Alice was wearing a dangerously sweet smile. “So Pocahontas led you to the pass, did she? Then she went back to her own people?"
In a very flat voice, Exeter said, “Yes, she led us to the pass. She couldn't go back to her family, although we went very near her home. They would have treated her as a traitor, even though she was only a child."
"I see. Sorry. I was being bitchy."
Mrs. Bodgley gulped audibly. “Er, what did these Thargian Junkers of yours have to say about the looting and pillaging?"
Looting and pillaging were not part of the Fallow curriculum.
"Almost nothing! That was very strange indeed! They shadowed us with cavalry, lancers on moas. We could see them in the distance, but they never closed. They picked off stragglers and patrols, but only Joalians. Nagian blood was never shed."
"Odd?"
"Very! Favoritism! It began to cause dissension, as you may imagine. Golbfish insisted that the enemy was trying to pry the allies apart, split the Nagians away from the Joalians, and he managed to keep the peace more or less—he was a wonder, that man! After a couple of days, when the pattern became obvious, he suggested that Nagians and Joalians exchange equipment, helmet for shield, spear for sword. We tried that, and even the army itself could hardly tell which was which. The Thargians stopped attacking at all.
"We kept up the pace. Forced marches, thirty miles a day. It was a race. Moggpass had held us up a little. After that we had a clear run across Thargvale to get to Saltorpass and home. Thargian roads are excellent, as you might guess. In order to cut us off, their main army had to run the gauntlet of Lemodflat, and I told you what that's like."
"Obviously you won the race, or you wouldn't be here."
Exeter rubbed his eyes. “No. We lost. Well, not exactly. The Great Game came into play again. I say, it feels deucedly late! We didn't get much sleep last night.... Do you think we could continue this breathtaking saga in the morning?"
"Well, of course!” Mrs. Bodgley said. “But you can't leave us hanging like that! Give us a clue. What do you mean by the Great Game?"
"The Pentatheon, the Five. I told you how Krobidirkin got me involved in the Joalian campaign, and possibly Tion was in on that also. I still don't know all the details. The Game is so complicated that even the players can't keep track of the rules, and everyone has his own way of scoring. But when Zath learned that the gates of Lemod had been opened under a quadruple conjunction, he knew exactly where the Liberator was. So he leaned on Karzon, who is the Man, who is also patron god of Thargland. That was why the Thargians weren't killing us—the priests in Tharg had received a revelation from Karzon."
"I'm lost,” Alice said.
"Zath wanted me taken alive."
"Alive?"
"So he could make absolutely certain I died, of course. This time he was going to do it himself and see it was done right."
36
NOONTIME SUN BEAT DOWN ON THE DUSTY ROAD. THERE WERE NO mountains in sight to the south at all—a situation that seemed wrong to Dosh, as if a necessary part of the world were missing. Thargvale was very big, the army very small. With the scouts and foragers and skirmishers spread out amid copses, hollows, and hedges, five thousand men could vanish into the landscape. Trudging up the road with Ysian at his side, he could easily disbelieve in those five thousand men.
That was a delusion, a fancy. In fact Talba's squad was just ahead, out of sight over the rise. Beyond the hedgerows, patrols flanked the army's progress on either hand. Gos'lva and his cavalry troop were close behind—unfortunately.
Since Lemod the cavalry traveled on foot, like everyone else. They were close enough to call out ribald remarks, usually about the incongruity of the pervert squiring the battlemaster's concubine. Away from the city, out in the field again, Dosh was no longer one of the boys. Jittery men needed a butt for nervy humor, and he was an obvious target.
"Hey, Pogink Lancer?” bellowed a voice.
"Yes, Koldfad Lancer?” roared another.
"Tell me, Pogink Lancer, why Dosh hath no spear?"
"I don't know, Koldfad Lancer. Why hath Dosh no spear?"
The punch line was predictably obscene. The cavalry's humor had never been of the best; descent to ground level and the status of mere mortals had not improved it. Their current blisters, fatigue, hunger, danger, and other tribulations must be very good for their souls but were obviously failing to keep their primitive minds from carnal fantasies.
Dosh bore no weapons because D'ward still used him as a runner. He probably traveled twice as far as the rest of the Army did in a day. He didn't usually let the abuse worry him, and didn't know why he was feeling the bite now.
"Hey, Koldfad Lancer?"
"Yes, Pogink Lancer?"
"What do you think of the way those hips move?"
"Which hips are you admiring, Pogink Lancer?"
"You don't have to stay here and listen to them,” Ysian said quietly.
Dosh glanced down and saw a puzzled look in her big, clear eyes—the eyes of a child. She had been limping along at his side in silence for some time, apparently paying as little attention to the humorists as he did ... paying, it must be admitted, very little attention to him either. The pack she bore was as big as any man's, her boyish form bent almost double under it. Every man in the army was half again as big as she was, but she kept up. She never complained, so far as Dosh knew. He sought her out and escorted her when he wasn't running errands, but the two of them rarely spoke much. The only thing they had in common was that they were both misfits.
A runner could not carry a pack, either. Ysian had shared her rations with him.
"They're just getting randy,” he muttered, and then wondered if she would even understand what he meant.
Apparently she did. “This rape and pillage expedition hasn't produced much of either so far, has it? And they are not as perceptive as you are."
"Don't let them vex you. D'ward had his own reasons for bringing you. It's none of their business. Want me to carry that pack for a while?"
Ysian shook her head, hefted the pack higher on her shoulders, and continued to limp along.
D'ward was bringing up the rear, as he usually did. He had given himself the task of inspiring the stragglers, the wounded and the weakest, although every day men would drop in their tracks and perforce be abandoned to the doubtful mercy of the Thargians. Golbfish was in the van, leading the rout.
The land was deserted. The Thargians had burned the houses and driven off all the livestock. There were no women to rape and precious few goods to pillage—which mattered little, as the invaders had no pack beasts to carry booty. Whenever the weary foot-sloggers did manage to catch a stray zebu or auroch, it went straight in the pot. The rations brought from Lemod were exhausted; the spring fields were bare. A few more days of this, and hunger would bring the army to its knees.
Thargwall to the north was a glittering parade of ice and fresh spring snow. Somewhere behind it the Thargians must be marching too. Mountains loomed to the east also, closer every day. Within those crags lay Saltorpass, the road home, but could the weary, starving invaders ever hope to force it, and then Siopass after? This campaign seemed destined for fame as one of the greatest military blunders in Valian history. Joalia had sacked Lemod, thanks to D'ward, but otherwise all it had achieved was to force the Thargians into wasting a strip of their own homeland. Dosh found that a very small consolation indeed.