The March North (19 page)

I have parents, and
grand-parents, and you can go back four greats. That’s it, all the history of graul there is in the world, because the wizard Laurel made our kind six hundred and sixteen years ago, if you count from the creation of the first one. The last made graul came out of Laurel’s vats after the Foremost marched.

“I do not think Halt can be faulted for telling people true odds.”

Blossom makes a broad gesture.
The clear view of the stars blurs and shudders behind the moving hand.

“People didn’t start off with the Talent. It’s new to life, not all through the world like breathing and digestion and making food from sunlight. Someone made it.”

There’s a tiny whiff of ozone coming off Blossom.

“Either they did a bad job, or they didn’t understand what they were doing, or — ” Blossom gets stuck.

Or they
had objectionable characters.

The spiders are much, much calmer about this than Blossom is managing to be.

The half-company of Reems guys are getting close, less than a kilometre. They’re not moving like people coming to a fight, but still.

Captain, Sergeant-Major. Turn out the duty platoon.

Sir.
Twitch doesn’t make any of the jokes about waking the dead.

Neither does anybody in One, rolling awake
in the standard. They’ve figured out they can will themselves into armour in there.

Blossom trots off. Five minutes later, Part-Captain Blossom trots up in armour.
Battery’s alert. Don’t have anything that’d be both decisive and safe at this range.

More than a hundred dead guys behind a single focus node really ought to do.

Stand by to go old-fashioned on them as required, Part-Captain.

I get
a grin and a wave and a knuckle-cracking gesture to go with my
Sir
. No salutes in the field, it’s the same wave the drovers use as an acknowledgement. Might be a Creek thing.

Oh, right.
Captain, Rust. I am going to need you to translate if these Reems guys are here to talk.

Rust comes awake like water falling up. You don’t see where the bedroll goes, and the hand that isn’t putting the hat on is a brief flicker of dark fire before Rust’s eyes focus.

Captain.
Faint, the first wisps of the fire starting.

One of the Reems guys is coming forward, holding up a reversed spear.

Been roughed up a bit; there are scrapes and scratches, but it looks like everything’s
functioning.

Dry, though. Can’t see a canteen. Hungry, after a night spent awake and moving in the cold.

Young and fit, so supposing they find potable water maybe good for a couple days of marching yet, even this far up the mountains.

Spear-guy stops, just about at bowshot, and flourishes the spear.

I head down the stairs with Rust. Halt is still knitting, and Eustace is still asleep.

You can
see the ripple in the grass as the edge of the focus moves forward with me, an extra shine on the frost. I stop about seven metres from the guy with the spear, so the edge of the focus stops about at five. Maintaining composure pretty well. Not likely to recognise who Rust is, though
what
Rust is won’t tax the wits of anyone able to hold a spear. Rust’s hat has acquired another bunch of steel-winged
butterflies, and the molten, languid, suddenly-bright wing-flapping is difficult to miss.

Whether Spear-guy thinks I’m the bodyguard or not is an open question. Unlikely to know more about what graul look like than the folk of the Creeks do, and in armour we sometimes fool each other. Being recognised as non-human usually tips the expectation from “important” to “bodyguard”.

Rust draws up, tall
and formal, near enough aristocratic, takes a specific pose with both arms and a tip of the head.
An invitation to speak
comes through the focus in smoke of burning animal fat.

The guy with the spear looks back and forth, decides to speak to Rust.

Under Spear-guy’s words, I get a translation in smoke, half a beat behind.

“Lord! You are most great, and full mighty! The tale of your dead cannot
be told!”

Rust’s arms move, head comes upright. Presumably Reems oratorical tradition for “do go on”.

There’s a pause, and the next bit comes out faster.

“The Archon is fallen, and the great lords of Reems. We would serve you, Lord, with sword and spear, for in the service of mightiness is glory and plunder!”

“Would you not rather return to Reems, and take up your estates?” Very odd, Rust’s alien
voice in my ears and clear words through the focus.

“Doom still comes to Reems.” Spear-guy wasn’t looking like someone sure of life before saying that, and it still takes all the hope out of Spear-guy’s face to say it.

