Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

“Yessir.” Graff swallowed. “Well, begging your pardon, sir, it seems that the grayskins cut the. . ah. . equipment off them, stuffed it in their mouths, and left them to bleed out.”

“Equipment?” Winter said. She had an image of saddlebags or bandoliers.

“Cocks,” Bobby said flatly.

Graff, turning a little red, nodded. “Give-Em-Hell is goddamned furious, I heard. He said he was going to take his whole command to find the bastards that did it and give them the same treatment.”

“Which I’m sure is just what they want,” Winter said. “Hopefully Captain d’Ivoire or the colonel will have better sense.”

“The colonel will,” Graff said. “He’s a cold bastard, that one. Looked up at those poor men and never said a word. It was the captain who finally got ’em cut down and seen to.”

Folsom jogged up, straightened, and saluted Winter, who as usual had to suppress the urge to look over her shoulder for an officer.

“Orders from Captain d’Ivoire,” the corporal said. “Break camp and prepare to march.”

There was a chorus of groans from the unofficial listeners all around. The recruits had rapidly picked up a bit of the cynicism of the Old Colonials, and they’d been hoping that the brutal murder and mutilation of a half dozen men meant they might get a respite from the day’s march. Winter’s voice cut through the curses.

“You heard him! Get moving!” As the complaining men got to their feet and the camp started to bustle around her, she leaned close to Folsom. “Can you take care of Feor?”

The big corporal gave a quick nod. Winter had tipped one of the carters to let the Khandarai girl ride with the water barrels, and Folsom delivered her there every morning swathed in a spare army greatcoat. It wasn’t the best arrangement, but with the captain’s new directives that no surplus baggage or personnel was to accompany the column, it was all that Winter had been able to come up with.

Feor didn’t seem to mind. Since the night of the fire, she barely seemed awake. She walked when she was led, ate and drank when food was put in front of her, and when left alone curled into a ball and lay motionless for hours. It was as though something inside her had shattered after her confrontation with Mother, and nothing Winter did could reach her.

Folsom saluted again and went into Winter’s tent to fetch the Khandarai girl. Graff followed him with worried eyes, then looked back at Winter.

“You think we’ll catch them?” he said.

Winter blinked, distracted. “Catch who?”

“The Desoltai.” Graff pitched his voice low. “Only I heard some of the Old Colonials saying that nobody can catch them, not now that we’re into the desert. They know every rock and hidden spring, and they’ve got magic as well. And then there’s the Steel Ghost.”

“Let me guess,” Winter said. “You heard this from Davis?” That sort of malingering sounded like the sergeant’s style.

“No, sir. Someone in the Fourth. Apparently Captain Roston shares those opinions.”

“The colonel can catch them,” Bobby said. “If anyone can.”

Graff looked worried. “But what if no one can?”

Winter clapped him on the shoulder. “Then we’re in for a long march, aren’t we?”

• • •

The scouts they’d found without their manhood were the first evidence of the viciousness of the Desoltai, but far from the last.

Every day, Give-Em-Hell took his cavalry out to screen ahead of the column, their sturdy Khandarai-bred mounts struggling over rocks and sand. Every evening, they returned to camp empty-handed, and fewer in number than they’d been when they set out. And every morning, the missing men were discovered just outside the camp, having expired from whatever tortures the endlessly inventive Desoltai raiders had dreamed up for them.

By the fourth day Give-Em-Hell was mad enough to scream at the colonel when he once again turned down the cavalryman’s request to ride out in a body after the “cowardly scum.” Colonel Vhalnich bore the verbal assault calmly, in full view of half the First Battalion, then told the captain that he and his cavalry were relieved from their scouting duties and would henceforth ride in the center of the column, protecting the baggage.

In their place, Captain d’Ivoire ordered infantrymen to patrol by half companies, in order to prevent any more isolated disappearances. This meant the unlucky troops who’d drawn the job had to wake up hours before dawn and start walking, creating a buffer between the main column and the desert raiders who waited invisibly among the rocks all around them. The Seventh Company made such a patrol on the sixth day, and Winter fully expected a horde of enemy riders to suddenly materialize and massacre the lot of them. It was easy, especially in the predawn darkness, to people every crevice and shadow with watching eyes.

What actually happened was worse, in a way, although it happened on someone else’s watch. A company of the Second Battalion, walking a mile in front of the plodding column, surprised a gang of Desoltai watering their horses from a tiny rock spring. Eager for vengeance, the Colonials rushed after them, only to find all the nearby boulders sprouting armed men. Out of forty men, only nine escaped, and the screams of those who’d been unfortunate enough to survive echoed over the camp until well into the night.

The next day, the captain issued orders that the patrols were not to engage the Desoltai under any circumstances, but rather to fall back from any contact until more forces could be brought up. This kept the infantry patrols out of ambushes, but made great sport for the Desoltai, who rode up in twos and threes to fire a few shots and watch the entire column grind to a halt as the lead battalion started deploying for battle. The rate of march slowed to a crawl, which meant that those soldiers in the center and rear of the army spent most of the day standing idle under the blazing sun. April had worn into May, and the days were steadily warming toward the unbearable furnace of the Khandarai summer.

• • •

Ten days out from Nahiseh, the Colonials camped in the lee of a massive rock formation. The desert was changing as they marched farther west, Winter had noticed. The rocks were getting bigger, but also farther apart, and the stony ground underfoot was drier and sandier with every passing mile. Dunes had appeared, drifted against the rocks like huge gray snowbanks, and when the wind came up the men had to fasten handkerchiefs across their faces to keep their mouths from filling with flying grit.

Like the rest of the army, the Seventh had dispensed with tents. Setting the pegs was nearly impossible, since the ground was either too hard or too loose, and the effort of erecting the canvas was too much for the increasingly exhausted men. Winter hadn’t changed clothes in days, and her undershirt was stiff with dried sweat and chafed her raw where it was tightly bound. Worse, most of the men in the ranks had at least a week’s growth of stubble, since there was no water to spare for menial tasks like shaving, and she was starting to worry that her smooth face would be commented on. Bobby, at least, was young enough that she could still pass for a beardless boy.

Even campfires had grown scarce. What wood there was, gleaned from the pitiful local vegetation or carried on the carts, was reserved for cooking fires. For warmth, the troops had to make do with horse and ox dung, which they now collected and hoarded like gold. It burned well enough, but Winter found the smell cut through even the congealed stink of her own unwashed body, and she hadn’t bothered to kindle a blaze.

The neat lines of the tent city at Fort Valor, much less the barracks at Ashe-Katarion, seemed like a distant dream. Winter lay on her bedroll, with a thin sheet across her middle and her pack for a pillow, amidst a crowd of increasingly ragged men who’d simply thrown down their things wherever they finished their march. The men of the Seventh gave her a bit of extra room, as a nod to her rank. She wished they wouldn’t. It made her feel alone under the great river of stars that blazed overhead. As she stared skyward, the sounds of the camp seemed to fall away around her, leaving only a silence as profound as if she were alone in the world. Her hands clutched the edge of the bedroll to keep from falling up into that vast, endless ocean.