by Chris Bunch
Sure that he was about to go under, especially after watching the bottomless pit of Farren Mariah gorge himself, Hal decided to go for a walk.
Yasin swore they were probably in no danger, even being Derainians, but all four carried their service daggers at their waists. Hal thought about carrying a sword as well, decided he was just as good at running as dueling.
Carcaor was even more of a ruin up close. Some of the streets were still blocked with rubble from the stonings, and many of the businesses not burnt out were boarded up.
The people were dressed shabbily, their eyes bare of hope.
A few streets still were lit, but not many.
"Damned good idea, this walky, and all," Mariah said to Hal. "As if I wasn't downcast frowncast enough already."
"I think we should be thinking about a drink," Hal said.
"Excellent thought, fearless leader," Mariah said, bowing toward an entrance.
They heard cheers, laughter as they entered, saw a low circular stage, surrounded by tables. The customers were well dressed, fat, contented-looking, and their women were young and overdressed, or the age of their companions and laden with jewelry.
Yasin frowned, leaned closer to Hal.
"Black marketeers."
Hal had already recognized them for what they were. Deraine had the same sort of greedy-guts.
It shouldn't bother him, here in Roche, once an enemy country. Black marketeers did almost as much to lose a war as a hostile army did to win it.
The entertainment was a rather threadbare magician.
They found seats, ordered drinks, jolted at the price of them.
"One and then we're for the cheapside," Calt Beoyard whispered.
Hal nodded.
The magician noted the four, most unlike the other customers.
"Ah," he said, "fresh blood, so a fresh trick."
He thought a minute, then waved his arms in an elaborate pattern, muttering a spell under his breath.
"Summer's almost gone," he said, more loudly. "And spring is just a memory. But something to think on, something to remember…"
He extended his hands, palms up.
There was a breath of a fresh wind in the club, blowing away the fumes of stale beer and musky perfume, growing a bit stronger, with the scent of fresh flowers.
It was as if the floor had become newly turned dirt, and flowers of many hues rose up around the tables. There was the chitter of birdsong, and flashes of bright color.
From nowhere, a butterfly appeared over their table, and darted to a safe landing on Yasin's nose.
There was laughter.
Yasin frowned, not finding this worthy of the dignity of a Roche officer, but kept trying to focus on the butterfly, which clung fast.
Mariah gasped with laughter at the cross-eyed Roche.
At last, Yasin's humor, little as it was, caught up with him, and he laughed more loudly than anyone.
Quite suddenly, the illusion vanished.
There was applause, and people cast money at the stage.
"I thank you," the magician said. "And that last took work, so I'll ask your help in what I am going to do next.
"I'm going to bring forth an animal. Your favorite animal.
"Think hard on its breed, its colors.
"The most powerful thought will carry the day."
"Uh-oh," Mariah said. "Don't anybody think of dragons."
The magician stepped off the stage, and waited.
The air shimmered.
And, quite predictably, especially with Farren Mariah's caution, a huge beast emerged on the stage, overfilling it.
The magician darted away, just as the dragon blatted, its tail sweeping across the club.
Hal ducked as the tail came at them, passed through them harmlessly, and the dragon, its breath quite authentic, screamed again.
"We're for the street!" Cabet shouted, and the four made for the exit.
The dragon-wraith looked after them, and honked in a lonely fashion.
They decided to stay with the street for a time.
Streetwalkers were out… more than Hal had ever seen before, even in the morally relaxed city of Fovant.
Some were clearly professionals, with a practiced patter, and in various costumes, from farm girls to skin-tight black silk.
Others had clearly been driven to whoring by poverty. These women clung to the shadows, and timidly tried to smile when someone caught their eye.
Mariah was the first to notice that the costumed doxies seemed to flock to their own—a street all of milkmaids, another one with female soldiers, a third with garishly painted boys.
"Ah," he said. "The Roche love to be organized in their decadence, don't they?"
Yasin frowned at him.
"I don't understand."
"No," Mariah said. "A man with a butterfiggle on his nose wouldn't."
He started laughing, and Yasin was even more perplexed.
"Now, this should be harmless enough," Cabet said. "A nice puppet theater."
Three schoolgirls went in before them, under the puppets dangling from strings, and Hal wondered what sort of parents would let their daughters out this late, in this part of town.
He quickly found out.
The puppets inside were large, almost life-sized, and their manipulators were hidden behind a curtain.
And they were, for the most part, naked, and performing as lewd a playlet as anything imaginable.
Hal was surprised that he was still capable of being shocked.
His shock grew when he realized that there were many "schoolgirls" sitting around the room, ranging from barely pubescent to in their twenties, all costumed as if for the schoolyard.
The male patrons of the room were mostly middle-aged, many of them with women on their laps.
One girl got up, and sashayed toward the fliers, swinging her hips.
She "accidentally" flipped her skirt up for an instant, revealing that she wore nothing underneath.
"That's enough for me," Mariah said. "I think it's past my bedtime," and he headed back out.
