Soldiers Live

98

Above the Cemetery: Mogaba Accedes

Twenty-six hours after his order to break contact Mogaba abandoned all hope of pulling together an attack that would take advantage of the enemy's despair and disarray. His own men had been too badly mauled to set aside their own despair and disarray. Only Aridatha Singh's division retained its cohesion. Its reward was the task of screening the retreating army.

Which consisted mainly of survivors of the Second Territorial. Of Saraswati's former right wing force not one man in ten could be accounted for anymore.

Enemy cavalry remained very active. The Captain seemed disinclined to let him get near her again.

A pair of billowing black shapes passed low overhead. They radiated a chilling psychic scream. Suddenly, instinctually, Mogaba knew that he was being watched by something he could not turn fast enough to catch staring. He knew that his best opportunity had ended. He summoned his latest aide-de-camp, who had been in place only a few hours. The man's several predecessors were still down there on the field. "Bring me the Deceiver prisoners."

"Sir?"

"The prisoners General Singh captured in the Grove of Doom. I want to see them." He thought he could offer them a deal. The girl could pretend to be the Protector for a while. Taglios would be less restive if the Protector appeared publicly sometime soon.

"Those prisoners were sent north, sir. Under special constraint because of the danger General Singh told us they present."

"And he was right. That was the best thing to do. We don't want them to fall into unfriendly hands." Publicly, Mogaba insisted on treating the recent encounter as a triumph. He expected his officers to do the same.

Mogaba spent a moment considering what options he might have. It took only a minute to conclude that withdrawal toward Taglios was the best course.

Oh, but he hated that. No matter the true facts, rumor would call it a defeat and a retreat. That would cost.

The Great General considered his aide. He did not know the man well enough to be aware of his family status. "Ton-jon, is it?"

"Than Jahn, sir. A remote male ancestor is reputed to have been Nyueng Bao. My family is Vehdna."

"Excellent. Perhaps you can share religious anecdotes with the enemy Captain."

"Sir?" Sounding both baffled and irked.

"I'm sending you south under a flag of truce. To arrange for an armistice. So we can collect our dead." If anything the Great General ever did won him favor with the Taglian people, it was his effort to bring back the fallen sons so their families could honor them with all the appropriate last rites.

This time would be a bitch. There was no way he was going to recover all the Taglian dead. "Find me some priests. Every kind we have." He needed advice about what to do with so many bodies, this close to home.

The Company, Mogaba was sure, would just fling their share of Taglian corpses into one big ugly hole, cover them over and forget about them.