targets. We need better tactics, and much more training.'
'Thank you,' she said as she stamped out onto the pier, Pil following with more caution. The girl turned to stare at them. 'Now I'll just shove you into the water, if you don't mind, so you can feel what it's like to have water dumped over your excitement at finally having done something right!'
Pil didn't like water; it had been hard enough to get him to bathe in the way Hundred folk did.
'I didn't mean it,' she added, hating that stiff-faced expression he got.
'You were brave,' he said. 'You didn't hesitate.'
She laughed. 'That's praise coming from you, I suppose, with your fancy Qin ways.'
The brown water flowed so sluggishly you couldn't quite see
the current's ripple. A pair of boats eased downstream, one tied on behind the other, an older woman steering the forward craft. The woman glanced their way casually and then, startled, looked more closely at Pil.
'Heya! Auntie! Look where you're going!' A pair of young men called out jocularly to the older woman. She favored them with a long look, and whistled provocatively, and they laughed in reply. The men, rowing cargo upstream, were stripped down to loincloths, their muscular backs rippling as they stroked.
Nallo nudged Pil, but he was already looking in that pretending-not-to-look way he still had, as if admiring were shameful.
The girl ran her toes along one of the long lines, staring sidelong at Pil much as he was watching the passing rowers. 'Why's he wear his hair all funny like that? Why isn't it short like a proper reeve? He's an outlander. So why's he wear reeve leathers?'
'I'm sure you're a smart girl,' said Nallo. 'If he come in here jessed to an eagle and wears reeve leathers, what do you suppose he is? Anyway, let me ask you a question. Why does this water stink so much?'
'It doesn't! You've got blood on you. All dried and flaking off. Yuck.'
'It does! It smells like rotting fish and rubbish. Yuck.'
'I never asked you!'
'Yes, but you had plenty to say about my friend here, and you never asked him, just talked to me like he wasn't even there.'
'Outlanders can't talk proper speech, everyone knows that. If he could, why doesn't he say anything?'
'I have nothing to say,' said Pil softly. The girl, hearing him speak, shrieked and danced away to the end of the pier. He grinned, more sweetly than Nallo ever did.
The male rowers had vanished past a point of land piled high with piers and warehouses, and the auntie floated out of sight under a narrow arched bridge that stretched between Copper Hall's islet and a spur of land that held what looked like a council square behind a screen of mulberry trees. The channel lay empty but for a leafless branch swirling aimlessly like a dead snake in the brown water.
The girl sidled a few steps closer. 'Folk say we're all likely to die,' she ventured, still staring at Pil. 'Not so much by starving, 'cause we got fields all over the islands, but 'cause that army, they coming back.'
'This city is well defended by the river,' said Pil. 'Only on two roads can an army march in across the wetlands. Likely the army will build paths and rafts. But your soldiers have weapons, boats, archers. You know the land. All this you can fight with.'
'We dun't really have soldiers,' said the girl. 'My brother got hisself killt. He was on Veyslip Island with the militia that held off the main attack on the east causeway. So he's a hero, but he's still dead. I dun't see how we can fight them again. My clan tried to get us out in a boat but it cost too much. At least we live here in the hall, and get nai every day for our labor. Why do you fight them?' she said to Pil. 'You being an outlander, I mean.'
He fingered his neat topknot. The clubbed hair bound around with thin leather strips had not a strand out of place. 'I am a reeve.'
'Heya!' Peddonon appeared on the porch. 'You two!'
Nallo rolled her eyes. 'He's changed now that he's been put in charge on Law Rock. Whew! High and mighty!'
Pil looked awa|.
'You got something going on there, eh?'
The girl snickered.
Pil's stance took on the rigidity that told her she'd gone too far.
'You can't hear me?' Peddonon bellowed.
'Eiya! I'm sorry. And an idiot.' She slapped Pil hard on the shoulder, and he relaxed. 'Let's go.'
She trotted toward the cote, Pil's steps sounding behind her. Commander Joss and Captain Anji emerged onto the porch, chattering away like her brothers when they would go on about the most precise details of the cursed goats.
The outlander had an engaging voice, his accent more pleasing than difficult. 'That huge old forest — the Wild, you call it — would be a perfect refuge for skirmishers. We could drop them in behind enemy lines to maintain a running disruption, and they could retreat into the forest when they got into trouble.'
'No human can enter the Wild, and live. It's forbidden to go in there.'
'What if we could speak to these wildings and ask them to allow our soldiers refuge? Just for the duration of the war? If they can think and communicate, then it is possible to negotiate with them.'
'Had much luck trading for horses with the lendings?' asked Joss with a laugh.
The captain winced, then grinned. 'It was my own fault. I did not listen to good advice. But if the wildings are people, like to us, then it is merely a matter of coming to understand what they need and how we can offer that to them in return for what we need. Then both they and we benefit, to our mutual advantage.'
The tip-tap of a cane preceded the appearance of the marshal. He was old, weary, and stoop-shouldered, shaking his head as he appeared in the open doors as if disagreeing with Anji's statement. His evident weakness made the contrast between the three men even greater: Commander Joss's excessive handsomeness could not disguise his barely leashed energy, striking in a man who had counted a full forty years; the outlander captain had a quieter but more forceful charisma, a deadly wolf lying patiently in wait for the right moment to kill.
The captain addressed the marshal as if resuming a conversation broken off inside. 'Marshal Masar, I know there is not time to properly train strike forces as efficient, disciplined units, but there is enough time to use them wisely. Reeves can carry soldiers and put them down behind enemy lines. We can sow confusion, pick off stragglers at little risk to ourselves. Create trouble. Draw off their attention while meanwhile I march the army up from Olo'osson. The key is to keep their gaze fixed elsewhere so they don't see us coming.'
'It goes against all tradition,' objected the old marshal.
Commander Joss's eyes widened as he noticed the blood on Nallo's leathers. 'Masar, if we are all dead, then how will our traditions have served us? The ones who command the Star of Life army have cleansed tradition from their ranks. We need not kill tradition to fight them, but we must change to survive. Do you want Nessumara, and this branch of Copper Hall, to fall to the army? To suffer what High Haldia and Toskala have suffered?'
The outlander captain raised a hand. His gaze skimmed over Nallo and Pil in a way that made her stand up straighter; Pil said nothing, his gaze lowered as if he were ashamed, although what in the hells he would have to feel ashamed of Nallo could not imagine.
The captain lowered the hand and tapped his own chest. 'Listen. I can move my army quickly. They're trained for exactly such a contingency. But I desperately need your support, and your support in particular, Marshal Masar, before I lay my plan before Nessumara's council tonight.' He paused, brushing the back of a hand along his beard, his gestures neat and graceful. 'We must strike while the people of Nessumara and Toskala and High Haldia and the entire countryside along the immense length of the River Istri still possess the will to resist. We must strike before they begin to prefer any form of peace, however onerous, to continued suffering.'
The marshal dropped his gaze like a man beaten in hooks-and-ropes. An agony of sorrow shuttered his eyes. Abruptly, Commander Joss touched him on the arm in a manner meant to comfort.
'There was nothing you could have done,' Joss said. 'Do not blame yourself when the blame must rest on those who forced the choice on you.'
'Why do you people hesitate?' Nallo cried, the words pouring out before she knew she meant to say them. 'Do you think you're the only one who's lost a kinsman? Don't you understand I'm standing here today because that cursed army killed my husband and orphaned my helpless stepchildren? Maybe it wouldn't have happened if there had been reeve wings fighting along West Track. I would rather fight and kill these gods-rotted bastards than sit