“Is not Reems yet mighty above its doom?” Rust conveys this in a way that comes through the focus with utter certainty that the question is rhetorical, that the might of Reems
is certain and enduring. “Archons fall; Reems goes on.”

Spear-guy makes a strange little dip with the butt of the spear, and Rust makes a left-handed flat wave with a skipping pat motion to it. Spear-guy drops to the grass, sitting cross-legged, head tilted down, spear over thighs. It’s not easy to stand there holding a spear upside down with your arms at three-quarters extension.

Not necessarily
easy to stand at all. Being stuck in a wizard-war takes it out of you, and then no food and a cold night.

“Lord, the might of Reems was great, and it grew, and conquered. The lamentation and grief of the conquered were bound, that the might of Reems should endure forever.”

The tears are obvious enough. There’s no weeping in Spear-guy’s voice at all; it seems flat, a bit shocky, but the cadences
are even.

“It is not so, that Reems should endure forever. I heard the wails of the dead Reems had conquered crying in fear, as they passed from bondage into death.”

Spear-guy looks up, looks directly at Rust like a man expecting to die. “The sorcerers of Reems made chains of chains, that the bondage of the conquered should be the subjugation of the mighty from beyond the world.”

No word for
demon
in Reems
, like bread catching fire.

“They are free, and many, more than did obeisance in the dark.”

The desperate gaze drops. “Reems is no more.”

That comes out ear-straining quiet. Even Rust’s translation is softer, a distant intimation of smoke.

“Yet you live.” Rust’s spoken voice doesn’t sound any harsher than the speech of Reems usually sounds. “Cannot you return to what was Reems, to
the walled towns and the hillside groves, and be there of service to the people?”

Keeping the roving brigands away, I think Rust means, while whatever sorcery survives does what it can for the demons and the weeds. There will be some sorcerers left, possibly most of the sorcerers left; it won’t be Reems, but it could well be a lot of tolerably prosperous walled towns.

With a demon problem, for
a generation or two, but clean farmland is worth fighting demons.

The bunch of Reems guys, further back, isn’t looking restive. Worried, yes. I suppose Rust’s formal oratorical poses aren’t going to be associated with the possibility of mercy.

“Lord, we are few, from many towns. Our fathers are dead, and our brothers, and our uncles, and our sons.”

Not this guy’s sons, not for at least ten years,
but as a general truth it will do.

Standard poetic formula
wisps through, in a satisfied smoke of cedar wood.

“If we join with victory, we are remade. If we return, we are handfuls in the fire.”

Spear-guy bends forward, and looks up, tear-streaked face the picture of entreaty.

“Lord, if we must pile bricks, or guard sheep, we will do it, and earn our women, not win them.”

Brimstone smoke, quick
and startled.
That offer is as desperate as they can get.

I start talking, as calmly as I can, and not all that loudly. Rust’s translation is what they’re going to be able to make sense of, anyway.

“I am a Standard-Captain of the Line of the Commonweal. I serve the Law of the Commonweal, and none living. It is not given to me in that law to admit armies, nor the soldiers of armies, nor the survivors
of armies, who had sought to invade, into land of the Commonweal.”

“That law permits you to come without arms, and to petition for entry, but I tell you as surely as death comes to all living, if you believe women are given in trade or purchase you shall not be admitted nor could you prosper.”

A lot of harm, before we hanged them all.

Rust finishes repeating that in the speech of Reems; there
are a few amazed shouts from the mass of Reems guys, and Rust adds a couple sentences of clarification. They start to get a rather desperate and wild look, and maybe it’s enough outside their experience to stop seeming like a parley.

One Platoon comes as close to condensing behind me as it can manage.

Toby looks willing to take Spear-guy’s spear away and use it for Spear-guy food, slowly; Twitch
looks bored. Spear-guy looks wit-stuck, trying to take in the whole of One Platoon, that certainly has the shades of women in it.

The mass of Reems guys start looking less militant and more afraid of ghosts. Lots of warding signs and frightened looks.

“If you do not wish to return to Reems, you must make peace with the land here. It has wits, and wakes, and perhaps it has work for you.”

Perhaps
it will devour you all. Or it could make you wives from shapes of birch and alder and you can be an old myth, but you are not coming into the Commonweal.

Rust translates the spoken part.

Spear-guy’s forehead touches the ground.

