“Anything?” he asked Subcaptain Orli after he had relayed First Cohort’s orders.
“No, Captain. Seventh Cohort is maintaining distance, according to plan. As for the mire, cursed if I know. I saw a boat.”
“So did I. Stay alert. Betrayal seems cursed simple, but something could easily go wrong.”
The runner reached the vanguard of Seventh Cohort. Arras worked his way back up through the unit to the wedge that surrounded their twenty-eight hostages, all of whom looked frightened and weary.
All but one.
The other hostages watched what she did, listened for what she said, adjusted their stride to match her pace. They were cowed hostages who knew they were alive only on the sufferance of their captors. She was not cowed. Interesting.
She offered him something that wasn’t a smile as much as a challenge. “Captain Arras. How nice of you to come explain yourself.”
“Explain myself? I’m still trying to figure what you did with those chickens.” He clasped his hands behind his back as he fell into step beside her.
“We didn’t do anything with the chickens. We had to put the cage back. You saw the whole thing.”
“The other chickens. The ones you successfully stole via misdirection.”
“I did nothing but what you saw me do, Captain. I’m sorry you believe otherwise.”
It was a discussion they’d had four times in the last four days; he was no nearer to figuring if the hostages had managed to cook the birds without him knowing or to trade them without being caught, and in the latter case for what items in exchange? He had the hostages’ bundles searched every night for weapons and contraband, but nothing ever showed up beyond the usual gear: a spoon, a bowl, a flask, a hat and cloak to keep off rain and sun, a spare linen jacket, soap, a comb, a towel, and a mat to unroll on the ground.
“I meant to say,” she went on, “I’m surprised you didn’t leave us back in camp instead of forcing us to march into battle with you. Won’t we just get in the way?”
“Only if there’s trouble.”
Her lips curved into a mocking smile. “Traitors opened the gates of Toskala. Nessumaran traitors can easily tear down barriers that block causeways. They’ll let you take the city without a fight. It’s the same day, is it not? Wakened Ox.”
“It’s better this way. For the Nessumarans.”
“Not for you?”
“Fighting threshes the weak from the useful. Helps me get to know my soldiers.”
She walked in silence, strides of her long legs matched to his. She was thinking over his words, or hoping he would go away; he wasn’t sure which. He was pretty sure she wasn’t afraid of him, as she ought to be. It was a cursed admirable trait, to be so cool and confident.
“Captain!” His attendant, a decent young man named Navi, had slipped back along the causeway. “Sergeant Giyara sends her respects, Captain. Our vanguard has started across the bridge.”
“I’ll come right up.”
“It’s cursed strange, though, Captain.” The young man swiped a hand over his left shoulder in a nervous gesture he had, the kind of thing that could get to irritating a man if the youth weren’t so stolid otherwise.
“What’s that?”
“Just that the channel we’re crossing is running so strong, Captain. You’d think they’d control the flow of water better. With dams and locks and flood barriers.”
“What good would that do? I’m uplands born and bred myself.”
“I’m Istria born, Captain. There’s plenty you can do by diverting a strong river current into irrigation channels and canals. I’d have thought they’d divert a side channel into a series of canals that would make haulage and transportation easy within the inner delta and the city, that’s what I’d—”
He seemed likely to chatter on, made enthusiastic by knowing something his captain did not. Arras cut him off. “Well observed. We’ll see what to make of it when we come to know the city better, as we will—”
Light glinted on the water, a flash repeated twice. Arras raised a hand to shade his eyes, staring over the flat expanse marred here and there by a bright explosion of greener brush or tenacious trees grown on hummocks.
Zubaidit lifted an elbow to point up. “That came from the sky. The reeves are signaling to someone out there in the swamp.”
“Why would they be—?”
Once before in his life, as a youth training as an ordinand, out on a field expedition with eleven others like him, he’d heard a sound before he realized he’d heard it. His action, back then, had saved his own life although it hadn’t saved the lives of the other young ordinands he was with. He’d not been captain of their merry little band. Indeed, he’d been youngest and least experienced among them, but the slaughter had taught him a lesson he would never forget: Don’t act for yourself alone; you are responsible for your comrades.
“Shields up!” he shouted as he grabbed Navi’s arm and yanked him behind the cover of the nearest infantryman.
Streaks darkened the sky as shapes rose out of the water, but his soldiers had already obeyed. Arrows rained down on the causeway, thwacking stone, thudding on upraised shields, but no one was hit. Hostages sobbed with fear.
“Get down!” cried Zubaidit to the Toskalans. She dropped, and the others followed like wheat mowed down as a second flight of arrows rose into the sky from the wetlands and clattered down. A man among the hostages screamed and thrashed.
“I’m hit!” cried one of the soldiers, without panic, just letting everyone know.
“Heh, trying to grow a second tool from your ass, Tendri?” laughed one of his comrades.
Arras heard the clamor of battle joined far ahead, whose first tremors in the air had warned him before he fully recognized what he was hearing.
