‘I’ll put an arrow in your eye if you don’t quiet that yowling.’
The sharp voice from up ahead stopped them all and cut the coarse melody as sharply and neatly as a knife on tight string. Manadar lowered the flute, pouting in exaggerated fashion.
‘That’s not the intended effect,’ he shouted. ‘More or less the opposite, in fact.’
Hamdan emerged from a dip in the ground, close to a hundred paces further on. He and Yulan were the only two Massatans in the Free: olive-skinned southerners who, it occurred to Brennan for the first time, probably found this hot, arid land almost homely. Hamdan certainly looked quite content. No sign of sweat, no lethargy to his movements. A smile on his face. He lowered his bow and beckoned them on.
V
All the rest were waiting for them. They had paused to water and rest their horses for an hour or two, and made the simplest of camps. Some had unrolled bedding so that they could close their eyes, however briefly. Someone had made a quick, small fire to roast a bird Hamdan had shot. The Free could make themselves comfortable-comfortable enough, at least-almost anywhere.
All of them, though, were awake and assembled to meet Brennan and the others as Hamdan led them in. Rudran, a red-bearded giant of a man who led the Free’s small company of lancers. He was there, with half a dozen of his men. Another half-dozen, more motley and less neatly attired than the lancers, who were swordsmen or spearmen.
Wren and Kerig, she smiling, he as usual with an almost-scowl on his face. They were lovers, those two, and more importantly Clevers. Capable of shaping and channelling the raw entelechs of which the world was composed. Less imposing, but far more dangerous than all the fell warriors gathered around them.
There was one who was not of the Free too: Surmun, the contract-holder. He bore the parchment that set out the particular task they had agreed to perform. The idea was that he could show it to anyone who questioned their right to do whatever they judged necessary in fulfilment of that task. In reality, few if any contract-holders ever had to show anyone anything. People tended not to challenge the will of the Free.
No one seriously thought a piece of parchment carried any weight within the Empire. But tradition and habit lay heavily on the Free. More often than not, a contract-holder rode with them. This particular contract-holder had barely spoken to anyone for days. He was not overly pleased with the course events had taken since he acquired his position. Exploring the fringes of the Empire of Orphans had not been one of his ambitions for the role.
And there was Yulan. The Captain of all the Free, latest in the long line of great warriors to lead this greatest of all the battle companies. His skin had the same soft, dark tone as Hamdan’s, but he was much taller and more powerfully built than the archer. Most strikingly, his head was almost entirely shaved. A perfectly smooth scalp surrounded the topknot into which he tied a single long lock of oiled black hair.
Lorin neatly and wordlessly cut Marweh’s bonds with a knife from his boot. He made no move to help her dismount, and she slipped and slumped clumsily sideways, almost falling to her knees. Lorin handed his reins to Brennan and went straight to Yulan. The two of them fell at once into muted but animated conversation.
Brennan and Manadar jumped to the ground. They tethered their horses to an ancient, desiccated tree trunk which lay close by. Inevitably, they were surrounded by curious questioners.
‘You lose the slavers or something?’
‘Why are you boys looking so glum?’
‘How’d you find a lady to bring along with you in this empty pit of a place?’
Brennan let Manadar answer the questions. He was not in the mood for recounting their misadventure. He led Marweh to a broad, flat stone embedded in the dry earth and sat her there. She was watching Lorin and Yulan. Brennan did too.
Lorin was pointing the way they had come. Drawing maps and movements in the air with his finger. Yulan was nodding. They had not-at least so Brennan hoped-lost the slavers. Lorin still held in his head the directions and distances. He evidently thought there could yet be a meeting of swords and a breaking of shackles before their quarry was too deep into the Empire to be reached.
Brennan stripped bedrolls and saddles and empty waterskins from the horses. Out of habit and long training he began checking their hoofs, one by one, for stones or wounds. The animals lifted each foot when he tapped their legs. They were patient and tolerant of his rather distracted ministrations.
He was brushing sand and grit from a hoof when he became aware of a presence at his side. He let loose the horse’s leg and looked up at Yulan.
‘Feel like a fool?’ the Captain of the Free asked him with a smile.
Brennan nodded.
‘A bit.’
‘Remember it, that feeling. It’ll make you work to stay clear of it in days to come. But it doesn’t sound as though what happened was much of your fault.’
‘It wasn’t Lorin’s either,’ Brennan said impulsively.
Yulan smiled again at that. A little ruefully this time.
‘Well said. True or not, well and loyally said.’
He ran one hand slowly, from front to back, over his bald scalp.
‘When a day goes sour, the man who gives the orders owns the fault. Only he knows how deserved or not that ownership is. Only he knows how important it is to remember the fault and the feeling it brings.’
Yulan turned away.
‘Rest a little,’ he said as he went. ‘We’re going to war very soon now before that war slips away through our hands like your water did.’
There was not a man among the Free who thought Yulan anything but a great leader as far as Brennan knew. Wise in judgement; fearsome in battle. In the nearly four years he had commanded them, none had fallen beneath an enemy’s blade. Yulan would be a legend one day.
Few knew him well though. Few came close to him. A handful, the most trusted, were no doubt his friends: Hamdan, Rudran, some of the Clevers perhaps. For the rest-those like Brennan who served lower in the ranks-well, they were left to wonder, to imagine.
The story they whispered was that Yulan shaved his head after something went wrong the very first time he led the Free into battle. Something that the Free failed to prevent, and in that failure saw their proud history tarnished. Those who knew the tale did not speak of it. Those who did not know it were left to murmur among themselves that the shaven head of their Captain meant something in the traditions of his Massatan people. It meant shame or regret or contrition. Nobody knew exactly what. Perhaps, Brennan thought, it was Yulan’s own inner judgement on how much of the fault for a sour day resided with the man who gave the orders.
Brennan hoped Lorin would not be judging himself too harshly for what had happened in the night. That might, he suspected, depend upon what happened next. In the possibly bloody hours and days to come.
Despite Yulan’s instruction and his own deep weariness, Brennan could not rest. His mind was more awake than his body would have wished.
He sat with the rest and ate a few morsels of roasted bird flesh. He did not speak much. None of them did for close to an hour. There would be good-natured taunts and jibes about lost water and the farmer’s wife who fooled the Free eventually, but for now everyone had more pressing matters on their minds. Some lay down and closed their eyes. Hamdan kicked sand over the little fire to extinguish it.
Marweh sat in the deepest silence of all. Wren, the Clever, took her some food and water, which she accepted with nothing more than a grateful nod.