An obesiance to the Archon
Rust says. It would have to be.

Spear-guy gets up, and turns, and walks away, everything in stance and manner

expressing indifference to incineration.

The half-company of Reems guys is still there as we pull out half an hour later.

That’s quick, and no breakfast until the first rest, but my feet are itching.

We aren’t over the crest of the pass southward before the Reems fortress succumbs to a rippling in the ground, and the quarry-flat we had been camped on fills back in.

Hard to tell at the distance, but I don’t think the Reems guys
were devoured. Knocked down, but not devoured.

Rust is route-finding, and trying to balance easy and rapid and south, all together; it mostly works.

Skirting yesterday’s battlefield wasn’t easy, the whole rise up to the south side of the pass is everywhere at least one of blasted, burnt, and fought over by demons. Lots of shredded horses and shredded Reems guys and bad footing. One notable stretch
has a long drift of steel armour, ripped into strips and tangled up together like nesting razors. It moved when the focus-edge pushed it.

The mostly clear path took us through the blast zone where the Master Gunner got whoever was running the big Reems joint enchantment.

That one went off in the air, and there’s a couple kilometres of shallow crater. Halt noses Eustace over for a look right in
the centre of it, and there’s a crackle and hiss of dissipating enchantments, followed by a leaping green and purple fire.

“Copper and gold”, Blossom says, looking over. Blossom’s been looking deeply pleased ever since we got a good view of the shape of the crater.

Eustace catches up. You’d never guess the howdah has the least volition; it sits there looking ornately inanimate. Still haven’t figured
out what it uses for eyes. I’m only half-sure Halt is pleased; despite it being a busy three days, I’m not sure I know Halt well enough yet to be sure pleased is what’s showing, faintly, through Halt’s face.

The waggon-loads of wounded go in the middle column of waggons; if there’s no road, it’s not especially more work to manage a wider firm surface. No sense in irritating the conscious terrane
by road-building, even the obviously temporary kind. We hit a lot of really firm turf and a couple of flat sections of sandstone, and even the two or three sections under trees never approach narrow enough terrain to risk trapping a waggon.

Whether this is a thank-you or the sensible decision that we’re not especially digestible, I’ll take it.

It wasn’t anywhere near as tough I had expected to
get the guys from Three with the critter-spine problems to ride on stretchers. They’re keeping a brave face up, sometimes collectively, but I can tell they’re getting worried. Nothing would be wrong if their bodies would actually work. The medics keep trying to look hopeful, but it’s slipping.

I’m keeping my guesses back of what Laurel gave us for teeth. Get them home, first.

That’s not going
to be today. I think the pass-peak and the big fortress was well east of the wall, and we’re heading nearly due south.

Over the saddle of a minor pass, there’s a steep descent into what I’m probably allowed to call a river valley. The river’s low with high summer; there’s braided water and heaped-up gravel, some of it three or four metres above the current water.

We set up camp in the middle of
the gravel; there’s room, if we go more rectangular than square, and low river is not
no
river. Better than the usual ditch, and I’d rather not fuse any of the terrain into walls. Shifting some gravel around into something like flatness should be less objectionable.

Sliding ourselves through the night under concealment ought to do it. Out of anything except an heroic bowshot from the banks, and
a vengeful sorcerer is more of a worry than troops. Extremely unlucky troops to have been in the right place; we’ve come more than a hundred kilometres today over a shape of mountains that wasn’t under the sun yesterday.

A sorcerer might just be able to find us. An active standard is detectable, and moving is haste is surely active.

I have Halt, Rust, and Blossom treat the possibility seriously;
pretend you’re a One-of-the-Twelve level sorcerer from Reems, out for vengeance. Whatever you’d expect from that, keep it from happening, quietly.

It was an educational instruction.

Rust lay, apparently comfortable on smooth rocks, head on saddle, hat over face, and you’d have to be paying careful attention to realise that the mountain-jays and the blackbirds and after nightfall the owls all kept
having short fits of looking for something. You’d need good eyes or the focus to realise it went out a long way.

Blossom sat down at a worktable that folds out of the side of the battery commander’s waggon with some copper rods and some silver wire and put a shiny thing together. Then the Part-Captain had a couple files of artillerists stick some engraved and inlaid steel tent stakes around the
perimeter of the camp, evenly round an ellipse at all thirty-two compass points.

