Unholy War (67 page)

When the column arrived at its destination, the mystery deepened. They watched from a hillside, then used a little gnosis to scry closer. There were fences of wood and wire to pen people – many people, perhaps ten thousand of them. A full maniple of legionaries was camped there, though it was clearly run by the Inquisition. The Dhassan and Keshi refugees they’d been following weren’t housed in tents, but simply penned on the open ground. Some were conscripted into the crude open-air kitchens; many more were given shovels to dig latrine trenches. Every day work gangs left for the hills, their escorts returning at dusk without the labourers. Every morning a few more dead were carted from the camp and buried in the grounds outside. These shallow graves drew the jackals and wild dogs, who prowled the fringes of the camp.

‘Slavers,’ Zaqri continued to maintain. ‘They’re awaiting windships to transport the prisoners to Southpoint.’

They glimpsed the eleventh rider from time to time, sitting alone, hooded and motionless, always watched, but only loosely. He moved awkwardly, in a lumbering fashion that reminded Cym of a drunk, or a very old man. Intriguingly, his skin colour was of Yuros. It was too far away to read his aura, and with Inquisitors right beside him, scrying was far too great a risk.

‘He’s one of us,’ Zaqri predicted. ‘Not our pack, but one of us. But why would they hold him?’ He turned to Cym, his eyes intent. ‘I say we must free him.’

30

Master-General Kaltus Korion

Ramon watched with interest as Lanna Jureigh cradled a Khotri man’s broken arm. They were surrounded by men from almost every known land on two continents.
Coming to Ardijah was the right move
, he thought.
Better even than I’d hoped.

Ardijah, a border town on a well-used trade route, attracted people from far and wide. As well as the local Khotri there were Dhassans and Keshi, tattooed men and women from Gatioch, many Lakh and even a few gaunt, fierce Lokistani. This incredibly diverse place had its own hybrid patois, with words from innumerable languages, so adding a motley collection of legionaries from half a dozen different legions made it a strange brew indeed. At times it boiled over in conflict, but for the most part there was a strange harmony, as if they recognised that foreignness was a condition they all suffered. They were all, in their own way,
strangers
.

The army kept the rankers busy on work detail, trying to repair the buildings and walls damaged during the seizure of the city. As the locals wanted the Dokken gone as much as the legionaries, and they also wished their city to be defensible against the Keshi on the north bank, everyone pitched in, the calipha’s men and the legionaries working in unison. Some of the repairs required a variety of expertise, from locals as well as the legion engineers, so cooperation had become essential.

But it was acts like this that had really sealed the bond, Ramon thought as he watched Lanna repairing another broken arm. The minor miracle of a gnostic healing was a big thing to the Ahmedhassans: not just a demonstration that the locals were valued, but also that the gnosis could be used for good. Other uses of the gnosis had helped further that notion: Earth-magi had been deployed to help the rebuilding, Water-magi were purifying the wells, and there were dozens of other tasks where a show of useful solidarity and well-placed gnosis might win hearts and minds.

The crowd cheered and patted each other’s backs as the Khotri worker stood shakily and displayed the arm that had been shattered by falling masonry an hour before. A lifetime as a one-armed cripple had averted by the ‘afreet magic’. The dazed patient kissed Lanna’s hand fervently, though she tried to stop him.

‘Please, it’s not so hard,’ she said tiredly. ‘Be more careful, yes?’ She looked up at Ramon and gave an exhausted but pleased smile. She’d had marriage proposals by the hundred in the last week, and been gifted so much food she could have fed a maniple.

He gave her a thumbs-up gesture and returned to the square where the accident had happened. Pilus Lukaz was overseeing lines of legionaries and locals as they passed chunks of rubble from a fallen bakery towards a half-built bastion wall. The giant front-rankers towering over the local tradesmen earned admiring calls as they humped the stone to the new site, but some of the Khotri were just as big and it looked like a friendly rivalry was developing.

It hadn’t all been plain sailing, of course. There had inevitably been brawls, drunkenness, stones thrown, fist-fights, bottle-fights, knife-fights, coin stolen – in fact, every infraction of the rules he could imagine. They’d even had to hang two rankers for murdering a local behind a tavern to ensure that there’d be no riots. The calipha had been astounded that they would sacrifice two of their own, and some of the legion officers had been downright rebellious, but the reward was this priceless harmony. He was almost regretting that they had to leave.

He found the people he sought atop a tower overlooking the river, near the northern causeway. The four of them – Jelaska, Severine, Baltus and Kip – were sipping wine or ale and looking out at Salim’s army massed on the riverbank four hundred yards away. Their cooking fires were streaming smoke into the sky beneath a searing sun.

