"Hey, Corp'ral," said Buck, laying his weapon aside again. "You fancy a look?"

"Don't be a moron," Tuft said, panting. "You think I would come all the way up here just to look at a bunch of recruits learning to swim? f.u.c.k." He doubled over, trying to catch his breath, the back of his jacket failing to cover his considerable girth. "I swear that f.u.c.kin' wall gets higher every time I have to climb it."

"What are you going to do when you get back to Vordan, Corp'ral?" Buck said.

"f.u.c.k Peg's wife," Tuft snapped. He turned away from the trio to face Winter. "Iherngla.s.s, get over here."

Winter cursed silently and levered herself to her feet. Tuft wasn't a bad sort for a corporal, but he sounded irritated.

"Yes, Corporal?" she said. Behind Tuft, Peg made a rude gesture, which provoked silent laughter from the other two.

"Cap'n wants to see you," Tuft said. "But Davis wants to see you first, so I'd hurry up if I was you. He's down in the yard."

"Right away, Corporal," said Winter, swallowing another curse. She slung her musket over her shoulder and took hold of the ladder, her feet finding the rungs with the ease of long practice. She seemed to draw more than her share of wall duty, which was undoubtedly another little gift from the senior sergeant. Nothing was too petty for Davis.

The fortress-Fort Valor, as some Vordanai cartographer had named it, apparently not in jest-was a small medieval affair, little more than a five-sided wall with two-story stone towers at the corners. Whatever other buildings had filled it in antiquity had long since fallen to bits, leaving a large open s.p.a.ce in which the Vordanai had raised their tents. The best spots were those right against one of the walls, which got some shade most of the day. The "yard" was the unoccupied ground in the center, an expanse of dry, packed earth that would have been ideal for drills and reviews if the Colonials had bothered with such things.

Winter found Davis waiting near the edge of the row of tents, watching idly as two soldiers, stripped to the waist, settled some minor argument with their fists. A ring of onlookers cheered the pair indiscriminately.

"Sir!" Winter went to attention, saluted, and held it until Davis deigned to turn around. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Ah, yes." The sergeant's voice was a ba.s.so rumble, apparently produced somewhere deep in his prodigious gut. Davis would have seemed fatter if he wasn't so tall. As it was, he loomed. He was also, as Winter had had good occasion to find out, venal, petty, cruel, stupid as an ox in most respects but not without a certain vicious cunning when the situation arose. In other words, the perfect sergeant.

"Iherngla.s.s." He smiled, showing blackened teeth. "You heard that the captain has requested your presence?"

"Yes, sir." Winter hesitated. "Do you know-"

"I suspect I had something to do with that. There was just one thing I wanted to make clear to you before you went."

"Sir?" Winter wondered what Davis had gotten her into this time. The big man had made her torment a personal project ever since she'd been transferred to his company, against his wishes, more than a year before.

"The captain will tell you that your sergeant recommended you for your sterling qualities, skill and bravery and so forth. You may find yourself thinking that old Sergeant Davis isn't such a bad fellow after all. That deep down, under all the bile and bl.u.s.ter, he harbored a soft spot for you. That all his taunts and jibes were well intentioned, weren't they? To toughen you up, body and soul." The sergeant's smile widened. "I want you to know, right now, that that's bulls.h.i.t. The captain asked me to recommend men with good records for a special detail, and I've been around enough officers to know what that means. You'll be sent off on some idiot suicide mission, and if that's got to happen to any man in my company I wanted to be sure it was you. Hopefully, it means I will finally, finally be rid of you."

"Sir," Winter said woodenly.

"I find I develop a certain rough affection for most men under my command as the years wear on," Davis mused. "Even the ugly ones. Even Peg, if you can believe it. I sometimes wonder why you have been such an exception. I knew I didn't like the look of you the first day we met, and I still don't. Do you have any idea why that might be?"

"Couldn't say, sir."

"I think it's because, deep down, you think you're better than the rest of us. Most men lose that conviction after a while. You, on the other hand, never seem to tire of having your face rubbed in the mud."

"Yes, sir." Winter had long ago found that the quickest, not to say the safest, method of getting away from an audience with Davis was simply to agree with everything the sergeant said.

"Oh, well. I had some lovely duty on the latrines lined up for you." Davis gave a huge, rolling shrug. "But instead you get to find out what lunacy Captain d'Ivoire has dreamed up. No doubt it will be a glorious death. I just want you to remember, when some Redeemer is carving chunks out of you for his cookpot, that you're there because old Sergeant Davis couldn't stand the sight of you. Is that understood?"

"Understood, sir," Winter said.

"Very well. You are dismissed."

