Duiker nodded. There was truth enough in that.
The sounds of the camp were a muffled illusion of normality, an embrace from all sides that the historian found unsettling. He was losing the ability to relax, he bleakly realized. He picked up a small twig and tossed it towards the fire.
Nil's hand snapped it out of the air. 'Not this one,' he said.
Another young warlock arrived, his thin, bony arms ridged in hatch-marked scars from wrist to shoulder. He squatted down beside Nil and spat once into the fire.
There was no answering sizzle.
Nil straightened, tossing aside the cord of leather, and glanced over at Lull and his soldiers. They stood ready.
'Time?' Duiker asked.
'Yes.'
Nil and his fellow warlock led the group through the camp. Few of their clan kin looked their way, and it was a few minutes before Duiker realized that their seemingly casual indifference was deliberate, possibly some kind of culturally prescribed display of respect. Or something else entirely. To look is to ghost-touch, after all.
They reached the encampment's north edge. Fog wafted on the plain beyond the wicker barriers. Duiker frowned. 'They'll know it isn't natural,' he muttered.
Lull grunted. 'We've a diversion planned, of course. Three squads of sappers are out there right now with sacks full of fun—'
He was interrupted by a detonation off to the northeast, followed by a pause in which faint screams wailed in the shrouded darkness. Then a rapid succession of explosions shattered the night air.
The fog swallowed the flashes, but Duiker recognized the distinctive crack of sharpers and thumping whoosh of flamers. More screams, then the swift thudding of horse hooves converging to the northeast.
'Now we let things settle,' Lull said.
Minutes passed, the distant screams fading. 'Has Bult finally managed to track down that captain of the sappers?' the historian eventually asked.
'Ain't seen his face at any of the jaw sessions, if that's what you mean. But he's around. Somewhere. Coltaine's finally accepted that the man's shy.'
'Shy?'
Lull shrugged. 'A joke, Historian. Remember those?'
Nil finally turned to face them.
'That's it,' the captain said. 'No more talking.'
Half a dozen Wickan guards pulled up the spikes anchoring one of the wicker barriers, then quietly lowered it flat. A thick hide was unrolled over it to mask the inevitable creaking of the party's passage.
The mist beyond was dissipating into patches. One such cloud drifted over, then settled around the group, keeping pace as they struck out onto the plain.
Duiker wished he'd asked more questions earlier. How far to the enemy camp's pickets? What was the plan for getting through them undiscovered? What was the fallback should things go awry? He laid a hand on the grip of the short sword at his hip, and was alarmed at how strange it felt – it had been a long time since he'd last used a weapon. Being pulled from the front lines had been the Emperor's reward all those years ago. That and the various alchemies that keep me tottering on well past my prime. Gods, even the scars from that last horror have faded away! 'No-one who's grown up amidst scrolls and books can write of the world,' Kellanved had told him once, 'which is why I'm appointing you Imperial Historian, soldier.'
'Emperor, I cannot read or write.'
'An unsullied mind. Good. Toc the Elder will be teaching you over the next six months –he's another soldier with a brain. Six months, mind. No more than that.'
'Emperor, it seems to me that he would be better suited than I—'
'I've something else in store for him. Do as I say or I'll have you spiked on the city wall.'
Kellanved's sense of humour had been strange even at the best of times. Duiker recalled those learning sessions: he a soldier of thirty-odd years who'd been campaigning for over half that, seated alongside Toe's own son, a runt of a boy who always seemed to be suffering from a cold – the sleeves of his shirt were crusty with dried snot. It had taken longer than six months, but by then it was Toe the Younger doing the teaching.
The Emperor loved lessons in humility. So long as it was never thrown back at him. What happened to Toe the Elder, I wonder? Vanishing after the assassinations – I'd always imagined it as Laseen's doing . . . and Toe the Younger – he'd rejected a life amidst scrolls and books . . . now lost in the Genabackan campaign—
A gauntleted hand gripped the historian's shoulder and squeezed hard. Duiker focused on Lull's battered face, nodded. Sorry. Mind wandering still, it seems.