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“Let me see those dogs you say come with him,” said Captain Lukas, and he strolled with exaggerated casualness over to the door and squinted along the porch. Sorrow and Rage regarded him with their dark eyes. When they saw Alain, they thumped their tails on the plank sidewalk but did not otherwise move.
The captain looked at those dogs for a long time. Then he looked at Alain. The captain recognized him. Alain saw it in the smile trapped on his lips, in the way he scratched at his forehead to give himself something to do while he considered, in the way he tapped a foot three times on the porch as he reached a conclusion.
“Best we go see the lady,” he said to the air. He turned back to beckon his sergeants closer. “I’ll need a dozen men. Sergeant Andros, you are in charge here while I’m gone.”
“There’s to be a sweep of the southwest quarter this afternoon, Captain.”
“Proceed as usual.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“If you will.” The captain indicated to Alain that they would walk together. “Surely you have come here in order to see Lady Sabella.” Without allowing Alain a chance to answer, he began issuing orders to the dozen men hurrying out to accompany them.
They stood in the dusty forecourt of what had once been a merchant’s warehouse complex but was now both barracks and stable. There were two long warehouses linked at their northern ends by a spacious hall. An open kitchen and small storage sheds fenced in the southern end of the compound. The men lived in one half of the hall, their horses in the other. There were three troops quartered here, one in each structure, about three hundred men in all if Alain’s estimate of the size of Captain Lukas’ troop was correct. Men lounged by the open doors of their living space keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the other soldiers, friends and rivals alike. Dogs slunk along at the base of each porch, looking for scraps of food or a friendly pat. They kept clear of Sorrow and Rage, but a rare bold bitch ventured up and sniffed them over. A cart laden with manure trundled past, pushed by a pair of soldiers headed out to the fields. The open dirt yard stank of sweat and shit and urine and dust and that peculiar intangible scent of men sizing each other up for weakness. A pair of men were joking in loud voices.
“Eh, those Varre boars! Look, there goes the ass-licking captain now!”
Alain glanced at the captain, but he took no mind of the words. In fact, Captain Lukas seemed not to have understood them at all. As if they were speaking in a language he could not understand, but one that Alain could. The swirl of movement, of men going about their business and dogs hanging back to allow the hounds to pass without challenging them and a horse backing nervously away from the entrance into the stables, so disoriented Alain that he felt the world spinning around him. He staggered and reached out to catch himself
they skate into Rikin Fjord across a skin of still water so clear that he dreams he can see fathoms into the deeps, down to the ancient seabed carved aeons ago out of glittering rock. But that is only an illusion. What he sees are the backs of a swarm of fish schooling around his hull.
One surfaces
No fish, these, but an entire tribe of merfolk. He leans on the rail, studying them. On deck, soldiers exclaim. Always, as they crossed the northern sea, they sailed with an escort of merfolk off their bow and behind the stern. These here, he thinks, are more like a ravening pack of wolves descending on a slaughter ground.
“Beware!” calls Deacon Ursuline, among his counselors.
Papa Otto calls from the stern. “A swarm has gathered here. I don’t like the look of these! I think they mean to do us harm!”
As if the words are sorcery, the boat heels starboard. His heels skid backward and he grabs the rail to stop himself from falling onto the deck, but just as he gets his feet up and under him, the ship heels again, seesawing to port side so abruptly that he cannot stop himself. He pitches forward, loses his hold on the railing, and plunges into the cold blue water of the fjord.
Icy water splashed his face as he caught himself on a hitching post, finding his balance although the ground still seemed to tilt and rock.
Captain Lukas swore. “Bitch of a weather! Feel that rain! You’d think it was still winter, by how cold it is!”
Alain blinked rain out of his eyes and shook his head to clear it. The shower had taken them all by surprise as it swept across the courtyard. Dogs and men ran for shelter. The captain laughed and shamed his men into moving more slowly.
“What? Are you running at the first cold drop? What, are you prissy snails?”
The vision, come so fast and unexpectedly, faded as the sights and smells of the compound drowned him. They passed between the kitchens, which smelled of porridge and smoke, and a storehouse, whose door was propped open. Inside, a score of folk huddled in the interior around a cluster of beds, sitting, lying down, coughing: a sickroom, perhaps. A child at the door watched them walk by with wide eyes and a somber expression.
“You’ve been on the road too many days,” said the captain. “The lady does not like the smell of the road. Baths first.”
“Can I take the plunge, Captain?” asked one of the escorts.
“Eh! I’d like a good washing, Captain!” said another.
“There’s some new wash girls at the baths, I hear,” laughed a third. “Not like in the old days, if you take my meaning. More to our liking.”
“Hush,” Captain Lukas said, but he wasn’t angry at his men. If anything, the comments caused him to lapse into a thoughtful silence.
These barracks lay near the southern gate and were not particularly close to the palace complex, which sat on a hill. The streets had little traffic considering the time of day. Twice they passed warehouses, each one guarded by a dozen soldiers.
“What do they guard?” Alain asked.
“Grain. As precious as gold.”
A few folk tended garden spaces in empty lots. Autun had not quite filled out the space between the walls built in the days of Taillefer, or else old buildings had fallen down and not been reconstructed, with the dirt around the foundations left to go to seed. A woman and man straightened from poking at freshly dug troughs to watch the soldiers pass. Like the child at the storehouse door, they called out no greeting, nor did the captain nod at them to acknowledge their presence. Their silence troubled Alain, who had an idea that relations between townsfolk and soldiers had once been easier.