‘I’ve calculated that we need to move within the month if we’re going to reach our lines in time for the big retreat to the Bridge next year,’ Ramon told the group. The Lost Legions – as the men had taken to calling themselves – had been inside Ardijah for almost six weeks now and it was already Augeite. ‘I’ve got it arranged. We just need Seth’s assent and then we can go.’

‘I agree,’ Jelaska responded, ‘but will Seth? Don’t you think he’s becoming a little
comfortable
here?’

They all knew what she meant: Korion was spending all his time with the sultan – or Salim’s imposter, whichever he was. Whenever anyone walked in on them they’d be usually reciting poetry, or singing, or plucking a strangely strung lute they’d been given by Calipha Amiza.

‘Then let’s bring Latif with us,’ Baltus said. ‘Clearly his presence is keeping the Keshi from outright assault, so hanging on to him would be sensible.’

‘What do they see in each other?’ Severine asked, cradling her alarmingly distended belly and nibbling grapes. ‘I mean, Korion is dull as dishwater and the Noorie is … well, he’s just a Noorie.’

Ramon glanced at her with mildly irritated fondness. That Sevvie could be blind to the colour of his skin but completely scathing of even a hint of colour in anyone else was entirely to do with her upbringing, he’d decided after considerable soul-searching. It made it only marginally less distasteful. ‘Latif’s rather charming,’ he said, ‘but you’re right about Korion. Poetry and music, Sol et Lune!’

‘You’re a peasant, Ramon,’ Baltus laughed. ‘Poetry is the soul of civilisation.’

‘Life is a song,’ Kip observed, drawing surprised looks from everyone. He coloured slightly. ‘That is an old Schlessen saying. My people are very fond of music.’

‘They hit sticks and rocks together,’ Baltus whispered conspiratorially. ‘It’s very rhythmic.’

‘I’ll hit your head with a rock and see how you like it,’ Kip growled.

‘Anyway,’ Ramon interjected, trying to bring the discussion back on course, ‘my point is, we need to move, but Korion is ensconced here – and the truth is, he’s way too cosy with Latif, almost to the point of fraternisation.’

Jelaska sniffed. ‘He says he’s getting the imposter off-guard so that he can learn more. Clever, possibly.’

‘Korion isn’t that clever,’ Ramon said. ‘I just think that he likes him.’

They all mused on that. ‘I suppose Noories are just people in the end,’ Severine commented doubtfully.

‘Do you think so? What about Silacians?’ Ramon enquired acerbically. ‘Anyway, the rankers are talking,’ he added. ‘Not that half of them haven’t got a Khotri woman by now – our baggage train will probably have doubled in size when we leave.’ He’d taken the decision to pay the troops while they were in Ardijah, not just to restore morale, but also to ensure that they could enjoy the respite the town had provided without resorting to plundering it. Of course, giving the soldiers money had done more than that: it had transformed the twin keeps of Ardijah into a hotbed of gambling houses, whorehouses and opium dens almost overnight as the soldiers did what soldiers always do when they have cash in hand and no one to fight. The calipha’s treasurer was a happy man.

During this period of respite, the waters of the floodplain had receded, leaving a treacherous maze of sinkholes and quicksand, and alligators had been spotted moving back into the area in ever-increasing numbers. Despite this, Ramon feared that soon, an assault on the northern island from all sides would soon be practical.

‘You know, I sometimes think Silacians are people too,’ Severine observed mildly.

Ramon ruffled her hair: things weren’t too bad between them just now, partly because everyone knew what Renn Bondeau was doing in the calipha’s suite every night. It was no secret that Ardijah’s new ruler had decided that a mage-child would be a fine addition to her lineage, and the Amteh Godspeakers could whinge in the Dom-al’Ahm all day and all night for all she cared.

Ramon couldn’t decide if Amiza was reckless or courageous, but time would tell, no doubt. He had to admit – if only in the privacy of his own mind – that her decisive lust for life was oddly magnetic.

‘I hear the calipha bled as normal last week,’ Baltus observed with a smirk. ‘She must be disappointed.’

‘I imagine sharing a bed with Bondeau is full of disappointments,’ Ramon observed.

Severine chuckled. ‘It was for me.’

Ramon eyed her disapprovingly. ‘I have to say that before you met me, you had no taste in men at all.’

Severine laughed. ‘Some would say I still don’t. Anyway, I have it on good authority that she retired to the Blood-tower by habit only – she has been heard complaining of an upset stomach,’ she added in a gossipy voice. ‘So maybe Renn has hit the target after all.’