Hal, Cabet, and Yasin started to follow him. Hal noticed that Calt Beoyard was staring at the girl as if hypnotized.
"You… you go on," he managed. "I'll catch up to you later."
Beoyard seemed to have entered another world. Hal shrugged and left.
Outside, Mariah was shaking his head.
"And I thought nothing could get to me," he said. "Those—"
He broke off, seeing an elderly man, wearing the worn uniform of a high-ranking Roche officer, beribboned and medalled, glowering at them, lips pursed, clearly aware of what the puppet show consisted.
"Disgusting," Mariah said, pretending utter shock. "No wonder they lost the war. There's naught in there but former generals."
Yasin didn't find that funny, but the other three did.
The old man flushed, and strode on as if he had a halberd up his ass.
They went back to their hotel, had a nightcap and went to bed.
After due thought the next day, Hal decided that Carcaor's nighttime pleasures were a little rich for his blood, although Beoyard kept returning to the puppet show club night after night.
Hal spent most of his time at the stables, taking care of Storm.
Cabet and Mariah frequently joined him.
The hotel filled with recruits to Yasin's unit, some scarred and most experienced, others not much more than schoolboys who'd somehow learned to fly the monsters.
Eventually there were thirty beasts, and twenty fliers signed on, when Yasin decided they had enough to fight, and, without much ceremony, ordered his troops north.
"Autumn's here, and so, instead of heading south, we fly north," Farren said. "You can easy tell we're about sojering."
8
The long flight north was cold, and grew colder. They stopped at cities along the way, and were greeted with adulation.
Hal wondered if Yasin could be that much of a national hero, then found
he'd sent riders north, weeks earlier, advising various city fathers of his route.
It seemed a little dishonest to Hal, but he decided that to feel like that was ludicrous. Didn't kings, after all, send criers in front when they visited the countryside?
Remembering what campaigning was and would be like, Kailas relaxed and enjoyed being made much of.
The Derainians, for some odd reason, seemed especially popular, even though they'd been Roche's enemies.
He didn't much like it, though, when some hero-worshippers, obviously in their cups, mumbled about Deraine finally learning what was right, by helping to keep the less-than-men from their borders.
But again, it really didn't matter.
All that did matter was that he retired at night, very full of choice cookery, to a warm, comfortable bed, and it was seldom empty.
What more could a field soldier want?
Yasin caught Farren Mariah casting a spell to predict the forthcoming weather, and thereafter treated Mariah most cautiously.
"He's even more spooky goosey than you are about wizardry," Farren chortled to Hal.
A week and a half after leaving Carcaor, they landed in Trenganu.
It was the rawest of frontier towns. The streets, such as they were, were unpaved, and turned to mudholes any time there was more than a heavy dew. There was one main street, with meandering alleys debouching from it.
Of course, there were no building restrictions, so a stable was next to a church next to an ironmongery.
They called it a city, but it was no more than a small town, with a population, including the expeditionary force, hunters and trappers, of about four thousand. There were no suburbs—Trenganu just stopped at a perimeter of farms, and then there was half-cut secondary timberland to untouched forest.
The close presence of the "natives."
"barbarians."
"barbs," here on "the edges of nothing," meant almost everyone went armed at all times.
It wasn't that much of an affectation—the natives were known for daring cross-border raids. Come in, hit hard, and pull back with slaves and loot.
Their warriors could run down a horse, especially one with an armored rider, gut the horse, then slit the rider's throat, and loot and strip him, before the animal stopped screaming.
Their magicians weren't much more than witches, but they had the advantage of numbers, of knowing the local herbs and power concentrations, and the Roche had very few magicians with them.
The natives showed no mercy to anyone. Women were ravaged, and the older ones killed, as were all men. Children of both sexes were made into slaves, the males after being hamstrung, to ensure they'd never be fighters if they were ransomed or freed.
The supposedly civilized Roche took their own slaves on the few occasions they could find a "barb" camp.
Yasin had already hired grooms, groundsmen, guards, servants, and the like, who had made the laborious journey north in clattering wagons, and they'd commandeered a drafty hall that had been a farmers' association for the unit headquarters.
The dragons were housed in sheds that had been intended for livestock shows.
The dragon fliers themselves, though, were given quarters in inns appropriated by Yasin.
One man, a supply warrant, complained about fliers always having it soft, and Yasin hauled him up in front of the entire formation.
"Yes," he hissed, "the fliers are special. And they'll be treated the same as long as we're fighting.
"Because you'll notice that not only do they get all of the glory and all of the comfort, but they do all of the dying, as well."
He drove the lesson home by having the warrant stripped of his uniform, and literally kicked out of the city.
There were even uniforms for the squadron.
Someone—Hal hoped not Yasin—had found dark gray uniforms that looked like they'd been intended for ushers. But they wouldn't stand out in the field, and that was more important than gilt and glitter, and better still, they were warm.
Trenganu crawled with uniforms, most of local design. But there were more than enough wearing Roche colors for Hal to realize that whatever military limitations the treaty with Sagene and Deraine had called for, the treaty provisions were dead letters.
