"About the march!" Adrecht said. "You know as well as I do that it's madness. Have you explained it to him?"

"I . . ." Marcus hesitated. "I'm not sure I would call it *madness.'"

"Chasing the Desoltai into the Great Desol? What else would you call it? The Desol eats armies and spits out bleached bones. d.a.m.n it, you know what it'll be like. No water, no food, Desoltai raiders s.n.a.t.c.hing up our pickets, night attacks and ambushes-" He broke down into a fit of coughing, violent and disturbingly wet-sounding. Marcus found a basin and cup nearby and poured some water.

"You can't let him do it," Adrecht said weakly when he'd recovered. "Come on, Marcus. Anyone who goes into the Desol isn't coming out again. The Redeemers and *General' Khtoba are one thing, but this is the Steel Ghost. They say he can't be killed."

Marcus had heard those rumors, too. He'd always discounted them, but in the light of what he'd seen . . . He shook his head.

"The colonel is aware of the difficulties. I've given him my opinion. Fitz is working on the supply problem-"

"The h.e.l.l with your opinion," Adrecht rasped. "Tell him no. Tell him you're not going to do it. The First will follow you, and so will Val and Mor. The Colonials know you. If you just explain it to them-"

There was a sharp intake of breath that Marcus took a moment to recognize as his own. Adrecht halted, aware that he had gone too far.

"I think," Marcus said, "that you may still have a touch of fever."

"I think you're right," Adrecht said dully.

"Shall I inform that colonel that you're not ready to resume command yet?"

"Tell him whatever you like. You can go and die in the Desol if you're so determined, but I'm staying here."

"No," Marcus said. "Everyone comes with the regiment, even the wounded. Relations between the colonel and the prince have . . . deteriorated. Anyone left behind wouldn't be safe."

"Saints and f.u.c.king martyrs." Adrecht clutched his head with his remaining hand, face contorting as another spasm of pain ripped through him. His breath hissed from between clenched teeth.

"Should I-"

"Get out," Adrecht managed. "Just . . . go, all right?"

a a a Marcus turned a corner of the battered sandstone Palace and found Fitz directing a company of the First hauling the battalion baggage to the edge of the field, where wagons and teams were lined up three-deep. Along with the usual transport for food, ammunition, and guns, Marcus was not surprised to see stack after stack of wine barrels.

"Throwing a dinner party, Lieutenant?"

Fitz saluted. "Sir. I need to report-"

Marcus waved a hand. "I think I get it. For water, right?"

"Yessir. Most of the city coopers practiced their trade in the lower city. It was necessary to obtain a supply quickly, so I took the most expedient route."

"I had a gang of wine merchants waving papers in my face all morning. I take it you handed out promissory notes for compensation, as per regulations?"

"As per regulations, sir." Fitz's face was straight, but his tone held the barest hint of humor. "I'm sure the Ministry will compensate them."

"I'm sure," Marcus said dryly. "How are things progressing?"

"On schedule, sir. We have a slightly longer sick list than usual, but other than that everything is in order."

"Something going around?"

"Mostly hangovers, I suspect, sir."

"Ah." He lowered his voice. "You've been here all morning?"

"Yessir, directing the preparations."

"Do you have a sense of the . . . feeling of the men? About this expedition, I mean."

"Sir?"

Marcus sighed. "I spoke to Adrecht. He's . . ." Marcus paused. "Well, he's not in a good state, but that's to be expected. But he was convinced that the march is going to be a disaster. I was wondering if that was a widespread opinion."

Fitz nodded, considering. He spoke quietly. "I don't believe so, sir. Among the Old Colonials, there may be a few, especially those who've spent time chasing the Desoltai in the past. But the recruits are confident in the colonel, and I have to say many of the Old Colonials have come around as well. Morale seems to be high, sir."

"That's good to know." That meant that Adrecht's complaints-technically treasonous-could safely be dismissed as grumbling. "Do we have our marching orders yet?"

"Yessir. We're to head for a town called Nahiseh. The colonel wants us to reach it by nightfall. I understand that he intends to secure additional supplies there."

