Unholy War (71 page)

Cym jerked away. ‘What, were you
inspecting
me while I was out there?’ she snarled disgustedly.

He patiently ignored her flash of temper. ‘Are you with child?’

She flinched. ‘That’s my business.’

‘
Our
business.’

She jabbed a finger at him. ‘No! That’s where you’re wrong. My body, my business.’

His face was blooming with wonder, despite her fury. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted, glowering. ‘But it means nothing.’

He beamed. ‘All those years, Ghila and I couldn’t manage it. I blamed myself, blamed her, blamed Pater Sol and Mater Lune. But now this …’

She clutched her stomach protectively. ‘It means nothing.
You
mean nothing.’

‘We were wed before the pack, Cymbellea di Regia. You are my wife, voluntarily, uncoerced, and consummated willingly, and many times over. Don’t try to deny it.’

She stared wildly about her at the night. The Inquisitors were still shouting and storming about outside the pen, and the refugees were wondering aloud what was going on. No one was paying her and Zaqri attention. ‘I don’t deny it,’ she whispered. ‘But you killed my mother. You don’t deserve my child.’

‘But it’s happening regardless,’ he said, taking her hands. ‘Look at me, Cymbellea.’ He waited until she did. ‘I love you. I have loved you from the moment I set eyes on you. Now the gods have gifted us a child. Will you please,
please
set aside this childish vendetta and love me in return?’

‘
Rukka te!
The gods haven’t gifted us a child – my stupid
body
has! My
weakness
has! And don’t you ever tell me that wanting retribution for my mother is childish, ever.’

Something in her blazing eyes made him stop whatever he was going to snap back at her and instead he drew her closer, so that their noses almost touched. ‘But you feel something for me too. Admit it.’

She tore her hands away and clutched them over her breast. ‘
Yes
, I feel something – but that’s not what’s important! It never has been! Leave me
alone
!’

It was as if he couldn’t hear her – as if he didn’t
want
to hear her. He clasped her face and kissed her lips until she kissed him back, then he gathered her into the wide expanse of his arms and bore her down onto the blanket.

‘I love you, Cymbellea di Regia, and nothing will tear us apart.
Nothing
.’

His eyes drowned whatever it was she might have said, but exhaustion was numbing her mind and body. She twisted away from him and closed her eyes, felt herself sinking into a pool of emptiness. She embraced it, let it engulf her as she wished the world away.

*

Over the next couple of days Cym and Zaqri kept largely to themselves, though Zaqri was forced to drive off a trio of Dhassan refugees who tried to rob them of their remaining food. One of the self-appointed camp leaders tried to enlist Zaqri in security, which gave them the opportunity to learn a little more about the camp. The Rondians had indiscriminately rounded up people in the southern rural areas, but they had said nothing of where they were going, or what their ultimate fate would be. Attempts to escape were dealt with brutally, and most had become resigned to a life enslaved.

The next work party was assembled three days later with a lot less fanfare, and it caught them unawares. A cluster of legionaries entered the pen and began herding people into a group, and Cym and Zaqri were too close to the action to move suddenly. They kept their heads bowed and hoped to be overlooked. Cym found herself terrified; she had to close her eyes and pray for the armed men tramping past to not notice them. She’d thought the refugees timid and subconsciously scorned them, but suddenly she knew exactly how they felt.

Then the worst happened.

‘You! Up! Into line.’ Cym felt her heart flutter as the legionary jabbed his sword in Zaqri’s direction.

‘Me?’ asked Zaqri mildly, putting a Keshi inflection into his voice.

‘Yes, you,’ the ranker replied sarcastically, unsurprised that Zaqri knew a little Rondian – many of the Ahmedhassans here did. He glanced at Cym. ‘And her.’

‘My wife is pregnant,’ Zaqri replied tersely.

The man went to shrug, then he relented. ‘Just you then. Join the workers.’

