Purpose.
It was the first time in weeks he could remember having any.
He made good time on the boulevard; traffic was minimal compared with the brawling chaos that would claim the streets later. A handful of tradesmen with their barrows, some slaves carrying bundled wood for kitchen fires, the odd merchant setting out on horseback for somewhere requiring an early start. Once, a short column of soldiers passed him, marching to a muster somewhere. Egar heard the cadence as they over-hauled him, made them for Upland Free Marauders, and grinned in recognition. He’d fought alongside the Upland Free a couple of times, had liked them for their hill-tribe manners and disdain for all things urban. More than any other imperial soldiers, they’d reminded him of his own people, back when that wasn’t such a bad thing.
They tramped on, double-timing it behind a mounted captain, and left him behind in the graying light. The chant faded out on the morning air.
Egar split from the boulevard a few hundred yards farther on, crossed the river at the Gray Mane bridge and then took the long, winding incline of Immortal Glory Rise. He reached the top just as the sun poked its new-forged glowing edge above the eastern skyline. A pause to get his breath back—really must start some kind of serious training again soon, the most exercise he’d had for months now was Imrana—then he turned and surveyed the long blank walls of the building behind him.
The Combined Irregulars barracks—rows of slit windows along the upper levels, sliced view of the parade ground quadrangle beyond the tall iron gates. Figures already moved there in the shielded gloom, pairs of them in stylized, repetitive combat motions while a drill instructor’s voice bellowed exasperated abuse.
Egar grinned at the sound, and went to announce himself.
The five halberdiers on the gate were Imperial Sons of the Desert, scarified southerners to a man, slim and almost desert-dark enough that you might have mistaken them for Kiriath until you looked in their eyes. Egar met their young, ordinary stares one by one as he rolled up, identified the squad sergeant by his sash, and gave the man a friendly nod.
“Here to see Commander Darhan,” he said breezily. “Tell him it’s the Dragonbane.”
It got him startled glances, and exactly the response he wanted. The sergeant made an almost involuntary bow and gestured at one of his men to carry the word. Watching, Egar wondered idly what these particular desert sons made of the whole Demlarashan mess. The ritual scars on their cheeks were a good sign—it was a practice frowned upon by the Citadel—and they all seemed comfortable enough in their brand-new rig, which was certainly not what he’d been led to expect. The court gossip Imrana had fed him recently was laced with references to the renamed regiment—the previous Holy Sons of the Desert was now deemed a little too ambiguous in its implications for loyalty—and tales were rife of devout officers refusing to wear or subtly defacing the newly ordered colors.
Yeah, well. Court gossip. Like fucking old women around a campfire.
“Eg?” A delighted bellow from the gate. “Eg the fucking dragon spanker? Get in here, man! Where you been? Thought you were off working bouncer for some cut-rate whorehouse or something, found your level at last.”
Darhan the Hammer, corpulent but still imposing in his padded black instructor’s gear, beard trimmed down to something approaching a groomed appearance, graying hair bound back in a ponytail. He propped the gate open with one hand, held a wooden staff casually in the other. Egar moved through the loose cordon of the halberdiers and raised a fist in greeting. Darhan bumped it with his own, and Egar saw his knuckles on that hand were torn up and bleeding. He nodded at the damage as he went in.
“Nice job. What’s the matter, old man? Recruits getting too fast for you?”
Darhan snorted. “Yeah, little fuck thought he was. He’s lying down now, reconsidering. Little lesson in pain management.”
“Majak?”
“Yeah, and worse yet, he’s a runty little Skaranak just like you were.” Behind the calculated tribal slur, the fierce old grin. “What do they do to you Eastland herdboys up there, Eg? Barely dropped out between their mother’s legs, they all think they got a map to the whole fucking world and everything in it.”
“Called pride, Darh. Course, I wouldn’t expect a soft, city-dwelling Ishlinak twat like you to understand that.”
“Oh, city dwelling, is it?” The Majak instructor dropped his staff with a clatter, put up fists in a mock-guard. “Old twat is it?”
“Well you call that pile of hovels down by the river a city, but … ”
“Mouthy fucking whelp!” Darhan threw a joke-slow punch at Egar’s head. Egar blocked and grabbed, and the two of them clinched and wrestled about in the gateway like a couple of young buffalo bulls in mating season. The southern guardsmen looked on with a uniformly sober lack of expression—they didn’t get it at all. Why would they? You had to be Majak to understand. Back on the steppes, Ishlinak-to-Skaranak, you couldn’t talk like this without blades coming out. But the first thing Darhan the Hammer bashed into your thick steppe nomad skull when you got to training with him was that down here there is no Skaranak, Voronak, Ishlinak, you’re all just ignorant mothers’ sons from the same featureless shit-hole stretch of buffalo pasture, and your gracious, imperial employers have exactly the same amount of contempt for you all. And you know what, they’re right, so leave your tribal horseshit at the door and let’s get on with turning you into soldiers, shall we? Stop fucking nodding, you, that’s what we around here call a rhetorical question.
