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By Root 982 0

them, even though it hadn’t been put to good use in recent years. An air of arrogance surrounded them; they assumed nothing could be done without their participation. Sang herself was the embodiment of this, a low-born, in cultural terms, who had achieved great things, and a woman only in physical terms. And even Apium was certain she was no lady, more vulgar in her manner than most male soldiers he’d known. She’d boasted to him once about all the islands she’d visited—travels around the entire Archipelago that no one else had managed. Said she’d even circumnavigated the Varltung islands, but he wasn’t so sure, since there was no proof of such a voyage. She would customarily employ mainly women sailors, using the few men simply for raw physical chores. And he could make a good guess as to what services these might include.

Apium had joined Brynd, Lupus, and Nelum on deck; Brynd was commenting on the salt refinery recently built, and that as yet stood as nothing more than a precarious shack on the quayside. He was clearly unimpressed.

Gish was altogether a decrepit place. No major division of the army had been deployed from here for a good while, so many soldiers were rotting away here—their time taken up with gambling, brawls, casual sex. That, he reflected, was what you got from doing nothing more rigorous than training exercises.

Brynd was exceptional in taking the opportunity of using cultists to develop training strategies on Kullrún, an islet off the opposite coast of Jokull. Cultist technology was normally to scare men senseless, to drive back arrows, form illusions of troop movements, create phantoms that followed them long into their dreams at night. Any threatening scenario could thus be recreated, played out again and again, until the soldiers learned how to kill their enemy in the most efficient manner. A time-consuming business, but essential for producing the best soldiers. When it came down to it, when a soldier aimed an arrow at another man’s face for the very first time, releasing it could prove difficult. And many of the soldiers currently in the Dragoons, Marines, or Regiment of Foot were fresh recruits who had signed up to avoid the hardships of the ice age since the military provided a guaranteed wage.

Boys and girls from the poorest parts of the Empire fighting for the richest.

Was that how all armies had been recruited throughout history?

A few hours later, Brynd was the first to step down off the Black Frieter and onto the main island of Southfjords, under a massive sky filled with fast-moving cumulus, looming over a landscape littered with small wind-ravaged trees tilting at an angle. Terns arced over their heads, heading off toward their high cliff colonies further along the shore.

The four guards set off along a gravel track that cut up through a green hill, and Brynd suspected that those black-clad strangers, carrying swords and axes, would be an intimidating spectacle for a young woman who had been told nothing of why she was summoned home.

Even in decay the temple was an imposingly beautiful building, with its limestone arches and soaring spire flanked by two smaller ones. As Jorsalir structures went, this was certainly one of the more extravagant temples, more sizable than the churches Brynd had seen back in Villjamur. Maybe several hundred years old, so not remotely ancient by the Archipelago’s standards, obviously it had been constructed in a period when the Jorsalir had commanded phenomenal power and wealth, unlike now, when the Council even levied tax upon them.

As they approached the building, three women stepped out, their green gowns whipping around their bodies in the wind like banners of war. The looks on their faces were just as grim, and Brynd asked his companions to remain still while he moved ahead alone.

Two of the women were aging slightly, graying hair framing their delicate features. The third was younger, but the graceful way she walked and her general demeanor made her appear ageless. He noticed a white dryas attached to her breast.

“Sele of Jamur,” Brynd greeted