The March North (22 page)

Deal.

Crinoline heads off to make it a planning exercise for the Fourth’s company commanders, that consistent fate of Part-Captains.

I have to move.

The gerefan for Westcreek want the Standard for the Second Heavy of the Seventieth Territorial Brigade, that mostly hypothetical formation, to be part of the memorial. We’re going to need new standards once the second Shape of Peace exists, so it seems to the gerefan that there is no harm in this.

There isn’t, really, though a lot of people are likely to be upset if anything happens
where I’d want to grab it out of the memorial between now and new standards showing up. Change the Shape of Peace, and it won’t work, the standards aren’t going to transfer.

Blossom appears after the armour stand gets shifted out of the standard onto some warehouse floor — always move that first, or you’ll knock it over trying to move past it — and offers to help. You can invite people into a
standard, but it’s an every-time thing; they can leave on their own, but one invite is one entry for everybody but the Standard-Captains.

And Blossom, who is a standard.

It’s good to have the help; there’s half a tonne of books and maps in there. Even at company strength for the last three centuries, half a thousand years of battalion records adds up.

Any time there’s a change of quarters, there’s
that point at the end when you’re checking to see if you missed anything. Nothing of mine, nothing in the map room or the records room but Blossom, gone completely sorcerer and looking at the ceiling frieze. It’s bronze, and full of runes I can’t read.

Better to say Blossom’s gone full enchanter; segments of the runes are lighting up, one at a time. Sometimes it’s parts of the border, asymmetric
knotwork that looks like the snakes were too drunk.

“This is one of the original standards.” Blossom manages to sound certain and disbelieving at the same time, saying this.

There were twelve; the Foremost departed with three of them.

“It’s been in the Creeks since the Line first came through, same as the Captain’s House.”

Blossom nods.

“How optional is this Shape-of-Peace thing?”

“It gets you
off the existential threat list.”

Blossom looks enormously sad, but goes right on looking up at the frieze.

“Those” — chunks of the frieze light up, gently, green and cyan and gold — “are there so a sorcerer can participate in the focus.”

Saying things gently isn’t my worst skill, but it’s nothing I’d ever try to make a living at. “Laurel didn’t intend the standard-binding to achieve independence.
Every historical source agrees on that.”

Blossom, nodding, manages to look sadder still.

“Plug you into a signa like” — my chin comes up, to indicate the frieze. “You could
make
the signa. You’re
going
to make the signas, and the standards, for the Second Commonweal’s Line.”

Blossom looks startled, maybe halfway out of the full depth of sad.

“Best enchanter we’ve got.”

I get an eloquent “can’t
very well argue with that” look.

“You could
be
the signa, yourself.”

No trace of surprised reaction. Of course Blossom’s thought about it.

“The only possibility of stopping you would be plugging a whole bunch of nothing-like-as-good sorcerers together, using some kind of modified standard binding, to try to get a brigade that could, maybe, stand up to yours. That’s the Bad Old Days returned, and
with no real hope of getting rid of them again.”

Never mind what’d happen to the landscape, anywhere you had a fight like that.

“The Commonweal is made out of magic; the Shape of Peace, the Standards of the Line, the mechanisms of the geans, and the courts of law, it’s all a collective application of very complex spells. It works because the rules are the same for everyone.”

As nearly as we can
manage, anyway.

“Those rules don’t apply to you. Not because you claim you’re important, not because you break the rules. They just don’t, any more than wood lettuce tea will make me sick.” It’ll kill most non-Creeks, but graul can eat anything.

A grin, brief and shallow, but still. At least the memory of bent metal.

“Getting the Commonweal into the future means making you into the rules. You,
and Halt, and anybody else the rest of us can’t be sure couldn’t just take over the whole enchantment that makes the Commonweal possible at all.”

“How is that not slavery?”

“It doesn’t say anything about what you do, just who you are. Same as I can’t be someone who wanders about, killing people and taking their stuff.”

Blossom snorts. The Line runs exercises that are never
called
“suppressing
graul bandits”; that would be tactless, since graul have never taken up banditry. Actual graul, usually graul who are Line veterans and suffer from a desire to exercise their sense of humour, are reliable about showing up to pretend to be bandits all the same. New junior officers are reliable about having several bad days.

