“Lord of the Mountain! You don’t want things by half, do you?”
Marin shrugged. “We have a chance here to make permanent our influence in Kendra. If all goes aright, Aman will be seen to have saved the kingdom. From there, any-thing’s possible.”
Orkid said nothing for a moment, almost overwhelmed by his brother’s vision.
“I must leave soon,” Marin continued eventually. “Two days from now, I think. It will take me five days to reach Pila, and as soon as I do, I will send the infantry. They can sail up the Gelt River to Chandra to save Areava paying the cost for their transport herself. I will also make contact with those southern Chett tribes we trade with. The rest will be up to you.”
“I will do what I can.” Orkid shook his head. “I had hoped our days of planning and scheming on such a scale, and at such risk, would be over once Sendarus married Areava.”
“We are born for this planning and scheming, you and I,” Marin told him. “I do not think either of us will ever stop.”
Chapter 15
The two men led their horses out of the defile and stopped. Before them spread the Oceans of Grass, and with a great sense of relief they realized they had completed their mission. The younger of the two wanted to go farther.
“Rendle will be twice as pleased if we find a river or sooq nearby. The company will use most of its water getting through the mountains.”
“If there’s a river or sooq nearby, so are the Chetts,” his older companion said shortly, wiping snow off his fur-lined jerkin and helmet. “We’ve done our job. Let’s clean the horses’ shoes and head back. We won’t reach our camp for another week as it is.”
“It’s still winter, Sergeant,” scoffed the other. “All the Chetts are away at the High Sooq.”
The sergeant lifted one of his mount’s legs and used a knife to dig out stones from the worn shoe. “Suit yourself, but I’m not hanging around. You’ll have to catch up.”
The young man cursed the sergeant under his breath. He did not fancy riding out into the Oceans of Grass by himself despite their apparent emptiness and his bravado, but did not want to seem a coward or fool.
“I won’t go far,” he said, and spurred his horse.
The sergeant said nothing, but shook his head. When he had finished with the horse, he found a rock bare of snow and sat on it, letting the stone warm his backside, and chewed on a long strip of beef jerky. The last four nights he had dreamed of nothing but hot stew and fresh brewed beer. His horse nibbled on yellow grass nearby. He looked up into the sky. The pale sun was still an hour from noon. He would wait until then ...
A terrifying wail pierced the air, and the sergeant’s heart froze. He scrambled to stand on the rock and anxiously searched the grass before him, but saw nothing. Then he heard another sound, the long victory howl of a grass wolf. A moment later his companion’s horse galloped into sight, empty stirrups slapping against the stallion’s flank.
“That’s it,” the sergeant hissed, as he jumped onto his own horse. He whipped the reins and dug his spurs in, sending the startled horse back up the defile, ignoring the danger of loose stones and a steep climb. His mount was reluctant to keep going until the riderless horse skittered past, then needed no urging from his rider.
The terrified mercenary could hardly breathe. The wild-looking Chett had one knee on his chest and a short knife pricking his throat. The Chett seemed to be listening for something, and after a while grinned and stood up.
“Don’t k-k-kill me!” the mercenary begged.
The Chett looked down at him with disdain. “No. Not yet anyway.” Then he grinned again. “Not yet.” He lifted his head back and howled a second time.
The mercenary pissed himself, but he was too afraid to be ashamed.
Four hundred leagues away Gudon was working on the docks at Daavis. He knew from his time as a pilot on the Barda River how busy the capital of Hume could be in winter, but it was nothing like this. Huge baskets of grain, barrels of wine, and crates of dried meat were being shipped in from Sparro in Chandra. As well, there were more soldiers than usual, all looking grim. He learned from other workers about the rumors of a coming war with Haxus, rumors that were substantively the same from whatever source; on the other hand, the rumors about what exactly Queen Areava was doing about the situation were as varied and wild and almost certainly unreliable.
Another barge slid up to the dock, and with a handful of other workers he hurried up to help unload it before the dock foreman gave him a tongue lashing. Then with a jolt he recognized the man with the scarred face and crooked nose standing impatiently at the bow and quickly ducked his head. He hid behind a particularly large stevedore with a rope brace around his shoulders; Gudon helped him lift a bale of horse feed over his head and into the brace, then slid behind crates of cabbages and corn to work from the stern of the barge. He glanced up quickly and saw Jes Prado bark orders to the foreman and then disappear among the harbor throng.
He breathed a deep sigh of relief, and the shock he felt at seeing Prado gradually melted away.
“You! Chalat! Get a move on there! I don’t pay you to stare at your feet!” Gudon bowed quickly to the foreman and joined the queue of workers at the stern waiting to unload goods. In a few minutes the barge was empty. It was pushed away from the dock, and another barge quickly took its place. This one was filled with mercenaries, tired and worn, and about six mounts that looked as ill as their owners. A wider plank was hitched over its gunwales and the mercenaries and their mounts started to disembark.
From this part of the dock Gudon could see all the way downriver, and all he saw was a line of barges loaded with troops and horses.
“What is happening?” he asked the worker behind him.
The worker shrugged. “More reinforcements for the coming war. Queen Charion will be angry. She wants regulars, not these hired mongrels.” The worker spat. “At least it means less cargo for us to take off.”
There may have been less cargo, but the number of barges more than made up for it. Gudon could not remember working so hard in his life. His thighs and shoulders ached with exhaustion, and the palms of his hands were beginning to blister.
Toward evening the barges stopped coming in, but instead of slacking off, the activity in the harbor actually increased. Empty barges were tied together from the end of the dock, two across, until they connected with a ferry quay on the other side of the river. Then huge planks were laid down on the barges and tethered in place with rope almost as thick as hawsers. When finished, the pontoon was twenty paces wide and two hundred long; the current tugged at the whole structure, bowing its middle. Gudon and the other workers helped construct the pontoon, then busied themselves tying ropes to iron loops in stone anchors and throwing two off the side of each barge. As soon as they were finished, the workers were hurried off, and a column of men leading horses appeared at the ferry quay on the opposite bank.
Although the workers were dismissed around midnight, several of them, including Gudon, stayed behind to watch the procession make its way across the Barda and into the city. Gudon scratched a mark in a crate for every ten men. After a hundred marks he whistled in wonder; there was still no end to the column. He had never seen so many mercenaries under one command before.
Are they for the war? he kept wondering. Or is Prado going after Lynan again?
Gudon saw the foreman by the pontoon bridge where it met the dock and went to him. “How long are we keeping the pontoon?” he asked. “We don’t get no barges in while it’s up.”
The foreman grunted noncommittally. “Don’t know. Don’t care. As long as we’re paid for the time off, you shouldn’t care either.”