'Perhaps,' I said.
Out in the marsh we could hear various sounds, movements in the water, the occasional bellow of a tharlarion, usually far off, and the cries of Vosk gulls, perhaps Vosk gulls.
'You, too, now plan to withdraw?' I asked.
'No,' he said.
'Why not?' I asked.
'Cos may be in the delta,' he said.
'That is unlikely,' I said.
'My orders are clear,' he said.
'It is perhaps just as well,' I said. 'Indeed, it probably makes little difference.'
'What do you mean?' he asked.
'You are isolated,' I said, 'probably like most of the other units in the delta. I regard it as unlikely you could, with this strength, enforce an exit.'
'You suggest that we are doomed?' he asked.
'I think men will escape the delta,' I said. 'I suspect some have already done so, perhaps even units, some days ago. Perhaps, too, these large-scale efforts by united columns will be successful. Let us hope so, for the sake of Ar.'
'But?' he asked.
'But,' I said, 'I think the only real hope of escape from the delta lies not with units but with individuals, or small groups of such, individuals who might with fortune, and with skill and stealth, elude rencers, the surveillance of tarn scouts, and the patrols of Cos. Such I think, and, ideally, lone individuals, would have the best chance of escape. Obviously Cos cannot survey the entire delta. She cannot investigate every rush, every stem of rence. She cannot, with adequacy, patrol every soft, dark foot of its perimeter. Indeed, I think that an individual, experienced in marshcraft, familiar with techniques of evasion and survival, of penetration and infiltration, traveling alone, moving with care, might easily escape the delta.'
'I think there are few such men,' he said.
'The red savages are such,' I said. I thought of such men as Cuwignaka, Canka, and Hci.
I think he had his head in his hands. 'Cos must be in the delta,' he whispered.
'Do you pursue your course because you fear, otherwise, court-martial, or disgrace, or shame?'
'No,' he said.
'Why then?' I asked.
'Duty,' said he. 'Can you understand such a thing, a spy?'
'I have heard of it,' I said.
He then moved away from me. In a few moments my keeper moved toward me. He regagged and rehooded me. He then thrust me back on the sand and shortened my neck-rope, so that I might be again held closely between the two stakes.
'If it were up to me,' he said, 'I would clothe you in bright scarlet, and put you at point, manacled, a rope on your neck.'
He then left me.
It had again been hot in the delta today, steaming and oppressive.
Columns must by now have attempted to escape from the delta, I thought. The information at the disposal of the captain might have been days old. Perhaps, exiting in force, they had been successful. I was not one to gainsay the expertise of the infantryman of Ar.
Oddly enough, I now again, as I had once long ago, felt uneasy in the heat. I felt again almost as if something lay brooding over the marsh, or within it, something dark, something physical, almost like a presence, something menacing.
It was a strange feeling.
I noticed then, interestingly, that the marsh was unusually quiet. I could no longer hear even the sound of Vosk gulls.
17 Flies
'Hold, draft beast!' called my keeper.
I stopped, grateful enough in the harness.
Lamentations, cries of misery, rang out in the marsh. Intelligence had arrived from the left. It was impossible not to hear the reports as they were carried from man to man. Indeed, the men learned more rapidly than the officer, I think, what had occurred, for it was onto their lines that men would first come, bearing ill tidings, crying out for succor, many of them, I gathered, wounded Oddly enough, it seemed few, if any, had encountered rencers in the marsh. It was as though these mysterious, elusive denizens of the delta had inexplicably withdrawn, suddenly melted away.
'I knew Camillus! I knew him!' wept a man.
'Flavius has fallen?' demanded another.
'I saw him fall,' said a man.
The left flank, apparently two days ago, had been struck, in much the same manner as the right, earlier. Until the attack it had been relatively immune from rencer contact. Many had conjectured the rencers were only on the right. If anything the attack on the left, to the south, had been more devastating than that on the right, perhaps because of lesser vigilance on the left, where no village had been encountered in the path of the advance.
'Woe is Ar!' wept a man.
I thought I knew, even though hooded, who now held the key to the manacles. I had heard this morning what I took to be the exchange.
'Woe! Woe!' cried a man.
'Four columns have been destroyed to the south!' cried a fellow.
These must be, I had then supposed, those of the left.
'Speak!' cried a fellow.
I heard men wading near me. One was coughing.
'Do not make him speak,' said a fellow.
'Speak, speak!' cried a man.
'I come from the 14th,' he said. 'We with the 7th, the 9th and 11th sought to make exit from the delta!'
'Desertion!' cried a fellow.
'Cosians were waiting for us,' he gasped. 'It was a slaughter, a slaughter! We were raked from the air with quarrels. Stones were used to break our ranks. We were trampled with tharlarion! War sleen were set upon us! We had no chance. We could scarcely move. We were too crowded to wield our weapons. Hundreds died in the mire. Many, who could, fled back into the delta!'
'Woe!' said a man.
'We had no chance,' wept the fellow. 'We were massacred like penned verr!'
'The field was theirs?' said a fellow, disbelievingly.
'Totally,' wept the fellow.
It was now clear, of course, given the references to Cosians, tharlarion, sleen and such, that this disaster was not that of the left flank, which had been struck by rencers, but a defeat suffered in the south, by the units attempting to remove themselves there from the delta. It was no wonder the Cosians had been waiting for them. Their every move in the delta, for days, had probably been reported to the Cosian commander, perhaps Policrates himself, said once to have been a pirate, by tarn scouts.
'Surely you made them pay dearly for their victory,' said a man.
'We were weak, exhausted,' said the man. 'We could hardly lift our weapons!'
'How many prisoners did you take?' asked a man.
'I know of none,' he said.
'How many prisoners did they take?' asked a fellow.
