Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (50 page)

Still there was little or no fighting. In the towns of central Kesh there were no healthy young men, and the Keshi who remained, the women and children and the elderly, merely hid their stores and begged for mercy. The less disciplined of the legions stole and raped their way from settlement to settlement, and Pallacios XIII’s mutineer rankers might well have done the same, but they were the last in the line and there was never anything left by the time they reached each town. Baltus Prenton’s prediction that there would be no real battles for them was coming true.

Kip was disappointed. ‘This Crusade, it is like a holiday stroll,’ he
commented morosely while wolfing down bread and gruel. His face was peeling badly from too much sun.

‘And all the better for it,’ Ramon replied.

‘It’s not like a proper war.’

Ramon glanced at his friend. Kip was a few years older than him and had been involved in tribal raiding among the forest Schlessen since his mid-teens. ‘What is a proper war like?’

Kip grunted uncomfortably. ‘Brutal. Dangerous. You feel … more alive than you’ve ever felt before, but you are surrounded by death. Every man you face, you must kill or be killed.’ His voice trailed off, his eyes faraway. ‘I’ve seen close friends butchered. I’ve lost control and done things …’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe it is better that this is not a proper war, yar?’

‘Si, much better. Let’s just see it out, make some money and get out alive.”

At his regular officers’ meeting, Duprey passed on news of isolated skirmishes: the windship-borne magi who’d destroyed an ambush near Peroz, and the storming of a fortress near Falukhabad that had been found to contain Keshi soldiers. By the time Echor’s legion arrived, the Kirkegarde had already taken it and were busy rounding up every inhabitant to be taken as slaves.

Severine whispered into Ramon’s mind. She’d stopped talking about her visions openly after Duprey had forbidden it.
> Two weeks had passed since the incident with Siburnius’ Fist, and she now associated anything and everything with that bald mage. She was obsessive. It didn’t mean she was wrong.

Duprey had one last item on this morning’s agenda. ‘The duke has demanded that we increase pace. The long-range scouts have found Salim’s army – they’re apparently retreating from Peroz towards Shaliyah. Echor wants to catch them and take Salim hostage.’

The tribunes all groaned. The pace was already too fast. Echor was trying to get fifteen miles a day from the legions, but the sapping heat was taking its toll: heat stroke was rife, and they were losing too many of the draft animals. The mules and oxen were keeling over,
exhausted and dehydrated, and there were no replacements to be had, even for gold. Ramon met Tribune Storn’s eye. They were lower on food and water than was wise too, and the maps suggested that the lands between Peroz and Shaliyah were desolate.

‘And some good news,’ Duprey added: ‘A captured Keshi revealed that Salim’s treasury has been moved to Shaliyah.’ His eyes lit up. ‘He said the Keshi nobles have given all their wealth into Salim’s hands to protect it – and all that gold is going to one place, lads: Shaliyah! Salim is planning to move the gold on to Mirobez after the rainy season, but the Duke’s going to trap him in Shaliyah before that.’

That cheered the commanders up and they strutted out into the sultry evening in better spirits, joking how they would spend their share of the spoils. There’d been few pickings so far, and the men were grumbling.

Ramon inhaled the fragrant evening air. The days and nights were growing a little cooler, and in the west, high clouds were forming.

Kip pointed them out. ‘What is these strange white puffy things in the skies? I seem to remember them from somewhere, but I can’t recall.’ The giant Schlessen chuckled at his own wit.

Ramon half-smiled. ‘They are called “clouds”. In some places they cover the skies entirely for months on end.’

‘Yar? Incredible!’ He scowled. ‘Not here, yar?’

‘The wet season is coming. Coll tells me it rains here in Decore and Janune – but that’s two months away.’

‘It will still be dry as we cross the desert to Shaliyah then? Echor should delay. The soldiers are tired and weak. They need to rest.’

Ramon agreed. ‘The food wagons are only half-full, and we’ve even less water. We’ve been burning through our stocks trying to keep up this pace. We should be waiting out the season in Peroz and pushing on in Martrois, fully stocked.’

‘Why don’t we?’ Kip asked.

‘Greed. Echor wants the gold that prisoner claims is being moved east. If there really is any gold.’

Kip grunted unhappily. ‘There better be.’