He turned back to the fight, which was nearly over, one man having wrapped his arm around his rival's neck while he pounded him repeatedly in the face with his free hand. Winter trudged past them, headed for the corner tower that served as regimental headquarters.

Her gut churned. It would be good to be away from Davis. There was no doubt about that. While they'd been in their usual camp near the Khandarai capital of Ashe-Katarion, the big sergeant's torments had been bearable. Discipline had been lax. Winter had been able to spend long periods away from the camp, and Davis and the others had had their drinking, gambling, and whoring to distract them. Then the Redemption had come. The prince had fled the capital like a whipped dog, and the Colonials had followed. Since then, through the long weeks of waiting at Fort Valor, things had gotten much worse. Cooped up inside the ancient walls, Winter had nowhere to escape, and Davis used her to vent his irritation at being denied his favorite pursuits.

On the other hand, Winter had learned to pa.r.s.e officer-speak, too. A "special detail" definitely sounded bad.

There was a guard at the open doorway to the building, but he only nodded at Winter as she entered. The captain's office was just inside, marked by the smiling staff lieutenant who waited by the door. Winter recognized him. Everyone in the regiment knew Fitzhugh Warus. His brother, Ben Warus, had been colonel of the Colonials until he'd taken a bullet through the skull during a h.e.l.l-for-leather chase after some bandits upriver. Fitz had been widely expected to leave for home after that, since everyone knew he was only here for his brother's sake. Inexplicably, he'd remained, employing his easy smile and flawless memory on behalf of the new acting commander.

Winter always felt a bit uncomfortable in his presence. She had small use for officers of any description, much less officers who smiled all the time. At least when she was being shouted at, she knew where she stood.

She stopped in front of him and saluted. "Ranker Iherngla.s.s, reporting as ordered, sir."

"Come in," said Fitz. "The captain is expecting you."

Winter followed him inside. The captain's "office" had more than likely been someone's bedroom back when Fort Valor was an actual functioning fortress. Like every other part of the place, they'd found it stripped to the bare rock when they arrived. Captain d'Ivoire had made a kind of low desk out of half the bed of a broken cart propped on a pair of heavy trunks, and he sat on a spare bedroll.

This desk was strewn with paper of two distinct sorts. Most of it was the yellow-brown Khandarai rag paper the Colonials had used for years, recycled endlessly by enterprising vendors who rescued sc.r.a.ps from trash heaps and sc.r.a.ped the ink off, over and over, until the sheet was as thin as tissue. Amidst these, like bits of polished marble in a sand heap, were several pages of honest-to-Karis Vordanai stationery, crisp as though they had just come off the mills, bleached blindingly white with creases like razors. They were obviously orders from the fleet. Winter itched to know what they contained, but they were all carefully folded to shield them from prying eyes.

The captain himself was working on another sheet, a list of names, wearing an irritable expression. He was a broad-shouldered man in his middle thirties, face browned and prematurely wrinkled like that of anyone else who spent too much time in the unforgiving Khandarai sun. He kept his dark hair short and his beard, just starting to show slashes of gray, trimmed close to his jaw. Winter liked him as well as she liked any officer, which wasn't much.

He looked up at her, grunted, and made a mark on his list. "Sit down, Ranker."

Winter sat cross-legged on the floor across the desk from him. She felt Fitz hovering over her shoulder. Her instincts were screaming that this was a trap, and she had to remind herself firmly that making a break for it was not an option.

It felt as though the captain wanted her to open the conversation, but she knew better than to try. Finally he grunted again and fumbled around under the desk, coming up with a little linen bag. He tossed it on the desk in front of her, where it clanked.

"For you," he said. When she hesitated, he gestured impatiently. "Go on."

Winter worked her finger through the drawstring and tipped out the contents. They were two copper pins, each bearing three bra.s.s pips. They were intended for the shoulders of her uniform; the insignia of a senior sergeant.

There was a long silence.

"This has to be a joke," Winter blurted, and then hastily added, "sir."

"I wish it was," the captain said, either oblivious to or intending the implied insult. "Put them on."

Winter regarded the copper pins as though they were poisonous insects. "Sir, I must respectfully decline this offer."

"Too bad it isn't an offer, or even a request," the captain snapped. "It's an order. Put the d.a.m.n things on."

She slammed her hand on the desk, just missing the dangerously upturned point of one of the pins, and shook her head violently. "I-"

Her throat rebelled, closing so tight she had to fight for breath. The captain watched her, not angry but with a sort of bemused curiosity. After a few moments, he coughed.

