He looked up, lips taut. His wound hurt bad now.
Sanguinet dropped to one knee. “Might have known you’d be the first one hurt. Let me look at it.” He grinned. “Close, eh? Don’t look that bad, though.” He squeezed Bragi’s shoulder. “There’s a reason behind every lesson we try to teach. Hope you learned something today. You paid a cheap enough price.” He smiled. “I’ll send the surgeon around. You’ll need stitches. Ride the chow dray the rest of the way in.”
“Do I have to do KP? Sir?”
“Got to pull your weight somewhere.”
“I’ll walk, then. Just stay with my squad.”
“You’ll do what you’re told, son. Laziness isn’t a good enough excuse for losing a leg.”
“Sir —”
“You have your orders, Ragnarson. Don’t compound foolishness with more foolishness.” Today Sanguinet spoke as a Guildsman to a brother, not as a drillmaster belittling a recruit.
Birdsong let Haaken and Reskird drop back to visit the afternoon the regiment started the long climb up the slope leading to the Eastern Fortress. They lifted him down off the chow wagon so he could look at the castle. “Gods. It’s big,” he said.
“They call it the Eastern Fortress,” Reskird told him. “Been here for like eight hundred years, or something, and them all the time adding on.”
Bragi looked around. How did the people of Hammad al Nakir survive in such desolation? The castle turned out its garrison in welcome. Ranks of silent men, dark of eye and skin, often beakish of nose, observed them without expression. Bragi sensed their disdain. The were all old, weathered veterans. He tried hard not to limp.
If he could impress them no other way, his size ought to stir some awe. He was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than the biggest.
Nowhere did he see a woman, and children were scarce. “This is the reception the old-timers talk about when Guildsmen come to the rescue?” he muttered. “Where are the flowers? Where are the cheers? Where are the eager damsels? Haaken, I’m not going to like it here. I’ve seen brighter people at funerals.”
Haaken had his shoulders hunched defensively. He grunted his agreement.
The column passed through the castle gate, into a stronghold as spartan as its defenders. Everything inside looked dry and dusty, and was colored shades of brown. Dull shades of brown. The companies fell in one behind another in a large drill yard, under the hard eyes of a group watching from an inner rampart. “Those guys must be the ones who hired us,” Bragi guessed. He studied them. They did not look any different from their followers. To him, very strange.
Reskird murmured, “Two things I’d give up what Haaken owes me to see. A tree. And a smile on just one of their ugly faces.”
The group on the wall came down and joined Hawkwind. Time passed. Bragi wished they would get on with it. After all that desert all he wanted was a gallon of beer and a soft place to lie down.
Things started moving. Men led the horses away. The front company filed through an inner gate. Bragi surveyed the fortress again, scowled. Not damned likely to be any comfortable barracks here.
One by one, the companies ahead marched away. Then it was the recruits’ turn. A lean native youth approached Sanguinet and spoke briefly. The Lieutenant turned and started bellowing. The company filed out.
The quarters were worse than Bragi had imagined. Two hundred men had to crowd into space meant for maybe seventy. Only a serpent would be able to slide in or out after taps. He tried not to think of the horror consequent to an alarm sounding after dark.
Even officers and noncoms got shoved into that overcrowded cage. There was no room at all for gear. That they left outside.
The growling and cursing died a little. Reskird muttered that he didn’t have room enough to get breath to bitch. Their youthful guide said, “I offer my father’s apologies for these quarters. You came earlier than expected, and at a time when many of our warriors are away, fighting the Disciple. You will be moving to better quarters as soon as they can be furnished. Some may move tomorrow. Your commander is already meeting with my father concerning duty rosters. Men who are assigned stations far from here will be moved nearer immediately.” He spoke Itaskian with a nasal accent, but much more purely than Bragi or his brother.
His gaze crossed Bragi’s. Both youths stared for a moment, startled, as if seeing something unexpected. Once their eyes moved on, Bragi shook his head as though trying to clear it.
“What’s the matter?” Haaken demanded.
“I don’t know. It’s like I saw... I don’t know.” And he didn’t. And yet, the impact had been such that he was now sure this slim, dark, strange young man would play an important part in his life.
Haaken was intrigued. There was more life in his eyes than there had been for months. “You’ve got that look, Bragi. What is it?”
“What look?”
“The same look Mother got when she was Seeing.”
Bragi snorted, making light of their mother’s alleged ability to see the future. “If she’d been able to See, Haaken, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Why not? She could’ve known. She wouldn’t have said anything if there wasn’t anything she could do. Would she?”
“That was all bullshit. She just put on an act to scare people into doing things her way. She faked it, Haaken.”
“Who’s bullshitting who? You know better than that.”