Ramon looked around and nudged Kip. ‘On the bright side, Storn’s
got promissory notes from the rest of the column, and a clutch of them from Kaltus Korion’s forces as well. We’ve got everyone’s gold, everyone’s promissory notes, and ten wagons full of opium.’

‘When will you destroy it?’ Kip asked, looking at him intently.

‘When we’re out in the desert.’ Ramon caught Kip’s sceptical look. ‘I swear it, on my mother’s name!’

‘You had better,’ was all Kip would say in reply.

*

A hand shook Ramon awake and he blinked his eyes groggily. He’d not even realised he’d fallen asleep. Storn was snoring softly a few yards away. He focused on the small shape wrapped in a blanket kneeling beside his cot. ‘Wha—?’

Severine whispered into his mind. He wrinkled his nose; she smelled of some rich perfume, days of sweat and sex too, a heavy and unpleasant musk. She’d resumed her on-off thing with Baltus Prenton – and probably others, too, so desperate was she to escape this march.

Mind you, I probably don’t smell too fresh either
, Ramon admitted to himself. Bathing had long been a luxury they couldn’t afford the water for.

She shook him again, as if to focus his attention.

he asked.

She tugged on his sleeve.
>

He wondered vaguely what she wanted. Stifling a yawn, he rose and followed her outside. ‘What?’ he whispered irritably. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

She leant into him. They were of a height, and her breath teased his earlobe. Her voice came out filled with an almost despairing exhaustion. ‘I had another vision today – it’s like I’m attuned to them: the more I think about them, the more they find me.’

He felt his stomach clench.
She looks dead on her feet. She’s not sleeping at all, is she?

‘The same thing?’ he whispered.

‘It was just three Keshi this time, all children. A branded mage bent over them and kissed them dead.’ Severine clutched his hand.
‘But it was a woman this time, with a shaven skull. Not Siburnius’ bald man.’

‘You said she was branded too?’

‘With an Epsilon,’ Severine breathed. ‘And just a few minutes ago, I had another vision, of a big half-Dhassan or Keshi: and he was branded with a Theta! He kissed a legion deserter dead. The deserter was chained to a wall somewhere northwest of here. There were Inquisitors watching.’ She grabbed him and pressed herself to him, trembling. ‘Ramon, you are the only one who’s listening to me—’

He tentatively hugged her back, though the reek of sex repelled him. It had been many months since he’d slept with Regina, back in Pontus, and after having to help Healer Lanna cure the genital pox on hundreds of rankers, being anywhere near a woman was somehow not as appealing as it had been. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked at last.

‘I don’t know. Maybe we can go to Duke Echor? He might listen.’

I sincerely doubt that
. But this was destroying Severine; he had to do something. He thought for a moment. ‘There’s only one person in this legion the duke might listen to.’

She looked up at him, the moonlight gleaming in her eyes. It was strange to be so close to someone he really didn’t like. ‘Who do you mean?’

‘The Lesser Son: Seth Korion.’

‘He won’t help,’ she said despairingly. ‘He despises us both.’

Didn’t fall for your charms, huh?

‘I heard that,’ she scowled, pulling away, and he let her go with a mixture of regret and relief.

‘Sorry. Look, Seth Korion’s got family in high places. I could ask him for you.’

‘Doesn’t he hate you?’

‘Si, but he’s a little scared of me too.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Why?’

‘I know secrets about him.’

‘Like what?’

‘If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?’

‘I think secrets are despicable.’

‘The best ones are. Listen, I’ll talk to the Lesser Son. We might need to show him more bodies, if you can find one.’

‘Duprey won’t let me look. He keeps me busy all day, communicating with the other legions.’ She dropped her voice again. ‘One of the other legion farseers has been getting visions too. He’s a Brician. His legate won’t investigate either. He says the Kirkegarde are taking over the slave caravans too, and most aren’t reaching the pens outside Hebusalim.’

‘What pens?’

‘I thought you knew things? The legions are supposed to be sending all the able-bodied Keshi west to Hebusalim, to be slaves for the rich Palacian families. But the Brician says he’s heard from a cousin in the Church that most aren’t arriving.’

‘That sounds like a lot of people.’

Severine nodded faintly. ‘Thousands.’

‘I’ll talk to Korion.’

Severine squeezed his forearm. ‘Thank you for helping. You’re not so bad for a lying Silacian sneak.’

