Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

25. Esprit De Corps

Miccola, my trusted lieutenant and my second-in-command, swatted a fat snowflake away like a fly.

"Will you stop grinning already, Ismar!" She started ticking things off on her fingers. "Three week's marching belly-deep in the mud. It's snowing early in the season. We're cursed."

"This is my first command, Miccola. One woman's curse is another's blessing."

"Her first command!" She rolled her eyes. "We're one-fifty strong, plus two hundred wild Haida horse riders. This isn't a command, Ismar, it's a raiding party."

I rose in Breva's stirrups to breathe in bracing air and take my bearings.

The mounted column looked impressive to me, winding its way through the forest etched with hoar frost. On both sides of the track rose somber firs, their widest branches skirting frozen ground like a tent, then tapering off to a point way above my head. The sky bore down on us just like yesterday and the day before. It was gray and turbulent.

Maybe it looked gloomy. Maybe chill pierced through our gray woolen cloaks to make the bones ache. Maybe I had no idea what was beyond the thousandth turn of this so-called road. Our local guide probably worshiped Bhutas. But in my reckoning, this was Nirvana on the Knowable World.

"It's a command," I said.

Miccola rode close enough to punch me on the shoulder, her nameless chestnut snorting its disdain at my dappled-gray Breva.

"The Captain-Commander awarded you the contract because everyone else would have held a grudge for a decade for such an rotten assignment. A century even! Their grandmothers would have hurried to be reborn to curse her grandmother for giving birth to her mother."

"If it's so bad, why did you come?"

Miccola chewed her lips. "I was drunk?"

I snorted. "And you like me in charge."

"Mmgh. It's funny, aye. But, Ismar, this assignment-- Fine, fine! This command isn't looking good."

"I don't care!"

"You should, Your Grandissima." This wasn't Miccola's exasperated voice. It was a totally different one. It belonged to a crone who resembled a cricket more than she did a human. Even her gums were brown and toothless.

"Greetings, Your Luminosity." I used the title brightly to remind her that she was my Company's High Scribe.

However, Phedoxia--this was her name--seemed to be past the age when women cared about the chain of command. Thirty years ago she should have bought a cottage. There, in peace, she could have collected spiders, poisonous mushrooms, smelling salts and other equally lovable things. But here she was on a military expedition, riding up to me on a giant black stallion, eager to lecture.

Miccola cringed, despite Phedoxia agreeing with her. It should have set my teeth on edge that these two polar opposites, my two senior officers, sided against me, but I let it slide.

"You're too green, Ismar. Hence, you're too eager to show off where no heroics are called for. Your hubris will doom us," Phedoxia predicted grimly.

Miccola would have nodded, but caught herself half-way. I could almost hear the conflicting emotions wrestling in her head. As much as I wished for her to be on my side of this argument, there was nothing for it. A woman five times my senior challenged my judgment. Good thing I didn't hold old age in reverence--only merit.

"If we're doomed, then you'll die," I barked at Phedoxia. "You'll salute me, and then you'll die, because it's my command and we're the Deadhead Company!"