“Grubs?” Hazad said in revulsion, and promptly dribbled more jagdah into his throat.
“Perhaps you should have found a horse,” Azuri suggested.
“A horse!” Kian laughed darkly. “How could I have, when the lot of you cowards rode away with them?”
Azuri rolled his eyes. Several of the Asra a’Shah, who suffered no slight to their honor even in jest, began muttering amongst themselves. Kian ignored them; he was too exhausted to worry over hurt feelings.
“Here,” Ishin said in his thick Geldainian accent. He handed over a fresh waterskin and a wooden bowl filled with a thin broth and floating globs of pale meat.
Kian rinsed out his mouth with water, then ravenously tucked into the stew. At the first bite, he flung the bowl aside and began retching. Ishin glared, the whites of his eyes prominent against his near-black skin.
Azuri flicked an invisible speck of dust from his immaculate sleeve-how the man stayed clean in a swamp was beyond Kian. “Now you know why I gave you the jagdah first. It has the blessed capacity to kill the taste of anything you eat afterward.”
Gasping, wondering if he had been poisoned, Kian wiped his lips with a shaky hand. With a Geldainian curse, Ishin snatched the bowl off the muddy ground and strode to the far side of the fire, and there began conversing with a group of his fellows, gesticulating with the empty bowl for emphasis. Two frowned and nodded in agreement to whatever he was saying, but the others laughed at Ishin’s expense and offered Kian sympathetic glances. Apparently, even Ishin’s brethren considered his cooking undesirable.
Hazad took a third pull of jagdah, then sighed with delight. “You should have been here last night,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m certain Ishin broiled up a pile of sheep flop and drowned it in a gravy of dog vomit.”
“Enough!” Kian cried, wrenching the skin of spirits from the big man. After two searing gulps, the liquid fire of his homelands did as promised, searing away all taste of the stew, and likely all meals he would eat in the next year.
After catching his breath, Kian asked, “Is there nothing else to eat besides-”
“Snake-fish stew?” Azuri said mildly.
Kian’s throat spasmed in revolt. He closed his eyes, willed his guts to settle. “Anything but that, yes,” he said when he could.
Hazad handed him a none too clean cheesecloth bag. “Salted meat. It should do.”
Kian stared at him with disgust, but rather than berate Hazad for holding out, he untied the bag, pulled out a thick slab of dried beef and stuffed it into his mouth. To make a point, he ate the entire contents, studiously ignoring Hazad’s fretting.
“That, my friend,” Kian said when he finished, “was most excellent!”
“I hope you enjoyed it,” Azuri said dryly, “because that was the last of anything palatable. As we are days from any settlement and any chance for refit, it is starve or suffer Ishin’s fare.”
Kian considered that for a time, mentally forming a map of Aradan and getting his bearings. “Fortress El’hadar is nearest, though I would rather not go to that accursed place.”
“We have no choice,” Hazad said with no small regret. Few men willingly ventured to El’hadar, what with its Black Keep and the half-mad lord marshal who ruled it. “El’hadar is maybe three days ahead, and right on the edge of the marshes. Yuzzika is easily a fortnight south and east from here.”
“Then El’hadar it is,” Kian said, unconsciously counting heads of the men around the fire.
Azuri guessed what he was doing. “Since first night, you are the only man to have returned. We sent out search parties, but they found nothing. With you, there are now twenty-four men.”
Kian sighed heavily. Not counting himself, Hazad, Azuri, and the prince, the company had left Ammathor with sixty Asra a’Shah. He had never lost so many under his command. Fury bloomed in his heart, but he had no enemy to attack, unless he drew his sword and began hacking away at fallen trees, or the earth itself.
Letting his head droop, he scrubbed fingers through his matted hair. Of course, there was an enemy, a young man that Kian had done his best to avoid thinking about since fleeing from the temple that Varis had led them to. Even now, he decided morning would be soon enough to broach that subject.
“Do we, at the least, have enough bedding to go around?” Kian asked.
Hazad nodded. “Come, and let father Hazad tuck you in.”
“As long as you do not try to swaddle my bottom,” Kian snarled.
Chuckling, Hazad led him a little way from the bonfire to a cleared area filled with a dozen crude, open-walled tents. Within the tents were raised beds made of branches that had been lashed together with vines. Insects were always a problem in the marshes, but the firemoss hunters’ trick of raising your bed ensured that most of the bugs that scurried about on the ground after dark stayed on the ground.
“You sleep on the right,” Hazad said. “The left is mine.”
Kian stifled a groan. Hazad had the unfortunate habit of rolling about in the night and groping anyone he was sharing a tent with. He snored as well, loud and unceasingly.
Kian was too exhausted to care. “Wake me for the last watch.”
“No.” Hazad said, shaking his head. “Sleep. You need it.”
Kian was not about to argue.
After shaking out his blankets to ensure no spiders, ants, or worse had made a nest, Kian unbuckled his swordbelt and set it near to hand, then flopped down on the makeshift bed with a relieved grunt. He had caught only snatches of sleep since he ordered the retreat, and the prospect of getting close to a full night of uninterrupted rest made him sigh in gratitude. He started to drift off as soon as his eyes closed, the low chatter of those men not on watch acting like a lullaby.
From seemingly a mile away Ishin said, “Fenahk?” His voice carried the barest touch of alarm. “Your watch is not over for another turn of the glass. Unless you have something to report, get back on the line.”
Kian found himself unconsciously waiting for a response. Of all the men he had ever hired, the Asra a’Shah were the most duty-bound he had met. They simply did not shirk responsibility, and not one of them would have come in from their turn at watch unless something was wrong. The horses became restive, stamping their hooves and snorting.
“Fenahk, are you … well?”
Kian’s eyes flared open at Hazad’s harsh, if quiet, curse. He sat up to find everyone staring at the saffron-robed figure standing just at the edge of the firelight. At first, Kian could not see what all the fuss was about, then Fenahk took a halting step closer to the fire, and Kian’s insides twisted. He knew Fenahk, as he knew all the men under his command, and this was not that man. Like all the Geldainians, Fenahk was not so large as an Izutarian, but rather a short, slender fellow. This man’s bulk rivaled Hazad’s. Yet there was more. It was as if something huge and malformed had donned Fenahk’s skin like a coat, and that too-small garment was threadbare and coming apart.
“Kiaaan,” Fenahk croaked in a voice that in no way resembled that of a man.
“Everyone, stay where you are,” Azuri warned in his eerily calm manner.
Ishin seemed not to hear or see what everyone else did. He angrily strode forward. “Get back to your post!” he ordered.
Fenahk’s eyes, black through and through, locked on the approaching mercenary. Kian was sure those orbs had not been so large when Fenahk had stepped into the firelight. Ishin halted abruptly, uncertainty flickering across his features. He stood but four paces from Fenahk. Whatever he saw at that short distance caused him to slowly reach for the hilt of the scimitar strapped across his back. All at once, everything was in motion.