"Technically," he said, "I could have you thrown in the stockade for that. Only we haven't got a stockade, and then I'd just have to find another d.a.m.ned sergeant. So let me explain." He sorted through the papers and came up with one of the crisp sheets. "Aboard those transports are enough soldiers to bring this regiment up to book strength. That's nearly three thousand men. As soon as they dock, I get this instruction"-he gave the word a nasty spin-"from the new colonel, telling me that he hasn't brought any junior officers and he wants me to provide people who are *familiar with the natives and the terrain.' Never mind that I haven't got enough for my own companies. So I've got to come up with thirty-six sergeants, without stripping the other companies completely bare, and that means field promotions."

Winter nodded, her chest still tight. The captain made a vague gesture in the air.

"So I ask around for men who might be able to do the job. Your Sergeant Davis picked you. Your record is"-his lip quirked-"a bit odd, but good. And here we are."

The sergeant would be apoplectic if he knew she was being promoted, rather than sent on a dangerous foray into enemy territory. For a moment Winter reconsidered her objection. It would be worth it, almost, just to watch his face turn tomato red. To make Buck and Tuft salute her. But- "Sir," she protested, "with all due respect to yourself and Sergeant Davis, I don't think this is a good decision. I don't know how to be a sergeant."

"It can't be difficult," the captain said, "or else sergeants couldn't do it." He sat back a little, as though waiting for a smile, but Winter kept her face rigid. He sighed. "Would it rea.s.sure you if I said that all the new companies have their own lieutenants? I doubt that your duties will involve as much . . . initiative as Sergeant Davis' do."

Shortage of lieutenants was a perennial problem in the Colonials. The primary purpose of the regiment, it sometimes seemed, was as a dumping ground for those who had irretrievably f.u.c.ked up their Royal Army careers but hadn't quite gone far enough to be cashiered or worse. Lieutenants-who, by and large, came from good families and were young enough to still make a life outside the service-would usually resign rather than accept the posting. Most companies were run by their sergeants, of which the regiment always had a sufficiency.

It was rea.s.suring, slightly, but it did little to address her primary objection. She'd spent three years doing all she could to avoid contact with her fellow soldiers, most of whom were vicious brutes in any event. To now get up in front of a hundred and twenty of them and tell them what to do-the thought made her want to curl into a ball and never emerge.

"Sir," she said, her voice a little thick, "I still think-"

Captain d'Ivoire's patience ran out. "Your objections are noted, Sergeant," he snapped. "Now put the d.a.m.n pins on."

With a shaking hand, Winter took the pins and fumbled with her coat. Being nonregulation, it lacked the usual shoulder straps, and after watching for a moment the captain sighed.

"All right," he said. "Just take them and go. You have the evening to say your good-byes. We're breaking the new men out into companies tomorrow morning, so be on the field when you hear the call." He cast about on the table, found a bit of rag paper, and scribbled something on it. "Take this to Rhodes and tell him you need a new jacket. And try to look as respectable as possible. G.o.d knows this regiment looks shabby enough."

"Yes, sir." Pocketing the pins, Winter got to her feet. The captain made a shooing gesture, and Fitz appeared at her side to escort her to the door.

When they were in the corridor, he favored her with another smile.

"Congratulations, Sergeant."

Winter nodded silently and wandered back out into the sun.

Chapter Two.

MARCUS.

Senior Captain Marcus d'Ivoire sat at his makeshift wooden desk and contemplated d.a.m.nation.

The Church said-or Elleusis Ligamenti said, but since he was a saint it amounted to the same thing-that if, after death, the tally of your sins outweighed your piety, you were condemned to a personal h.e.l.l. There you suffered a punishment that matched both your worst fears and the nature of your iniquities, as devised by a deity with a particularly vicious sense of irony. In his own case, Marcus didn't imagine the Almighty would have to think very hard. He had a strong suspicion that he would find his h.e.l.l unpleasantly familiar.

Paperwork. A mountain, a torrent of paper, a stack of things to read and sign that never shrank or ended. And, lurking behind, on, and around every sheet, the looming anxiety that while this one was just the latrine-digging rota, the next one might be important. Really, critically important, the kind of thing that would make future historians shake their heads and say, "If only d'Ivoire had read that report, all those lives might have been spared." Marcus was starting to wonder if perhaps he'd died after all and hadn't noticed, and whether he could apply for time off in a neighboring h.e.l.l. Spending a few millennia being violated by demons with red-hot pokers was beginning to sound like a nice change of pace.

What made it worse was that he didn't have to do it. He could say, "Fitz, take care of all this, would you?" and the young lieutenant would. He'd smile while he was doing it! All that stood in the way was Marcus' own stubborn pride and, again, the fear that somewhere in the sea of paper was something absolutely vital that he was going to miss.

Fitz returned from escorting another newly frocked sergeant out of the office. Marcus leaned back, stretching his long legs under the desk and feeling his shoulders pop. His right hand burned dully, and his thumb was developing a blister.

