Baji looked confused. “Then why the hell are they docking there?”
Altan looked smug. “For precisely the same reasons that the First and Eighth are amassing troops by Sharhap. Sharhap’s the obvious landing spot. The Federation don’t think anyone will be guarding Murui. But they weren’t counting on, you know, talking birds.”
“Nice one,” Unegen said.
“Thank you.” Qara looked smug.
“The coast at Murui leads into a tight latticework of irrigation channels by a rice paddy. We will draw the boats as far as possible inland, and Aratsha will ground them by reversing the currents to cut off an escape route.”
They looked to Aratsha.
“You can do that?” Baji asked.
The watery blob that was Aratsha’s head bobbed from side to side. “A fleet that size? Not easily. I can give you thirty minutes. One hour, tops.”
“That’s more than enough,” said Altan. “If we can get them bunched together, they’ll catch fire in seconds. But we need to corral them into the narrow strait. Ramsa. Can you create a diversion?”
Ramsa tossed something round in a sack across the table to Altan.
Altan caught it, opened it, and made a face. “What is this?”
“It’s the Bone-Burning Fire Oil Magic Bomb,” Ramsa said. “New model.”
“Cool.” Suni leaned toward the bag. “What’s in it?”
“Tung oil, sal ammoniac, scallion juice, and feces.” Ramsa rattled off the ingredients with relish.
Altan looked faintly alarmed. “Whose feces?”
“That’s not important,” Ramsa said hastily. “This can knock birds out of the sky from fifty feet away. I can plant some bamboo rockets for you, too, but you’ll have trouble igniting in this humidity.”
Altan raised an eyebrow.
“Right.” Ramsa chuckled. “I love Speerlies.”
“Aratsha will reverse the currents to trap them,” Altan continued. “Suni, Baji, Rin, and I will defend from the shore. They’ll have reduced visibility from the combination of smoke and fog, so they’ll think we’re a larger squad than we are.”
“What happens if they try to storm the shore?” Unegen asked.
“They can’t,” said Altan. “It’s marshland. They’ll sink into the bog. At nighttime it’ll be impossible for them to find solid land. We will defend those crucial points in teams of two. Qara and Unegen will detach supply boats from the back of the van and drag them back to the main channel. Whatever we can’t take, we’ll burn.”
“One problem,” Ramsa said. “I’m out of fire powder. The Warlords aren’t sharing.”
“I’ll deal with the Warlords,” Altan said. “You just keep making those shit bombs.”
The great military strategist Sunzi wrote that fire should be used on a dry night, when flames might spread with the smallest provocation. Fire should be used when one was upwind, so that the wind would carry its brother element, smoke, into the enemy encampment. Fire should be used on a clear night, when there was no chance for rainfall to quench the flames.
Fire should not be used on a night like this, when the humid winds from the beach would prevent it from spreading, when stealth was of utmost importance but any torchlight would give them away.
But tonight they were not using regular fire. They needed nothing so rudimentary as kindling and oil. They didn’t need torches. They had Speerlies.
Rin crouched among the reeds beside Altan, eyes fixed on the darkening sky as she awaited Qara’s signal. They pressed flat against the mud bank, stomachs on the ground. Water seeped through her thin tunic from the moist mud, and the peat emitted such a rank odor of rotten eggs that breathing through her mouth only made her want to gag.
On the opposite bank she could just see Suni and Baji crawl up against the river and drop down among the reeds. Between them, they held the only two strips of solid land in the paddy; two slender pieces of dry peat that reached into the marsh like fingers.
The thick fog that might have dampened regular kindling now gave them the advantage. It would be a boon to the Federation as they made their amphibious landing, but it would also serve to conceal the Cike and to exaggerate their numbers.
“How did you know there would be a fog?” she whispered to Altan.
“There’s a fog every time it rains. This is the wet cycle for the rice paddies. Qara’s birds have been keeping track of cloud movements for the past week,” Altan said. “We know the marsh inside out.”
Altan’s attention to detail was remarkable. The Cike operated with a system of signals and cues that Rin would never have been able to decipher had she not been drilled relentlessly the day before. When Qara’s falcon flew overhead, that had been the signal for Aratsha to begin his subtle manipulation of the river currents. Half an hour before that, an owl had flown low over the river, signaling Baji and Suni to ingest a handful of colorful fungi. The drug’s reaction time was timed precisely to the estimated arrival of the fleet.
Amateurs obsess over strategy, Irjah had once told their class. Professionals obsess over logistics.
Rin had choked down a bagful of poppy seeds when she saw Qara’s first signal; they stuck thickly to her throat, settled lightly in her stomach. She felt the effects when she stood; she was just high enough that her head felt light but not so woozy that she couldn’t wield a sword.
Altan had ingested nothing. Altan, for some reason, did not seem to need any drugs to summon the Phoenix. He called the fire as casually as one might whistle. It was an extension of him that he could manipulate with no concentration at all.
A faint rustle overhead. Rin could barely make out the silhouette of Qara’s eagle, passing over for the second time to alert them to the arrival of the Federation. She heard a gentle sloshing noise coming from the channel.
Rin squinted at the river and saw not a fleet of boats but a line of Federation soldiers, implausibly walking in the river that reached up to their shoulders. They carried wooden planks high over their heads.
She realized that they were engineers. They were going to use those planks to create bridges for the incoming fleet to roll supplies onto dry land. Smart, she thought. The engineers each held a waterproof lamp high over the murky channel, casting an eerie glow over the canal.
Altan motioned for Suni and Baji to crouch deeper to the ground so they wouldn’t be visible over the reeds. The long grass tickled Rin’s earlobes, but she didn’t move.
Then, far down by the mouth of the channel, Rin saw the dim flicker of a lantern signal. At first she could see only the boat at the fore.
Then the full fleet emerged from the mist.
Rin counted under her breath. The fleet was twelve boats—sleek, well-constructed river sampans—packed with eight men each, sitting in a straight line with trunks of equipment stacked in high piles at the center of each boat.
The fleet paused at a fork in the river. The Federation had two choices; one channel took them to a wide bay where they could unload with relative ease, and the other took them on a detour into the salt marsh labyrinth where the Cike lay in waiting.
The Cike needed to force the fleet to the left.
Altan lifted an arm and flicked his hand out as if releasing a whip. Tendrils of flame licked out from his hands, streaking in either direction like glowing snakes. Rin heard a short sizzling noise as the flame raced through the reeds.
Then, with a high-pitched whistling noise, the first of Ramsa’s rockets erupted into the night sky.
Ramsa had rigged the marsh so that each rocket’s ignition would light the next sequentially, granting several seconds of delay between explosions. They set the marsh ablaze with a horrifically pungent stink that overwhelmed even the sulfurous odor of the peat.