Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Purpose .

It was the first time in weeks he could remember having any.

He made good time on the boulevard; traffic was minimal compared with the brawling chaos that would claim the streets later. A handful of tradesmen with their barrows, some slaves carrying bundled wood for kitchen fires, the odd merchant setting out on horseback for somewhere requiring an early start. Once, a short column of soldiers passed him, marching to a muster somewhere. Egar heard the cadence as they over-hauled him, made them for Upland Free Marauders, and grinned in recognition. He’d fought alongside the Upland Free a couple of times, had liked them for their hill-tribe manners and disdain for all things urban. More than any other imperial soldiers, they’d reminded him of his own people, back when that wasn’t such a bad thing.

They tramped on, double-timing it behind a mounted captain, and left him behind in the graying light. The chant faded out on the morning air.

Egar split from the boulevard a few hundred yards farther on, crossed the river at the Gray Mane bridge and then took the long, winding incline of Immortal Glory Rise. He reached the top just as the sun poked its new-forged glowing edge above the eastern skyline. A pause to get his breath back—really must start some kind of serious training again soon, the most exercise he’d had for months now was Imrana—then he turned and surveyed the long blank walls of the building behind him.

The Combined Irregulars barracks—rows of slit windows along the upper levels, sliced view of the parade ground quadrangle beyond the tall iron gates. Figures already moved there in the shielded gloom, pairs of them in stylized, repetitive combat motions while a drill instructor’s voice bellowed exasperated abuse.

Egar grinned at the sound, and went to announce himself.

The five halberdiers on the gate were Imperial Sons of the Desert, scarified southerners to a man, slim and almost desert-dark enough that you might have mistaken them for Kiriath until you looked in their eyes. Egar met their young, ordinary stares one by one as he rolled up, identified the squad sergeant by his sash, and gave the man a friendly nod.

“Here to see Commander Darhan,” he said breezily. “Tell him it’s the Dragonbane.”

It got him startled glances, and exactly the response he wanted. The sergeant made an almost involuntary bow and gestured at one of his men to carry the word. Watching, Egar wondered idly what these particular desert sons made of the whole Demlarashan mess. The ritual scars on their cheeks were a good sign—it was a practice frowned upon by the Citadel—and they all seemed comfortable enough in their brand-new rig, which was certainly not what he’d been led to expect. The court gossip Imrana had fed him recently was laced with references to the renamed regiment—the previous Holy Sons of the Desert was now deemed a little too ambiguous in its implications for loyalty—and tales were rife of devout officers refusing to wear or subtly defacing the newly ordered colors.

Yeah, well. Court gossip. Like fucking old women around a campfire .

“Eg?” A delighted bellow from the gate. “Eg the fucking dragon spanker? Get in here, man! Where you been? Thought you were off working bouncer for some cut-rate whorehouse or something, found your level at last.”

Darhan the Hammer, corpulent but still imposing in his padded black instructor’s gear, beard trimmed down to something approaching a groomed appearance, graying hair bound back in a ponytail. He propped the gate open with one hand, held a wooden staff casually in the other. Egar moved through the loose cordon of the halberdiers and raised a fist in greeting. Darhan bumped it with his own, and Egar saw his knuckles on that hand were torn up and bleeding. He nodded at the damage as he went in.

“Nice job. What’s the matter, old man? Recruits getting too fast for you?”

Darhan snorted. “Yeah, little fuck thought he was. He’s lying down now, reconsidering. Little lesson in pain management.”

“Majak?”

“Yeah, and worse yet, he’s a runty little Skaranak just like you were.” Behind the calculated tribal slur, the fierce old grin. “What do they do to you Eastland herdboys up there, Eg? Barely dropped out between their mother’s legs, they all think they got a map to the whole fucking world and everything in it.”

“Called pride, Darh. Course, I wouldn’t expect a soft, city-dwelling Ishlinak twat like you to understand that.”

“Oh, city dwelling, is it?” The Majak instructor dropped his staff with a clatter, put up fists in a mock-guard. “Old twat is it?”

“Well you call that pile of hovels down by the river a city, but…”

“Mouthy fucking whelp!” Darhan threw a joke-slow punch at Egar’s head. Egar blocked and grabbed, and the two of them clinched and wrestled about in the gateway like a couple of young buffalo bulls in mating season. The southern guardsmen looked on with a uniformly sober lack of expression—they didn’t get it at all. Why would they? You had to be Majak to understand. Back on the steppes, Ishlinak-to-Skaranak, you couldn’t talk like this without blades coming out. But the first thing Darhan the Hammer bashed into your thick steppe nomad skull when you got to training with him was that down here there is no Skaranak, Voronak, Ishlinak, you’re all just ignorant mothers’ sons from the same featureless shit-hole stretch of buffalo pasture, and your gracious, imperial employers have exactly the same amount of contempt for you all. And you know what, they’re right, so leave your tribal horseshit at the door and let’s get on with turning you into soldiers, shall we? Stop fucking nodding, you, that’s what we around here call a rhetorical question .

Darhan broke the clinch—Egar let him—and clapped a violent arm around the Dragonbane’s shoulders.

“It’s fucking great to see you, Eg. Just come and have a look at these idiots we’re working on, see if it brings back memories.”

IT DID.

Across the training yard in the strengthening morning light, the paired young men went back and forth with yells and the volleyed knock of staff on staff. Darhan stood by the south wall with a mug of hot stock cupped in his injured hand and gestured at his charges.

“ ’Bout a month,” he said reflectively. “I reckon that’s the most I’ve got before the palace comes calling and packs them all off to Demlarashan. They’re emptying the barracks as fast as I can train them up. You think these ones’ll be ready?”

Egar squatted with his back to the wall, his own mug drained and set aside. He watched the exercise with narrowed eyes. In among the lines, someone fumbled and dropped his staff. His opponent stumbled into him as he bent to pick it up. Another pair of trainees stopped what they were doing to laugh at the mess. A trainer rushed in, bawling.

Egar rubbed at his newly shaven chin.

“Is that what we around here call a rhetorical question?”

Darhan sipped from his mug and grimaced. “I know. Thing is, regional command’s saying it’s not going to take crack troops to break this thing—not that Jhiral’s got any to spare with all that swamp demon shit going on up north—so they’ll take whatever we’re turning out here, whatever they can get at short notice. They’re saying it’s just the usual desert moron suicide brigade, but—”

“But a lot of them.”

“Right.” Darhan stared at the trainee lines as they formed up again. “Remember the reptile peons?”

Egar chuckled, but the sound was rusty in his throat. “Trying to forget.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Ah, come on, they had fangs and claws and a tail lash they could break your fucking leg with. Not going to be the same thing at all, is it?”