‘I doubt I’ll ever have a child,’ Jelaska said heavily. ‘Every lover I have ever taken is dead. Poor Sigurd is only the latest of a long line of corpses I’ve left behind.’ She swept back her grey mane and shrugged. ‘I’ve come to regard myself as cursed.’

Baltus waved a hand airily. ‘Curses are a superstition, Lady. The only real magic is the gnosis.’

Jelaska threw him an appraising look. ‘I am willing to test the courage of your convictions, Windmaster.’

‘I say, my lady, is that a proposition?’

‘I am a plainspoken Argundian, Magister Prenton. My door is open to you.’

Ramon shared a look with Severine. ‘Romantic, these Argundians, aren’t they?’

‘Terribly.’

Kip guffawed and swigged more ale. ‘I miss Schlessen girls. Blonde hair in braids and big, soft bodies. The woman here are too small and skinny. They need to be fed better. Beef, that is the answer.’

‘A simple man with simple tastes,’ Baltus commented.

‘A Schlessen, in other words,’ said Jelaska, and the two of them laughed, not very surreptitiously looking each other over.

Kip burped and waved them away. ‘I care not what you think. I know what’s true.’

‘He could be right, you know,’ Ramon put in. ‘Why is it that a whole race of people can be smaller and thinner than another? It can only be what they eat, si? Antiopians eat almost entirely vegetables and spices and very little meat. But their noblemen eat meat – you saw see how fat that damned caliph was? It took eight men to lift his corpse!’

‘It’s the spices that stunt them,’ Jelaska muttered. ‘Evil stuff, gives you the shits.’

‘No, it’s the lack of meat,’ Ramon said firmly, ‘mark my words.’

‘Anyway,’ Baltus said, still looking Jelaska over; she was a handsome woman, no doubt, but twice his age, Ramon suspected. Still, how much did that actually matter?

He turned his attention back to the matter at hand. ‘The thing is, if we don’t move, our position is going to deteriorate. The Emir of Khotri has shifted some forty thousand men to camps south of us and Salim has thirty thousand soldiers on the north bank. In the middle of all this there’s us: just twelve thousand men divided over three camps – this northern Bridge-tower, the southern Bridge-tower, and the southern causeway.

‘And some mighty women,’ Jelaska added, toasting Severine.

‘Yes, also stuck in the middle,’ Baltus smirked. ‘I’m with Ramon on this: Salim and the emir are talking to each other – I’ve seen skiffs shuttling between them. What if they find common cause?’

Ramon sat up. ‘I understand they hate each other, but you’re right: that doesn’t mean they can’t work together at all.’ For the past week, he’d also been meeting with the Emir of Khotri’s representatives, trying to iron out a deal so the legion could march downstream on the Khotri side of the river to the next fords, then leave the emirate. For it to work they needed two things: to be able to trust the emir, and to give Salim the slip.

‘I rather think that convenience can outweigh all manner of normal politics and prejudices,’ Severine said, without irony, causing Baltus to wink at Ramon mockingly.

Si, I’m her convenient partner, regardless of normal prejudices
. Ramon flicked a rude sign at the Brevian. Aloud, he said, ‘You’re right. Maintaining an army here is inconvenient to both the emir and the sultan. Salim wants to go north, where the real fighting is, and the emir dearly wants him to go. Moving us on would solve both problems.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘The real question is; can we trust the emir and the calipha not to sell us out to Salim?’ He stared out over the darkening landscape. Tiny bats were circling the tower like moths around the lamps. The campfires of the Keshi army were a galaxy of yellow stars. ‘I don’t know that we can.’

‘Then we’re in trouble,’ Jelaska said. ‘We’re like walnuts between the hammer and the anvil.’

Kip cocked his head. ‘Eh?’

‘They’ve got us by the nuts,’ Ramon clarified.

*

Seth Korion lounged in his armchair and gazed admiringly at Latif. The Keshi was picking deftly at the lute, a chord progression that seemed to capture the very essence of the desert: the space, the golden vistas and the heat, brought to vivid life by fifteen strings, played with wonderful mastery. ‘All of my brothers play,’ Latif said offhandedly as he finished another tune. ‘I’m not the best of us.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone better than you,’ Seth told him. ‘How can a ruler find time to perfect such technique?’

‘I am just an imposter, remember. I’m not real.’

‘Don’t say that. I only like you because I think you are a sultan.’

Latif smiled slyly. ‘I don’t believe you. I think you like me because I am a talented and altogether brilliant individual who happens to excel at pretending to be someone else. I could just as easily play you.’