Darhan broke the clinch—Egar let him—and clapped a violent arm around the Dragonbane’s shoulders.
“It’s fucking great to see you, Eg. Just come and have a look at these idiots we’re working on, see if it brings back memories.”
IT DID.
Across the training yard in the strengthening morning light, the paired young men went back and forth with yells and the volleyed knock of staff on staff. Darhan stood by the south wall with a mug of hot stock cupped in his injured hand and gestured at his charges.
“ ’Bout a month,” he said reflectively. “I reckon that’s the most I’ve got before the palace comes calling and packs them all off to Demlarashan. They’re emptying the barracks as fast as I can train them up. You think these ones’ll be ready?”
Egar squatted with his back to the wall, his own mug drained and set aside. He watched the exercise with narrowed eyes. In among the lines, someone fumbled and dropped his staff. His opponent stumbled into him as he bent to pick it up. Another pair of trainees stopped what they were doing to laugh at the mess. A trainer rushed in, bawling.
Egar rubbed at his newly shaven chin.
“Is that what we around here call a rhetorical question?”
Darhan sipped from his mug and grimaced. “I know. Thing is, regional command’s saying it’s not going to take crack troops to break this thing—not that Jhiral’s got any to spare with all that swamp demon shit going on up north—so they’ll take whatever we’re turning out here, whatever they can get at short notice. They’re saying it’s just the usual desert moron suicide brigade, but—”
“But a lot of them.”
“Right.” Darhan stared at the trainee lines as they formed up again. “Remember the reptile peons?”
Egar chuckled, but the sound was rusty in his throat. “Trying to forget.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Ah, come on, they had fangs and claws and a tail lash they could break your fucking leg with. Not going to be the same thing at all, is it?”
“Let’s hope not.” Darhan downed his stock, threw out the dregs on the training yard dirt. “So anyway, what you doing up here, Eg? You looking for a job or something?”
“No, mate. Just some information.”
“About?”
Egar squinted into the brightening light across the yard. Now, with the sun up and another human being around to broach the subject to, his newfound sense of purpose suddenly seemed a bit foolish.
“You he
ard anything about any of the brothers down here taking the Citadel’s coin? Hiring on officially, I mean. Livery, the whole works.”
“Citadel?” Darhan blinked. “Don’t think so. Reckon I’d remember pretty well, too. Not like the holy robe mob were ever very keen on our kind. Where’d you hear this anyway?”
Egar gestured vaguely. “Around. You know how it is. Just thought I’d chase it up, see if …” He gestured vaguely.
“If what?” Darhan was, he knew, looking down at him quizzically. “What’s your end of this, Eg? Why should you give a shit?”
Why indeed?
Come on, Dragonbane. Make some sense a fellow steppe thug can follow.
“Thing is, Darh …” Slow and measured. Laying it out in words for the first time since he’d had the idea, and pleased it didn’t sound quite as half-arsed as he’d expected. “I’ve got this bodyguard gig right now. High ranker at court, and she’s had some scrap with the robes. Happened last year, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to go away. I’m just looking for a back door in. Try to get some intelligence, maybe some advance warning set up from inside. Figure another Majak might see it my way, and help me out.”
“Or not.” Darhan, dubious. “There’s still a code of sorts going around, Eg, even these days. Take their coin, you owe them the fight. That’s still what I’m teaching up here, anyway.”
“Yeah, but the fucking Citadel?” Egar glanced up at his old trainer. “Come on.”
Quiet close in, the yells and messy rattle of staff play across the yard. Darhan stared out at his men.
“You ever run into Marnak?” he asked distantly.
“Sure. Last year, back up on the steppe.” Egar chuckled to cover a sudden stab of regret. “Old bastard never seems to age.”
“He didn’t think about coming back south with you?”
“No chance. He’s happy up there, Darh.” Egar didn’t add that the circumstances of his own departure hadn’t allowed for Marnak to express a preference one way or the other. “Found his place in the world, I reckon.”
Darhan grunted. “He ever tell you we fought opposite sides of a couple of battles, back when he was taking League coin? Back when we were young?”
Egar couldn’t remember.
“Never mentioned it,” he said breezily. “You making a point or something?”
“My point is, Eg, there was a time, Marnak might have killed me if we’d ever come face-to-face on those battlefields, and he would have done it without blinking. Same goes for me—the Empire paid my wages, I killed their enemies for them. Still do when there’s call. If those enemies turn out to be Majak, turn out to be Ishlinak-Majak even—well, that’s a damn shame, but there it is.” Darhan turned to look at him intently. “You don’t want to lean too much on that tribal thing, is what I’m saying.”
Egar levered himself unhurriedly to his feet.
“That sounds like a warning, Darh. There something you’re trying to tell me?”
