'I'm to continue on to give my message to Seventh Cohort, commanded by Captain Daron.'
'Very well. Follow me.'
He signaled Sergeant Giyara to maintain control of his personal staff and, with the runner in tow, dropped back from the front of his unit. He passed the first-strike infantrymen, his
heaviest shields. Behind them marched a cadre of guards walling in the hostages, followed by five cadres of proven infantry with new soldiers mixed in among the veterans. Next in line came the wagoners with their six wagons rumbling along without incident, archers pacing them with bows ready. He reached the rearguard, where his toughest men were wiping their brows and eyeing the distance opening between them and Seventh Cohort, its vanguard barely in sight behind them. The youth took a swig from his flask, then sprinted off as Arras followed his swift progress with an approving gaze.
'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.'