Return of the Crimson Guard

Tonley, share barbs and boasts with the Seti while swilling enormous quantities of whatever alcohol his men had most recently ‘liberated’. Most often beer, though the occasional cask of distilled spirits appeared, and even skins of mead. Visiting the command tent meant, well, getting even closer to Commander Ullen. Something she found frighteningly easy to do.

What would the Marquis think? Or Choss? Would they approve? Ghelel pulled her gloves tighter against the chill night air, glanced to the east where the land fell away into the Idryn's flat, rich floodplain. Somewhere there just days away marched a ragged horde of pirate raiders. Idly, she wondered why Ullen didn't simply uproot his rearguard battalion together with the Falaran lancers, the Seti scouts and the Marshland cavalry and wipe the brigands from the face of the continent. Well, damn them anyway; they maintained she was the heir of the Talian Hegemony, the Tali of Quon Tali. Therefore she outranked the Marquis and Choss wasn't here. She headed to the command tent.

Reaching a main alley in the encampment, she saw ahead the torches and the posted guards, Malazan regulars of the Falaran brigades, and she slowed. If the League should win the coming confrontation and she were installed as the Tali of Quon Tali… how would her behaviour here now come to reflect upon her in the eyes of these regulars everywhere? The thought of their mockery burned upon her face.

The eyes of those guards had her now, glittering in the dark beneath their helmets, and she forced herself to keep moving. Well, damn them too; right now she was nothing more than a lowly cavalry captain, a Prevost. Lowly, and lonely.

As she approached, the guards inclined their heads in acknowledgement and one pushed aside the flap. Ghelel gave as courteous a response as she dared and ducked within. It was warm inside. The golden light of lanterns lit a cluttered table, a scattering of chairs and a low table littered with fruit, meats and carafes of wine. Commander Ullen straightened from pouring wine at the table and bowed. The Marquis Jhardin straightened and bowed as well, though more slowly and perfunctorily — a mere observance of aristocratic courtesy. For her part, Ghelel saluted two superior officers.

Ullen waved the salute aside. ‘Please, Alil. How many times must I ask?’

‘Every time, sir.’ Ghelel drew off her gloves and cloak, draped them over a chair.

‘We were just talking of this pirate army,’ the Marquis said, easing himself back down. ‘They say that at Unta they must have tried to rob the Imperial Arsenal. Blew up half the city and themselves for their trouble.’

‘There's enough of them left,’ Ullen growled into his cup, and sat, stretching out his legs. Ghelel liked the way he did that; and liked the way he watched her from the corner of his pale-blue eyes, almost shyly. She sat at the table, picked up a carafe. ‘I quite understand why we aren't swatting them. I mean, since they number so many…’

A smile from Ullen. One that held no mockery at all, only a bright amusement shared by his eyes. ‘How gigantic have they become now?’

‘I overheard one trooper swear them to be at least thirty thousand.’

The Marquis whistled. ‘Prodigious multiplying indeed. Forget them, Alil. They're just a mob of looters. We don't care about the vultures. We've come for a lioness.’

But Ullen frowned, the lines of care around his mouth deepening. Ghelel caught his eye, arched a questioning brow. ‘We aren't ignoring them, Alil. I have Seti scouts watching from a distance. There have been some rather disturbing, admittedly contrary, rumours about them. But they are — how shall I put it? Difficult to credit. And our mage with Urko, Bala, has sent the message that she is troubled. She suspects powerful mages shielding themselves from her questings.’

‘There must be one or two forceful personalities keeping the horde together,’ the Marquis opined. ‘We'll spot them and eliminate them and the mob will evaporate. They should not have come inland — they are obviously overconfident.’

‘Was Kellanved overconfident?’ Ullen mused aloud, eyeing his glass, ‘when he marched inland with his pirate raiders from Malaz? And Heng was one of his first conquests.’

Neither the Marquis nor Ghelel spoke for a time. The Marquis inclined his head to concede the point. ‘I suppose you could say he was the exception that proves the rule.’