Zaqri threw Cym a concerned look, but stood.

he sent.

Fear of separation made her forget her supposed indifference.

she sent back worriedly. They were both keenly aware that none of the men sent out on these work gangs had returned here.

Something in his eyes smiled at her obvious fear.

He glared at the legionary, whom he towered over, then trudged away, his aura pulled inwards so that it was invisible to gnostic sight. Inside a minute, an order was bawled out, and they marched away, trailed to the gate by a gaggle of women. Cym joined them, in case they knew what was happening, but they didn’t appear to, and anyway, she knew no Keshi. But she had something in common with them; they were scared too.

A few minutes later, half of Siburnius’ Fist and the Dokken mage Delta trotted after the work detail without a backwards glance.

Cym returned to her blanket, huddled into it and tried not to envisage what might be happening.

*

At dusk, she returned to the fence-line, a shawl over her head, where the most forward of the women were begging information. The exact words might be a mystery, but the meaning was clear:
Where are our men?

The guards ignored them.

Then they all heard and felt the thud of hooves approaching. The woman next to Cym poked at her arm, talking at her. When ignoring her failed to dissuade her, Cym turned to the woman and showed her an illusion: that her tongue had been cut back to a scarred stump, like she’d seen once in Rimoni, the product of rough justice on a farm. The woman blanched at the illusion and backed away, throwing her pitying looks.

Siburnius’ Inquisitors trotted into view, their helms facing forward, the horns of their mounts aloft. Behind them came the robed man, Delta. They looked unsettled, and their horned horses – khurnes, she heard one of them call the beasts – looked hard-ridden. There were no Keshi workmen with them. No Zaqri.

Food and water were wheeled into the pen and there was the usual stampede. The bereft women still called out questions, their voices increasingly impassioned, the fear in their voices palpable. Cym kept her head down, unwilling to join the mêlée about the wagons, though her stomach was begging to be filled and they had precious little dried meat left in her pouch. The sun fell and Luna rose, a waning sliver of silver. As darkness descended, the cooking fires gradually became the only thing that could be seen. She longed to just fly away, but though her Air-gnosis was sufficient, she knew she couldn’t evade the wards about the camp in physical form. In the end she just rolled herself in Zaqri’s blanket, breathing in the smell of him, and tried not fight the feeling that the world was falling into Hel.

He didn’t return that night, or the next day, and by the end of the week she was out of food and her panic was beginning to overflow. She had to join the scrabbling refugees fighting at the gates of the pen night and morning for a handful of lentils, and now she had no man to protect her, she huddled in the single women’s area, pressed against strangers, using her tongue-less illusion to avoid having to speak. Her gnostic sight revealed that the Inquisitors’ dome-wardings were still in place, and the Inquisitors, evidently on edge, were now patrolling day and night.

Zaqri must be out there, he must be …

Or he’s dead.

After another week, by which time she was almost delirious with fear and the bulge in her stomach was clear to all the women around her, she had no choice but to try and find a way to escape.

33

Ordo Costruo

‘Scout, sir!’ Pilus Lukaz’s face wore its usual calm expression, while behind him his cohort shifted and shuffled about. They were still learning the quirks of being mounted, and even as simple a matter as halting sent a few of the riders into dancing circles.

‘It’s Coll,’ announced Harmon, one of the few who’d adapted well to riding.

Kip chuckled amiably. ‘He’s in a hurry, yar?’

Rat-faced Bowe sniggered, ‘He looks like he’s got a thorn in his butt.’

The scout was indeed riding awkwardly. They all chuckled as he cantered up, wincing heavily.

‘You catch an arrow in the arse?’ Ramon asked with a grin.

Coll spat with feeling. ‘Boils,’ he groaned.

The cohort laughed sympathetically. ‘ “Man’s suffering is endless”,’ quoted the pious Dolmin.

‘So are your damned holy words,’ Neubeau replied.

