Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

Marcus stood uncomfortably while Adrecht’s deft fingers worked the buttons and straightened his collar. Looking over the top of his friend’s head, he said, “Did you have some reason to be here? Or were you just eager to see me embarrass myself?”

“Please. Like that’s such a rarity.” Adrecht stepped back, admiring his handiwork, and gave a satisfied nod. “I take it from the getup that you’re off to meet the colonel?”

“I am,” Marcus said, trying not to show how much he wasn’t looking forward to it.

“No time for a celebratory drink?” Adrecht opened his coat enough to show the neck of a squat brown bottle. “I’ve been saving something for the occasion.”

“I doubt the colonel would appreciate it if I turned up stumbling drunk,” Marcus said. “With my luck I’d probably be sick all over him.”

“From one cup?”

“With you, it’s never just one cup.” Marcus tugged at his too-tight collar and sat down to turn his attention to his boots. There was a clatter as his scabbard knocked over an empty tin plate and banged against the camp bed, and he winced. “What have we got to celebrate, anyway?”

Adrecht blinked. “What? Just our escape from this sandy purgatory, that’s all. This time next week, we’ll be heading home.”

“So you suppose.” Marcus pulled at a stubborn boot.

“It’s not just me. I heard Val say the same thing to Give-Em-Hell. Even the rankers are saying it.”

“Val doesn’t get to decide,” Marcus said. “Nor does Give-Em-Hell, or the rankers. That would be the colonel’s prerogative.”

“Come on,” Adrecht said. “You send them a report that the grayskins have got some new priests, who aren’t too fond of us and have a nasty habit of burning people alive, and by the way they outnumber us a couple of hundred to one and the prince is getting shirty. So they send us a couple of thousand men and a new colonel, who no doubt thinks he’s in for a little light despotism, burning down some villages and teaching a gang of peasants who’s boss, that sort of thing. Then he gets here and finds out that the aforementioned priests have rounded up an army of thirty thousand men, the militia that we trained and armed has gone over to the enemy lock, stock, and barrel, and the prince has decided he’d rather make the best of a bad job and take the money and run. What do you think he’s going to do?”

“You’re making the assumption that he has an ounce of sense,” Marcus said, pulling his laces tight. “Most of the colonels I met back at the College were not too well endowed in that department.”

“Or any another,” Adrecht said. “But not even that lot would-”

“Maybe.” Marcus got to his feet. “I’ll go and see, shall I? Do you want to come?”

Adrecht shook his head. “I’d better go and make sure my boys are ready. The bastard will probably want a review. They usually do.”

Marcus nodded, looked at himself in the mirror again, and paused. “Adrecht?”

“Hmm?”

“If we do get to go home, what are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I recall, a certain count told you that if you ever came within a thousand miles of his daughter again, he would tie you to a cannon and drop you in the Vor.”

“Oh.” Adrecht gave a weak smile. “I’m sure he’s forgotten all about that by now.”

• • •

Marcus, feeling prickly and uncomfortable, stood beside Fitz at the edge of the bluff and watched the last few companies toiling up the road. The path switchbacked as it climbed the few hundred feet from the landing to the top of the cliff. The column of climbing men looked like a twisted blue serpent, winding its way up only to be devoured by the gaping maw of the fort’s open gate beside him. There seemed to be no end to them.

The men themselves were a surprise, too. To Marcus’ eyes they seemed unnaturally pale-he understood, suddenly, why the Khandarai slang for Vordanai was “corpses.” Compared to the leather-skinned veterans of the Colonials, these men looked like something you’d fish off the bottom of a pond.

And they were so young . Service in the Colonials was usually a reward for an ill-spent military career. Apart from the odd loony who volunteered for Khandarai service, even the rankers tended to be well into their second decade. Marcus doubted that most of the “men” marching up the road had seen eighteen, let alone twenty, given their peach-fuzz chins and awkward teenage frames. They didn’t know how to march properly, either, so the column was more like a trudging mass of refugees than an army on the move. All in all, Marcus decided, it was not a sight calculated to impress any enemies who might be watching.

He had no doubt they were watching, too. The Colonials had made no effort to patrol the hills around the fort, and while the rebel commanders might believe the Vordanai were on the verge of departing for good, they weren’t so foolish as to take it on faith. Every scrubby hill and ravine could hide a dozen Desoltai riders. The desert tribesmen could vanish on bare rock, horses and all, if they put their minds to it.

In the rear of the column, far below, a lonely figure struggled after the last of the marching companies under the burden of two heavy valises. He wore a long dark robe, which made him look a bit like a penny-opera version of a Priest of the Black. But since the Obsidian Order-perennial of cheap dramas and bogeymen of children’s stories-had been extinct for more than a century, Marcus guessed this poor bastard was just a manservant hauling his master’s kit up the mountain. One of the sinister inquisitors of old would hardly carry his own bags, anyway. He wondered idly what was so important that it couldn’t be brought up in the oxcarts with the rest of the baggage.

His eyes scanned idly over the fleet, waiting for the colonel himself to emerge with his escort. He would be a nobleman, of course. The price of a colonel’s commission was high, but there was more to it than money. While the Ministry of War might have been forced to concede over the past hundred years that there were commoners who could site guns and file papers as well as any peer, it had quietly but firmly drawn the line at having anyone of low birth in actual command . Leading a regiment was the ancient prerogative of the nobility, and so it would remain.

Even Ben Warus had been nobility of a sort, a younger son of an old family that had stashed him in the army as a sinecure. That he’d been a decent fellow for all that had been nothing short of a miracle. Going purely by the odds, this new colonel was more likely to be akin to the ones Marcus had known at the War College: ignorant, arrogant, and contemptuous of advice from those beneath him. He only hoped the man wasn’t too abrasive, or else someone was likely to take a swing at him and be court-martialed for his trouble. The Colonials had grown slack and informal under Ben’s indulgent command.

The servant with the bags had reached the last switchback, but there was still no flurry of activity from the ships that would indicate the emergence of an officer of rank. More boats were landing, but they carried only supplies and baggage, and the laboring men down at the dock were beginning to load the carts with crates of hardtack, boxes of cartridges, and empty water barrels. Marcus glanced at Fitz.

“The colonel did say he was coming up, didn’t he?”

“That was the message from the fleet,” the lieutenant said. “Perhaps he’s been delayed?”

“I’m not going to stand out here all day waiting,” Marcus growled. Even in the shade, he was sweating freely.

He waited for the porter in black to approach, only to see him stop twenty yards away, set down both valises, and squat on his heels at the edge of the dusty path. Before Marcus could wonder at this, the man leaned forward and gave an excited cry.