The Godless (26 page)

“And the catapults.”

He hadn't looked at those. His glass eye slid down the long tail of the army, where bulls were being used to pull the siege weapons. He counted eleven, made similarly. “They won't do much damage going up the side of Ger's Spine.” Behind the catapults were livestock: pigs and cattle and sheep, penned at the moment, kept in place by dog and man. “But once there…”

Beside him, Zean lowered his spyglass. “How did Heast not know more?”

Bueralan thought the same thing. Two days ago, they had encountered the razor-wire chain fence than ran across the border of Leera and that had, as Heast said, gone some way to explaining why they knew so little. A long string of dignitaries and their guards were strapped to the fence, most with their throats slit. On each of them, wilted letters of introduction had been sewn into the skin. It was difficult to tell how long they had been strung up on the country's border but Liaya, poking at each with her long fingers, said that they were at most three months old. “The humidity makes it hard to be sure,” she had said. “But they've not joined the bones on the ground, yet.”

That was the best answer any of them had, but it was not enough. “Bad magic,” Ruk muttered sleepily as they sat around their cold camp the night before and discussed the fires on the horizon. “Why we even discussing it? It has the smell of blood all over it.”

“It's easy to make a country look like it is experiencing a civil war,” Bueralan said, lowering his own spyglass. “It's easy to hide what people are hearing.”

“That's a big army in front of us. You spill a lot of blood in a nation to hide that, and more to hide that you spilled it.”

“You don't have to spill blood. Every revolution we have been part of, or broken up, has been spread out among the city as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Bits here and there, nothing too suspicious, a bit of misdirection. You know that as well as I do. The patrols we've come across returning to the main body could be nothing but that.”

For the week after they had left the Mireea and entered Leera, Dark had not seen much. Besides the corpses on the border it had mostly been heat, still bodies of water and insects. On the third day of the second week, however, they came across a small band of raiders: six men, none of them worth much of a fight. They didn't have much in the way of belongings, but their teeth had been filed down to points, a self-mutilation that spoke of cannibalism. They avoided two more groups after that: Aerala picked up the trails early and led Dark around the raiders or into a quiet corner to let them pass. In those groups there was nothing to suggest a wildness, a departure from the morals that all men and women shared or the degeneration of a civilized mind. There had been, instead, a stillness and a quiet as they rode back into Leera.

If that wasn't enough, the first village that they rode into with marshland mist clinging to them helped Bueralan's argument. In the morning's sun, Dark had ridden past stripped houses, their frames bare like browned skeletons, the grass long and untended, the vegetable and garden patches overgrown and smelling of ripe, rotten fruit and vegetables. But for all that, there was no sense of destruction, no bones, no marks of fire.

“A civilian army.” Zean spat. “That's the last thing you want to walk into.”

Bueralan did not reply. It would take years to train an entire nation, years to fashion them into a military force, but if they had done it … There were between thirty and forty thousand people throughout the countryside, three times what he believed Mireea held, and that was men and women of fighting age. But Bueralan had seen not just young men and women, but older ones; in his glass eye he had tracked an elderly man wearing a green-and-brown-streaked cloak with a matching tabard walking around a siege tower, examining the wheels.

“Nothing changes,” he said, finally. “I want you to start backtracking, seeing to the wells and water holes, the bridges that they will likely take.”

“And you still mean to go to Dirtwater?”

“I know you don't like the idea.”

“Does anyone like it?”

No
.

Bueralan pushed his way through the gray brush, moving slowly down the muddy decline to the cold camp Dark kept. Kae and Aerala had removed as much of their tracks as best they could, though it would not stop a decent tracker, but not much would. Before him, Liaya sat on a log, working through her bags, while behind her slept Ruk. On the edge of the camp stood Samuel Orlan and his ancient pony, his mouth still wearing the frown that had appeared last night after he had heard the saboteur's plan.

“Well?” Aerala asked.

“Nothing has changed.” He pushed the spyglass together. “Orlan and I will head down to Dirtwater and the rest of you can start working. Don't worry, I've done this before.”

