Of Bone and Thunder (21 page)

“It's not the rags, sir. It's the drivers and the RATs.”

Vorly immediately took off running, not bothering to see if Rimsma was following him.

He reached his flock's tack room and charged through the door, out of breath and light-headed. Running was a young man's game. The scene that greeted him was chaos. He'd feared the RATs would use their thaumics, but they were throwing conventional fists and boots. That should have put the ivory-tower RATs at a huge disadvantage against his drivers, especially as three of the RATs were women—and Breeze was fighting too?!—but the battle seemed evenly matched.

Vorly sucked in a couple of more breaths while the drivers and RATs traded blows. Realizing he couldn't wait any longer, he stood up straight and roared, “
What the fuck is going on here?!
”

The fight went on unabated. “Son of a witch,” he said, wading into the fray. “Stand down! Everyone stop right now!” He grabbed a RAT by her collar and dragged her off one of his drivers. “
Enough!
”

The fighting quickly subsided. The only thing that could be heard was the sound of heavy breathing. The RATs grouped together on the far side of the room while Vorly's drivers clustered near him by the door. He glared around the room—there were enough bloody lips and black eyes for last
call at the pub on payday. “Are you all mad?! Are you all
fucking mad
?! We lost two men not four days ago!”

“And we know why,” Lancer Frem Sowka said, pointing a finger at the RATs. “Those crystals are dangerous!”

“No more dangerous than fool superstitious drivers who don't follow instructions!” Breeze retorted.

Vorly recognized himself in the insult but let it go. He couldn't afford to be blinded by his emotions. Not now. He noticed that despite Breeze's disheveled hair and one tunic sleeve torn completely off, her face looked unscathed. Her knuckles, however, were a bloody mess.

“Just like a RAT to get all high and mighty,” Sowka spat out. “You think because you went to your fancy academy, you know everything about everything. I think you know shit.”

“I could learn to fly a rag in a week,” Breeze shot back. “You probably can't even spell
academy
.”

“Enough!” Vorly shouted, looking at Breeze. “And not another word out of you.”

Breeze crossed her arms and glared at him. “You're siding with the drivers. Of course. We figured you would.”

Shouting and taunts flew across the room until Vorly picked up a wooden bench and hurled it against the far wall, where it shattered. The noise immediately ceased.

“Anyone else care to comment?” Vorly asked, forcing his anger down.

“I think Sowka's right,” Rimsma said. “The crystal sheets are dangerous. But I also think they're important. Imagine the possibilities when we get it all worked out.”

Vorly knew his mouth was open and closed it.
Rimsma is the voice of reason?

“How many more have to die to ‘get it all worked out'?” Sowka asked, turning on Rimsma. “You ready to risk your life again to find out?”

“I am,” Rimsma said. The other drivers looked stunned. The RATs did, too. They clearly hadn't expected to get support from the other side. “Look, you all know I'm not the brightest star in the sky, but this thaumic stuff isn't going away. Instead of fighting it, we should figure out how to make it work better.”

“I think you very much might
be
the brightest one in this room,” Breeze said, looking at Rimsma and smiling. When she turned to look at Vorly, the smile was gone. “If you want promises that there will never be another . . . accident, I can't give them to you, but then, you can't promise us a rag won't explode or try to eat one of us. We're here to do a job—one we're very good at. Let us do it . . . please.”

That caught Vorly off guard. Modelar had made it clear the RATs weren't going anywhere, but maybe these particular RATs had been threatened by their commander with something equally as terrifying as riding a wagon train.

Vorly looked around the room, taking his time to stare down every single driver and RAT. It was childish, but it was also necessary. This was
his
flock. “All of you listen up, because I will
never
say this again. This was your one and only fuckup. You don't get another. If I have to replace every driver and RAT here, I will do it, and don't think for a moment I won't. And that doesn't mean you get transferred to another flock. Oh no. You'll be
done
.”