At least he's thinking about it. Marcus didn't flatter himself that it was his own harangue that had gotten Ja.n.u.s' mind onto that track, but he hoped it had helped. Looking at the rows of wagons, and the troops forming beyond them in the field, he felt momentarily comforted. It didn't last. Out to the east was the Great Desol, the desert that devoured armies and laughed at mapmakers. And somewhere, hiding amidst the sands, the Steel Ghost.

a a a Once again the long blue snake wound out, flowing through the gate, under the stone walls of Ashe-Katarion, and into the burned-out wasteland that had been the lower city.

The column had changed a great deal since the last time Marcus had watched this scene, back at Fort Valor. For one thing, it had shortened considerably. The battalions themselves had slimmed-the Colonials had lost nearly five hundred fighting men, most of them in the action around Weltae-but the "tail" of wagons was also considerably shorter, shorn of the prince and his entourage as well as the usual gaggle of Khandarai camp followers. Marcus had decreed that nothing that was not absolutely necessary would accompany them into the desert, making the maximum possible use of available wagon s.p.a.ce and beasts of burden. Cartload after cartload of barrels rumbled past, weighed down with heavy, precious water.

The men themselves were different, too. It was harder to distinguish between the recruits and the Old Colonials: the new soldiers had lost their fish-belly pallor, and their kit had acquired the patina of dirt and hard wear that marked an army on the march, while the veterans had repaired some of the more obvious shabbiness to make sure they looked better than their younger companions. Strings of cavalry remounts, another thing Marcus had insisted on, walked in riderless lines behind the wagons, while Give-Em-h.e.l.l and his troopers were spread in a thin screen around the marching column.

Toward the end came the hospital wagons. Despite his promises to Fitz, Marcus had allowed a few of the very worst stricken to remain behind, those whom the cutters had quietly promised him didn't have long to live in any case. Subjecting dying men to vicious jouncing along rutted roads in unsprung wagons seemed like one cruelty too many, but he hoped that the prince would not inflict some final indignity on them in petty revenge. The rest of the injured, including Adrecht, had been packed into wagon-beds cushioned with commandeered carpets. He could hear the occasional chorus of shrieks and moans when the vehicles. .h.i.t a b.u.mpy patch in the road.

He'd made all the preparations he could think to make. Probably more usefully, he'd given Fitz a free hand to make all the preparations he could think to make, and as usual the young lieutenant had come up with a dozen things his chief had forgotten. In spite of it all, though, Marcus couldn't fight off a dark foreboding. Riding under the walls himself, in the gap between the Second and Third Battalions, he looked at the stout wooden gates and wondered if they would find them closed when they returned.

If we return. He chided himself for the thought.

The fire had left the lower city in ruins, but marching through it reminded Marcus that this sort of clearance was a regular event in Khandar. The scavengers had started in on the rubble before it was cool, and the last of the flames had barely died away before the hunt for building materials was on. New structures were already going up, claiming choice real estate. To Marcus' eyes, they looked ready to topple at any moment, and just as flammable as the last batch, but they were being raised as fast as gangs could haul blackened but serviceable timber from the debris. He'd seen the vast temporary kilns the brickmakers had raised along the waterfront, too. It wouldn't be long until the city sprang from the ashes, like new growth after a forest fire.

A horde of Khandarai had turned out to see the Colonials go. They watched in silence, without open hostility but also without cheers or celebration. Marcus saw a lot of dark, angry faces, and heard a great deal of quiet muttering.

He was glad when they pa.s.sed beyond the old boundary of the lower city. A few buildings had survived here, better built or simply luckier than their neighbors, and the ramshackle grid of streets dissolved into country lanes that wound their way between ancient, rock-walled fields and irrigation ditches. Unlike their previous march, there was no convenient highway to follow. Roads led west and south from Ashe-Katarion, but not east, since there was nothing in that direction but the wasteland of the Great Desol. Instead, the column followed markers laid down by Give-Em-h.e.l.l's scouting hors.e.m.e.n, who rode down any track that looked as though it headed in the right direction and compared what they saw to the vaguely drawn Khandarai maps.

Nahiseh, their initial goal, was a market town twelve miles from Ashe-Katarion. Marcus had hoped to make it there by midafternoon, but by the time the sun was high he realized they'd be lucky to reach it before dusk. The narrow lanes restricted the column to a long, thin line, and every hesitation or obstacle encountered by the troops in front was transmitted down the length of the snake, forcing those behind to halt while the leaders sorted things out. Worst of all, of course and as usual, were the wagons, which suffered badly on the rocky ground.

