“At ease,” Stryke told him.
“Sir.” He didn’t noticeably relax.
“Everything all right with you, Pirrak?”
“Yes, sir. Shouldn’t it be, sir?”
“Well, it should be, but I get the feeling it isn’t.”
“I’m fine.” The response was a little too quick and a little too edgy.
Stryke tried another tack. “The band’s treating you well? They’re comradely?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Dallog?”
There was a pause before he got an answer. “What do you mean, Captain?”
“He’s taking care of you?”
“Yes.”
“Look, Pirrak, maybe I’ve not been as easy to talk to as I should have been. But you know things have been frantic since we left Acurial.”
The private’s expression visibly stiffened. He said, “Yes, sir,” his voice taut.
Stryke put that down to the youngster’s callow nature. “My mind’s been on the mission, and on other things, and maybe I’ve been forgetting my duties to the band. But I want you to know that if you ever need to talk to me about anything, you can. Or any of the other officers. Though you might not want to make Sergeant Haskeer your first choice.” If Pirrak saw the intended humour in that, he didn’t react. “If Dallog’s not around, that is,” Stryke quickly tagged on.
“I understand.” As an apparent afterthought he added, “Thank you, sir.” There was a more genuine quality in that, and perhaps even a little warmth, than anything else he had said.
“All right. Just bear it in mind. And get a shake on, we’ll be moving soon.”
“Sir.”
Stryke turned and left him standing there, looking graceless.
Almost immediately he crossed paths with Coilla and Pepperdyne, on the way back from their tryst.
“See you were having a natter with Pirrak,” Coilla said. “Pep talk?”
“Kind of. Don’t know how much sunk in.”
“Does seem kind of woolly most of the time, doesn’t he?”
“He’s not the easiest of the new recruits to talk to,” Pepperdyne said, “but they’re all a bit green, aren’t they, Stryke?”
“I’d hoped they’d be a little more ripe by now. But I guess that’s what comes from letting Dallog keep them apart from the rest.”
“We carrying on now?” Coilla asked.
“Yes,” Stryke replied, “start rousing ’em.”
Coilla headed off for a bout of shouting, Pepperdyne in tow.
On impulse, Stryke decided to go over to Dallog.
When he came to him he saw that he had his eyes shut, and seemed to be muttering to himself.
“Dallog?”
The corporal came to himself with a start, and for just an instant appeared sheepish. But his crisp “Captain!” had its usual ebullience.
“What were you doing?”
“Praying.”
“Praying?”
“Asking the Tetrad to look favourably on our mission.”
Stryke knew it was something many in the band did. He did it himself occasionally when things looked rough, and he had turned to the gods more than once since Thirzarr was taken. But it wasn’t the sort of thing anyone talked about much. He tended to think of it as a personal matter and none of his business. So he simply said, “Sorry to disturb you, then.”
“No problem, Captain. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been talking to Pirrak.”
Dallog’s gaze flicked to the grunt in question, who was gathering up his gear. “Have you?”
“Yeah. And I’m still wondering if he’s fitting in.”
“Oh, that. Like I told you, he’s a little on the quiet side. Bit of a thinker, if you know what I mean. Not that it makes him any less dependable in combat.”
“Maybe not. But he’ll fight better if he mixes with the band more. All the tyros will.”
“You’ve already made that point, Captain.”
“Just so you know I mean it. There are going to be some changes in future.”
“If there is a future for us.”
“What?”
“I mean, I sort of figured this mission was a one-off. I don’t know if you have any plans for the band after that, or whether we’d be part of it.”
“I don’t know myself. And you could be right: maybe there’s no future for any of us. Who knows how this thing will pan out?”
“That’s a glum way of looking at it, Captain. I’m sure that under your command-”
“Yeah. We’ll see. Meantime, keep an eye on Pirrak.”
“You can count on it.”
“And get ’em ready; we’re moving out.”
They rode on for what could have been a quarter of a day, if they had any means of judging it accurately. The constant sun sat high in the sky, as it always did, and their sense of time was shot.
The landscape stayed the same, not quite lush and not quite scrub, until a change loomed. Ahead of them was the edge of a forest. It spread a long, long way to the west and east. Stryke halted the convoy.
“Through or round?” he asked Dynahla.
“Round is going to delay us a lot, and would probably be as perilous.”
“Forests are too good for ambushes. I don’t like ’em. Unless I’m doing the ambushing.”
“I could scout it for us. But if there’s no obvious trap in there-”
“You might not see it. I know. That’s why I don’t like forests.”
“Well, shall I?”
Stryke nodded.
The shape-changer took on a bird guise again, a small one this time, presumably to make it easier to negotiate the forest. They watched as it flew towards the tree-line, but lost sight of it before it got there.
There was such a long wait that they were starting to think they’d seen the last of the fetch. Then the bird reappeared, travelling at speed.
Back in his familiar form, Dynahla reported. “It’s big. Took me a while to get all the way over. I didn’t see anything that looked threatening, but that might not mean much. It’s pretty dense in parts, and dark.”
“We going to be able to get that through?” Stryke stabbed a thumb at the curious weapon.
“I think so. Though I expect there’ll be a certain amount of weaving about.”
“I suppose we’ll have to do it then.”
“Like I said, everything in this place has a purpose. The forest’s there because we’re supposed to enter it.”
“That’s another way of saying we will run into something.”
“Not necessarily. It could be just a forest. But it pays to expect trouble.”
“What the fuck,” Haskeer said. “We love trouble.”
“You’re unlikely to be disappointed,” Dynahla told him.
Stryke made sure everybody had at least one weapon close to hand, and got the archers to nock their bows.
They resumed their journey.
The nearer they got to the forest the more it came to dominate, and it became obvious that many of the trees were enormously tall. Entering it was like being swallowed by some gigantic beast composed of timber rather
