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Zaid expected an attack at sundown or maybe during the night, but none came. His men marched their fifty kilometers, rested until the day cooled, and marched again. The new soldiers weren't good fighters individually, but they could handle the distance and arrive at their destination ready to fight. When it came to basic spearmen, Kashmar spent more money on their shoes than it did on their weapons. Those troops existed for one purpose: to carry their spears from place to place so they could point them at the enemy on command. Calique didn't deploy masses of archers: wood was too valuable. Rebels rode into battle on their appalons with spears and swords, and the best defense against them was a block of spearmen several ranks deep.

The second march after the parlay turned strange, with a hot wind blowing dust up into their faces, forcing everyone to cover their mouths. The stars were hidden, and Silenz shone diffuse and brown through the dirty atmosphere. When the lone moon set, the entire column was left in choking hot darkness. Disciples lit polished beads of white stone, but that made their predicament strangely worse. The dusty air reflected the light, blinding them as effectively as darkness but with an added sense of futility.

Zaid halted the march early. If he let his men get scattered by the weather, they'd be easy targets for the more mobile rebels. The army rested where it was, ate dry rations, and waited for dawn.

The first sign of the enemy was what Zaid didn't see: his forward scouts. The small forces sent to cover his flanks and rear all returned safely and reported no sightings of the enemy, but the forward scouts were missing in action. A hundred men were gone without a trace, either swallowed up by the desert or killed when they failed to see the enemy before the enemy saw them. Zaid's money was on enemy action: they were somewhere in front of him, probably waiting at Bitter Spring.

That would make sense from the rebel point of view. They hoped their superior disciples would win the day against Enclave, but they would need walls and forces to do it. The tribes wouldn't stick together once their gardens started burning: each would return to its oasis to defend it, and Zaid could crush them one at a time in easy, bite-sized pieces. To keep his force together, the young Pasha would have to fight him at Bitter Spring.

"I need a cadre," he told Paraskevi.

"Are you sure you want to put disciples at risk so early?"

"All they're doing right now is riding in cars, keeping themselves safe. If all they can do is protect themselves, what good are they?"

"They are hardly idle, Princeps. They mend your gear, heal your men, and supplement your water supply. I wouldn't be so eager to throw them into a fight. Most of them don't specialize in combat."

"I don't need them to fight; I need them to scout. I'd like to know where the enemy is."

"They'll need bulwarks."

"About that … why is Zorda the only one who brought people with him?"

"That's not quite true. Two of the deans brought valets, and I brought a secretary. Zorda has bulwarks because he lives in the field full-time. A disciple has to support his followers out of their own pocket. Most resident practitioners have little need for a dedicated staff."

"So, they're too cheap? Don't they get paid handsomely for their work?"

The guardian narrowed her eyes at him. "Most of them find their stipends sufficient for their needs, and only take jobs when they want to."

"So, they're lazy." This kept getting better and better.

"They are the repository of Heritage!" Paraskevi's voice was rising like it did when she was about to start spitting zealotry.

"I have thirty princes in this army," he said, heading off another tirade, "and they're here because they work hard. For every one of them, there are three more who never make rank because they aren't good enough. If our work ethic was as bad as Enclave's, the rebels would have overrun us ages ago!"

Paraskevi fumed. "This is getting us nowhere. I'll have a disciple selected who can use the relevant prayers. Choose three bulwarks, preferably large young men who have decent fighting skills. Enhancements can overwhelm a small body."

As dawn burned the dusty sky in reds and browns, Zaid ordered up a battalion of mounted skirmishers, almost a thousand men. They didn't specialize in mounted combat like elite cavalry, but they were more mobile than regular infantry. It was a large enough force to find trouble and then get out of it while protecting the disciple. For his part, the disciple needed to place vision enhancements on as many soldiers as he could, plus whatever protective prayers he wanted on his assigned bulwark.

