Sunset Mantle (2 page)

There was a line drawn in the dirt between the two rows, and the sergeant was at the other end, all smiles as well. So many smiles; it was as though Sheavesday had come in summer. Cete could feel the blood pulsing in his neck, feel the shivering starting in his fingers. “Whenever you’re ready, old man,” said the sergeant.

“What are your rules?” asked Cete.

“Pretend to wear a merit chain, and you don’t know the gauntlet?” laughed the sergeant. “Rule is this—walk the line from one end to the other. That’s it. No other rules, no—”

Cete stepped forward. The first man on the left, holding an overseer’s truncheon, moved first. He was tall and broadly built, with a child’s face. The first man on the right was smaller, with pale, almost brown hair and a neatly cropped beard. He held a practice sword, and he pulled it back to strike.

Cete grabbed the man with the truncheon by his elbow, pushing in close while the weapon was still raised, and punched him in the center of his chest at the same time, moving with all his weight. The man showed more surprise than pain at that, the sort of stupefied, half-embarrassed look that Cete had seen on countless faces of men who had taken a mortal blow in battle.

The sword was coming down. Cete pivoted, sent the big man into the man with the cropped beard. Cropped beard fell back, as did the man next to him, who’d gotten tangled in his fellow soldier’s elbows. If Cete had let go of the big man, all three of them would’ve been off the line until he was past. He didn’t. One hand on the elbow, the other on the wrist, and he twisted. The boy dropped to a knee. Cete let go of the elbow and drove a fist into his nose. The crunch of cartilage and blood, the tears of pain. Another punch, this one in his eye. That rocked his head back; the boy had enough muscle in his neck that it wasn’t a killing blow, but he was unquestionably out.

One last punch. Cheekbone, just under the eye. No point in that but showing the others what would happen to them. The head rocked back again. This time, Cete let the boy fall, pulling the truncheon loose from nerveless fingers.

The smiles were gone.

The young soldiers looked white around the edges, nauseated, afraid. Eighteen of them—seventeen, now—and one of him. Cete gave a battle roar, full-throated, from his core, and they took a step back. He walked forward, truncheon swinging loosely, and they blanched. They’d get their courage back, and there were too many of them, too young, for him to beat them all. But at least they knew that staying on the line meant a blooding.

Before he could get to them, the sergeant came roaring through. “I’ll see you bled for this, you outclan swine!” There was spittle on his beard and wildness in his eyes. Cete felt his muscles tense, felt the length of the truncheon in his hand. Could be that he would bleed for it, but he couldn’t help what he was about to do, any more than he could leave the mantle behind. It was the edge of the madding; it was his rage, not his mind, which would swing the truncheon.

“A three-year veteran, and you a grayhair trash!” shouted the sergeant. Just another step, two, and Cete would have the range on him. He could already hear the crack of wood on skull, feel the shock going up his arm. The madding had not quite swallowed him, but it was getting close.

“Attention!” came a shout from outside the field, and the sergeant stopped. Another step, another half a step, and Cete would’ve started his swing, would’ve killed or been killed.

“Sir!” said the sergeant.

“What’s this?” asked another voice, not shouting, but with a clear note of command. All eyes had turned to the interloper, but no pause had been called for the gauntlet. Cete could push past, he could step up and crack the sergeant’s skull open. He did neither, but nor did he turn away to see the man who was talking. Cete was balanced on the point of a knife.

“This outclan grayhair heard there was easy meat for no work here, sir, so he faked up some story with a merit chain. Then he cheated at the gauntlet, hurt young Arthran bad, sir. Nothing to concern you, sir; I’ll deal with it.”

A laugh. “You’ll get your fool head cracked open, Sergeant Mase. Arthran’s half his age and has a foot of height on him, and he’s a damn bloody pulp. Didn’t you hear that battle roar?”

The sergeant hesitated, took a half step forward, hesitated. Cete crouched, ready, willing himself back from the edge.

“Enough.” The man who had been talking vaulted the fence into the exercise yard, the smooth leap of a young man secure in his strength. All the soldiers stood at attention, including the sergeant and, after a breath, Cete. “You wear a merit chain of the Hainst.”

“Yes,” said Cete.

“Have you held command before?”

Cete hesitated. Before he had been cast from the Hainst, he had been a captain general; he had left that behind, and had not allowed himself to want it since. “Yes,” he said.

