Of Bone and Thunder (8 page)

No one could be bothered to echo his gripe. The rest of the shield was bone-tired and flaked out among the vegetation on the mountaintop. They formed a rough circle facing outward, covering every opening in the jungle the slyts might use. Soldiers had finished stringing prick vine, the tough, thin, thorn-covered vine that grew throughout the jungle, around the camp. As an obstacle it wasn't much, but in the dark it might catch an unsuspecting slyt trying to sneak up on them.

The ocean breeze didn't seem inclined to join them at the summit, so they sweltered in the humidity and batted at swarms of bugs. The climb back up had taken most of the daylight with it and the shadows were growing long.

Lead Crossbowman Listowk lifted his head a fraction from where it rested on crossed arms draped over his knees. It was even silver on whether the complaining Vooford would wind himself up into a fury or wear himself down to a mumbling sulk. Normally, Listowk would have bet on the heat sapping the soldier's strength, but Vooford had that rare quality of finding energy in misery and multiplying it until everyone around him suffered.

“Why don't you park your ass, get some food in you, and enjoy the great outdoors?” Listowk asked, mustering just enough energy to point at the trees with his nose. “If you're real nice, Carny might even have a treat for you in one of those haversacks,” he finished, turning his head to catch
Carny's surprised expression a few feet away. Did Carny think he didn't know what the little cripple had brought him?

“Fuck you, and fuck Carny, too,” Voof said, raising his voice even louder. “In fact, fuck you all!” He paused in his pacing to look around. “Just 'cause you got strong-armed into the army don't mean you stop thinking. We're still citizens. We got rights. More than ever. Why should I fight for this king? He ain't even a real king.”

“If a slyt doesn't put an arrow in that festering wound you call a mouth, I will,” someone grumbled from the other side of their encampment.

“Who said that?” Voof shouted, bringing his crossbow up into a firing position in front of his chest.

Listowk sighed, letting his right hand slide down his leg. His hand came to rest on his own weapon lying on the ground beside him. It was cocked with a bolt resting in the groove. He hooked his thumb under the iron safety latch, gently caressing the smooth metal. A quick flick up and the latch would release, freeing the trigger.

“Now, now, children,” Listowk said, looking around the encampment. Tired, dirty, and scared faces looked back him. They really were like children. “Let's all just take a breath and relax. It's hot, we're tired, and we're stuck up here with nothing but dirty thoughts about sweet things. But do keep in mind, this is slyt land. We don't need to be making their job any easier by squabbling among ourselves.”

“Since when is thinking for yourself a problem?” Voof said, still staring in the direction of the hurled insult. “Long past time we woke and did a whole lot more thinking for ourselves.”

“Sweet trees a'mighty, Vooford!” Listowk said, his voice rising despite his attempt to remain calm. “I didn't get much book learning as a child, but even I mastered the concept that thinking don't necessarily also mean talking at the same time. It's entirely fine if you do the first without all the latter.”

Those bright enough to catch his joke chuckled. It wasn't many.

“Someone's gotta stand up for what's right,” Voof said, his voice less strident than before. His crossbow, however, remained in a firing position.

Listowk saw his opening. Vooford had let off his steam and now just
needed a way to back down without losing face. “And it's commendable that you take that responsibility on, it truly is. You—”

“Vooford!”
Sinte bellowed, stepping through the trees and into the middle of their camp. “Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up! We're surrounded by slyts up here!”

Voof snarled and spun on his heel to face Sinte. An audible gasp went up from the soldiers. The chirping, clicking, screeching insect chorus that greeted every nightfall quieted.

This close to calming the fool down!
Listowk tensed his thumb, ready to flip the iron safety latch up. It was all on Sinte now.

“LC Listowk,” Sinte said, deliberately angling his body so that he faced Listowk but kept Vooford in sight out of the corner of his eye. “Why the hell are these men idle and gossiping like a gaggle of washerwomen? I don't smell wax. I thought I made it clear that bowstrings were to be waxed daily.”