For a moment, their gazes locked. Then Darhan snorted, shook his head, grinned at the ground. Looked up, still smiling.
“You’re a fucking idiot, Dragonbane, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. You, and your loyalties. Going to get you killed one of these days. Look, a couple of decades back, it was the League and the Empire, right? Then the lizards came and stirred everything up so we were all friends in the grand human alliance. And afterward we went right back to killing each other, League and Empire, same as it ever was.”
“You don’t need to remind me, Dar. It’s why I went home.”
“Yeah, but now you’re back. So I guess things didn’t work out the way you hoped up there. Life on the steppe not how you remembered it?”
Egar found a grimace of his own. “Don’t ask.”
“Yeah. What I thought. So like I said, you’re back and now it looks like the palace and the Citadel might end up going at it for a while. So what, Eg, so fucking what? Politics. It’ll pass, just like the lizards, just like the war. Let it go, stand aside if you can. At a minimum, make sure you don’t get caught in the middle unpaid.”
“Been paid, Darh.” Egar made a formal bow, Yhelteth horse-clan style, hinged fingers of each hand locked together to form a flat double fist at chest height. It was the first thing they’d learned as recruits into the imperial war machine. The first physical thing Darhan the Hammer taught them. “You made me that smart, at least. Look, I’ve got to go. Clients to shake down, whorehouses to frequent, you know how it is. Do me a favor, though. If you do hear anything about the robes hiring Majak enforcers, could you send me a runner? They’ll get me on the Boulevard of the Ineffable Divine, number ninety-one.”
“Yeah, right. The Boulevard.”
“Yeah, it’s just a temporary thing. Till I get my own place, you know.”
“Fuck, right, off.”
“Seriously.” Egar winked. “Make it worth your while. I’ll come up and buy you a beer.”
“Yeah, you’ll buy me a fucking barrel if that really is your address. Fucking court puppy. Get out of here, before I come with you, see if they don’t need someone to feed their fucking dogs or something.”
They bumped fists once more.
“Good to see you again, Darh. Thanks for the soup.”
“Hey, any trainee of mine, fallen on hard times. The least I can do, y’know. A cup of gruel.”
“Hospitality worthy of the ancestors, truly.”
“Yeah, your ancestors, maybe.”
Egar grinned, forked an obscene shaman’s gesture at the other man for farewell, and walked. He was halfway across the yard, still chuckling in the sunlight, when Darhan yelled after him. Egar stopped, turned about to field what was likely going to be some parting obscenity about his tribe.
“Yeah?”
“Just occurred to me.” The old instructor’s voice pitched effortlessly to carry over the shouts and blows of the ongoing staff drill. “Probably came to the wrong place. You really want to chase this Citadel hire thing, why don’t you try the Pony Stringer’s. Same crowd as ever down there.”
Egar frowned. “That place? Under the Black Folk Span? I thought it burned down years ago.”
“Yeah, it did. They rebuilt it. Been open a couple of years now. They’re calling it the Lizard’s Head.”
“Oh, that’s fucking original.”
Darhan shrugged. “What you going to do? They’ve got the head.”
CHAPTER 7
he imperial trade legate was less than impressed.
“When slaves are shackled in Yhelteth,” he sniffed, peering out at the slow gray creep of dawn across the scrub, “they stay shackled.”
Poppy Snarl held down an urge to stab the man right under that neatly kept little fucking goatee he wore. Wouldn’t have been hard to do it, either; two steps across the tent, he barely topped her by an inch and a half anyway, and like most imperials she’d met he was mannered and perfumed like some harbor-end ladyboy with delusions of courtly station. Useless piece of shit. He’d done nothing but bitch about the conditions on the march since they set out, and the endless comparisons with how much better things were done in Yhelteth were beginning to wear her down. She didn’t like the imperials and their oh-so-fucking-superior airs, even at the best of times. And this—well short of cock-crow, the night without sleep, nearly an entire coffle of male merchandise somehow escaped, or killed or crippled beyond salable worth in the attempt, close to a dozen of her march-masters dead or dying, and another dozen still out unaccounted for in the hills—this was definitively not the best of times.
Still—fingers forced, through a major effort of will, to remain loose on the hilt of the fruit knife she was using to peel a breakfast apple, a bland diplomatic smile put on like makeup—she needed this man’s good graces. They all did. Preferred supplier status was not something the Empire granted lightly, and Trelayne was not the only city in the League jostling for position now that Liberalization had opened up the trade again. Play nice, Slab Findrich had advised her over a ce
lebratory pipe before they left. Let him feel superior, if that’s what gets his ink on the parchment. It’s just business, you’ve got to suck it up.
Yeah, easy for you to say, she’d snapped. You’re not the one going to be on the road with him for a solid two months.
Findrich just fixed her with his leaden eyes. He wasn’t much for histrionics.
We’re legitimate now, Poppy. An equally leaden patience in the rasping, pipe-cooked voice. This is how it’s done.
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