“I am Radan Termith; I am captain general here. How are you called?” Radan wore a commander’s armor, lacquered scale and inlaid plate, and he wore it well. Long hair, black and thick, and a close-cropped beard. Young, nearly as young as the soldier who Cete had laid out, but he wasn’t showing arrogance or deference, just the easy assurance of command.

“I am Cete.” Sergeant Mase ground his teeth at that, but Cete had no reason to defer to the commander; he was not under orders.

“Well, Cete,” said Radan. “You’re looking for work?”

“I am,” said Cete.

“I will buy from you three years of work as a fifty-commander, at the rate of one half-mark a day, one quarter paid in advance, one quarter on completion, and the rest every tenth day of service.”

Cete had been hoping for a short-term contract, something he could walk clear of if he saw the hammer start to fall. He’d hoped to temporize, rather than commit; it had been foolish.

“These terms are acceptable to me,” he said. “My labor is yours for the term you have specified, sir.”

Radan leapt back over the fence, where a half-dozen junior officers waited. “The contracts will be drawn up, and your first payment prepared. Report to the quartermaster after the evening services; he will have your contract, your initial payment, and your assignment.”

Radan gave the exercise yard one last look. “See to Arthran, Mase,” he said. “And be less of a fool, if that’s at all possible.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mase, and knelt beside the man whose truncheon Cete still held. A fifty-commander was a lieutenant-captain, and it was no longer appropriate for Cete to bear a grudge against a sergeant who was to serve alongside him. Which did not mean that there was no longer a reckoning due.

Cete dropped the truncheon and walked to the end of the line. The rest of the soldiers were no longer on the gauntlet, but if he left it undone, it would mean one thing, and finishing it meant another. Then he left the yard, headed back towards the Reach. It was not a wise decision, but it was made. He was a fifty-commander in the army of Reach Antach, sworn to the Antach of the Antach, and to his commander, Radan Termith. Their doom was his. Now he would see what that decision had gained him.

* * *

There was more of Marelle’s work hanging from the walls within her shop. A woman’s festival gown, with irises and orchids twined on the sleeves, a prayer mantle with broad stripes of geometric patterns, clothing embroidered with flowers and constellations, hawks and hounds, bold patterns and subtle. Nothing there could match the sunset mantle, but all of it was beautiful.

“I should like to commission from you a mantle,” he said. Marelle was sitting in a straight-backed chair, her fingers pulling a red thread through a white cloth as she stared off into the middle distance.

“How much?” she asked.

Cete considered. He would have a hundred and fifty marks as his first payment. As an officer, he would have to pay for lodgings, he’d need some money set aside to cover gaps in issued equipment and pay for festival meals for his command. The most he could spare was twenty marks from the initial payment, and then two of the five he’d receive every ten days. Fifty, if he could wait until the Sheavesday festival. Fifty marks could buy a man a house, or ten olive trees, or twenty-one sheep.

“Sixty,” he said, “I will give you twenty tomorrow, and the rest on delivery.”

“I will trust you to pay for what you purchase,” she said, drawing back slightly, the faintest hint of offense in her voice.

“I am now a fifty-commander in the Reach army,” said Cete. “And I have no friends or relations within two month’s travel.” Or within ten year’s travel, but that was of less concern to the law. “If I die, all I own will be given to charity. I do not want you to work for me and receive nothing.”

“Most men think that the Reach army is a safe, if dull occupation,” said Marelle.

“They are wrong,” said Cete.

Marelle nodded. He was an outsider, and she would have heard that the Reach army was safe from men who had lived in the Reach for decades, but she didn’t show any signs of surprise or disbelief at his pronouncement. “You think that war is coming?” she asked.

“When I went to the church for the afternoon service,” said Cete, “the Antach of Antach was there, at the dais. Next to him sat a man with the victory braids of a tribal chief in his hair and beard.”

“Tribesmen fear God as well as we do,” said Marelle. “If they come in peace, their chiefs are accorded all honor—that’s mere prudence.”

“Yes,” said Cete. “But for all their differences—the Antach in his city mantle, the tribesman in his robes—there could be no mistaking the fact that the men were brothers.”

Marelle’s lips quirked up in a smile. “It is supposed to be the deepest-held secret of the Reach,” she said.

Cete forbore mentioning that if a blind woman could see it, it could not be such a great secret as all that. “Then they ought never have been seen together. I cannot say how it was arranged, but the city clans cannot allow it. The enmity of the tribes is the leash around the neck of the Reaches. It extends their debts from years to centuries, forces them to rely on the arms of the city, to pay double for everything. If one reach slips its lead, the others will follow. A war is coming, and I do not think that the Antach will be permitted to win.”

