Tarr grunted. ‘Right. I doubt it’ll be the same come tomorrow. It’s a long haul ahead of us. Weapons fit to use? Everybody? Shortnose?’
The heavy looked up, small eyes glittering in the gloom. ‘Yah.’
‘Corabb?’
‘Aye, Sergeant. Can still hear her moaning from the whetstone-’
‘It ain’t a woman,’ said Smiles. ‘It’s a sword.’
‘Then why’s she moaning?’
‘You never heard a woman moan in your life, so how would you know?’
‘Sounds like a woman.’
‘I don’t hear any moaning anyway,’ she replied, drawing out a brace of fighting knives. ‘Weapons good, Sergeant. Just give me some sweet flesh to stick ’em in.’
‘Hold the thought,’ Tarr advised.
‘For, like, five months, Smiles.’ Koryk looked up, studied her from under his unbound hair. ‘Can you do that?’
She sneered. ‘If it’s going to take five months to cross this desert, idiot, we’re deader than dead.’ She rapped one blade against the clay jug slung by braided webbing on her pack. ‘And I ain’t drinking my own piss neither.’
‘Want mine?’ Bottle asked from where he was lying, eyes closed, hands behind his head.
‘Is that an offer to swap? Gods, Bottle, you’re sick, you know that?’
‘Listen, if I have to drink it, better it be a woman’s, because then, if I work real hard, I might be able to pretend I like it. Or something.’ When no one said anything, Bottle opened his eyes, sat up. ‘What?’
Cuttle made to spit, checked himself, and turned to Tarr. ‘Fid have anything new to say, Sergeant?’
‘No. Why, should he have?’
‘Well, I mean, he figures we’re going to make it across, right?’
Tarr shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Can’t do that mission if we don’t.’
‘That’s a fair point, sapper.’
‘He say anything about all this drinking our own piss?’
Tarr frowned.
Koryk spoke up, ‘Sure he did, Cuttle. It’s all in that Deck of Dragons of his. New card. Piss Drinker, High House.’
‘High House what?’ Smiles asked.
Koryk simply grinned, and then looked up at Cuttle and the smile became cold. ‘Card’s got your face on it, Cuttle, big as life.’
Cuttle studied the half-blood, the ritual scarring and tattoos, all in the glyph language of the Seti that Koryk probably only half understood. The ridiculous moccasins. His view was suddenly blocked, and his gaze flicked up to meet Tarr’s dark, deceptively calm eyes.
‘Just leave it,’ the sergeant said in a low mutter.
‘Thought I was gonna do something?’
‘Cuttle …’
‘Thought I was going to rip a few new arseholes in him? Shove my last sharper up inside and then throw him into yonder wagon? Something like that, Sergeant?’
From behind Tarr, Koryk snorted.
‘Load your pack on the wagon, Cuttle.’
‘Aye, Sergeant.’
‘Rest of you, get your gear up and get ready — the night beckons and all that.’
‘I might sell my piss,’ said Smiles.
‘Yeah,’ said Koryk, ‘all that silver and gold, only it won’t go on the wagon, Smiles. We need to keep the bed clear for all the booty we’re going to scoop up. No, soldier, you got to carry it.’ He pulled on the first moccasin, tugged the laces. Both strings of leather snapped in his hands. He swore.
Cuttle heaved his pack on to the wagon’s bed, and then stepped back as Corabb followed suit with his own gear, the others lining up, Koryk coming last wearing two untied moccasins. The sapper stepped past the corporal, Bottle, and then Smiles.
His fist caught Koryk flush on the side of the man’s head. The crack was loud enough to make the oxen start. The half-blood thumped hard on the ground, and did not move.
‘Well now,’ Tarr said, glowering at Cuttle, ‘come the fight and this soldier beside you, sapper, you going to step sure then?’
‘Makes no difference what I done just now,’ Cuttle replied. ‘Beside him, in the next battle, I ain’t gonna step sure at all. He mouthed off in the trench — to Fiddler himself. And he’s been mopin’ around ever since. Y’can have all the courage you want on the outside, but it ain’t worth shit, Sergeant, when what’s inside can’t even see straight.’ The speech had dried out his mouth. He lifted his right hand. ‘Gotta see a cutter now, Sergeant. I broke the fucker.’
‘You
‘Just his luck,’ muttered Smiles.
Horns sounded. The Bonehunters stirred, shook out, fell back into column, and the march was under way. Bottle slipped in behind Corabb, with Smiles on his left. Three strides in their wake walked Shortnose. Bottle’s pack was light — most of his kit had gone into general resupply, and as was true of armies the world over, there was no such thing as oversupply, at least not when it came to useful gear.
The clay jug rolled in its webbing alongside his hip, swinging with each stride.
‘Get up here beside me, Bottle.’
‘Sergeant?’
‘Fid wanted me to ask you some questions.’
‘We already went over what I remembered-’
‘Not that. Ancient history, Bottle. What battle was that again? Never mind. Drop back there, Corabb. No, you’re still corporal. Relax. Just need some words with Bottle here — our squad mage, right?’
‘I’ll be right behind you then, Sergeant.’
‘Thanks, Corporal, and I can’t tell you how reassuring it is to feel your breath on the back of my neck, too.’
‘I ain’t drunk no piss yet, Sergeant.’
Once past the corporal, Bottle scowled back at him over a shoulder. ‘Corabb, why are you talking like Cuttle’s dumber brother these days?’
‘I’m a marine, soldier, and that’s what I am and this is how us marines talk. Like the sergeant says, what battle was that again? Ancient history. We fight somebody? When? Like that, you see?’
‘The best marines of all, Corporal,’ Tarr drawled, ‘are the ones who don’t say a damned thing.’
…
‘Corporal Corabb?’
‘Sorry, what, Sergeant? Like that?’
‘Perfect.’
Bottle could see Balm and his squad a dozen paces ahead. Throatslitter. Deadsmell. Widdershins.
‘No warrens around here, right?’
