Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

“What’s that?” she said.

“What?”

“That.” She pointed with one hand. “The smoke. Has there been more fighting, do you think?”

Marcus lifted his eyes. Beyond the next bend in the road, a column of smoke was rising. It wasn’t the gray-white color of powder smoke, which in any event tended to hug the ground like fog. This was the thick black smoke of burning wood and canvas, burning wagons and stores and blankets-

“Brass Balls of the Beast,” Marcus snarled, kicking Meadow to a trot. “What the hell have they gotten into?”

WINTER

Winter hiked wearily back toward the ravine where she’d left what remained of her company. The immediate aftermath of the Redeemer’s attack had been a desperate scramble to rescue what wounded they could and then run for the nearest cover. They’d ended up in a wind-carved defile through the high ridge, narrow enough at both ends to be easily defended. Only then had Winter felt secure enough to give most of the company a rest, while she and Bobby picked a cautious path up the empty hillside to find out what had happened.

When they returned, Graff shouted the men awake. Most of the survivors had dropped wherever they’d halted, sprawled across the narrow floor of the ravine like a blanket of corpses. But the corporal’s yell produced a miraculous resurrection, and as Bobby related the good news the buzz of conversation spread, punctuated by whoops and hollers. Winter pushed her way through the jubilant throng and found Graff.

“Good to see you back safe, Sergeant,” he said.

“Thanks.” She jerked her head in Bobby’s direction. “You’ve heard?”

“I’m not sure I believe it.”

“We had the whole story from a couple of Give-Em-Hell’s outriders,” Winter said. “From the top of the hill you can see the Redeemer camp burning.”

“Nice to get good news for once,” Graff said.

“Better than the alternative,” Winter agreed. “But we’ve still got a bit of a walk ahead of us, and it’d be best to make it before dark. How many of the wounded need to be carried?”

The corporal counted on grubby fingers. “Fox. . Inimin. . Gaff. . Regult. .” He looked up. “Four, I think.”

“What about Eiderson?” Winter wasn’t good with names, but she was starting to remember a few. Eiderson was a big, blond man with a sarcastic manner, prone to sneers, but he’d screamed loudest of all when they’d carried him from the battlefield with a carbine ball through the thigh.

“He died,” Graff said quietly. “An hour or so back.”

“Oh.” Winter felt guilty that this news didn’t affect her more. “Four, then. Eight men to carry them, and four more just in case. Bobby and I will stay with them. Can you take the rest of the men ahead?”

Graff frowned. “There could still be Redeemers about. Best to stick together.”

She shook her head. “The outriders said we’re in the clear. The more men we get back to a camp by nightfall, the less worried I’ll be.”

“As you say, Sergeant,” Graff said. “Take Folsom as well, then. I can ride herd on the others.”

Winter glanced up at the sun. It had touched the horizon, and lurking under the still-stifling heat she could feel the chill of the desert night, waiting to pounce.

They rigged stretchers for the four wounded men out of muskets and torn jackets, and fashioned makeshift torches from scraps and scrub grass for when night fell. Graff set off first, with the balance of the company, promising he’d send riders to escort them the rest of the way once he reached the regiment. Winter and her small party left the ravine just after sunset, picking their way down the center of the valley where the land was flattest. The wounded men whimpered and moaned, and any false step that jolted them produced heartrending screams.

At first the stretcher bearers and their escorts kept up a lively chatter, Bobby among them, though Folsom had reverted to his usual silence and walked silently at Winter’s shoulder. As twilight deepened from red to purple, though, the gathering darkness smothered conversation like a shroud. The four unburdened men lit their torches, which gave enough light to place their feet by, but no more. They filled the valley with flickering, dancing shadows, decorating every rock with a long black streamer.

A column of smoke was visible, rising from burning Redeemer stores and blotting out a chunk of the darkening sky. Winter directed them toward it, which was the direction the valley ran in any case. She’d intended to skirt the base of the conflagration once she arrived, but at ground level it was more of a cloud than a bonfire, with no clear edges. They were in the Khandarai camp, or the remains of it, before they realized it.

There was actually very little to mark it as a camp of any sort. There were no neat lines of tents, as in the Vordanai encampments. Bedrolls and sheets were scattered at random, interspersed with crude lean-tos of linen and sticks. Amidst these were all the detritus of an army on the march-weapons, spare or broken, sacks of meal or fruit, bones and offal from butchered animals, bits of clothing left behind for the final march into battle.

Most of what would burn had been blackened by fire, and here and there fitful embers still smoldered, sending up choking black smoke. Before long, full dark arrived, and the circle of light cast by the torches defined the limit of their vision. They walked in silence, objects coming into view a few paces ahead and falling into oblivion after they’d passed, like floating wreckage flowing around a ship under sail.

Winter barely noticed the first body, blackened and charred by flame, curled into a ball amidst the crisped ruins of a bedroll. Only the skull marked it as something that had once been human. The next, though, was a ragged man coated crimson from a dozen wounds in the back, lying facedown in the dirt. Past him was a man with a spear still in his hand, the side of his head shot away by a musket ball. From then on, as they entered the center of the camp, they encountered more and more corpses, until they all had to tread carefully to avoid crushing stiff, outflung fingers or stumbling over twisted limbs.

There were women, too, Winter realized with a start. Some, dressed in rags and curled around the wounds that had killed them, were indistinguishable from the men, but this far into the camp any resistance had apparently collapsed, and the victors had found time for a bit of sport. They passed one body naked and spread-eagled, her throat cut in a ragged red half circle like a broad grin. Elsewhere the torchlight revealed the pale buttocks of three women laid facedown in a row, robes hiked up to their armpits. A gray-bearded old man lay nearby, killed by a single shot to the chest.

It went on, and on, and on. Winter wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare. Inside the smoke cloud, she had no way to navigate, so all she could do was lead her men on a straight course and pray they’d come through it eventually. She watched the faces of the men in the flickering light. Folsom, behind her, might have been carved of stone, but Bobby’s eyes were wide as saucers. The boy had dropped back when they found the first corpse, and with each successive discovery he pressed closer to her side. Winter reached out and found his hand with hers, tentatively. She wasn’t sure if the gesture was unmanly, but Bobby twined his fingers through hers, and gripped tight.

She felt an odd need to explain, to make excuses. It’s war. This is what it’s always been like. After a battle, when their blood is up, men will do things they’d never consider otherwise. But her throat was too tight to speak, and the burning camp had the heavy, unbreakable silence of a cathedral.