captain, in his lime-whitened horsetails, shaded his eyes to watch them pass overhead. A sergeant marched to either side, both women by their shape although their faces were really too small to make out features.
'Kesta! The hells!'
'Quit jerking around, Joss. You'll pull poor Arkest-'
'That's Zubaidit! Wearing sergeant's colors and-'
'How can you possibly tell from this height?'
'I'd know that body anywhere!'
Kesta laughed. 'You just might! If it's her, then she's turned traitor.'
'Circle back!'
'No time, Joss. I've got to dump your weight. Arkest's tiring.'
They swung west over the narrowing delta. Here in the northern reaches grew the forested swamp. A constant rain of leaves built up a thick underlayer beneath the trees, which got very dry when the rains died. A dirty haze hung over the swamp as they flew onward,
wisps of smoke drifting upward. Now and then flares of red flashed where the canopy parted, fires smoldering.
'What happened?'
'Chief Sengel set fire to the forest along the causeway. The smoke drove back the cohorts attacking under cover of the forest canopy. It was the only way to hold them back until Commander Anji got here.'
'But it's still burning.'
The rising smoke made them cough. Animals teemed in the waters or on safe islands. Elsewhere, weakened trees had collapsed to open up the understory to the glare of the harsh sun. The stagnant backwaters were streaked with blackened branches and the bloating corpses of krokes and men.
'There!' Kesta pointed with her baton.
It was past midday, really hot now, and cursed if the army hadn't covered ten mey already, halfway to solid ground at Skerru. How could they maintain such a pace? For now, they had halted, strung out along the causeway over more than a mey, companies separated by gaps, men asleep under the shade of blankets, many dousing the horses and themselves with water hauled up from the swamp. The order of march had shifted. Now, Captain Targit's Qin cohort rode as the vanguard with a cadre of local scouts as escort. A cohort of local Hundred men led by Qin sergeants came behind them. After them came several companies of skirmishers and archers, and then the companies that had been in the vanguard followed by another cohort of mostly local Hundred-men. Anji's command unit now marched two units from the rear.
'Whoop!' shouted Kesta as they plunged.
They came to ground on the causeway in front of the command unit. Six guardsmen trotted out to set a barrier, and with polite smiles escorted Joss and Kesta into the shade of an awning strung up over the entire causeway with immense lengths of silk rope. Anji was in council, his chiefs seated on camp chairs while captains and sergeants stood behind them.
'Commander Joss!' Anji beckoned, smiling. 'Cordial? Wine? There's kama juice. Mai's favorite.' He frowned, the expression brief and disconcerting, then chuckled as the reeves walked in under the blessed shade. 'I will say, Joss, I've seen you look better.'
'So they tell me,' said Joss, unaccountably stung, but Kesta
laughed. She was drawn aside by Sengel while Anji offered Joss his own chair and took one relinquished by Deze.
'We lost you in Nessumara and couldn't wait,' said Anji as they drank. 'Do you mean to ride with us?'
'If you'll have me.'
After Joss reported on what he and Kesta had seen that day, they talked for a while of inconsequential things. Anji asked about the swamp, the islands, the delta, and finally the old question about how Copper Hall had come to have two halls, one on the Haya shore and one in Nessumara, without becoming two separate named halls. He sounded like any merrily curious visitor come to a new town, happy to enjoy the fresh sights and local color. Others dozed, while a new shift of guards came on duty. Finally, Anji unrolled a blanket, lay down with his head resting on his rolled-up armor coat, and fell asleep so quickly that Joss was pretty sure it was between one breath and the next.
The heat weighed on him. Kesta had left. He slumped, dozing off, and startled awake just before he tipped off the chair. He'd meant to get Anji's assurance, yet again, that he would not attack the other cloaks. Yet the ghost girl had killed three of Anji's soldiers. Why wouldn't Anji want to kill her, too? If she rode with Mark, did that mean Marit could not be trusted?
But Anji slept, and he dared not wake him. A soldier offered him a blanket for the dusty ground, and he lay down but could not sleep.
Why did an army led by a Qin commander and Qin officers trouble him so? They were only a few hundred men. Even with the addition of a cohort of some five hundred new Qin soldiers, they amounted to less than a thousand. Lord Radas's horde was far larger and had done far more damage. The Qin had never harmed anyone except the enemy.
Except the Guardians.
Let it go. Now was not the time.
He slept, and did not dream, and was awakened by men rising. He drank and ate with the others, quickly and on his feet. Biting down a grimace, he swallowed the pain of mounting a good-natured gelding brought for him to ride. How efficiently the Qin had trained the grooms and tailmen who attended them! The forward companies had already started marching, so reeves reported; scouts rode up with their own reports.
'Where is Tohon?' Joss asked, riding beside Anji as the command unit set out.
'I sent him some days ago with a scouting force of reeves to find Wedrewe.'
They rode through the last of the afternoon and into the swift dusk, twilight falling fast and hard. Soon night cloaked them. Local men trotted in shifts with lamps held high; wagons rolled in the gaps with lanterns swinging from their tailgates, beacons to guide their way.
They rode all cursed night except for one rest stop to changeover horses, and very late in the night, or so early that the first birds had begun to herald dawn with tentative songs, scouts rode in from the front with the expectant posture of men with stupendous news.
'The vanguard will be in visual range by dawn, Commander. We've killed eight pickets although some escaped.'
'Is there any change in their fortifications?' Anji asked.
'Neh.' These were local men, who knew the swamps and channels. 'They've got shields set ten deep massed where the causeway opens onto the mainland. It's enough to press back any attack from the causeway, and it leaves them free to push forward at a moment's notice. They've figured out we're coming.'
Anji said, to Joss, 'They've dug some minor fortifications at the rear of their encampment. They're expecting skirmishing groups to come at them from behind. I expect they know that Nessumara doesn't have as many troops as they do, so the Nessumara militia could never risk a frontal assault down a confined corridor.'
'Isn't it better to let the reeves lift troops over their heads and hit them from behind?'
Anji shrugged. 'That's what they're expecting. That's why they have the fortifications at their rear. If you want to see, go forward with the scouts.'
'My thanks. I'd like to go, if your scouts will have me.'
Of course they would, if Anji said they must.
They were easygoing local men. Their way of talking fell smoothly on the ears of a man raised on the Haya shore, who had spent some time around Nessumara in his youth, although he'd never walked deep into the delta. Krokes and snakes did not appeal, and the smell of decaying vegetation overlaid with smoke and ash made his lungs hurt.
The scouts numbered sixteen; all walked with a stoop but so
quickly that he struggled to keep up. He was sent off with a pair of older men. Forgi was short and stout and as graceful as a cat; Ussoken was about Joss's height, thin, and had such a dry wit that maybe it scorched the land more than fire. They both had spears with which they poked the ground, testing for hot spots. This far north, they informed him, they did not expect to find fire, because they had fired the forest about three mey south, luring the enemy in far enough that he had no choice but to retreat fast and furiously. But you never knew how far it might
