Traitors' Gate by Kate Elliott

Author:Kate Elliott [Elliott, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Epic
ISBN: 9780765310576
Amazon: B0046LUONM
Goodreads: 4039512
Publisher: Tor
Published: 2009-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

‘And the hirelings and assistants from Copper Hall? Cleanse them?’

Someone had to take the blow. War was a hard business. It was idiotic to pretend otherwise. ‘No cleansings. Kill them, but make it clean and quick. When the compound burns, let it have a necklace of dead to remind the people hereabouts that the reeves, and those who support them, are going down to defeat.’

Stage by stage, day by day, the caravan journeyed to Old Fort. The amount of local traffic on the road shocked Kesh. Men led donkeys piled high with firewood. Lads and lasses shepherded flocks in grassy clearings. Women walked – alone! – with baskets of mushrooms gathered from the forest, calling out a cheerful greeting to the soldiers. Now and again they saw an eagle and reeve overhead, patrolling. At every village they crossed a guard post with a barrier blocking the road while the escort sent with them from Dast Korumbos cleared their passage.

‘I’ve never seen the roads so secure,’ said Kesh for the hundredth time. ‘You could send a cursed child walking from here to Dast Korumbos and not fear for its safety.’

‘All under the watchful eye of the Olo’osson militia,’ said Eliar.

‘As long as they’re protecting me.’ Kesh pushed forward to keep pace with the soldiers assigned them at the border. ‘Are the roads safe all the way north, even to Nessumara?’

They were local lads, clear-featured and well disciplined, wearing their black hair up in topknots to mimic the Qin. ‘Neh, things are cursed bad in the north,’ they said with serious looks.

Kesh bit back a grin to make it a grimace. ‘No one traveling up to trade in Nessumara and Toskala then, eh?’

They scoffed. ‘Tss! You’d be good as dead, you would. But we hear—’ They bent closer, confidingly. ‘As soon as our army is ready to march, we’ll do to them gods-rotted Stars of Life criminals, won’t we?’

‘Surely you will,’ agreed Kesh, surprised by the fervor in their expressions.

They descended toward a familiar hill, its ancient ruins overlooking the glittering expanse of the Olo’o Sea caught in the ruddy light of late afternoon. Old Fort’s palisade gates were open. Folk worked in fields and orchards scattered all the way up to the upland highlands where the southern shore of the grassy Lend washed against the foothills. They labored in stinking butcheries and tanning yards, sawed and sledged in the big lumber yard by the water where ten ships were drawn up awaiting logs and planks. No sooner had their caravan rumbled in to the large encampment grounds then young and old alike swarmed them with wares to barter or sell, freshly roasted meat on skewers, kama juice, barsh. A pair of young women had set up a slip-fry stand and got to work as the newly arrived Qin solders stared.

In procession with her eunuchs, the captain’s mother presented herself to the slip-fry girls. Kesh hurried over, Eliar at his heels.

‘What are these items? In what manner are you cooking them? Is

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