"Where's lord Ghita?"
The eyes hardly blinked. Only the old horse moved, restless under the stressed shafts.
"Dammit, answer me!"
"Lungan, lord. In Lungan." From the grandfather, who looked fit to collapse. "All the soldiers are there."
"Fortified?"
"Yes, lord, fortified."
"Where?"
"The camp, lord. Around the camp."
Too much fear. Too little knowledge. Anything they said might be a lie, they would agree to anything he suggested, whatever would please him. "Go on," he said, and reined out of their way. He added, sorry for them: "I'd go wide of Anogi if I was you and I'd spread that word up and down the road. There's a garrison there. I just wouldn't be in that town, if things get bad. The mercenaries are apt to loot and run straight down to Mandi. Pass the word. Go north of Anogi, keep to the country roads. You'll be a damn sight safer."
Still the huge-eyed stares. The baby cried and the girl put her hand over its mouth, hugged it against her.
"Go on," he said.
They started the horse up. The cart rolled past.
"And throw a third of that damn junk off," he yelled over the squealing of the wheels. "You may need that horse."
There was no likelihood they would take either piece of advice. He staring past his shoulder at tragedy on an unstoppable course.
"Can't depend on anything they say," Taizu said, walking her horse up beside him. "They're too scared. They'll never talk to a soldier."
"Damn fools."
He knew better than what he had just done. He felt angry with himself, angry with them, for reasons varied and too scattered to make sense of.
If you were there, Taizu had said to him a long time ago, you'd set things right.
Of course I would.
Like climbing a cliff. It was the looks down that took a man's stomach, the occasional realization where he was and what he was doing and what he had to work with.
A while more down the road, thinking and thinking, watching the people they passed for any sight of weapons. But there was no threat in the wagons and the carriages, in the people who ran from the trouble they foresaw, who drew aside in terror from a company they took for Oghin mercenaries. Very few young men, very few; exempt as some lord's servant, some lord's tenant farmer, a widow's son, all the various reasons a household could give for exempting a boy from conscription. And from those very few, nothing but bowed heads, averting of the eyes, as if they were terrified every moment a soldier's eye was on them that they might have that exemption revoked.
Of course conscript the young men out of the central provinces, especially from regions around the capital, especially from the towns and cities, where discontent fomented and young men gathered in taverns and tea-shops.
And damned if those that were left were going to risk their precious exemptions. So they would do nothing, dare nothing; but one could panic, accosted by soldiers, one could turn out to have a weapon.
So it was one of the women he rode down on of a sudden, when they next came on a knot of refugees—the hindmost, who struggled along under a bundle too large for her, and who had no hope of running. She looked up when he reined across her path. It was a tolerably pretty face. Or at least it might have been, except the dirt and the sweat and the fear. "Girl," he said, holding his fretting horse still, and saw out of the tail of his eye that the next to last straggler of the little group had delayed, an old man with the cart who looked as if he wanted desperately to do something—and was not sure how much a moral act was worth.
"Girl, just a few questions." In a cultured accent this time, pure courtly language. "I won't delay you, I won't hurt you. Who commands in Lungan?"
"Lord Ghita," she stammered.
"Is he there, personally?"
A definitive nod. Fear in the eyes, but a re-estimation, too. Who are you? that look said, scared, but with perhaps the sudden notion that she was not talking to a mercenary.
"Who's attacking him?"
"Lord?"
"Who's attacking Lungan?"
A hesitation. The horse pulled at the bit, and he held it hard, waiting for his answer.
"They say the lords south."
"Who's leading them?"
"They say lord Saukendar. They say there's demons. They say—"
"What, girl?"
"He's come with their help." A quick swallow, as if too many words had gotten out. Her mouth trembled and she clamped it hard, her face quite pale.
"Where's the Emperor right now, do you know?"
A desperate move of her head. No. She looked at him, at his hands, at his face again.
And the old man still lingered, at the edge of his vision.
"That old man yonder looks like he'd like to help you. Do you know him?"
A frantic glance. "No. No. I don't."
"I'd travel with him if I were you. He's worth something."
"Lord?"
But he let the horse go then, and it walked on, his waiting company closing around him at that pace, a long day, tired horses.
"Ghita's in Lungan," he said, "and they know I'm involved in the south. The rumors have gotten north."
"M'lord," the squad leader said. Which was about all the conversation he usually had of the men. But they were steady and none of them were slow-witted. Not one of them made a suggestion. They talked, when they rode close to each other or when they stopped for a rest, in quiet voices, sometimes with looks his way or Taizu's. Sometimes they looked a great deal worried. They did now.
Wondering what we're doing? Shoka thought. Wondering how we're going to get into Lungan and what we're going to do and what they're along for?
So am I, man. I'm working this out as I go. Or maybe I have an affinity for women with baskets.
There was a wall and a hedge for shelter in the last of the dusk, an old shrine, which the men thought lucky: they made sacrifice of a little rice, a little wine, and paid their respect to the gods and their ancestors with more fervency, a couple of them, than might be likely in foreigners.
Asking the gods for help, maybe. Or for the welfare of wives and parents they might not see again.
But no one was there to see: the refugees had thinned out to a very few after dusk, and no one stayed near them. No refugees and no sign of other units, which was the thing he had worried most about—running into some other squad, real mercenaries inbound or outbound from Lungan. None so far, and either they had hit the pace that might keep them isolated on the road, or inbound troops were getting very few now and no one was coming out again.
So it was a plain, decent supper, a camp with a little leisure to sit and catch breath instead of falling straightway to sleep. "We could gain a little time," Shoka had told them when they stopped, "but I know this road we're on and I know Lungan, gods know I know it. We can stop now, get some sleep and get there by noon tomorrow, and if there's any traffic coming in at all, that can help us. I'd just rather not answer close questions if we can avoid it; and if we have to, better we do it on a good sleep. Take a little wine. Whatever lets you rest. All right?"
"Yes, m'lord," the squad leader said. His name was Chun.
"I don't think I've ever served with better," Shoka said after a moment; and the men looked shocked for a moment, then, with Chun, made deep bows, murmuring, "my lord," one and all of them.
There was fervency in the look they gave him, in the dark, in the light of their little fire. He usually hated looks like that. But not at the moment. It came from both sides, he thought. That was the difference. Chun. Eigi. Jian. Panji and Nui, cousins. Liang and Waichen, Yandai and Wengadi. They did not, thank gods, look to him for miracles, just sane orders. And they tried, they kept trying—maybe because there was a woman in their midst, even if she was a demon.