He paused while that sank in. When he saw a few nods he continued. “Something else I want everyone here to get through their heads.
I
am the flock commander. That means every rag, man, and woman in this flock is
my
responsibility. I do not play favorites. No, that's not true—the rags come first, but after that, you're all the same. Driver or RAT, if you do your job and work your ass off, we'll get along fine. Pull shit like this,” he said, waving around the room, “and I will
end
you. Is that clear?”

There were more nods and a few ayes.

“No one appears to be choking on their tongue, so let me try that again. Is that
crystal fucking clear
?” he asked, pronouncing his words slowly and clearly.

“Yes, sir!”

“Lovely. Well, now that that's settled, the first order of business is to get this tack room back in order,” Vorly said, lowering his shoulders and clasping his hands behind his back. “When that's done, and it
will
be done by the time I get back from lunch, you are all going down to the pens and mucking out the shit. Might help you burn off some of this energy.”

He waited, daring one of them to protest. He pointedly looked at Breeze—she stared back, the muscles of her jaw flexing, but she kept her mouth shut.

Vorly turned to leave, then stopped and turned back. “Out of curiosity, who threw the first punch?” All the drivers looked directly at Breeze, while the RATs looked everywhere but at her. To their credit, no one said a thing. Vorly kept the smile to himself, but only just.

“Wipe the blood off your faces, fix this room up, get those stables mucked out by dusk, and do it without killing each other. Remember,” he said, turning and walking out the door, “there are a whole lot of slyts out there in the jungle waiting for that chance anyway.”

THE SUN EMERGED ABOVE
the tree line as a shimmering orange ball. The few straggling dosha plants still clinging to life in drought-stricken swamp plots began to wilt as the red loam cracked and lost even more moisture to the relentless heat. Barely an eighth of a candle past dawn, the Luitoxese lowlands were baking.

Stretched out over the plots in a skirmish line forty yards wide and oriented on a north–south axis, the soldiers of several shields in the Second Javelin advanced. They walked west, their shadows stretching out before them like long black fingers.

A low, wide dust cloud another seventy-five yards to the rear marked the position of a caravan of three native brorra-drawn wagons of Deputy Legion Commander Weel's Second Legion Command Group. The lumbering animals were about the size of a cow, but their skin was gray and covered in coarse black hair. It grew thickest in a long strip down their spine from their head to their rump. Their distinguishing feature, however, was the thick, single curving horn three feet long that sprouted from the top ridge of their heads.

A canvas tent roof supported on wooden poles provided shade for Weel's wagon, a luxury the passengers of the other two transports did not enjoy. A half shield known officially as Command Group Guard Detachment—and unofficially as Silver Shield for their cushy assignment—walked alongside the wagons providing security for Weel and his officers. The mule train, six hundred dwarves and fifty wagons of the Eighteenth Pioneer Support Group, followed one hundred yards farther back.

For added punch, the six twenty-foot-tall field catapults of Bear Battery creaked and clattered across the single dirt road that cut diagonally through the dosha swamps from north to south. The battery was scheduled to reach
a collection of three palm trees five hundred yards to the east of Moskoan village by midday. At the moment, Moskoan lay seven hundred yards ahead of the forward skirmish line. Only when Bear Battery was set up, a process that would take one-fourth of a candle, would the catapults be able to offer anything more than moral support to the Seventh Phalanx, Weel's old phalanx, which was leading the attack this morning. If the reports of a large FnC force infiltrating the area were true, that wouldn't suffice.

A soldier riding a pony trotted up to Weel's wagon and slowed to a walk, matching its pace. The pony, a blue roan, might have had a good coat once, but the peaks and valleys of its rib cage marred its sides. A regular-sized man would have driven the pony to the ground, but in this case the rider appeared little larger than a twelve-year-old boy with shockingly thin legs.

Deputy Legion Commander Weel failed to acknowledge the rider even though he glanced up from the map spread out on his lap and looked straight at the messenger. Watching from a few feet away, Subcommander Brobbi Parmik thought Weel was a prick of the first order.
It's because he's tall
, Parmik thought. Tall men were always arrogant. By contrast, at four foot ten, Parmik was stubby and brick shaped, with a sunburned face; small, squinty eyes; and a fiery red beard he kept shorn one inch below his chin. Barely a half foot taller than most dwarves, he was mistaken for one more times than not. Still, the beard stayed. It was a perverse choice on his part, but he couldn't help himself.