Marcus' temper grew shorter each time they had to stop. It was not improved by falling off his horse, which he did just after midday when Meadow shied at a particularly violent outburst. For a terrifying moment he thought the mare was going to trample him, but she stepped daintily aside, leaving him with a long cut on his arm where it had sc.r.a.ped against the stone wall and considerable damage to his dignity.

The colonel, of course, was nowhere to be found. Marcus had seen him go past early in the day, at the head of the column, trotting out as eagerly as if he were off to a fox hunt. Fitz, Val, and Mor were busy corralling their own battalions, so there was nothing for Marcus to do but pick himself up and keep at it, spitting silent curses all the while.

He was just sorting out an altercation between one of the Preacher's gunners and an unfortunate carter who had gotten in a hopeless tangle when Fitz came trotting up, his uniform somehow still spotless in spite of a day of dusty marching. The artilleryman was in the middle of a tirade, threatening to stuff the teamster down the barrel of one of his twelve-pounders and chop off all the bits that didn't fit. Marcus let him go on until he'd exhausted his head of steam, then told the carter to get his equipage out of the way as soon as possible, and never mind the risk to his axles.

Then he turned to Fitz, who'd waited patiently at his shoulder. The young man was blank-faced, as always, but something in his manner made Marcus instantly concerned.

"Something wrong?"

"Could be, sir," Fitz said. "You'd better come and have a look."

"Lead the way," Marcus said, then gave the lieutenant a questioning look when he didn't move.

"Best to ride, sir."

Marcus cursed inwardly, but there was nothing for it. His legs already ached from a long day in the saddle, and his arm hurt abominably. But Fitz knew of his aversion to horses, and if he thought they had to ride, that meant something was very wrong indeed.

An aide brought up Meadow, and the two of them started down the stalled column. "This is a mess," he said, more or less to himself. Fitz answered anyway.

"Yessir. Road's too narrow, sir, and there aren't any good alternative routes. Give-Em-h.e.l.l said that we should break out of these stone-walled fields once we get past Nahiseh."

"Just be glad the Desoltai haven't turned on us yet. This would be a h.e.l.l of a place to be ambushed." The thought of trying to push past those stone walls as they fumed with gunsmoke gave him the shivers. On the other hand, the Desoltai loved their horses almost as much as they hated the Vordanai, so they would find the idea of fighting on such cluttered ground just as uncomfortable. Then Marcus had a nasty thought. "That's not what you're taking me to see, is it?"

"Not exactly, sir. The leading companies of the First have reached Nahiseh, and there was a bit of a fracas."

"A fracas?"

"An altercation, you might call it. The locals are unhappy."

"Wonderful. Where's the colonel?"

"He rode through the town already, sir. Said he saw something on the hill just beyond and took a squadron of cavalry as an escort."

"At least he had that much sense." Marcus wouldn't have put it past Ja.n.u.s to wander off on his own if something really interested him. For a man with his obvious military talent, he could be surprisingly obtuse at times. "Come on. Let's get to this town before someone burns the place down."

a a a It hadn't quite come to that, but it wasn't far from it. Marcus found two companies of the First waiting on the outskirts of the little town, which would barely have qualified as a large village in Vordan. It was a collection of dusty shacks and a few brick-and-timber buildings, not much bigger than Weltae. Its primary purposes were to serve as a way station for farmers carting their produce to the city and to host markets for city merchants to sell goods to the rural folk who never got to make that trip. The main attraction was an underground spring that gave pure, sweet water, which some long-ago ruler of Khandar had built up into a fountain and pool with a statue depicting an unrecognizable G.o.d.

It was over this fountain that the "altercation," as Fitz had termed it, had developed. A dozen Vordanai soldiers, looking very nervous, stood with shouldered muskets and fixed bayonets, while another blue-coated man lay in the dust with a corporal leaning over him. In front of the line, Marcus was depressed but unsurprised to find Senior Sergeant Davis, face red and veins bulging, screaming at a square-jawed Khandarai who listened impa.s.sively to his tirade. A small crowd of locals stood behind him. They looked more like curious onlookers than an angry mob, but Marcus knew that the line dividing the two could be a thin one.

