hair up in topknots, like the Qin, while others had bound their long hair in horsetails that swagged down their backs. She admired their squared shoulders. Jagi, at the back, had so easy a seat on his horse that he and it might as well have been one creature.
A formation consisting only of Qin riders swept past. Jagi peeled off from his own group and raced with his comrades through an about-face back toward the starting line with a precision and speed that made her heart pound. No wonder they had defeated a much larger army!
'Vish!' Jerad trotted up, his face smeared and his clothes dirty. He wore a big grin of pure happiness as he watched the troop ride off. 'Did you see that, eh? I'm going to be a soldier in the captain's army. Jagi is teaching me to ride. I'm going to become a black wolf, just like them.'
42
'Why should you get to keep that girl for yourself, not sharing her?' The soldier confronting the sergeant squinted, holding an axe in one hand. 'Who set you over us as if you was lord?'
Shai watched sidelong as he scoured out the pot that had been used to cook rice. The conflict had been taking shape over several days of marching, and now, having stopped for the night in yet another isolated, abandoned, burned village, the malcontents within the cadre of thirty-six had decided to confront their leader.
'I was named captain when the cloak left us,' snarled the sergeant. 'You going to argue with the lord?'
The man with the axe sneered. 'You think that pervert cares
about us? You ever think maybe we were led into a trap? I've been thinking the lords sent us west to test Olossi's strength, not caring what became of us. Like scarpers sent into a hole to see if an adder will bite. What do we owe them? Why go back at all, eh? Plenty of fields here. We've got slaves to do the work.'
Shai sat on a charred beam out in front of a shed where most of the younger children, chores complete, already rested on such pallets as they could scrape together from grass or straw. They were always scratching, bodies speckled with bites and discolored with sores and bruises and welts. His foot itched. He leaned down and felt along the arch until he identified the bump where he'd been bitten. Aiye! He hurt everywhere, but he must never let it show.
Twenty-six men had congregated around the sergeant, so there were nine men not present. He identified four in visible watch positions where two paths entered the wide clearing. Two more would be in the woods on a ranging watch. Where were the other three? Yet he could not possibly lead twenty-four frail children and adolescents into the woods; even with a head start, they would be caught.
'Farming is hard work,' said the sergeant as his allies muttered agreement. 'I didn't sign up to farm.'
'You say that because you get a good lie-down every night, when there aren't enough to go around who are old enough, eh? Or are you like the cloak, eh? The younger, the better?'
'You gods-rotted, pus-filled shit!' The sergeant flicked up a hand, and Twist and another pair of soldiers threw the challenger to the ground. Their bodies blocked Shai's view of the beating, but two girls who were carrying buckets on a pole down the lane faltered and dropped the pole, so frightened were they at the sight. Solid thumps changed tone to a meatier, more liquid sound; they were bashing in the man's head.
There is a way men have of breathing hard when their blood is up that Shai had come to recognize in these soldiers, a spillover that the Qin soldiers had, evidently, learned to rein in. Twist lurched out of the gathering, glaring around, hands clenched. Men moved back from him as he spotted the cowering girls. Shai leaped up and trot-led forward.
'Here, now!' he called out. 'I'm thirsty! Where's my water?' He
affected the lopsided gait that made the men laugh at him, but no one was laughing.
'Take the body away,' snarled the sergeant. 'If any of you have further complaints, let me know.'
Twist grabbed Shai. 'You're not what you pretend to be, that's what I think, cursed outlander.' He spat in Shai's face.
The spittle landed beneath an eye, and he flinched, sparking with hatred as he forced a stupid grin. 'Heya! My dear mom said spitting wasn't nice.'
'I'd wick your dear mom until she wept for mercy!' Twist slugged him up under the ribs.
The impact doubled him over, but the spectacle had drawn the attention of the others, those slinking away to lick their wounds and those needing a bit of fun to work out the bloody aftermath of the killing of one of their own.
'Heya, Twist! I'm betting his mother was a ewe. I hear that's more to your liking.'
'You ass-wiping turd.'
Gagging and hacking, Shai stumbled out of the way. A fight broke, fists flying, and more men waded in, laughing with a high-pitched giggling, but as Shai staggered toward the girls the roil settled out and the knot dispersed, men grumbling as they headed to fires or shelters.
'Pick up the buckets.' It was hard to choke out the words with his chest throbbing. 'Get back to the well and get more water. Keep moving like nothing happened.'
Faces gray with fear, the girls grabbed pole and empty buckets and hurried off. They were so scrawny their shoulders came to a point instead of a nice rounded curve. What remained of their tunics hung in flaps.
Shai rested on hands and knees as he waited for the worst of the pain to fade. Merciful One protect them! Tohon would be making a plan, while he did nothing more than react as each new blow fell. Maybe he was dull- witted in truth. He'd done his best, organizing the children into banners so they could look out for each other, carrying the weakest when they lagged. But it wasn't enough.
And yet the girls did come back with the water without being hit. The men mumbled, and ate their supper, and called for their
favorites or waited their turn. The beaten man had been dragged away by the other soldiers and thrown into the trees, but despite the pulpy mess of his head, some glimmer of life still animated him because no ghost rose.
Shai crept back to the shelter as twilight mellowed the scene. It was easy to believe they sheltered in a peaceful backwoods hamlet, trees soughing in the breeze, candlewick flowers giving off dusk's perfume. An owl hooted, and a nightjar clicked.
After night fell, Jasya and Wori and the others old enough to be taken hobbled back to the shelter, ducking past him on the threshold and finding their places in their banner groups as he had assigned them. He waited until all were back except Yudit, who was forced to remain with the sergeant all night. He had to wait, because three nights ago they had lost Jolas, done to death in a rough way that Shai sheared away from recalling, having seen the aftermath. He hadn't thought to go looking for the lad until morning, and by then of course it was far too late.
Yet what could he have done anyway?
How was it possible he could not keep them all safe?
Too restless to sleep, he braced himself across the opening so no one could grab one without him knowing. He considered paths of escape. Could they sneak out at night? By the two sentry fires, shadowed forms paced on watch. The pair of men set to watch the prisoners' shelter kept up a steady murmur, an idiotic conversation about a game called hooks-and-ropes.
Rain passed over, out of the southeast. He dozed, woke when a child whimpered, but it was only a dreaming cry, not repeated. The watch fires glowed red. At the forest's edge, mist untangled from the vegetation to drift into what had been some poor soul's tended garden.
He rubbed his eyes. The mist took on a flowing shape, a ghost winged with a gleaming trail as if its spirit were blown back in an unseen wind from the land beyond the Spirit Gate.
The soldier was dead, then, his ghost wandering in confusion. That left thirty-five, still too many for a single woodchopper to take on.
Yet for an instant, as the ghost crossed the compound toward the byre where the sergeant slept, he saw in the misty shape the form of a woman who looked exactly like Cornflower.
Merciful One! Would her haunt never let him rest? He shut his eyes, wishing desperately for sleep, anything to shut down the fevered workings of his exhausted mind. If he breathed slowly, if he cupped hands before his heart in the attitude of prayer and murmured the beseeching phrases, perhaps he could find peace.