Coll remembered to salute. ‘Sir, there’s some kind of camp ahead. Thousands of Keshi, and some of our boys.’

Ramon sat up in the saddle. ‘Ours?’

A low cheer went up and Ramon could feel his own excitement rising.
Rondians this side of the Tigrates! Have we really reached our own lines again?
After nine months on the march, cut off from any help, were they finally back with the army?

‘Well, not
us
as such, sir, but Rondians.’ He spat. ‘There’s a maniple of legionaries, but it look like there are Inquisitors in charge.’

The cohort muttered at that. ‘Quizzies’ were nobody’s favourite people, not even the devout Dolmin. ‘Maybe they’re lost too?’ Vidran chuckled.

‘We en’t lost, Vid,’ Bowe replied. ‘We’s always knowed where we are – in the wrong fucking place.’

His raw-boned mate Trefeld guffawed.

‘In the wrong fuckin’ place,’ Manius mused. ‘Should be our motto, lads.’

‘Kore’s Word,’ Dolmin agreed fervently.

Ramon raised his hand, got silence. ‘A legion camp full of Keshi likely means slavers, lads.’ He surveyed the faces, which mostly hardened at his words. ‘Personally, I don’t like slavers. But let’s go and find out for ourselves, si?’ He turned to Lukaz. ‘Send a messenger to General Korion, tell him what we’ve found. Coll, rest your arse here.’ This raised a general snort of amusement. ‘The rest of us will push on and see what’s going on.’ He looked at Kip. ‘Coming?’

Kip exhaled through rubbery lips like a camel preparing to spit. Schlessens had once been the most common victims of the Rimoni slavers, and though that was centuries ago, it had never been forgotten. ‘Yar, I’d like to meet some slavers, for sure.’

Ramon and Kip spurred forward, moving at a trot so that the cohort could keep up. He listened to the muted rumble behind him. Ramon knew these men pretty well by now. Most of them had emerged from Khotri with a different view of the people whose lands they were marching through; some even had Khotri wives in the baggage train. The news of a slavers’ camp might split opinion, but first and foremost they were soldiers who would follow his orders.

They chewed up the miles quickly and before long they were topping a rise and the sight Coll had described was spread out below. The air was smoky in the bowl, tainted by the ordure of thousands of people penned together. They could see and smell the sewer-pits festering in the sunlight, even from up there. The shrieks of children filled the air, and the fences were lined with desperate-looking Keshi, grimy, dark-skinned people clad in ragged clothes, the washed-out hues of white and orange and blue all fading to dirty grey and dun. As they got closer, he could feel a miasma of resigned despair, doubtless fed by hunger and thirst.

‘The legion commander doesn’t seem too worried about disease,’ he commented to Lukaz.
Or anything else.

Lukaz adjusted his helmet distractedly, as if contemplating his next words carefully. Finally the Vereloni spoke. ‘Magister, this camp is too far south. Unless they have windships coming, it is too far to take these people to the Bridge.’

‘Windships are expensive, and rare,’ Ramon agreed. ‘The empire wouldn’t waste them on slave-trading, not unless the price of slaves has gone mad in our absence.’
No, this reminds me of something else entirely
. He felt a sudden sense of oppression.

Rukka mio, isn’t it
wonderful
to be back with the empire … ?

‘Sir?’ Lukaz indicated a small group of riders who had suddenly whirled and were riding hard towards them with the urgency of people who wanted to head them off before they saw too much.

‘Inquisition,’ Kip growled.

The Church knights pounded towards them, just four of them, but that was comfortably enough to win against two low-blood magi and a cohort of humans.

‘Thing with these pricks,’ Vidran commented, ‘is you never know whether you’re on the same side as them.’

‘They’re on Kore’s side and that’s it,’ Neubeau said.

‘That’s the same side as all of us,’ Dolmin replied dutifully.

Ramon quieted them with a gesture. ‘Spread out. Treat them as hostile, but don’t do anything unless I tell you to.’