Zaid was surprised to see Tishk, the volunteer from Vanush, as part of the scouting force. He looked leaner and more dangerous than when Zaid picked him up. If he was already promoted to a mounted unit then he was doing well for himself. He had that look Zaid had often seen in young men's faces, like the world had opened up to them and they were seeing everything for the first time. Even the dust storm seemed exciting, and why shouldn't it? Kashmar had nothing like this weather. It was hot and stifling, but it was also strange and new.

The reconnaissance battalion departed an hour after dawn. Shortly after that, Zaid had the drums sound the ready signal. Five minutes later they sounded the march, and a ripple of legs set into motion, traveling to the column's ends at the speed of sound.

The second sign of the enemy came half an hour into the march, just as visibility began to improve. Ten-kilogram rocks thrown at howling speed smashed into the water wagons. The crack of breaking planks and the shouts of injured men echoed all along the column. The first few volleys were the worst. Officers didn't know how to respond to this unseen enemy, so they tried to form shield walls around the wagons. That just gave the rebels more time to sling rocks. Several commanders dispatched large forces in the direction the stones were coming from, into the obscured desert, causing them to flee. A few elite cavalry even managed to bloody their swords on the rebels, though they didn't report killing anyone.

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"The trick is just to get close to them, as Brother Zorda said," reported one of the officers. "Get inside their zone, and they're visible. Or," he added, "get downwind of them with a good tracker and follow their nose."

"So they're not likely to attack from upwind," concluded Zaid. It was an interesting detail, and tactics were all about the details. "Were you able to follow their trail?"

"No, Princeps. The hard ground makes tracking difficult to begin with, but they erase all signs as they go. Even their scent doesn't linger on the ground. Fair warning: the disciples and their bulwarks are insanely tough. Most of them are wearing brigandine, and it's probably that enhanced tirun we've been hearing about. Hitting their armor is useless. Your only chance is to strike an unprotected limb, and wounding one is like chopping wood. It cost me the lives of ten good men just to bloody two of them."

"They served Kashmar well, commander. This is the most useful tactical information we have."

"One more thing, Princeps. Their slings are unstoppable head-on, but if you brace a couple of heavy shields at an angle you can redirect the shot."

"Good work. Bassel, pass that report to all regiments. And see that his men get an extra share of rations when we rest." By 'extra share' Zaid meant 'good alcohol, but not too much'.

The next battle casualty was the roads. Less than an hour after the attack on their water supply, the roadbed opened up under the lead gurantor train's wheels and dropped the front of the wagon into a trench just deep and wide enough to trap it. The driver was thrown, so the gurantor pulled and pulled until it broke the train's harness and cracked the tongue, then wandered off to stand to the side of the road. Traffic got routed around the stuck train, only to have the same thing happen to another train a hundred meters on.

Prying the cars free and fixing the road would have been time-consuming and exhausting if it weren't for Zorda's help. He could enhance soldiers' strength faster and better than the other disciples, and he fixed the road while hardly blinking. The ground swelled around him, reorganized itself, and packed itself into the smoothest patch of highway Zaid had ever set foot on.

"This road is old." Zorda made eye contact with Zaid for the first time, with wide round eyes that shone uncomfortably intense over the cloth that protected the disciple's face. He stood on the new patch of road, in the hot dirty air, looking as comfortable as Zaid did in his own home. The rivets of his brigandine coat glimmered dimly as if his armor drew its power from bad weather. His three bulwarks stood far enough away from him to be off his work surface, facing outward. The four of them seemed deeply aware of each other without needing to look.

The Princeps had a troubling thought: that the simpleton embodied the true intent of the Unity church's founder better than any guardian or resident disciple. He didn't care about politics, Heritage, or glory. He had his Work, it was useful, and that's all he wanted. And the only reason Enclave didn't defrock him was because he was too simple to try and leave them.

"Can I upgrade the road from here to Sand Castle?"

Paraskevi appeared and was about to voice some objection, but Zaid stopped her with a glare.

"Yes, Brother Zorda, but you have to stop when the army rests. We want to make sure you're protected." Zaid put his one useful disciple in the vanguard, with a force of five thousand men to screen him on every side.

