A shadow moved. Phain opened her eyes. The sunlight was angling steeper, so she must have slept. Yes, the walls were a network, holes held together by wicker. Time to go.
“Do you need anything?” asked a small and tremulous voice. Phain shook her head on the pillow and tried to smile, to put the child at ease. It was a hard time for a youngster. Death Watch was never easy.
She couldn’t remember the girl’s name. Terrible how the old forgot! She could remember Keez clear enough. She could recall every ax stroke and every knot as the two of them had built the cottage together, over their special Place. But for the life of her she could not remember which poor child had been sent to keep her Death Watch. She could not even remember all the family coming to say good-bye to her, but she knew they must have. How long had she been lingering and making this poor girl wait? She licked her lips.
“Drink?” the child asked. “You want a drink? I’ll get you one. ” Eager to please, eager to feel that she was doing something useful : ..
Phain recalled her own turn at Death Watch. A nasty, stringy old man named . . . couldn’t remember, never mind. He’d taken a week to die, given her no thanks, thrown up everything she fed him . . . He had smelled quite horrible, as she doubtless did to this youngster now helping her hold her head up to sip from a half gourd. The water was cool, so it must have come fresh from the stream.
“Name, child? Forgotten your name.”
“Thaile of the Gaib Place.”
Gaib? Didn’t mean anything. Phain tried to speak again. “Yes?” the child cried in sudden panic. “What? I can’t hear!” And she sprawled over Phain on the bedding, pressing an ear close to her lips.
Poor thing was terrified, of course. Frightened of death, frightened of suffering, frightened of messing it all up.
“Not yet!” the woman gasped, almost wanting to laugh. ”Oh!” The child—Thaile—scrambled back. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . I thought . . . I mean, I’m sorry.”
Phain dug down in her lungs, finding just enough air at the bottom there to make a chuckle, and a few words. “Just wanted to ask who your mother was, Thaile.”
“Oh! Frial of the Gaib Place.”
Ah, yes! Frial was her oldest granddaughter, so this leggy filly must be one of her great-granddaughters. Fancy that! Not many lived long enough to pass on their word to a greatgrandchild. Gaib was the quiet, solid one with the pointy ears. Pointier than most, she meant.
“Food?” Thaile asked. “Can I get you something to eat, Grammy?”
Phain shook her head and closed her eyes to nap a little. She hoped she wouldn’t linger much longer. She was too weary to speak more now. Only one word left to say, and she knew she would find breath enough for that.
Maig! Maig was the name of that smelly, stringy old man she’d done Death Watch for. Maig had taken a week to go. She hoped she didn’t take a week. Or hadn’t already taken a week. Hard on a child. Maig hadn’t been able to speak most of the time, but he’d found enough breath at the end to pass on his word.
And no good had it ever done her, Phain thought. Perhaps she’d never had any special talent, or the word had been too weak, or shed just not had the Faculty.
No, there’d never been any magic in her life, just a lot of hard work.
And love. Much love. But no magic.
The wind sighed through the little ruin. She thought she would nap now, and maybe eat something later . . .
3
The standard was a pig of a thing, almost too heavy for Ylo’s spent muscles to manage, but it was life. As long as he clung to that pole, the whole Imperial Army was going to fight to the death to defend him. He clung.
Battle screamed around him and he ignored it, concentrating on holding the standard vertical and avoiding being knocked down by his own countrymen in the scrimmage.
He had saved a standard. He might be going to survive this. This wasn’t the XXth Legion, though. He glanced up and registered that he had just transferred to the XIIth.
The XIIth! One of the crack outfits!
A man who saved a standard won the right to bear it till his dying day—assuming that day was not this day. No more filthy ditch-digging . . . no more mind-destroying weapons drill.
He was a signifer, a standard-bearer. Attaboy, Ylo!
Signifers wore wolfskin capes over their armor, with a hood made from the wolf’s head. Barbaric? Romantic! He could guess how girls would react to that. Women would be free again. Signifers had the nearest thing to a soft job the army ever offered. Even those twenty-three years might not seem too bad as a signifer—not much danger, and lots of respect. Perks! Yea, Ylo!
Then he took another look. This was no mean run-of-the-mill standard he’d rescued, emblem of maniple or cohort. At its top was the Imperial star and below that the lion symbol of the XIIth. Red bunting floated from the crosspiece, and the rest of the shaft was laden with battle honors in silver and bronze. This was the legionary standard itself.
Signifer for the XIIth Legion? Hey, Ylo!
You are going to eat meat again, Ylo!
The war had gone away. Order was being restored. Bugles were sounding in the distance.
Suddenly officers were beckoning, and he led where they pointed. They followed him to the crest of a small hillock, the only high ground in sight. A voice beside him barked, “Pitch camp!” and his shredded wits were just operational enough to realize that it was addressing him. He swung the standard in the proper signal, barely registering protests from his battered muscles. Distant bugles picked up the call.
Signifer!
And of course the speaker had been the legate himself, with a green-crested helmet and gold-inlaid breastplate. Of course. Where else would the legate be but beside the standard? Legates were not supposed to have blood on their swords, but this one did. He was dirty and sweaty, and his dark eyes blazed below the brim of his helmet as he appraised Ylo. He held a canteen in his left hand.
“Well done, soldier! I saw.”
Ylo muttered, “Sir!” but his mind was on that canteen. With the bottle almost at his lips, the legate paused, and his mouth showed that he was frowning. “What outfit?”
Ylo had lost his shield; his mail shirt was totally coated in mud and blood, although none of that seemed to be his. He was anonymous. “The XXth, sir.”
“God of Battles!” the legate said. “All night? Here, you need this more than I do.” And he handed over the canteen. That was Ylo’s first inkling.
The Impire had held the field. The fighting was ending as the surviving djinns surrendered or were cut down. More standards were arriving, and more officers.
One of those was the commander, Proconsul Iggipolo himself, and the way he returned the legate’s salute was another inkling.
Ylo glanced up again at that potent pole he held. How could he have missed it? Above the battle honors and even above the crossbar shone a wreath of oak leaves, cast in gold.
Only one man in the entire army could put his personal signet on a legionary standard.
Ylo’s mind reeled. He forgot honor and comfort and doeeyed girls. He thought Revenge! He thought hatred. He thought of his father and brothers, his cousins, his uncles. He thought of his mother, dying disgraced, in exile. He thought that man killed my family.
Trust. Confidence. Being close in dark places. He thought knife between the ribs.
And then he was limping painfully along, bearing the standard high, heading for the tents that had sprouted like a field of orderly mushrooms at the edge of the swamp. Behind him came the legate.
And all the way battle-weary soldiers were scrambling to their feet to laud the leader of the XIIth, the hero, the man who had saved the day. Their cheers rang sour in Ylo’s ears and the sound was bitter. He thought most popular man in the army.
“Shandie!” they shouted. “Shandie!”
Emshandar. The prince imperial. The imperor’s grandson. Heir apparent. The most popular man in the army.
4
Never before had Ylo entered a commander’s compound, but now he marched straight in and was saluted as he did so. He set the pole in the base prepared for it and spun around to face the procession he had been leading—or tried to, but his legs failed him, and he almost fell. The imperor’s grandson saluted the standard, ignoring the stagger. He gave Ylo a nod that was a personal summons and headed for his tent, followed by a gaggle of shiny-helmeted officers, few of whom had likely bloodied their swords this day.