Golan found himself breathing more easily. ‘Well done, Second. Well done. You have my compliments. So enter it into the records.’
‘Yes, Master.’ He remained bowed, silent.
Golan felt his chest tightening once again. ‘Yes? What else?’
‘The bodies, Master. It would take a great deal of time to bury them all. And … well, the men may refuse to touch them.’
‘Ah. I see. Well?’
‘Might I suggest we dispose of them in the river?’
Relieved that the matter was so trivial, Golan waved his switch. ‘Yes, of course. Proceed, Second.’ Waris backed away, still bowed, until clear of the circle of yakshaka, when he turned and jogged off. Good, Golan congratulated himself. The army reconstitutes itself. Shaken and much diminished, yes. But not shattered. We march on. We must. There is no alternative.
Golan’s improved mood was short-lived. Another figure approached, this one gangly and stick-thin, with a long curved neck that somehow managed to support an improbably oversized head. Golan drew a deep steadying breath and awaited the arrival of Principal Scribe Thorn.
‘You live still, Master!’ Thorn announced as he closed, a quill tucked behind one ear, the heavy bag of papers swinging at his side. ‘I rejoice. Here so many you lead have passed on yet still you remain! Thank the fates.’
‘Your joy is noted, Principal Scribe. Have you an accounting?’
The scribe drew a sheet from his shoulder bag, squinted low over it. ‘I am hardly done, of course. It will take a long time to count all those fallen. So many! Such a catastrophe. Yet you have emerged unhurt, I see. That alone makes a victory of the night, yes?’
False gods! This man does not spare me. Golan pinched the bridge of his nose and rested his gritty eyes. ‘You do have an estimate?’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘Well?’
As he studied the sheet, the man’s black tongue poked out as if it too was curious. ‘I estimate a force of some three thousand remaining serviceable labourers. Of the troops, eighteen hundred are able to march.’
Golan’s breath fled him. Their remaining labour force had been halved again. Who would carry all the stores? Cook and break camp? How could they advance?
‘Sobering numbers indeed,’ Thorn continued, peering further down the sheet. ‘Yet encouraging news exists.’
Golan could hardly credit his ears. Encouraging news? ‘What possible good news could emerge from this disaster?’
‘There are now more than enough stores for those surviving!’
‘Yet none to carry them.’
Thorn did not miss a beat: ‘You anticipate me.’
‘I believe I am beginning to, Principal Scribe. You have a report?’
‘Quite.’ Thorn replaced the sheet and withdrew another. He peered at it myopically, pronounced: ‘Once again the Army of Righteous Chastisement emerges victorious.’
Golan found that he had to turn away, his fists clenched rigidly round the Rod of Execution. A long low breath summoned the proper Thaumaturg-taught calm. ‘At the rate of these victories we shall soon have the entire jungle conquered,’ he remarked aloud, acidly.
He heard the scraping of the quill on paper and he spun. Thorn peered up from the sheet, quill poised, mild innocence upon his narrow pinched features. ‘You have more to add, Glorious Leader?’
Through clenched teeth Golan ground out, ‘That is more than enough, I am sure.’
Thorn shrugged indifferently. ‘We are all at your mercy, Master. What are your orders?’
That you throw yourself into the river. But no, that is unfair. The fault is mine. The responsibility mine and mine alone. He drew another steadying breath, peered down at the blackwood rod with its silver chasing. He tapped it into one palm. ‘Record this, Scribe — Master Golan orders that what surplus stores and gear the bearers cannot manage be divided up among the troopers and that the army advance onward into the jungle of Himatan. So it is ordered, so it shall be.’
Thorn’s shaggy brows rose while he wrote. He finished with a firm tap to end the entry, and bowed. ‘So it shall be, Master.’
CHAPTER XIII
It was almost impossible to compel the locals to enter any ruins or abandoned villages. ‘Do you not fear the ghosts?’ they would ask. ‘There are no ghosts,’ I told them. But they disagreed. ‘Ghosts live in all dark places in Jacuruku,’ they all assured me. ‘They are under bridges, in corners, under fallen trees, in all the old villages. They are afoot and very much alive.’
Mara heaved herself up a muddy shore to lie panting, pressed into the muck, searching the surrounding dense fronds and hanging creepers. At her feet lay the carcass of a bizarre hybrid creature. A fine dusting of metallic blue and green feathers covered its naked torso down to scaled legs ending in feet bearing claws as large as daggers. Instead of hair, long brown feathers covered its head and back like a mane while its eyes, rolled dead white now, had shone green speckled with gold. The mouth held needle teeth still red with Mara’s own blood.
Shuddering, she kicked it further away. A bird-woman! Who would have thought the legends of Jakal Viharn true! Unlike the subjects of all those fantastic stories, however, this one had no wings and could not fly. She could run like a fiend, though. Probably chase down a hound.
The jungle rang all round with the cries and screams of a running battle that had continued through the night and into the day. Feet kicked the ground nearby and Mara spun, her Warren crackling about her, sending the litter of leaves and detritus flying. A guardsman appeared, hands raised. Leuthan.
‘Are you wounded?’
She waved him away. ‘No.’
He slid down to her. ‘You can stand?’
‘I am fine!’
‘Don’t get separated like that.’
She lurched to her feet, shook out her sodden dirt-smeared robes. ‘Do not lecture me. Everyone is separated, if you haven’t noticed.’
He laughed. ‘Well — we’re gathering at a rise to the southeast. No more running from these sports.’
‘Very good. Take me there.’
He gestured. ‘This way.’
Mara followed the Bloorian swordsman. Like everyone she’d met out of Bloor or Gris, he claimed to be the offspring of some noble family. Gods, how they’d fought each other in those petty kingdoms! Family against family, village versus village. Each valley an armed stronghold held against its neighbours. A war of all against all. She shook her head: sometimes she was convinced that the old emperor had done them all a favour when he’d swept them into his pocket one by one.
Shapes darted through the dense underbrush. Shouts sounded: Crimson Guard battle codes. Yet no grating clash of steel against steel rang out; these monstrosities used only tooth and claw. They passed the sprawled gutted corpse of a half … something or other. Half-lizard, perhaps. Grey-backed with a white belly. Mara didn’t really care. It was enough that it was dead. They were strong and fierce, these things, but no match for armed Disavowed — even if most of everyone’s armour had rotted off.
Next they came to the body of Hesta, an Untan swordswoman. One of the tiniest of all the Guard. Her neck had been broken and crushed as if she’d been taken by a predatory cat. Her face was upturned to the sky, pale now, with a look of complete surprise in her dead staring eyes. Mara exchanged a wary look with Leuthan.
So, he was here. One of Ardata’s favourites. Citravaghra.
Leuthan urged Mara onward. ‘This way.’ A moment later he stiffened, cursing. Something huge was crashing directly towards them through the underbrush. A humped grey shape emerged, wide arms brushing aside thickets of saplings. At the sight of them it bellowed a bull-like war call and charged. Though utterly wrung, Mara summoned what remaining energy she possessed. She tapped into her own vitality and felt it almost flicker out. She channelled the force outwards before her. The ground erupted, soil and earth peeling. The thicket curled up and amid the storm of dirt and flung trees the beast fell backwards, roaring his rage, and was sent tumbling, hammered and pummelled by the wreckage. Mara’s vision blackened and she felt Leuthan supporting her at the waist.