“Tortoise!” he cried. The soldiers shifted seamlessly, forming a barrier with their shields. Movement flurried through the ranks as Sergeant Giyara pushed back to join him. For an instant he stood above the turtling backs of the shields, above the cowering hostages, and scanned the entire prospect: the deadly mire, the exposed bridge and the solid island beyond, the enemy in the swamp, boats slipping into view with more archers within, a chaos of dust and hammering action ahead where the vanguard boiled with action against the haze and smoke raised by the commotion. Impossible to see what they were up against.
“Captain Arras,” said Zubaidit from the ground. Her grin was so cocky that he wanted to kick her. “I think your betrayers have either betrayed you, or been betrayed in their turn and had their plan exposed.”
She was right, curse her.
Seventh Cohort’s captain acted at last: Figures, small at this distance, broke off in clusters from the cohort behind his and plunged into the water toward the half-hidden archers, only to flounder into traps and sinkholes.
“Captain!” Sergeant Giyara yanked him under a shield as a new shower of arrows fell. His people were too cursed exposed, and they were taking hits.
Zubaidit grabbed his arm. “Captain! I beg you. Can the hostages hide under the wagons? I’ve got five hit already.”
He shook her off. “Sound the drum! Push over the bridge and get onto land! Move! Move!”
Arrows flew. Men staggered. Some fell, and were dragged by their fellows as the companies pressed forward, pushing hard to get off the causeway. One man spun away over the edge of the causeway and tumbled into the shallows, facedown in the muddy water. Behind, Seventh Cohort was retreating, cursed fools; they had three mey of causeway to cover to get back to dry land; they’d be picked off.
“Sergeant!” he called, having lost Giyara in the forward surge. He took a sharp blow to his head. An arrow slid down his body, and he stepped on it, snapping it in half. The hells! He swiped a hand over his helmet, but the arrow hadn’t dislodged anything.
He snagged a pair of unbroken arrows. “Pick up every arrow you can find. Toss them in the wagons. Keep moving!”
The soldiers on the outside had their shields wedged well togeth
er to cover legs and torsos. The line inside had lifted shields to cover the heads of the outer rank. They marched in pace with the drum. The wagons rumbled. Arrows thudded into the gravel, or were swept up by a spare hand and tossed into the wagons. A driver grunted as an arrow sprouted in his side, but he kept driving, hunched over. Zubaidit leaped up on the bench and yanked the reins from the man’s hands. Where were those cursed hostages? If they were getting in the way of his troops, he’d slit their throats himself. But they had boxed themselves in between the wagons, hauling their injured. A young woman went down in a fresh shower of deadly arrows. He felt the kiss of death brushing past, but nothing hit him; instead, he stepped over a limp body, a young soldier shot in the eye. Dead instantly, no doubt. Unfortunate. He grabbed the fellow’s sword and kept moving. Looking back, he saw one of the hostages—an older woman with her hair tightly wrapped in a scarf—wrench the shield from the soldier’s slack hand.
The gravel of the causeway surface gave way to wood planking, the crunch of his footsteps turning to a scrape as he moved over the bridge in the midst of his personal staff. The current in the channel ran swiftly beneath, a purling sound so loud it muffled the roar of confusion coming from up ahead where First Cohort was fighting a foe of unknown size, ferocity, and skill.
The bridge went on and on, as arrows rained down, but although one man and then a second and then a third slumped against the railings, the drummer did not cease her steady beat, the wagons rolled, the men held. The Toskalan hostages grabbed wounded men and slung them on the backs of wagons.
They marched out onto dry ground where he got a quick impression of plenty of dangerous open space and scattered abandoned carts and wagons and hitching gear plus boats drawn up and overturned by the river wall. There were warehouses, trees in planted rows, low brick walls surrounding several conjoined garden plots, a long brick row house with porch and multiple doors, many left open, the place clearly deserted in haste. The island was small, with a lane piercing straight through to a distant bridge, where a mob of fighting churned and boiled, dust thick in the air.
He pushed forward to find the vanguard setting up a quick and dirty perimeter using a pair of storehouses as their cornerstone.
“We’re not stopping. We push up to support First Cohort—”
A massive crack made everyone flinch. Out of the chaos ahead, men screamed; shouts rang as the enemy cried aloud in triumph. Arras ran out beyond the perimeter: the distant clot of First Cohort’s rearguard was falling back in confusion, completely out of order. Smoke billowed from the vicinity of the bridge and the unseen ground beyond it. Flames licked, running high. A horrible screaming yammer—maybe no more than ten men—caught in those flames on the bridge, but their agony stabbed panic into the rest. Arras had seen men break and run. He knew what would happen next; he’d witnessed the death of his comrades before, because once you are routed, you are easy prey.
“Heya! New orders!” The rain of arrows had abated now that they were on the island, but he knew their enemy out in the mire was merely taking this chance to regroup, or was pursuing Seventh Cohort down the causeway. “We’re fixing a perimeter on this island. Move to those garden walls.”
“There’s good cover, Captain, in these warehouses—” cried one of his vanguard sergeants.
“Neh. They’ll burn us out of wooden structures. That thatch will go up in a heartbeat. Set up an outer perimeter along the warehouse line. Everyone else back to the brick walls. Sergeant Giyara!”