“Why not me instead?” Kae asked in his quiet, assured voice. “I could go alone. I would be less of a loss if this general is a powerful warlock.”

“You would not be less of a loss,” he replied. “Now, I know none of you like it, but we are being paid to find out who is leading this army—and there is not a better way for us to do it.”

“We should already know, Bueralan.”

That was the real problem. General Waalstan was an empty name, one step above being no name at all, with all the descriptions of him or who he was nothing more than rumors. It had been a problem when he had spoken first to Lady Wagan, when he had seen the Quor'lo. It had not changed since they had entered Leera and not one member of Dark liked the idea of being blind. They liked it even less when there was no clear way out if things turned sour. He had taught them too well, taught them risk and reward, and they saw no reward for the risk in this particular plan.

But he did.

Before Orlan had joined them, he had planned to sneak into the army, to find a way to slip into the back of it, a member of Dark here and there, learning what they could from the unranked end of the army. It was a risky plan, but with Orlan, Bueralan could be brought into the camp and introduced to the general, perhaps given dinner, and then sent on his way in the morning to rejoin the others. The reputation of Samuel Orlan would protect him, would ensure his safety: the cartographer was such a prize that no general would look critically at the horse he rode in on.

Not even one who had made an army from a nation.

“You don't have to like it,” he told them. “I don't like it much either, but we have questions we need answers for. Now, wake up Ruk, and start moving. You all have a lot of ground to cover.”

 

4.

 

After they had left, Bueralan pulled himself onto his horse and waited for Orlan. The cartographer's pale-blue gaze had watched the others leave, following each into the marsh. He had stared into the trees long after they had gone.

“It'll be fine,” Bueralan said. “They worry about nothing.”

“I did not agree to this,” the old man said quietly.

“You want to ride with us, then you don't get to avoid the risks. Besides, this is just a bait and switch. We drop you in and later we pull you out. If it gets to be a problem, we'll pay your ransom.”

“And if there is none?”

“There's always a ransom.”

“In an ordinary army, yes.”

Bueralan did not reply. Orlan's barb came on the heels of his own doubt, but he did not plan to discuss it with the cartographer. There was little other choice anyway, he told himself as he nudged his horse toward the start of the thin trail leading out of their camp. After a moment, Orlan pulled himself into the pony's saddle and they made their way down the trail.

In truth, Samuel Orlan had not proved to be a difficult companion, not even after the first night when Bueralan had asked him to leave. He had gone out of his way to be of use, providing quiet trails, knowledge of the area, and doing his fair share of the cooking and watch. Indeed, until the night before when Bueralan had said that he planned to use him as bait to meet the commander, the cartographer had been easy-going and witty. The sisters took to him immediately, Ruk shortly after. Kae and Zean had been won over before they led the horses carefully over the barbed-wire fence that marked the Leeran border, and that had surprised him. Both had been uneasy with the inclusion of the man when he told them. Yet now it seemed to Bueralan that he was the only one who retained a healthy distance from the man.

They reached Dirtwater before the second sun had reached its zenith. It was easy to find. A large trading town, the first of three stops on the way to Ranan, the capital of Leera. According to Orlan, the town had been founded by the first settlers. They had built it believing that they were close to a freshwater supply only to find that the river behind was stagnant, more bog than stream. According to the old cartographer, enough bodies lay in there that if you drained it, you would find entire generations stretching back to the War of the Gods. Despite that, a town had sprung up with a huge wooden wall encircling it.

Not any more, though. On first sight it was clear that the wall had been stripped, leaving only the skeleton to form a ring, like a warped halo, around the overgrown village. The buildings had suffered a similar fate, though three had been made from solid logs that must have proved too thick and heavy to move, for they stood complete in lonely positions through the town, dark and immovable. On the peaked roofs of each sat black swamp crows, the murder the thickest there, though they were by no means sparse on the warped skeletons of the stripped buildings.