Parmik looked around the wagon, curious to see if any of the other officers would draw Weel's attention to the rider. As Bear Battery's liaison with Weel's command group, Parmik was a guest, as Weel himself had put it. Parmik's superior, Commander Newel Joars, had made it clear that Parmik's job was to explain to the army ants what a catapult could and couldn't do, and then keep the ants happy. Parmik looked down at his boots and then back up, deciding to heed Joars's advice.

The rider meanwhile appeared unperturbed by Weel's rudeness, even nodding pleasantly at the other officers. Field Deputy Paet Leieroyo, another tall man, though not nearly as snobbish as Weel, looked around the wagon. Perhaps it was the fact that Leieroyo commanded the Provisions and Fodder Detachment of the Seventh Phalanx that made him more down-to-earth. All he talked about were grains, hays, and the fucking navy and the weevil-infested foodstuffs they kept pawning off on the army.
Parmik remembered he still hadn't spoken to Leieroyo about the need to get in touch with the rag commanders in this area so that he could beg, borrow, or steal some of their rock. Catapults worked significantly better when they were hurling stone and not forgetful officers.

Leieroyo glanced at Weel, who was still head-down over the map. Placing a finger to his lips, Leieroyo offered the rider his water skin, even taking the trouble to unstopper it before handing it over. It was a custom job, the outer layer made from a fine, dark brown beaver pelt. In a rare instance when he wasn't talking about food or the navy, Leieroyo had joked that the beaver pelt kept the water wetter.

The rider smiled and took the water skin. He raised it to his lips and took a small sip. He then brought it down and emptied the rest of the water into his other hand. As he did so something shiny tumbled out of the opening and vanished immediately as the rider palmed it and placed it in a small leather pouch strapped to the belt around his waist. When he brought his hand back out, he held several brown folded leaves. In one smooth motion, he placed them in a slit in the fur of the water skin and passed it back. If Parmik hadn't been fascinated by the water skin, he never would have noticed.

Leieroyo quickly placed the water skin in his haversack before buckling it shut. When he looked up and saw Parmik watching him, he started and quickly looked away. Parmik looked over to the rider, who was now staring at Parmik as well. Unlike Leieroyo, the rider looked completely at ease. He even had the audacity to wink at Parmik.

Weel finally looked up from his map and appeared to notice the rider for the first time. The soldier sat up straight and saluted.

“Bristom, where are the catapults?” Weel asked. He didn't return the soldier's salute, instead leaning over the edge of the wagon and holding out the map. The rider identified as Bristom dutifully grabbed the edge of the map and pointed.

“Bear Battery is here,” Bristom said, his finger touching near the bottom edge of the map. “They're having a tough time with the road. It's barely wide enough for the catapults. They've had two slide off already.”

Parmik silently cursed.
Road? More like goat path.
It was a wonder the catapults had made it this far west as it was.

Weel looked off to the south. Parmik followed his gaze, as did the rest
of the officers. A smudge of brown against the distant green of the jungle marked Bear Battery's slow progress. Weel looked back at the map.

“Subcommander Parmik, why aren't your catapults keeping pace?”

Parmik stood up at the back of the wagon, steadying himself on the wooden bench.

“You heard your pony boy—it's the road. Sir.” Parmik muscled his way through the six other officers on board until he stood beside Weel. He wasn't going to be intimidated by these men, no matter how tall they were. “Too narrow and rutted, like that old pony's rib cage.”

An audible gasp went up from the command group. Weel's cheeks flushed, but he adopted a tight-lipped smile as he faced Parmik.

“Well, Subcommander, that simply won't do,” Weel said, each word clipped so sharply it could have cut metal. “I specifically ordered that the six catapults of your battery be in position by noon. The Second Javelin will be assaulting Moskoan inside of a fourth-candle.”