"Tell me that was the last one," he said.

"That was the last one," Fitz said obediently.

"But you're just saying that because I told you to say it."

"No," the lieutenant said, "that was really the last one. Just in time, too. Signal from the fleet says the colonel's coming ash.o.r.e."

"Thank G.o.d."

One year ago, before Ben Warus had gone chasing one bandit too many, Marcus would have said he wanted to command the regiment. But that had been in another lifetime, when Khandar was just a sleepy dead-end post and the most the Colonials had been required to do was stand beside the prince on formal occasions to demonstrate the eternal friendship between the Vermillion Throne and the House of Orboan. Before a gang of priests and madmen-more or less synonymous, in Marcus' opinion-had stirred up the populace with the idea that they would be better off without either one.

Since then, Khandar had become a very unpleasant place for anyone wearing a blue uniform, and Marcus had been living right at the edge of collapse, his mouth dry and his stomach awash in bile. There was something surreal about the idea that in a few minutes he was going to become a subordinate again. Hand over the command of the regiment to some total stranger, his responsibilities reduced to carrying out whatever orders he was given. It was an unbelievably attractive thought. The new man might screw things up, of course-he probably would, if Marcus' experience with colonels was any guide-but whatever happened, up to and including the entire regiment being ma.s.sacred by screaming Redeemer fanatics, it would not be his, Marcus', fault. He'd be able to turn up for heavenly judgment and say, "Well, you can't blame me. I had orders!"

He wondered if that carried any weight with the Almighty. It was something to tell the Ministry of War and the Concordat, at any rate, and that was probably more important. Of the two, the Almighty was a good deal less frightening. The Lord, in his infinite mercy, might forgive a soldier who strayed from the path, but the Last Duke certainly would not.

Fitz was saying something, which Marcus had missed entirely. His sleep lately was not what it ought to have been.

"What was that?" he said.

The lieutenant, well aware of his chief's condition, repeated himself patiently. "I said that the troops are almost all ash.o.r.e. No cavalry, which is a pity, but he's brought us at least two batteries. Captain Kaanos is sending the companies up the bluff road one at a time."

"Will there be room for everybody inside the walls?"

Fitz nodded. "I wouldn't want to stand a siege, but we'll be all right for a few days."

This last was something of a joke. Fort Valor itself was a joke, actually. Like a strong lock on a flimsy door, it was effective only as long as the intruder remained polite. It had been built in the days when the most dangerous threat to a fortress was a catapult, or maybe a battering ram. Its walls were high and unsloping, built of hard native limestone that would crumble like a soft cheese once the iron cannonb.a.l.l.s started in on it. They wouldn't even need a siege train-you could take the place with a battery of field guns, especially since there was no way for the defenders to emplace their artillery to shoot back.

Fortunately, no siege seemed to be in the offing. The Vordanai regiment had scuttled away from Ashe-Katarion, the prince's former capital, and as long as they looked like they were leaving, the Redeemers had been content to watch them go. Still, Marcus had bitten his fingernails to the quick during the weeks of waiting for the fleet to arrive.

"Well," Marcus said, "I suppose we'd better go meet him."

The lieutenant gave a delicate cough. Marcus had been with him long enough to recognize Fitz-speak for "You're about to do something very stupid and/or embarra.s.sing, sir." He cast about the room, then down at himself, and got it. He was not, technically, in uniform-his shirt and trousers were close to regulation blue, but both were of Khandarai make, the cheap Vordanai standard issue having faded or torn long ago. He sighed.

"Dress blues?" he said.

"It would certainly be customary, sir."

"Right." Marcus got to his feet, wincing as cramped muscles protested. "I'll go change. You keep watch-if the colonel gets here, stall him."

"Yes, sir."

If only, Marcus thought, watching the lieutenant glide out, I could just leave this colonel entirely to Fitz. The young man seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing.

a a a The dress uniform included a dress sword, which Marcus hadn't worn since his graduation from the War College. The weight on one hip made him feel lopsided, and the sheath sticking out behind him was a serious threat to anyone standing nearby when he forgot about it and turned around quickly. After five years at the bottom of a trunk, the uniform itself seemed bluer than he remembered. He'd also run a comb through his hair, for the look of the thing, and scrubbed perfunctorily at his face with a tag end of soap.

"Why, Senior Captain," Adrecht said, coming through the tent flap. "How dapper. You should dress up more often."

Marcus lost his grip on one of the dress uniform's myriad bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and swore. Adrecht laughed.

"If you want to make yourself useful," Marcus growled, "you might help me."

"Of course, sir," Adrecht said. "Anything to be of service."