The cohort nudged apart to present no clumped targets, gripped their sword-hilts tight and waited. No one looked like they relished a fight against such foes, especially one on horseback.

‘We’s all Rondians, ain’t we?’ Bowe complained.

Harmon put a finger to his lips. ‘Shut up, Bowe, you butt-wad. They’re the Inquisition. They’re a breed apart.’ The two of them glared at each other. The cohort mostly got on, but if there was a fracturing it usually involved the generally repugnant Bowe on one hand, and the aloof Harmon on the other.

The Inquisitors galloped in smoothly on their horned steeds and drew to a stop some ten yards away. There were three men and one grey-haired woman. Ramon realised he knew at least two of them.

‘So, you again,’ the grey-haired woman rasped.

It wasn’t the greeting he’d envisaged when they finally made contact with their own lines again. He saluted respectfully, though, while his mind raced. ‘Battle-mage Ramon Sensini, Pallacios Thirteen. I bring the greetings of General Korion.’

The woman blinked slowly. ‘
General Korion?
’

‘Indeed. Our main body is east of here, and should arrive very soon.’
Or not. They’re probably half a rukking day behind us. Still
… ‘What is happening here, Acolyte … er … ?’

‘Fist Third Alis Nytrasia,’ the woman drawled, looking left and right. The scar-faced young Acolyte who’d been with her last time was at her shoulder, eyeing Kip with cold disdain. ‘I understood the Pallacios Thirteen to be …
destroyed
.’

‘Several units managed to extricate themselves from Shaliyah.’

‘Did you run?’ the young male Inquisitor drawled mockingly. The cohort bristled, causing Lukaz to raise his hand warningly. The Inquisitors didn’t blink, but Ramon could feel how ready they were to unleash havoc.

‘We retreated south when the battle turned against us,’ Ramon replied levelly. ‘We’ve been marching west since then, avoiding the enemy when we can, fighting when we have to. I ask again, what is happening here, Acolyte Nytrasia?’

She sniffed haughtily. ‘This is a slave camp. It’s none of your business.’

Ramon remembered the branded mage, and what he and Sevvie had seen in Peroz.
The Hel it is
. He took a breath, and tried to estimate the number of Keshi in the pens.
Sol et Lune! The Inquisition are harvesting souls by the thousand, out here where no one knows
.

Alis Nytrasia was watching him with narrowed eyes.
Trying to gauge how much I know … and whether it’s worth killing us.
He tried to seem oblivious. ‘We are short of food and tired from the march. General Korion will wish us to join your camp.’

‘We have no excess stores.’ Nytrasia pointed northwest. ‘The bridges at Vida are that way, two weeks’ march.’

‘Nevertheless, we will make camp here. Salim’s army is near, and I’m sure the legion commander will be grateful for our presence.’ He looked past her pointedly. ‘Where is the commander, by the way?’

‘Dealing with more important matters,’ Nytrasia replied. ‘Go away, Sensini.’

Her tone set a bristling noise rippling through the cohort.
Don’t do anything stupid, lads
, Ramon prayed.

There was obviously little point in pressing the issue. He pretended to back down, and led the cohort away. The Inquisitors watched them go impassively. He made for a small flat area and extended a veil from scrying over it. He immediately came into conflict with an active spell – the Inquisitors were already scrying him – but he felt them break off – he could almost hear their hiss of annoyance.

‘Old friends of yours, boss?’ Lukaz enquired dryly.

‘You could say that. Kip knows, and so does Severine. These are some of the most evil bastards I’ve ever come across.’ He looked around the dell. ‘Those Inquisitors aren’t taking slaves: they’re on an extermination mission. We need the army here, right now.’

The men looked at one another and he saw everything from loathing to callous disinterest cross their faces.

‘They’re only Keshi, sir. What can we do?’ Bowe asked, his face unsympathetic.

‘A Fist has enough power to kick us all the way back to Ardijah,’ Trefeld added.