“The Antach thinks,” started Marelle, and then shrugged. “But I think that he is wrong, and that you are right.” She stopped her embroidering, a length of scarlet thread between her hand and the white fabric. “If you joined the Reach army on my urging, I am sorry for it.”

“You spoke only good sense,” said Cete. “I will have the money for you tomorrow.”

“I will make something fine for you,” said Marelle. “Before Sheavesday.”

With that done, Cete felt almost giddy. That it was commissioned did not mean it would ever be completed. Death came to all men; he might never see it done, even if it were finished. But he had made his choice, and now he had made his commission.

“How comes it that a clan lord has a brother who is chief of a clan?” he asked. There had not previously been space in his mind for that question.

“In the clans, descent is through the father,” said Marelle. “In the tribes, the mother. The father of the Antach took two wives. With their knowledge and consent—they were both ambitious women.”

Within the law, but outside of custom. Ambitious, certainly, but foolish just as surely. They talked for a time about that, and about other things, until it was almost time for the evening services, and Cete had to make his hurried farewells. It was only later that he realized he had not spoken to Marelle about his commission, had not specified what colors he wanted, or what pattern. Well and good; he could not have imagined that sunset sky, clouded with birds. He had no doubt that Marelle’s eyes could not see, and he had no doubt that he lacked her vision.

The payment and the orders were ready after the evening services, as Radan had said, and Cete spent most of the night reviewing the contract. There was seldom much difference in the arrangements offered to outclan fighting men, but it was only good sense to read through what had been given to him to sign. His life and his obligations to God were bound up in those parchments, so it was well to be certain of those chains.

As he suspected, most of the weight was on his shoulders. He had no clan to guarantee him, or to protect him in case of default or misconduct by his captain general or the Antach of the Antach. The only protections he had were those the law gave to any fighting man, and his only guarantor was the Lord God. If he was slain unlawfully, no clan had the right of feud with the Antach, and if the Antach wished, his contract could be ended at any time, under any circumstances, with only payment in money to soothe his wounded honor.

There was a time when the Hainst would have stood behind him, and if he signed with another clan, his rights would have had a guardian. But that time was long gone, and better forgotten. Cete signed, and claimed his silver. Early the next morning, he met his fifty on the practice yards.

As with all Reach armies, they went through the dawn routine with sword and axe before the morning services. Watching that routine, Cete saw the work that he would have to do. It was not a bad command. He had fought alongside worse, stood shoulder to shoulder with raw recruits, with criminals, with garrison troops accustomed to wine and ease. There were some of those there, but the bulk of his fifty were sober fighting men, men who had learned their routines as youths and had practiced them faithfully as adults.

The problem was that there were too many outclan, from too many clans, and the difference in routines was painfully obvious. There were men accustomed to the wall-walk where Cete expected locked arms, or who dipped, turned, and reached where he thought the dawn routine should show straight cuts. Men bumped each other, fell out of time, swore.

Radan Termith had given him a command, but it was a command of men like Cete, rather than a command of children of the Reach. Fair enough—the politics of the Reach clans could be poisonous, and he had been given a post that ought to have gone to a Reach army veteran—but it was scarcely a soft posting. Fair enough, as well. The Reach general had shown faith in Cete’s word and in his skill, and Cete would reward that faith tenfold.

It was not just the dawn routine that was the problem; it was the attitudes that drove the form, the assumptions that the fighting traditions made about attack and counter, how the others in ranks would strike, what would be considered an opening, and what would drive men back to defensive poses. If he could count on some months free, Cete would have started them from the beginning, either with the tradition in which he was raised, or in the traditions of the Reach Antach. But the crisis could come any day, and if his men met it halfway between traditions, it would be a disaster.

The best he could do was to redivide the squads. There were too many traditions for that to work neatly, but there were enough similarities and differences that he could find patterns. It was ugly and inefficient, and would never produce the perfect uniformity of routine that distinguished a superior command. But it would work in the field, and Cete could think of nothing else that would.

The differences limited him, but within those limits, Cete pushed as hard as a man could. Days stretched into weeks as Cete pounded his men into shape. It was a good deal more than the other commands went through, and naturally, the men resented it. Which meant that more of Cete’s money went towards festive meals and donatives, and that more of Cete’s blood and time went into the exercise yards.

