staves on black cloth.'
To Shai's surprise, the reeve spat. 'That lot! That's the gods-rotted cohort that burned Copper Hall on the Haya shore.'
'The very ones I seek.' Heat swelled in his heart, although he could not tell if fear or excitement made his pulse swim in his
ears. 'I have a mission at the service of the militia and council and temples of Olossi.'
The reeve scratched his head. Hu! He had a straggle of black hair pulled back in a clumsy approximation of a Qin topknot.
'When did you reeves start skirmishing?' Shai added, which brought a bright grin from the young man.
'New tactics from the commander. About cursed time, if you ask me.'
'The commander?'
'Commander Joss of Clan Hall, and that outlander captain from the south. Those two are our commanders. Didn't you know that?'
Shai hid his surprise behind his usual baffle of impassivity. 'I've been in hiding a long time.'
An eagle swooped past, the reeve nagging them, and Rayish swore. 'Hook in. We'll find this cohort, and I'll drop you behind their lines. Will that help?'
'The hells, ft will!' Shai laughed. His new best comrade laughed. They were after all two young men fighting on the same side and eager to get their blows in.
The eagle launched right at him. Shai threw himself flat, but the eagle wasn't after him. With a high-pitched call, it struck so hard Shai felt the impact in his bones. A male voice screamed, the noise as horrible as the dog's agonized yips. Rayish cursed, dangling over a soldier punctured by the eagle's talons. Two more enemy soldiers were racing up behind.
Shai leaped up and plunged past the eagle's outstretched wings, heedless of the fierce beak. He caught both men unawares because they were fixed on the reeve and the eagle and their dying comrade. The raptor shook the man loose and struck at a second as Shai cut inside, thrust with his spear, and punched it into the third man's shoulder. He ducked out of the way of a flailing blow from the soldier's sword and kicked the man's knees out from behind him. As the soldier dropped, Shai grabbed his shoulder and slashed his throat. Hu! Not deep enough; he had to saw a second time. Blood gushed everywhere; piss stank where the dying men had voided; a cry raked the air so awful the sound made him wince, but his man was already dead and the raptor put its prey out of his misery.
'Aui!' Rayish retched right over the bloody mess as Shai got up, very very slowly, and stepped back as the eagle slewed its massive head around to take a good long look at Shai.
He displayed knife and spear. 'I'm your cursed ally. Not your cursed dinner.'
The eagle shook itself free and waddled backward out of the slick mess it had made, so awkward Shai had to wipe his eyes as laughter choked him.
Rayish spat, averting his eyes from the corpses. 'Eihi! Feh! Gah!' He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. 'Hurry! We're vulnerable on the ground.'
'I'm coming,' said Shai. 'Find me that cohort, and you'll have my thanks.'
'You have my and Pretty's thanks already,' said the reeve. 'That third one might have got us.'
That third one had ceased twitching and gushing although Pretty's two victims still spasmed. A misty extrusion twisted from the eyes and nostrils of the man Shai had killed, swirling in the streaks and pools of his blood until it took on a man-shaped form that rose to confront Shai.
'The hells! What hit me? Eihi! That cursed eagle! They said to watch, but I didn't believe — Bedi? Oyard? Can you hear me?' Hollow eyes fixed on Shai. 'What are you, that you stare at me so? Are you one of those gods-cursed demons they warned us about?'
'Get over here! I have to leave.' Rayish's shouts blended with the voice of the ghost.
'Am I dead?' The ghost sobbed. 'They promised if we believed and served that we would escape death, if we wore the Star of Life it would shield us-'
Shai dodged away from the twisting mouth and insubstantial groping hands. The raptor's fierce talons and beak were as nothing, compared to a ghost's cry or the sight of what he had himself wrought: slicing a man out of life and into death.
Rayish hooked him in, shaking and laughing. 'We did it! Gods-rotted rubbish, that's what they are now! Finally!'
A whistle shrilled by Shai's ear, and the beat of the eagle's wings shattered the ghostly mist into oblivion as they rose into the wind.
From Toskala, Joss and Anji's scouting party flew north, intending to sweep past High Haldia and up beyond Seven and the Steps to the spectacular mountaintop fastness of Gold Hall. Anji wanted a look at the mountainous spine of Heaven's Reach,
maybe even as far as the isolated valley of Walshow. The one place they were careful to avoid was Herelia, although they spoke of it often, mulling over the report Joss had heard from Marit.
So the council at Gold Hall went.
'Fifteen cohorts?' Marshal Lorenon demanded, looking at Joss. He had not once addressed Joss as 'Commander.' 'And more in training? Do you know how many soldiers that is?'
He was a man of middle age but not in good health, and although his querulous tone never eased,he addressed his remarks to Joss and Anji equally, not showing any prejudice toward the outlander captain. On the whole, Joss thought him relieved to have someone to talk to who had an air of competency. His senior reeves sat in attendance and were as like to talk over him as to maintain silence. Discipline was breaking down in Gold Hall, and Joss thought the senior reeves tolerated Lorenon as marshal out of habit, or because they felt, by now, that they had lost the war and were only hanging on to the remnant that survived in their stronghold and in the few high mountain villages that supplied them with provisions and necessaries.
'Surely the Star of Life has recruited from the regions you patrol,' said Anji. 'Teriayne. The plateaus. The town of Seven and High Haldia. Young men do not like to feel they can be slapped around. In the end, even the responsible ones may feel it is better to march with those who have weapons than to cower with those who must bare their throats.'
Listening reeves nodded, and ten different anecdotes poured out as they all talked over one another: a village arkhon had brought a complaint to the local assizes and was killed in the night on his pallet; lads had disappeared; trouble plagued the roads; gangs of armed men demanded coin from merchants to protect their market stalls against thievery. Men marched south in arrogant cadres, wearing a star hammered out of cheap tin as a necklace.
'It was never meant to be this way,' said Marshal Lorenon when the passionate chatter subsided. 'The laws bind all in equal measure. The Guardians were meant to put a stop to those who use swords or coin to abuse the vulnerable.'
'The Guardians may have done so, in the years before,' said Anji, 'but those who command the Star of Life army now are corrupted. Whether demons or human, they have stolen the Guardian cloaks and twisted them to serve their own selfish ends. They have soldiers. They have swords. They have the means to
look into your mind and your heart. They do not care how many people die, as long as they get what they want.'
'So what in the hells is it they want?' Joss asked abruptly.
Anji shot him a glance, as if puzzled by Joss's puzzlement. 'They want to rule. Maybe they even believe that the rule of a single strong arkhon or lord — what would be called the var among the Qin or a king or emperor in other lands — is a better and more stable rule than the tumult of a hundred towns and cities each ruling itself.'
'Neh, the gods rule the Hundred,' said Joss. 'Their power resides in the temples. We each serve a year's apprentice to one of the gods, and some serve their entire lives, and thus we tie ourselves to the land. It is the gods' laws that govern us. As it says on Law Rock: 'On law shall the land be built.' Not on men, whether one man or many.'
'Maybe so,' objected Marshal Lorenon, 'but right now, laws don't defeat swords. Can Olo'osson's militia really defeat fifteen cohorts, Captain?'
'Not alone,' said Anji. It was a bit unnerving: the steady gaze, the square shoulders, the air of being in command that was not intimidating but rather assured. 'In an alliance that spreads from Olossi to Nessumara to Gold Hall.' He opened both palms in the storytelling gesture that invited listeners to make up their own minds. 'Let
