'Will you help me?'
13
Arras had grown up in the highlands, where ridges and hills and peaks cut into the sky. Here in the delta, as night pressed down over the mire, the flat land troubled him. How did you distinguish sky from land, or land from water? Divisions ought to be clear; that which was blurred was untrustworthy. Here the only consistent element was the humid, musty smell of water and vegetation, like a two-finger porridge coating his tongue.
But as he gazed upward at the stars and strands of cloud streaking the moonless sky, he smiled. No reeves out spying. Night was a good time.
'They're coming back over the bridge, Captain,' said Giyara, who was standing beside him.
A lantern detached from the enemy lines and swayed in a cautious journey over the dismantled span. Subcaptain Piri walked forward with a detachment to meet the negotiators, but he brought back to Arras only Zubaidit in her tabard with its sergeant's badge and young Navi, the runner.
'Where's Laukas?' Arras asked.
'They took him,' blurted out Navi.
'What do you mean, they took him?' He fixed his gaze on Zubaidit. 'Give me your report, Sergeant.'
He thought she'd been about to smile, but at his tone her brows furrowed. 'Navi and Laukas and I were taken to meet with their captain. He's an old fellow, walks with a cane and a limp. He made the offer you expected: he'll call his people off if you'll turn your men around and march back to the mainland and leave Nessumara alone.'
'He could have shouted that offer over the channel. Why did he keep you there so long?'
'He took us on a tour of the militia awaiting us on the island. Wanted to make sure we saw how many armed men were waiting to hammer us should we not agree to retreat.'
Arras scratched his chin. 'How many?'
'About five hundred, that I counted.'
'And Laukas?'
Zubaidit smiled almost mockingly. 'I guessed you sent the lads to spy on me as much as to pretend to be my personal runners, make it seem I was a real sergeant. Now you'll never know if I meant to betray your secrets to the Nessumarans.' Her gaze sharpened as her amusement faded. 'Because it seems that your lad Laukas was a traitor. I'm not sure what signal he gave, because he never spoke one word out of our hearing. But all at once the captain signaled and a pair of guards hustled him away. I'll bet he's spilling his guts right now, telling them everything.'
Arras glanced at Navi. 'They never separated us,' the youth said. 'It's just as she says.'
'The strange thing is,' Arras added, 'that I still can't know what you would have done if it weren't for me threatening to kill the other Toskalan hostages if you didn't return.'
'Then I won't waste my words trying to convince you of what I know is true.'
He grunted, lips twisting into half a smile. 'Laukas seemed so competent, willing to work hard to prove himself. Ambitious,
even. That will teach me to trust new recruits before they've proven their loyalty.'
'They could attack tonight,' she said.
'It's what I would do. But they'll see we're digging in. They may hesitate. They may have only five hundred men, and no more. Anything else?'
'I need a stick to mark with-' Arras handed her his dagger. She cocked an appreciative smile as she handled it, getting its weight and balance, then crouched and began scoring lines in the dirt: a double line for the causeway that ran into a double line crossed by vertical lines to suggest the bridge joining the two islands; the buildings and structures and paths she had seen on the second island; the pattern of their troop disposition. 'Note how they are massed here along the road. They expected First Cohort to push all the way over, so perhaps their counterattack was more successful than they expected. They're city militia, not as disciplined as your men. Also, I saw heaps of dead — piled here, and here — so it's impossible for me to know how many Nessumarans were killed and wounded by First Cohort before the First collapsed.'
'You're observant, Zubaidit. Not a common skill.'
'I had an excellent teacher.'
'What of the farther portion of the island, its connections to what lies beyond?'
'This is all we saw. Navi will corroborate my report.'
'I feel sure he will.' He gestured, and Giyara and Piri pulled back with all the attendants to leave him standing within the hazy pool of light splashed on the ground by the lamp. She was painted a rich golden brown in its light, lustrous and compelling. She wore her hair twisted up atop her head and pinned tightly back, but tendrils brushed her shoulders. Had they shaken loose accidentally, or did she wear them that way on purpose, to distract the men she was dealing with?
Her smile irritated him. 'Captain, you'd like to devour me, that's certain. You're a good figure of a man, and I have no objection to the act, as long as you acquit yourself well, but you must know I'd not be doing it because I'm enamored of you but because you are of me.'
The words stung, but they made him laugh, too. 'That's honestly spoken. You've hit me where I'm vain. I'm not likely to press you now.'
'Another man might.'
'I'm not another man. I won't come begging. I hope your husband is to your taste, for you'd be a fearful woman to be wed to if he weren't. Better your scorn than your indifference.'
'He was an unexpected pleasure, I admit,' she said with the same half-absent flicker to her gaze as when she'd talked about the unknown 'teacher' who had trained her to be an excellent scout. 'Just as charming as his aunt warned me he'd be.'
'And yet you are torn from him.' He shook his head. 'A sad tale.'
'There speaks a man who is captain in the army that took hostages in Toskala in order to force Toskala to bide quietly under its hand. And hung other innocent folk up on poles to die from pain and thirst.'
'Only the Guardians can truly know who is innocent and who a criminal.'
She rose angrily. 'It's true,' she said, the words clipped in a way that suggested she was forcing down what she really wanted to say, 'that few are truly innocent in any meaningful way.'
'I'd be surprised if any were, beyond children too young and those gods-touched too simpleminded to know what is right from what is wrong. Anyway, isn't it better for the Toskalans to bide quietly than lose hundreds or thousands more as happened in High Haldia?'
Her frown fell as swift as the night-wing's call. This close to the bridge he heard the steady waters slushing along in the nearby channel; a splash plopped farther out, but he didn't understand the sounds here: it might be a thrown rock, a fish, a merling, a man; it might be the Water Mother's afterthought, a tear from her left eye. Lamps glimmered on the far shore while his own people worked in darkness. Curse that gods-rotted Laukas, and himself for being careless and overconfident.
Her voice spilled low across the undercurrent of night noises, trembling in much the same way water surges when too much is forced through too small a channel. 'My husband is well enough — he's far better than what I might have found myself bound to — but what choice had I in the matter? I'm obedient to those who rule me. I have no power of my own. It chafes me…'
Her words trailed off. She seemed ashamed, if folk could be ashamed of wanting what they had always been told they should not desire. Was a man wrong to like the discipline of battle? The
tales of the Hundred did not speak kindly of war, and yet Arras had never tired of hearing over and over again those episodes elaborating the clash of weapons, the daring of stalwart soldiers, the courage of those who sought to resolve disputes with clean force.
'I refused to marry the woman my clan wished to bind me to,' he said at last, 'so they cast me out for my rebellious nature. I found comfort in the Thunderer's cohort as an ordinand, but it was not until I was recruited to this army that I have found true satisfaction. The cruelty they practice, which they call cleansing — the hanging from the pole — is pointless, but it is not my army to command.'