There was some fussing when it became apparent that Rust’s disembodied awareness was returning periodically to be bodied, and not quite in a way the shiny thing understood. Blossom adjusted something, Rust sat up, entered into a brief discussion of esoterica with Blossom, and then lay back down.

Pretty much what you’d
expect.

The gentle, unthreatening darkness will talk to Halt, in entirely comprehensible words. They were still chatting amiably away when I condensed back out of the standard around midnight, having checked up on One Platoon and updated the battalion diary.

Some of the drovers may still be shuddering. I’m not sure I wouldn’t be, myself, if I ever let myself think about it for any length of time.

Morning is quiet; we do a proper cooked breakfast and a kit check. Throwing a wheel loses time and drops the injured.

One fewer injured to drop; lost one of the demon-bit injured in the night. They go in the ashes-barrel with due ceremony and into the standard to a rueful welcome.

The living are holding together pretty well. Can’t say they’re not as tired as I expected, but the Company is dealing
with it better.

All of them will have put in a hard day’s work with something that grants a simple focus, a plow, a dredge, lumbering, making bricks, anything like that, and you put the day in and you’re tired and you wake up in the morning doing pretty well. Not a lot different from putting in a day’s work just with muscles.

Part of that, maybe most of that, is that the simple focus has a limit;
you can’t get more than a fixed amount of the Power into it, and if you have, and try to use, more than that, you get an obvious overflow effect that keeps the simple focus from working.

Line standards will take everything you give them. There’s no limit; you can kill yourself with the drain. It happens from inattention much more often than from desperate circumstances.

Nobody did that. All that
catch was good for something.

Living and dead crushed attacks by demons, sorcerers, toxic critters, and veteran infantry, spent an uneasy night, and then put in a day of hastened marching, pulled into focus without having time to notice they were still tired. Today, nothing will keep them from being woozy-tired in ways they don’t feel in their muscles.

Even the dead; the dead still think of themselves
as having bodies, bodies with muscles that get tired.

You see various stretches, people rolling their shoulders or rotating their arms, and looking baffled because there’s no ache to it. It’s talent-tired. Something an Independent would know, or veterans, but new to the Creeks.

More than one unit of the Line, new from an actual battle, has had its morale crack from being talent-tired. It’s been
described as all the bad bits of being drunk, or the early stages of being poisoned.

The artillerists, veterans all, make a point of explaining. Halt gives a good deal of implausibly grandmotherly advice. Rust points out, once, that it’s a much better feeling than losing.

Blossom has the good grace to look as much abashed as is consistent with a Part-Captain’s dignity when Dove — who looks like
someone who got green wine, and is combining drunk and poisoned — asks outright if Blossom’s ever been talent-tired. Blossom certainly isn’t now, something as may trouble the shades of Reems sorcerers variously finely-divided.

The camp goes right on pulling itself together. Blossom’s wards haven’t gone off, Rust hasn’t found anything, and whatever Halt found to chat about with the enveloping darkness,
Halt hasn’t felt it necessary to mention any of it.

That was a day.

A day indeed, Sergeant-Major.

Twitch has Toby running One through the same mend-and-maintain routine. It looks like it’s helping.

Coping with talent-tired and the ghosts of worn uniforms might keep them from thinking about what kinds of conversations they’ll have if I get them home.

Rust looks flatly annoyed, so much so that the
ghost-horse noses Rust in worry. Rust is as talent-tired as the rest of them, with as good a reason, but has far too much practice with the state for that to be it.

Where are we, Captain?
A nice hot hardwood fire, this one, a couple hundred metres upwind somewhere.

I take a chance, and run the viewpoint of the focus up about half a kilometre. From there, and the still-considerable height in the
mountains, I’m fairly sure I can see the distant shadow of the Folded Hills and a faint shine from Westcreek’s headwaters marshes.

We’re at least a hundred kilometres west of where I thought we made camp.

Didn’t notice anything.
Rust’s not at all happy. I’m just glad no one is likely to make an actual fire out of old wet boots.

Polite of the terrane.

It’s raining when we march into Headwaters.