By the time they reached the Eastern border of the battlefield their trousers and cloth leggings were painted red to the knees from pushing through the soaked grasses. Flies tormented them, and the setting orange-red sun cast its light almost parallel with the plain, limning the field of slaughter in rich honey tones. Nait glimpsed dun-hued shapes loping across the hills in the distance and he shivered. Jackals or wolves. They were already here – and he was coming. He waved to his boys – that is, his men and women, all gone quiet now over the harrowing course of their trek – to pick up their pace.
The rain that had been threatening all day fell with the cooling night. After labouring in the downpour beside his men finishing the defences of the Imperial compound, deepening the pooling outer trench, helping to shore up the logs of the palisade, Ullen, along with a handful of other officers, was separated out. They were marched to the main gate. Entering, he strained to look back to the set, grim faces of the Talian soldiers watching him go within while they remained without. Many saluted their farewell. He was escorted to a brig of sharpened stakes. Here he found Urko, V'thell and other surviving League officers, including Choss, who lay in the lap of a Captain Roggen, near unconscious from loss of blood. Urko was hunched nearby, wearing only a torn padded linen jerkin, apparently unhurt despite everyone attesting that he'd been trampled by horsemen three times. V'thell sat nearby as well, his battered and cracked armour reflecting deep red-gold from the torches. Ullen knew that Urko could walk right out if he wished, but he – and Laseen no doubt – also knew that he wouldn't because of reprisals against his men.
He knelt on his haunches before his commander. The chill rain slapped against his back. ‘General – the men are being kept outside the compound.’
Urko slowly raised his head. ‘What?’
‘All the Talian regulars. They're being kept out.’
‘What?’ Urko lurched up, peered into the slanting mist of rain. He crossed to the wall of stakes, grasped hold and shouted to a guard, ‘Get me your commander! Right now!’
‘No need for that,’ a voice answered from the thin rain. A dark shape approached flanked by guards. Squinting, Ullen made out the bulky armoured figure of Korbolo Dom. ‘Urko and Cartharon Crust,’ the man called, stopping at the wall of stakes. ‘Amaron, Grinner, Nok, Surly… Do you have any idea what it was like to grow up on Nap in the wake of such names?’
‘Fener can shit on that! My men are outside the compound with that monster on the loose – on whose orders?’
‘Mine.’
‘You!’ A stake shattered in Urko's fist.
‘Kill me and your men will surely die!’
Urko subsided, his shoulders twitching beneath his padded gambeson.
‘Anonymity,’ Korbolo continued. ‘You doomed us all to anonymity. Can you think of the name of any Napan of the last generations?’
‘There's my grand-nephew Tolip.’
‘Well, a new name has finally eclipsed yours. All the mouths on the island and in the Empire will finally be speaking that new name – Korbolo Dom – Sword of the Empire. And it is only right and proper that a fellow Napan has finally defeated you.’
‘I'd say it was just Oponn's decision. The fortunes of war. Listen, let the men in… I'll guarantee their cooperation.’
‘The loser would invoke fortune, wouldn't he?’
‘And the winner wouldn't, would he?’ Urko hunched his shoulders, biting down anything more. He finally asked, ‘What do you want from me?’
Korbolo straightened, adjusted his layered cloaks against the rain. ‘I have what I have always wanted. Look at you, squatting in the mud like an animal. You are defeated, squalid. I need not even attend your execution in Unta – you are already dead to me.’
Urko bared his teeth. ‘You don't want to know what I'm lookin’ at.’
Korbolo turned away, walked off into the night escorted by his guards.
‘Listen, Hood take you!’ Urko called. ‘Never mind about me. Do what you want with me – but let my men in!’ He wrenched another stake from the wall, broke it in his fists, almost launched himself out after the man, but mastered himself to finally sink down into the mud.
Ullen sat as well. To one side Choss coughed wetly, murmuring. Roggen held a cloth out over his slack face. Reaching out, Ullen tried to warm the man's ice-cold hand in his. The chill damp was sapping even Choss's strength. He doubted his old mentor would see the dawn.
Lights approached, torches flickering and hissing held by guards, and in their midst a short slim figure, the rain beading and running from her dark hair, the wet silk cloth of her tunic outlining her muscular arms, slim chest. Ullen had not seen her in decades but she looked exactly as when he had last set eyes upon her. Surly – Laseen. So small and unprepossessing! Yet all those around were unable to ignore her presence; even the captive Talian officers found themselves drawn to stand in respect. She acknowledged their gesture with a slight nod. Urko, however, refused to look up. She simply waited, clasped her hands at her back. After a time Urko finally glanced up, then away, and kept his face averted.
‘I expected better of you than this, Surly,’ he grated.
‘I've come with a request, Urko,’ she said.
He pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. ‘A request? You come with a request of me? Well, it just so happens I have one for you.’
‘Yes. Strange, that. I would speak with you and V'thell.’ At the mention of his name the Gold commander bowed. His right arm and side were a weeping, gouged and mangled mess.
‘I would want their cooperation. Urko. V'thell.’
‘You'll have it,’ Urko swore. V'thell bowed again.
‘I will still have to keep you and the officers as guarantors…’
‘We understand,’ V'thell said.
‘Very well.’ She signed to a guard.
‘What of Korbolo?’ Urko asked.
‘He is not your concern.’
That statement, delivered with such assurance and command, struck Ullen as a true note of Imperial rule and it must have echoed similarly with Urko as well for he straightened, giving a small nod of his head, with a look of something like surprised wonder on his craggy, rain-spattered face.
Nait, followed by the two heavies of his squad, Tranter and Martin, and one of his regular infantry saboteurs, Kal, walked the lines of the defences. ‘You seen a soldier named Brill?’ he asked every picket he met. ‘A stupid-looking gawking awkward fella? Anyone? Out on the field?’ But no one had and the fellow hadn't reported back. How stupid could he be? Had he just fallen asleep somewhere without reporting? If so, he was gonna tear his head off!
A soldier caught up with them and tapped his arm. ‘You lookin’ for a man out on the field?’
‘Yeah. Brill.’
‘Brill. Brill? Maybe. I was with a healer detachment. He waved us over but wouldn't leave the field. Said he was ordered to stay with his man. Don't know why though – the fellow was dead.’
Nait stared, then shuddered with cold. He wiped the rain from his face, saw the soldier regarding him curiously. ‘Right! Ah, thanks, solider.’ The man saluted. Nait stared again until he realized that he ought to respond; he answered the salute and the soldier jogged away into the rain. He looked to Tranter, Martin and Kal. Their eyes slid aside to the darkness out beyond the crossed stakes. Poliel's Pustules! Hood's Kiss! Fucking dumbass anus-for-brains! Nait threw his helmet into the mud.
‘I haven't heard anything about no inspection,’ the guard at the gate said, frowning in his confusion. Nait shrugged under his cloak. ‘It's not like it's official or anything – we're just worried about the wall of the palisade collapsing – that's all.’
The guards exchanged alarmed looks. ‘Collapsin'?’
‘Yeah. In the rain.’ He pointed to the wall of sunken poles. ‘Look – they're tiltin’ out already.’