‘You’re welcome. You’re the nicest arrogant Rondian sow I know.’

She curtseyed ironically. ‘To know me is to love me.’ A smile ghosted across her face like cloud across the moon, and then she was gone, leaving him awake and alone.

*

‘I don’t care,’ Seth said. ‘Echor hates my family. He wouldn’t listen to me anyway.’ He sat uncomfortably on his khurne, the only one in the column, beside a charred farm building on the edge of a blackened field. The horned steed stood placidly, though Ramon and Severine’s horses had been so distressed by the stink and the heat from the still smoking field that they’d had to be left hundreds of yards away. Crows swarmed and swirled over a clutch of half-burned bodies, eight Keshi dead lying on a barely smouldering pyre. Bodies took a lot of fuel and there was little here except for animal dung. The bodies had scarcely been touched by the flames, let alone consumed.

Ramon and Severine stood beside the pyre and looked up at Korion.
Severine had found it three nights after her midnight conversation with Ramon, after another vision. Ramon hadn’t actually seen her since then, but she was constantly inside his mind, telling him of new scryings, and conversations with her farseer friend in the Brician legion.

In her vision she’d seen the bald man, Delta, kill these people in front of Ullyn Siburnius’ Fist, she told Seth and Ramon. ‘The Fist surrounded them and he killed them, one by one,’ she said plaintively.

Seth looked away.

‘Delta has killed at least fifty people – that we’re aware of,’ Ramon added. ‘And he’s just one of several branded magi who’re always aided by Inquisitors.’

Seth stared off into the middle distance, to the dust clouds raised by rumbling wagons and marching feet. ‘So what? They’re just Keshi.’ He sounded as if he would really rather not have known any of this.

‘They’re human beings,’ Severine snapped.

‘They’re enemies. And heathen.’

‘They’re not even soldiers,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s driving me mad.’

Seth sniffed. ‘Then this is about you. If you can’t take this, get out.’

‘I’m indentured,’ she reminded him sarcastically. ‘I’m stuck here.’

‘Until you can get yourself plumped,’ Seth sneered. His eyes flickered to Ramon. ‘You reduced to him, now?’

Severine opened her mouth then closed it furiously.

Ramon put a hand on her shoulder. <
I’ll deal with this
,> he sent her. ‘Seth, can we have a private word?’

‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ Korion replied.

‘Nevertheless.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Very well. But she can get out of my sight.’

Severine stomped away and Ramon waited until Seth climbed down off his khurne. He whispered something to it and the horned steed snorted, and trotted obediently away.

‘Well?’ the general’s son asked.

Ramon stared after the khurne. ‘There’s something about those things … the hulkas too. Animals shouldn’t be able to understand so much.’

Seth shrugged. ‘Jealous? In my father’s legions, all the magi have them. There is even a khurne cavalry century. And Father has warhounds too, packs so intelligent they’re more effective than human scouts.’

‘But here you are, in poor little Pallacios XIII,’ Ramon observed. ‘And I know why.’

Seth stiffened. Ramon observed the inner turmoil with a little sympathy. There had never been much to like in Seth Korion, a spineless, gutless child of privilege. But the silver spoon had been snatched from his mouth. Though he’d been awarded a gold star by Turm Zauberin, Ramon knew as well as every other students who’d seen Seth blubbing in fear during the exams that he shouldn’t have even been given a pass. And that was only one of the secrets Ramon knew of him.

If it was any other pure-blood but you, Lesser Son, I’d fear for my life to be alone and threatening you. But you’re a coward, and we both know it.

‘There’s nothing you could tell anyone that they don’t guess already,’ Seth said miserably.

Ramon cocked an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ he said, looking Seth in the eye.

The general’s son flushed. ‘But … you wouldn’t—’

Ramon shrugged meaningfully. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

Seth hung his head. ‘Echor will never listen to me,’ he whined.

‘He has enough interest in you to have had you assigned to one of his legions.’

‘I’m a hostage against my father,’ Seth complained bitterly.

Ramon shook his head. ‘No, if that were the case, you’d be a captive in his staff tent. He knows your father has all but disowned you. But you’re still a Korion: the name has weight. And it will please his ego.’

Seth said resignedly, ‘All right, I’ll try. When the army reaches Peroz, there will be a muster. I’ll ask then.’