All of his funds that were left over and much of his time went to Marelle and his commission. He never asked what she was making, and she never broached the subject. There were other things that they did not discuss—Marelle’s blindness, how long it would be before the city clans ended the Reach Antach, why Cete had chosen to stay instead of leaving for a less perilous reach. And yet, somehow, they found enough to say to each other, or shared their silences in her shop, or on the porch of Cete’s shabby little house.

When an unmarried man spent so much of his time with an unmarried woman, it excited rumors. Cete ignored them, and Marelle made no mention of having heard anything untoward. If Cete had any expectation of surviving the years for which he had sold his labor, he might have put forward a suit, but as it was, there was no point in thinking in those terms. When the time came, he would earn his thing of beauty with his death. Until then, he would forget it as best he could, sitting in Marelle’s shop and talking with her of other things.

The waiting ended just over a month after Cete found his place in the Reach army. The day after the fast of the Summer Candles, the Antach of the Antach had the Reach army muster up beneath the walls, and blessed them as they marched out, headed north. Only the wall fifty, the militia, and the Antach clan army were held in reserve; the rest followed Radan, banners held high. The tribes would be in their deepest summer grazing lands, far from the reaches, and since the summer sheaves were not in, it’d be a strain on the Reach to support an army in the field. It was not a propitious time for a raid.

They struck out on pilgrim roads and dry riverbeds, marching so fast that the scouts and slingers who took to the hilltops were barely able to keep pace with them. Risky. It was good country for an ambush, with long fields of grazing land between steep and wooded hills. No chance that a local tribe would miss them, and the column would do poorly if the tribesmen chose the place to give battle.

So. Out into tribal lands, out of season, with no fear of local tribesmen. The assumption had to be that a foreign clan had come into the lands claimed by the Antach’s brother, and posed a threat to the Reach. It seemed the city clans had made a move, and that the Antach—the Antach and his general—had learned of it early enough that they were trying to preempt the tribal attack, hit them before they could come within sight of Reach Antach.

For the first time since Cete had taken Radan’s commission, he let himself feel hope. If the Antach had an ally among the city clans who gave them information on the coming attack, and if the Antach were close enough to the local tribes that they could march their army out with impunity, perhaps Reach Antach would be able to throw off the leash of the city clans. If they could, the rewards . . .

Cete didn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. There was a river of blood between the Reach Antach and security, and he had taken silver to wade through that river. His concern was not what lay on that further shore, or even how best to reach it. His job was to find a way not to drown, within the limits of the law, and his duties, and his honor.

The Reach army was moving too fast to properly fortify each night. There were pickets up, and quickly raised barricades of branch and thorn, but they only stopped marching when it was already too dark to dig proper lines.

The enemy they sought found them on the fourth morning out of Reach Antach, just as they were breaking their camp. It had been a risky site, but they’d been moving too fast to make good camps. That night, it had been a stretch of land cropped clear by sheep, spread out across both sides of a dry riverbed. The tribesmen had crept up through a copse of bottomland oak and terebinth trees, and burst from cover with the whistle of javelin and the wavering, terrifying battle yell of the northwestern tribes.

Cete and his fifty were on the same side of the streambed as the tribesmen, and his men, at least, were in harness, with weapons ready. No time to find the signalman; he’d have to command by action. He ran, axe loose and warm in his grip, legs eating the ground, finding his footing without thought. First ten-squad came in behind him, third and fourth formed up for the charge.

They passed a bloodied sentry, hit a tribesman who had gotten in front of the rest and cast him aside, the whole fifty iron-hungry, despite the whistle and tramp of an oncoming foe. Then, behind them, the signal horns blew the retreat.

Another moment on the point of a knife. Orders were to be followed, and they were not yet at grips. Law and custom were as clear on that as anything. But they were the wrong damn orders. Try to get back across that streambed, and they’d be clawing at the bank like stranded turtles while the tribesmen skewered them from behind. It might have made sense to Radan—the bed would make a fine ditch between them and the tribes—but the tribesmen would blood them and fade away, and they were three days from the Reach.

The horns blew again. Cete shook his head, and charged on, and his men followed. Even if he was violating the chain of command, they, at least, knew to obey it. His sin was not theirs. Three more heartbeats, and they were in among the tribesmen, and no law or custom allowed a commander to call off a troop once they had come to grips.

