these soldiers of Mann, just on the other side of the chartassa – some even running amok within the formation. They were the same men who had gutted her people and laid her homeland to ash and waste.
Curl was ashamed of the fear they instilled in her; it was beyond reason, something primal in it like fear of darkness. It was appalling, this power they still held over her.
With haste she finished fitting Bahn’s wounded arm into a sling. It was good to stand next to him, a familiar face in the storm. The man was frightened too, she could see.
‘Thank you,’ he told her as he inspected the sling.
‘Have it seen to properly when you can,’ she told him.
They looked at each other for a moment, something unspoken passing between them. Bahn opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes flicked to the side, and she saw it too – a squad of imperial soldiers behind their lines, one of them tossing a grenade in their direction. Someone shouted a warning. Bahn launched himself at Curl. His arms wrapped around her, and then a bang knocked the senses out of her and she was engulfed in a wash of cold air, and then a hot blast.
She was lying on her back with the wind knocked out of her, and Bahn pressing against her body.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’m all right.’
But his eyes were closed. She couldn’t feel him breathing.
With a shove she pushed him off her and onto his back. His left cheek was torn open. Blood leaked from the ear on that side. Another man lay close by them, his eyes staring blankly at the night sky.
‘Bahn!’ she shouted as she checked his pulse. It was hard to find, but it was there, faintly beating.
She was fumbling for her bag when General Creed himself came stamping towards her with his bodyguards trying to keep up. ‘Is he alive?’
‘Barely!’ she shouted back.
The general glanced across to where an officer was calling out to him. He returned his attention to Bahn sprawled on the ground.
‘Look after this one, you hear me!’
She nodded her head. Creed took one last look at Bahn then strode off towards the officer. ‘Look after him, you hear?’
‘Matriarch,’ said the captain of her honour guard. ‘We should withdraw to a safer position. You are exposed here.’
The captain was right. Sasheen was deep within the imperial lines, a position she’d sought for good reason.
‘Captain. When we win this battle I do not wish it to be said that I sat and watched it from the rear. You are my bodyguards. Protect me.’
Che listened to the exchange with interest. They stood in a clear space of field between the multitude of formations still to be employed in the fighting, and those in front already embroiled in the action.
The Khosians were edging ever closer.
Archgeneral Sparus had been beckoned to her side some moments earlier. He came now on foot, trailed by his own retinue of officers.
‘Can’t you stop them, Archgeneral?’ Sasheen demanded, sitting astride her zel as she considered the scene ahead. ‘I thought they were nearly finished?’
Sparus looked up at her with his bloodshot eye, like a man long ready for his bed. ‘They are, Matriarch. But they have mortar crews holding a superior firing position on the ridge to the south.’ He pointed for her benefit. ‘They fire down upon our forward lines. It allows them progress.’
‘Then retake the ridge and have us finish this.’
He hid his annoyance well. ‘We’re trying to, Matriarch. It will be ours again presently.’
She waved a hand to dismiss him, and Sparus gave a curt nod of his head.
Che turned his back on it all. Behind them the fresh infantry was standing impatiently, waiting for their turn to join the fight. They seemed eager to get this business finished too. It was cold in that armour of theirs on this frozen valley floor. Many were likely hung over, or at least still tired from being awakened so rudely from their sleep.
As a Roshun, and then as a Diplomat, Che had been trained to spot the important details first. Something drew his attention now, and he squinted between the formations of men at a lone Acolyte moving towards the Matriarch’s position.
It took Che a moment to become conscious of what was wrong with the image. The man wore leather leggings beneath his robe.
Che’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword.
Ash was close.
He could see the Matriarch astride her white zel, a golden mask over her face, surrounded by white-robes and mounted bodyguards and her standard hanging above them. His eyes narrowed.
He marched along the edge of a waiting square of men. Deserted camp equipment and trampled pup tents lay scattered across ground that had been churned into a filthy mush. He strode through the remnants of a campfire, scattering ashes and still-glowing embers. His hand closed around the hilt of his sword as he neared the outer ring of Acolytes gathered about the Matriarch.
Behind Sasheen, off to one side of the white-robes, a young Acolyte stood watching Ash.
Ash stopped.
The man drew his blade and stepped out to meet him.
As the Khosians pushed closer towards the Matriarch’s position, the imperial light infantry of the Eighty-First Predasa – less hardened auxiliaries in the main, freshly returned from garrison duty in the northern hinterlands, all of them now sober, tired, and positioned in the thick of the action next to a hardcore of Acolytes – decided that losing over half of their numbers to mortar fire and grenades, including most of their officers, was too much to tolerate for a single night, and decided to beat a retreat to safer ground.
They broke, in fact, when the largest and fiercest of their number, Cunnse of the northern tribes, there for the money and little else, threw aside his shield and sword and shoved his way back through the loosening ranks, shouting that enough was enough, it was time for someone else to meet the slaughter. It took only a moment for the rest to follow his lead.
In no time they were rushing back towards the lines behind them, back towards where the Matriarch was positioned. Others in the fore joined them, retreating from the concussions of mortars raining down from the overlooking ridge.
Che was shoved from behind by this sudden surge of men as he tried to stride forwards.
He fell, rolling through the muck as he held fast to his sword. When he regained his feet he saw men flooding past Sasheen’s position. Her Acolytes and mounted bodyguards struggled to shove them aside or back into the fray. Swords swung, felling some of them – dead men being better than routing ones.
Che looked back. He could no longer see the impostor in the sudden milling press of bodies.
What am I doing? he demanded of himself.
He had more urgent matters at hand. The Khosians were fast approaching the Matriarch’s position, who sat shocked on her jittery white zel with its tail dyed a pretty black.
Che shoved a fleeing soldier out of his way. He took out the pistol loaded with its poison shot.
Waited to see what Sasheen would do next.
Bahn came to a with a gasp, and found that he was being dragged along the ground by a bearded soldier.
A woman was fussing over him.
‘Marlee?’ he croaked.
It was Curl, though, not his wife, and she was bent over him with a vial of smelling salts in her hand. She looked surprised at his recovery, even managed a nervous twitch of her lips.
‘Don’t move,’ she said. ‘You may be concussed.’
He looked up into the bruised and bloodied face of the soldier. The man nodded to him, kept dragging him along.
He had no recollection of how he’d come to be here. One instant, Curl had been treating his wounded arm… then blackness. ‘What happened?’ he rasped.
