing, he went back out into the mud long enough to hang his wet clothes in the tent he shared with Petronus, then went to find dinner in the galley.
He sat alone, holding a metal cup of venison stew close to himself, eating it slowly and savoring the wild taste of the young deer cooked with turnips and potatoes, carrots and onions.
That voice had stayed with him. The scriptures and the ecstatic utterances raised the hairs on his arms even now.
And when he said them, he said them as if those words were the most important words ever spoken.
Neb finished his dinner and crawled back into his tent. Yesterday, Sethbert’s wagons had arrived with long wooden pallets and they’d laid them in the mud within their tents and along the causeways where they walked the most. There weren’t nearly enough of them, but it was a start.
Neb wrapped himself in his blankets and listened to the water running beneath his pallet.
In the distance, he heard the Marsh King’s voice start up again, too far away to hear clearly despite the magicks that enhanced it.
But Neb heard the laughter at the end of this night’s brief?_›
It haunted his dreams.
Petronus
“You must pull your people back,” Gregoric said, his voice sounding both weary and angry at the same time.
Petronus shook his head. “I’ll not. Not until this work is done.”
One of the other Gypsy Scouts had found him in the galley, pressing a scrap of paper into his hands-a call to the river. He’d dumped his stew back into the communal pot, grabbed a chunk of dark, sweet bread that was only partly stale, and made his way to the place where he’d first encountered the Captain of the Gypsy Scouts.
“Sooner or later, you’ll start losing men,” Gregoric said.
Petronus’s laugh was more of a bark. “It’s already happening. And with the rains coming on, there are fewer showing up to help.”
“I don’t mean just attrition,” the scout said. “You’re caught between four armies, old man. One of them is bound to fall on you.”
Petronus knew this was true. Today’s battle had been within sight and sound and he’d watched it drift closer and closer to where his men worked with their shovels and wheelbarrows. Talking to the Entrolusian lieutenant, he’d learned that the Marsh King had surprised them all. No one had expected him to ride down from the north and declare some strange kin-clave with Rudolfo. They’d waited and watched, but when he sent horse-bound skirmishers across the fallen city to attack Sethbert’s forward cavalry, the waiting and watching evaporated into warfare.
“Let them fall,” Petronus said. “We will do this work and trust the Gods to watch out for us.”
In the rain, Gregoric was easier to make out. A sheen of water along a shoulder, drops of rain rolling off him to splash lightly into the mud. “We’ve work of our own to do, by the bird.”
Petronus felt his eyebrows raise. “You have news?”
“Aye. A message from General Rudolfo at the Summer Papal Palace. We were to follow the armies on their way east and slow them as best we can. Every day is one closer to winter and we have the advantage in our home-woods. But the Marsh King’s arrival may be all the delay we need.”
Petronus nodded. “What else?”
Gregoric chuckled.?gor20; “Sethbert went into a rage this morning. There are rumors that his Androfrancine funding ran out. More rumors that there is a second Androfrancine Pope with a more direct line of succession than Resolute the First.”
Petronus hoped he was able to mask the surprise he felt. “Where is this second Pope?”
“We do not know for certain,” Gregoric said, “but if he’s making life hard for Sethbert, then he’s fine by me.”
Petronus nodded. “A second Pope would complicate matters.”
Gregoric’s voice took on a thoughtful quality that alarmed him. “Particularly if he announced himself. It could break the alliance against General Rudolfo and even up the odds.”
“We will get there with or without this second Pope,” Gregoric said. “It’s only a matter of who fights for whom. Word of the Desolation has spread across the Named Lands. Rumors continue to fly-some claim Rudolfo brought down the city, honoring some ancient kin-clave with Xhum Y’Zir. Others say Sethbert, though they offer no compelling reason why. A handful believe it is the beginning of some darker shadow that falls across us all. Fewer and fewer believe the Androfrancines brought this doom upon themselves.” Gregoric paused.