Ramon eyed the pair coolly. ‘Maybe. But once the rest of the army gets here, we’re going to break this party up.’

The legionaries looked at him doubtfully. ‘What’s the profit in that?’ Ollyd wondered.

‘Are they as tough as the tales tell?’ Kel Harmon asked, his eyes far away, fixed on the Inquisitors. ‘I’ve often wondered.’ The rest of the cohort unconsciously backed away from him.

‘The heathen is already damned,’ quoted Dolmin.

Kip grunted. ‘I’m a heathen. So are half of you pricks.’

‘But they’re Noories,’ Bowe whined. ‘That’s different.’

Ramon rounded on him. ‘Sol et Lune, look at you all! Half of you could pass for Dhassans, you’ve been under the sun so long. How many of you have a Khotri woman in the baggage train? How many of you shared a pint or a pipe with a “Noorie” back in Ardijah? How many hundred rankers told me, “They’re not so different from us, sir” when begging permission to marry a Khotri widow? “Just common muck like us”, you kept telling me. Well, that’s who’re in that camp: common muck like us, getting slaughtered for sport by Siburnius and Nytrasia and their lot. I think we’re better than that – but maybe some of you don’t?’

The men hung their heads, not meeting his eye. Then Lukaz looked up. ‘You’re right, boss. If they’re just killing for the joy of it, that ain’t right. I’m with you.’

Oh, it’s so much worse than that.

Vidran nodded, as did Manius and Baden. Then Harmon smiled to himself and tapped his sword-hilt. With the opinion-leaders in agreement, the rest fell into line, even Bowe and Trefeld.

‘Good.’ Ramon pointed to a nearby rise, which had a view over the camp. ‘Lukaz, assign the watch. I’ll stay – Kip, I need you to go and find Baby Korion as fast as you can and bring him here.’ He wished he had a relay-stave, but they’d not had one since before Shaliyah.

‘Yar, no problem.’ Kip spurred his horse fiercely and galloped off. In minutes the Schlessen was just a dust-trail in the middle distance and Ramon left the cohort where they were and went to the top of the ridge to view the camp below. The sun beat down and the dry heat was parching. He let his horse graze the stubby brush dotting the slope behind him while, watching Alis Nytrasia and her companions below. He still feared some kind of attack and was keeping his inner eye open for signs of the gnosis.

That was how he spotted a bird, apparently a sparrow, that swooped in from the south and landed in the lee of a low boulder where it could not be seen from the camp. He instinctively warded and was almost set to blast it with a mage-bolt when it spoke into his mind.

a woman’s voice drawled.

The bird turned into Cymbellea di Regia – or rather, an image of Cym, for the sun shone through her without casting a shadow. ‘Cym!’ Ramon squawked. ‘Rukka mio, is that you?’ He raised his arms as if to hug her then dropped them again. ‘Where’s your body?’

‘Down there,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you the rest later.’

A million questions leaped into his head as he stared from her to the camp and back again, then back at the men of the cohort. Cym would be invisible to the naked eye, but none of them seemed to have noticed that he was talking to himself. ‘You’re inside that camp? Sol et Lune! We’d better get you out. There’s an Inquisitor Fist down there with a tame Dokken in tow, and they’re up to no good.’

‘I know.’ Her voice cracked a little. ‘I think they killed Zaqri.’

‘Who’s Zaqri?’

She hesitated. ‘A friend.’ She didn’t say it with enough warmth for him to be convinced. ‘I’ve not seen him for weeks, and it’s getting desperate in the camp. They keep taking people away and they don’t come back. I can’t get out because they’ve warded the fences. I keep hoping … The Inquisitors are hunting someone outside the perimeter, so perhaps he got away …’

‘This Zaqri? Who is he?’

She hung her head. ‘Zaqri is a Dokken.’

He blinked. ‘You’re
friends
with a Dokken? But—’