“Being someone who does the job they’re given isn’t enough?” If you made
me guess, that’s the foundation of the sadness.

“I might be that. You have the ghosts of your dead gunners pleased to accept the live ones pouring out beer for them so their shades will remember they were living long enough to train their replacements.”

Blossom looks away.

That happened when we camped on the gravel bar. Blossom teared up then, and maybe now.

“They’re not serving the Line; they’re
serving you. It’d be a worry if you had the talent of a wheel of cheese.”

An actual smile.

“Point.”

“Once I turn over the standard in Westcreek Town, I’ll be carrying around the same transfer token I used to get here, so I don’t drop dead of having no assigned standard.” The token is in the Captain’s House, which is, after all, where it belongs.

“You know it works.” Blossom gestures. “I can
read that, and know what I know that Laurel didn’t. I can even write it down, so maybe the Second” — there’s a small catch in Blossom’s even voice — “Commonweal’s standards will be more efficient, if I can get everybody to agree it wouldn’t damage the rest of the working.”

I turn, and start heading out of the records room. Blossom follows along. “Everybody survived the first Shape of Peace” —
 only one of them is known to be alive now, but the Shape of Peace isn’t what killed the rest of them — “and if Halt isn’t worried about the name transfer, you hardly need to be.” The number of things bound with Blossom’s name probably isn’t small, but Blossom just hasn’t had time to catch up with Halt.

It will be exciting if Halt’s name actually changes, switching Shapes of Peace, and many mighty
things need to be bound anew. They’re supposed to go into the Shape of Peace, the knowledge of all the bindings, when an Independent dies, and the load sort of gets diffused across those Independents yet living. Can’t expect that to work, switching Shapes of Peace.

Every Commonweal citizen’s true name gets stuffed back of the Shape of Peace. You can ask if someone is really who they say they are
without knowing their true name, and the Shape will answer. Try to fake who you are and it will kill you. Try to take any Commonweal citizen over through their true name, try to use their name to take or crush the power of a Commonweal sorcerer, any sorcerer, some guy who can do four charms reliably as much as one of the Twelve, and you have to overcome the Shape entirely to get the one name. Also
the one time you want the Line to find you before the Independents do.

A second Commonweal means a different Shape of Peace, and, since there’s no time, presumably something like the original working, that bound names based on geography, rather than the present mechanism of descent.

“Do you think the current Shape of Peace won’t let go?”

Blossom makes the hand-rocking gesture of doubt. “Theory
says it’s fine.”

“How much of the red shot you expended was theory before we marched up north?”

I get the metal-bending grin. “The short black-black-reds are close to regulation.”

Blossom goes out of the standard ahead of me; it would let the Part-Captain stay, if I left first, but that wouldn’t be polite.

I don’t have to give it up quite yet, but I pat the wood and iron frame of the thing that
isn’t a door anyway.

I’m going to miss it.

Dove and two files stay in Headwaters. There are more spine-stuck than the hospital can readily handle, and harvest is ramping up. Not a slow time for any hospital. Dove had just looked at Radish, when Radish had tried to suggest taking that detail, and Radish had nodded, and shut up.

The dead think they’ve had a rest. The hale living have had, and we march out of Headwaters in good time
and good order. Breaking step for the bridges goes by without notice. I’ve got a veteran half-company of regulars now, along with orders to get the designation caught up.

Also an unburdened Eustace following Blossom, and therefore also Blossom’s horse-thing. Eustace isn’t doing much of the fire-breathing; there’s a faint glow over fleshy nostrils, but no jets. Eustace is acting like one false
move will bring on wishing to be cutlets.

Blossom’s will, or attention, I can’t tell, has been unable to entirely tamp back into Blossom’s junior officer face. Doesn’t feel Shape-of-Peace related. Even the veteran artillerists were visibly careful of Blossom’s mood, loading up a barge in the pre-dawn near-dark. Artillery to cover the northern border is obvious critical supply, didn’t look like
social embarrassment that they were getting water transport.

