and legs, no meat to them at all. One good shove will send them running.'
'But the Askhans came up with the idea of the legions… That's what makes them better than everyone else.'
'Maybe against your lot, whooping their heads off and running at a spearwall, but against another legion, those Askhans will be on the shitty end of the stick.'
Removing his now warmed hands, Gelthius was about to continue his argument when he hesitated, his ears catching a change in the wind. The voices were still there, harsh and cold, but they had grown more strident.
'You must be able to hear that,' he said. 'That's not just a trick of the mind.'
The others were looking around with concern and did not reply. The voices, though no louder, were speaking rapidly, the cadence of their words increasing in tempo. They throbbed in Gelthius's ears, growing in insistence, worming their way into his mind. His heart beat faster, keeping pace with the awful voices as the rhythm continued to speed up. Through the hissing he could hear disturbance in the camp below; shouts of alarm, the sound of running feet, the pause in the hammering at the armouries.
An eerie quiet settled, not a sound made by any of the thousands of men, only the wind and its disturbing voices could be heard within the camp walls.
'That's jus-' began Arsiil, but he choked. Dropping his spear and shield, he clutched his hands to his throat, eyes bulging.
The legionnaire fell to his knees with a crack, gasping. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his lips, and he looked at his comrades in terror. Geddiban took a step towards him and suddenly fell, convulsing as he vomited blood across the planks of the tower.
'The spirits of plague!' hissed Gelthius, backing away from the afflicted men.
He saw more men falling along the walls and on other towers. He watched one legionnaire stagger backwards, arms flailing, until he toppled over the rampart into the stake-lined ditch outside. Looking down into the camp, Gelthius saw other casualties stumbling between the tents. Some blundered blindly into fires, hoarse screams coming from bloodstained lips. Many were on their hands and knees or crawling on their bellies, leaving crimson trails in the frost-rimed mud.
The voices stopped.
The wind continued to blow, but now screams and groans and agonised shouts were carried on the breeze. Gelthius heard officers bellowing orders, but did not understand the words. His ears still burned and his stomach was a knot of pain. He dabbed a finger to his lips, fearing to see blood, but there was none. Keeping his distance from the bodies of the men on the tower, he made his way to the ladder and hastily climbed down, only to find a contorted corpse at the bottom. Fingers spasmed into claws, legs and arms bent awkwardly, the dead legionnaire stared up at Gelthius with wide eyes, bubbles of red froth still bursting through his gritted teeth.
'You, get away from there!' a second captain called out. 'If you're not ill, muster at your drill square.'
Gelthius nodded dumbly and staggered through the camp, every turn revealing more dead and dying. He heard something scraping at the canvas inside a nearby tent and broke into a run, dashing for the safety of open ground.
II
'Seven hundred and thirty-eight dead,' Anasind announced grimly. 'Another seventy or so that won't survive the night, and hundred and six more that will probably live but can barely breathe or walk.'
Ullsaard took this news without comment. He rubbed his bristled chin and looked at his First Captain. The prevailing wisdom was illness, but Ullsaard was not so sure. It was not the number infected that shocked him, but the sudden speed of the affliction's onset. And though he had said nothing, like everyone else he had heard those sinister voices in the air. He had been feeding Blackfang and thought it was just the guards outside the corral tent whispering to each other. Then the panic had started.
'How many desertions?' he asked quietly.
'Not too bad,' said Anasind. 'At last muster, less than two hundred men accounted for, and half a dozen officers. It's not a rout.'
'I think they've been poisoned,' the general said.
'Poison? How?' replied Anasind. 'It's affected men from companies across all three legions here. If it was the food, it wouldn't be so widespread.'
'Something in the air, maybe,' said Ullsaard. He shook his head angrily. 'I don't know how, but it's an attack. Plague doesn't strike in winter. Check all of the food stores, and double the number of men accompanying the caravans. If you find anything suspicious, anything the slightest bit odd, burn it. We can't take any chances.'
'Nobody has had access to the food except the men,' said Anasind. 'And no man in the camp would poison the supplies, because he'd be just as likely to die himself.'
'What else would you have me do?' Ullsaard asked, slamming a hand on the arm of his campaign chair. 'Stop the men from breathing? While you're at it, send patrols up the rivers, make sure the water isn't being tainted. And check the storage butts too. Something caused this, and we have to stop it happening again.'
III
The gruesome episodes did not stop. Despite every precaution that Ullsaard and his officers could take, there were sporadic outbursts of death and disease. Sometimes the bloody vomiting returned; other times, men were struck blind and deaf, or their bones became brittle so that they snapped with the slightest pressure.
The winter closed in fiercely, colder than anything any man in the legions could remember, even the Enairians. Though the snow came thick and fast for days on end, Ullsaard began to welcome the blizzards; when the snow was thick, he could not hear the voices on the wind, there were no strange episodes and men were unwilling to risk their lives in the wilds by deserting.
The general began to have nightmares. Nothing distinct, nothing he could place when he woke, but every morning he would have a lingering feeling of dread and oppression. He could tell others were affected the same; a surly mood born of fatigue and worry enveloped the camp.
The snowstorm was almost permanent. It became a constant job for the legionnaires to shovel ice and snow into wagons and take it out of the camp. Tents were flattened and the walls needed continual repairs to guard against the weight of the cold deluge.
By Midwinter's day, as close as Ullsaard could reckon it, it had snowed for thirty-eight days without surcease. Sickness, death and desertion since the winter began had robbed him of more than two and a half thousand men. The bodies of a thousand had been buried in the forests a few miles from the camp: the army could not spare the wood to build pyres. Ullsaard had promised that proper ceremonies would be carried out in the spring, but he could feel the will of his legions being sapped day by day.
There was no open rebellion, but the grind of daily life that had once been the machinery of discipline had become a soulbreaking series of never-ending chores without end in sight. Not even in the blasting heat of Mekha had he known the morale of his soldiers to fall so low. There was no enemy to fight, no foe to blame for the misery they endured, and so the grumbling turned against the officers and, with an inevitability Ullsaard had feared, the camp talk began to whisper questions about Ullsaard's endeavour and the wisdom of his bid for the throne.
He discussed the matter with Anasind and the other First Captains, but there was not a lot they could do. Rumour and gossip was part of legion life and couldn't be stopped. The weather was beyond their control. All that could be done to keep the men warm and fed was being done. Ullsaard all but emptied the coin store giving the men advance pay, but it was nothing more than a gesture for there was nothing to spend it on. Parmia was only ten miles away, but in the blizzards it was a journey of several days and no man had neither the time nor the will for such an expedition just to drink wine, eat a fine meal or have sex with a prostitute.
Midwinter's night found Ullsaard walking the ramparts, trying to cheer up his men whilst showing them that he shared their predicament. They were respectful but quiet. He had always enjoyed a good relationship with the