The road had been left in place. Made from thick stones and weaving through the village, it was the only sign left that Dirtwater had been a sizable or even successful town. Their slow ride through the village did not reveal any other signs of wealth: no livestock, no silos, no blacksmith, no stables, absolutely nothing but the husks of what had once been a life, now overgrown and owned by silent, watching crows.

“Bueralan,” Orlan said softly. “To your right.”

A man.

An old white man, more bones than skin, more gray hair than bones or skin. “You ain't got no business here!” He stood half in the doorway, his face pressed against the door frame of one of the three solid houses, the second sun's light barely reaching past his bare toes, bony knees, thin chest, and matted beard. “You need to leave! You both need to leave!”

“Why don't you come out.” Bueralan swung off the horse. “Tell me what happened in this town.”

The old man shrank into the darkness of the building.

“Do you have anyone in there with you, old man?”

“Soldiers!”

Behind him, Orlan said, “Let it be. You'll get nothing from this one.”

Bueralan didn't reply. Instead, he stepped closer to the building. “If there are soldiers in there, they should come out.” He dropped a hand to the hilt of his axe. “I have a man to sell.”

“No one,” came the old man's scream, “sells Samuel Orlan!”

Bueralan glanced back.

“Why are you persisting in this?” the cartographer asked, disgust evident in his tone.

“He knows you.” Bueralan took another step forward, then another. On his third step, the old man inside the hut screamed, but before he could get deeper into the hut the saboteur was there, his fingers snatching the tattered remains of his shirt, ripping it until the old man broke free with a harsh thud on the floor and scampered further into the darkness.

With his eyes adjusting to the light, Bueralan could make out faint shapes across the floor, shapes that became ridged, became bones: bird bones, swamp crows. Black feathers littered the ground around each pile and, as his eyes grew more accustomed to the light, he saw not a few piles, which the old man broke through as he scampered to the back of the building, but hundreds.

The old man had been eating them for months, for a year, for longer.

“Have you no place to go?” Bueralan asked. “The army doesn't want you?”

“I have to hide!” He was shouting, had not even heard the words. “I can't be seen! If Samuel can find me, then the general can! Then
she
can!”

“Who can?”

With a wordless scream, the old man launched himself forward. He caught the saboteur off guard, pushed him to the ground, then leaped up and burst out of the door. Bueralan was quick to follow him. His fitness was enough to bridge the gap, but as he leaned forward to crash into the old man, he heard Orlan's voice. Heard him call his name, heard him shout it with so much force he stopped and turned.

Turned to the four soldiers who had just entered Dirtwater. Five white men and three white women. They each wore the same green-and-brown cloak, each had their hand on a sword or a crossbow.

Leeran soldiers.

It was not the first impression he had hoped for.

 

5.

 

The haunt Oyia circled the Temple of Ger slowly, her body lit by the violent light above.

Zaifyr could hear her voice, softly repeating that she was cold and hungry as he swam out to the half-submerged structure but lost track of it—and her—after he hooked his first metal spike into the wall. It was a much more difficult job than he had thought: the smooth rock had to be broken by a hammer too awkward and too big to easily slam in the spike. Still, he managed a first, then a second and third. But rather than hang from the wall to hammer in a fourth, he pulled himself gracelessly onto the top.

The once charm-laced man lay beneath the red light and raised his hand, holding it up against it. It sank into the skin, coloring him, changing him. A child who had been born in the City of Ger would have spent years without knowing the natural color of their own skin. It reminded him strongly of the early years of his life, where children were raised on the faltering beliefs of their parents. In the company of Jae'le, Zaifyr had passed ocean-side villages where children were born in the settling black blood of the Leviathan and a series of small cities where the left hand of a child was maimed in deference to Aeisha, the goddess of literature. As he rose from his position, the memory of them did not remove the queerness of light above him, nor leave him feeling less apprehensive about what he would find when he broke open the shell. Still, with his hand curling around the wooden shaft of the hammer, it did not stop him from striking the stone either.