Sparus watched her approach from his position on top of a dune, where he sat on a field chair amongst a gathering of his closest officers. The other men were dressed as he was, in their plain imperial armour of hardened leather, their tattoos of rank clearly visible on their temples. They squatted in the sand around him a loose circle. A canvas canopy snapped a few feet above his head, and on the ground lay an unfolded map of the island of Khos, across which scratched particles of blown sand.
‘One last point,’ he continued to his men, hurrying to finish before the Matriarch reached him. ‘We know our enemy. We know that Creed is a natural fighter with a reputation for aggressiveness, of going for the throat. And we know that this trait of recklessness has only been constrained over the years by the Khosian council of Michinè. Now, though, that changes. With our presence here, Creed will be afforded full powers under his role of Lord Protector. We can therefore assume that he will come at us with everything he can muster. We must hope for this, in fact. If he does, we may win this campaign even before we arrive at Bar-Khos.’
His officers nodded, knowing all of this already, though aware too of the importance of stating it once more.
They began to stand as Sparus rose from his chair to receive Sasheen, all of them stooped like age-broken men beneath the low flapping roof of their shelter.
She looked well in her white suit of armour, Sparus had to admit. She wore it like a veteran, and watching her approach him now, confident and relaxed in her stride, Sparus had to remind himself that this was her first campaign in the field, her first martial command. That was her mother’s influence: Kira had insisted Sasheen be trained in the arts of war. Thank kush the old witch wasn’t here with them, though. Kira would have dominated her daughter in that mocking way of hers, and at a time when they needed their Matriarch to be at her strongest. Even worse, campaigns in the field were intimate affairs amongst the officers and leaders of an army. Those around Sasheen would have seen how it truly was: how her mother wished for her to be Matriarch more than Sasheen did herself.
The old general felt his annoyance fade away as he thought of all that; this woman he was fond of, living a life she had been sculpted all her life for, but who, at times, seemed hardly to have the heart for it.
Sasheen shot him a wide smile as she tramped up to their position. ‘How are we doing?’ she panted over the wind with a voice edged by excitement, and Sparus saw that she was sober for once, her eyes clear of drink and narcotics, yet they shone brightly none the less. It seemed Sasheen was enjoying this venture of theirs, even with her left arm bound up in a sling.
‘Please,’ Sparus said, stepping forward to give her a hand up. ‘Sit down. What happened?’
‘It’s only a broken arm, Sparus,’ she chided, though she accepted his vacated chair readily enough. ‘And hardly the only one after last night.’
‘Aye, if only broken bones were the worst of it.’
Sparus remained stooped as the Matriarch turned her head to survey the grassy slopes that rose up from the dunes behind them. The fort up there was still smouldering, where Hanno’s Commandos had stormed it in the night and fired it in their recklessness. On another hilltop, on the opposite side of the small bay where they had landed, a village smoked in ruins too; the work of the Hounds that one, the veteran skirmishers of eastern Ghazni. Beneath the village, Acolytes were constructing a palisade that would surround the Matriarch’s command camp for the night.
When the Matriarch turned back to face him, Sparus finally sat down again, squatting on the sand next to her as his officers did the same.
‘How bad is it?’ she asked him.
The general was holding a twig of driftwood in his hand. He used it now to point at the map. ‘It seems we’ve landed a dozen laqs or so from where we intended to. We think we’re here, in Whittle Bay. The inland approaches are steeper from this position. If we wish to keep to our schedule, we’ll have to push the army even harder than we intended.’