“In time faith may be the only thing that sustains us.”
Something in her voice must have concerned him for he moved closer, putting an arm around her shoulders and drawing her close. She allowed herself to be embraced, her earlier pique lingering but not enough to push him away. “I hardly slept,” he said. “The thought of you in that place . . .”
“Was better than the reality.”
He winced at the hardness in her voice, drawing back a little. “It seems all I can do is say the wrong thing. What would you have me do? Just tell me.”
“Find me a change of clothes for a start,” she muttered, slumping against him, letting herself surrender to exhaustion. “And,” she whispered as her eyes began to close, “a working and accurate timepiece.”
? ? ?
In the morning Arberus presented her with a set of cavalry fatigues, presumably taken from the body of one of the more youthful troopers. Lizanne peeled away the filthy overalls she had worn throughout her time in Scorazin, uncaring of any witnesses to her nakedness. She tossed the garment on the camp-fire before dousing herself with the bucket of water Arberus had fetched from a near by stream. The chill of it was shocking, but also added a welcome tingle to her flesh which she realised had become increasingly numb during her imprisonment. She rubbed at her damp skin, scraping away the grime and stink of the place, but somehow knowing some vestige of the scent would always linger. Blinds don’t wash, Clay had told her once in the trance. It seemed Scorazin didn’t wash either.
Arberus had also procured her a mount, a russet mare with the sturdy proportions and broad, hair-covered hooves of a cart-horse. “The Brotherhood can’t afford to be choosy over its mounts,” the major explained as Lizanne looked the animal over. She regarded Lizanne with soft brown eyes, issuing a placid snort as she smoothed a hand over her snout.
“As long as she doesn’t bite,” Lizanne said, climbing into the saddle.
The Electress’s army was already in motion, hounded to its feet by gang leaders turned captains. Varkash was most prominent among these enforcers of discipline, seemingly possessed of an ability to command instant obedience and quell grumbling with a glance. Despite their willingness to follow the Electress’s course, these weren’t soldiers and the host moved in a disorderly crowd, plodding east at an unimpressive pace.
“We’ve covered twenty miles since yesterday, I reckon,” Anatol said as they assembled at the Electress’s camp-fire come nightfall. Atalina seemed content to tolerate the presence of Lizanne and Arberus, despite the fact that they hadn’t been summoned.
“More like twelve,” Arberus insisted. “If that. These soldiers of yours move as if they’re on a holiday stroll. And,” he went on, nodding at a group of convicts near by who were busy squabbling over a bottle of wine, “many are too drunk to put one foot in front of the other.”
The Electress glanced at Varkash, who promptly strode towards the squabbling group. They instantly fell into silent stillness at his approach, apparently too fearful to run as he took the bottle from one of them and slowly emptied the contents over the man’s head. “Next time I’ll piss in it and make you drink it,” he said, smashing the bottle on the ground before walking back to the fire.
“Fear of him won’t be enough,” Arberus told the Electress. “Not when the fighting starts. If you truly want this to be an army, you’ll have to make this lot into soldiers.”
“How d’you propose we do that?” she enquired.
“Some proper organisation for a start. Divide them into regiments and the regiments into companies, each with its own captain. Each company will march together and camp together. Also, you need to take charge of the supply situation. At the rate this lot are consuming the food taken at Scorazin they’ll be starving within two weeks. Gather the supplies into carts and appoint a quartermaster to ensure equal shares are rationed out. You should also start sending foraging parties out to gather more. And,” he added with a glance at Varkash, “make sure any drunkenness is harshly punished.”
“Seems sensible,” the pirate said to Atalina in his nasal twang. “Haven’t flogged a man in years. Preddy sure I can remember how, dough.”
“No,” the Electress said. “These people threw in with me on the promise of freedom. Start showing them the whip and they’ll soon decide they might as well try their luck on their own. Still, getting rid of the booze is a good idea. Go through the camp in the morning, smash all the bottles you can find. Most’ll still be too groggy to object. As for the rest of your suggestions,” she said, turning back to Arberus, “I’ll leave to you. It’s your plan, you make it happen.”
? ? ?
Arberus divided the army into five regiments of roughly a thousand soldiers apiece. Each regiment consisted of five companies of two hundred soldiers and tended to reflect the soldiers’ prison-born allegiances. The First and Second Regiments were mostly Furies and Wise Fools whilst the Scuttlers made up most of the Third. The remaining companies had also been formed around a nucleus of survivors from the minor gangs. Those not allotted a regiment, mainly the older convicts and others unsuited to fighting due to infirmity, were organised into what Arberus called a logistics train of cooks, cart-drivers and medical orderlies. There were no qualified physicians amongst them but the pressures of life in Scorazin had produced a surprising number with hard-earned skills in the healing arts. Several were whores from the Miner’s Repose, all familiar with various restorative concoctions and the tending of minor wounds. Arberus placed the perpetually rancorous Silvona in charge of the army’s medical services. Being the oldest, and by far the most vocal, the others tended to defer to her in any case.