for the Seventh to get here.”
“They’re not landing at the Sharhap,” Altan responded. “They’re docking at the Murui. Far away from the fishing wharf. The civilians stay away from Murui; the flat shore means that there’s a broad intertidal zone and a fast-running tide. Which means there’s no fixed coastline. They’ll have difficulty unloading. And the terrain beyond the beaches is nonideal for them; it’s crisscrossed by rivers and creeks, and there are hardly any good roads.”
Baji looked confused. “Then why the hell are they docking there?”
Altan looked smug. “For precisely the same reasons that the First and Eighth are amassing troops by Sharhap. Sharhap’s the obvious landing spot. The Federation don’t think anyone will be guarding Murui. But they weren’t counting on, you know, talking birds.”
“Nice one,” Unegen said.
“Thank you.” Qara looked smug.
“The coast at Murui leads into a tight latticework of irrigation channels by a rice paddy. We will draw the boats as far as possible inland, and Aratsha will ground them by reversing the currents to cut off an escape route.”
They looked to Aratsha.
“You can do that?” Baji asked.
The watery blob that was Aratsha’s head bobbed from side to side. “A fleet that size? Not easily. I can give you thirty minutes. One hour, tops.”
“That’s more than enough,” said Altan. “If we can get them bunched together, they’ll catch fire in seconds. But we need to corral them into the narrow strait. Ramsa. Can you create a diversion?”
Ramsa tossed something round in a sack across the table to Altan.
Altan caught it, opened it, and made a face. “What is this?”
“It’s the Bone-Burning Fire Oil Magic Bomb,” Ramsa said. “New model.”
“Cool.” Suni leaned toward the bag. “What’s in it?”
“Tung oil, sal ammoniac, scallion juice, and feces.” Ramsa rattled off the ingredients with relish.
Altan looked faintly alarmed. “Whose feces?”
“That’s not important,” Ramsa said hastily. “This can knock birds out of the sky from fifty feet away. I can plant some bamboo rockets for you, too, but you’ll have trouble igniting in this humidity.”
Altan raised an eyebrow.
“Right.” Ramsa chuckled. “I love Speerlies.”
“Aratsha will reverse the currents to trap them,” Altan continued. “Suni, Baji, Rin, and I will defend from the shore. They’ll have reduced visibility from the combination of smoke and fog, so they’ll think we’re a larger squad than we are.”
“What happens if they try to storm the shore?” Unegen asked.
“They can’t,” said Altan. “It’s marshland. They’ll sink into the bog. At nighttime it’ll be impossible for them to find solid land. We will defend those crucial points in teams of two. Qara and Unegen will detach supply boats from the back of the van and drag them back to the main channel. Whatever we can’t take, we’ll burn.”
“One problem,” Ramsa said. “I’m out of fire powder. The Warlords aren’t sharing.”
“I’ll deal with the Warlords,” Altan said. “You just keep making those shit bombs.”
The great military strategist Sunzi wrote that fire should be used on a dry night, when flames might spread with the smallest provocation. Fire should be used when one was upwind, so that the wind would carry its brother element, smoke, into the enemy encampment. Fire should be used on a clear night, when there was no chance for rainfall to quench the flames.
Fire should not be used on a night like this, when the humid winds from the beach would prevent it from spreading, when stealth was of utmost importance but any torchlight would give them away.
But tonight they were not using regular fire. They needed nothing so rudimentary as kindling and oil. They didn’t need torches. They had Speerlies.
Rin crouched among the reeds beside Altan, eyes fixed on the darkening sky as she awaited Qara’s signal. They pressed flat against the mud bank, stomachs on the ground. Water seeped through her thin tunic from the moist mud, and the peat emitted such a rank odor of rotten eggs that breathing through her mouth only made her want to gag.
On the opposite bank she could just see Suni and Baji crawl up against the river and drop down among the reeds. Between them, they held the only two strips of solid land in the paddy; two slender pieces of dry peat that reached into the marsh like fingers.
The thick fog that might have dampened regular kindling now gave them the advantage. It would be a boon to the Federation as they made their amphibious landing, but it would also serve to conceal the Cike and to exaggerate their numbers.
“How did you know there would be