We’re a kilometre south of the causeway end, rolling along, Eustace and Blossom’s horse-thing on the grassy verge, the dead stirring no dust from the road behind me, when the lookout notes the presence of a riderless horse-thing on the east, left, wet, side of the roadway. There’s maybe thirty metres of mixed trees and swamp and the
kind of grass that doesn’t mean this is a safe place to put your feet before the channel of the Wet Westcreek on the east side of the road, all the way along the first ten kilometres. The horse-thing is right at the point the road starts to curve because the Wet Westcreek does, too.

The horse-thing, visually identical to the one Blossom is riding until you get to the tack, is just off the verge,
not in the damp stuff. It’s alert, it’s looking at something under the trees, and it’s flicking an ear. No sign of wanting to move.

The half kilometre up to where the horse-thing is goes quick, and I call a halt.

“Part-Captain?”

I remember the horse-thing Blossom rides kicking Reems guys into spray. Sending someone to grab the reins isn’t the first thing to try.

Blossom dismounts. Blossom’s horse-thing
and this one whistle at each other, sounding like what you’d get if penny-whistles were a social species.

Blossom takes some slow steps from the side, clucking, and puts a hand on the other horse-thing’s neck. There’s an ear flick, but no other movement. One more step forward, even with the horse-thing’s head, and it shies; Blossom’s going metal-fire.

Someone with a large cat half on their head
rises from behind the waist-high grass. The reflex reaction to Blossom going angry-sorcerer is for the focus to close up; nobody orders it, it just starts to happen, and then it stutters.

The cat looks up with hisses and tail-lashing, and the woman smiles.

If there’s a way to punch humans in the gut so they sigh, instead of folding up, that’s what happens. The
dead
do it.

“Spike!” says the woman,
out of the astonishing smile. From what I’m getting back through the focus, human people will die for a chance to see that smile again.

Blossom takes six steps through the grass and hugs whoever this is.

Whoever it is reacts to Blossom’s advance by shifting the cat into a lower, away-from Blossom grip, and leans into Blossom’s approach. Whether the cat’s resulting ear-gnawing is affectionate or
not, the woman takes no notice of it. Brief razor-fine lines, magenta and orange and a blazing teal, show everywhere teeth touch flesh. The tail-lashing is impressive; there are a couple of resolute
bong
noises from Blossom’s tassets.

Three dead guys, a couple of file closers back in two, and Radish, for half a step, start forward. Radish stops them all.
Sir! That’s an ocelotter. It’s wild, not
safe to pick up.

Ocelotters are considered lucky
, much more calmly from Twitch.
Mostly because any place they live has relatively few weeds species established.

The new horse-thing’s ears are staying back; the woman with the ocelotter stops, two steps into coming forward, scritches behind the ocelotter’s ears — I can hear the purr from ten metres, and there’s an ornate head-butting — and sets
it down.

I get enough height out of the focus to watch it bound twice and vanish into swamp water. Something happens to the ears before it hits the water. The thick tail sculls, and it dives. There are…four more, watching from trees. Yearling group? And the brave one or the crazy one went to talk to the nice sorcerer?

Blossom looks happy, every bit as happy as looking out over the crater where
the commander of the army of Reems had been.

“Captain, may I present the Independent Grue?”

“It’s short for Gruesome”, Grue says, smile intensity adjusting upward. I can feel the standard-bearer’s knees start to give before there’s a general mental retreat into the focus.

I give the standard short bow, thinking
the other one
while I do it.

It’s really
Grew
, but try to get someone who wound up
two decimetres over average height to use that.
Blossom can get a lot of fondness through the focus.

Grue’s about nineteen decimetres, a decimetre taller than Blossom. Typical female Creek height. More leg and less shoulder and an odd impression of a truly floating stride, feet not quite touching the ground.

“Was the Independent proceeding south or north?”

“The Independent was waiting to ambush
your Part-Captain; I have Blossom’s luggage.” Vast gentle amusement.

One of the cases behind the saddle of Grue’s horse-thing is waxed leather with brass corners, not significantly different in design from what anybody with things that mustn’t be crushed uses instead of a saddlebag. The other one is…

Cruncher hide?
I can’t tell if Twitch is appalled or astonished.

Killed it with a spoon.
Only
a very little bobbling to get first latch to the standard.
Of
the Line the Foremost’s worn boots.

