Dust of Dreams - Page 198/461

It was a minor and mostly irrelevant detail that Pores had somehow lost his recruits. Snatched away from the marine squads by someone nobody knew anything about. If trouble arrived Pores could look innocent and point fingers at the squad sergeants. Never make a roadblock of yourself on trouble’s road. No, make yourself a bridge instead, with stones slick as grease.

I should compose a mid-level officer’s guide to continued health, indolence and undeserved prosperity. But then, if I did that, I’d have to be out of the battle, no longer in competition, as it were. Say, retired somewhere nice. Like a palace nobody was using. And that would be my crowning feat-requisitioning a palace.

‘Queen Frabalav’s orders, sir. If you got a problem, you can always discuss it with her one-eyed torturer.’

But for now, fine Letherii smoked sausages, three crates of excellent wine, a cask of cane syrup, all for Fist Keneb (not that he’d ever see any of that); and extra blankets, extra rations, officer boots including cavalry high-steppers, rank sigils and torcs for corporals, sergeants, and lieutenants, all for his fifty or was it sixty vanished recruits-which translated into Pores’s very own private stock for those soldiers on the march who lost things but didn’t want to be officially docked for replacements.

He’d already commandeered three wagons with decent teams, under guard at the moment by soldiers from Primly’s squad. It occurred to him he might have to draw those three squads in as partners in his black-market operation, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Envy diminished the more one shared the rewards, after all, and with something at stake those soldiers would have the proper incentive when it came to security and whatnot.

All in all, things were shaping up nicely.

‘Hey there, what’s in that box?’

‘Combs, sir-’

‘Ah, for Captain Kindly then.’

‘Aye, sir. Personal requisition-’

‘Excellent. I’ll take those to him myself.’

‘Well, uhm-’

‘Not only is the captain my immediate superior, soldier, I also happen to be his barber.’

‘Oh, right. Here you go, sir-just a signature here-that wax bar, yes sir, that’s the one.’

Smiling, Pores drew out his reasonable counterfeit of Kindly’s own seal and pressed it firmly down on the wax bar. ‘Smart lad, keeping things proper is what makes an army work.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Hedge’s pleasure at seeing that his Letherii alchemist had rounded up the new recruits as he had ordered quickly drained away when he cast a gauging eye on the forty would-be soldiers sitting not fifteen paces from the company latrine trench. When he first approached the bivouac he’d thought they were waving at him, but turned out it was just the swarming flies.

‘Bavedict!’ he called to his alchemist, ‘get ’em on their feet!’

The alchemist gathered up his long braid and with a practised twist spun it into a coil atop his head, where the grease held it fast, and then rose from the peculiar spike-stool he’d set up outside his hide tent. ‘Captain Hedge, the last mix is ready to set and the special rain-capes were delivered by my brother half a bell ago. I have what I need to do some painting.’

‘That’s great. This is all of them?’ he asked, nodding towards the recruits.

Bavedict’s thin lips tightened in a grimace. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘How long have they been sitting in that stench?’

‘A while. Not ready to do any thinking for themselves yet-but that’s what’s to be expected from us Letherii. Soldiers do what they’re told to do and that’s that.’

Hedge sighed.

‘There’s two acting sergeants,’ Bavedict added. ‘The ones with their backs to us.’

‘Names?’

‘Sunrise-he’s the one with the moustache. And Nose Stream.’

‘Well now,’ Hedge said, ‘who named them?’

‘Some Master Sergeant named Pores.’

‘I take it he wasn’t around when you snatched them.’

‘They’d been tied to some squads and those squads were none too pleased about it anyway. So it wasn’t hard cutting them loose.’

‘Good.’ Hedge glanced over at Bavedict’s carriage, a huge, solid-looking thing of black varnished wood and brass fittings; he then squinted at the four black horses waiting in their harnesses. ‘You was making a good living, Bavedict, leading me to wonder all over again what you’re doing here.’

‘Like I said, I got too close a look at what one of those cussers of yours can do-to a damned dragon, no less. My shop’s nothing but kindling.’ He paused and balanced himself on one foot, the other one set against the leg just below the knee. ‘But mostly professional curiosity, Captain, ever a boon and a bane both. So, you just keep telling me anything and everything you recall about the characteristics of the various Moranth alchemies, and I’ll keep inventing my own brand of munitions for your sappers.’