The midday’s sun was high above the trees and the humidity had a touch of death’s odour in it. The Leeran camp looked like bones: the tents stripped of cloth, supplies and coin, while the dead had been rolled into a pile, their weapons and armour removed.
Heast stood just beyond the dead, near the middle of the Leeran camp, where he had entered it the night before. Before him, the bodies of his fallen lay in a wagon. Eleven soldiers: four women, seven men, each still dressed and covered in thin blankets from head to toe. Not one of them was a member of his precious veterans. Heast did not like to remind himself of that, but he would not deny the reality of it, either.
He had told Refuge that he would be heading to Vaeasa tonight. He did not lie to them: he told them what had been found in the tent. ‘The Lords of Faaisha will not be happy to see me,’ he said to them. ‘Lord Jye Tuael will tolerate me, however. At least, he will to hear what I say. If he is as corrupt as his marshal, then Anemone and I will struggle to make it back. If he’s not, we will return with weapons, armour and soldiers. While I’m gone, Sergeant Bliq and Sergeant Qiyala will have command. Kye Taaira will be their second. Listen to all three while I am gone.’
He had approached the wagon after he dismissed them.
There was no horse to pull it, but Corporal Isaap and the remains of his squad had asked for the task of pulling it through the scrub to their next camp. Heast had ordered them to go ahead to the ruins of Celp. He would meet them there later. The bodies would be buried well before then, he knew. He would have preferred for them to be burned, but he knew that that was not the Faaishan way. Still, he trusted that Bliq and Qiyala would keep the tracks and the graves hidden as they made their way to Celp. When it came to the burial, however, neither knew the words that were said over the dead soldiers of Refuge. It had been over two decades since Heast had said the words himself, but he would not allow the cart to leave without him saying them. The soldiers had given what they had for him, given it to Refuge, and it did not matter that what they had was not enough, that it was not moulded by years of war, of the industry of violence he had brought them into. They had given all they had and he asked for no less.
‘Captain.’ Corporal Isaap appeared beside him, a heavy rope over his shoulder. He was a lean man, no more than a boy, really, the dark beard along his olive skin a patchy stubble of thin hair. ‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’
‘No,’ Heast said.
‘It’s just that you looked as if you were speaking.’
‘Merely offering my thanks, Corporal. A captain can do only that at this point.’
Isaap lowered the rope to the ground. ‘It was my mistake, sir.’ He almost called him marshal. A lot of them did. ‘I don’t know how, but the Ancestor heard us. You should have chosen someone else for the job.’
Heast turned to him, turned away from the wagon. ‘How long have you been a soldier?’ he asked.
‘A few months.’ Isaap offer a wry smile. ‘Just over a year, I guess. I was given my post last spring.’
‘What were you before?’
‘Rich.’
‘And you gave that up, did you?’
‘No, sir. My parents said I could be rich and respectful in the lord’s army.’ He ran a hand through his hair, fidgeting, embarrassed by what he had said. ‘My parents did not want the family to stay in Maosa. They said that there was no fortune there, beyond what they had. No prestige. They said I should distinguish myself to bring the attention of the other lords to me. You know how parents are, sir.’
‘Mine have been dead for a long time.’ They had, at any rate, not been like that. ‘But I know what you mean. Not so long ago, I had a sergeant whose father was a very rich man in Yeflam. His son lived in the shadow of that for a long time. He tried to step out of it for years. I thought that there could be something in him if he managed to do so.’
‘Did he? Step out of it, that is.’
‘No,’ Heast said. ‘In the end, he was nothing more than his father’s son.’
Isaap nodded. ‘I don’t want to be like that,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be my father’s son. I have not always understood that, but I do now. I see how he never took responsibility for where the family was. For his bad choices. For the way he treated people. I own my mistakes, sir. The people here are dead because of me. I made the mistake when we came out of the brush. I came in before the Hollow was in position and others paid the price. If you want to strip me of my rank because of that, I’ll understand, sir. I’ll work it back.’
Before the battle, Heast would have been prepared to do that. It was not that Isaap had asked for fire, or that he had let his nerves get the best of him. No, it was his continual failure to accept orders, his belief that he knew better, the inability to recognize that he had none of the skills he believed he had. He had been barely trained in the year he had been a soldier. He had one advantage over the others in Refuge and that was that he could wield his sword with a certain amount of skill. It was the reason that Heast had given Isaap the job of securing the tents around the Ancestor.
Before he gave his orders to Refuge, Sergeant Qiyala and Bliq had both spoken to him about Isaap. They had waited for him outside the tent where Anemone worked. Both the sergeants had told him that the soldiers who had survived beside Isaap had done so because of him. They said he reacted quickly to the sight of Kilian rising, that he kept them alive and had pulled the survivors around Taaira.
‘When I was a corporal, I lost four soldiers. Four soldiers of Refuge.’ Heast bent down and picked up the rope. ‘I made a small mistake. I washed a pot in a stream. I was nervous and I thought it would keep me busy. But the food scraps flowed down and they gathered in the rocks downstream and a tracker saw it. I had just gotten back to the camp when we were swarmed. The sentry caught them as they came up on us, but we were never meant to see a fight there. It was bad terrain. But I survived. Myself and one other out of six. A couple of days later, I told the captain just what you told me. I said I’d work back my rank. At the time, the Captain of Refuge was Tisoc Denali. He was a big man, Denali. Had fists like stones. After I finished speaking, I kept waiting for him to punch me. To punish me for what I did.’
Isaap followed Heast as he made his way to the front of the cart. ‘Did he?’
‘No.’ He dropped the rope on the seat of the cart, took one end. ‘He said to me that you make a mistake and people die. Then he said you make the right choice and people die. Then he left me.’
‘That doesn’t sound helpful.’
‘No?’
He shook his head.
Heast handed him the end of the rope. ‘Everyone dies in Refuge, Corporal. By sword, by fire, by will. That is what we say over the bodies of our soldiers when we bury them. That was what I was saying when you came upon me.’ He held up his hand as Isaap tried to speak. ‘You have made mistakes. I will not tell you otherwise. Indeed, you might lose your rank one day, but it is not today. Put aside your father’s shadow and it will not be tomorrow. Now, you find half a dozen soldiers to help you pull this cart. I don’t want you doing it by yourself. When you bury those in it, you say the words I told you. They were soldiers of Refuge, and I need you to be a soldier in Refuge, not just for them, but for everyone else who stands.’
He left him there, tying the rope to the wagon, half a story in his mind.
Captain Denali had said more to Heast, before he left the hut he was in. In truth, he had torn strips out of Heast for his failure, and rightfully so. He had done it with the one surviving member of the group present, and he had done it in a voice that was hard and sharp. At the end of it, Heast had offered to resign, to do more than earn his rank back. He had said he would leave Refuge. He did not know where he would go: he was not yet eighteen and his life for years had been the mercenary unit. All the world he had seen, he had seen with them.
After Heast had said those words, Denali took one step towards him, as if he would strike out at the young soldier. His dark eyes burned, as if the words Heast had just said were worse than the men he had lost. ‘You die in Refuge,’ he said in a low, furious voice, ‘or Refuge kills you. That is all there is to your life now, Corporal.’