The baggage train moves slowest and thus at the rear. The wagons are almost past us, and if we don’t hurry they’ll leave us behind. Far to the east movement trembles on the road, difficult to discern as the light fades: there marches the enemy, hard on Father’s heels.
“Let’s go!” I say impatiently.
“Mules don’t give orders.” Klidas slaps me.
The blow really hurts. Tears stream.
A staff slams Klidas in the chest and whirls around to catch him behind the knees and flip him to the ground. Kal steps in, bracing the tip of his staff on the soldier’s chest.
“No honorable man uses that word. Nor does he strike women. Do you understand me?”
“Y-yes, my lord.” He’s heaving, sides shaking from pain. Agas stares wide-eyed.
Kal removes the staff and nods at me.
“Let’s go,” I repeat. We head out with no further protests.
Outriders wave us through. We climb the embankment up onto the road and race after the last group of wagons grinding along, three heavy catapults being pulled by eight mules apiece. The road crosses a steep-sided gully, where water flows in the rainy season. Efeans wielding pickaxes and shovels are digging a trench through the road here so the enemy won’t be able to cross without time-consuming repair work. The noise of iron hammering rock rings a cacophony around us.
Mis shrieks, “It’s Dusty!”
She bolts. I run after her, losing Kal in the confusion. The laborers swing their pickaxes with zeal, as if they are imagining the surface of the road as the faces of men they hate. Dusty is barefoot, clad only in a grimy keldi. Whip scars run cruel tracks across his back.
A Saroese sergeant holding a spear blocks our path.
“Girls! If you’re here to work, haul rock and pile it on the road as a barrier. Otherwise get out of the way.”
For once Mis does not obediently step back but charges forward.
“Dusty. Dusty!”
His back still to her, he brings the pickax down with a blow that cracks the surface. He hasn’t heard her.
“Dusty!” she shouts.
He hesitates, then turns.
I wince, and Mis presses a hand over her mouth.
His right eye is seamed shut with a mass of fresh scar tissue, like a clumsy seamstress tried to sew shut his eye socket. His good eye passes right over us, then tracks back. He shakes his head, tapping his right ear as if to clear it.
“You’re dead. I’m seeing things.” He shifts the pickax to ready it for another blow.
Mis grasps his arm. “No, we’re alive, Dusty. How did you get here?”
Dusty’s thinness makes him look fragile but an intensity burns in his ruined face that scares me. “The doctor and those mercenaries gave me to the East Saroese as a slave. At the battle by Port Selene, General Esladas sent skirmishers to burn the enemy baggage train. A bunch of us prisoners took the chance to run after them when they returned to the Royal Army, and they took us on as laborers. I don’t know how you survived but I thank the Mother of All that you both did. You have to get out of here. If the enemy captures you…” He touches his ruined eye, then pushes Mis roughly away. “Go! We’re trenching the road to slow them down.”
A horn blasts, calling the alert.
The wagons keep rolling but the rearguard infantry turns to face back the way they’ve come. A rumbling sound resolves into skirmishers wearing the hawk tabards of East Saro, racing out of the gloom to attack the laborers working on the trench. The shadows make their numbers seem enormous, like swarming locusts.
I’m too stunned to run.
“Brace! Pull!”
A loud racheting noise clacks behind me.
“Fly!”
With thumps, the three catapults let fly. Pots spin overhead. A few arc harmlessly to the side of the road but the rest slam down amid the enemy. Ceramic shatters.
Shouts of laughter spread among the East Saroese soldiers at this ineffective blow.
Then a scream. Followed by an outbreak of cries and shrieks.
Dusty heaves up his pickax and slams it down. “Scorpions,” he shouts with a wild laugh as he and the other laborers really start pounding.
The catapults are being ratcheted back with a clank clank clank for another volley. Arrows fly as our soldiers shoot at will into the confused and frantic enemy.
Mis shakes me. “Go on, Jes! I’m not leaving without Dusty.”
“I can’t leave you here, Mis! You heard what he said. You saw what the enemy did to him.”
“Do you think Efeans don’t risk that every day, where the Saroese rule? Maybe your father treated his servants fairly, but there’s no law to protect us against abuse. Can’t you understand? Your father’s rank and Kal’s attention don’t make you Saroese, Jes. In their eyes you’ll always be Efean, like me.”
“No. I reject that. I’m not one or the other—”
She cuts me off by hugging me, hard. “I know you have to make your own journey. And I have to make mine. Be safe, Jes.”
With a kiss to my cheek, she pushes me away and runs back to the laborers, where she starts hauling rock.
“Mis!” I shout after her, but the catapults thump, drowning out my voice. Scorpion-laden ceramic bombs fly to scatter amid the enemy.
“Jes!” It’s Kal, looking for me. I’ve imperiled him by hanging behind.
It makes me sick to leave, knowing I may never see them again, but I do.
Kal commandeers horses from a passing cavalry regiment. As we gallop forward, weary soldiers glance up.
“Lord Captain Kalliarkos! The hero of Pellucidar Lake has returned to us!”
A ragged cheer flows down the impossibly long column of soldiers.
When I was younger, the Royal Army at full strength marched out of Saryenia to fight a war in a foreign land. The king and queen declared it a festival day. We girls with Mother were allowed to wait amid the crowds on the Avenue of the Soldier to watch them go, since Father marched with them in his first campaign as a captain. It took all morning and into the afternoon for the army to pass through West Gate, a long, hungry, hot day for four young girls and their anxious mother. Amaya started crying because her favorite doll got stepped on, Bettany threw up from the dust, and Maraya blithely named off all the regimental banners as they passed, which made me jealous because I had secretly been trying to learn them so Father would praise me when he got home.
It’s the same mass of numbers here. For all that the Royal Army is understrength and weakened, the ranks seem endless, moving relentlessly and in silence but for necessary commands and the sounds of feet, hooves, and wheels in constant motion. As twilight descends, lamps get lit until the road becomes like a stream of spark-bugs. We ride forward and forward as in a dream that won’t end.
But at last a cluster of banners marks the command company, a mix of infantry and cavalry guarding the general’s carriage. A company of spider scouts clanks along on either side, a gleaming wall of brass and articulated limbs.
A captain cuts across our path. He’s wearing the firebird badge that marks him as an adjutant under Father’s direct command.
“Halt! We are under orders to observe strict order-of-march discipline.…” In any other circumstances I would laugh at his double take. “Lord Captain Kalliarkos! My lord, I did not expect to see you.” He hesitates, then acknowledges me with a nod.