grinning.
Two First Cohort cadres — both lacking a full complement — waited alongside the road, watching him as if he were insane, or gods-touched. Waiting for orders. How, many cursed companies did he now command? He'd not had time to count. He whistled over a runner and sent the lass to scout out Giyara, with an order to make an accounting and assign out the new cadres into the commands of his three subcaptains.
'Neh, neh,' he said, calling the lass back. 'Tell Sergeant Giyara to attach as many cadres as she needs to her own staff, specifically for laboring. Got it?'
'Yes, Captain.' Off she ran, braided black hair tailing out from her boiled leather helmet.
He examined the two cadres left to him, one at half strength and looking completely demoralized and both missing their commanding sergeant, as if the enemy had specifically targeted sergeants as a way to break down and panic units. A smart tactic, if it wasn't just by chance. He pulled the man standing straightest out of the larger cadre. 'Your name?'
'Fossad, Captain.'
'You're acting sergeant now, promotion to be reviewed according to performance. Your task is to find shovels, anything you can use, and start digging. We'll be throwing up earth ramparts all around this island.'
'Yes, Captain!'
He turned to the final group, the sorriest-looking ragtag bunch he'd seen, scratched, limping, streaked with smoke, many with faces and arms reddened from burns.
'You lot were on the bridge?'
After a moment, the oldest among them spoke up. 'Yes, Captain.'
'Get your wounded under cover in one of those warehouses. As for the rest of you, we'll need a steady source of water. You make a survey of the island, you dig within the gardens if you have to, or you collect buckets and start hauling to fill cisterns. You're in charge, Sergeant-'
'I'm not the sergeant-'
'You are now. Your name?'
'Segri, Captain.'
'Sergeant Segri, you're in charge, under my personal command. Get moving!'
That was the last of them. Without looking, he could hear and sense the focused activity of his troops around him, and he thought too that he felt a stammer of hesitation among the enemy. They'd launched their attack, but he had responded, fenced off his own people as well as he could. They must decide how to answer. He called in his personal staff and trotted west to the forward bridge. The causeway, in a sense, cut straight across the island; the bridge lay at the same elevation, no ramp leading up, merely a continuation of the roadway.
Subcaptain Piri met him with runners in tow and they surveyed the rushing channel, the stalwart reeds that could conceal an enemy, more flat islands beyond. The militiamen who milled about on the far shore shook spears and swords in their direction; they paced among the fallen, dragging their wounded and dead free and stabbing any wearing the tabards of First Cohort's companies. Like the other cohorts, First had brought along a number of Toskalan hostages, but he had no idea what had happened to them; he'd marked none among the survivors who had reached him.
Above, the sun had passed the zenith and begun its steady descent. Eagles sailed, sharp-eyed reeves dangling beneath in their clever harnesses, waving flags to send messages each to the others and to their allies on the ground.
'Hard to win a war when they've got the eyes,' he remarked to Piri as the two runners listened. 'Good thing the reeve halls are split as they are, no one liking to take orders from the next.'
'Lord Commander Radas had the reeve commander executed in Toskala. That's cut off their head.'
'If only we could kill the rest of the cursed reeves. Or unite them to work for us. I wonder who in Nessumara betrayed our plan.'
Piri laughed scornfully. He was an older man, his face pitted with scars and his back scored with the marks of many whips long since healed. He'd been one of the first soldiers assigned to Arras's first command, a man with a reputation, nothing good, but he'd been steady and true for the last eight years. Tough as stone, steady as an Ox, which he was. 'I can't cry for those willing
to betray their own when they're betrayed in their turn, Captain. It just leaves us in a worse situation than we expected.'
'I did not want to be ambushed today,' said Arras with a laugh that made those around him chuckle nervously, attempting bravado. All but that young man, Laukas, who just watched, thin-lipped and serious. 'But here we are. First Cohort is a loss. We'll absorb their cadres into our own companies. It's strange, though. They lost cohesion so thoroughly.'
'They were hit hard and fast.' Piri shaded a hand to survey the militia gathered across the rushing channel, their hurried councils as they tried to decide what to do next. 'The militia killed a cursed lot of the sergeants. There's not one captain left standing, like they were targeted specifically. Maybe you and I should tear off these horsetails, Captain.'
'Neh, we're made of stronger stuff. The thing that concerns me is we've got no means to communicate with the other cohorts. Listen, Piri. Blood Cloak — Lord Yordenas — was marching in the front with First Cohort, wasn't he? Leading the advance?'
'I saw him.'
'Yet no sign of him now. Do you think-' The idea did not bear voicing aloud, but the situation required it. 'Do you think they killed him?'
'The cloaks can't die, Captain.'
But if he'd been in the lead, and he wasn't dead, then was he taken prisoner? Impossible. Had he fled? Abandoned them? Arras shook his head.
'Captain?' asked Piri.
'Neh, it's nothing.'
'What do we do now, Captain?'
Arras surveyed the island, the sky and its spying reeves, the rushing water that would, he hoped, make boat travel on the channels more difficult for the defenders. They had too much daylight left, with reeves watching their every action. Later, night would cover the movements of their enemy, who knew the channels and mires as he and his people did not.
'We dig in.'
Across the way, a man approached the channel's bank waving a strip of cloth, an offer to parley.
Arras grinned. 'I know what they're going to say. If we retreat in order along the causeway all peaceable like, they won't let our sleeves get dirty.'
'Cursed liars.' Piri snorted.
'My thought, too.' He whistled for a runner. 'No, not you, Laukas. I've got a more difficult job for you, if you'll take it.'
The young soldier did not flinch or even look excited. 'I will, Captain.'
'You. Lati, isn't it? Get back to the gardens. Send Navi up to me. Also, I need a pair of sergeant's badges. Any will do. I want all the Toskalan hostages bound and confined in one of the warehouses. Find me among the hostages the woman who calls herself Zubaidit, and bring her here. If she won't be of use to me one way, then she can be in another.'
'What do you mean to do, Captain?' asked Piri.
'I'll give her sergeant's badges so if they kill her, we won't have lost one of our own. She can do the parley knowing the safety of the hostages depends on her coming back. And Navi and Laukas can keep an eye on her, while getting a chance to prove themselves. What do you think of that, Laukas? Willing to take the chance, going over to walk among the enemy?'
His expression did not change. He nodded obediently, like a good soldier ought. 'Yes, Captain.'
Having slept past midday after several interruptions to nurse, Mai felt better. She nursed the baby, rose and washed, and ate crunchy stalks of pipe-stem slip-fried with steamed fish.
'Sheyshi, you'll watch the baby. Come and fetch me if he cries. Priya and I will be in the counting room.'
A fair amount of rebuilding and fortification had taken place in the compound in the months she had been gone. The main house's entrance porch had a newly reinforced gate leading into the entrance courtyard; she heard
