He climbed down off the wagon.
To Giyara he said, 'Give Zubaidit her weapons.'
To the subcaptains he said, 'Form up your companies in attack order. We'll go broad, one, two, and three across the front, four and five flanking, and six at the center back as reserve, Piri, so you keep your eyes open. I'll stand with you in the command unit.'
He looked over the troop as they fell into marching order, each soldier knowing the comrades at whose shoulder he stood. He had trained them well; they knew their business.
'Shall we?' he said to Giyara, and to his subcaptains, who were gathered around him.
He was answered with an emphatic 'yes.' They, too, felt the sting of a hundred small slights and niggling doubts; he wasn't the only one who was ambitious, who felt he'd not received the reward he'd earned or a full measure of credit for his labors.
He gestured, and the Sixth Cohort banner was raised and lowered. The horns called the advance, and the drums set the pace.
They marched out double-time, and soon the clamor of battle filled their ears, drowning out the sound of the river. The rearguard of the other Saltow contingent, massing at the ferries and bridges to cross, saw them coming and raised a cheer.
Arras signaled, the banner rose twice to pass the command. The pace quickened.
Again he signaled, and again the banner rose. The beat hammered faster, and the cohort shifted into a trot. From across the river, horses pounded, men shouted, steel.clashed.
He raised a hand and the banner raised and lowered a final time as they closed with the now-bewildered Saltow units. The drums, like his heart, raced. He'd made his choice. There was no going back.
His front line broke into their charge.
Joss had to admire the way in which Captain Arras and his cohort smashed their former comrades. They hit them from the rear and took them apart while the other soldiers were still trying to figure out what was going on and who had attacked them. It was brutal but effective, worthy of Anji's Qin, if you wanted to look at it that way. From on high, he watched as the Sixth Cohort took control of the ferries and bridges. They cut down soldiers fleeing in retreat across those crossings toward what looked like the safe harbor of one of their own. On the other side of the river, Anji's rear units had reached the battleground and were advancing step by step, clearing all opposition. The open ground between Skerru's livestock palisade and the causeway was littered with the dead and the dying, with Olo'osson and Nessumaran militiamen stalking the wounded to drag free their comrades and finish off their enemies. Meanwhile, the forward units pressed the remnants toward the river. Many dismounted to harry the enemy on foot, while riders swept around the flanks to cut off men trying to escape into the swamp. Arrows flew with deadly grace. Skerru's gates remained resolutely closed, although some desperate men tried to scale the palisade and were driven off with poles and pitchforks wielded by Skerru's frightened populace.
As the army disintegrated, losing cohesion, the slaughter began. Here and there, soldiers threw down their arms and tried to surrender, but in the frenzy they were cut down anyway. Men threw themselves into the river, carried away on the current.
Anji's command unit rode through the carnage to consider the
crossing arrayed on the other side. Captain Arras had managed to winch all the ferries over to his side of the river, leaving only the two bridges to protect. His cohort had fallen back to open ground away from the corpses of their dead comrades and shifted into marching order, ready to retreat in ranks and at speed. But they weren't moving.
A single figure sauntered out over the main stone bridge. She halted about two-thirds of the way across. To Joss's surprise, Anji rode out onto the span with six Qin solders in attendance. He dismounted, and he and Zubaidit conferred. She stepped away from Anji to wave a strip of cloth. At this signal Arras left the lines, also alone. Driving a wagon in which lay a man much cushioned by pillows and silk, he approached across the bridge.
Zubaidit looked up. Of course she had known all along that Joss was there. She waved the cloth again, a clear invitation. Join the meeting. Maybe even: Meet me after. Aui! A dangerous woman!
Setting down on the bridge was a risky and reckless maneuver. As a young man, he'd shown off in exactly such a way once or twice. He grinned, hands tightening on the jesses as he gauged the width of the span, the feel of the wind, and his angle of approach.
The sun's glamour flashed to the north, at the tip of the massive ridge that divided the river. Yet how could that be? The sun was high, although the shadow of Scar's wings protected him, and a heat haze combined with drifting smoke to obscure the landscape.
There was a Guardian's altar at Kroke's Ridge. He'd seen Lord Radas earlier. Where else would a Guardian go, but to an altar?
He hauled on the jesses. Reluctantly, the eagle's muscles bunching and easing behind Joss's back, Scar came around. Because he was looking, he caught sight of a second flash, like a signal sparking from a lamp. He followed that beacon down until he plunged toward a sun-swept treeless spine of rock where a winged mare ridden by a man swathed in a cloak the color of the noonday sun clattered to earth.
Lord Radas wore the cloak of Sun.
Lord Radas, at whose command Marit had died. At whose order Joss's dreams and hopes had come apart. And he was the least of it; he'd squandered some chances and made good use of others, but he'd not had his farm burned down around him, his husband murdered or wife raped, his children led away in chains to
become slaves, his coin and storehouse ransacked, his body hung from a post until thirst and pain dragged him under.
Kesta and Peddonon were right. Lord Radas had broken the boundaries.
He tugged on the jesses and, obediently, Scar, with wings spread and talons pitched forward, dropped to land at one end of the spine of rock. Joss unhooked and hit two-footed. There wasn't much to see, a dusty level surface glittering under the hot sun. There was no cave, no boulders, no_ hollow, just a long flat ridgetop scattered with rocks and a ghost walking with a cloak like the sun shining its lamp in Joss's eyes. The heat and sun and smoke made his head ache, but cursed if he was going to let that stop him.
He drew his sword and ran forward to the entrance to the glimmering path that marked the Guardian's labyrinth, the track that led to the hidden altar, where it was forbidden for any but Guardians to walk. Anji had walked there, and lived to tell of it. Joss had survived'its twists more than once, and this time, by the Herald, he'd have his revenge.
He put his right foot down, and then his left. The pavement on which he walked might have been the thinnest glaze of crystal, or it might have been the veins of the Earth Mother, cutting through stone into the depths of the obdurate earth. As he paced the measure, the air seemed to slowly rotate around him, and each time he shifted at an angle, a fresh landscape appeared as through an open window, glimpsed and, with each new step, left behind.
He knew these places!
Needle Spire, seen once beyond Storm Cape and never forgotten. A tumbled beacon, doubtless from the South Shore. Stone Tor in the midst of the Wild. An altar overlooking the Salt Sea in barren Heaven's Ridge. Mount Aua, where he and Anji had conferred. An unfamiliar village. Aui! The pinnacle where he had found Zubaidit and her brother.
There were one hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians scattered across the land. And they were all empty except for a whisper that chased through his heart and rumbled like wind in his ears.
A man's voice made hard by selfishness. 'Where are they all? Yordenas? Night? Bevard? Why do you not walk?'
Beneath, a different voice spun like song into the heart of the altar. 'Go to Indiyabu. Release me.'
Sinking deeper yet, as faint as a whisper, a woman spoke in a timbre oddly like Mai's voice: 'Anji betrayed me.'
He fought past the horrible whispers, for perhaps they were only the altar's third eye and second heart ripping his secret fears and angry hopes out of the thoughts and feelings he had struggled for years and months and days to conquer. He stumbled into a hollow as the sun burst in his face. Where his foot slammed into the ground, pain stabbed up through his sole, but he grasped hold of the billowing cloak with his free hand. The ground slammed sideways beneath his feet as the cloak pulled him back from the precipice. He stumbled backward into knee-deep water that burned through his leathers. A man knelt in the shallows with liquid pouring out of cupped
