Sunset Mantle Read Online Free Page A

anything untoward. If Cete had any expectation of surviving the years for which he had sold his labor, he might have put forward a suit, but as it was, there was no point in thinking in those terms. When the time came, he would earn his thing of beauty with his death. Until then, he would forget it as best he could, sitting in Marelle’s shop and talking with her of other things.
    The waiting ended just over a month after Cete found his place in the Reach army. The day after the fast of the Summer Candles, the Antach of the Antach had the Reach army muster up beneath the walls, and blessed them as they marched out, headed north. Only the wall fifty, the militia, and the Antach clan army were held in reserve; the rest followed Radan, banners held high. The tribes would be in their deepest summer grazing lands, far from the reaches, and since the summer sheaves were not in, it’d be a strain on the Reach to support an army in the field. It was not a propitious time for a raid.
    They struck out on pilgrim roads and dry riverbeds, marching so fast that the scouts and slingers who took to the hilltops were barely able to keep pace with them. Risky. It was good country for an ambush, with long fields of grazing land between steep and wooded hills. No chance that a local tribe would miss them, and the column would do poorly if the tribesmen chose the place to give battle.
    So. Out into tribal lands, out of season, with no fear of local tribesmen. The assumption had to be that a foreign clan had come into the lands claimed by the Antach’s brother, and posed a threat to the Reach. It seemed the city clans had made a move, and that the Antach—the Antach and his general—had learned of it early enough that they were trying to preempt the tribal attack, hit them before they could come within sight of Reach Antach.
    For the first time since Cete had taken Radan’s commission, he let himself feel hope. If the Antach had an ally among the city clans who gave them information on the coming attack, and if the Antach were close enough to the local tribes that they could march their army out with impunity, perhaps Reach Antach would be able to throw off the leash of the city clans. If they could, the rewards . . .
    Cete didn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. There was a river of blood between the Reach Antach and security, and he had taken silver to wade through that river. His concern was not what lay on that further shore, or even how best to reach it. His job was to find a way not to drown, within the limits of the law, and his duties, and his honor.
    The Reach army was moving too fast to properly fortify each night. There were pickets up, and quickly raised barricades of branch and thorn, but they only stopped marching when it was already too dark to dig proper lines.
    The enemy they sought found them on the fourth morning out of Reach Antach, just as they were breaking their camp. It had been a risky site, but they’d been moving too fast to make good camps. That night, it had been a stretch of land cropped clear by sheep, spread out across both sides of a dry riverbed. The tribesmen had crept up through a copse of bottomland oak and terebinth trees, and burst from cover with the whistle of javelin and the wavering, terrifying battle yell of the northwestern tribes.
    Cete and his fifty were on the same side of the streambed as the tribesmen, and his men, at least, were in harness, with weapons ready. No time to find the signalman; he’d have to command by action. He ran, axe loose and warm in his grip, legs eating the ground, finding his footing without thought. First ten-squad came in behind him, third and fourth formed up for the charge.
    They passed a bloodied sentry, hit a tribesman who had gotten in front of the rest and cast him aside, the whole fifty iron-hungry, despite the whistle and tramp of an oncoming foe. Then, behind them, the signal horns blew the retreat.
    Another moment on the point of a knife. Orders