“Ah, Shield Leader, welcome back,” Listowk said, nodding. He made it sound like a long-lost brother had just returned. “Really great to see you. I was just about to tell the men to do that very thing.” In fact, Listowk had told the shield to do it, but soldiers being boys, they'd focused on other matters like lighting up their pipes and lolling around. He understood and wasn't about to get his lads in trouble with the SL.

Sinte turned to fully face Listowk, exposing his back to Voof. It was a strong statement but also a risky one. “Good, because when I do a weapons check tomorrow morning, I'd better not find a single slack string or the entire shield will be held accountable.”

Listowk looked around the encampment, careful not to linger on Voof. Soldiers were hurriedly unhooking the strings from their crossbows. The whipcord they used was strong, especially this new type they'd been issued that had strands of animal sinew woven in, but it still needed waxing to keep from fraying and drying out, or even rotting.

“Let's remember to use our upstairs attic,” Listowk said, tapping his helm with the knuckles of his left hand. “Right edge, keep your string on and wax your spare. Left edge, do the opposite. It wouldn't do to have the entire shield stringless at the same time.”

Listowk kept an eye on Voof. With only Sinte's back to rail against and
seemingly forgotten, Voof grumbled something obscene. Sinte chose to ignore it. Listowk flipped his safety latch off. The bowstring hummed as the main trigger picked up the tension. The entire weapon felt tighter in his hand, like a coiled snake waiting to strike.

“I'm going to get some food,” Voof muttered, stomping off to the other end of the clearing.

“Any sign of Black Shield?” Listowk asked Sinte, thumbing the safety latch back down to engage the trigger bar. It took more effort to put it into place than it did to take it off. Stifling a yawn, he eased himself into a standing position.

Sinte walked over until he stood about two feet in front of him. “He's becoming a bigger problem.”

Listowk shrugged. “I think of him as the spout on a boiling teapot. The shield needs to let off pressure now and then, and he's the loudest. Lets them all get it out of their systems.”

Sinte scowled. “You sound like a damn witch with that folksy wisdom. Vooford is an infection that will spread if we don't stop him.”

Listowk didn't like the turn the conversation was taking. Sinte wasn't blinking. “Any sign of Black Shield?” Listowk asked again.

Sinte didn't answer for a moment, as if weighing whether to continue his original train of thought. “No. I went two hundred yards and couldn't find a thing.”

“Shield Leader Trivvos is a cagey rascal,” Listowk said. “He's probably got his boys dug in and quiet as Holy Grove mice,” he said, making a mental note to ask Trivvos just how the hell he did that.

“Listowk, you look like a damn fool,” Sinte said suddenly. “Weel sees you dressed like that, he'll have your balls.”

Listowk looked down at his uniform. Without much effort, he'd simply grabbed a leaf here and some fronds there as they marched, weaving them into his leather webbing and aketon. A string or two of vine and some flowers, and he'd pass for just one more part of the jungle. “I do seem to pick up more than my fair share of the shrubbery, don't I? Not exactly parade-ground presentable, but it seems to work out here.”

“It's unorthodox,” Sinte said.

“I suppose it is at that, but everything has to start out unorthodox at
first,” Listowk said, refraining from asking Sinte whom he thought the slyts would shoot at first. “And like you said, SL, we're in slyt territory here. They sure as hell blend in. I was planning to take a stroll in a bit and see if I can't locate the Blacks myself. Figured I'd be better off if I blend in, too.”

Sinte's left hand brushed at something on his own aketon, perhaps self-consciously, and shook his head. “Forget that. It's too dark. I don't want you wandering around out there getting lost, or worse. We'll sit tight here and make the best of it.” Sinte paused for a moment and looked around their camp. “Why, you worried?”

A psaltery being lightly strummed filled the clearing before Listowk answered. Crossbowman Hanjil Sovoad—“the Bard,” as the shield called him—carried the thing everywhere. Sinte was surprisingly tolerant of the lad's playing. Maybe the SL had a heart after all.

The Bard sang, his voice a soft flannel.

Dark mountain rising above the sea

Our youth spent upon your velvet thighs

With your head in the clouds

And your heart buried in time.