Now Twitch is
both
appalled and astonished.

Sergeant-Major?

Twitch gets everybody informed and moving again. There’s a couple hundred other happy meetings coming up, as soon as we get the company home. It doesn’t seem necessary to ask if Grue is coming along, or if the new horse-thing can keep up.

The only other time I ever saw a riding dress, it was on some foreign dignitary really determined to stay in a particular style of long robe. Grue is wearing a pale blue frothy one over cavalry boots, the scout-cavalry over the knee kind that has marked those wildly more brave than sensible for the last four hundred years. Grue mounts by a process indistinguishable from levitation and rides well
enough that Grue’s horse-thing backs and turns to flank Blossom’s on the east without Grue laying hand on the reins.

There’s a generally pleased-sounding set of quiet whistles from the horse-things.

Blossom hands Grue the letter tube from the back of Blossom’s sword belt; Grue produces a half-dozen, and hands them to Blossom. Grue’s letter gets read; Blossom, on duty and on the march, tucks the
half-dozen away.

A quiet five kilometres or so later, proceeding at the full regular rate of advance, Twitch asks, privately,
A spoon?

A high-velocity spoon.
Blossom tries for repressive, doesn’t quite manage it, tone somewhere between the Part-Captain and the Independent.

The image is of an older-looking, and thus much younger, Blossom; the cruncher’s great triangular head and tree-snapping beak
are reaching fast, Blossom’s hand is
inside
the gape, and there’s a flash and an awful mess. Crunchers are not easy to kill, but nothing does all that well with its brain blown out of the back of its head and what looks like all its extensor muscles locked.

Grue shouldn’t have heard the question, or been able to tell who it originated from.

The next bit of image comes directly from Blossom. There
is muttering in it, and what are presumably the younger Blossom’s hands, picking up a spoon folded in half and crushed nearly into a cylinder around the long axis and proceeding to bend and squeeze it back into a proper spoon shape using thumb pressure, like a potter making a clay figurine.

The one spoon the Part-Captain had?
Twitch is still appalled, but it’s the appalled that will stuff itself
into the general category of Independents. I’m not sure if it says more about Twitch or Blossom that Twitch really wasn’t sure Blossom hadn’t beaten a cruncher to death with a spoon.

Wasn’t even an ensign then
. Blossom reaches into a harness pouch, twists to reach into a saddlebag, straightens up holding a fan of five identical spoons, strangely shiny.

One Platoon, who can perfectly well see the
spoons, start off perplexed and finish with smiles as Twitch explains. Blossom puts the spoons away with good humour.

I no longer believe in Independents randomly arrived.

Independent

Grue, for all love

Are you in the Creeks for some particular purpose?

I do medical stuff, some agricultural work
 — which could be anything, weeds, crop enhancement, encouraging birds to eat the bugs you want eaten
 — 
and Halt sent me a letter saying that there was no limit to the work to be done in the Creeks.

The smile and the cheerfulness fade, for a second.
“By the pricking of my thumbs” isn’t something you want to read in a letter from Halt.

Blossom’s face goes bleak. I hear the next thing Blossom sends, Grue does, and it’s clear to me that the focus is forbidden to pass it more widely.
It’s happening
faster than Halt expected.

Grue reaches up, brings a butterfly that perched on the raised hand as though butterflies all do that down into the path of a wider smile, blows gently. The butterfly sails off; somewhere behind me, troopers fall out of step.

Differently, maybe. Halt called the auguries grim.
Grue doesn’t get the smile into that.

Blossom inhales; Blossom’s horse-thing curvets. Halt’s
understanding of grim is a bad thing to find yourself trying to imagine.

Grue looks, I think, wistful. Side-on and upward doesn’t help with subtle human expressions.
The auguries and the news that the Eastern District had assigned the Standard-Captain to the Creeks crossed, getting to the Line-Gesith. Halt didn’t expect much support from the Line, and
did
expect to have trouble with Rust.

This
one’s easy, it’s approval, slanting past Blossom who is looking oddly at Grue.
When Halt says even Rust could see not to try your ruthlessness, Captain, that’s a rare compliment.

I suppose it must be.