If nothing else, he’d secured a retreat for those with better discipline. Then all thoughts of strategy, all thoughts of right and wrong vanished, and there was nothing but sword and axe and knife and blood, the push of line against line.

The first wave of tribesmen went down. They had courage, but lacked the discipline of the cities—each tribesman fought to prove himself, to win acclaim and honor, but Cete’s troops fought because that was what they had learned, because they had been trained to do nothing other than fight when the blood began to flow.

First wave down, second wave coming. Not the heroes of the first line, not young men trying to prove themselves, but the fighting men of a northern tribe, beards and hair tied back, mail shirts and brass embossed shields. Man for man, the Reach army was their better, but there were too many of them. Step by step by step, Cete and his men were forced back to the riverbank. Before them, a mass of fighting men, hundreds of tribal warriors, with goat-skin standards and red-painted shields. Behind them, a drop almost as tall as a man, and bleached stones beneath.

Damn Radan! The boy had looked fine, and they had been right to march out to meet this threat, but if he was to be a field general, he had to see that circumstances had changed. Now was the time to call for the slingers and ladders, now was the time for a counterattack. The surprise was gone, and Cete had a beachhead for him. Cete had disobeyed, but he had been right, and Radan had to take the advantage that Cete’s fifty had earned.

It had not just been his fifty who had remained on the weak side of the streambed. Others had not heard the call to retreat, or had come to grips before it was blown, or had not chosen to obey. But there were less than eighty of the Reach men, and they were falling fast. Cete ducked underneath a spear, which skidded across his shoulder. He pushed up, axe in one hand, knife in the other, and found the weak point in his opponent’s mail shirt. The knife cut in at the armpit, and the tribesman pulled back, howling in pain.

Two more came in, and went down, but all along the riverbank his men were dying. Three patches held. Where he stood was the first squad, and remnants of the fourth; he could not tell who was left alive. He could hear the soft sounds of a ready army behind him, amidst all the thunder and shouting of the melee. If Cete had kept his horn, he’d have blown the charge himself, and to hell with the consequence, but that was long gone, trampled with his tent or taken as a trophy.

There was a pause in the assault, just an instant, and Cete looked back over the dry riverbed. There was Radan, his face white beneath his helmet, horn to hand. He was young enough that this might have been his first real battle.

Cete took a spear in the center of his chest. It dropped him to one knee, but it didn’t cut his armor, or knock him back into the streambed. The roar came up from inside him, forced out from his chest, loud enough to hurt his throat. He was on his feet, his foe was gone, and he was holding a fistful of hair. He had no recollection of what had happened; his vision was going white around the edges, and while his fingers still gripped his weapons, he could no longer feel them. The edge and the breath of the madding.

He leapt forward, beyond the knot of his men, into the face of his enemies. Cete had always known how he would die.

Behind him, as though through a very long tunnel, the trumpets blew the charge. A hook-bladed knife gashed into the side of his face; his axe took off the hand that held it, so the spray of the tribesman’s blood met his own in midair. Another spear in the center of his chest, as he moved through the blood. This one caught between two plates in his armor, and the man behind it tried to push through the chain and arming shirt. Cete’s axe came up and around, cut the spearpoint off just beyond the tang. He was pushed forward, forward by the weight of the men behind him.

Cete staggered, held his ground, did his best to distinguish between the tribesmen and the Reach army. They started singing the war hymn, which helped. He joined in the chorus, found his voice in theirs, found his center in the tramp of armored men moving as one. The tribesmen had been pushing his fifty-command hard, but against the force of the Reach army, they were the ones who fell, they were the ones who turned to flee.

Then the terrain the tribesmen had chosen worked against them. It was too broken, too steep for easy flight. Warriors tripped over roots, caught their feet in brambles, fell and were killed by spear and axe. The trumpets blew the halt as the tribal army thinned out, fled in too many directions to follow as a troop. This time, that caution was correct. It did not seem likely to Cete that the tribes were trying to lead them into an ambush, but he had seen too often their courage; they were fleeing because they were losing. As soon as the odds evened, they would turn and fight, ferocious as boars at bay.

Cete could not remember where he had left his dagger—in a tribesman’s belly, perhaps, or knocked from his grip and trampled into the gory earth—but there was no shortage of replacements. He picked up a hook-bladed tribal knife and stuck it in his belt. It was longer than the dagger that the Reach army had issued, and the balance was different, but it was a fine tool. It would serve.