"You little gray-skinned motherf.u.c.ker," Davis said. "If you and your little friends don't clear this street right now, I mean right f.u.c.king now, I am going to order these men to blow the lot of you straight into your f.u.c.ked-up afterlife. Is that what you want? You want me to take a bayonet and rearrange your insides?"

"Sergeant Davis!" Marcus boomed, in his best parade-ground voice.

Davis whirled, his face still lurid with rage, and for a moment Marcus thought he was about to receive the benefit of his acid tongue. Then good sense took over, and the fat sergeant quivered to attention and saluted as crisply as he could manage.

"Sir!" he barked. "Request permission to a.s.semble my company and disperse this resistance, sir!"

"Are they resisting?" Marcus looked out over the crowd. "They don't appear to be armed."

"They're blocking the road, sir! And one of them decked Peg-that is, one of them struck Ranker Nunenbast, sir!"

"Was that this man here?" Marcus said, indicating the big Khandarai.

"Yessir. I want him punished, sir!"

"Let me talk to him."

Marcus dismounted awkwardly and went over to the man, with Fitz following at his shoulder. He mustered his politest Khandarai and said, "I am Captain d'Ivoire. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?"

The Khandarai blinked, a bit surprised, and said, "I am Dannin-dan-Uluk. I am the headman of this town."

Marcus inclined his head at Peg, who was still groaning theatrically. "And what seems to be the problem?"

"He wished to use the fountain. I explained that he would have to make an offering to the Lord of Waters, but he refused. When he attempted to push his way past, I was forced to do him an injury."

"I see. Did he understand you?"

Dannin shrugged. Marcus sighed inwardly.

"I apologize on his behalf, then," he said. "Many of my men do not speak your language. I wish for them to have free access to your fountain for tonight and tomorrow morning. How large an offering to the Lord of Waters would be appropriate?"

"How many men?"

"A little more than four thousand, and our animals."

The headman shook his head. "Too many. They will deplete the pool, and it will not refill for many weeks. In the meantime, the town will suffer."

Marcus grimaced. Here's where I show that I'm no better than the likes of Davis, after all.

"We must have water," he said quietly, so the crowd behind the headman would not hear. "I am prepared to make a generous donation to your town and your G.o.d in exchange for it, and to purchase food and other necessaries besides. If you refuse, however, we can commandeer these things in the name of the prince, and then you will have nothing."

"You have no right to do such things."

I have an army. That's even better. "The prince disagrees. You may apply to him for compensation."

"And if we refuse?"

Marcus glanced over his shoulder at Sergeant Davis, who was still glaring daggers at the Khandarai. Then he shrugged, as though it were a matter of indifference to him.

"You will pay," the headman said, after a moment's contemplation. "And we will bring wine for your soldiers to drink, so only your animals need to use the fountain. You must pay for the wine, too, of course."

"Of course." Marcus' head was starting to pound in time with the ache in his arm. He wondered how he was going to explain this to Ja.n.u.s. If he even bothers to ask.

a a a "And did he say where we go next?" Jen said.

"Of course not," Marcus said, pulling off his uniform jacket one-handed and tossing it into a corner. "He just smiles, as though he expects me to enjoy the sense of mystery. I swear to Karis the Savior the man missed his calling as a stage conjuror." He picked up the wineskin-a too-sweet vintage generously provided by the villagers of Nahiseh-and took another long pull.

Jen, sitting on his bed, nodded sympathetically. He hadn't invited her in, exactly, but she'd been waiting for him outside his newly erected tent, and his anger at Ja.n.u.s' refusal to divulge his plans had come bubbling out almost involuntarily. Now he stood with the skin in one hand, facing her bright, curious eyes behind the thick-lensed spectacles, and wondered if he'd said too much.

She's still Concordat, when all is said and done. And Ja.n.u.s is still my commanding officer. Betraying a confidence went deeply against Marcus' nature. He hadn't mentioned the Thousand Names, or that Ja.n.u.s might have a reason for the march other than to run down the Divine Hand, but he wondered how much Jen might infer from his frustration.

"He doesn't trust me. No surprise, really. I don't think he really trusts anyone." He tried a grin. "No offense intended."

"None taken. His Grace the Duke certainly doesn't trust him." She held out a hand, and Marcus silently handed the wineskin across. "That's why I'm here, after all. Though what I'm supposed to do now is beyond me."

"No secret instructions from the Ministry?" Marcus said teasingly.