It was interesting to see Brother Zorda in his element: he walked along briskly, humming a tune as the road before him rose and swelled and the road behind him packed itself into a perfect, smooth highway. He strode atop the moving wave of earth, a master of the ground beneath his feat. At every five-kilometer interval, he disintegrated the old distance markers and put up new ones: polished green obelisks that glittered, one hundred seventy centimeters tall. He only used his hand to engrave the proper number into each marker, then filled the grooves with white quartz he fashioned from sand.

By mid-afternoon the sky was clear and, though the day was hot, they could breathe free again. The column halted for a six-hour rest, to resume at night when there was a moon to march by. Zaid favored the disciple by having a meal with him. To the Princeps's mind, the defective old man was more useful than the rest of the church people put together. They sat among the command staff, with a double wall of tower shields braced at an upward angle to guard their flanks while they chewed on jerky and warmed an energizing root tea over a fire fueled by dried gurantor dung. He tried to prompt some conversation.

"You look happy, Zorda."

Zorda smiled, a little droopy-eyed from a shift of hard work. "I like roads. Roads are good. People use them."

"I noticed you put up new markers. Was there something wrong with them?"

Zorda looked to one side, at something only he could see. "Those markers were old. I made them a long time ago. I can do aventurine now. I saw Phillip do it and now I learned it too. Mistress Manu said, 'roads are a workman's product, but markers are a chance to show off.' I want Phillip to see I can make aventurine."

"How old are you?" The odd man looked over one shoulder and wasn't inclined to answer.

"We're not sure," said one of his bulwarks, a woman of about forty. "We know from the Histories he must be over sixty, but he could be as old as seventy. He's built or rebuilt every major highway in Tenobre. He's in great shape for someone his age."

"Walking is good for you!" chimed the disciple.

"I can see why Nexus recognizes you," said the Princeps. "You did a lot for us today."

Zoarda was still looking into the desert. "Perfect fit," said the disciple.

Zaid felt the stirrings alarm, because the the last time he said those words was after they met with the Pasha. But he never got the chance to ask the old man about it, because he grunted and fell face-first onto the ground. Two short arrows stuck out from his back, at an agle as if they had come from above.

"Uncle!" The bulwark threw herself over his body, but it was too late. Both shafts ran straight through his armor and into his heart. Zaid knew a dead man when he saw one.

"To arms!" he yelled in his most commanding voice. "Shield wall left flank! Shooters high!"

The cry was repeated down the column. A second rank of shields was hoisted above the first, angled to block attacks from falling arrows. Zaid and everyone around him gathered under the shelter, and more shields were held above them.

The Princeps felt an impact and looked down to see his lower leg was dangling from scraps of skin and tendon. He was in too much shock to feel pain, but the blood loss was sure to kill him. An arrow had passed through his body and lodged in Zorda's perfect roadway, leaving only the notch exposed above the surface. With all their attention drawn to one flank, they had momentarily forgotten about the other.

"Behind us!" he tried to shout. Someone was pushing him down and trying to stop the bleeding.

"Skirmishers!" commanded Bassel. It might be expensive, but they had to overrun the ambushers' position and drive them off.

Calls for a healer went out, too. The command section carried four healers, and one of them appeared and began his work while Zaid listened to the sounds of battle. His limbs shook from sudden blood loss, and he might vomit, but he still knew the noise of battle. The skirmishers marched out with spears and shields but didn't find anything. The enemy had done what they wanted and retreated.

He must have passed out briefly because, the next thing he knew, his aide was looking down at him. The men were still arranged in a shield wall. The skirmishers hadn't yet returned.

"Your leg is healing," said his aide. "Don't move." Bassel could be intemperate where the Princeps's honor was concerned, but he was cool when the fighting started. He also had a grand head for logistics.

"What in Morufu's burning ass hit me?"

Bassel shook his head. "Some kind of new bow." Zaid followed Bassel's gaze and saw the healer who had worked on him, laid out on the highway with a hole clean through his head. A cone of blood spray went out the other side. "They hit like ballista. Runners are still out, but we'll have casualty reports soon. Don't move until the bone is strong again." Bassel ran up and down the shield line to check with the officers, keeping his head down the whole time.