“Lad needs to learn how to rhyme,” Sinte said.

“I'll tell him to stop,” Listowk said.

“Not like the slyts don't know we're here,” Sinte said. “Let him play for a flicker or two.”

Listowk raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Instead, he turned and pointed at Carny. “Divvy up the food, okay? If they sent us any honey oranges, save me a wedge?”

Listowk then waited until the bustle about food and the Bard's singing and strumming had the soldiers preoccupied before answering Sinte. “So, am I worried? We're up here with our asses out of our trousers. Weel chewed out Rhomy, and now we're getting spanked. On a training exercise that'd be fine, but this is different. We have no idea where the other shields are and no way to contact them if we did. Maybe they brought some more carrier pigeons with the newest draft,” he said, motioning back down
toward the beach, “but that doesn't help us tonight. The slyts are getting bold.”

Sinte knocked his knuckles against the iron plates sewn to his aketon. “There are six shields on this little mountain. That's nearly a hundred and twenty trained bows. And there's hundreds more on the beach with more arriving every day. They'll have heavier weapons, too. Catapults, ballistas, trebuchets, the works. You know the slyts—hide, loose off some arrows, then run and hide again.”

Listowk didn't take the SL for stupid, but Sinte's faith in the Kingdom's army worried him. “It all sounds good when you say it like that, but that ain't the half of it. We're spread out like six tiny islands. And all those big throwers on the beach are still going to be in pieces. It'll take them a good day or more to put them back together, and probably a couple more after that to string all the sinew and rope and get them tight and aligned. And even when they do, they'll be shooting blind until we rig up a way to talk to them.”

Sinte sighed. The man was tired, too, but he'd fall down dead before admitting it. “So what do you suggest? I sure as hell can't march us back down to Weel.”

Listowk allowed himself a moment to smile on the inside. You couldn't tell a superior what to do, but you could lead him to ask the right questions. “Odds are the little devils have had eyes on us the whole time. They damn well hear us with the racket these boys make. Wait until it's been dark an eighth of a candle, then we leave this site and slip down the side of the mountain, about two hundred yards, and wait out the night.”

Sinte didn't answer right away, which Listowk took as a good sign. “Our orders are to man the summit.”

“Hell of an inscription on a grave tree,” Listowk said with a measured nonchalance that was almost impossible to take offense to.

“And I suppose you scouted out a place on our way up where we could ride out the night?”

This time Listowk did smile. “We crossed a few ruts that I figure were runoff channels when the rains hit. Remember those? Looked like tiny canyons.” Sinte nodded. Listowk couldn't tell if the SL really remembered them or not, but he knew Sinte would never admit it. “I followed one, and
just past the bush a few yards, there were some big rocks and a decent-sized dirt bank upslope on the southern side of the path. We could tuck in there. Won't be comfortable, but it's a sight better than sitting in the open out here. If I had to wager a silver coin, I'd bet Trivvos has his shield in a place like that, too.”

“I can't leave the summit abandoned,” Sinte said. He didn't look at Listowk but instead watched the shield talking and joking as they ate.

It was Listowk's turn to sigh. The chance that Weel would send anyone up to check on them was beyond remote, but if Trivvos or one of the other shields sent scouts to try to find them, someone had to be there.

“If we all just sit here, we're asking for trouble,” Listowk said.

Sinte nodded. “If you were a slyt, and you knew we were here, how would you come at us?”

Listowk had given the idea some thought. “I'd swing around toward the ocean side and come up that way. Not only would it have the element of surprise, but in the dark we could end up shooting at another shield coming up from the beach in support. It'd be a bloodbath.”

“So if you were going to put out a small patrol to watch for that . . .,” Sinte said.

“I'd put it in that little rut I found on the way up,” Listowk finished.

“Take three crossbowmen and one long, but not Vooford. I want that bastard where I can see him,” Sinte said.

And of course, no thank-you, no nothing.
The only way Sinte ever took advice was by believing it was his own.

“Big Hog, Wraith, the Weasel . . . and Carny,” Listowk said, nodding his head in their direction. Sinte looked that way.