the sun was concealed behind clouds.
'Eliar, call the party to a halt in sight of the gate but at a prudent distance. I'll go ahead.'
Without waiting for Eliar's reply, he urged his mount forward. Behind, brakes screamed as wagons hit the incline. Kesh approached the wall. Armed men watched from the parapet as the caravan lumbered to a halt. Kesh rode across the big ditch on the same plank bridge he'd used every time he'd come back from the south. He hoisted his travel sack with his permission chits, ledger, and tax tokens.
'I'm Keshad, riding under the direction of Captain Anji of the Olossi militia. I request to speak with the captain in charge.'
The guardsmen were staring at the party behind him, and Kesh turned in his saddle, abruptly seeing from their perspective: this was no caravan but a significant military force with remounts, supply wagons, grooms, servants, and slaves. Why should they even be allowed into the Hundred?
'Master Keshad?' Kesh looked up at a Qin soldier. 'I'm Chief Deze. I know of your mission. These Qin soldiers fly Commander Beje's banner together with that of Anji's clan.' He eyed the caravan without even the flicker of a smile. 'Someone wanted to make sure you arrived safely.'
The white mountain peaks of the Spires loomed behind them, a seemingly impenetrable barrier between the Hundred and the empire. It was a fence Kesh would never again cross, not if he wanted to stay alive. 'I don't think my safety was of concern. This troop escorts Captain Anji's mother.'
Some might call the Qin callous and hardened for their lack of emotion, but Kesh was pretty sure they had simply learned in a hard school to mask their feelings behind impassivity. Chief Deze's astonishment flashed brightly as he leaned on the parapet.
Then he barked an order and vanished. Shortly, a big basket was swung over the lip of the parapet, and Deze climbed in and was lowered down. He sprang out of the basket and, after hurrying over to Keshad, grabbed his arm in a powerful grip to tug him out onto the plank bridge. Adders writhed and hissed in the ditch below, provoked by the movement. As the planks shifted under Kesh's feet, he was dizzied by an overwhelming sense that he was about to plunge into the pit and be bitten to death.
'This means that Commander Beje — of his wife Cherfa — has been in contact with the captain's mother all along,' said Deze in a low voice. He rubbed his wisp of a beard, a man whose thoughts were spinning new threads into the weave. 'Take your party to Old Fort and there take the road to Astafero.'
'Astafero? Where's that?'
'The naya sinks. That's what folk now call the settlement out in the Barrens. Do not go to Olossi.'
'Why not?'
Chief Deze began to speak, stopped himself, and began again very like a man who has changed his bargaining position in the middle of negotiation. 'You can see that a big force of outlanders will scare the Hundred folk.'
Kesh had gotten used to the soldiers. He liked them. But they were cursed intimidating, if you took a step back from familiar faces and considered them as a group. There was a reason the Hundred folk called them the black wolves for their black tabards and Captain Anji's black wolf banner. And honestly, it was difficult to imagine how Anji's mother would react to a delegation of Olossi merchants and clan-heads traipsing out to greet her with all the flourish and babble so beloved of Hundred merchants.
'I'll do it. Do you want to greet her?'
'Hu! If the var's sister wants to speak to me, she'll call me to her.' Having reached a decision, the chief moved with dispatch. The gates were opened; the caravan trundled through, and the beasts set to water. Anji's mother took her attendants to the camping field where her servants set up screens of cloth so her veiled women — she was the only female who rode — could emerge from their wagon hideaways where no one could see, or count them. Anyway, their heavy robes and veils made them appear all alike. Most of the wagons conveyed their luxuries.
One of the eunuchs emerged from behind the screens and set up a padded stool fringed with gold tassels. The old woman sat down with her back to the cloth as a slave fetched Chief Deze.
'The Qin are cursed odd,' muttered Eliar as he and Kesh watched the man approach. 'Look how he comes like a dog to her call.'
'He's not being servile, just respectful. No dog would be given such a consideration.' Kesh smirked at Eliar as a folding stool was brought so the chief could sit. The old woman proceeded to ask him questions, or so it appeared, because he did most of the talking and she did most of the listening.
The caravan waited until she dismissed the chief. Then the veiled women climbed back into the wagons; servants took down the screens; the wagons were rolled into line.
'Did you see the reeve go?' said Eliar as they took their usual places at the front.
'What reeve?'
'You didn't notice, did you?' Eliar's self-satisfied smile at having noticed what Kesh had overlooked was, like a point scored in hooks-and-ropes, an unspoken boast. 'A reeve flew, with a passenger in harness. The chief has wasted no time in sending word forward. A lot of trouble for one old woman, don't you think? The sooner the old bitch gets back inside the women's quarters, the better.'
'Aui! You Silvers! Captain Anji's got no 'women's quarters.'' The train started moving, local guardsman falling in as guides. 'It's not 'a lot of trouble.' It's just the respect you would show any eminent elder.'
Yet Kesh wondered.
'Clan Hall doesn't have the means to house and train you,' Joss said to Badinen as they stood on an eyrie at the southeastern tail of the Liya Hills. 'I'm taking you to Copper Hall. That's where I trained as a young reeve.'
Whether Masar would curse him or thank him for bringing in a novice whose speech was difficult to understand and whose eagle was also young and untrained he did not know. But he'd not yet made contact with Gold Hall in Teriayne where they likely housed other reeves with a northern way of talking. Masar he could impose on. The old marshal owed him that much.
The lad was staring at the astonishing vista: not, mind you, at
the cultivated plain, but at the vast forest spreading southward. He asked a question which Joss puzzled out as 'What is that?'
'That's the Wild.'
'The Wild? As in the wildings?'
'Indeed, wildings live there. It is forbidden for any human to enter its boundaries. Have you wildings up in the north?'
Yes, he did. He told an incomprehensible story about a tribe of wildings and a cliff and a valley and someone's child falling into a fell stream — or maybe a fallow field strewn with seed, hard to say — but his nonchalance in recounting the tale made Joss wonder what in the hells it was like growing up in the uttermost north where you might see a trading ship twice a year and now and again an outlander's fishing boat blown to shore in the storm season. He could barely imagine a place where all you knew of the Hundred were the tales handed down by your grandmother and the same everyday local faces. Which evidently included wildings.
'We won't fly over it today,' Joss added, 'but in your training you'll get a taste of how big it is. Come on.'
They hooked in. Scar launched, and Sisit beat after, keeping her distance. She was very young, unsure of how to respond to another eagle except that she always kept her feathers up. Of course all eagles were hatched and raised in their early months in the distant mountainous wilderness of Heaven's Reach, but usually the fledglings returned to the halls with a parent in tow and learned to recognize their family group within the eagles. Within these groups the eagles could be remarkably cooperative. Outside them, training taught most to subdue their territoriality when in company with their reeves.
They sailed over the wide coastal plain. Farmers turned no earth; dug no ditches; trimmed no mulberries. No one was hauling water. No young shepherds guarded grazing flocks. When the first burned villages came into view, Joss knew he should have expected it, yet even so the sight shocked him. Lord Radas's army was spreading its blight.
Lord Radas, whom he might kill if Marit had told him the truth.
Yet thinking of Marit caused him to recall the way she had responded to his kiss.
The hells! He had to focus. With Nessumara under siege, the old Silver had ceased providing bags of nai and rice, and it had therefore become urgent to clear Law Rock of anyone not contributing
to the defense. But because the town of Horn had refused to take in a single refugee, they had to haul the
