Sunset Mantle Read Online Free

only protections he had were those the law gave to any fighting man, and his only guarantor was the Lord God. If he was slain unlawfully, no clan had the right of feud with the Antach, and if the Antach wished, his contract could be ended at any time, under any circumstances, with only payment in money to soothe his wounded honor.
    There was a time when the Hainst would have stood behind him, and if he signed with another clan, his rights would have had a guardian. But that time was long gone, and better forgotten. Cete signed, and claimed his silver. Early the next morning, he met his fifty on the practice yards.
    As with all Reach armies, they went through the dawn routine with sword and axe before the morning services. Watching that routine, Cete saw the work that he would have to do. It was not a bad command. He had fought alongside worse, stood shoulder to shoulder with raw recruits, with criminals, with garrison troops accustomed to wine and ease. There were some of those there, but the bulk of his fifty were sober fighting men, men who had learned their routines as youths and had practiced them faithfully as adults.
    The problem was that there were too many outclan, from too many clans, and the difference in routines was painfully obvious. There were men accustomed to the wall-walk where Cete expected locked arms, or who dipped, turned, and reached where he thought the dawn routine should show straight cuts. Men bumped each other, fell out of time, swore.
    Radan Termith had given him a command, but it was a command of men like Cete, rather than a command of children of the Reach. Fair enough—the politics of the Reach clans could be poisonous, and he had been given a post that ought to have gone to a Reach army veteran—but it was scarcely a soft posting. Fair enough, as well. The Reach general had shown faith in Cete’s word and in his skill, and Cete would reward that faith tenfold.
    It was not just the dawn routine that was the problem; it was the attitudes that drove the form, the assumptions that the fighting traditions made about attack and counter, how the others in ranks would strike, what would be considered an opening, and what would drive men back to defensive poses. If he could count on some months free, Cete would have started them from the beginning, either with the tradition in which he was raised, or in the traditions of the Reach Antach. But the crisis could come any day, and if his men met it halfway between traditions, it would be a disaster.
    The best he could do was to redivide the squads. There were too many traditions for that to work neatly, but there were enough similarities and differences that he could find patterns. It was ugly and inefficient, and would never produce the perfect uniformity of routine that distinguished a superior command. But it would work in the field, and Cete could think of nothing else that would.
    The differences limited him, but within those limits, Cete pushed as hard as a man could. Days stretched into weeks as Cete pounded his men into shape. It was a good deal more than the other commands went through, and naturally, the men resented it. Which meant that more of Cete’s money went towards festive meals and donatives, and that more of Cete’s blood and time went into the exercise yards.
    All of his funds that were left over and much of his time went to Marelle and his commission. He never asked what she was making, and she never broached the subject. There were other things that they did not discuss—Marelle’s blindness, how long it would be before the city clans ended the Reach Antach, why Cete had chosen to stay instead of leaving for a less perilous reach. And yet, somehow, they found enough to say to each other, or shared their silences in her shop, or on the porch of Cete’s shabby little house.
    When an unmarried man spent so much of his time with an unmarried woman, it excited rumors. Cete ignored them, and Marelle made no mention of having heard