Ghelel studied her wine glass. ‘Speaking of the Throne… why don't we go to meet her? Excuse me for asking, but as new to the command — could we not stop her in the narrow plains west of Cawn?’

Another smile from Ullen. ‘True.’ He stretched, ran both hands through his short blond hair. ‘But then she would simply withdraw to Cawn and wait for us. That we cannot have. As an advocate would say, the burden of proof lies with us. We have to beat her; she merely has to stand back and wait for our support to erode.’

For all Ghelel knew Ullen was patronizing her just as Choss and Amaron had, only his manners were smoother. But there was nothing in it that felt that way to her; they were merely talking through the options together and he was giving the benefit of his greater experience. She wondered again just how much the man knew of her, how much Urko or the Marquis had told him. It could mean a great deal to know that. ‘Why should our support be eroding — not hers?’

‘Because if we can't take Heng, how can we take anything?’

Ghelel pursed her lips at the truth of that sobering evaluation. Indeed. Why should any of the League's supporters stay with them if they should fail here? They would face wholesale desertions. A return to independent kingdoms with the old war of all against all not far behind. Continent-wide strife, the inevitable dissolution into chaos with starvation, brutality and petty warlordism. Something Ghelel would do anything to avoid.

The Marquis drained his glass and stood. ‘If the Empress commits to the field then Heng can hang itself.’ He saluted Ullen: ‘Commander.’ Bowed to Ghelel: ‘Prevost. I will leave you two to sort out the rest of the problems facing our army and will expect appropriate orders tomorrow. Good night.’

Laughing, Ullen waved the Marquis out. When the heavy canvas flap closed Ghelel faced Ullen alone. For a time neither spoke. Ghelel poured herself another glass of wine. ‘Did the Marquis tell you I am new to his command?’

Ullen nodded. ‘Yes… Your family goes back quite far in Tali?’

Ghelel felt her face reddening and damned the reaction. To cover it, she shrugged. ‘Rich in ancestry, poor in cash. Yourself?’

An edge of his mouth crooked up. ‘Like you. Rich in experience, poor in cash. I have served in the military all my life.’

‘Then you have been overseas? Genabackis? Seven Cities?’

He shook his head. ‘No.’ A mischievous smile. ‘Unless Falar counts?’

She answered his smile. ‘Oh, I suppose we could allow that — just for this one night.’

Ullen raised his glass. ‘My thanks. Now I possess a more soldierly exotic flair.’

But Ghelel was troubled. The man looked to be in his late forties, yet had never served overseas. Where had he been all these years?

Had he seen only garrison duty for the last twenty years? Yet Urko seemed to have every confidence in him; could he be nothing more than a competent manager, more clerk than soldier?

A knock at the front post. ‘Yes?’ Ullen called.

A guard edged aside the thick canvas. ‘Seti scout here, sir, with word from the raiders.’

Sighing, Ullen pushed himself to his feet, crossed to the work table. ‘Send him in, sergeant.’

A slight wisp of a figure slipped through the opening and Ghelel stared. A child! What had they come to, sending children into the field? The girl-child's deerskin trousers were torn and muddied, her moccasins worn through. A sleeveless leather jerkin was all else she wore despite the bitter cold night. Her long hair hung in a tangle of sweat, knots and lengths of leather and beads, and a sheathed long-knife hung from a rope tied round one shoulder. Despite her bedraggled and hard-travelled appearance the girl-child surveyed the contents of the tent with the scorn of a princess.

‘Ullar yesh ‘ap?’ she addressed Ullen in obvious disapproval.

‘Aya,’ he replied easily in Seti. ‘Tahian heshar?’

‘Nyeh.’

Ullen looked to Ghelel. ‘Excuse us, please.’ To the girl-child, ‘Bergar, sho.’

The child launched into a long report in Seti. When she gestured Ghelel was wrenched to see that her fingertips were blue with cold, as were her lips. Gods! This child was half-frozen with exposure from riding through