“Captain!”
“I want sweep teams through every abandoned building while we’re free of archery fire. Strip any provisions, supplies, everything. I’ll need another cadre to drag in all the wagons and boats. We’ll break them up and build shelters, arrow breaks, barriers. If we can manage it in staggered units, break down that row house for bricks to strengthen our perimeter. We’ll make the three walled garden plots our main defensive hold, build it up as we can, and I want to include that mulberry orchard, too, so we have range of motion and some protection from that direction. We’ll need forward outposts, and banners torn up to form signal flags. Cadre sergeants—”
“I’ll assign them, Captain,” said Giyara, as he’d known she would.
“Captain!” Subcaptain Orli’s runner came panting up, face streaked with mud. “There’s trouble on the first bridge. Burning arrows, Captain.”
“Get back to Subcaptain Orli. I want everyone over and the main central planks pulled out. We must control access to the bridge, stop their reinforcements from marching up over the causeway.”
“They can still land boats, Captain—”
“One thing at a time! Get those men over and close down that bridge.”
His soldiers fell to their tasks with the discipline he’d drilled into them, but as he scanned the shape of the island—too big a slab of ground to encompass easily but not so large that it offered a range of environment—remnants of First Cohort came fleeing down the road with shields slamming on their backs in rhythm to their pounding steps. Their faces were tight with bewilderment and unthinking fear.
He grabbed a company banner ripped by arrow shot and placed himself in the center of the road with the pole held horizontal to block their headlong flight.
“Halt, you gods-rotted cowards!”
He’d trained all his youth with an ordinand’s staff; of all weapons, a strong staff still felt most comfortable in his hands. He lashed out now, thumping the men in the front with a flurry of blows that knocked them back or sent them to their knees.
“Halt!”
The second rank slowed, men responding to his voice in the shaken manner of people coming awake abruptly. The soldiers behind them had to stutter step to avoid smashing into those before them, and this shift altered the entire momentum of their collapse.
“Get in your cadres! Form up!”
Folk who feel helpless desire order just as the starving desire food, or the falling man grasps at any object that will stop his fall.
“You!” He grabbed a soldier who was moving too slowly and backhanded him. Others skipped into ranks, startled by the blow.
The young man he had hit reeled sideways, then caught himself and snapped upright. “Captain?” he squeaked.
“Where’s your sergeant?” Arras roared
Men looked around, seeking sergeants. “Captain! I don’t know, Captain!”
“Move your group off the road. Stay in formation!” The mass began to seethe as the press behind them thickened. “You there!” He pointed at another man. “Where’s your sergeant? Eiya! Move your group off the road, to the other side. Stay in formation!” He whistled, and one of his runners jumped up beside him. “I need Subcaptain Piri and his company.”
By the time Piri arrived, Arras had two cadres sorted out.
“Captain!”
“Piri, take your company to the forward bridge. Make sure it’s blocked, then hold the perimeter. I’m sending these two cadres with you.”
“Captain?”
“If we’re stuck on this island, we’ll claim all the ground and place our perimeter on the shoreline. Dig in.”
“Captain!”
As Piri and his company pushed through First Cohort’s retreat, Arras cracked the whip of discipline over the fleeing men, separating out more cadres, sending them with runners to reinforce: this cadre to Orli at the eastern bridge; three cadres to Giyara to break up wagons, but not boats, so his own troops could be released to set a shoreline perimeter. With the remains of First Cohort, he might have enough to hold the island.
Yet every time he looked skyward, those cursed eagles circled, spying out his every move. A sweating runner sprinted into view.
“Subcaptain Piri’s compliments, Captain. The bridge approach is secure. Any intact planks on our side are pulled back for later use if we choose to push forward. We’ll need more planks. We’ve set up a strong archery screen so they can’t completely dismantle the railings on the far side. First Cohort’s forward companies on the far
side look pretty well slaughtered. There are bodies in the channel, but they’re getting swept downstream by the current into the swamp. Orders, Captain?”
Arras looked him over, a stocky young man with a fresh cut on his chin. “You’re one of the new recruits. Laukas, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Captain.” The young man didn’t smile as some new recruits did, when the captain honored them by recalling their names. He wasn’t a friendly sort like Navi. “Orders, Captain?”
“Escort this sorry-looking cadre to Piri. Have him split them out among his own company. I want a secure perimeter. I’ll be up soon to get a look.”
“Yes, Captain.” No nonsense there. He ran back to the front.
Arras beckoned to the lone sergeant wearing First Cohort’s spear-and-star tabard. “What’s your name, Sergeant?”
The man looked gray about the eyes, as ashamed as he should be. “I’m called Eddo, Captain.”
“Take your cadre and secure every boat you can find on this cursed island. We’ll need them all, half placed at each bridge. Then break down the planks in those warehouses. In case we need to build a floating bridge.”
The man stared at him, not responding.
For a moment Arras thought he was addled, or an imbecile. “Sergeant Eddo?”
There’s a look men get when they have lost hope and then, unexpectedly, find a spark they can feed with the kindling of resolve. “Yes, Captain!” He briskly took charge of his men.