had managed to cook the birds without him knowing or to trade them without being caught, and in the latter case for what items in exchange? He had
the hostages' bundles searched every night for weapons and contraband, but nothing ever showed up beyond the usual gear: a spoon, a bowl, a flask, a hat and cloak to keep off rain and sun, a spare linen jacket, soap, a comb, a towel, and a mat to unroll on the ground.
'I meant to say,' she went on, 'I'm surprised you didn't leave us back in camp instead of forcing us to march into battle with you. Won't we just get in the way?'
'Only if there's trouble.'
Her lips curved into a mocking smile. 'Traitors opened the gates of Toskala. Nessumaran traitors can easily tear down barriers that block causeways. They'll let you take the city without a fight. It's the same day, is it not? Wakened Ox.'
'It's better this way. For the Nessumarans.'
'Not for you?'
'Fighting threshes the weak from the useful. Helps me get to know my soldiers.'
She walked in silence, strides of her long legs matched to his. She was thinking over his words, or hoping he would go away; he wasn't sure which. He was pretty sure she wasn't afraid of him, as she ought to be. It was a cursed admirable trait, to be so cool and confident.
'Captain!' His attendant, a decent young man named Navi, had slipped back along the causeway. 'Sergeant Giyara sends her respects, Captain. Our vanguard has started across the bridge.'
'I'll come right up.'
'It's cursed strange, though, Captain.' The young man swiped a hand over his left shoulder in a nervous gesture he had, the kind of thing that could get to irritating a man if the youth weren't so stolid otherwise.
'What's that?'
'Just that the channel we're crossing is running so strong, Captain. You'd think they'd control the flow of water better. With dams and locks and flood barriers.'
'What good would that do? I'm uplands born and bred myself.'
'I'm Istria born, Captain. There's plenty you can do by diverting a strong river current into irrigation channels and canals. I'd have thought they'd divert a side channel into a series of canals that would make haulage and transportation easy within the inner delta and the city, that's what I'd-'
He seemed likely to chatter on, made enthusiastic by knowing
something his captain did not. Arras cut him off. 'Well observed. We'll see what to make of it when we come to know the city better, as we will-'
Light glinted on the water, a flash repeated twice. Arras raised a hand to shade his eyes, staring over the flat expanse marred here and there by a bright explosion of greener brush or tenacious trees grown on hummocks.
Zubaidit lifted an elbow to point up. 'That came from the sky. The reeves are signaling to someone out there in the swamp.'
'Why would they be-?'
Once before in his life, as a youth training as an ordinand, out on a field expedition with eleven others like him, he'd heard a sound before he realized he'd heard it. His action, back then, had saved his own life although it hadn't saved the lives of the other young ordinands he was with. He'd not been captain of their merry little band. Indeed, he'd been youngest and least experienced among them, but the slaughter had taught him a lesson he would never forget: Don't act for yourself alone; you are responsible for your comrades.
'Shields up!' he shouted as he grabbed Navi's arm and yanked him behind the cover of the nearest infantryman.
Streaks darkened the sky as shapes rose out of the water, but his soldiers had already obeyed. Arrows rained down on the causeway, thwacking stone, thudding on upraised shields, but no one was hit. Hostages sobbed with fear.
'Get down!' cried Zubaidit to the Toskalans. She dropped, and the others followed like wheat mowed down as a second flight of arrows rose into the sky from the wetlands and clattered down. A man among the hostages screamed and thrashed.
'I'm hit!' cried one of the soldiers, without panic, just letting everyone know.
'Heh, trying to grow a second tool from your ass, Tendri?' laughed one of his comrades.
Arras heard the clamor of battle joined far ahead, whose first tremors in the air had warned him before he fully recognized what he was hearing.
'Tortoise!' he cried. The soldiers shifted seamlessly, forming a barrier with their shields. Movement flurried through the ranks as Sergeant Giyara pushed back to join him. For an instant he stood above the turtling backs of the shields, above the cowering hostages, and scanned the entire prospect: the deadly mire, the
exposed bridge and the solid island beyond, the enemy in the swamp, boats slipping into view with more archers within, a chaos of dust and hammering action ahead where the vanguard boiled with action against the haze and smoke raised by the commotion. Impossible to see what they were up against.
'Captain Arras,' said Zubaidit from the ground. Her grin was so cocky that he wanted to kick her. 'I think your betrayers have either betrayed you, or been betrayed in their turn and had their plan exposed.'
She was right, curse her.
Seventh Cohort's captain acted at last: figures, small at this distance, broke off in clusters from the cohort behind his and plunged into the water toward the half-hidden archers, only to flounder into traps and sinkholes.
'Captain!' Sergeant Giyara yanked him under a shield as a new shower of arrows fell. His people were too cursed exposed, and they were taking hits.
Zubaidit grabbed his arm. 'Captain! I beg you. Can the hostages hide under the wagons? I've got five hit already.'
He shook her off. 'Sound the drum! Push over the bridge and get onto land! Move! Move!'
Arrows flew. Men staggered. Some fell, and were dragged by their fellows as the companies pressed forward, pushing hard to get off the causeway. One man spun away over the edge of the causeway and tumbled into the shallows, facedown in the muddy water. Behind, Seventh Cohort was retreating, cursed fools; they had three mey of causeway to cover to get back to dry land; they'd be picked off.
'Sergeant!' he called, having lost Giyara in the forward surge. He took a sharp blow to his head. An arrow slid down his body, and he stepped on it, snapping it in half. The hells! He swiped a hand over his helmet, but the arrow hadn't dislodged anything.
He snagged a pair of unbroken arrows. 'Pick up every arrow you can find. Toss them in the wagons. Keep moving!'
The soldiers on the outside had their shields wedged well together to cover legs and torsos. The line inside had lifted shields to cover the heads of the outer rank. They marched in pace with the drum. The wagons rumbled. Arrows thudded into the gravel, or were swept up by a spare hand and tossed into the wagons. A driver grunted as an arrow sprouted in his side, but he kept driving, hunched over. Zubaidit leaped up on the bench and yanked
the reins from the man's hands. Where were those cursed hostages? If they were getting in the way of his troops, he'd slit their throats himself. But they had boxed themselves in between the wagons, hauling their injured. A young woman went down in a fresh shower of deadly arrows. He felt the kiss of death brushing past, but nothing hit him; instead, he stepped over a limp body, a young soldier shot in the eye. Dead instantly, no doubt. Unfortunate. He grabbed the fellow's sword and kept moving. Looking back, he saw one of the hostages — an older woman with her hair tightly wrapped in a scarf — wrench the shield from the soldier's slack hand.
The gravel of the causeway surface gave way to wood planking, the crunch of his footsteps turning to a scrape as he moved over the bridge in the midst of his personal staff. The current in the channel ran swiftly beneath, a purling sound so loud it muffled the roar of confusion coming from up ahead where First Cohort was fighting a foe of unknown size, ferocity, and skill.
The bridge went on and on, as arrows rained down, but although one man and then a second and then a third slumped against the railings, the drummer did not cease her steady beat, the wagons rolled, the men held. The Toskalan hostages grabbed wounded men and slung them on the backs of wagons.
They marched out onto dry ground where he got a quick impression of plenty of dangerous open space and scattered abandoned carts and wagons and hitching gear plus boats drawn up and overturned by the river wall.