Some of these men were volunteers, looking for adventure and blood. Others, particularly the more senior ones, were "observers," sent by the Roche government.
And some of the "volunteers" seemed very much part of assorted formations.
But officially, there was only one expeditionary force, led by a General Arbala.
Yasin said he was one of the better commanders from the war, known for leading from the front, yet without getting himself mired in the trivia of a skirmish and losing the battle.
He was young and scarred, and when Hal first saw him, and heard him speak, he reminded him of his late friend, Bab Cantabri.
The thought made him wonder what was going on with his divorce, and with life in general back in Deraine.
But there were more immediate matters to take care of.
Yasin broke the twenty fliers down into four flights of five, making sure there were at least two inexperienced fliers in each group.
"I know," he told Hal, "you flew in groups of three in the war. Too small to be effective if you got hit, too large to be unobtrusive."
Hal decided he disagreed, but didn't care one way or another. He was willing to try Yasin's tactics, so welcomed two novices to his "flight."
The next step was to figure out just exactly what the squadron's mission would be.
Yasin said the dragons would be used to provide intelligence, and not aerial fighting. There didn't seem to be any dragon-riding natives.
At least, not yet.
Cabet worried about whether the barbarians could also be hiring mercenary fliers—there were certainly enough out-of-work dragon riders between Roche, Sagene, and Deraine.
"Not to worry," Farren said. "The natives don't appear to have gold, and there's naught else to trade, except ox fur or hide or whatever they cover themselves with."
"Young slaves," Beoyard suggested.
"But who'd be the buyer?" Hal wondered. "I don't see anybody rolling in silver who's interested in crippled children around here."
No one had an answer, and so Kailas set out, with Yasin's blessing, to find out what Arbala's headquarters really knew about their enemy, the mysterious forest natives.
Almost nothing was the immediate answer. They were bold, big, and bad, which fit almost all enemies worth fighting.
As far as tactics, size of formation, leadership went… nothing seemed known. Yasin's unit was working utterly virgin territory.
Having heard stories about how the barbarians treated their prisoners, Kailas found a witch, had her make up doses of fast-acting poison, and found thin neck chains for them to hang on.
There weren't many takers among the fliers.
Most of them, including Hal himself, were self-assured enough to think that they'd never get taken prisoner, or, if they did, that they could somehow escape before they ended up in the torturers' hands.
He put his team aloft, well behind the "lines," such as they were, practicing not the expected formation flying, but observation—learning to search the ground for possible ambush sites, small units of men, camouflaged positions, and the like.
Remembering his own first flights in combat, and how virginal he'd been, he took them east and north of Trenganu, into relatively safe territory, looking for barbarians.
The natives helped at first, by volleying arrows up at any dragons they saw carrying men, then learned they evidently meant no harm.
Little by little, his fliers, and the others being trained by Yasin similarly, got as good as they were able without having flown in a fighting war.
The ground formations having been brought into some kind of shape by General Arbala and his officers, the first operation was planned.
It wasn't very spectacular in design—the expediti
onary force was ordered to march northeast, looking for natives.
They should have set off at dawn, but it was mid-morning of a sunny autumnal day before they left Trenganu.
Yasin's dragon squadron was airborne, flying back and forth over the horsemen and infantrymen.
Hal took his own flight ahead of the forward skirmishers.
Yasin had briefed the fliers that Arbala's plan for this day was no more than a shaking-out of the troops. They would march a certain number of leagues, make camp, then return, via a different route, the next day.
While he'd been talking, he kept glancing, worriedly, at Hal, which Hal couldn't figure out.
Then he realized that Yasin was dreadfully worried that he would be angered—how dare Yasin tell anyone of Hal's rank what to do?
He was about to laugh, then realized that Yasin was putting himself in his place, and that if the situation were reversed, Yasin would be most irked. Then the matter became much less humorous.
But ignoring all the fripperies, it was nice to be in the air. Storm honked in pure glee, diving and darting to and fro, and several of the other dragons seemed equally sportive.
Kailas saw his two novices getting into the spirit of the day, and blasted a warning on his trumpet, pointing down, reminding them this wasn't a lark they were on.
The army was closing on a steep bluff. Hal swooped low over it, and saw, crouched behind boulders, at least twenty of the enemy, waiting in ambush.
He circled back, low over the nearest skirmishers, and blew a warning.
Evidently the riders hadn't been told of Hal's purpose, because the scattered formation didn't change, still keeping its flank to the bluff.
Hal cursed, pondered.
Then he swirled Storm down, and down, bringing him in for a landing just in front of the horsemen.
There was a young officer goggling at him.
"You, dammit!" Hal bellowed. "'Ware your front, sir! Archers in ambush!"
The officer gaped at the bluff, which appeared deserted.
"But I've orders—"
"Damn your orders, sir!" Hal shouted, realizing he was sounding very much like Lord Cantabri, and the thought almost made him start laughing.