With dawn’s first light paling the eastern sky, the mounted troop of Letherii thundered down the narrow coastal track, the berm of the old beach ridge on their left, the impenetrable, tangled forest on their right. The rain had dissolved into a clammy mist, strengthening the night’s last grip of darkness, and the pounding of hoofs was oddly muted, quick to dwindle once the last rider was out of sight.
Puddles in the track settled once more, clouded with mud. The mists swirled, drifted into the trees.
An owl, perched high on a branch of a dead tree, had watched the troop pass. The echoes fading, it remained where it was, not moving, its large unblinking eyes fixed on a chaotic mass of shrubs and brambles amidst thin-boled poplars. Where something was not quite as it seemed. Unease sufficient to confuse its predatory mind.
The scrub blurred then, as if disintegrating in a fierce gale-although no wind stirred-and upon its vanishing, figures rose as if from nowhere.
The owl decided it would have to wait a little longer. While hungry, it nevertheless experienced a strange contentment, followed by a kind of tug on its mind, as of something… leaving.
Bottle rolled onto his back. ‘Over thirty riders,’ he said. ‘Lancers, lightly armoured. Odd stirrups. Hood, but my skull aches. I hate Mockra-’
‘Enough bitching,’ Fiddler said as he watched his squad-barring a motionless Bottle-drawing in, with Gesler’s doing the same beneath some trees a few paces away. ‘You sure they didn’t smell nothing?’
‘Those first scouts nearly stepped right on us,’ Bottle said. ‘Something there… especially in one of them. As if he was somehow… I don’t know, sensitized, I suppose. Him and this damned ugly coast where we don’t belong-’
‘Just answer the questions,’ Fiddler cut in again.
‘We should’ve ambushed the whole lot,’ Koryk muttered, checking the knots on all the fetishes he was wearing, then dragging over his oversized supply pack to examine the straps.
Fiddler shook his head. ‘No fighting until our feet dry. I hate that.’
‘Then why are you a damned marine, Sergeant?’
‘Accident. Besides, those were Letherii. We’re to avoid contact with them, for now.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Bottle said. ‘Well, no. It was the owl, dammit. Anyway, you would not believe what looking through an owl’s eyes at night is like. Bright as noon in the desert.’
‘Desert,’ Tarr said. ‘I miss the desert.’
‘You’d miss a latrine pit if it was the last place you crawled out of,’ Smiles observed. ‘Koryk had his crossbow trained on those riders, Sergeant.’
‘What are you, my little sister?’ Koryk demanded. He then mimed Smiles’s voice. ‘He didn’t shake his baby-maker when he’d done peeing, Sergeant! I saw it!’
‘See it?’ Smiles laughed. ‘I’d never get that close to you, half-blood, trust me.’
‘She’s getting better,’ Cuttle said to Koryk, whose only response was a grunt.
‘Quiet everyone,’ Fiddler said. ‘No telling who else lives in these woods-or might be using the road.’
‘We’re alone,’ Bottle pronounced, slowly sitting up, then gripping the sides of his head. ‘Hiding fourteen grunting, farting soldiers ain’t easy. And once we get to more populated areas it’s going to be worse.’
‘Getting one miserable mage to shut his mouth is even harder,’ Fiddler said. ‘Check your gear, everyone. I want us a ways deeper into these woods before we dig in for the day.’ For the past month on the ships the Bonehunters had been shifting over into reversing their sleep cycles. A damned hard thing to do, as it turned out. But now at least pretty much everyone was done turning round. Lost the tans, anyway. Fiddler moved over to where Gesler crouched.
Except this gold-skinned bastard and his hairy corporal. ‘Your people ready?’
Gesler nodded. ‘Heavies are complaining their armour’s gonna rust.’
‘So long as they keep the squeaking to a minimum.’ Fiddler glanced at the huddled soldiers of Gesler’s squad, then back towards his own. ‘Some army,’ he said under his breath.
‘Some invasion, aye,’ Gesler agreed. ‘Ever known anyone to do it this way?’
Fiddler shook his head. ‘It makes a weird kind of sense, though, doesn’t it? The Edur are spread thin, from all reports. The oppressed are legion-all these damned Letherii.’
‘That troop just passed us didn’t look much oppressed to me, Fid.’